mistressofmuses

It snowed!

This year has been bizarrely light on snow for our area. The weather stayed warm well into November, and our first snow only came last Saturday, as barely a dusting. I'm not complaining - I've joked that I find snow acceptable between Thanksgiving and New Year's only - but as usual ~we need the moisture~. I don't think I ever expected our snow to *actually* hold off until after Thanksgiving, and it's true that I also don't want things to be on fire all next year. (That can and does coexist with the fact that I would be happy to literally never see another snowflake.)

But at least if it is going to snow, this particular storm was very aesthetic!

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Yesterday, Alex and I went over to my mom's house for a while to help her sort through some old stuff of hers. A while back, she expressed to me the desire to try and sell off a lot of the "stuff" she has accumulated. I think a combination of her mom passing away, and then trying to help her sister with her hoarded house in preparation for moving, and her own 70th birthday, made her really want to make sure that she doesn't wind up with a lot of junk. A lot of what she has isn't really junk: she has antique tools of her grandfather's, some china, some other genuinely antique things. But she'd rather get rid of it now - and maybe get some money for it - rather than leave it to be dealt with after she's gone.

We did look at a lot of the tools, so many of which are really cool! It's amazing how well some of them were made. Nicely carved hardwood handles, a few with carved decoration, things like that. A few it makes me sad to think of getting rid of, because they are such an example of "they don't make 'em like they used to!" but I also understand my mom's desire to part with things that she doesn't actually use.

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Bella and Jaspurr had an accidental face-to-face meeting. I went to the bathroom, and came back to Jaspurr hiding under a chair, and Bella sniffing him. Alex and my mom thought he was upstairs and that Bella was just sniffing around more generally, or they would have intervened. While Jaspurr wasn't loving it, the meeting actually went really well! He didn't hiss or swipe at her, and she was just happily interested. She was easy to call away (though then wanted to go back) and was just mildly excited. He did growl at her the second time she returned, and she left him alone. They later also had a quick meeting in my mom's room, while he was up on a table and Bella was on the floor.

Jaspurr didn't love Bella being there, and ended up spending the whole night in my mom's room after, but it really did go about as well as I could have hoped! We've never gotten to truly test Bella around cats (beyond seeing them at more of a distance), and Jaspurr hasn't gotten to interact with other animals since being with my mom and Taylor. I'm actually quite pleased.

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I had a dentist appointment this morning, and since my dentist is only about five minutes from my mom's house, in light of the forecast snow overnight, I spent the night at my mom's.


The birds were happy to have the feeders today in the snow. A towhee and several house finches!

These couple pictures are a little blurry, but of my favorite random bird at my mom's:


This little girl on the right does not have snow on her head - she has a white patch on the top of her head! She's also not a white-crowned sparrow or anything like that, she's just a house finch with a leucistic patch.


You can see more of the patch here, though it blends in a bit with the snow. She's been coming to my mom's feeders for about three years now, she thinks. I'm always happy to see her. :)

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My dentist appointment went well! I'd been dreading it a little bit, because I had to have *such* extensive dental work done back around 2020-2021. A decade+ of no dental care, and many years of really precarious living situations, plus probably some general mental health garbage really took their toll.

I missed my last cleaning over the summer because of my grandmother's memorial, and so it'd been closer to a year than six months, and while I hadn't noticed any issues, I was very afraid it'd be worse than expected.

It wasn't! No cavities, which always feels like a big win, haha.

The weird hole in my jaw (where I had an extra baby tooth removed when I was young) has not gotten any worse. It's always exciting when every dentist and hygienist that sees my x-rays has an instinctive, horrified gasp. They assumed this was a crisis that would require bone and tissue grafts... and somehow, it's all very stable. The teeth around the gap aren't unstable or in pain, the jaw itself is not deteriorating. This was my five-year x-ray appointment, and my hygienist was delighted when she said that it looks the same as it did five years ago. "Science would disagree with me, but it really does look like it's just... not causing problems." I love that science can't explain my jaw.

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Jaspurr, having returned to the main floor this morning, ha. So regal.

Kind of a catch-all post!

Alex had an MRI last week. This was to try and find out exactly what's going on in his neck, causing a lot of pain and occasional numbness. The results came in quite quickly. Basically they all validate "yup, this shit is fucked." I think that's the official medical terminology. Pretty much every individual vertebra has problems of some kind, though some are only "mild," though most are "moderate" with a few "severe." Pretty much what Alex was expecting, but it is a bit vindicating to have the thing that says "yes, medically, this stuff is just so fucked up."

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Greenbean II (one of the katydids) passed away yesterday. She made it quite a bit longer than either of our katydids from last year did, and longer than Three. She also left behind many eggs, so we'll see if we can get another generation.

Clickbait is still going pretty strong. I'm impressed! Fingers crossed that he keeps wanting to eat his beans and make noise at every crinkling package in the kitchen.

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I am still struggling post time-change. I don't know why I've had such a bad time adjusting this year! I'm still getting tired an hour "early" at night. This mostly gets frustrating because the end of the night is when I try to get my reading done, and so currently I've been reading more slowly than I was, because I fall asleep instead. Getting off of work after it's already been dark for an hour+ also sucks.

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I did start kind of looking at my TBR list for next year (and the rest of this year). I've got nine books that I'd really like to finish by the end of the year, though we'll see if I can manage it.

For next year, my initial tentative goal is to read 50 books. I've managed more than that this year, and it'd be great if I could do it again!

More specifically, my goal is to get through some of the “classics” that I feel I *should* have read, and then put off reading out of misplaced guilt over not having read them yet, because anxiety is stupid: The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Ursula K Le Guin, and Terry Pratchett. The Hobbit/LotR is technically a reread, but I barely remember my first read through and I didn't enjoy it. For UKLG I planned to start with the Earthsea stories, and for PTerry I planned to start with the Watch books.
I also want to read the queer-themed ebooks from the charity bundle I purchased.
I also want to read the Up and Under novellas.
I also want to reread the Murderbot Diaries in preparation for the new one that comes out in May.

Then I actually did the math on that list: 4 Tolkien + 7 Earthsea + 8 Watch + 14 queer ebooks + 4 Up and Under + 8 Murderbot (including the new one) + 4 new releases for ongoing series that will be coming out next year = 49 books. So. Only one other TBR book for the whole year, if I'm aiming for 50??? (Not even taking into account any books I read with Alex or Taylor, or any of my "brain candy" side reads.)

Oof. Gotta realign some of those expectations.

Currently my plan is to prioritize LotR and the Murderbot reread. For the queer ebooks, the UKLG books, and the Terry Pratchett books I will make sure they're in a regular rotation of the TBR list, but I'm not going to worry about whether I get through all of those within the course of the year. Time is fake; as much as I like having a nice even spot (like the new year) to wrap something up and start something new, it's not illegal for me to carry my same goals forward into 2027.

Assuming we're all still here and not in a smoking crater, ha.

Happy Halloween! :D

Our big Halloween season event was last weekend. We went to "Spirits and Spirits," an event at Four Mile House. (This is the same place that had the lantern festival we went to back in September.)

Spirits and Spirits was an adult-only event with some spirit tastings, drag shows, a fashion show, a vendor marketplace, tours of the historic farmhouse including Victorian-era mourning customs, and the chance to attend an optional seance. I did get us tickets for the seance.

It was a lot of fun!

We got there right around opening time, and wandered around for a few minutes. We went to get something to drink, and then wanted to go to the first timeslot for the drag show... but unfortunately they had to cancel the first time. But it meant we were right there for the first fashion show slot, so we did get to see that, which was quite cool!



The fashion show was put on by Bête Noire, a local designer who mostly does super fancy gothy stuff.

Always love models walking to some Sisters of Mercy.

Five more pictures:

Liked the candles and coffin decor.


I was particularly fond of the floating candles.

My phone was not terribly cooperative with taking pictures of anything moving, so my pictures from the fashion show mostly didn't turn out well, but here are a few more:






This model was the best. She was so energetic and fun to watch.

After that we had to head to our seance session, since those were timed entries. (They actually did not check our tickets, even though all the sessions were sold out, ha.)



The seance was held in the attic of the farmhouse.

It was led by a couple members of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society.

They talked a bit about Victorian seances, and the spiritualism of the era. We had some tarot cards, runestones, as well as some objects (like an ax, and a creepy doll). There were a couple ouija boards, a pendulum, etc.


Trying to use a ouija board.

Just a couple more pics from the seance:

Another ouija board.

The ouija boards did not get much in the way of any response, or the ones they got weren't very clear.

The pendulum was about the same; the only 'response' we got was a "maybe," ha.

They had someone do a phone recording to check for an EVP, and that was somewhat interesting: There was noise in the background that sounded a bit like an argument, though nothing was clear enough to hear. While there was some background noise from the tours happening downstairs, it didn't sound at all like that. So that was at least a bit interesting!

But no conclusive ghosts, haha.

We hung out and chatted for a bit, bought a couple books.

Then we went downstairs and sort of took ourselves on a tour of the house. We didn't start at the beginning, but just sort of wandered at random. They did have interpreters in most of the rooms to talk about the house specifically or customs of the era in general.


The parlor, and talking about Victorian mourning customs in particular. (Mourning attire, mourning periods, memento mori, covering mirrors, etc.)

Six more pictures:

I liked this little couch.


Some stuff!


Cool old stove. (I genuinely don't know what the white streak is. Maybe the kitchen is haunted!)

Most of the wallpaper and such is reproduction, but they have a few sections of original wallpaper under protective covering. (Allegedly including some fine arsenic green!)




(Eek, it's me.) Or no, I should say: ~but there was no one there when I took the picture~ It's a ghost!


Last picture of fancy wallpaper.

We also went on the little "haunted hayride" around part of the property. It was quick, and went through a couple little setpieces with fake headstones or zombies and such, but it was fun! There was also a shooting star, which I think was the highlight for everyone, haha.

We wandered over to some of the animal pens, and the goats came out and started bleating at us.


So we petted some goats for a few minutes.

Sadly, we never ended up getting to see the drag show. There were three timeslots, but the first was cancelled, the second was during our seance timeslot, and the third was packed.

We did get apple cider churros, which were delicious.

This was a really fun evening. I wish I hadn't had to go back to work the next day, but it was still mostly the kick-off to my time off from work. If they do a similar event next year, I hope we get the chance to go again.

Last week, we were lucky enough to have a pretty nice day, so we definitely wanted to take advantage of it!

It was a very beautiful fall day. There were lovely colors, it was warm, and it was all around fairly perfect to be out.


Much gold! And the creek down in the corner.


Liked the view looking up. The sky was also just extremely blue.


Look, it's Bella!

Eleven more pictures:

This time we walked past the other two mosaics on the road bridg:






A boxelder bug nymph!


Ducks on the creek! And some nice fluffy milkweed seeds.


A late chicory flower.


More ducks and colors!


This goober.

(This was right after she took a wade in the very cold creek, immediately got the zoomies from being overstimulated by the cold, rocketed around for a bit, and slammed into my shin hard enough to make both of us yelp, lol.)


Flowers!

We went down to the little stone house for a bit.


It's Bella again!


Really nice colors!


I love the color of these geraniums, but it also seems like a fake color, haha.

On Tuesday, we decided that while we were out in the middle of nowhere on the eastern plains, we might as well do something else before we made the long drive back.

There was a historic cemetery that wasn't too far away, and the trip out that way would also take us past something we'd noticed on our way to the Sand Creek Massacre site:


A derailed section of train!



At the time, we were wondering if perhaps this was tornado or wind damage, since it looked more twisted than crushed.

Nope! Apparently it just... fell off?

It was carrying wheat!

(At least some of what looks like sand or dirt blown up against the cars is probably wheat.)

This article has even less info, but some cool aerial shots.

While a couple articles talk about the derailment, and mention the cause being under investigation, I did not see any followup. The derailment also apparently happened on August 20, so it had been sitting for a bit.

Five more pictures:

Many springs in the grass.

I was glad we got to stop and get a closer look, though at the time we didn't know any details about what had happened.

I still have one post from the lantern festival, but I'm getting slightly out of order, because it's Indigenous Peoples' Day, and that feels like a fitting time to post about our visit to Sand Creek.

Then again, memorializing a horrific massacre isn't exactly celebratory, so.

A couple weeks ago, we decided to take my weekend and go out to the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. Alex has wanted to go out there for some time, but it's far enough that it would have to be an overnight trip, so we just hadn't had a good chance to. We had a weekend free, and could swing the hotel expense, so we decided to go.

It was a good trip. It's a somber, tragic place, but still good.


"Welcome to the Massacre" sets a bit of a weird tone, gotta say.

This sign does have the very brief explanation of the site and the massacre itself: November 29, 1864, the US Volunteer Cavalry attacked a peaceful camp of Arapaho and Cheyenne natives. They were camped in a place they had been told to go; they were actively engaging in peace talks with the territorial and federal governments; they had emblems that indicated they were part of these talks, they were flying an American flag, they flew a white flag of surrender; the camp itself was largely made up of women, children, and elders... And the Cavalry attacked and murdered them anyway, killing more than 200 of them, and mutilating many of the victims.


A 33 Star American flag. This is the flag that at the time would have been flown over the camp; the one that was ignored, even though it was supposed to keep them safe.

The site is pretty far away, and there weren't many people there, but we weren't the only ones, either.

We arrived pretty much just in time for one of the ranger-led talks about the history of the site. While I already knew a fair amount about it, it was still informative. The ranger who led it was very nice, and spent a lot of time talking with us. (It was Alex and me and then another couple who came to the talk.)

We were initially a little leery of the other two, as the guy fairly quickly brought up being a veteran. That shouldn't feel like a red flag, but. Turns out it was not; the guy had a lot to say about military violence, and how horrible anything like this was. When the ranger opened it up for questions, he asked about how he'd heard the current administration is threatening to shut sites like this down, or wants to ensure that things have to be portrayed positively, and wanted to know if those were concerns.

The ranger said that yes, those are very real concerns. He said they're under a lot of scrutiny, and well... "Massacre" is in the name of the site. It's hard to sugar-coat. He also said he has to inform us that if we feel he was being too negative about the nation's history, then we can report him and the site.

The other guy had some opinions about what bullshit that was, and how important history was, and accountability for history, and knowing what we've done wrong so we can do better now, etc. Appreciated it.


My thoughts on the mandatory signage. "Anything negative about past Americans..." Welp. They were murderous assholes, so.

There was discussion of a couple soldiers who did the right thing. Two in particular: Silas Soule, and Joseph Cramer. Both of them disobeyed orders and refused to fire. They also both later testified against Chivington.

I've visited Silas Soule's grave in Riverside Cemetery. He was murdered shortly after his testimony regarding the massacre; it is believed that is likely why he was murdered.

There are a few trails to different parts of the site. You can't go to the massacre site itself, though you can go up to an overlook. We didn't have time for one of the longer trails (the site's hours are limited, and they're closed on Tuesdays completely, so we had to do it on the Monday, after the long drive out, leaving us with limited time.)

One thing that we noticed on the walk up the trail we did take: so many grasshoppers! So many different kinds of grasshoppers. I'll put my squeeing over bugs into a separate post, though.


Looking out toward the actual camp site. Either a raven or a turkey vulture soaring over; I never got quite a good enough look at it to tell.


Toward the camp.

We met a couple older women up at the overlook. They also expressed that they were visiting because they'd heard about attempts to shut the site down by the federal government. They said that if the government tries, they and their friends will all come back and protest. Told them we'd see them there, ha.


One of the places I found most... emotional, I guess. There is a place for repatriation; remains are still being recovered. There were a lot of bodies and body parts, as well as belongings, taken as trophies. Some are still being found. The ranger mentioned that the most recent was earlier this year. I believe he said that the femur of a teenage girl had been found and returned.

Six pictures of signs from the site:

These are not all of the signs at the site; there were several I didn't get pictures of. But here are some with more information.




I appreciate that someone has scratched up Chivington's face.

The National Parks and Monuments have a "BARK Ranger" program. (Basically you bring your dog and promise to keep them on leash and pick up their poop.) But Bella got a BARK Ranger tag!)

I guess it was good timing that we went before the shutdown.

Back on September 18th, Alex and I decided to go do a fun splurgey thing. We went to the Four Mile Historic Park's "Bright Nights" lantern festival display. :)

Four Mile Historic Park is a historic farm in Denver (which was once a stagecoach stop, which is where the Four Mile name comes from, I believe.) They're typically closed on my days off, so we never end up going, but they had a booth at Pride, and we picked up a flyer for the upcoming lantern festival.

It was lovely!


The entrance. (Though I took this picture on the way out; it was still slightly light in the sky when we got there.)


Should have gone back over once it was fully dark, but I do love the peacocks. (The sign about this particular display talks about them representing love. They are, of course, both male, haha. And have a giant rainbow heart. Love my pride peacocks.)


I really loved this fae creature on their throne. <3

Twelve more pictures:

I was, of course, very taken with the jackalopes.


Fun fantasy deer... seaweed? creature.


Some charming little mushrooms.


It's probably zero real surprise, but the rainbow butterfly lights "room" was probably one of my favorite spots.


A kitsune!


Armadillo!


There were a bunch of interactive displays. This one has a crank at the front, and turning it moves the machinery to move the segments of the dragon's body up and down.


The dragon's face.


Some were like this, intended to be photo frames. Very pretty!


Birds and lotus flowers.


I really liked the bluebirds and bluejays in the tree.


And one final jackalope!

I'm splitting the pictures from the lantern festival into a few different posts, since otherwise it'll be very, very long.

I took last Saturday and Sunday off to attend a model horse show with Alex. There haven't been many shows this year; he attended BreyerMidwest in the spring, but I wasn't able to take that weekend off, and the host who usually holds the majority of the semi-local shows has been taking a year off from it to do other things.

This one was held by a regular shower in the local community, and it was nice to have a show to attend!

It definitely made for a long day: we got up around 5:00 to get the car loaded, and then take Bella over to my mom's house for the day. We managed to get on the road by 6:30 or so (just slightly later than hoped, but did include getting coffee). After a couple hours' drive through mostly rural areas, we made it, just a bit after the 8:00 setup start.

The show itself was fun, but long, and a liiiiittle frustratingly disorganized. (The host kept changing things in the weeks leading up to the show, and continued changing things day-of.) Still, running a show includes SO many moving parts, and so much to keep track of, it's just a whole lot to do, so I appreciate anyone willing to do it!

Alex did pretty well - 21 NAN cards (the cards awarded to the top two places in each class of a NAN-qualifying show; serves as a "ticket" for that model to be entered into a relatively prestigious annual show) and 28 "Western Conference" cards (which appear to be an attempted regional "competitor" to NAN, which I have never heard of, despite it apparently having been a thing for 10 years... these "tickets" are awarded up to third place.)

Alex's biggest win was:



This is a custom that he did a few years ago. :) It was first in the custom Morgan class, and then went on to win the sectional champion for custom light breeds! (Got a ribbon and the 3-D printed dog. The show holder is very into German Shepherds, ha.)

This custom does extremely well for him, and deservedly so! The finishwork (done in pastels rather than paint) is extremely well done. (It's that much more exciting that it does so well, since he was the artist.) He never seems to believe that it does deserve it, though!

By the end, we were just extremely tired. The biggest divisions took a long time to get through, and we didn't end up finishing the last of it until 9:00... and then had to deal with the drive back.

I felt really bad making my mom stay up that late to wait for us to come get Bella. We made decent time on the way back (via a different route), and managed to get there just after 10:30 to pick her up, so not really much later than mom and Taylor would have been staying up anyway.

Mom said that Bella was very good. (She still hasn't really met Jaspurr; he came downstairs once, and as soon as Bella hopped off the loveseat to approach him, he bolted back upstairs and didn't come back down.)

Their excitement for the day was mom taking Bella on a neighborhood walk and finding...


A huge snake shed! Broom for scale, lol.

There is a huge bull snake somewhere in the neighborhood! :D

Kind of a bunch of stuff that happened in the last week or so...

Last week, we had a minor scare with Bella, where she ate a fairly large piece of a toy. She has swallowed similar bits before without us knowing, until usually after a day or so, she'll throw it up, which is very, very lucky. I wish I could count on that happening, rather than it making its way farther through the tubes and getting to blockage/obstruction or laceration territory, but it's also not a gamble we wanted to take. So we got to induce vomiting (using hydrogen peroxide) which she was emphatically not a fan of, but at least it did bring the chunk up right away. Better than an emergency vet bill.

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Then on Sunday, while I was at work, my stepmom texted me that she was taking my dad to the ER for difficulty breathing and heart palpitations. The ER thought it was most likely a-fib, which is at least easily treatable, but they wanted to rule out anything else it could be, so transferred him to a cardiac hospital. I don't believe he actually had a heart attack (though getting complete information from him isn't always going to happen.) They did a bunch of tests on Monday, including sending in some scopes to look for blockages, plus delivering a shock to hopefully "reset" the heart rhythm. Apparently everything went well, and there weren't any complications or scary findings, and he got to go home yesterday. He's on medication now, which he said makes him feel "woobly."

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The good thing for the week:
I spent the weekend (Sunday night through Tuesday morning) over at Taylor and my mom's house, since they had Monday off for the holiday. (It's always my day off.) We hung out and played a good chunk of Final Fantasy XIV. We did a couple of the job quests (Sage and Reaper) which were fun. Then we started part two of Endwalker. We got through the first bit, where we start to see the Final Days corruption start, and then we got to do some fun time travel back to Elpis, which really was pretty absurdly fun in terms of what they decided to do.

Spoilers for part two of Endwalker:

Yeah, go ahead and team up with Emet Selch (before he became Empires Georg), his coworker-bestie-husband (who you met as a ghost at the ghost DMV once), the guy who will become the most recent big bad you fought and killed (but like before he went very extremely destroy-all-life crazy), and their really cool previous coworker (before she becomes like... The Main Goddess Of Everything) and follow them around while Emet Selch really just wants to conduct a job interview.
Emet Selch, civil servant, and his worst day at work (so far.)

- I love finding out that, ah, Emet Selch was always just a bit of a bitch. Delightful as always.
- They made Hythlodeus just... absurdly pretty. Like. Why is he that pretty? He's also the best, and while I can't say I approve of Emet Selch wanting to burn down the universe to regain all the people he lost in the apocalypse and revive the glory days of his people... Look, one of those people was Hythlodaeus, so even if I don't approve, I kinda get it. He's just that pretty.
- Venat is very cool, and I'm so glad that we got to see who she was pre-Hydaelyn.
- Yes, the cutscene with her and the whole "No more shall man have wings to bear him to paradise. Henceforth he shall walk." bit was really badass.

We also finished reading Witch King, and had a really good Labor Day dinner.

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On Monday, Alex texted me to tell me that our AC had died. He tried hard resetting the unit, but no luck. It wasn't quite hot enough to qualify as an emergency issue to be called in on a holiday, so he submitted a regular non-emergency request to management. It's relevant that in the request he included the information that a) the compressor does come on, and the unit blows air, but the air itself is not cooling at all, and the unit itself will not shut off; and b) that he turned off the unit and the thermostat, because it was blowing in warm air; however the only way to get the unit to shut off at all is to flip the breaker it's connected to, as turning off the thermostat does not do anything.
We are told that now our maintenance requests go through some third party company that "helps to diagnose and expedite service requests," even though the maintenance itself is still done by our on-site crew.
They say they'll send someone out on Tuesday. We went on a hike after Alex picked me up, so we weren't home when they came by, but they did leave us a note on the door saying they came and that everything is fixed!
... The note helpfully says that they found the problem: we had turned off the thermostat! Now that they turned it back on, the unit was again blowing air.
So yeah, it was about 82° in our apartment, despite the fact that they (not we) had set the thermostat on 68°, the lowest it goes.
So Alex submitted another request for service, saying that yeah, the problem isn't fixed. The problem is not that the unit does not blow any air, the issue is that it is not cooling the air which is the primary function that we want from an AC unit. It also will not stop blowing air, unless the unit is shut off via the electrical breaker, because none of the functions of the thermostat are being communicated to the unit.
The third party company responded by asking for a picture of the thermostat "to ensure that the settings are correct" and they ask again if the unit is blowing air.
Alex sends them a picture of the thermostat, as well as reiterating that yes, the unit moves air, but it is not cooling the air that the fan is blowing into the apartment.
Then, a couple hours later, responding to the text that included the picture of the thermostat, they asked him to please send a picture of the thermostat.
That was the last we heard today. Tomorrow is supposed to be back into the 90s, which IS supposed to be "emergency" territory for an AC unit. We'll fucking see.

My annoyance is compounded, because we had this issue before. Maintenance came out (pre "third-party"), and they were the ones who told us to try switching it off via the breaker as a hard reset. That did fix it that time! But both of the members of the maintenance team who came out told us they'd seen this issue before with the specific unit we have in our apartment; that almost all of that type have had to be replaced, because once the internal electronics go bad and don't communicate with the thermostat, it's not really repairable. So if this is a familiar, known issue (or so we were led to believe), I don't understand why "aw, you stupid little shits, you just switched the thermostat off the way you said you had, I'm sure in the SEVEN FUCKING YEARS you've lived in this apartment you just never figured out how that worked so la-di-da, we fucking fixed it by turning on the thermostat and not checking to see if it was actually performing its function at all" was the response this time.

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A couple months ago, they also introduced a "new employee" who manages rent reminders via text. I suspect that "Ryan" is actually an AI bot, despite all the claims being that "he" works for our rental company, hence the dismissive scare quotes. This is the helpful third party that last month sent us reminders a week after we paid rent that we still owed rent. A few days later, "he" acknowledged that our rent had been paid.
This month we got our paper bill, and our reminder from "Ryan", but "Ryan's" listed amount owed was $100 less than the paper bill we received. Alex asked for clarification, and "Ryan" confirmed the lower amount. We plan to pay the lower amount, and see what they say if we show documentation that we were told that was the amount owed.

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The hike on Tuesday was nice though.

Continuing from my previous post: part two of the trip back to Castlewood!


Spoilers: we made it to the dam, lol.


A very lovely little lizard.

Sixteen more pictures:

The trail that heads up toward the dam was a little steeper and quite hot, but we headed that way. This section of trail is actually the other end of the trail we'd taken in from the west end of the park, the one we'd had to turn around on and then missed our turn back to the parking lot, ha.

And finally:


The dam was in sight!

That trail leads up to this one, a very short little jog that goes up and around the ruins.


It's dam(n) historic.

We headed down first, around the base of the dam along the creek, where the trail then climbs steeply up along the far side of the dam wall, to the top, and then back down the side we'd approached from.

Parts of that steeper trail up are almost hard to follow; there are a lot of rocks arranged to serve as stairs, but if you aren't at the correct angle, they blend in really well. Bella, brave pathfinder, did not struggle with it as much as I did; despite being very hot and tired by that point, she was excitedly charging up with no struggle to find the correct path, haha.


Climbing up a bit higher. Do Not try to get in the culvert thing, haha. And it's hard to see, but up at the corner of the dam wall is the flimsiest looking ladder.


Looking across the canyon, you can see just a bit of the other side of the dam. Just a pile of stone, really,


Finally, panting and wheezing, we made it up to the top. There was a cute little rock wren!


(Ha, erected.)


There's a fence so that you can't go any farther, but looking across the canyon along the top.


Informative Sign about the dam collapse in 1933. Some neat historical photos! Basically it was effed from the start: it leaked from the beginning, and sandstone erodes very readily.

After this we headed down the other side of the dam, which was a much less steep trail than the side we'd gone up!

At one point a very large snake (I think a yellow-bellied racer?) slithered across the path right in front of me. It went *directly under Bella* and she didn't even notice! I didn't get a good look at the snake, it was so fast, but it looked decently big, and mostly looked smooth and grey, so I'm about 85% confident in the yellow-bellied racer ID.

Poor Bella was pretty exhausted as we were heading back. She was dragging! Rather than head back on the second half of the loop, we crossed back over the creek to go back to that spot by the creek we'd taken a break at before. She didn't even resist when she was nudged into the water, so she was definitely pretty hot!

She felt better pretty fast after a cool-down in the water and a snack, though, ha.

(Except that we think she may have been stung by a bee! She was laying in the sand, and reached over and bit at something, then jumped up and started shaking her head. I found the dying honeybee, which had lost its stinger. I'm not sure that the sting actually "took" though; Bella was acting like it a bit with the head shaking and like she was trying to spit something out, but there was never any swelling at all, and about five minutes later she seemed utterly over it. Poor girl had a rough time of it for a bit!)

I've been really good about applying sunscreen this year, and hadn't gotten a single bad sunburn, for possibly the first summer ever! ...Except that apparently I managed to miss just the backs of my upper arms this day, and by this halfway point of the hike Alex had noticed that I was burning. Ouch!

After Bella had recovered from her exhaustion (and possible bee sting!), we headed back across to the second trail that would take us back to the trailhead.


This was a very well-fed looking lizard! So fat! It was hanging out with the other lizard from above the cut, but they ran to opposite sides of the rock when we approached.

After a bit, we saw a little set of stairs heading back down to the creek, so we decided to head down and see if we could get to the water again.

This spot was even prettier than the first place we'd found, I think!


There was a nice flat rock to sit on, and the water was shallow and slow, and so very peaceful.

Alex basically declared his intent to just live there now, haha. I don't disagree!


Bella even *wanted* to go wading.


Alex reached down into the water to rinse his hands off, and this little toad basically just hopped into his hands! So cute and little!

(If we hadn't just adopted Guava Splash, we might have come home with a new toad.)


Small toad, back in the creek.


At one point I looked down behind me, and there was a very large crayfish approaching along the bank, haha.


Bella contemplating the creek.

Finally we did have to move on, but it really was a beautiful spot.

One last picture:

More mud-dauber nests! I love them.

The hike back was pleasant, until the very end where there's a pretty steep bit back up toward the trailheads. By that time I was very tired, and going *up* more was a struggle, lol. (Considering how much hiking we've done this year, I had hoped my endurance would have improved a bit, but no such luck!)

This was a lovely hike, and that second half of the loop was possibly my favorite of the trails we've hiked in the park. (I know it was Alex's.) I'm glad we finally made it all the way to the damn dam! I'm sure we'll wind up back there again.