End of the World. Beginning of a new one. The Life of Amberwolf.

[hammerstrumm]

Hello Amberwolf
I did not read your whole ordeal, but saw you lost your home and are struggling with two dogs who are nearing the end of their lives.
In 2017 I lost my house (Portugal, Europe) in a huge forestfire. And my lifes work.
And I recently had to put my 13 yo best friend to sleep.
So, I can relate.
My philosophy has always been, that bad stuff happens to make way for new opportunities.
Even if we dont see that at first glance.
In my case, this turns out to be so. Believing it, sort of makes that happen.

Meanwhile I got a 8 week old pup, who makes me smile whatever he does, whatever the circumstance.
Take care, and thanks for your advice.
Nil

 

[amberwolf]

Here are my thoughts about the two pieces, Convocation of Lies and The Discernment of Candor:

I liked both, but so far I prefer Convocation of Lies, but not for a reason I can pinpoint. It feels more like listening to a story, with a beginning, middle and end, even though the mix and style seemed consistent throughout. I liked the pace of the music, not music for sleeping, but action or doing something. The Discernment of Candor had more variation, but didn’t have that same story feel. I liked that it had variation in the mix of instrument sounds, but also had some quiet sections that isolated one or two sounds. Those sections made it more interesting. Also, at the very beginning, the sound, sort of like a bassoon, reminded me of last weekend when I rode through a park, and there was a group of people playing didgeridoos of all things. I thought I was going to hear more of that, and the sound was probably there, but mixed with a lot of other sounds. It sort of felt out of place the first time I listened to it.

Thank you. The intro to TDoC is actually "monks", specifically a plugin called The Delay Lama. I have been considering removing that intro; I had other ideas for it but it turns out the plugin can't be remotely controlled via any of the interfaces I have, for the things I need to do with it; I can only "record" the movements I make with it's onscreen controls, which I can't do the way they need to be done, with a trackball or mouse (and don't have a touchscreen that might let me). I tried hand-drawing envelopes to do the work (and also modifying "recorded" ones off the onscreen controls), but SONAR's drawing tools for this are so primitive and hard to use that I can't get the shapes right.

There is also more of this sound in the background of most of TDoC, but you can't specifically hear it over the rest of the sounds; it just fills out some of the chords and bassline here and there.

FWIW, CoL had an intro section of a few bars that I removed because it didn't fit with the rest of the sound of things; I tried a lot of stuff to fix that before giving up and just taking it off entirely. You can hear those in the several versions of CoL that are on the http://soundclick.com/amberwolf page (they're a ways down in the list, I think they're all in one section). Some of the early versions sound quite different thru the entire song than the present one. Much more like TDoC in the lack of variation throughout.


The detail and variation in Convocation of Lies, especially it's "sectioning", is something I've been working on in TDoC, but CoL is several months older and has had more time for more work on it. I also haven't been able yet to make the decisions on which parts of TDoC to mute or change or swap to open up the space for other parts; this was relatively easy for CoL as there were a lot of crappy bits that were easy to cut out when I started with that one. :lol:

So it's good to know that this is a good direction to keep going in.


TDoC has actually gone thru two completely different versions. I'm not sure I ever uplaoded the first one; I only got some stuff recorded and a few glaring mistakes edited out before I "started over", as I just didn't have a feel for going further with it. The present TDoC is the evolution of the redo.

I may have some additional thoughts after hearing them a few more times. I only listened to the Candor one once, but the Lies one three times. I'm curious of how you came up with the names. I tried initially to see if the meaning came through in the sounds, but then just decided to listen for enjoyment instead.

Well...I actually have a notepad file full of "cool titles" that pop into my head, noted down whenever that randomly happens. I don't usually have a specific meaning for a song so it often gets a title out of that list. Convocation of Lies was titled that way.

Some songs I actually have a specific idea for, and a name, even before I start--but rarely. Mostly I just hear a sound in my head, and figure out slowly how to get it into the computer as closely as possible to what I hear (a process that frequently completely fails). I often have dreams of a specific piece of music, but can very very rarely spend the time when I awaken from them to try to put them into the computer (have to either get up for work or go back to sleep so I can then function at work when I do get up for that). I almsot never have the same music-dream again, so almost all of this music is lost, as I don't remember it later, not consciously at least.

The Discernment of Candor is titled based on being a "set" with CoL and I wanted an opposing concept/title for it. I thought about different concepts to decide what CoL was really supposed to be about, then decided it was about the gathering and concentration of misinformation and how it can become "truth" to people when they hear enough of the same things for a long enough time. Then TDoC became an emotional response to that, rejecting the lies and the people telling and believing in them. I doubt any of that comes across musically, as it wasn't really in my head when making either of them....

I actually have words for TDoC, that should convey the idea (quoted at the end of this post), but I can't carry a tune in a locked steel box, so the only way I can get words into a song is to sing or say each word or phrase into a microphone into SONAR as cleanly and clearly as possible, then hand-tune and trim each and fix timing manually, and place them in the song where they feel right. An example of "raw" vocals (barely cleaned up, left that way for emotional reasons) is in "As He Lay There, Dying Alone" (which is about PeanutButter's death at the start of 2020). A couple of examples of partly-fixed vocals are "Drying Tears" (about Yogi and Kirin's deaths last year) and "Back to the World" (about returning to "normal" life after all that happened last year).

It's a long tedious process (dozens of hours minimum, potentially hundreds--far far longer than creating the rest of the song) and I usually don't finish it because of that, and that almost no one actually ever hears my stuff anyway. Ideally I'd get an actual vocalist to sing stuff, but have yet to find anyone capable of it that's interested, given that there's no money in any of this, just being credited for the work.

CoL does have an actual guitarist on it for the "lead" guitar sections, Travis Lausch, who liked it and heard a track he wanted to play, so he recorded that as a long continuous track I then cut and spliced into the mix as I felt it to fit; it was a little different than where he concieved of in places, but he said it still works. That's the only collaboration that ever resulted in anything, other than a very old project from the 90s called DeadManSwitch where Branden Harper added a more pounding kick/bass drumline to it. Don't know if I have that one up anywhere. The other couple of collaboration attempts never went anywhere; couldn't get them to keep communicating with me or get together, etc.

_________________________________
The Discernment of Candor:

Truth.
Lies.
Which is Which.
Who tells what.

How do I know
who to trust (trust)
who to push away
who to hold close

Truth is lies
-and lies are truth
you tell me this
- but you mean that

I hear your words but maybe they're mine
I can't tell which voice cries them out

I believe in a thing called truth but
not a single person out there knows what
someone else's truth is going to be
or what when they open their eyes they'll see


You don't know a goddamned thing about me
so how can you tell me what is right and true
You can't know what is right for me only for you

why don't you open that door walk out and leave

Every trust is broken
Betrayal smashes me
into glittering shards
dust shining in the wind
broken bits of me
falling down the well

Truth.
Lies.
Which is Which.
Who tells what.

How do I know
who to trust (trust)
who to push away
who to hold close
drowning in the pool of lies
under sparkling cover of truth


Truth is lies
-and lies are truth
you tell me this
- but you mean that

You give me hope
-then rip it from
my shattered heart
my broken brain

I can't tell
who to trust
Confusion reigns
certainty flies


Every trust is broken
Betrayal smashes me
into glittering shards
dust shining in the wind
broken bits of me
falling down the well
drowning in the pool of lies
under sparkling cover of truth

___________________________________

 

[amberwolf]

Depends on your mood at the time, its not my style of music but its tolerable.
Yes I did listen to it entirely, its sounds like what the kids in the club might dance to, whereas I am into Van Halen, Metallica, Boston, Eric Clapton, George Strait, Snoop Doggy Dogg, NWA, Journey, Chilliwack, GnR, Danko Jones, SRV, Kid Rock, Airbourne, ACDC, Sloan, Big Wreck, Big Sugar, Social Distortion, Georgia Satellites and Dan Bairds.
A good guitar solo you can never go wrong with, so I am not to into instrumentals unless there is a good beat, better rhythm, and the typical chords used rather then synthesizers. There is one instrumental from Metallica on my ipod that I dig, there's not many.

I'm the opposite--I prefer songs taht do not have people (words) to get in the way of the music itself. Vocals arent' necessarily unwanted, but I prefer them to not be the focus.

I tend to use a lot of synths, which often sound like 80s types, as I just like the sounds themselves, and the way they mix. I also like arpeggiated stuff because I can't actually play very fast at all, so using them makes what I play in more complex while I'm playing it in, and may make it better. Sometimes the arp gets added later, long after playing in the basic notes.

I would rate those links to music as very good, not sure how one would go about making something that, its more then I could do.
The most I can do is d/l Audacity and chop a live track to get right into the song.

I think there is a set of posts in my "studio" thread that describe some of how I do what I do, but basically:

Most of the things I do start with a specific sound or set of sounds I am after. I'll find the sound, then use a MIDI keyboard to play in some of the notes I want to use; I may play entire tracks and then chop out badly played sections (sometimes this is most of the track). I may quantize it nondestructively with a "realtime plugin" to put all the notes on a specific beat or even pattern, to play other things to, and sometimes I'll then turn off the plugin so the timing goes back to the way I played it for syncopation or other timing effects. I may hand-edit the notes (it looks like kind of like an old time player piano roll)

I may or may not have any percussion track in a song when I start, even if there is one later. I may use a delay timed rhythmically to play a part in with, and often I'll leave that delay in there for all or part of it. Percussion may be something I add as a plugin that just plays the same thing over and over, then I'll drop that into a track as actual notes and chop out sections and add fills or leave blanks, etc. (this is how TDoC's percussion was made). Sometimes I will use audio samples of specific sounds, rather than any beat, and build a percussion track or tracks from scratch; this is how CoL's percussion was made, and why it is much more varied than TDoC's.

I have a decent bass guitar, an acoustic with magnetic pickup, and a crappy electric guitar, that I use for various "real" guitar parts on some projects. Cloudwalkers was built around the bass guitar, and I added all the other stuff afterward. (Cloudwalkers is what I heard in my head when reading a story about a zeppelin battle in a scifi story I can't recall the name of, but I think it was in a series of story collections called "there will be war"?) I can't actually play the guitar, so I don't use it as much as normal people would. To record parts I lay it on my lap and hold a finger on a fret for a note, tehn pluck, rub, etc, the strings as needed to get the sound I'm after. Sometimes I can play in a series of notes this way, but to get what you hear I have to do this over and over with different fingered-frets, and then manipulate the resulting audio inside SONAR to get the sound or even the specific notes (or pitchbends, etc) needed. A little like what I have to do to my vocals but with much less fixing and work since the guitar mostly makes the right sound/note to start with.

SONAR creates "clips" of things and you can group bunches of notes or audio pieces into one clip, or group of clips, and then copy/paste that around a project for repeating parts you don't want to have to recreate. If you use MIDI rather than audio for most of the notes, you can even copy/paste the same notes from one instrument to antoher, so that they all play the same parts, or transpose their notes so they complement each other, etc. Or even copy/paste whole tracks across several instruments, and then mute or quieten some parts of each insturment track to let other instruments stand out instead for that section. That's done a lot in Convocation of Lies; I'm still working on that part in The Discernment of Candor.

All the effects (eq, compression, distortion, delay, reverb, etc) are added with realtime plugins, meaning they aren't a hard part of the tracks, not recorded in permanently--this gives a lot more flexibility when mixing, as someitmes I find that when turning a track up or down to fit in better with others, the effects type or amount also need to change or even go away entirely. Often a delay on a track that creates syncopation or other musical effects when intially recording causes problems with other tracks as they're added, and must be muted or turned way down, leaving mostly only the original sound. This is especially true for basslines.

Wings of Pegasus is a good channel to watch for critiques, if I am in the mood I watch him on youtube, see whos cheating with Auto Tune.

I wish I had an actual automatic autotune...any vocals I do have to be tediously hand-edited in SONAR's built-in Melodynefor timing and tuned (see previous post). The term "singing" can only be loosely used to describe what I can do with my voice. :lol:

 

[amberwolf]

I did not read your whole ordeal, but saw you lost your home and are struggling with two dogs who are nearing the end of their lives.

In 2017 I lost my house (Portugal, Europe) in a huge forestfire. And my lifes work.
And I recently had to put my 13 yo best friend to sleep.
So, I can relate.

The housefire was 9 years ago at the end of this week; I've been back in the house since about 8 years ago, but it was a huge loss in itself, even if it werent' for losing all four of the dogs I had then in it (which was much much worse). I may not be completely over losing those dogs then, but I mostly am over the house and stuff I lost, though I sometimes remember something I wish I still had and get grumbly about it (I lost a lot more stuff from theft after the fire than in the fire itself).

Kirin and Yogi, if those are the two dogs you're referring to, died last year (which destroyed me worse than the housefire and losing those dogs did, whcih I did not think was possible), and were not really nearing the end of their lives (Yogi was 12, so I guess you could say that for him, even though he was still very puppy-ish for a few minutes at a time), but Kirin was only 8 or so, and should have had many more years).

I still have Jelly Bean the Perfectly Normal Schmoo (But a Very Strange Dog), but she is something like Tiny in that she is about as independent (or moreso) as a cat, and rarely really wants my attention, and only for moments at a time when she does. Almost never when I need her attention, and she's not a snuggler; if she does it's more accidental in being tired enough to doze off for a while when she happened to be next to me (she typically chooses to sleep somewhere no people are at). WHen she does want belly rubs, etc., she flails around so much it's pretty hard to do much of anything before she decides she'd rather be somewhere else. I love her anyway, but not like Kirin at all (who was glued to me whenever possible), or even Yogi (who was independent but *would* snuggle if you needed it).

My philosophy has always been, that bad stuff happens to make way for new opportunities.
Even if we dont see that at first glance.
In my case, this turns out to be so. Believing it, sort of makes that happen.

Whiile it's probably true, and I keep trying to see it that way, it is very very hard most of the time. I'm still working on this. :/

Meanwhile I got a 8 week old pup, who makes me smile whatever he does, whatever the circumstance.

Jelly does make me smile a lot....but it's nowhere near the same as Kirin, or Yogi, or most of the other dogs I've had. I had Hachi (until the fire) who grew up from being born right in front of me to full size before I lost her; she is the only puppy I've had that young since I was a kid, so quite a long time.

 

[E-HP]

The detail and variation in Convocation of Lies, especially it's "sectioning", is something I've been working on in TDoC, but CoL is several months older and has had more time for more work on it. I also haven't been able yet to make the decisions on which parts of TDoC to mute or change or swap to open up the space for other parts; this was relatively easy for CoL as there were a lot of crappy bits that were easy to cut out when I started with that one. :lol:

So it's good to know that this is a good direction to keep going in.

OK, after listening to both a few times while out riding, CoL is a couple notches better in my opinion.

I've been struggling with wind noise with my ear buds when riding, and made some small flaps on my helmet straps, that cut it by about 80% or so. CoL sounds great, riding down a long straight stretch along the bay, with the addition of some slight wind buffetting sounds, 60 degrees, wearing a windbreaker, pedaling to the beat. :thumb:

I'm thinking of making some ebikng specific playlists. I have ones that I made for driving, which are still good for biking, but I can see how different styles and beats would work better for biking. I think I have 9k songs on my phone, so I'll probably listen to stuff I haven't heard in years.

So do these pieces continue to evolve?

 

[amberwolf]

So do these pieces continue to evolve?

Often, yes, at least while they are still in my head, like these two. Sometimes I post multiple versions to the Soundclick page, as I get further in the edit process; sometimes I only post the last one as I run out of time/etc to work on it. CoL has a bunch of versions on there.

CoL is probably "done"; I hear a few things in it I sort of wish were different, but I'm not sure I can fix them without quite a bit of work figuring out what to do with the bits. TDoC isn't nearly "finished", but it is certainly listenable as-is. Another still in progress but requiring instruments I don't yet have usable versions of is Caninical Hagiography (well, I have them, but can't use them in SONAR yet until I fix the VST Adapter problems that screw up old plugins whenever I scan for new ones).

Sometiems I pull up an older piece to listen to, and find it lacking and begin re-editing it.

Sometimes I know a piece is lacking but never get to finish fixing things at the time, but go back later when I find time and interest in that one.


Some of the more recent ones I'd like to play around with again include Cloudwalkers, Patterns of Behavior, Ghosts--rattle the bones, Only Three Minutes, A Billion Bags of Seawater, and The Tomorrow Option. All of those are listenable as-is, but could stand improvement in a number of ways.

I'd also like to "finish" a few others, like Back to the World (which needs the rest of it's vocals created before I can make the rest of the song; a long and tedious process I may never complete), 042919 000001 000007 (newly titled Dark Blue Rain), and 040120 000000 000002c (newly titled Hollow Like the Sun).

 

[amberwolf]

OK, after listening to both a few times while out riding, CoL is a couple notches better in my opinion.

I've been struggling with wind noise with my ear buds when riding, and made some small flaps on my helmet straps, that cut it by about 80% or so. CoL sounds great, riding down a long straight stretch along the bay, with the addition of some slight wind buffetting sounds, 60 degrees, wearing a windbreaker, pedaling to the beat. :thumb:

You may also like Cloudwalkers, and Only Three Minutes, and possibly Patterns of Behavior, for your riding list.

 

[goatman]

Patterns of Behaviour that one got me going right away
i love music
Drying Tears is awesome, whos singing?

 

[amberwolf]

thanks, i'm the only vocalist i've got, sucky as i am. took days and days to get those vocals recorded word by word mostly, and then tuned, retimed, and spliced together in the song. and that's mostly nearly spoken-word rather than sung....

 

[goatman]

worked perfect for that song
cloudwalkers :thumb:
light in your eyes/vocals :thumb: . its hard to tell if there is vocals, its like a whisper you cant hear compared to light in your eyes
#44 060417 000001 200015c :thumb:
#66 101115 000001 000015c :thumb:
truth is in there :thumb:

 

[calab]

Today is 420 day :thumb:
What day is magic mushroom day?

truth is in there :thumb:

 

[goatman]

Today is 420 day :thumb:
What day is magic mushroom day?

truth is in there :thumb:

c'mon Z, you know i dont do drugs :lol:

 

[amberwolf]

Today I've got a good start on "Broken Pieces of Yesterday":

https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14428003

I started with nothing other than a blank template file based on Convocation of Lies and Discernment of Candor's sound sets and effects in the same basic track and bus layout (none of the notes or sound samples, etc).

After a few hours, I got to the point you hear in the link above. Now I'm too tired to keep going, so I put it up for y'all's aural perusal.

I haven't tried to record the vocals, but the words are below; they scan to the lead well enough though you have to sing some of the words quickly or as a single note to line them up right; it still fits, mostly. I didn't really intend the imagery; it just came out like this. (I actually didn't intend any words at all, but...I was looking at my "song titles" notepad file (where I store nifty song titles I think of, and sometimes lyric pieces), and right above the title I used for this song was a partial lyric "dead pixel"...much of it scanned to this song, as I was playing it back while I looked thru the file. So I rearranged phrases to better fit, and so here is what I ahve so far:


broken pieces of yesterday
littering my mind
cracks across the screen
with colors running green
and pink and blue and black
the picture's not coming back

My world is covered in bits of all of you
images corrupted
by colors interrupted
with lines of things I never saw
among blocks of life I once had lived

bits missing from my life
circuit incomplete
with loss replete
all files delete
spin....down
lights go on
lights go out

broken pieces of yesterday
littering my mind
vias sundered by swollen layers
separating memory from me

 

[amberwolf]

updated
https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14428409

 

[amberwolf]

I've expanded (and diversified) Broken Pieces of Yesterday

https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14431307

 

[amberwolf]

An "acoustic" one (actual guitar, only synth is the drums) I've wanted to fix up for a long while now; it took a lot of fixing....

Dark Blue Rain
https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14440279

 

[amberwolf]

Still making music when I can't work on anything else, or when I'm inspired:


Powerful, and delicate:

Just Give Me a Voice
(to Say the Words and I Will Say)

https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14446369

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/just-give-me-a-voice

 

[amberwolf]

Now there is Google Schmooview:

 

[amberwolf]

Here is Jelly the Perfectly Normal Schmoo enjoying the pouring rain...apparently soaking in it all day, waiting at the gate for me to come home...when she *could* have been inside in the dry warmness anytime she wanted to. (though from the mud on the corner of the bed she prefers, she did come in there and do a circle, but there's no puddle so she didn't lay down and stay there).

We'll just start a new breed, the Soaking Bernard...or maybe the St Sponge.

 

[tomjasz]

:lol:

 

[methods]

Hu?
Are you without work brother?

-methods

 

[amberwolf]

Hu?
Are you without work brother?

-methods

No, I've still got the same dayjob as I've had for 15 years (well, the actual job isn't the same, but it's the same company; moved up slowly over time; the job itself has been the same for a few years though). I don't always like it (mostly it's ok), and it's usually stressful, sometimes very stressful, but it has paid the bills for a while. I'm not presently getting as many hours as I used to, so have had to stop buying unnecessary things to equalize income and outgo; don't have any money to play with these days since costs of everything (especially food) have also gone up so much. But until prices rise more, I'll be able to continue as I am. When they go up enough more, I'll have to go find a second job to break even (not sure how long I'll survive that, but it will become necessary since hours at work are unlikely to increase, and pay definitely won't).

 

[amberwolf]

More Jelly the Perfectly Normal Schmoo pics, of how she is when I get home, just because:

 

[amberwolf]

Apparently the chainlink fence has aged badly in some places (especially the areas damaged by the people doing the rebuild after the fire a decade ago, where they basically flattened it into the ground bending posts, etc., getting equipment in and out fo the yard (why they didn't just use the huge gates on the side or alley I can't understand)). So the bottom edges of enough sections of it no longer are secure down into the ground, and the possiblity exists that the Schmoo (Jelly Bean the Perfectly Normal Schmoo, But a Very Strange Dog) could get under them and out, and get lost or hurt or worse. She probably wouldn't, but I won't take the risk--it only takes once.

There are a few ways to fix it, but the most secure is to install bottom rails that are clamped to the uprights, and wire-tie the chainlink to that, and also embed some additional chainlink "fabric" into the ground below that so it can't be easily dug under. The last part I can probably safely skip, and is the most work, but the 10' bottom rails would be about $30 each, for 20 of them (about 200 feet of fence to fix), whcih by itself is $600. That doesn't include the clamping hardware, which varies in price significantly, but the ones I can get locally that I can actually feel how well made they are (vs online stuff that's cheaper but looks thinner and may be too flexible to be secure against a St Bernard). It would probably be at least another hundred dollars for all that hardware, including the nuts and bolts that don't come with the clamps, and enough good stiff wire to tie the fence to the pipes every foot or so. Some other fence parts need repair or replacement too, and that's another couple hundred dollars or so.

Another issue is that I need to put some kind of serious privacy screen up on the fence, that blocks the Schmoo's view of the neighborhood, and their view of her, mostly because there are some people (mostly teenage kidsthat walk thru the alley or along the street sidewalk and tease her. None of the stuff I can find for a reasonable price (like a dollar a foot, which would still cost at least $200 for enough to do the fence) is actually good enough for that--it can easily be seen thru, regardless of what the ads say. Another issue with any of them is that people graffiti things around here, and I would have to keep painting over that when they do, and I would not be able to match the color as the paint the city provides for covering graffiti is random in nature based on what gets donated to them. To keep it looking "nice" I'd have to paint the entire privacy screen, all 200 feet by 5 feet high, each time, which is a lot of paint and a lot of work.


Another even more expensive solution is to add a second fence with privacy screen, or a wall, several feet inside the first, so the original keeps people from graffitiing the inner one; it's not really an option due to the work and time and money needed.


So I went for a much simpler, slightly cheaper option, though it does not make the Schmoo happy at all: Enclosing a small area of the yard near the house, including the back door, in a 4' high fence, and a privacy screen attached to that. This is only about 40' of fence/gate to enclose, from just east of the back door/porch stoop out to the end of the standalone "awning" then west to the north edge of the first shed. It lets her still use the doggy door to go out when she wants / needs to, and be out when she feels like it (because she usually likes to be outside more than inside).

Because it doesn't touch the original yard fence, and is far from the property edge, it also gives me the option to DIY some of the securing hardware, or even weld the uprights and top/bottom bars together, making it even more secure and saving considerable money in the process. And I can even use some of the pipe/tubing I already have, where appropriately strong.

Since Lowes had some 50' x 4' 9ga fence fabric on clearance for about $40 (vs the $170 it started out as), this option only ended up costing about $500 to do, all up, including a gate kit (cheaper than buying all the parts and way easier and faster than DIYing something) and a privacy screen mesh (from online, since locally I couldn't find anything useful for a reasonable price) that even though it doesn't block visiblity entirely, does enough this far into the yard (vs being at the alley or street) to keep her attention off of most of the things out there, and does keep the people that would tease her from seeing her or getting to her to do the teasing.

So I spent basically the last week getting and building and installing that. The last part was to put the extra chainlink up between some uprights along the old wooden fence between me and the nextdoor neighbor, since it wasn't built very well and his replacement plans haven't gone far yet. And to put hinges and a good tensioning latch on the shed doors that are within the enclosure area, as that shed was donated to me a long time ago with nonworking doors (the slides were broken and the doors messed up so they couldn't be used that way anyway...so making them into hinged doors is much simpler and more secure). That way she can't get in there when bored and potentially hurt herself messing with any of the yard tools/etc stored in there. The gate latch is kept from being nosed open by a carabiner, since she cant undo one of those it doesn't need a padlock.

I can still let her out of that area when I'm home and outside to keep an eye on her, and make sure there's no one around that will mess with her, so she can still run around the whole yard then.

She's not terribly happy about the whole thing, but she's learning to deal with it.

 

[amberwolf]

Bill Casbeer, the only in-person friend that really stuck with me after my housefire a decade ago, died Saturday morning. I don't know of what, but suspect it was his heart given previous problems.

He had moved away from here several years ago with his sister, but like virtually everyone else in my life, did not really stay in touch with me after that. (I don't count the forwarding of jokes and whatnot, as I was just one person in a CC list for those). I did try multiple times to stir up communication (mostly via email), but as with most other people, he typically didn't reply, or stopped doing so after the first one in a series. Sometimes he would send me something just to me and we'd swap replies once or twice, but I looked at my saved stuff and was the last one to reply in all those cases. The last time I tried to reach him was late in 2022, with no reply.

Anyway, I haven't had a call or text from him since he moved, so when I saw his name come up on my phone as I started lunch at work on Saturday, I started to answer it with happiness that he'd actually call...but I realized even before the voice on the ohter end spoke that it was not going to be him and felt that chilling falling feeling inside my head and chest, and then a voice saying she was his niece said what she'd probably said to others already, and I thanked her and then sat there feeling nothing until my lunchtime-end alarm went off, and I had to go back to working.

I'm still at that point about it, two days later.