Another Day — Gone
I feel like I’ve been really busy the past few days. I had to be in Albuqueruqe for a board meeting for the natural gas company (it went well), and I got to have lunch with my buddies at my favorite Thai restaurant. If anybody is passing through Albuquerque it’s called Thai Tip and it’s up on Wyoming Blvd. Today I got back to riding Pi, and I don’t know if it’s because we’ve gone from winter to summer in a single day, but he was a lazy pig. I felt like I was carrying him around the arena on my leg. Now my legs, and back and seat, and gut are really tired. Tomorrow The Whip!
I came home and started to work on Wild Cards, then called Michael Cassutt to brainstorm over the manager’s notes on The Big Space Movie. We got a plan, and I said I would put in the bullet points in the document while Mike tied up some other work. Then we had a series of cascading power failures. I have no idea what caused them, but it destroyed some of my work, and when the power finally came on to stay I found that the wireless mouse and the wireless ergonomic keyboard wouldn’t work anymore. So I hauled out the Mac keyboard and mouse so I could keep working. I’m not sure I accomplished just a whole hell of a lot.
I needed some outside time so I went out to build terraces off the edge of my cliff. I’ve got some places where there is bad erosion, and I need to get the dams and terraces built before the monsoon season. I’m also still waiting on a bid from another irrigation expert. I’m desperate to start planting, but I’ve got to have in the means to water using the cisterns and the grey water. I may by a big bag of wild flowers and broadcast seed the sides of the hills once we’re closer to the summer rains.
All in all things are a little dull right now. There is a horse for sale that I want to go see. His name alone makes me want to own him. Dream Weaver. What a perfect horse for a writer to own. 
Melinda
May 11th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Sounds like you would make good use of a UPS unit if power failures are a semi-regular thing. Maybe paired with some sort of solar unit.
Or maybe that’s me dreaming my off-grid dreams again.
In any case, Dream Weaver does sound like a marvelous horse for a writer.
May 11th, 2007 at 8:27 am
We looked into solar when we built the house, but to power the entire house would have cost around $40,000.00, and when we talked to architects who use the systems they said the current panels used in the U.S. need to be replaced just about the time you’ve finally paid off the initial outlay. Carl thinks the Siemens panels that are being used in Germany might be the answer, but I don’t know if they are for sale in this country yet. Their life span is supposed to be 20 years.
I will go and look at the UPS unit link you provided. Usually we only get power outages during our big thunderstorms, and yesterday was bright and clear. The wind wasn’t even blowing.
And keep dreaming those dreams. I’d love to be off the grid. Up on my cliff wind power would also be really viable.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Everybody in Bangalore had their own backup power unit. Of course, the grid went off at _least_ once every day.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
BTW, did you see “Fracture”?
May 12th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I haven’t seen FRACTURE. Waas it good? I like Hopkins, but it looked like he was playing Hannibal again.