#storm damaged trees

[sp0o0kylights]

I've had a lot of people ask for updates or just give well wishes (and I appreciate every single one of you even if I havent been able to respond--Ive been stuck on the tumblr app and mine crashes constantly lol)

Some fun disaster facts for you: they had to get a special crane to remove both the trees due to the sheer size of them, and the second tree (pictured in the top photo but not in the bottom ones bc its fricken impossible to get them both in one shot on the ground) they had to cut at the property line bc it was through both mine and my neighbors house, and the arborists got uppity about potentially further damaging my neighbors house (which I laughed at but like, I get it.)

Our insurance would not condemn or assess the house until the trees were removed. Somehow that is normal.

My house was condemned--it has some insane damage not just from the collapse, but from the second ice storm that followed. The whole place is swollen (some of the floors are crazy to walk on.) Insurance did get a structural engineer to put in supports so we were able to get a lot of things out, but at the same time there's so much more damaged than you'd ever think (given some of the upstairs rooms were untouched, etc.) just from the weather.

It's spooky to walk in, and a lot of professionals wouldn't go near it (can't blame em.)

We're finally in a rental home, and we've picked a contractor to move forward with. Whole things getting razed to the ground and rebuilt.

What's insane is that only three homes so far have been condemned in the neighborhood. My neighbors house in the above image? Yeah they said it's fine.

Which I personally think goes to show how bad insurance is more so than like--the houses themselves being sturdy.

[johnschneiderblog]

Emergency operation

Wouldn't you know it ...?

After I practically rolled out the red carpet for the deer with my clearing and trimming of trails leading to my new trees stand, Friday's wild wind came along and split this big beech down the middle, depositing half directly in front of my stand.

As much as I hated to muck around in the woods just two days before the archery opener, I had no choice but to wade in with my chain saw, human scent and all.

Sharon signed on and, working Saturday and Sunday, we reestablished the main corridors.

On the positive side, I'm glad I discovered the situation Saturday, as opposed to Tuesday. Learning, in the-pre dawn darkness tomorrow morning, that the stand was unhuntable would have been an inauspicious beginning, indeed, to the 2024 season.

At leasts we got some good firewood out of it .

[blacktobackmesa]

Benry. Beany.

WHAT DID YOU DO

[shejustcalledmeafish]

give ur guy a little fear gas in the mail. for experimental purposes obviously

It wasn’t his package, sure. No one ever sent him any packages. But it had ended up at the door of his motel room, and fuck it. John was so bored, and he loved crime. He wasn’t above opening a stranger’s mail, especially when it had been given to him so temptingly.

It would be a mistake, of course, like every choice John ever seemed to make.

The package contained nothing but dust as far as John could tell. He was immediately wary, he knew about what could lurk in innocent enough particles. But at first, nothing seemed to happen, and he huffed and threw the package in the bin.

John was asleep in bed when the canister slammed in through the window and immediately began to spit gas. He shot upright quickly enough to clock what was happening, but not to stop from breathing in the tainted air.

He ran out of the room, and took in a deep breath of night air. Then he heard the click of a safety, and turned to see a gun inches from his head.

With no hesitation, John grabbed the gun with one hand, twisted the arm holding it hard with the other, then flipped his would-be assailant over the railing. There was a short scream and a shorter thud. John sighed. He couldn’t even have a decent night’s rest.

There was nothing he couldn’t replace in the room, so he made his way to the stairs with nothing but his newly acquired gun and exactly as much clothing as the readers decided to give him. He had to get out of here before someone else tried to kill him.

It was a rational thought, especially for John. But as he made his way down the crumbling stone steps, he felt his heart beginning to race just at the thought. He saw something glint in the distance and immediately ducked, fearing a sniper.

He was crouched on the stairs for almost a full minute before he decided they weren’t going to take a shot. His heart didn’t slow. But he did start to move again, taking each step with the utmost precision.

John didn’t know where he was going. He had no car or ship, but if people kept trying to kill him, he wouldn’t have time to program a jump. He crossed by the pool, quick and light, when he saw a shadow of a person drawing closer up ahead.

So he pivoted, going through the ajar gate and into the pool area. It was empty for the off season, covered by a poorly aligned tarp. It was easy for John to push the tarp aside, wincing at the crinkle of the plastic, and quickly slide into the four foot concrete pit. He would have to take his chances here, it was that or jump the fence and run.

His head was beginning to ache, from the gas or the stress or the lack of sleep, he couldn't be certain. He sat down, back resting against the pool wall. It stank of must and rot. He wasn’t the only animal that had attempted to seek refuge here.

After a few minutes of sitting in silence, John decided it might be worth making a move. But as he tried to move, he realized he couldn’t. His muscles were clenched in fear, trembling, sweat pouring from his clammy skin. The gun he held so tightly his knuckles had gone white. There was no reason for him to be so scared, he knew logically. But if he moved an inch, he would be dead, so better not to move at all.

So he didn’t. He sat perfectly still until exhaustion overcame him and he slumped in sleep, gun clattering out of his grip.

John jolted awake to the sound of a piercing scream, only to find a bottle of window cleaner lying by his feet. He stared at it for a moment, confused, then scrambled to his feet, popping his head out above the tarp.

The man who screamed seemed harmless. The crumpled body at his feet in a cleaner’s uniform made John’s blood feel sluggish and thick inside him. Glancing upward, he saw his room. Window perfectly intact.

John sank back down before he could be spotted. No gas canister. No assassin. Nothing but an empty box. It wasn’t that empty after all, and neither was John’s threat to whoever had sent it. He didn’t know what exactly had been done to him, only that something had been. He was going to get answers. As soon as he snuck out of this pool and rooted around in his bin for a return address.

[patchwork-crow-writes]

Okay, so, haha

Turns out

The early-gen Samsung phones had something of a battery flaw

In that they would easily overheat and, um.

Catch fire.

Or less extreme but no less annoying, constantly cycle on and off again.

Which happened to me with my refurbished Galaxy S7 camera early this week.

Fortunately, I fixed it. Unfortunately, I had to perform a factory reset to do it, so all my crow photos and videos got eaten :(

As consolation, please take a look at this tree which was damaged in a storm we had a couple weeks back:

Not sure if you can properly see from this angle, but it split pretty badly. I might have to go back and take another one from a better angle next time.

More to come, so stay tuned if you're into that sort of thing :)

[landgraabbed]

holy shit the old dudes are fighting outside lmfaoooo

[slashingdisneypasta]

Damnnnnn, people still don't have power around here. I'm good, but other people are being told it won't be til Saturday, or god forbid- the end of bloody march!?? I hope not, for their sakes 😬 /:

[altruistic-meme]

hey, how are you doing?? Are things drying out? I was in charlotte the other day and the damage is... worrying (sincerely, a coastal Carolinian).

hey :')

im alright <3 things are improving pretty steadily here! there are still people without power, and almost everyone is without wifi, and the phone connections are still weak af and wonky, and we're still under a curfew, and there's still trees Fucking Everywhere....

but there's no longer insane lines for gas or limits on how many people can go in the store, we're not under a boil advisory anymore, trees are getting removed from houses and yards, most of the stoplights seem to be working finally, and im back at work!

it still hurts to drive down the road and see all the damage done though, that's the worst part of it all. and i know ill still be seeing it years from now which is kinda heartbreaking to me after the devastation :(

but also my body seems to finally be realizing that the danger is over, which is also a good sign, even if it means I'm sore all over and occasionally have more energy than I know what to do with :')) but it's better than constantly being scared of the very slow tigers so I'll take it

[dabbertcustomblades]

This is the last of the live oaks that was killed in the hurricane in 22. The storm destroyed many of our oaks, I had to trim them back to nothing but most are coming back and in a few years should be nice again.

[lamaenthel]

when tornado season starts and you actually get tornados

[equinesandeducation]

Absolutely unbothered 😌

[ilovemushystuff]

Today, we had storm Poly. Look what happened in a street in Haarlem. This pic!

[stars-and-branches]

Lads my blog is going to be slowing down considerably for a bit, it looks like we aren't going to be able to get electricity or internet until at least the end of the week.

[weavewilled]

also in assessing damages from the hail storm last night we lost a 25 year old 30+ foot tall live oak in our back yard that has now fallen over and took my blueberry and strawberry bushes with it ☹️

[bellshazes]

thinking about long-term building infrastructure in minecraft that's viable for my playstyle; thinking a lot about how real-world architecture takes a while to be built and the different environmental experiences that, say, being grateful for scaffolding providing cover on a rainy day or shade on a warm one can provide. what would beautiful or visually interesting in-progress builds look like? it should be truly functional for letting me resume building at a later date, since the point of this would be to essentially find a peace between letting things sit for a long time in a way that's pleasing and could be left unfinished indefinitely but also makes it easy to pick it back up.

irl scaffolding i'm most interested in functions best in contexts of denser builds, with pre-defined relationship to the non-building space. by which i mean, you got sidewalks & streets & alleys in there. the scaffolding then becomes another interesting feature of navigating & can visually break up an otherwise straight line of buildings. setting up (mc) scaffolding pillars a few blocks out from the building's face and then creating a small platform at different height levels - so that you could walk underneath it - is viable, but i don't like the idea of it for every build. and scaffolding itself gets noisy at large scales, so this would ideally be improved. (ought to consider instamineable blocks, tho most top-of-mind aren't immediately plausible for industry.)

more isolated builds, is there a default configuration of ladders & temp blocks I could create to a) have a consistent language of "building infrastructure" across my areas and b) make it easier to do things like build roofs, etc.? actually, besides roofs, what's prohibitive for me is i really like going back and texturing things to indicate age or decay or growth, and if i could build in a solid block color and easily traverse vertically without terribly blocking the sightlines i need to check if i like the changes, that would help so much.

in the real world, building has to follow a certain order but in mc, maybe i ought to be more systematic about alternatives? i do like building a single face and working that, before any insides have been done, because you can scaff one side and view the other. but i also like filling out one corner of a space and inhabiting builds before they're finished - that's why i'm thinking about this, how to make that livable.

maybe then i should be working out interesting ways of interior scaffolding, to build up building faces - and then could swap portions of the scaff for real rooms if i wanted, stairs when i'm ready for them, etc. and you could maybe do some interesting things imitating house shells, that way.

[onepiexe]

my god. yesterday was a day.