The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

The school's fiscal year goes July 1 - June 30, which I assume is also how the budget goes. But I could be wrong about that, because three sample chairs appeared in our office today pursuant to an email that said the budget for this year included new chairs for ODE. Much sitting in chairs and making of faces ensued, and so far there's a clear favorite ("the blue one"), but we get to keep the samples until next week. So far there's one person who likes the one everybody else hates. Takes all kinds, I guess.

We've officially got all of the 24th off, which is nice. I might spend a couple of days in Noank, but the cats are being clingy, so spending some time in Brighton providing lap space is probably a good idea too. And I do need to do something about the rugs. The answer for the bedroom rug is probably "replace it" since it came from Home Despot in the first place and Snip hasn't gotten up in the morning properly if she hasn't sharpened her claws on it. And if I replaced it with a larger rug, more of the corners of my box spring would be on it and I could stop wondering if the box spring is scuffing the floor. However, I just stopped hemorrhaging money as of this month and I don't want to start again already. Having my watch repaired is indulgence enough for now. I might go to the movies while on vacation, too; In the Heart of the Sea might be brain candy, and there's this new Star Wars movie coming out...

Speaking of indulgences, I think I have now proven conclusively that I can't stop paying attention to what I'm eating. Every time I do that for a week, I'm very sorry eventually. So I guess I pay Weight Watchers $20 per month for the rest of my life. It works, which is nice, but it was also nice when I didn't devote so much brain space to the Venn diagram of what I should be eating, what there is available in the cafeteria, and what I want to eat. First world problem, I know. But I have to keep it in mind.

For the sake of not starting off with a rant about the state of my shoulder, I will start off by saying that last night I bought the last Terry Pratchett book (The Shepherd's Crown) on the way home from work, got home, curled up on the sofa with it and a pint of cherry tomatoes, and proceeded to read it in three hours. Not his best book, but as the afterword said, he never thought he was done tweaking a book and he couldn't get done tweaking this one. Worth reading, though.

I'm debating whether I want to go see Black Mass when it comes out. I wasn't living in Boston when Whitey Bulger was, and I don't usually like that sort of movie, but something about this one interests me and I'm not sure why. Possibly because it's Johnny Depp, who I would really like to see doing something that doesn't depend on him being handsome (Public Enemies), erratic (Pirates) or weird (Sweeney Todd).

Long weekend coming up. Hooray! I probably shouldn't be saying that already, since I did have two consecutive weeks of vacation two weeks ago. But I needed more weekend than I got last weekend. And the project I'm trying to update is driving me mildly insane. Last year I assigned a "content level" between 1 and 5 to every lecture in the curriculum blueprint. But some of the courses have changed a bit this year and I'm now going back and trying to do the content levels over again, and disagreeing with myself, and probably mislabeling new lectures because I disagree with myself about the old ones. The answer is most likely "stop caring so much", but perfectionist that I am, it bothers me.

Oh, I so don't want to argue with anything else any more today, but it's only 1:45, so I guess I'll have to.

The traffic this morning was fairly awful for some reason (or combination thereof, including grooved pavement on Washington St between Monastery and Comm Ave, and the T bus getting stuck behind a school bus for a while), but the bus was emptier than it has been for ages. Graduation season has begun, apparently. Therefore I went and looked up the schedule, and it seems all the huge graduations will be over before the 20th. That seems early to me, but I am not complaining.

I'm not complaining about the weekend, either. Saturday was haircut, Age of Ultron and cheeseburger day. Age of Ultron was OK, and I'm not sorry I spent the money, but I don't understand why the romance plot was necessary unless there's a comic book storyline they were trying to get to. Haircut was expensive, but at least now I can stop looking in the mirror in the morning and thinking "Ye gods, do I need a haircut!" Cheeseburger was not wise, because I am now two pounds over the weight I said I wasn't going to go over. But sometimes you just want a cheeseburger and nothing else will suffice, and Saturday was one of those times. And I'm not sorry at all.

Yesterday was laundry, which I had managed to hold down to a dull roar, and embroidery before it got absurdly humid. There was a mistake somewhere in the current pattern repetition and I couldn't figure out where it was, so I pulled out a lot of stuff I had thought I was being sneaky with and started over in a different spot. I was trying to bring the end out to meet the middle, but it wouldn't meet the way it was supposed to. Some year I'll learn that being sneaky almost never works the way I think it ought to. So I pulled the end out again and went back to the middle. And when the laundry was done drying and it was too humid to embroider, I went downtown to look for sandals. I'm still getting major blisters from the Clarks sandals I loved two years ago, and I can't wear Tevas to work, and in a perfect world I would have some unsandal dress shoes for summer. So I went looking for sandals and found possibilities, but didn't actually buy any sandals. I think this is going to be a Zappos proposition, after I get the next credit card bill (at which point maybe some options could be on sale?). But the going out and wandering around was good for me, anyway.

Yesterday I let my phone die completely and then recharged it, and now it's back to happy again. I'm glad I don't have to go phone shopping again already on top of shoe shopping. (And train ticket shopping, although there's not so much "shopping" to be done there as there is "hand the credit card to the only game in town".)

Still enjoying the fact that I can read HHhH without having it in one hand and a dictionary in the other. But now I have to go track down the translation, because I want to know how it dealt with some of the original's peculiarities.

Shoulder: Ow comma dammit. I wish I could predict from one day to the next what I'm not going to be able to do. PT evaluation tomorrow, and hopefully some sort of helpful exercises and/or treatment to be going on with.

Easter: ran away to Noank on Friday and spent three days hanging around. Introduced my parents to Guardians of the Galaxy, which they liked (I thought they would). Aided in the annual production of orange-flavored Easter bread. Cleared the air about why I went to a therapist and we can now consider the subject closed as far as I'm concerned. Ate entirely too much stuff I shouldn't make a habit of, especially since Thursday night's dinner consisted of an entire bag of cheddar and horseradish potato chips. (They tasted good and I didn't have to keep Lily from climbing into the bag, on account of the horseradish.) Got to see some of Dad's side of the family, who were very glad to see him and even more so to see him up and about and reasonably cheerful. Spent an hour with my Fairly Godmother, at the end of which she felt better for being able to rant about some things she needed to rant about. Got advised by somebody who lived there that I really do want an underwater camera for Australia. (Hm.) Showed Dad the current HRC pieces and he agrees that William Schumann hates (hated?) basses and altos.

Misc: was possessed by a spirit of civic duty last week and ended up elected by acclamation as Clerk of the HRC Executive Committee. That means I take minutes at meetings and (next semester) develop the seating chart. May have to ask somebody else to do that for the alto section as I'm currently annoyed at two altos who take every time we stop singing as an opportunity to start talking. Tempted to put them on opposite sides of the section.

Blorg, I say. Sometimes I get thoroughly annoyed at the amount of work it takes to stay fitting in my size 8 pants. Today I rewarded myself for tromping all over hell's half acre all morning by tromping off to the movies in the afternoon; Big Hero 6 has a very Disney plot, but the animation is gorgeous and the whole thing is good brain candy.

At least I now have stamps and groceries and laundry soap. And tomorrow it's supposed to be warmer, and the only place I have to walk to is my voice lesson, so I can otherwise stay home and do laundry and possibly make bean soup. I haven't decided yet about the bean soup.

Today is my 39th birthday. I know why I didn't take today off (I'd just have to come back to work on Friday), but I'm sort of wondering why I didn't take Friday off. Oh well. Next year July 10 falls on a Friday and I'm absolutely taking that day off.

Yesterday I decided that I like the idea of my next New Adventure being Australia. The question is when I would do it. If it's going to take me two days to get there, I'm going to be there for at least a week and a half. And if I'm going to be away from work that long, it's probably going to be in the summer, which is winter there. Do I want to go to Australia in their winter? I don't know yet. I need to do some more research. But I really do want to go to Australia. (Insert James Garner here, protesting that he doesn't want to be sheriff; he's on his way to Australia...)

File this weekend under Useful, because:

- I got 24 points of exercise, all due to walking to and from various useful things (pet store, Trader Joe's, voice lesson, movies). That means I can have absolutely anything I want for dinner on Wednesday.
- I finally got around to sharpening the good knives.
- Having sharpened the knives, I butchered the beef tenderloin I bought last week. 12 filets and a couple of servings of stirfry for $98 and less than an hour's worth of work. Not bad.
- I did laundry.
- I went to the movies on Sunday and enjoyed myself watching Captain America do his thing while various scenery explodes.
- I actually slept all the way through Saturday night. That doesn't happen a lot lately; I keep waking up somewhere around 2:00 and having to convince myself to go back to sleep.
- I'm forgetting something useful that I did this weekend, but it can't have been all that useful if I can't remember it.

I can't really call it a result of all the walking because it's too soon for that, but I'm back down to -50 again. I wish I could figure out what the pattern is. I can't tell from week to week what it's going to be. But as long as it's between -45 and -50, it's good and I still fit in my "bragging pants". I probably shouldn't wear those home for Easter, because I feel like that's flaunting it and I know that I shouldn't do that, but I sort of want to anyway.

Today being Veterans Day, it was also Vet Day and I got to do the Zipcar-and-cat-carriers dance. Lily needs a tooth pulled, so I have to make an appointment for her for that someday soonish. But not until after this credit card cycle, thanks. After I got the cats home and put the car back, I allowed as how I HATE the Zipcar-and-cat-carriers dance (I don't love driving under normal circumstances, and driving with a soundtrack of miserable cats doesn't help), and went for a walk for an hour and a half so as not to start eating. I've officially lost 30 lb as of this morning, and have arrived at the conclusion that my size-14 jeans are too damn big. New jeans can also wait until the next credit card cycle, though.

Today also seems to be Medical Phone Call Day. Because Lily has lost a tooth and has one that needs to be pulled, they wanted to do bloodwork and find out if she had bacteremia. She doesn't, but they had to call and tell me that. Today I also heard from the BIDMC general surgery department about my gallstones, and I have an appointment with them in a week. Since I'm feeling better, they'll probably tell me I don't need surgery right now. That's OK with me. However, if I get any more escaping gallstones, I'm going to want something permanent done about them.

It's a very nice day out, and I feel like I'm wasting it, but I also sort of feel like I've had my exercise for today and I don't really want any more. Maybe I'll go to the movies after all; the new Thor movie is supposed to be fairly terrible, but I tend to like comic book movies. Things explode and the plots don't tend to be terribly complex. In short, Brain Candy. (The argument against going to the movies is orange, furry, vibrating at an alarming volume and apparently highly averse to leaving me alone.)

This past weekend, I canceled the DVD-by-mail portion of my Netflix subscription and sent back the DVDs I had. However, the no-DVD bit didn't kick in until yesterday, so they mailed me two more DVDs on Monday. I watched them last night. Major mood whiplash ensued, because the DVDs in question were The Gods Must Be Crazy (which I had practically memorized at one point) and The Secret of Kells. The former is funny, and the latter is Not, although it is gorgeous.

I know I'm not the only one who does any work on junior promotions, but of the 22 files on the October agenda, I've read 18 of them. I have another dozen Waiting For People To Send Me Stuff. I also have a sore shoulder that won't let go and I keep catching myself grinding my teeth. Apparently it's one of those days. The meeting I just had didn't help hugely, either; after an hour of discussion I still don't know which night next week is going to be the late one.

The ATA meeting is in Boston this year, which gives me pretty much no excuse for not going. Problem is, I'm not sure I want to, because I'm just about convinced I'm never going to get to call myself a translator. I didn't count how many business cards I gave out at the last ATA meeting I went to, but none of them got me any work. Having just failed the TransPerfect pharmaceutical test didn't do a whole lot for my confidence either. So why should I want to spend $400 or so going to a conference that won't get me anywhere? Because who knows, and if I don't go, I definitely won't get anything out of it.

I think I disapprove of this "dark by 7:00" idea. Bring back my daylight, dammit! (Especially today, when the definition of "daylight" includes the word "soggy".)

I spent most of yesterday being Not Home, mostly because it was a good day for it.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I decided I wanted to go out for breakfast, so I left for Watertown at 9:30 or so. From there I went downtown on the Great Linen Handkerchief Quest, which wouldn't have taken so long if I hadn't tried to find them everyplace they weren't before finding them where I knew I would. It was a nice walk around Downtown Crossing and State Street, though. After I actually bought the handkerchiefs, I wandered through Borders for a while and then went off to the movies at Fenway, because I wanted to see Iron Man and I didn't do it last weekend.

By the time I got done with all of the above, it was about 4:45, and I hiked back to Kenmore and got on a train that decided to run express from BU East to Harvard St. Apparently I'm glad I wasn't trying to get home any later last night, because the B line turned into a major headache. So, got home, fed the Hairy Beasts, fell into my embroidery and the next time I looked up, it was 10:30. Wonderful stuff, concentration. (And I'm almost done with the current section of embroidery, which is my least favorite so far. It's a repeat of a previous section, only upside down, and I don't like it any better upside down than I did right side up.)

Today's list consists of dim sum and laundry. Apparently somebody else's list consists of making the front porch go away. I did know that was going to happen, but I didn't remember when exactly. It seems that running the dryer vents out under the porch lo these many years ago might have been a bad idea, and what seemed to be a soft spot was an extremely soft spot. So the porch is being replaced, and I have to remember to use the back door for a while.