The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

This week wasn't as productive as last week, partly by design and partly because it was public school vacation week and slightly harder to get things done with everybody and their kids also trying to get things done.

What I did do, though:

- Went to Blue Man Group in the pouring rain (fun, but needed more drumming)
- Washed the door curtains
- Bent my left thumbnail the wrong way so badly the top outside corner is now sore and purple (door curtain rod fell on me and I tried to catch it)
- Read the first two books of N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy and decided not to read the third
- Played some more Civ 5
- Did some more embroidery
- Spent Thursday worrying about Snip, who had such a bad cold she wouldn't eat (she's getting better)
- Went to the chorus committee meeting, and figured out one of the reasons I stopped going to rehearsals (now I have to figure out what to do about it)
- Made cornmeal pancakes and only burned half of them (this is progress; usually I burn most of them)
- Went out for coffee three times just for a walk with coffee in the middle of it

I'm debating making bread tomorrow. It's supposed to be good bread weather. Today isn't bad, but a little chilly so I'd have to shut the windows again, and I don't wanna just yet. Fresh air is good for you and open window weather is still rare around here.

Life with public transportation, on weekends: Hmm, OK, 4:00 movie at Fenway. That means I have to take the 2:45 bus. Or I leave home at 2:45 to try to get on the T before 3:00, and walk from Kenmore.

How much of the chores list can I get through by then? Can the laundry wait until tomorrow? I need to go to Trader Joe's. I can do that on the way home from the movie if I remember to bring the shopping bags. Can I wear sneakers or do I still have to wear snow boots? Do I have any serious wool socks left or are they all in the wash from last week?

At least I got the window curtain from the shower bleached and washed, and the bathtub washed again after I got done pouring bleach water down it and standing a ladder in it to get the curtain down and up again. That's been bothering me for weeks now. The List consists of:

Laundry
Change sheets
Trash
Recycling
Buy kitty litter and kitchen sponges
Trader Joe's

Lots of that can wait until tomorrow.

I feel accomplished because last week the following things happened:

- Internet issues resolved and speed doubled
- Cable bill lowered
- Trumpet obtained
- GP appointment accomplished
- Mammogram accomplished (can't decide whether this or pap smears are worse)
- Whales watched (and I did get video of a breach; it was a "point and pray" situation, and it worked)
- Eye doctor appointment accomplished

I also rotted my brain on too much TV, and got halfway through page 7 of the embroidery pattern, which got me mostly out of the crown of that tree. Thank goodness.

And here I am at work, not accomplishing a whole lot, but that's OK because quiet is good and we haven't had as much of it as usual this summer.

Nothing like going out with a grocery list consisting of coffee, cat food and stuffed grape leaves, and coming home with:

- Coffee
- Stuffed grape leaves
- Lemons
- Mushrooms
- Downeast Cider (might as well see what the fuss is about)
- Garlic oil
- Bacon jam
- Carnitas
- Chickpeas
- White beans

And, of course, no cat food because they were out of the right kind.

I decided not to buy what looked like an interesting book about the Soviet gulags, because right now I'm not in the mood for absolutely everything I read to be depressing.

Speaking of depressing, since the weather decided to be solid overcast, I decided to get all the other depressing stuff over with today, and did my taxes and the laundry and paid the bills. Laundry isn't all that depressing except for how long it takes the air-dry stuff to actually dry, but it keeps me at home because I don't go out while the dryer is running. It hasn't set the place on fire yet, but I don't quite trust it not to try. And actually, taxes aren't so much depressing as "get them over with as soon as possible and don't think about them again until next winter". I ended up getting the usual chunk of refund, so that's nice. But there are definitely things I would rather be doing.

I'm not going to California in March. Next year, when I'm not in charge of the oral surgery course, and the accreditation insanity is over, and the meeting is in Orlando, I'll go. I do want to decide where I'm going next, though. And when. The When is the hard part, because give me a time period between now and mid-October and I'll give you a reason why going on vacation then wouldn't be a good idea. Eventually "because I need to be Not At Work for a while" is going to be a better reason than any of the others, but that's not the case just yet. I've maxed out my accruable vacation (again), though, so I should probably use up some of it.

To borrow a concept from somewhere else (but I forget where), I have been beaten with the Whelming Stick so much lately that I am now officially Over-Whelmed. There are so many medium-sized things going on all at once that I don't want to deal with any of them.

1. Lily is going to be taking pills for the rest of her life, and the rest of her life is probably five years. This complicates my ability to go anywhere for more than 24 hours; she can skip one pill, but only one. And if I'm lucky, her liver and kidneys won't require medication because her thyroid does. I have no idea how I'm going to convince her to take three medications every day. On account of her not having so many pre-molars these days, she sounds like a dog eating peanut butter when she eats pill pockets. The idea of chicken-flavored peanut butter gives me the blue creevles.

2. Chorus is over until January 25, but the music is still stuck in my head and we got pretty thoroughly humiliated in front of the composers at the last dress rehearsal. It's hard to sing joyfully when you're going to be stopped and savaged for not being exactly in tune/not enough diction/etc. after three bars. We did it for the actual performance, but I had to go find a corner in one of the "dressing rooms" after the dress rehearsal and get some equilibrium back in order to perform up to my own standard.

3. The thermostat in my apartment has decided not to work. It sits there merrily reporting that it's 60 in the living room, and that the heat is supposed to come on at 64, only it doesn't. I'm hoping it's something stupid like needing new batteries, or having a loose wire. I really don't want it to involve tearing out all the wiring between the living room and the furnace; I can live with a certain amount of deconstruction (see "kitchen floor") but I don't want any cats going exploring in the walls and getting stuck.

4. I need new concert dress, or I need to get serious about fitting into the concert dress I've got. I went through about four variations trying to find something that (a) fit me and (b) wasn't obviously two different blacks under strong lighting. I don't fit into my size 10 pants. This cannot be allowed to continue, but when I stopped following Weight Watchers I enjoyed the absence of being hungry all the time. I didn't realize I was, until I stopped. I have to figure out how to get around that.

5. I never get caught up on anything domestic, except the bills (because I like having shelter and utilities and not much debt) and possibly the dishes. I need to do three loads of laundry and sort through the pantry shelves and vacuum all the rugs and wash the floors and clean out the fridge. But I never have motivation when I have time, and I never have time when I have motivation. So I live in a state of more chaos than I really want lately.

I tried, I really did, but by the end of today I just plain hated every human being I came into contact with. They consisted of:

- Pushy salesmen (referred by the Dean, so I couldn't just tell him to pound sand)
- Pushy students (no, I can't print this recommendation letter from this faculty member on our letterhead; the faculty member is not a member of our office, and no, I don't know who in their department can do it for you)
- Confused faculty (no, I don't know who's giving this lecture; ask the course director, and no, I don't care that they told you to ask me, because they haven't told me who it is, so I still don't know)
- Faculty with legitimate but stupidly complicated questions (yes, that is a legitimate course, but it's part of the old curriculum and only a month long and no, I don't know when during the day it happened)
- Confused coworkers (no, I don't think renaming all of these two-hour lectures as "interactive sessions" is going to keep them from being two hours of Powerpoint slides, either, but that's what I was told to do, so I'm doing it.)

I also was not fond of the fact that the three (and a half, because she's filling in while two co-directors of the same course are on vacation) Year 2 course directors, the instructional technologist, and myself, all seem to have different versions of the course schedule. We have a Dropbox folder precisely so we can avoid this sort of issue. I have no idea which version is the one being argued over.

So I called my parents and said "Set the clock" and got it mostly out of my system, and went home by way of a bookstore and a liquor store. Turns out the new Harry Potter book really is a play, and I've never been able to get anything out of reading plays, so I came home with The Golem and the Jinni instead. The woman I sat next to in dress rehearsals for chorus was reading that in the spring and I thought it sounded interesting.

Good old cherry mead. All of the above are still aggravating, but I don't care nearly as much as I did half an hour ago.

Made it to Thursday, despite not having seen the sun since Saturday (cold, cloudy and windy when not actually raining; when did I move to England?).

Not-so-good stuff:

- I want to go home and hibernate until the sun comes out again. If that happens on Monday, it'll be too long, and if it happens tomorrow, it'll be another work day anyway.

- It's performance review season, which always gives me a lack-of-self-esteem problem. And I had one before performance review season started in the first place.

- Due to lack of self-esteem, one of my worse eating habits is back. Time to stop buying certain sorts of edibles, because if they're around I will eat the whole thing at once, or damn close to it.

- I can almost recite CODA Standard 2 from memory. It's got 25 parts and part 2-23 has 15 subparts. I am so sick of CODA Standard 2, I could scream. But I'm stuck with it until at least July 2017, when the self-study document has to go to the site visitors.

Good stuff:

- My boss hates performance review season as much as I do. We both consider it a waste of time.

- Pret à Manger will do catering for less than 10 people. They'll even do it on short notice if you go in and beg at 8:30 in the morning, but you have to pick it up yourself (not a problem). And their sandwiches are pretty tasty.

- I've been feeling somewhat more human again since the retreat/dress rehearsal/concert weeks are over.

- I've only had to go to two lunch meetings in four days this week.

- The Hairy Beasts are still glad to see me when I get home, and are still breathing in both directions (in and out).

- New Avengers movie coming out this week. Maybe in two weeks or so I'll be able to get a ticket.

- It's going to be sunny again at least once before the end of May.

Not feeling it today. Whatever "it" is. Today isn't quite an Easter Island day, but I seem not to be communicating in any language anyone else understands. When I say I need to know who to address an externship recommendation letter to, I need a name and a university, not a request for three more letters to send to "other programs" (still no names or universities).

It's easier to figure out what I don't want, because everything that comes up is met with an instant Do Not Want. I guess if I take the opposite tack, I want:

- The oral surgery course schedule to stop needing rearranging at least once a week
- The CODA Standard 2 nagging to be somebody else's problem; there's a schedule, but nobody's following it and I don't know how to make them follow it (short of filling out their forms for them. NOT happening.)
- The CE credit application for the April retreat not to include a budget and a schedule and a writeup of each individual workshop session's goals and objectives
- People to realize that they can't call into meetings in rooms with no phone jacks and bad cell service (well, they could, by cell, but it won't work well enough not to be annoying)

What I want amounts to a nap in a sunbeam, followed by an excursion to somewhere that sells Swiffer cloths, followed by an enormous bowl of pho. I might get the Swiffer cloths off the list tonight, at least. I've been trying to get around to that for two weeks now, but a combination of weather and other places I had to be got in the way rather extensively. I hate it when mandatory responsible adulthood gets in the way of responsible adulthood that makes me feel better.

Good news! Grammie came through her hip replacement surgery (although it took seven hours on account of her arthritis) and is maybe going to a rehab place today or tomorrow, when she and the hospital and a rehab place decide which one. Apparently there are three options.

Also good news: I donated my size-16 suit to a program that collects interview clothes for women who can't afford them. The idea is for me not to need a size-16 suit again, and I did get my current job from an interview I went to in that suit. Hopefully it has good karma for somebody else. And since my boss begged me not to go anywhere until at least the summer of 2017, and I like this job (mostly), I don't need to run right out and buy a new suit this weekend.

Not-so-good news: Snip has her annual post-vet cold. She's a congested and very sneezy beast. But she's still eating like a vacuum cleaner, so that's good. She usually gets over the post-vet cold in about a week, so most likely she'll be fine by Thanksgiving.

Shoot-me-now news: The week after Thanksgiving is going to be a bear. It starts with three consecutive days of lunch meetings, I have four hours of dress rehearsal for chorus on Monday and Wednesday night, and a retina specialist appointment on Thursday morning.

Slightly better news: I can start drinking high-octane coffee again the week after Thanksgiving, which might help me get through it. I went off caffeine last week because the parental units don't drink high-octane coffee and I'd rather have the headache before Thanksgiving weekend and get it over with. And I'm only going to the retina specialist because my new eye doctor noted that I haven't seen one in a zillion years, not because there's anything new wrong with my retinas.

Continuing to enjoy stupid things that don't hurt with functional shoulders, including:

- Holding my music for two and a half hours of chorus rehearsal
- Being able to raise my left arm enough to put deodorant where it will be useful
- Taking a shirt off over my head

Also trying to remember that this is only temporary, so I should enjoy the living daylights out of it without overdoing things. I'm not going to run out and go rock climbing. But I am going to start doing all five pages of PT exercises again. And I have a massage appointment tomorrow, which will sort out the muscles for a little while now that the tendons have been silenced. But tonight, after the PT exercises, embroidery!

Apparently we're back to not having Hurricane Joaquin on our doorstep this weekend, but it's going to rain. Or not. But not constantly. Or not. And only in the morning. Or not. It all depends on which weather forecast you look at and when you look at it. So I'm bringing my raincoat, and my windproof jacket, and a change of trousers, to the Alzheimer's walk on Saturday. I suppose I could go to EMS and get some rain pants and be mostly waterproof, just in case. (Or possibly just encased.)

Still want to go see Black Mass. Maybe that's what Sunday afternoon is for.