Monday, August 30, 2021

 Monday, August 30, 2021

 

    It was 680 at 2 am, according to Vince, one of my neighbors who walks early in the morning as I do. It was 670 the other day. This is winter weather. I had to get up and close the bedroom sliding door to hold in whatever heat Elsa and I generated. I can hear you saying, “Boohoo! You poor people!”  We’re not complaining. Remember, we have no heating or cooling here. We are at the ‘mercy’ of the weather, summer, winter, spring, and fall. While the weather is delightful, it is also scary. This is our warmest time of the year, August through mid-October. Whereas the rest of the world is experiencing warmer, hotter temperatures, we have cooler and wetter weather than usual. It’s all part of climate change.  

    Vince and Julie, a couple I run into daily on my early morning walk, have told me they don’t have enough hot water to take a decent shower. I have a solar-powered hot water tank. Ours is also connected to the grid. When the temperature is below a certain temp at 4 am, the grid kicks in and heats that water. It sounded like their system wasn’t connected. Today I found out that it is. It’s just they have to set the timer to have the grid kick in. I was shocked. I told them how to do it. They said no. I told them to have their son do it. Also no. Okay, it’s cold-water showers for those two. 

    I got more weeding done. I sprayed eight bottles of vinegar. I needed to get it done before it clouded over and started raining.  

     At 8:30 am, I had a session with sixth-grade D.  We continued with the prewriting exercise. We worked on the section where he was getting ready to launch himself and catch a wave.

    I left 10 minutes at the end to do some decoding work. We completed a sentence at the second-grade level and then switched to the third-grade level. I didn’t hear D read, but he reports improvement. That’s good enough for me for now.

     At 11 am, I had my reading support office hours. I had one Step Up Tutoring volunteer. She was open to my offering. My method is very easy to learn; it just takes courage to experiment and make errors – in front of a student.

     Because my friend Carol Zim encouraged me to, I texted my Kaiser primary doctor to tell her that I was ordering ivermectin. I had been thinking of taking it preventively but decided against it. The medication is designed to kill something- worms. But who knows what it will do to my biome? I will take Vit C and Zinc, which is part of the protocol. Today, I heard a talk about ivermectin on the radio. It’s all the rage now. I got in just in time to be part of the crowd. 

       The other day, I hit a button on my Tesla app for my power walls, switching it from self-powered to backup-only. As a result, all the electricity went to the power wall and the grid. None went to power the house.   I called Provision Solar to tell them something was wrong. Their receptionist didn’t know about the problem and filled out a ‘ticket.”   That evening, I figured out I could contact Tesla customer support. It was an easy fix, although the young man in customer service didn’t have much tolerance for my lack of technological know-how. 

    Today, the serviceman from Provision called. I told him all was good. He said there was a problem. All the solar panels from Provision were not working because the transformer wasn’t working. So glad to hear that the equipment is that fragile. It only worked for a month before it broke. I thought I was protecting us from impending disaster. Guess not. The system is sensitive and needs attention. Scott’s solar system is good. Small simple. For now, it was a good thing I made that mistake on the app. It made the tech guy check my system and see the problem.

     When I made one of my short walks during the day, I found a lime sitting beneath Darby’s mailbox. She leaves them there for me. So sweet.

       Damon called. We usually have a nice long, satisfying talk. Today, I had to be on Zoom at 4 pm. Damon told me how August was doing at school. He just started college. He had been excited about his roommate. He was the brother of one of his father’s best friends from college daughter’s best friends. August is social. His roommate was profoundly introverted. He may even be on the spectrum.   All he wants to do work on his computer. His computer skills are in the stratosphere; he will be producing the next big Internet site. Damon’s friend said when he does develop his idea, invest. But this left August without a satisfying social connection.

   August sat in his room for a day. That was enough. He went out on his own. He found a group to connect to. They all signed up for a group text. August said for some reason, he wound up being the contact man. People would text him asking if they could join them. By day four, Damon received a picture of August with twelve other people. Damon was thrilled. He had been worried about August’s social skills.

     I reminded him of his first days at Vassar. He had a roommate he didn’t connect with. It took him longer than four days to find his people. He is still friends with those guys, Mike, Eddie, and Judd. August should be just fine.

    I had to laugh. One of Damon’s concerns over this last year was that August missed out on developing his social skills. I pointed out that his cohort was all in the same boat. And, when his father and I Ieft high school, we had no social skills to speak of. We did just fine, with the help of some therapy.  

   I’ve been watching documentaries on entertainment figures. First, I watched Inventing David Geffen, and now I’m watching a document on Bob Dylan. God, he is an odd one. Given the fame that fell on Dylan, his introversion and refusal to cooperate with the attention probably paid off.