Reading

Entry tags:

weird power outage, and knee update

We had a *weird* power outage today: most but not all of the apartment lost power. Mercifully, we did not lose power to the study, where I've been sitting quietly in the air conditioning all day (the high was 35C/95F). Our first thought was that something weird had happened to our apartment's power. Cattitude spent some time on the phone with the management company, which sent a technician. The technician looked things over and told us to call Eversource.

Some piece of their equipment broke, leaving 37 customers without power, according to the outage map, including us and our upstairs neighbors who also had power in part of each apartment. It took them several hours to fix, but fortunately we got our lights back before it was entirely dark out. The oddest-feeling bit of this was realizing that I could plug my phone in to charge, in the middle of a power outage.

I have been doing almost nothing today, to avoid straining my knee*. It's feel better now than last night, but still not great, and I'm having trouble using the quad cane correctly: even moving slowly, my foot and the cane are landing with one an inch or so ahead of the other (sometimes the foot is forward, sometimes it's behind). Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot cooler, but I'm still planning to stay home, and hopefully do some stretching.

* Yes, I buried the lede in yesterday's post, because the googly-eyed train was more interesting.

Entry tags:

semi-recent reading

Since my last reading post:

Nobody Cares, by H. J. Breedlove. This one is good, but dark: it's dedicated this to Black Lives Matter, and fairly early on I got to the first mention of Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It's also book 3 in the Talkeetna series, with further developments in the friendship-turning-romance of Dace and Paul.

The Disappearing Spoon, by Dan Kean: a history of the periodic table, with a bit about each of the currently-known elements and the people, or groups of people who discovered them. Someone recommended this after I mentioned liking Consider the Fork, but the two books have almost nothing in common.

The Electricity of Every Living Thing, by Katherine May: a memoir, about walking and what happens after the writer hears a radio program about Asperger's and thinks "but that's me." (I don't remember where I saw this recommended

Return to Gone-Away, by Elizabeth Enright: read-aloud, and a reread of a book I read years ago. Sweet, a family's low-key adventures in an obscure corner of upstate New York. As the title implies, this is a sequel; read Gone-Away Lake first.

Beautiful Yetta, the Yiddish Chicken, by Daniel Pinkwater, a short picture book that we read aloud after Adrian and I realized Cattitude hadn't read it before. Conversation in three languages, with translations (and transliterations) for the Yiddish and Spanish. Not Pinkwater's best, but fun.

Thimble Summer, by Elizabeth Enright, because I enjoyed rereading the Gone-Away Lake books. Several months of a girl's life with her family on a farm. The plot and adventures are relatively low-key. I liked it, and am glad I got it from the library.

Also, it looks as though I didn't post about the summer reading thing here. It started June 1, and the bingo card has a mix of kinds of books, like books in translation, published this year, or with an indigenous author; some squares with things like "read outside" and "recommend a book"; and some that go further afield, like "learn a word in a new language" and "try a new recipe." Plus the ever-popular "book with a green cover." (OK, last year it was "book with a red cover.") I do a lot of my reading on a black-and-white kindle, so I don't know what color the covers might be. Therefore, I walked into a library yesterday, looked at their summer reading suggestions, and grabbed a book with a green cover.

Current Mood: sore

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Two minor amusing things from a trip downtown this morning:

I saw (and rode) one of the googly-eyed trolleys for the first time.

And on the way back, an ad in a subway car for some AI thing. The headline is something like "offload the busy work." The steps given below that are "AI drafts brief" and "brief accepted." Almost anything would have been a better example, after repeated news stories about lawyers getting in trouble for submitting impressively flawed AI-drafted legal briefs.

The trip was to try on sandals at the Clark's store. There was one that was slightly two big, so I have ordered a pair in my usual style, to be delivered to the store, so I can try them on there and return them if they don't fit.

I stopped to grab some lunch at the Quincy Market food court, and then wrenched my knee while sitting down on some stairs in order to eat it. The trip home was not fun, but I came home, sat down for a couple of minutes, then got out last fall's cane and went into the kitchen to make tea.

(no subject)

The house next door is currently unoccupied, awaiting its new owners. The athletic 10 year old twins across the street have just figured out that they can now play on the very enticing driveway-- a smooth curving slope. It's fun to watch! (Dead end street so quite safe, with just a bit of caution.)

Entry tags:

(morning writing, dawg)

Carrie is home. We have a soft muzzle coming so that we can restrict her licking. She already licked raw part of her foreleg. It's bandaged now but they wanted air circulation. And she didn't eat her dinner. Poor thing. Hoping we can get through the rough bit without (more) human meltdowns.

I'm not too achy and stiff from yard work. My professional work looms over me and i wish i were more rested.

Current Mood: relieved

Entry tags:

celiac test is negative

My GI doctor says the celiac test is negative. This is both unsurprising and a relief: the doctor ordered the test because of comorbidities, not because there were any signs of celiac, but celiac is common enough in people with collagenous colitis that it was worth checking.

I do still need to contact her office tomorrow and ask about that follow-up appointment.

Entry tags:

(morning writing, dawg, critter watch, critters)

I'm hoping the universe is done with sending us to the emergency room for a while. Carrie has spent the night at the veterinary hospital because she was bit on her front left ankle by a presumed copperhead yesterday morning between 9 and 10 am -- probably more like 9:45? And she's probably going to be OK, but there will probably be a long rehab of some sort with skin and tissue damage on that leg.

I am suspicious that maybe Carrie didn't see the snake? And that's how her foot was bit? Marlowe is so tiny, so Christine has insisted on keeping her in, but i don't know that that's actually going to help unless we plan to keep her in forever. Once Carrie is home and we need to let her out in the back yard, Marlowe is going to dash out. However Christine's got to work through her anxiety and i need to let her take the lead on this.

I think the best we can do is the snake repellent (that Christine had distributed before she left to spend the afternoon with B--) and trying to keep the weeds down.

I'm off to meet my sister and dad to drink coffee in memory of my mom at the hospice where she died, and get my sister's weed burner/flame thrower. Mine had it's final failure when the control knob fell off somewhere in the yard yesterday as i burnt it all -- well as much as i could of the stilt grass, particularly at the fence line. I didn't burn it all : i kept noticing poison ivy and worrying that i was going to send myself to the emergency room by burning then inhaling the urushiol. I am not that sensitive to poison ivy. I occasionaly get blisters that i suspect are from blowback from fragmented leaves in the weed whacker, but i know i've brushed by intact plants and had no reaction.

In the past week I've watched a hawk survey my garden and other parts of the front yard for prey, and have clearly seen it carry off two snakes. I assumed it was mainly getting DeKay's brown snakes: it's welcome to all the copperheads it and its brood can eat.

(While on the topic of pests: Christine's found two ticks - before they could attach - but so far my pants-in-socks seems to have discouraged any interest in me.)

Rabbit! Rabbit! Rabbit!

Happy Kalends of Iunius!

blood draw, etc.

I'm fine, as far as I know everyone's fine, but my trip to get blood drawn was more exciting than anticipated: the bus driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid either a bicycle or a pedestrian crossing in mid-block. She did that, checked to make sure that everyone on the bus was OK, then drove to the next corner, pulled over, and asked again if everyone was sure they were OK.

A few stops after that, someone asked me where he should get off the bus to get to "the little mall with Trader Joe's and MicroCenter." It took me a moment to figure out what he meant, because the bus we were on doesn't go there. So first I told him I wasn't sure, because this bus didn't go there, and then I started thinking about the problem. He said he wasn't good at directions, so I suggested a route that involved more walking but less chance of getting lost. I wound up signaling for his bus stop, and then telling him I was sorry, I'd forgotten they'd moved the bus stop, so [revised directions]. I should note, he didn't ask me for most of this, just what bus stop to use, and I was in the mood to do the extra bits.

The rest of the trip to Mt. Auburn to get blood drawn went smoothly. Once I got there, I had very little wait, and the phlebotomist did a very good job; I made a point of telling him so. On the way back, I stopped in Harvard Square to put more money on my Charlie card; buy and eat a slice of Otto's mashed potato and bacon pizza; and then went to Lizzy's to get Adrian a pint of non-dairy chocolate ice cream.

I was going to withdraw some cash from the ATM at the 7-11 at Comm Ave and Harvard Ave, but when I got there the screen said "windows 7. Press ctrl-alt-del to log in," which was literally impossible with the numeric keypad, so I just came home.

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?

Eve's Fountain

teeth bared

weird power outage, and knee update

semi-recent reading

(no subject)

(no subject)

(morning writing, dawg)

celiac test is negative

(morning writing, dawg, critter watch, critters)

Rabbit! Rabbit! Rabbit!

blood draw, etc.

Wiscon report

RETREAT

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