She was just seventeen

Because she's at sea and can't stop me, I'm posting another picture of Sharee from the batch of scans I got from Andy Porter yesterday. All the pictures are from the 1980 Norwescon, and most of them are of her in costume, like the one I posted yesterday. This is one of two non-costume shots. It looks very '40s to me, and not just because it's black and white. The hair style and jacket look old-fashioned to me too.

It's hard to think about that era without thinking about what a stupid child I was at that age (an older man of nineteen), but I guess we all have to learn the hard way. And what did I learn? That I'll always be stupid about certain things! I just have a cognitive bias that way. The unknown known, as Michael Dobson put it in a recent Facebook post about risk analysis. Appropriately enough.

Compost

Today was the annual day of spreading my small amount of home-brewed compost. I get a ridiculous feeling of accomplishment from spreading my small amount of home-brewed compost.

Something burrowed down alongside the underground part of the compost bin over the summer, and over the past couple of weeks I've been trying to block the hole with bricks. I wasn't sure what it was, but I suspected it was a rat. So being the over-imaginative type, as I dug into the compost I was halfway waiting for a small, toothy rodent to leap out of the debris and tear my throat out. No such luck. I couldn't see any evidence of critters around the plastic basket at the base of the compost bin, so I'm still in the dark about what it might be. The second layer of bricks seemed to be enough weight that whatever it is couldn't move them. The same was not true for a single layer of bricks. Anyway, maybe it has abandoned ship.

I also busted some sod in the front lawn today. It felt good to do something physical, break a sweat, and get covered in dirt.