Sunday, July 07, 2024

The Big Science Fiction Convention

     Inconjunction was this weekend.  I didn't go.  I'm still getting used to being around people again.  I nerved myself up and went to a nearby antique shop Saturday, and then to dinner at Half Liter with Tam and one of her friends.  A lot of walking and a little bit of bike-riding: I slept like a log.

     Between the pandemic, the crazy reactions to the pandemic, and the chaos leading up to and following the 2020 election, I have become deeply leery of anything but the simplest. arms-length, surface-level interactions with other people.  Don't know 'em, don't wanna know 'em; smile, nod, "How about this weather?" and be on my way.  I'm sure many of them are fine people but I've been disappointed too many times and fooled more than once.  So how about I just don't get to know them well enough to find out?  Seems like a fine basis for coexistence.  Maybe they're a saint.  Maybe they're an asshole.  Why should I know?

     Today, I did another load of laundry, cleaned out the gutter on the south side of the house, repaired a broken wire in the feedline of my ham radio antenna that I found while cleaning the gutter and made a nice chuck roast with mixed vegetables (apple, turnip, potato, carrot, celery, onion and a couple of little cherry tomatoes, seasoned with coarse salt, mixed fresh-ground peppercorns, curry powder, garam masala and some datil pepper sauce -- no, it wasn't especially spicy, since I used that stuff in moderation) and mushrooms in parsley butter on the side.  You can hardly beat apples and turnips in something like this, though people don't believe that until they try it.  After all that, I'm worn out.  I may not even do dishes tonight.

3 comments:

  1. I'm sure that I've read it on your blog, but I would enjoy seeing a description of your ham rig since I do not recall. Our antenna is in the attic, so we don't have to worry about most threats to lead wires.

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  2. I'll have to think about that. It's a collection of old stuff - the newest would be a pair of TenTech "Triton IV" 540 transceivers, but my causal listening is mostly on an RME 45 made shortly after WW II.

    The only antenna I have up at present is a G5RV doublet, from the late W7FG -- stranded housewire and insulators made of sections of 1" irrigation tubing. It is bent and twisted to fit my lot and the available supports.

    I'm not very active, listening much more than transmitting. Many of the old CW types are gone and I have trouble copying a lot of the machine-sent code on the bands.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks. I was a CW person but like you am not on the air much - in my case, for some years.
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