a day of labor

I took today off from work to have my belated Labor Day holiday because I worked on Monday. I had a list of things I wanted to get done, but honestly didn't get very far.

I did pull rose and honeysuckle from a chunk of our forest near our uphill property line. I didn't quite finish that area, but I did clear a good portion of it. I also noticed that a very large limb had come out of one of the trees which is right on the stone wall that runs along the property line. The base of it is on our side and the smaller ends are one the neighbor's property. I'll have to check with them to make sure their side is trimmed back enough so it's safe for me to cut my side. The base of the tree is on our side of the line, so I may have to drop it before it causes any more trouble for them. It's a very large tree.

The bushings and such for the front shocks arrived late yesterday, so today I got the shocks installed in the van. As always one side was easy, the other wasn't. I did the driver's side first and it took forever! I also hurt my hand trying to reach around and pull the bottom of the shock down: bend wrist at 90 degrees, grip with two fingers on each side of shock shaft, pull down hard and aggravate about every tendon and ligament in your hand. Unfortunately, it hurts to type now. The passenger side went together easy. Now I'm waiting for a tool to arrive so I can press out the upper control arm bushings and some hardware to arrive so I can install new, not rusted, hardware for the holding all these various parts in place.

I also finished up getting the rain fly installed for the van pop-top. I had done most of the work but the last few snaps didn't line up right when I was trying it before. Then I got new instructions from the vendor. Based on those I had to drill a couple of holes and now I can fasten it in all the necessary places. So finally done after months.

reading

My favorites from this month's Asimov's were among the short stories. There was a good variety: Jason Sanford's "The Eight-Thousanders", Michael Libling's "Robyn in Her Shiny Blue Coffin", Y.M. Pang's "Mangy White Dog", and Gregory Frost's "Traveling On".

Of the longer stories Gray Rinehart's "Flare Shack" is my favorite. I think the storylines of small group working on desolate world/asteroid lead people to write good stories. "Flare Shack" feels like classic science fiction without feeling stale or dated. It works on a plot device that's been used many times before, but does so well.

I also liked Ian Tregillis' "When God Sits in Your Lap". I didn't feel he quite got the dialect/slang thing right, but it was a fun story. Personally, I wouldn't have been surprised at all to see Crowley show up because it felt like a slightly grittier riff on Good Omens. For some reason, I kind of compare it to Christopher Moore's "Noir". Perhaps it's the slang. Tregillis does it better than Moore.

We got longer stories from Kristine Kathryn Rusch and R. Garcia Y Robertson. The Rusch story really wasn't a story. It was an idea for a story in an interesting universe.

28. Asimov's Science Fiction September/October 2020