Sauna - some assembly required

I won't write in public how we got this thing because AI is always listening but some months ago we were convinced a sauna would be good for us but particularly Frederick.  After giving up on the online order ever processing I got a text from a robot Thursday that told me a sauna would arrive Friday morning at 8 am.  I was skeptical but willing to cooperate in case it was true.  And it was-- in part--because at 10 am a huge truck pulled up in front of our house. But contrary to my expectations it wasn't a team of men delivering it but just one poor guy with a crappy pallet lift/fork thing machine.  And the box, which was held together by staples and prayers, weighed 1150 pounds.  His directions were to leave it in the street but when he said that I literally broke out in a flop sweat and squeaked, "How am I going to get that thing there?", pointing up our sloped and cracked driveway. Obviously feeling sorry for both me and himself he set to work, pushing and pulling for 20 minutes and getting only about 2' further.  Finally,  miraculously, an old black guy toddled out of the Dollar General and was heading past our house when he sussed up the situation. The two spoke in hushed Black Speak that I was not intended to hear.  (The driver was black if you hadn't picked up on that.) Then the old guy toddled off back to the store and came back with a small army of young black guys he had coralled out of the store and they all set to work getting that damned box up our driveway and right next to my car.  Then all but the driver drifted off without a word.  I've heard stories about the secret connections among black strangers who are never really strangers to each other but never witnessed it in action before.  I gave the driver the biggest tip I could manage with what I had on me and he left looking like he needed a nap.  I KNOW his inner dialog during the whole ordeal was "I do not get paid enough to do this shit!"

I managed to break off the wooden crate which was like busting up balsa wood and popped the top.  I was hit with a wall of cedar scent--really lovely.  I unloaded as much as I could by myself.

Here are the heat rocks which are surprisingly really heavy. In fact all of it is surprisingly heavy.

Simon unloaded the rest and stacked up the bits (which he compared to a giant Lincoln log set) in our back yard 

Here is the door with a glass insert.  And that was REALLY heavy.

You can smell the cedar from across the yard.

There are the crate bits which so far no one has taken. Not surprising, really, because it is shit wood and I say that as someone who is a bit of a hoarder when it comes to lumber.

It is rainy today and I am burdened with a big task that will take up all of this next week. But come June 1st I get to assemble a giant cedar house in our back yard.  It"ll be great, I am sure.

More About Rain Barrels

I can't even remember now why I decided that the rain barrels needed to be moved because it's a helluva lot of work.  But I'm committed now.  The first step was to get guttering attached to the garage to run the water into the primary barrel.  That took long enough because everything is harder than a random guy on YouTube makes it look:

We haven't had any serious rain since I put this up so I don't know how well the gutter is going to drain water into that first barrel but I will soon find out as we are expecting a MASSIVE rain storm tonight (in fact as I type this massive dark gray clouds are quickly rolling in) which is predicted to continue through tomorrow. (Or so weather.com claims, but they are about as reliable as a 1910 Farmer's Almanac since the US federal government stopped paying its annual dues to the weather satellite system.) I spray painted primer on Barrel 1 and it was a miserable task: the paint smells terrible and gives me headaches and it takes forever and the coverage is patchy.  And it's boring work, too.  I also primed Barrel #2 and tried out the yellow enamel paint on the top to see how it looks:

I don't like the yellow--too shrill and too shiny. And the enamel paint smells worse than the primer. So I'm going to have to go to Home Depot AGAIN (I feel like I live there these days) to get a can of primer and a can of yellow outdoor paint and do this all over again using roller brushes. It won't smell, the color will be better, and I don't care if the roller brush leaves orange peel dimpling in the paint as it's going to end up being covered with leaf and raspberry debris anyway.  Meanwhile, these barrels are waiting in the wings:

This morning I disconnected the hoses, removed the spigots and moved the cinder blocks over to their new home next to the garage. (And I twinged my back and worked through the pain and now feel fine--there's a lesson in that for those who can pay attention.) Once this latest climate change induced mega storm spends itself, I'll paint these damned barrels and set them up. THEN I can finally move my raised bed containers into position and THEN I can finally plant the things up. If I get a vine ripened tomato before winter sets in, I'll be amazed.

Mott Parking Structure Demolished

Mott Community College is between us and work, and the quickest bike ride is through campus, and used to use a parking structure that had an entrance down low and an exit up high, next to the Planetarium (you can see a sort of teal dome in a couple of these pictures).  It's been fenced off for a while, and now I see that they've completely demolished it.  That's a LOT of concrete.

 

You can see what the view used to be from the top of the now-missing structure in this post.

The Double Turn by Carol Carnac

 

A few weeks ago I restarted reading the so-called "cozy murder mysteries" as a break from so-called "literature," and started Airing in a Closed Carriage--an absolute whopper of a book (which is not typical for books in this genre) and it got WAY too upsetting to continue.  I have about 160 pages left of it and just could not go on, as the characters were just far too real and the tragedy was just too upsetting.  

So I turned to this book and it is absolutely the right type: the murders are bloodless, the bad characters are seriously flawed and the heroes are (somewhat but not overly) likable. If the name looks familiar, it should as E C R Lorac wrote all those Lake District novels featuring Chief Inspector McDonald I've discussed before. (The guy who wants to escape London and buy cows out in Lancashire where everyone is always saying "Champion!") The basic idea of this book (which does NOT feature McDonald) is that it is post-WWII (1956 when published) and the primary female character has returned home from living in Canada (where she taught at university and avoided being blitzed) to her father's home to help take care of him.  He's old, senile and bed-ridden.  He's also been taken care of by a formidable woman who is called "Trimming" (she doesn't seem to have a first name) who is his nurse, cook, housekeeper and a self-flaggelating religious nut. She's also miserly and won't spend money on gas for lights or house repairs.  So the enormous estate now looks like a crumbling haunted house that you'd have to spend the night in to get your inheritance. Trimming only begrudgingly lets Virgilia (yes, that really is the is the daughter's name) into the house to see her father, whom she hasn't seen in decades.  His mind swims in and out of focus and he acts as if he recognizes her. Meanwhile she doesn't actually want to be with him and really wants to be left alone to work on a book she wants to publish. She spends her days writing and drinking tea out in his old studio (once upon a time he was a well respected artist who painted massive things (think 25' by 25' in size) that only museums could house.  They are entirely out of fashion now (nymphs and other romantic images inspired by mythology) and so they are heaped up in "her" studio.  She does not like her father but tells everyone who will listen that she has a duty to care for him--yet she doesn't care for him (Trimming does that) and neither he nor Trimming even want her there.  Their only concession to Virgilia is in permitting a local doctor to visit her father once a week to make sure he's eating enough and taken care of.

After getting to know this household we drop by a much happier house next door: a retired lawyer lives there with his niece (who is a real Jolly Hockeysticks sort) and she is often visited by her boyfriend who is (fortunately for her) wealthy as she intends to be a modern painter and doesn't have two pence to rub together.  She is also committed to such communist ideas that property is theft and houses should not be locked and household objects should be considered communal among friends, families and strangers in need. But, she is fascinated to learn that her uncle's neighbor is a (formerly) famous painter and so she is desperate to see his works in person.  So they trot over and view the crumbling estate and massive paintings and, despite her ideological convictions, she is smitten with the magnitude of the property and all evidence of former wealth.  Her uncle is thoroughly cynical and is convinced there is ill will bubbling beneath the surface of that odd household.  

And he is right: the next day the doctor shows up as scheduled and the house is locked up and no one answers the doorbell.  He heads to the studio to let Virgilia know and she and he circle the massive house, looking for an open window or door, finding none.  She hasn't been in the house since the night before (she claims) and they both are immediately worried.  He breaks a window and lets them both in, only to find Trimming dead at the bottom of the massive stairwell with a broken neck and Old Man collapsed at the top of the stairs, alive, but unable to move as he's had a massive stroke.  He's taken to the hospital with no one believing he'll recover. It's so obvious Trimming tripped: the carpet on the stairs is old and worn and she is old and frail and the tray of food she was carrying was heavy.  So no mystery, right?  Yet the doctor has a bad feeling and calls the police and then THEY all have bad feelings.  Everyone is convinced that Trimnming was pushed.  But how?  And why?

Trimming doesn't have a penny to her name--she never even accepted payment from the Old Man.  And if he had money, why not kill him?  Or both?  And anyway, no one was in the house and it was locked from the inside.  A real head scratcher.  But before CID man Rivers is done, he's going to discover a suspicious geriatric plasterer named "Walter" (but really Willy Potts) who did horrible work on the ceilings and that Old Man was in fact a millionaire because he won an Argentinian lottery thirty years earlier and kept his money in Paris so the English government couldn't tax it (there was a lot of griping about regulations and taxes by all characters that were not police throughout the book).  And into all this weirdness appears a "nephew" of Virgilia who is way too interested in everything (he pokes about touching things he shouldn't, smearing fingerprints on everything) and has strong opinions about what happened. But mainly he wants the police to hit the road so he can put the massive tapestries up for auction so he and "Aunt" Virgilia can get at some serious cash.

So what happened?  And who did it?  It's completely bewildering until the second from the last page when (a) a third dead body appears and (b) the criminal suddenly confesses for no reason.  

I would say that this is a B- story.  Not great writing or very satisfying.  But certainly not upsetting either.  Now, back to Airing in a Closed Carriage...

Film review: Maniac Cop (1988)

One of the more notorious 1980s horror movies was Maniac from 1980, which was like an 80s gored-up version of Peeping Tom, where you took the point of view of the titular killer, who scalped his victims to provide hair for his mannequins.  It was directed by William Lustig, who also directed this little number, which will be notorious for precisely nobody, which goes to show what you lose in going from a noun to an adjective.  This one is in solid B-movie territory, as evinced by the fact that the hero (or rather, one of them, because there are different heros for the two halves of the movie) is Bruce Campbell, most famous as the muse for Sam "Evil Dead" Raimi (who also shows up as a TV reporter), who is just a millimeter away from leading man material (somehow a tiny bit too strange, a tiny bit too cheesy), and now has a thriving career being himself and going round various conventions, often performing marriages for his fans.  If this has been his sole output, however, he would not have half so many fans, as the role gives him no quippy one-liners or catch phrases, or indeed any chance to flex his comedy muscles.

The writer of the film is the prolific B-movie screenwriter Larry Cohen (famous for It's Alive, where the monster is a baby, or Q, The Winged Serpent, where it's a quetzelcoatlus that lives in the attic of a New York skyscraper, or, in a late-career mainstream breakthrough, Phone Booth), and I have to say, it's not one of his most imaginative.  The basic plot is that there's a giant guy dressed up as a New York Cop going round killing random people (the first person he kills is a poor woman running away from two muggers who thinks he's going to help her, but has her neck snapped instead).  This, understandably, exacerbates the public's already tense relationship with the fuzz, and, in fact, gets an innocent (well, ACAB) cop shot by a terrified civilian as a result.  This can in theory be blamed on our first-half hero, Detective Frank McCrae, played by one of those "I know that guy!" actors, Tom Atkins, 

who seems a bit old for the role, particularly as the reason the public knows about the Maniac Cop is because he leaked the story to a far-too-young-and-sexy (well, with allowances for ridiculously unflattering 80s hair) news anchor with whom he has, it is strongly implied, dallied.  (He looks old enough to be at least her father, and to his credit, he shows no interest now.)  McCrae is the voice of reason and decency, who (a) doesn't believe the culprit is any of the schmucks his higher-ups want to pin it on (like the two muggers), and (b) is very quick to believe that it's a rogue cop, to the horror of those aforementioned higher-ups (which include Richard "Shaft" Roundtree).  

When we are first introduced to Bruce Campbell's Jack Forrest (yeah, tried real hard with that name), it is as a purposeful red herring, because we watch him from behind putting on his police uniform, just as the film has opened with closeups of the maniac cop strapping on various items of equipment.  And, indeed, his neurotic wife suspects him of being the maniac, and keeps a scrapbook of all the newspaper clippings about the murderer.  After Jack leaves the apartment, we see part of the reason the wife believes this: the phone rings and a female voice taunts her with accusations about Jack being the killer.  This drives the wife to follow Jack as he goes out into the night (supposedly on patrol) and she finds that he is instead going to a sleazy motel where she bursts in on him in bed with a blonde (who turns out to be another cop, and is pretty much co-hero of the second half of the film).  Jack, to his minor credit is pretty ashamed once caught, but it's too late as his wife runs out into the night... and into the arms of the real maniac cop.  Once her garotted corpse is found in the very room in which the tryst occurred (by a cleaning lady who is, very unrealistically, not a non-English speaking immigrant, but another "don't we know her from somewhere?" type), Jack is slapped in jail, although McCrae is already convinced he's innocent, and goes to check on the blonde (Theresa Mallory, currently undercover as (of course) a prostitute), just in time to help her fight off the maniac.  (But she's already emptied a whole clip of bullets into him, so the extra couple that McCrae contributes can't be what swings it.)

McCrae is convinced that Jack must have been set up by somebody in the force, and somebody who knew about Jack and Theresa's affair.  But the only person she told was a mousy long-serving desk jockey with a bum leg called Sally Noland...  Anyway, McCrae pretty quickly works out who the real Maniac is, and his connection to Sally Noland, the only hitch being that he's supposed to be dead.  So he arranges a meeting with the coroner who supposedly conducted the autopsy, just before the maniac storms the cells killing all and sundry, except his intended targets, Jack and Theresa.  However, Jack is now a suspect in multiple murders - including (alas) McCrae's.  

So he must take over the mantle of hero for the remainder of the film.  We start with a visit to the coroner's to find out the mystery of how a dead man could be murdering so many people.  

We learn that he wasn't exactly physically dead, but the coroner was pretty convinced he was brain dead.  Then it's back to Police HQ for a bloody showdown, that transitions to a car chase to the pier and the usual "is he really dead?" ending to set up Maniac Cop 2.

Why the Criterion Channel of all things was showing this, I'll never know (Jami zeroed in on it when I asked her to pick a film - she ignored all the classics of the Czech New Wave and the like).  It's not cheesy or weird enough (unlike some of Larry Cohen's other creations) to be truly interesting.  It is competently made and acted, I'll give it that, but it kind of fumbled the opportunity for social commentary, and our killer didn't really kill with panache, which you want in your inhuman slashers.  If there's nothing else on, it can't hurt, but I wouldn't seek it out (unless you're a Bruce Campbell completist). 

Jami's Spring Gardening, Part the third

First honeysuckle.  Have three more to transplant to the lattice fence once it gets finished.

Front yard now: crazy bale raised beds. An experiment to keep sun loving vegetables off contaminated soil.  Also in Fall the straw will help improve the soil. 

Inside (but not for long): these two hydroponic things need a deep clean.  It's really difficult to do that in the dining room so they are going to spend the summer outside growing strawberries.  I can clean then with the hose very easily.  Then in Fall they'll come back inside to grow lettuce.

Baby strawberry peeking out.

Another backyard experiment: potatoes in cloth bags.

Jami's Spring Gardening, Part 2

Along with the fig tree this is where the food growing will be. 

Old rain barrel system which I started to move but lost steam today 

Raspberries: hese were planted by squirrels all over the yard so I've been digging them up and moving  them over here.  But they are a mess and I need to figure out how to organize them.  The most ambitious sprig was transplanted from a crack in the driveway near where I park my car.

Long been a problem: between our front yard and the parking lot is half a fence.   There was more but strong winds and homeless people pushed part over.  So fed up I'm going to finish off the lattice fencing to withstand any gale force and mentally unstable person.  It requires digging fence post holes which Ive been putting off. But it has to be done soon as the ground is like cheese cake and soon, once the spring rains stop, it'll be like Adobe brick. 

Future lattice and honeysuckle vine support.  Also featured are out of control grape vines.  I need a good idea to get them some sort of pergola sort of support but haven't finalized a design yet. 

Jami's Spring Gardening, part 1

Hosta haven: nothing grew under the balcony near the house and was told hostas would love it there.  They are outrageously expensive so I wouldn't buy them but you Simon bought me a Bordines gift card last year and I used that and this year they are looking lush: beautiful all summer and completely maintenance free. And we never gets slugs so leaves look perfect.

Shitake mushroom plugs in fresh cut tree chunks.  They take a full year to get their shit together but since it's completely shaded there next to the Dollar General, we have nothing to lose by trying mushrooms.  If these work well expand to buttons and portabellos.

Raccoons did a number on the liner two years ago and I'd been putting off draining most the water, cleaning the algae off, patching (think patching bicycle innertubes), and refilling it. About three weeks ago the fish were fully recovered from winter hibernation so I set to work.  Amazingly  it worked and now the pond has a lot more surface which fish need.  Plus the birds like the shallows.

 

I found a new plant store that does only pond plants so I got some when they got their first spring load.   I got grasses as they can best withstand bad winters.  In theory they'll oxygenate the water and the gdfish (some of which are 10 years old) will be even bigger and stronger,

Our soil is almost certainly contaminated so I'm going to try raised beds.  Everyone on our street has versions of these popping up in their cars given that food has increased 500% in the past few months. Everyone is planning for the complete economic collapse of the US. 

Never liked where they were because they weren't near the things that needed water but moving them required installing guttering.  Also they are ugly green so I'm going to paint them.