The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

Pretty good weekend. I got my watches back, bought three books I haven't read (The World Beneath the Sands, Culture Warlords, and Anansi Boys), went to H Mart on a field trip and got assorted pancakes and soy-marinated eggs and a bibimbap kit and some smoked duck and some more rice cakes and various other happy stuff like that, discovered what happens when Snip encounters a fish cake (has to figure out that it's fish, after which GIMME THAT), put out the last of the scented kitty litter, and gave myself permission to order unscented kitty litter online and get it delivered for once.

I wish I didn't have to have the litter delivered, but my ankle is alternately grumbling and hollering at me, from one of the specific places that hurt (after it healed enough to hurt in specific places) when I sprained it last December. I suspect that adding a half-mile walk with 40 lb of litter won't help it. So, delivery it is, at least this time.

As of yesterday, the hot water in the shower was dripping from the tub spout to an extent that wouldn't be good for the water bill long-term. So today the plumber came and repaired the hot water faucet, and told me that the fixtures are on their last legs on account of being 40 years old or so. (He also said the entire neighborhood has awful water pressure, which I didn't know because it seems fine to me.) I rather like having separate faucets for the hot and cold water, and if the plumber had his way he'd replace it with a single hot/cold/diverter unit. That would require replacing some of the tile, too, though. But at least the drip is down to occasional for now, and the faucet doesn't crank beyond horizontal to turn off, and the plumber doesn't think it's leaking behind the tile, which I worry about occasionally.

This morning a flatbed trailer parked on the street and disgorged a Bobcat, which I saw trundling around, and, apparently, an excavator, which had already gone where it was going by the time I saw the Bobcat. I happened to look out the window after the plumber had left, in time to see the excavator go back on the trailer and pull the ramps up after it, except it was about six inches too far forward, so it backed up and the ramps fell down flat. For no particular reason the whole process amused me.

Thankfully, the meeting I postponed last week went fairly well today. Especially since my boss had already told this person what she wanted to hear in the first place, so I didn't have to say I couldn't tell her that. There might be hope for this week after all.

I noped the hell out of a meeting today with somebody who's on my last nerve, and wanted me to set up the Zoom link besides. I can maybe cope with her next week, but for sure not today. She needs more hand-holding than the next three students put together and I just can't do it any more this week.

Received my ballot on Monday, filled it out instantly, and took it to the Brighton library drop box after work. It's not showing up as received by the election office yet (edit 4:30 PM: it's been accepted). I don't know how often they empty that box, though, and I can't seem to find out. But anyway, I know for sure it was in the box as of October 19, so I've done my part. 2020 has been heavy on the civic duty; paid taxes in February, would have had jury duty in March, filled out the census in April, voted in the primaries in September, got a flu shot in October, voted in the general election...sigh.

I think I'll take November 12 and 13 off and make a mini-vacation out of having the 11th as a holiday. I'm up to 35 vacation days accumulated and that's about when HR starts sending emails about how I really ought to take some vacation. And I need some time offline.

I wish it were either wear mask or stay six feet away from everybody else. "Social distancing" is right up there with "Homeland Security" in terms of phrases I would be happy never to hear again. (I think I said that already, months ago. But nothing has changed since the last time I said it.)

Woke up this morning feeling like me for the first time since Friday. Thank goodness. Also, all of my usual Tuesday meetings have been canceled on account of CPR training (which I don't have to do) and Promotions Committee (which I don't have to be at) happening today. I don't mind in the slightest. I had to log into one class session yesterday to make the course director the host, and never turned my camera on because I felt like I looked like five miles of bad road. I made myself go to bed at a reasonable hour last night and slept like a rock.

Yesterday I also finally emailed the purchasing manager at the dive shop about the missing regulator. Hopefully somebody knows something about it.

The regiment has invested in a kneeling chair, which arrived on Friday, and Lily was just a bit put out about that because it still doesn't provide her any lap space when I'm at my desk. So I've been kicking Lily (and Snip; they take turns) off the keyboard starting at about 2:30 every day since Friday. The chair is very well padded, which is nice, but there's more weight on my shins than I'd really like because there's more of me than there should be. I could do something about that if I stopped buying comfort food (notably cheese and pasta). Unfortunately I have very little other comfort these days.

I need new sneakers again. I keep wearing out the heels and on Sunday I got blisters. Harumpf.

After Getting Things Done on Saturday, I did a fair bit of not much yesterday except reading a couple hundred pages of a book I bought after grocery shopping, and watching a couple of football games (sometimes reading and watching games at the same time, in the case of boring football). It was too humid for embroidery.

I thought we were past "this web site won't work with your browser," but I had to call Jabra customer service and clear my cache and cookies in Firefox only to find out their online store doesn't work with Firefox anyway; it wants Chrome but will settle for Safari. And then I had to remember all my various logins in Firefox again. GRR. This was work-related, so I had to do what I had to do. But GRR, anyway.

Before that, and semi-work-related, I ordered myself a kneeling chair because I've had one before and liked it, and it was the short way to end the Great Chair or Chair Cushion Quest. I threw a little more money than I really wanted to at the problem, but it wasn't very much more than I spend on six weeks of prescription cat food, and the chair will last a lot longer than six weeks.

Lily's got some sort of intermittent gait issue with her left hind leg, possibly soft tissue injury or possibly arthritis or possibly just Aging Ain't For Sissies. I'll have to ask Dr. P about it on Cat Herding Day, which this year is November 12. Which gives me exactly 13 days afterward to isolate myself before Thanksgiving, so as not to possibly bring COVID down to Noank. I wish I didn't think about that so much. I wish I didn't have to think about that at all.

Memo to self: put "flu shot" on the list for mid-October.

It's been a long week for several reasons, and I'm glad the only thing I really have to do today is write a recommendation letter for a student applying for a scholarship. This has been performance review week, data wrangling week, try to pay a Paypal invoice through Harvard week (possible, but of course not easy, whereas last fall it was impossible), prepare for curriculum committee next Tuesday week, try to figure out MMSc course management software issues week (nobody seems to know what's wrong or why), and so forth.

Compared to the rest of the week, having a cleaning fit tonight and/or tomorrow should be easy. At least I can see progress when I do that sort of thing. Progress would be nice.

Yesterday I took some actual away-from-computer lunchtime and cranked down the pivot rod nut under the sink enough so it stopped leaking entirely. I win, I think. But I did remember why I stopped where I did on Sunday; the wings on the nut were at an angle that made it a pain in the ass to get the pliers on them. But once I finally did, it only took one more iteration of cranking to get the leak to stop (for values of "stop" meaning "ran the water for almost two minutes and it didn't leak.")

I really need a massage. Everything between the end of my ribcage and my knees is either currently in knots and painful, or was recently in knots and is sore. But I'm not that brave yet.

Sigh. I've got this data assembly project for somebody's research, which involves going back about seven years into the admissions data. But only one year seems to have the data I need, which is silly because it's got to be somewhere. So I asked the person who would know, and hopefully I'll get an answer one of these days. It wouldn't break my heart if I didn't get it until Monday, though. Hunting around for this stuff is giving me a headache.

Unglued-from-computer, day 1: pet store for kitty litter, home, Trader Joe's for groceries. Spent more than I really meant to on groceries, but hadn't been for a week and a half.

Also canceled haircut appointment in September because hairdresser has moved next door; next step, make appointment at place hairdresser went to (Brookline Arcade? Didn't know there was a hair salon in there. Apparently there are three of them.).

Got things done today so I can do only and precisely what I want to do tomorrow. Gotta buy cat crunchies on Wednesday, and if the weather cooperates, going whale watching on Thursday.

Day 2: Decided to get it over with and went and bought cat crunchies, and went to the bookstore and dropped $60 on books I had already read and donated, but felt like owning again (in paperback, because paperbacks take up less space). Bookstore atmosphere is still weird; one-way aisles and no browsing to speak of if you want to spend less than 15 minutes indoors.

Useful note: smoked salmon will practically raise both cats from the dead. They shouldn’t eat fish on account of the phosphorus and the elderly kidneys, and they got fish last month when I gave Snip a happy pill, but they didn’t get very much smoked salmon (despite their best efforts).

Day 3: Did only and precisely what I wanted, including embroidery (now I remember why I stopped where I did; there’s a mistake in there somewhere and I hadn’t found it) and watching movies on TV. I should have watched DVDs instead, because the usual trick of “watch one thing until a drug commercial comes on and then switch to something else” just leads to watching a drug commercial on the other channel.

Work intruded upon me to the extent of a text from the Drama Llama, who got stuck dealing with the faculty member who was giving me a hard time last week. No, I hadn’t gotten as far as ordering any supplies yet; I only got as far as who’s going to pay for them.

Talked myself out of whale watching on account of probable lack of social distance on the boat. Sigh.

Day 4: Spent lots of the day tearing out embroidery, because I was tired of faking it around the error. Tearing out takes longer than embroidering.

Accompanied the tearing out with Season 1 of Vikings, because I own the first three seasons and didn’t really get into it when it was on TV until partway through the first season. Still enjoyable, although the end of the season consists of “let’s kill off all the female characters we don’t know what to do with.” And Travis Fimmel and Clive Standen are perfectly acceptable eye candy.

Day 5: Another work intrusion; had to log onto a Zoom meeting and change the host so they could present slides.

Spent more of the day on the computer, in general, than I really wanted, but it got humid enough to notice when I tried to embroider. Pried myself loose for the purposes of reading an actual book for a while.

I haven’t bought new music in a dog’s age. I think the regiment is going to invest in some Wardruna.

Back to 90 and humid again, just in time for the work week. 90 is fine, humid is getting tiresome. Under normal circumstances, next week I would be able to be up to my neck in the ocean somewhere. Not this year (I don't want to spend two hours on a train). I do have an untouched quart of chocolate ice cream, and a bathtub, but it's not quite the same. And I shouldn't eat an entire quart of ice cream in a week anyway. Maybe I'll suck it up and go on a whale watch sometime next week. It's outdoors and the wind is ripping right along on the way there and back, and if I wear a mask and stay on the deck rather than in the cabin, I can probably manage not to catch anything. They only run one boat per day, harumpf, but I suppose it helps to keep the crew from catching anything if they limit exposure to one boat full of general public per day. Too bad all the smaller charter boats run out of Provincetown, because I can't get there right now.

Also, today I'm grumpy because I have another meeting with the MMSc student who never wrote a research paper before. I'm at the point where I think it would be easier if I wrote half of it and then told her to write the other half based on mine. It isn't entirely her fault; she went straight from high school to dental school in India and never wrote research papers in high school. But I tell her what to put where and she goes and puts things in the wrong places anyway. This would probably be easier to do in person, but we can't do that. And Acrobat is having temper tantrums again, so I have three things on the list that I can't do until Acrobat gets over itself.

Popping bubble wrap is still fun. The trick is getting any in the first place without specifically ordering it. Lucky me, I've got both kinds at the moment. So, popping of bubble wrap ensued, and it was a little less Monday around here for a little while.

I am coming to realize that one of the things that frustrates the living hell out of me is people who ask me something, and then when I either don't know the answer or don't understand the question, it turns into "Well, find an answer and then do this piece of my job for me once you have it." WRONG. I'll give you the answer and you can do your own damn job. ESPECIALLY if the answer, once I understand the question, is information anybody could find in about five seconds. (No, I am not going to fill out half of this online survey and submit it for you. I'll tell you what to put in it, but the survey was not originally sent to me and I refuse to take responsibility for submitting it.)

One and a half more weeks until I can stop being helpful for a week.

Snip is getting one of her right front toenails stuck in things. That was quick, but at least it's not the massive dagger on the right hind, again, which I trimmed as short as I dared with the help of happy pills. I'm out of happy pills, so I have to wait until she's very deeply asleep. Dreaming doesn't count; I've tried that before and it didn't work at all. If she understood English, I could explain, but I think we're all better off that she doesn't.

Sigh. TGIF, because I'm done with being glued to the computer for a while, and that includes my cousin's kid's second birthday party via Zoom tomorrow. Never met the kid, for one thing, and until Zoom comes up with a "mute everybody else only for you" option (vs. "host mutes everybody for everybody"), not really interested. I don't need to hear all the rest of my cousins' elementary and middle school kids all trying to talk at once for an hour.

The Arolsen Archives posted a new project earlier this week: registration cards from Mühldorf, which was a Dachau satellite camp. It was mostly a massive construction site, because the Nazis were trying to build underground Messerschmitt aircraft factories with slave labor even though they knew the war would be over before they got them built. Which meant it was a really nasty place to be, if you read between the lines. "Transferred from Auschwitz in July 1944, transferred back to Auschwitz in October 1944" probably means "worked almost to death and sent back to be gassed" and there are a lot of those. Mostly Hungarian Jews. I either have to learn not to think about that, or go back to the main Dachau registration cards, lots of which say "delivered from camp by US Army".

So naturally, since I'm done with being glued to the computer, along came a couple of emails that boiled down to "I waited until after the last minute to do this, so you do it for me." I hate that anyway, and I particularly hate it when there are no instructions beyond "do it for me" and it turns out I didn't do it right, so I have to do it over. Apparently the cure for being massively annoyed about this situation is to go drink a little bit of milk and come back and do it over.

Must go drop my "yes, I want to vote by mail" card in the mailbox today. My polling place is in an elderly housing complex and I think I'm probably better off staying out of their community room. Hopefully someday I won't have to run a risk assessment on absolutely everything that involves going further than the front porch.