The Song Fight Bulletin Board

so this happened three blocks from my house

how are you?

Pfft how I am - how are you and your friends?

I'm not sure what to make of this world, I just hope you're all keeping okay.

I just ran out of Milo.

I just got a vasectomy. I'm a bit sore but I'm on the way to liberty street!

vasectomy is easy mode

Yeah I was gonna do it back in the spring but postponed it because of covid and then trojan let us down and now we're expecting soooo yeah.

You've read The Iliad right? Sure, the defences were strong, but the Achaeans still snuck in.

(Congratulations‽)

Congratulation on both counts.

I love my vasectomy, and I love my kids.

Ha, yeah we were planning on stopping at 2, but we've got a guest room and adore the ones we've got already...not looking forward to a couple more years of diapers, but I'm sure he'll be a cool kid!

I spent awhile today messing with Fruity Formula Controller. The lack of variable assignment for the equations is a pain but you can get some awesome lfos that way

I missed your earlier update, @sleepysilverdoor--congratulations!

Just went for a run for the first time in about 10 months. I did a bunch of running in autumn last year, except then it started getting too dark in the evenings and we lived on a country lane with no street lights or footpaths. Didn't want to get hit by a car (or, more likely, a tractor), or trip over in a paddock, so I stopped running. We live on a bus line now, and I had every intention of joining the gym again this year now that it's easier to get to, except then, you know... so, I've become increasingly more unfit. Hooray! Anyway, I put on one of my running playlists and did 1.7km. It's a start. Now I'm gonna go have a bath in something that's supposed to smell like eucalyptus that I bought in a fit of homesickness and goddamn it better or I'll be cross.

I used to bike to work four times a week. It was a bit over 7km each way. Now, not so much. I went 2-3 months without touching my bike before I finally started making a tiny effort to ride. One of my brothers lives in NYC and has been working a lot and has been stuck in his apartment too much so we're going to try to encourage each other at least get out for one ride a weekend. I can ride from my house down to and around a park on the bay and stop for a nice view of the bay, San Francisco, the Golden Gate bridge, etc. It's only about 5.5km each way so it's not very long or strenuous but it's a no-brainer default scenic ride. I did that on Sunday.

In a “GET IT DERRY” moment, Tadhg alerted us to the fact that a starling had fallen down the chimney today and was stuck behind the electric fire that our landlord put in to replace it.
Turns out it was two starlings.

I saw a mouse in my studio last night, and my cats seemed completely disinterested. So today I've set up a bunch of mouse traps all over my studio and kitchen.

This was after feeling something fuzzy brush against my feet yesterday which wasn't my cat, so.

I hope it's just the one but realistically there's probably more of them. Because, like potato chips, you can't have just one.

It probably came in through a gap in the wall in my kitchen, which I've long suspected was a mouse ingress spot anyway (like, I saw what looked like mouse droppings in a lower cabinet when I was clearing it out for demolition before my remodel) so I also soaked some cotton balls in peppermint extract and tossed those into key spots where I really don't want them to be nesting, since supposedly they can't stand the smell of peppermint. Hopefully that'll flush them out enough that Fiona has something fun to do, or at least herds them towards the traps.

For the last week plus I've had gnats or fruit flies consistently flying around my monitors. (I suspected a dead mouse or something in the music room but there's been no smell and I've not found anything upon a cursory inspection.) Last Friday evening I found a very small spider (smaller than the gnats) had spun a small web by the desktop near the keyboard around one of my cables. Sunday I returned home and there were like twelve dead gnats under the web. I love that spider. I'm gonna miss her when she's gone.

@fluffy We stuck steel wool in some gaps in the kitchen wall and it seems to have stopped mice from coming in—at least, it’s greatly reduced the level of obsession our cat has had with the area behind the stove, so I think it helped.

@crumpart were the starlings alive?

I’m super exhausted from work and prepping to move this weekend—we close on Friday, move on Saturday, and I have a big deadline for work the following Friday. I also got diagnosed with a chronic illness recently, and that’s taken some time to get used to—it’s been a stressful time. But I hope to find time to finish writing my Circle of Titles song soon. And then maybe another Songfight one of these days.

Yeah steel wool is what I used back in NYC, but I had physical access to the gaps. The way my kitchen is set up I don't actually have gap access, it's in a wall that's hidden behind my cabinets and filling the gaps would require tearing my whole kitchen apart.

Owl, please be well. Exhale through the mouth, too.

We've had mice in the cellar and even, more disturbingly, in the attic, in recent years. Mostly fall and winter. Hate to kill anything, but disease, man. Successful trap bait has been a peanut glue gunned to a traditional trap. A few peanuts escape, but fewer than mice. Sorry, little critters, but ya can't stay.

owl wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 29, 2020 4:24 pm

I also got diagnosed with a chronic illness recently, and that’s taken some time to get used to—it’s been a stressful time.

Oh jeeze, I missed this on the first read of your post. I know just how frustrating chronic illness can be, and I hope yours is one that isn't too troublesome. You have my sympathies, regardless.

Yep, the starlings were very definitely alive. Luckily for them we don’t use that heater, so keep shelves in front of it and Tadhg couldn’t get to them. When we realised what was going on we put him outside and moved everything so they could get out, and they flew to the front window and out that way.

fluffy wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:20 pm

owl wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 29, 2020 4:24 pm

I also got diagnosed with a chronic illness recently, and that’s taken some time to get used to—it’s been a stressful time.

Oh jeeze, I missed this on the first read of your post. I know just how frustrating chronic illness can be, and I hope yours is one that isn't too troublesome. You have my sympathies, regardless.

Thanks, fluffy and paco—type 2 diabetes, and wasn’t horribly out of control when they caught it. So it’s very manageable and controllable with diet and exercise, at least for the moment, but still a bummer, and I’m still figuring out and adjusting to the necessary changes to my diet (food types, meal timing and size) plus getting in the habit of monitoring/testing.

It runs in my family really strongly on my mom’s side, so it was in my genes, but I got it pretty early but on the plus side, between family history and relevant stuff I’ve worked on for my job, I know quite a lot about the disease and it’s not as scary as it could be. Plus I do have a lot of control over it if I can stay disciplined. I do love my carbs though! I’m sad to say goodbye to giant bowls of noodles and ice cream sundaes.