The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

Lily is not eating very much, but she's not ready to let go yet. She has two bad teeth that refuse to give up and fall out, and I wish they would, because I think that's the problem (or at the very least not helping). Having them pulled would mean putting an almost-15-year-old cat with kidney problems under general anesthesia, and Dr. P is good with my not wanting to do that.

Got my $1400 stimulus check, and am taking the BC Easter vacation (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Monday off), so I guess I can go mattress shopping. Hooray? Mattress shopping feels like used-car shopping to me. I think I know what I want, though, and it's a matter of going down to Mattress Firm in Coolidge Corner, which is where they sell what I want, and persuading them that that's all I want. The regiment could probably invest in a new futon mattress someday too, but that's at the end of the "not now" list after new office rug and new quilt. Quirk isn't doing the quilt any favors either.

And I really need a plasterer to fix the office wall, and a plumber and a tile guy to at least replace the tub/shower faucets and replace that square foot of tiles in the middle of the wall, and if I won the lottery I'd have the entire bathroom re-tiled. I'm probably going to have to win the lottery for the plasterer anyway. AND I'm not sure how long it would take to fix the wall, and I don't think it would be a good idea to try to be doing my WFH job while the wall's being fixed. So I'm in about three minds on the subject.

It's been a week since I posted anything, because I've deleted a couple of rants. I don't want this to become a journal of rants.

On Saturday night I got something jammed in the gum behind my last left-hand lower molar, and I think I got it out, but it was angry enough to require Advil Monday and yesterday. Today it seems to be annoyed rather than angry. I'll take that. Especially since I don't know when I could get it seen by anybody at HSDM.

It's not a trend yet, but Quirk is sleeping on top of the office cat tree, right out in the open, for the second day in a row. It's nice to have a cat hanging around in here with me, without feet on the laptop. And it's gratifying that Quirk has decided I'm non-threatening enough to be slept at.

As of February 4, my taxes are hanging around in the ether. I decided I didn't mind if they hung around for a week, and I wanted them to come off the "don't forget to do this" list. I should be getting my usual refunds, which is nice.

I've gotten fascinated with excavator videos on Youtube, drawn in by one that was on another site and captioned "Who do you call when your 22-ton excavator is sunk up to its cab in mud? This guy." When in doubt, go play in the dirt (or the mud) with heavy machinery. And the guy who extracted the 22-ton excavator is damn good at it, and I end up learning things about geology and physics and things like that. In one of the videos he says that his sitting there doing nothing while the state police are inspecting a dump truck he's supposed to be filling with rocks is costing the job $400 an hour. I wonder how one gets trained to run excavators? I could have a post-retirement career...

For now, though, I have to go make the university visiting committee happy, and make CODA happy, and make the Dean happy in terms of hoops I have to get the faculty search candidates to jump through. I'd rather go play in the mud with heavy machinery, though.

It is very nice that certain names aren't showing up in the news every day these days. I can't say I was losing sleep over the previous administration, but not reading about them several times a day is relaxing.

The book that's coming by tortoise, also known as book rate mail, has another week before it's officially late. I doubt there's anything I can do about it if it is late, because there isn't any tracking available either. So I'll just sit around and wait, and hope it gets here someday, and doesn't get delivered next door or downtown or somewhere. Apparently one of my credit card bills took a detour and went back to the post office before it got to me, because somebody wrote the correct address in great big numbers on the envelope. I like getting bills on paper; it reminds me to pay them, and I have a physical record in case the internet goes kablooey.

On a semi-related note, if you're going to send me a phishing text about a debit card, it won't work if it's supposedly from a bank I don't have an account with in the first place.

For want of huge Honeycrisp apples (TJs hasn't had them for two weeks now), I bought three pounds of mandarin oranges. Partly because I didn't see any obviously ugly ones in the bag (there's always at least one moldy clementine per flat and you find it after it's already spread to its neighbors), and partly because I had a craving for orange juice. I hope they aren't all as hard to peel as the first four were. I'm somewhat daunted by the idea of eating three pounds of mandarin oranges all by myself, and I don't know why; I eat three pounds of cherries in two days in cherry season. Cherries don't need to be peeled, though.

Well, it was going to be a good week, and then I went to pay bills on Sunday night and discovered that yet again, somebody who isn't me has ordered Netflix on my credit card. So I called the credit card company and they basically said (with an accent that was hard to understand over the phone) go away and don't bother us, call Netflix. Which I did, and Netflix was most apologetic and blocked the card from any further usage, but I'm annoyed at the card company. If that wasn't the card with the longest history and the highest limit, I'd cancel it entirely.

Today was furnace maintenance day, which led to a lot of clanging around in the ductwork, and led me to diagnose furnace maintenance day rather than mice in combat boots. But since the heat wasn't going to come on and it's cold and wet out, I went and shut all the storm windows for the winter. I try to hold out for November, but it's not going to get any warmer in the next four days.

I did get to have bibimbap for lunch, though, because the H Mart bibimbap kit is good for about three bowls. And I had exactly enough rice left to make three bowls. So I get to have the last one tomorrow.

I stopped buying alcohol in mid-July, because I could see it becoming an expensive pandemic-related habit and I don't need the calories. But I'm sorely tempted to go buy something fairly strong for the election results. The question is whether I'll be drinking it in celebration, in which case it should be something I like, or in despair, in which case it should merely be something strong (and should really probably be Blithering Idiot, if I can find any.) Zombie Killer will do for celebrating; it's not as strong, but I like it and the name would be somewhat apt.

How is it not October until tomorrow? It's been September for six or eight months now. I think it's partly because of the two or three repetitions of "no, wait, still not opening schools until later in September" in the news, and now they've finally run out of September. Meanwhile the school I work for has been chugging along (albeit slowly) since July. But that's different. Next week we get to use a whole 20 chairs in the 40-chair teaching practice, instead of the 12 we've been chugging along with. And I still get to stay home until who knows when.

I want a 90-minute massage, which I can't get yet for public health reasons, and I need to do some foundation garment shopping, which budget-wise I can't do until December. I'm keeping an eye on the budget again because I'm supposed to be saving money to buy this place in a few years. September was cat food on credit card bill month, October is kneeling chair on credit card month and November is vet bill on credit card month. On the other hand, I've taken out the usual weekly walking-around money three times in six months, so I should be OK if I spend some hitherto unspent walking-around money on foundation garments in October. I do have to stop spending so much on groceries, though.

Today is St. Jerome's Day. St. Jerome is the patron saint of translators. I always at least notice St. Jerome's Day because I did so love translating, but I couldn't get to the point of making a living at it. Maybe if I'd had a previously unknown rich uncle when I graduated from Kent State I could have, but that's for another timeline, or a different universe, or something. (Been reading too much alternate-universe fiction lately.) I had to pay the bills, and eat, so I ended up working for Harvard. Not that working for Harvard isn't fun sometimes, but I don't love it the way I loved translating.

It's Thursday, only it's Friday, because for once a holiday fell on a Saturday. Friday the 13th falls on a Monday this month, but that's beside the point.

I'm going to need a second job, because I've agreed in binding, but un-notarized, writing to buy this building in 3-5 years. It needs to be assessed for real, not just drive-by, because the inside is not worth $1.1 million. I would believe $800K or so. But $1.1 million is what some developer paid apiece for three triple deckers at the other end of the street. I wish the pandemic would reduce housing prices to somewhere sane. If I ran the universe...

So anyway, my ideal second job would be piece work like the Dachau transcriptions, that I can do from home for several hours at night. One of my cousins had an editing job like that for a while, but the company she worked for isn't hiring right now (I checked). And it's hard to find actual real jobs like that, because so many piece work from home job listings are scams, or MLM, or some other thing that will never actually make me any money.

I could, conceivably, save $100K in 3-5 years by putting my starving grad student hat back on, or at the very least by cutting my weekly walking-around money in about half and cutting down the grocery budget and canceling cable and taking Two Dots off my phone and not buying new books every weekend (when that can happen again; the bookstore is theoretically open, but apparently I'm not ready yet). I don't have to start from $0, at least, because I do have a savings account with five figures in it.

Having said that, though, I am sorely tempted to throw the budget out the window next week and order more takeout sushi than I actually want, in celebration of my birthday. I don't know how much sushi counts as "more than I actually want" considering I don't seem to have an off switch where sushi is concerned. And I haven't had actual good sushi in quite a while. My taste runs more to Genki Ya than O Ya, at least, and Whole Foods would have done in a pinch before it got too expensive to be as mediocre as it is.

I thought it was lunchtime, but it's meeting time. I wish this version of Outlook made a noise when somebody invites me to a meeting.

On Friday morning a house on Snow St caught fire, while it was pouring rain. The house is still standing, but is all boarded up and there's been a lot of pounding and sawing going on all weekend. I hope the pounding and sawing means it will be repaired, rather than torn down and replaced with a couple of townhouses.

The worst thing about the current state of the pandemic is the conflicting information. Stay home, but go outdoors and get exercise, but don't do it anywhere you can't keep six feet away from everybody else. Order takeout to keep the local economy going, but keep in mind you're putting the cooks and delivery drivers at risk to die of COVID-19 just because you don't want to cook. Go to the grocery store instead, but keep in mind you're putting the cashiers and shelf-stockers at risk, and stay six feet away from everybody else in the store. Don't worry, statistically nobody under 60 dies of COVID-19 and you probably already had it. But you have it now, and you're asymptomatic, so you're Typhoid Mary. But we won't test you unless you have symptoms. Et cetera. I don't want constant conflicting information to be the new normal.

Hauling home two weeks of groceries on Friday and then doing four hours of spring cleaning on Saturday made everything hurt yesterday. I would very much like a 90-minute massage, which I won't get for who knows how long. I should start doing pushups or something every time I feel like having a snack, because I won't get to walk home from work for who knows how long, and I can feel stress eating becoming a default setting in my head.

At least it was open window weather yesterday and today. Finally. Of course, it will be 55 for the rest of the week, but at least there were two consecutive days of spring. And watching the Hairy Beasts get drunk on oxygen and chase each other all over the place never gets old.

In February I discovered I'd had $200K in combined retirement accounts in January. I have no desire to find out what I have now.

Massachusetts got its act together over the weekend, so now my state taxes are e-filed and my federal taxes are accepted and I'm waiting on my $900 or so in refunds. I'm going to turn that around when I get it and buy my own BCD, because I'm sick of renting BCDs and spending ages arguing with the straps that are too long in places and too short in other places and you don't know that until you try to get into it. I want to set it and forget it. And I want a backplate and wing setup because that's what I trained with, and besides I have little faith in a jacket BCD fitting properly.

I have now watched all of the extended versions of the Hobbit movies, and I like them much better than the regular versions. Even if they are about three hours long apiece. And now the next time I find one on TV, I can start the extended version DVD at the first commercial break and still be done with it before the TV version is over. That works with the LOTR movies, too.

Snip has a new nickname, which she doesn't answer to because she only started needing it this weekend. DP stands for Dawn Patrol (a la Disney's Jungle Book), and refers to her new habit of waking up sometime between 3:30 and 5:00, going insane, and running across me at least two or three times. Which wouldn't be so bad if she didn't insist on stomping on pressure points, with claws, when she runs across me. She might as well be an elephant in that case, because that hurts. I need a massage, but not like that.

I also need a new kitchen timer, by which I mean I love my current kitchen timer (Oxo triple timer), but the 0 and start/stop buttons are tired and some of the other number buttons are getting tired (I hit 3 and got 43). So I need the same thing again, because this one is probably ten years old at this point and is (shockingly) still available from Amazon. Yet Another Thing From Amazon. Sigh.

On a happier note, it's nice out, and I might actually be able to go elsewhere for lunch for the first time in at least two weeks. Also, on Friday night I got through Montezuma in Civ 5, and am now working on Napoleon. I'm halfway through the alphabet and more than halfway through the list. And I think, but I won't swear to it, that Catalina and Civ 5 will play nice with each other now, so someday I might get my laptop to stop urging me to update it. And I managed to change the burned out lightbulb in the hall light fixture without dropping the glass dome on either my head or the floor, either of which felt like a distinct possibility. So hooray.

Responsible Adulthood continues to be a pain in the neck. If I had gotten all the legal documents done in October, I would be done with all the financial stuff now. But the credit union updated all its systems software in November, and now instead of transferring my existing accounts, I have to close them and reopen them as a trust. And I can't do anything with the CDs at all. GRR.

So that was Saturday morning. Then I wandered off to the Coop and bought a couple of books, and then wandered off to Saloniki in the Smith Center and had salad and hummus for lunch, which was nice because I needed some vegetables. Then I went home and figured out how to exchange heavy stuff for other heavy stuff: I went out with an empty kitty litter jug and a full container of change, and turned the change into paper money and subsequently into V8 and seltzer and kitty litter. And a new cat bed, because the cheap ones don't provide any padding between Lily and the floor, and she is an official teenager, and the floor is cold. So, new cat bed has a lot more padding between Lily and the floor. She sleeps in that bed all evening and Snip sleeps in it all day.

Unfortunately I waited for the T for 25 minutes on the way home with the heavy stuff. I hate it when it does that. I really hate it when it's cold and windy and I'm thirsty and it does that. So I came home and drank quite a lot of seltzer and decided to spend most of the rest of the day reading books. The Librarian of Auschwitz wasn't quite what I wanted in terms of character development. I bought it because it's a translation, and I didn't find any blatant translatorese in it, which was a bit of a surprise. The latest No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book for a couple of months now, and it turned out to be just about exactly what was required. (It occurs to me that one of the things I like about that series is there are absolutely no cell phones in it.)

Yesterday I went out for more (different) seltzer and more vegetables, because I wanted to make Smitten Kitchen's pizza beans yesterday, and LTMB and vegetable soup this week (I made the LTMBs last weekend and froze them). So I came home with a case of seltzer, and a cabbage and some carrots and some tomatoes and a bag of frozen spinach. I made an extremely quick and dirty version of pizza beans, because I used three cans of beans and a jar of marinara sauce, and a pound of thawed drained frozen spinach. If I had made my own sauce, it would have been better, but it worked for hot food last night and it will work for lunch this week.

Unfortunately this week got off on a very cold, soggy and grumpy foot. Missing the 7:50 bus was my fault, because I didn't get out the door until 7:48. But the fact that the 8:00 and 8:10 buses never showed up at all meant the 8:20 was a sardine can, and even though at that point I had been standing in the rain for half an hour, I was absolutely not in the mood for a sardine can. So I went down to the Cambridge St bus stop, because it has a roof over it, and stood there for another ten minutes and got an actual seat on the 8:30. Which was a sardine can by the time it got to Comm Ave. I got to work at 9:00 or so with soaking wet feet and a massive case of Don't Wanna. If I hadn't used up all my personal days for the year already, I would have taken one today. At least the Drama Llama decided to be sick today, so I didn't have to listen to him whine when I finally did get here.

I need to go to REI tonight and invest in some more socks. I cleaned out the sock drawer last spring, and now I get to about Thursday and it looks pathetic in there.

This is me not staying in bed until Saturday. I did ignore the existence of Halloween last night, though, because HSDM went mildly overboard with it and I was DONE by 3:30.

Sometime earlier this week, the estate planning lawyer I had filled out a bunch of forms for last year called, because I had fallen off their radar and they'd like to get me off their list. So I talked to him again today, and I get to go sign my will and living will and pet trust on December 3, after I get done with my annual physical. I might as well get all the Responsible Adult stuff done at the same time, and it won't hurt to do it before I run off to Bonaire (although the legal documents are going to cost me another $1000. But what's another $1000 on top of pet insurance ($1100) and dive trip ($2600 so far, without gear rental) and vet bill ($whoknows) in October and November anyway?).

In light of the above expenditures, I managed not to buy $100 worth of cookbooks on Wednesday night. I really wanted to, though. I need inspiration if I'm going to stop eating noodles. I eat way too many noodles, because noodles are both cheap and uncomplicated. Memo to cookbook authors, however: cilantro is disgusting, so stop making it a major component of every other savory recipe in the book. I can cope with "garnish with cilantro" because then I just won't, but when the dish has three main flavors and cilantro is one of them, that pretty much ruins it, and I can't always use parsley instead (cucumber salad with sesame and parsley just sounds odd). If I ran the universe, things would be different, that's all.

I think Snip had a 36-hour internal complaint of some sort, which is better as of today. But for the last two days she didn't want to be touched aft of her ears, and she got up for meals and ate them, but wasn't as enthusiastic about them. As of this morning, she's much better; she woke me up at 6:00 to be scritched, and she was hollering for breakfast from the kitchen when I got out of the shower. Much better. Last night she got insistent about cheese, too, so she was probably starting to feel better then. And the sun has been out for most of the day, so hopefully she's charged up her solar cells and will be better until the next time we don't see the sun for a week.