this is exactly like sisyphus rolling the boulder

[omaewokorosu]

So our block has some "drainage" issues—and I guess one could say that this area of the Southern Tier has issues because people in Southport and Horseheads are also complaining about drainage issues that...the municipalities don't give a shit about—where melting snow and rain end up pooling in different areas of our yards. Us and our neighbour at #8 have pooling in the same areas of our respective front yards and our driveways (towards the road end of it, not towards our houses). We have the same areas of our back yard that collect water as well. As for #4, who I'm going to be talking about in this part of the entry...what doesn't collect water on their property. It's their yards, their driveway... Yeah. Their entire driveway is a "pooling zone", so melted snow becomes a pond (contained to their driveway). It hasn't snowed like, a lot for most of the season, so this hasn't really been much of an issue.

Until now, because we got hit and are gonna get hit more. So how are they handling this? Are they throwing down a whole bunch of sand so that it can soak up as much snow and water as possible and then just collect that somewhere? No. They are using a sump pump to pump it out into the street and the parking lot across from both of us. And the thing is a sump pump can't be used like that. Because that's not how a sump pump works.

A sump pump is a device that removes water from a basement and away from a home. It's installed in a sump pit, which is a low area that collects water.

A sump pump is something you find in a little well area under your basement that detects water. Once it goes above whatever programmed threshold, it turns on and pumps whatever water is there into a drain that leads to the sewer. You can't just plonk this down in a puddle in your driveway and expect it to do its job. There's not enough water to trigger it. So it'll just sit there and do nothing. Five people inspected both it and the hoses to see what it was doing and...yeah, not much.

It was also raining when they first began this endeavour so they essentially tried moving one big puddle over to another big puddle and also because it was raining water is going to continue collecting into the areas that...collect water. Like you can tell where all our ponding is because that's where all the wettest snow is. #4 has no snow and no slush because it's all melted, which compounds the issue. And it's still not enough to trigger the sump pump.

idk if anyone here's ever seen IT Crowd but if you have... It's like Moss taking the fire and putting it over with the rest of the fire. You're just gonna end up with an even bigger fire (or pool of water in our neighbour's case).

Every once in a while they would move it further along on the driveway to test out what spots would be best. Sometimes they would readjust a hose that was out in the street for most of the day. Sometimes they would even inspect it to see if any water was coming out. Nothing was happening.

And then it started to rain and snow and the wind picked up. We are expecting wind gusts of 50mph. Temps are gonna be in the mid-teens so any standing water or anything wet is going to freeze overnight. They've had to shovel their driveway already; I haven't had to shovel anything since a good chunk of it melted and I'd put rock salt out yesterday on the bits I cleared. There is a shortage of rock salt so I guess we'll have to buy sand or something. I dunno. But we also don't have to drive anywhere, so if our driveway is kinda icy, well... It's fine. But #4's might be an ice rink by tomorrow morning.

They've since removed the sump pump and hoses and brought them inside I would guess. You can't have shit like that out in the road overnight esp since it's snowing and they are good about plowing, especially since we're sandwiched between two major roads.

Moral of the story? Use sand. Sand will clump together when wet and then you can shovel it elsewhere or put it in a big bucket. What do you think clumping cat litter is?? basically that. But these neighbours only have dogs so maybe they don't know that. We've never spoken to these people, we just see them out in their yard with their dogs. (Meanwhile our neighbours at #8 we've met a few times, say hello to them whenever we see them or they see us, and we know their cat's name is Coconut. They also have an aging golden lab. Go figure we get along better with the neighbours who have a cat lol.)

*

There is a lot of personal shit happening that I...could probably discuss on this platform, but I won't because... *sigh*

It's not that I'm in denial about it, or even angry necessarily even though I am feeling the latter. It's more the fact that I want to remain positive about things, is all. So all of that might end up in my paper journal. It might also not. It's just. Everything is a fucking dumpster fire right now with everything. So I guess what I'll talk about is the church fire that happened a couple of days ago.

I say church but it's been abandoned for like 10-15 years now. It was purchased by some private investor who never did anything with it so it was abandoned. Beautiful building with nice stained glass and it was right next to our closing attorney's office, so when we were there to drop off the booklet of the history of our property, I was kind of...walking around a little looking at it. Because I love things like this.

Because no one's been giving two shits about it, it's been structurally unstable for quite some time. Bricks coming loose and things of that nature. Which is a shame because it was a historical building and now it's more or less almost gone because they're in the process of tearing down what's left.

The City of Elmira, where this church was, has a huge homeless problem, which is commonplace in any city in any state when you think about it. It's no different from Port Jervis and it's no difference from Rochester, it's just how many homeless people. So naturally any abandoned place is going to be a target of squatters, especially this time of year when it's cold and snowy. What they keep saying—which no one knows if it's true but it is official word—is that squatters made a fire to keep warm and it got out of control and because the building was old and in extreme states of disrepair... Yeah. It. Went. Up.

It ended up more or less gutted by the time they put the fire out. And because it's even more structurally unsound, they absolutely have to demolish it. Which blocks off access to a major street in Elmira. So like, going to Wegmans is fine and dandy because you take West Water Street (which is a one way) but coming back from Wegmans isn't so easy because you have to bypass the section of Church Street that leads to our street so going down all these sidestreets and that's a pain in the ass.

People are naturally upset at the loss of yet another historical building since the memorial pool in one of the nearby parks was also recently torn down (due to also being structurally unsound)...and it was only one of like 100something memorial pools still left in the country. And then that leads to people wondering what will be replacing these things and will it be a good use of City taxpayers' money? Especially since their taxes recently went up.

(We live in the Town of Elmira so our taxes are different.)

So yeah. I don't think anyone was hurt or anything in the fire, which is always good.

*

I've been working on fic but I haven't really been posting anything or even typing anything because...meh. I've been trying to preoccupy my time in other ways...like retro gaming handhelds.

(Which are basically handheld emulator computers.)

Because it would be nice to play NES and SNES games, right? Or idk some kind of Sega console. Or even GBA games that I already own (I use my DS Lite to play them though I don't know where my DS charger even is right now), or GBC games I already own...

(And then I end up just playing Stardew Valley on my Switch anyway.)

Serena and I have gotten into uhhh DIY miniature dollhouse type things that I would describe more accurately as 3D puzzles. We're almost done with our first one. It's been a fun little date night activity :3

I've been picking at my worldbuilding shit and just kind of. Meh. About it.

So yeah.

I spend a lot of time on Reddit because there are so few "safe" social media places anymore. FB has been a cesspool for a while but up until the recent Election and everything leading up to it it wasn't like. terrible? if you curated your feed correctly. But now that all of the social media billionaires are more or less sucking the Cheeto's dick it's been harder and harder to find places that aren't filled with Nazi propaganda. I've had to cut down on FB (which I only really watch Reels on anyway), I left Twitter when the TOS changes were announced and haven't looked back...

I miss message boards/forums. And Reddit is the closest thing we have to anything remotely similar. So.

I try to keep informed on politics but it is fucking bleak. Everything is nowadays. I find myself having less and less energy for anything. It just fucking sucks.