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Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo doesn’t have much to say for himself at the moment.
Fall is definitely here, with a genuinely crisp morning today. I also think the hummingbirds have now left for warmer climes. (UPDATE: Narp, they’re still here.)
Speaking of falls, we now have to carry Decanter Dog down the stairs because she can’t seem to navigate them anymore, as her eyesight is starting to go. Alas, I’m afraid she’s starting to age.
On a cheerier note, Ol’ Robbo salutes his beloved Nationals for having a much better season than he originally feared, especially after their miserable start. Yes, we’re still in last place but I though we’d lose 100+ games for sure early on. More importantly, a genuine competitive core is starting to emerge. I hope (and believe) the trend will continue going forward. (As far as the playoffs go, my attitude is Anybody but the Philthies.)
Also on the athletic front, I’ve got back into my routine of periodic sets of pushups throughout the day plus a lunchtime power-walk, which for some reason I had dropped. I can’t think why, as it really makes all the difference. (Alas, I still can’t use my equipment in the Port Swiller Manor basement until we get it cleaned up and put back together.)
Same thing when it comes to my piano-playing. After a long lapse, I’ve started messing about with some of Haydn’s sonatas and wondering why I ever gave them up.
Ol’ Robbo finds himself rereading the Flashman Papers for the umpteenth time and feeling marginally guilty about it. But they’re that good. And how is rereading a book any different that re-listening to a favorite CD?
Whelp, it seems possible that I may have some time on my hands next week, work-wise, although I still rayther doubt it. This morning, Mrs. R said, “Hey! You could paint Eldest Gel’s bedroom!” Grrrr…….
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Yes, today Port Swiller Manor is being pounded by the remains of TS Ophelia, no doubt in punishment for Ol’ Robbo’s many crimes against the environment. That is to say, it’s been raining on and off all day with occasional gusts of wind less severe than the average summah thunderstorm. Eh. (A friend down in the Tidewater did, in fact, lose power this morning, so she at least has, or had, a little bit of a punch at some point.) I have seen no sign that supplies of bottled water and toilet paper have been hoovered up by panic-stricken locals this time around.
Still, that we’re more or less bull’s-eyed by any kind of tropical system at all is fairly unusual: The last one that hit us head-on was Isabel and that was twenty years ago. I’m too lazy to look it up but I just can’t recall any other such direct strikes since then, only the occasional side-swipe.
In any event, doubtless you are all agog to learn whether Ol’ Robbo took advantage of the weather to paint his upstairs hall as he mentioned yesterday? Well, the answer is yes and no.
Yes, I finished all the trim and the doors (seven of them). At first I had the unreasonable expectation that maybe I could get away with just one coat of semi-gloss, but quickly realized that no, even though this is a non-public part of the house and even though the light generally isn’t all that good, it just wouldn’t do. (I confess that there are times when I wish I wasn’t so conscientious about things.)
Yes, I also slapped up a coat of primer on the walls themselves. But when I came to open the can of flat to go on top, I discovered that the can had been sitting in my garage for so long that the paint had separated back out into its component parts. And while as I say the weather isn’t all that bad, it was enough to keep me from taking the can back to the hardware store to see whether they could re-shake it (simply stirring would not have been enough) or else whether I’d need to buy another gallon. Instead, I said the devil with this and packed it in.
So the project remains three-quarters completed. (Actually, I can prolly put the last coat on in no more than about an hour.) Then there’s the biznay of cleaning up. Ol’ Robbo has always been a rayther sloppy painter but today seemed to hit a new height with blotches of white (it’s all white – the trim, the walls, everything – and can induce in me a sort of snow-blindness) scattering everywhere despite my attempts to contain them on the drop-cloth. No matter, it’s a hardwood floor so I need only wait for them to dry and they’ll easily scrape right up. This was also my first paint job since growing a beard during WuFlu house arrest, which combination included its own set of difficulties. (I’ve grown into the habit of fingering said beard when thinking about things, in this case not noticing the paint I’d got all over my hand.)
In any event, we will have lived in Port Swiller Manor twenty-three years come October and that hall is the only room in the house we have never yet painted. So even if not actually done yet, Ol’ Robbo feels like he has now hit some kind of a milestone.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Well, here we are on the eve of Ol’ Robbo’s favorite season of the year. Ma Nature has chosen to mark the first day of autumn here by sending in a weak tropical system tomorrow, so I must needs spend the day today getting done all my yardwork ahead of the rain. Heigh-ho.
Alas, one of my tasks will be getting out on the garage roof again to hack back the ivy on the corner of the house. We hates doing that. I doubt if there’s anyone in the world who has a poorer head for heights than Ol’ Robbo.
I also scrubbed out the goldfinch feeder this morning. Let Ol’ Robbo remind you friends of the decanter who have such feeders that this needs to be done from time to time in order that said goldfinches can see the oily sheen from the Nyjer-seed through the sides. It’s what attracts them.
What else? Yesterday Ol’ Robbo noticed a couple of yellow-vested fellahs out front marking the ditch along the street with white paint dashes. According to code, white means “proposed excavation limits or route.” I’ve no idea what they’re doing – the markings go up the street and around the corner into the neighborhood, but fortunately stop short of the Port Swiller Manor frontage. Regular friends of the decanter will know that Mrs. R and I have gussied up our own bit of said ditch with pachysandra and some low fieldstone beds. We’ve always known and accepted the risk that the County could plow through it all at any time, but it would still be a shame to see it happen.
Speaking of which. There are not many things that make Ol’ Robbo genuinely angry,*** but here is one of them: The Virginny Department of Transportation has taken on a massive project of widening the Capital Beltway in my quadrant of it. Part of the project involves replacing a bridge over said Beltway that Ol’ Robbo frequently uses. The new bridge is being built next to the current one and necessitates realigning the approaches on either side. This, in turn, requires clearing out a lot of trees and appropriating property from houses located in the immediate vicinity. People who for years have enjoyed peace and quiet are now finding the damned road right on their doorsteps: A flurry of “For Sale” signs has sprung up and those poor folks are going to take a serious bath trying to unload their homes. What makes Ol’ Robbo angry about this is that there is no need whatsoever to replace the current bridge. It’s fine! It handles traffic without any problems and was, in fact, re-enforced not that many years ago. Ol’ Robbo tried to research the justification for replacing it and can only find a bullet-point touting a new “cycling and pedestrian lane” on the new bridge. Whoop-dee-fargin’-Hoo! There are no such lanes on the road on either side of it nor are there any plans to add such lanes, so this “feature” is positively useless. Pah! This is just a make-work project to line somebody’s pocket and is ruining people’s lives in the process. I boil every time I pass it.
Well with that outburst out of the way, I suppose it’s time to go labor in the fields. Fingers crossed that I don’t fall off the roof. Perhaps tomorrow, given that it’s supposed to rain all day, Ol’ Robbo may finally get around to painting the upstairs hall, about which he’s dilly-dallied here from time to time over the last few months. Perhaps.
*** Not to be confused with cranky, appalled, skeptical, etc. As regular friends of the decanter will know, plenty of things in this wretched world provoke such responses from Ol’ Robbo.
UPDATE: Ivy done. Neck Status: [ ] Broken [X] Not Broken.
However, the sciatica which I first contracted from wriggling out Youngest Gel’s bedroom to do the job is back yet again.
UPDATE DEUX: Well, Ol’ Robbo went round the hall this afternoon removing the rug, the pictures, and the doorknobs, so I suppose I’m pretty much committed to painting tomorrow. (In fact, I did the prep specifically to keep myself from weaseling out of it in the morning.)
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
As regular friends of the decanter will know, Ol’ Robbo is deeply suspicious of the modern information age and all the electronic whatzits that go with it. Too much opportunity for spying out personal information by our corporate and gubmint betters. Too much remote control by same. Too much room for fraud and theft. And it’s becoming increasingly apparent that “social media” is a pretty bad idea all around, especially for children.
That said, Ol’ Robbo must give due credit to his iPhone. By keeping a hawk’s eye on the radar on my weather app-thingy, I was able to dash out in the only possible half hour slot between downpours last evening and successfully grill dinner for Mrs. R and the in-laws. (And even then, it was, as Wellington said of Waterloo, a damned near-run thing.)
I’m sure Bob from the NSA chuckled.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Fall is definitely here in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor, with highs in the 70’s and lows in the 50’s for the foreseeable future. I will take it gladly.
This morning Ol’ Robbo filled up his hummingbird feeder for what definitely will be the last time this year. As I mentioned somewhere earlier, we’ve had three of the little blighters this year, a male and two females, the latter of which dog-fight non-stop. I suppose they will be lighting out for the territory some time soon. When I stop to think what their metabolism must be and how close to starvation they must come so quickly, their very existence boggles my mind, much less their Herculean migratory practices. Ma Nature truly is a marvel.
(Because the Innerwebz knows all, Ol’ Robbo has been receiving unsolicited ads for hummingbird birdhouses of late. Part of me is intrigued.)
On a different note, today will see the first of three fall limings of the Port Swiller Manor lawn. Ol’ Robbo is still patting himself on the back over, having let it slide for twenty years, taking its maintenance back in hand. Three years into the new regime and it’s looking infinitely better. (Yes, Ol’ Robbo is a thorough suburbanite. I know this violates the canons of the Brave New World Order** but I’m already in so deep for wrong-think on so many other topics that I figure it won’t make any difference at my show trial. (And if you’re paying the slightest attention to the nooz these days you’ll know that Ol’ Robbo is being only slightly hyperbolic is saying this.))
On another completely different note, we are having an industrial-grade dehumidifier installed in the Port Swiller Manor basement today. Regular friends of the decanter will recall the great hoo-hah Ol’ Robbo went through last year having the walls of said basement re-enforced after it flooded out for the umpteenth time. It was proposed at the time that we put in a new dehumidifier but I thought we could get away without it. Well, 48 out of 52 weeks in the year, I am right, but that one month in the summah makes all the difference and the influx of mold has proven unbearable. Perhaps I’m just starting to get old. In any event, in she goes today.
Finally, with the onset of Fall come the inevitable mums. Ol’ Robbo does not like mums. Why, I couldn’t really say. But there it is.
** In the Brave New World Order, of course, you will live in an unlit, unheated, 10×10 stack-a-prole flat, you will be forbidden to travel more than 15 minutes (on foot) in any direction, you will eat zee bugs and like it, and you will report to your Block Captain once a week for Social Credit Score review and adjustment.
UPDATE: Dehumidifier installed. It looks like a small, blocky jet-engine and the drain line feeds directly into the sump pump. The home-owner nerd in me is highly pleased. Meanwhile, I duly tramped around the yard scattering lime broadcast and getting a fair quantity of the dust up my nose. (For that, I prolly oughta mask up.) I’ll do two more treatments this fall, plus overseed after the weed & feed service aerates the place.
Even as I type this I’m receiving word that Mrs. R is buying iris bulbs in quantity. Suddenly Ol’ Robbo sees his next project looming on the horizon.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbbo had been having concerns over the past couple weeks that our puppet-masters were attempting to gin up another round of Covidz-panic. If so, it doesn’t seem to be (if you’ll pardon the expression) catching. I’ve noticed that the metro at rush hour is quite crowded these days but that there are still relatively few maskers. Certainly there’s been no kind of spike since the headlines of the latest dread strain started appearing.
A cause for hope? Perhaps, although my internal skeptic remains….skeptical about whether most folks realize what’s actually been going on over the past three years.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
We must have had some kind of storm last night here in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor – leaves blown all over the place and a considerable amount of rainwater on the (covered) back porch this morning. Ol’ Robbo woke up for a single clap of thunder but otherwise slept right through it. Mrs. R reports having to spend considerable time comforting Decanter Dog, who is deathly afraid of the boom-booms.
I believe summah has just about shot its bolt for the year in these parts. After a late series of hot, dry days, we’re getting an unsettled weekend followed by markedly cooler temperatures. All in all it was a bit warmer and drier than the last couple years just at the end but nothing like some summahs I’ve experienced in my thirty-odd years in the neighborhood. No doubt the High Priests of the Cult of Climate Crisis will tell me I’m wrong, but I prefer to trust my own lying eyes than to buying into their (politicks, not science-driven) dogma.
So Ol’ Robbo has decided to postpone the great raspberry bed transformation, about which I’ve been noodling here all summah, until next year. Today would have been the day to start, but on final analysis I decided that the outlay in time, effort, and money was just not quite feasible at the moment. The fallback plan is to spend another season expanding the auxiliary bed, to hand out other transplants to thems what wants them, and to have another whack at it come next fall. This means, of course, that the plan for dividing the peonies also gets put on hold again but you mayn’t laugh at Ol’ Robbo about that because I simply don’t have any place to put them now.** I do still plan to put in some irises in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, it’s getting on time to start the fall lawn-maintenance regime. As regular friends of the decanter will know, Ol’ Robbo took it upon himself two years ago to lime and overseed the yard. I must say that I am quite pleased with the results so far and can only assume that they will get cumulatively better going forward. I’m also pleased to say that, despite my weed & feed service’s dire warnings to the contrary, I’ve seen no sign of the dread Japanese beetles or their grubs this year.
I will refrain from posting about the autumnal leaf campaign yet but will warn you that I may need to vent more than usual about it going forward, as Mrs. Robbo has made clear her determination that we clean out all of the leaves this year. I’m not sure why she’s suddenly possessed of such a finicky neatness, but there it is. Ground Zero is going to be the pachysandra bed out front under the maples. I tried clearing it with the blower last year but wound up blowing off half the pachy leaves, too. I’ll be damned if I’m going to clear that bed by hand.
** I’ve an idea of donating some to my church. I asked the Former Llama Military Correspondent if he thought my Padre would like the offer. He said, “Are you kidding? Ask Father that and he’ll make you head groundskeeper.” Heh.
UPDATE: Not just leaves. On closer inspection this morning, there were quite a few twigs and branches down, too, plus half a dead trunk in the neighbor’s yard. Looks like another round of storms is on its way in this afternoon. Interesting that they’ve been tracking from south to north – almost invariably a sign of instability and change.
Things had got so dry that the pachy bed out front was really starting to wilt by yesterday. It was astonishing to see how quickly they sprung back overnight from the storm. No additional watering by Ol’ Robbo necessary.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
As I’m reminded by email today, it’s just about three weeks until Netflix mails out its last DVDs. Ol’ Robbo is truly going to miss this service.
Checking my account, I see that I’ve been a subscriber since August, 2005 and in that time have rented 1772 DVDs. That’s not to say I’ve seen that many different films, of course. I won’t go to the trouble of sifting through the history, but I would guestimate a core of forty or so regular re-watches with additional one-offs now and again.
It appears Netflix is content simply to flush out its library, as I see nothing about returning titles after operations cease. It looks as if my final three will be:
“Apocalypto” – Mel Gibson’s pre-Columbian action flick. Eldest Gel was a history major as an undergrad and focused herself on the roots and growth of the Spanish Empire, necessarily becoming acquainted with the great Indian empires in the process. She says the film is a not-unreasonable portrayal of late-Mayan life.
“Sleeper” – To me, far and away the funniest of Woody Allen’s slapsticks. Diane Keaton’s aping of Marlon Brando’s Stanly Kowalski always makes me larf and the mechanical dog Wags entered the Robbo Family joke lexicon when I was quite young. Plus, the soundtrack is terrific.
“Casablanca” – Well, I’d eventually have bought this anyway.
Which brings me to the future. Eldest calls me a dinosaur for sticking with DVDs and insists that I can get any movie I want via one or another streaming service. Maybe, but especially in these times I don’t trust such a platform, where it seems to me far too easy to manipulate or disappear content that falls foul of the current fashion.** (It surprises me that she does trust it, given what a skeptic I’ve raised her to be about so many other things.) To that end, Ol’ Robbo gradually has been stocking up his home library with titles – mostly (but not all) classics and westerns – that I know I like but reckon will become increasingly hard to find going forward. I’ve not hit on a specific formula for what I consider purchase-worthy yet and am mostly winging it at the moment, but at some point may become somewhat more systematic in my approach.
** See, also, books and CDs.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo seems to have mostly kicked whatever it was that has been ailing me – achy muscles, pounding sinuses, and sore throat and lungs, mostly. Whatever it was, I managed to get myself out and do the yard this morning without undue fatigue, so I’ve got that going for me.
On the gardening front, alas, the last of my experimental rhodies has given up the ghost. To hell with it. Maybe the former owner was right about them not growing on this particular plot. I shall replace the corpses with azaleas, which do just fine in the Port Swiller Manor demesne.
Also on the gardening front, Mrs. R is beginning to kick a bit about my scheme to turn the current raspberry bed to roses and peonies, even though I successfully transplanted some of the raspberries to a new bed. I honestly think she just hates the idea of me laying waste to the old bed, sort of the gardening equivalent of shooting Bambi’s mother. Sigh. At the moment, I haven’t decided how much to push back on this but if the project does, indeed, get cancelled or postponed then none of you are allowed to heckle me if I don’t divide out my peonies after all this fall, despite what I said earlier this year.
Speaking of fall, I see college football starts this weekend. Can somebody explain to Ol’ Robbo the brilliant idea of having the Miami (Ohio) Red Hawks play the Miami (Florida) Hurricanes last evening? I mean, I know they’re both technically Division I, but come on. Ol’ Robbo has grown to truly enjoy Mid-American Conference football since Youngest started there. MAC-competition can be pretty tight and I just don’t see the point of a needless, throwaway loss like this. I can only hope that the ‘Canes felt a little bit ashamed of themselves.
On a different note, it seems in my absence from blogging this week that WordPress has added an “AI Assistant” doo-hickey to the menu bar. To hell with that, too. If Ol’ Robbo is going to generate errant nonsense, it’s going to be 100% organic errant nonsense: I’m not going to have a damned machine do it for me.
And speaking of errant nonsense, what news is there these days that isn’t?
Well, enough. Ol’ Robbo braim boggles a bit that it’s Labor Day weekend already. My plan for laboring on the day involves slapping a new coat of Thompson’s Water Seal on the super-woody parts of the back porch. I can’t remember when I did so last, so that means it’s time to do it again.
In the meanwhile, time for me to hit the hammock with a bowl of popcorn and P.C. Wren’s Spanish Maine, the last and (I may say) silliest of his four French Foreign Legion novels. It’s pure melodrama and I’m not especially enjoying it but once I start a book I feel generally honor-bound to finish it.
Later.
Labor Day UPDATE: Mrs. R and I discussed the fate of the raspberry bed again. She ended by saying, “Do what you think is best.”
Right.
To quote the Robot, “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”
To quote Admiral Akbar, “It’s a trap!”
We shall see what happens.
As for those of you wondering, no, Ol’ Robbo did not get on with his resealing project today. To quote Cole Porter, “It’s too darn hot.”
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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