Reading

Entry tags:

wiscon,
wiscon 2025

Wiscon report

This year's Wiscon was all-online, and billed as a "gap year," with fewer program items than I'm used to, and no dealers room.

I went to two program items--a "US immigration law and worldwide fandom roundtable" and a panel on "the wild world of modern agtech and why isn't it showing up in current SF."

The roundtable was about as cheerful as you'd expect, with a lot of discussion of both past and feared legal difficulties in traveling to cons, and alternatives like smaller gatherings and online cons. Most of us thought that online wasn't as good as in person, but that it's significantly better than nothing. (There may be some selection bias here: people who didn't think an online con was better than nothing wouldn't bother attending.) And a couple of people noted that their choice has been online or nothing at least since 2020, for reasons like disability or budge that don't have much to do with Trump.

The panel on current and future agriculture was fun. Some of the "what SF is getting wrong" was about TV and movies, showing a garden plot that's much too small for the population it's allegedly feeding, and that the fictional future is even worse/stupider about monoculture than the real world today.

Other than that, I hung out on the Discord server. Most if not all of the program items were recorded, and will be available to convention members for a week after the end of the con, but I may not get around to watching any of them, even less interactive things like readings and the guest of honor speeches.

Entry tags:

RETREAT

			RETREAT

what about when you don't fit
when you feel like you don't
         BELONG
i used my blue crutches
and hobbled my way around
the trolley only working odd hours
missing late nights
         early mornings
         and in-between meets and classes
this retreat was not for me
        INCLUSION
         they scream from the rooftops
         but they left out me and my friends
         they left out       
                                        me
so i rode the u-haul  rides up and down the hill
        skipping things i wanted to go to
         because i had to rest not hobble
         i had to rest not break
         because inclusion is for so many
         but at this retreat
         in this community
         inclusion doesn't count                         
 me
		it broke
and saying, simply, “i hear you” 
	isn’t enough
		ACTIONS speak 
		words whisper
here i am post coital from the retreat
	a sad sack sore lump of human
		glad to be home
		happy to be gone
	

this year i’m only bordering mad
	next year i’m gonna be pissed

Watch on YouTube

Entry tags:

(morning writing, crochet, f&f, cats)

Written Sunday morning:

I think i am a little numb.

Thursday afternoon i started frogging (ripping apart) a sweater i had crocheted years ago. Ravelry says i started October 27, 2007 and completed March 15, 2015. I never wore it, and it was bulky and taking space in the closet. It took hours ... about one for each year i worked on it, ha! ... to pull it all apart. I wasn't quite done by midnight, listening to an audio book as i did the mindless work.

I took Friday off, brain dead. I had breakfast with my sister, then mostly went back to yarn stuff. We brought home Edward's ashes, and Christine and i discussed some things i could make with the forest green suede yarn. She wants a toque, and i could make Yuletide gift bags. I started on the bags, which i can make without a pattern. I continued the sitting around yesterday. I also finally mended a shirt of Christine's with a variety of visible mending and embroidery. I hope it remains comfortable: the fabric was very worn and fragile, and the applique patches i made were from a bulky yarn.

I am fascinated by what is coming back to me with crochet and what seems fuzzy

Late Friday night Christine heard from her sister D-- that B-- has declined more. He has a heart pump, and it alarms with low flow - which is what is happening as he dies. So it sounds like they have this challenge of when to turn it off, which will be the choice that it is time to die. "Most patients died within an hour of LVAD deactivation, and all within 26 hours." How much harder? easier?

Entry tags:

talked to GI doctor: we have a plan

I just had a telemedicine appointment with the gastroenterologist. Her office called at about 9:30 this morning, to ask if I was available for a 10:30 appointment, and I said yes.

The diagnosis is collagenous colitis, which I already knew from MyChart. The good news is that it's both benign and curable. The treatment will be nine weeks of budosenide pills, starting at three/day for the first six weeks, then two/day for the next three weeks, and a final three weeks of one/day. Those are to be taken with food, and in the morning because it's related to steroids and can interfere with sleep. [I mis-remembered, it's a total of 12 weeks of these pills.]

The most common risk factors for this kind of colitis are being a woman over sixty, and regular use of NSAIDs. Therefore, Dr. Morgan wants me to talk to Carmen about whether there's a plausible alternative to me taking naproxen almost every day, but she did say there may not be, since tylenol doesn't work the same way and may not be effective for the hip and knee pain I'm using it for.

I asked about continuing the Imodium and the fiber capsules, and Dr. Morgan said I could stop using them when the budosenide starts to be effective for the diarrhea, which might be within a week. I told her that the combination of Imodium and fiber is working well enough that I may not notice a difference, so the tentative plan is to wait at least a week, then pick a day or two when I won't need to go out, and try stopping the Imodium. (Adrian pointed out that I'm currently taking two pills twice a day, so I could try halving the dose and see how I feel. That sounds plausible, but I'm going to ask Dr Morgan if she thinks that's worth doing.

Also, a significant number of people with collagenous colitis also have celiac, so she wants to test me for that. I asked, and it's a straightforward blood draw, which I can do at my convenience: I don't need to wait until after getting blood drawn to start on the new medication.

She is sending the prescription to CVS, and told me to call her office if there's any problem with the insurance company.

ETA: I looked at the doctor's visit notes on MyChart, which reminded me that I should be checking my blood pressure about once a week while taking the budosenide.

Entry tags:

proposed restrictions on covid vaccines

The clowns running the FDA have proposed restricting access to covid vaccines, to people over 65 or who have certain medical conditions. There's a public docket for comments on the proposal.

Your Local Epidemiologist has a good post about the proposal, including that the people suggesting this know that nobody is going to do the placebo-controlled tests of new boosters they want to require.

Possible talking points include:

Families and caregivers wouldn't be eligible for the vaccine, even if they share a household, unlike the current UK recommendations.

Doctors, dentists, and other medical staff wouldn't be eligible either.

My own comment included that the reason I'd still be eligible for the vaccine is a lung problem caused by covid.

(cross-posting from

thisfinecrew)

More art experiments

Drawing with any black medium on white paper utterly triggers my perfectionism to a paralyzing degree.

Sepia ink on brown paper? Fun!

(Can't take a gazillion markers with me when I travel so working to come up with something more portable but still satisfying. Four sepia markers seems to fit the bill.)

Entry tags:

wiscon

Wiscon

I just bought a membership in this year's Wiscon, which is entirely online, so I don't have to worry about energy levels, or covid risk, and all I'm paying for is the con, not airline tickets and a hotel room and all.

travels with confusing people

My mother is not actually (yet) a wanderer, dementia-wise, though she is accident prone, which is basically the functional equivalent.

(Apparently, especially with sundowners, people do just. Wander a lot, and also there is the subsection of them who want to find old homes that no longer exist and/or they no longer live in.)

The first time this seemed wandering-esque, last month, it was that she had gone out to, presumably, get ice around 5 am at night in a hotel. (She and my dad were going to an archeo-astronomy convention). She then forgot her room number and hadn't brought her room key with her, but she eventually found the front desk, and they called my dad. ....who hung up the phone on them because he was 3/4 asleep. So my mom and the front desk clerk went and banged on the door of their room, several times. (She then forgot the part about their having called my dad until several days later when I was talking to them about it. This is the problem with reconstructing events, sometimes she doesn't remember a recent thing has happened at all, and then sometimes, 10 minutes later, she remembers both the event and a particular detail, and it's never predictable which way it'll go.

However, I would like to praise her problem solving skills on the night of the event, there.)

The second time this happened was last week, which my father reported to my brother and I as her "losing her car keys," but what actually happened was she locked them (and her purse) inside the car outside her local pharmacy, and since she didn't have her cell phone on her (she never does, is the problem), she went inside the pharmacy and asked to use their phone (again, top tier problem solving skills, but I suspect she had to do a lot of hemming and hawing about it because she's become *even more* unable to get to the point of her questions/train of thought than she used to be.) First, she called my dad, who called AAA for her. I lose track of the narrative a bit here, but I think basically, AAA took awhile so she got impatient, then the pharmacy called Riverside Community Care Elderly Services, who called the Dedham Police, who called the Dedham Fire Department, who kindly broke into her car for her. Riverside then followed my mom home and offered my dad their Elderly Services brochure, and said they'd call Monday, and my dad was sad because dementia, and also he wants to deal In His Own Way, and I suspect also because my mom had become Obvious To Their Hometown.

(They did not call today.)

Anyway, so my brother and I stopped by today to have dessert and commiserate with them, and we are inching toward my dad being OK with getting a 3-ish-days-a-week helper, which would assist *infinitely* with dinner, which causes a lot of stress because my mom thinks she can still be organized enough to cook and she isn't.

I also, today, registered her as a wanderer with the Dedham Police, or anyway, that's what the form focuses on, but it's serves just as well as, "Please return this person if she's having troubles." Really, what she *is* is a a) deaf, and b) a source of confusion for people who run into her in stressful and/or confusing situations, because she takes shortcuts in her brain, doesn't let other people in on the shortcut, and also, as noted, no longer asks questions that give people enough clues to figure out either the answer or the question. So she may occasionally functionally *act* like a wanderer even before she becomes one, and if the Dedham Police know this, so much the better.

The point of this post is, I dun' like it.

Entry tags:

Goodbye to Edward (cats, f&f, garden)

We said goodbye to Edward around 12:20 yesterday, a month and a few hours after saying goodbye to Luigi. There was a cloud that was rainbow colored in the sky, a nacreous cloud (except May?! and 35° latitude?!) that greeted us as we reached the vet, that offered a bit of marvel to go with the grief.

The medication to allow Edward to breathe more easily failed and the prognosis became even more complicated. No prognosis had him leaving the cage where he was receiving supplemental oxygen, so we said good bye to him there.

We're shattered, and i have so much at work to focus on the next few days. A week and a half before i can safely see my dad.... No spots, so we're thankful for that. (I think Christine worries the stress of waking to Luigi's condition triggered the last flare of my condition.)

--== ∞ ==--

Meanwhile, B-- (Christine's sister's husband) is now using supplemental oxygen. D-- and B-- lost their two grey cats Atty and Scout to some seizure condition in late 2024 and this spring. We know additional grief is on the horizon.

So we will go through the change in our lives because forward through time is the only way i know.

--== ∞ ==--

I'd started working in the yard just before, the vet called. And then while Christine showered before we went to the vet, i put a few plants in the ground in the yesterday:

Better boy buried deeply in the eastern side of the back of the circle garden; a bigger Early girl to the west, and between them a "Sweet banana" pepper and a sweet basil. Last year a Matt's wild cherry tomato swarmed that whole area. I would have expected seedlings but maybe the winter weeds then pinestraw mulch was too thick.

Carmen (Red Italian frying pepper) east most, and the second of the four "Sweet banana" peppers in the east middle bed; the last two "Sweet banana" peppers in the west middle bed, and one between the two tomatoes.

The Thai basil in the east front bed close to the peony where sage thrived before.

I also pulled some seeds out from my collection - Zinna, marigold, sunflowers. I have struggled to grow sunflowers here but will try again, i guess. I mixed a bunch of collected marigold seed heads in the soil near the tomatoes - who knows when i collected those. I should probably soak some of the hyacinth beans and plant them so when all the poppies die back i have something to replace them. It failed last time i tried but i will try again. If i get my seedling kit going soon, i should start some more basil.

I'm leaning towards planting the rosemary where i had it before but i don't know why that big plant died last year. I suspect humidity from all the stilt grass and Bears foot (Smallanthus uvedalia), then drought. But i wonder if the Smallanthus uvedalia had anything to do with it beyond the shade and captured humidity.

Entry tags:

walk

I went for a walk this afternoon with Cattitude and Adrian: downhill to Beacon Street, then inbound as far as the Summit Avenue T stop. Not only was it useful exercise, I got to smell one of my favorite flowers, rugosa roses. It may have been too long a walk, because my joints were feeling the strain before I turned back and took the trolley partway home, but if I'd turned back any sooner I'd have missed the roses. While I took the T home, Cattitude and Adrian continued to Coolidge Corner, to shop for groceries and then get bagels. (Most of the time, the two of them can walk further than I can.)

I had to walk a few blocks uphill from the T to get home, but I allowed for that when I decided how far to walk. I came home, took my shoes off, and sat a while before I put on the shoes that I'm still breaking in. I will probably break them in a little more before I wear them outside.

Entry tags:

cats

Edward Cat

Following up on last night's semi-cryptic post.

Last night, around 1 am, Edward Cat's blood work came back indicative of congestive heart failure with nothing in the fluid from around the lungs (pulmonary edema? i guess) indicative of cancer. There was some chance his breathing difficulties were triggered by fluids he received on Thursday[1]. Given that, there are reasonable chances that he can receive treatment and be better, at least for a while. So he's been hospitalized today with some hope that they can stabilize his breathing, give him some drugs for the fluid build up and to help him eat, and feed him (with a feeding tube) to get his eating started again -- and then he might come home. And it's possible maybe we give him regular meds and he's OK for a while.

We got home, had a bit of alcohol to sedate and counter coffee, and then were asleep -- my watch says 3:20 am. I was up around 7. I just called and learned they're doing rounds: we'll hear how he is in a few hours.

[1] "Decompensation into fulminant pulmonary edema may be precipitated by a stressful event, anesthesia, intravenous fluid administration or steroid administration. " https://academy.royalcanin.com/en/veterinary/management-of-the-cat-with-heart-failure

Edward

So his breathing was worrisome, Christine sent a video to our vet who suggested we take him to the 24 hr vet. We are now in Durham where we have been told he has fluid buildup around his lungs, either from congestive heart failure or cancer. We will have them attempt to remove the fluid to provide relief and be tested for signals of cancer. Also a blood test to determine heat failure.

Then I think we will take him home. There is an at home euthanasia vet to call when the time comes. There's still a chance it's just infection but the vet didn't seem to think that the likely result.

Entry tags:

(morning writing, health, garden, cats, f&f)

After a winter with so many cold spells, i doubted the return of many zone 8 plants and a zone 9 plant. But to my delight

not only the dahlias i grew from seed years ago but the new dahlias from last year have all returned
the Calla lilies i did not get around to digging up are sprouting
a Jewels of Opar plant (Talinum paniculatum) that came up last year presumably from a scattered seed has returned
and a Stevia plant i'd grown from seed -- the zone 9 plant -- has come back for the second time under both cold and weed pressure!

Most of the bee balm (Mondara) i looked at yesterday had powdery mildew. I'll look again this weekend to see if there's any i can harvest as a herb while cutting back all the tall growing plants to promote branching.

--== ∞ ==--

Wednesday was the monoclonal antibody second infusion. I was feeling good and then the dose of intravenous benadryl hit and i was knocked out of it for the rest of the day. The infusion itself was short. Dad has COVID aka, as he calls it, Covig, on returning from a Danube cruise with his sweetheart. Nurse said to stay away from him (and my sister and her husband who have been exposed to Dad as they cared for him) for two weeks.

Thursday was a blur with work meetings. I was promising myself a Friday to focus but then more distractions. Plus a new phone has arrived, so ensuring i have all the things i use set up is taking attention.

Meanwhile Edward Cat has been sleeping, not interested in usual companionship, not eating. He's clearly got a cold. We first thought to let it take its course, but Thursday and Friday Christine's taken him to the vet. (The vet urged the appointment on Friday). Blood sugar low, so stopping the insulin, and ordered a glucose testing kit so we can do a better job monitoring without vet trips. We have an appetite stimulant to try.

He wasn't in the bed when i woke somewhat early, so i looked for him and finally found him by the litter box. I assume getting there sapped all his energy.

Christine's sister's two cats died in the past year and i know Christine is almost expecting Edward to die, following Luigi. She's worried about his will to live. I hope not. He still looks like a hearty cat.

shoes

I went to the New Balance factory store today* and, with the help of two salespeople, found a pair of shoes that I think fits. I bought it, then treated myself to a hot fudge sundae before coming home.

By the time I got home my feet hurt, which is from either trying on shoes that didn't fit, or the amount of walking I did in my old shoes. I will wear these around the house for a few days to break them in and confirm that they fit.

If they fit, I'm going to go back and buy another pair in a different color; if not, I'll return them, regretfully. I also want to see about sandals, and have a few stores in mind, but shoe shopping is so often frustrating that I wasn't going to try a second shoe store today.

*meaning Friday, which is yesterday by the computer clock.

Entry tags:

CT scan looks fine

I had a CT scan of my lungs this morning, then saw the pulmonologist. The CT scan looks OK, considering: "Again seen is diffuse bronchiectasis with tree-in-bud opacities seen in the right upper lobe, right middle lobe and lingula. The areas in the right upper lobe may have improved in the interval."

The low-tech exam was also reassuring: the doctor used a stethoscope to listen to my chest, and had me cough while listening. She heard no wheezing (or other problems), which is good. So, she told me to keep using the flutter valve twice a day, and come back in six months.

And, some non-medical notes:

I discovered that it's possible to accidentally cancel a Lyft ride by putting your phone in your pocket after the driver has picked you up. The driver suggested I text Lyft to tell them I hadn't meant to cancel, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. After a minute or two of frustration, I asked the driver if he would take cash instead, and he said yes. So I handed him $25, and repeated the destination address so he could enter it in his GPS. I try to carry some cash on general principles, but this isn't something I was expecting to need, or be able, to pay cash for.

Mount Auburn was also having some trouble with their medical information system: the doctor could see the CT scan, but only on the machine in her office, not the one in the exam room. Fortunately, I didn't need to see the images. Given their computer problems, I was particularly pleased to have a list of my current medications on my phone, to show the doctor's assistant. I don't yet have my follow-up appointment, but that's not because of today's computer problems, but that they aren't set up to book follow-up appointments that far in advance.

I took transit home, which is cheap and makes sense to me, from many years of practice. I stopped at Flour to get something to eat, 7-11 to use their no-fee ATM to withdraw some more cash, and CVS to pick up a prescription, and was home in time for lunch. It was effectively two stops rather than three, because the 7-11 and drugstore are both near the bus stop where I was changing from the bus to the trolley.