Ping!

I may have mentioned it before, but this house pings in the rain. Drops work their way down inside the flues, which are all sheet-metal. Ping! Ping! It's extraordinarily untuneful and arhythmic.

From which site-report you may gather that it is raining. In Sunnyvale, in September. I am appalled. I had planned to work in the garden, but uh-uh. It's wet out there.

Also, you will deduce that we have flues. Of course we do - but the legendary USian urge to excess applies even here, on the roof. I counted last week, and I believe we have sixteen flues, chimneys and vents. That's not counting windows, or ordinary externalia. That's excrescences from the roof alone. That's one for the boiler, one for the dryer, one for the kitchen extractor fan and one for the bathroom, and, um... Well. Twelve more. *shrugs*

Karen's gone to Bardic; I'm going to hockey later, if someone comes to pick me up. In the meantime I have cold pork sammiches (for last night's dinner was triumphant, thanks) and coffee, and much that I could do withindoors and very little that I want to, so. I'm thinking sofa, book, om nom slurrup. Maybe I'll do some work later, maybe...

Bitter reality

As a matter of absolute fact, I cannot conceivably actually want another mug of coffee. Given how much coffee I have already intaken today, it is an impossibility of desire. Undoubtedly, therefore, what I actually want is something else. *nods*

Besides which, I have no coffee in the house. I have run out. I had meant to go to the store to buy more coffee, and at the same time get moneys to pay the yard guys when they came; but it was raining, remember? And as every Englishman knows, you can't cut grass in the rain; and as every Californian knows, human beings melt in the rain. So I stayed home instead.

Annnnd then - yup. The yard guys came. The yard guys are here, yarding. Californian grass must be otherwise. And now of course - being English - I cannot leave the house at all, because the yard guys are here and I would melt if they actually, y'know, saw me.

I have no coffee, and I must gulp.