back home and it's cool and rainy. we are in fall. the leaves are beginning to turn and it gets dark at 10pmish.

haven't posted just because things have been very boring. the cat killed a bird yesterday and left the corpse neatly by my side of the bed. he's very proud of himself. i am flattered by the gift but also i like birds that are alive, so i hope this is a rare thing. this is the high point of excitement for the week. also i am waging a silent war against the slapper who keeps parking in front of our house. so far i am not winning because spouse doesn't seem to understand the need for defensive parking tactics. every time we come home late and she has stolen our spot (with open spaces at the slapper house) i get irritated, and i am not playing this game in winter after i've done the work to shovel the snow. so either we make it obvious the spots are in use now by parking them up solid, and/or i write a "find a new parking spot, lady" note, and/or i catch her parking and tell her in person. anyway, it's WAR. there's lots of empty street to park on and she keeps choosing our house when (since spouse got back) me & mary have been regularly taking up the spots in front. she has to have seen they are in use, but we come back late and her car is in our spot, with all this empty street parking everywhere else. is she dense or rude or what? makes me insane. i bet she leaves her cart in the middle of the shopping aisle too. i don't think much of the slappers.

so that's the sum total of current excitement in my life. cat caught a bird. neighbor is a rude parking hog.

huntsville was nice. it was a good trip. apparently the kids in the local school district get to go to space camp for free. that is a sweet perk! if i had kids, or had any interest in having kids, that would make it a very attractive place to live. it's still alabama, tho. weird, smart, bougie, military industrial complex alabama.

we went to a highly rated bbq place in the next town over and had the absolute best smoked turkey i have ever had. yeah, the brisket and pork were good, but the turkey blew my mind. i don't even really like turkey, it was that good. i will never make turkey that delicious and i'm kinda sad about it.

so basically i hung out with feds all that week. spouse knew one of the other trainees from earlier, another rare not-conservative in a profession that attracts mostly conservatives. B has a degree in nuclear engineering and spouse assured me that he is smart. so it was interesting to get his take on recent current events as we quietly shared bits of news as it came out. we visited another coworker for dinner and spouse gave me the heads up not to talk politics, which i assumed, and we had a nice evening with no mention of goings-on. feds are supposed to prioritize the law above all else - the whole long employment process selects for that - if laws are broken they will want to get the lawbreaker. they might even take it more serious if it comes from someone they were invested in. but, there's also "innocent until proven guilty" and the human bias of believing someone who shares your political goals (or claims he does) is a good person, exactly like you, and deserving of the benefit of the doubt. and the secondhand humiliation that comes from supporting someone who turns out to be an irredeemable piece of shit. there is a "battered spouse" like component in play, with psychological incentive to minimize and deny the horrible behavior of someone you invested your faith in. because what does it say about you, if you could be fooled and used like that?

the people who are most vulnerable to the "battered spouse" mindset, because they believe they are immune to it, are garden variety conservative family men. their pride and inclination to follow hierarchy and group themselves into "tribes" makes them perfect for abuse. if you lose your figurehead, you lose a chunk of your identity and your place in the community that was built around supporting that figurehead. not everyone is mentally strong enough to recognize and extract themselves from an abusive relationship. the personal stakes are very high for them.

it's been an interesting peek into the lives of people who are largely seen as faceless govt jackboots. they are funny and smart and dedicated and they want to help their fellow citizens (what varies is how to best go about that). as a group they get cast as villains or heroes depending on the moment, but they're just imperfect humans struggling collectively for the fairest outcome. just like i don't believe that scientists would intentionally release a harmful vaccine on the world, i don't believe that the feds are all conspiring to push a certain political agenda. it's not possible. even with hillary.

what can we do? we wait. we hope. but eventually, in the long arc of history, i believe the truth will out. i just hope it's sooner, rather than later.

so i guess spouse's mom thinks she is a progressive because she is progressive for her church. apparently they don't like that she wears pants and has a nose piercing. so that's why she considers herself progressive despite having deeply conservative views. she has the visual trappings and thus is the "bad girl" of the church (with like 12 members). she likes that self image.

people get tattoos and piercings and body mods for a rainbow of reasons, but by itself it doesn't mean a fucking thing, besides aesthetic preference and maybe a fondness for novel experiences. i cannot roll my eyes harder at this woman for thinking her nose ring and blobby scratcher tattoo actually give her some sort of magical "progressive rebel" status. no it fucking doesn't. it means you held still long enough to get a little piece of wire through a body flap. nobody fucking cares, except apparently the judgemental lulus she hangs out with, which ought to be a big ol' red flag, right? you can't give yourself a personality with piercings and tattoos. that's not how it works.

i'm not going to get into it with her on her own territory, and it's unlikely she'll visit our house, so i guess i just scream about it futilely into the void. nobody decent cares about your nostril piercing, mother in law!

so last weekend we rented a uhaul to take a load to the landfill (we got the new couch finally, so the old couch & other stuff needs to go). we ended up blowing a tire on the highway and waiting 3 hours for a tire change, which meant by the time the truck was fixed, the landfill closed, and we accomplished exactly nothing except giving $$ to uhaul. this is so typical of how all my projects have gone the past few months. it's like i am hexed.

we voted in the primary. due to ranked choice voting the results are not out yet. a whopping 180k of us voted (30%). i have a better grasp of how tiny the population of alaska is, after living on the east coast. it does make it feel like our two votes count for more. we can cancel out two red hats. excellent.

i have finally got around to playing with the stain for the blue pine. i got a pint of general finishes dye stain in medium brown and it seemed too yellow/golden in my test swatch and i was trying to force myself to like it and waffling. then i realized i wanted more of a rust/burnt sienna tone because 1) it would match the mantlepiece wood better and 2) it's the blue/orange contrast that i'm after. i want the warmer orangey tone to contrast the blue-grey stain. so then i had to go back and get a pint of vintage cherry. this general finishes brand is not cheap. i can get pints from a local independent shop for $22, which is not a terrible price - it's just expensive. so i have medium brown, vintage cherry, pewter and the reducer that lets you dilute the stain. that's $88 already, yikes.

the good news is that a little dye goes a long way. i played around on a scrap and the color is very intense and rich and can go quite dark. i've figured out a blend of 1 part vintage cherry to 1.5-2 parts medium brown creates a nice warm burnt sienna color, and diluted with another 2-3 parts of reducer makes a lighter stain that isn't too dark when applied twice.

it's like watercoloring on the wood. applying the wood conditioner first and going in while it's damp creates a wet-on-wet like painting experience where the edges of the stain blend together. i bought these wool daubers to apply the stain, thinking they would be more paintbrush like, but no, they leave wool fiber everywhere. cheap disposable foam brushes are the undefeated champion. it doesn't look like i've transformed the cheap pine to some other expensive wood, but it is very interesting and pretty all on its own, in my opinion. it's the colors that are the key.

i'm messing around with staining brackets and some plaques for coathooks, to start. i have the pine boards for a long nicknack shelf to go at head height from the living room to dining area (project area). once i get all that stained and finished and installed, i can start working on the blue pine accent walls for serious.

things are coming along. i finally got most of the curtain rings stitched and curtains hung (guest room curtains are the exception). the double rod over the patio is still saggy and i need to glue it, and i've figured out i'm going to have to hem all the curtains because i don't like the puddled look. but the curtains look good and the rings slide easily, which is what i wanted. the new blue couch (loveseat) is comfy and the pub table behind it is very functional. we have double rolling workbenches in the project area - awesome! the main bedroom closet with the double rods and cedar lining is working well. the house is slowly morphing into "our" place and seems more and more comfortable. the house has totally grown on me since the first time i saw it and i just like it more and more and more. it is just right! smol house, smol couch, smol and good.

after all the instability in the past 11 months, it seems unreal to have spouse back for good, and we have a home, and we won't be worried about moving next year ... finally, finally, we are back to normal real life.