Month: November 2015

Genealogy

The 1916 Fire on the SS Philadelphia

Shelly

Jackie sent me a link to this beautiful 1918 animated film about the sinking of the Lusitania.

And that reminded me of a family story that’s somewhat apocryphal. Or maybe not?

My great grandmother, Nell Basquille, came to the US from Castlebar, Ireland, in 1916 on the SS Philadelphia. The ship arrived in New York on 1 October. The story goes that there was a fire on-board the ship while it was waiting in port. Given the time period, there was much speculation that it may have been deliberately set by German agents or Nazi sympathizers.

SS Philadelphia

But I say the story is somewhat apocryphal, because I’ve never been able to turn up any reliable mention of it in various fits of researching. Just a single passage in a book whose author’s credentials are unknown to me. But the incident is mentioned there, and surely if it weren’t true, two different people wouldn’t have dreamt it up independently?

Here’s what Captain Henry Landau had to say, in his book, The Enemy Within: the inside story of German sabotage in America.

The Enemy Within, page 85

The Enemy Within, Appendix

So even if he doesn’t list his sources (and as far as I can tell, he does not), Landau at least does mention the fire, which leads me to believe it actually happened. Probably.

Crankypantsing, Photography

Cleaning All the Things

Shelly

Window #windows

HAND (Housing and Neighborhood Development) inspections for my apartment complex were yesterday. They inspect every five years or so, I think? They’re concerned with making sure rental properties are up to code and habitable, so they check smoke detectors, make sure fire extinguishers are up to date, test sinks, tubs, showers, exhaust fans, etc., and check all egress points (doors and especially bedroom windows). It doesn’t take long, but it’s nice if your apartment or house doesn’t look like it was struck by a tornado. Which mine did, after weeks of frantic arting.

So I’ve spent every waking moment since last Thursday deep cleaning ALL THE THINGS. Under sinks, closets, drawers. I took several carloads of stuff to Goodwill, several more went to the recycling center, and somehow I still had a huge mountain of crap to take to the trash dumpsters. I also washed windows (gross!), cleaned the patio, did a huge pile of laundry, vacuumed and re-vacuumed and shampooed carpets, scrubbed floors, rearranged the bedroom (see above! Now with turquoise curtains!), moved around some paintings, and cleaned, sorted, and rearranged some of the junk stored in my work room.

I am tired of cleaning. Everything hurts. The best (and by best, I mean worst) part was moving things back into the bedroom after emptying it and putting down the rug that had been in the living room. Because rugs on top of carpet are a pain in the ass and will shift if you even look at them sideways, I had to make sure to completely lift the furniture in the air, instead of sliding it across the floor. Do you know how difficult it is to lift and carry a full size mattress all by yourself? I don’t think my back will ever recover. And also to do all that while not tripping over whichever cat has decided that that’s the perfect time to get under your feet.

But it’s done now, and everything is sparkling clean. I also devised a Piglet-proof window treatment for the bedroom that doesn’t look like ass. No more waking up at 3am to a cat mangling the blinds.

Pets

Evil Brain Hamsters

Shelly

Now that Franny’s surgery date is set and rapidly getting closer, I’ve been having bad dreams about it. They’ll be removing the lymph node near the larger tumor, because of the tumor’s proximity to it. Twice now, I dreamed that she developed lymphedema in that leg. So in my dream, Frances had to have her leg amputated. Only that is her bionic leg! The one she had $3000 worth of surgery on in 2013.

Removing her bionic leg would be a cruel irony. The evil hamsters in my brain need to STFU.

Meta

A Blogging Observation

Shelly

I’ve been slowly (oh, so slowly) adding posts from the old blog. I’m nearly through the entirety of 2007. It’s tedious as all hell, and I’m not sure why I’m doing it, except that I’ve been blogging for a long time, and it pisses me off that I lost all of those entries.

So.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that I spend a whole lot less time these days fussing with technical, under the hood crap. It seemed like, back when I was self-hosting WordPress plus my own image gallery, I spent half my time keeping things running and half my time complaining about having to keep things running. Now, without all that nonsense to worry about, I can complain about other things.

#winning