The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

Went climbing for the first time in roughly eight years, on Saturday morning. Then took my watch to be repaired (dropped it and shattered the crystal), got my hairs cut, went grocery shopping, went home, and fell over. I knew there was going to be pain, and I wanted to get all the moving I needed to do done before I couldn't move very much. On Sunday I couldn't bend my left elbow for more than about a minute before it started screaming at me, and my upper arms (though thankfully not my actual shoulders) were most displeased. I did laundry anyway, because clean underwear is a good idea. But I had to come back upstairs and whimper at Snip for a minute. She was mightily unimpressed. I got to the top of a bouldering route, at least. But the walls at Brooklyn Boulders are taller than the ones I'm used to, and I can't bring myself to believe in the auto-belays from that high up. And I don't have the strength to get all the way up anyway; bouldering routes are short.

Karma smacked me upside the head this morning, because yesterday I watched the Bills/Steelers game get snowed on in Buffalo and was glad I didn't have to deal with snow. This morning it was snowing when I got up, so I dressed for snow, and then stood in the rain at the bus stop for 15 minutes. My supposedly waterproof winter coat leaks at the shoulders. That'll teach me to be smug.

As usual, the fact that I work at a dental school is not keeping me from being surrounded by sugar at this time of year. There's a half sheet cake (chocolate) and a very large pie (undetermined) around the corner from me. At least those are slightly harder to eat than the usual five pounds of shortbread. And the faculty member who just came back from Istanbul came back with baklava. And one of my other coworkers made biscotti. And the lunch meeting today involved leftover chocolate trifle.

I have to figure out traveling for Christmas. Some of me doesn't wanna do it at all, but most of me does. Rib roast is not to be sneezed at, and after Dad's heart surgery extravaganza two years ago, I'll take family when I can get it.

This weekend was my favorite kind of weather: between 65 and 85, and sunny and dry, and a nice breeze (which is a bonus). It was perfect embroidery weather if I had stayed indoors, but it's a shame to waste weather like that on staying indoors, so I didn't. Except on Sunday, when I was suffering from the effects of eating entirely too many potato chips on Saturday (I had a craving, and decided to kill it completely. That worked, in that I want nothing to do with any more potato chips until at least Labor Day, but I felt like a slug all day Sunday.) I did my usual "stay home and watch the Pops on TV" thing yesterday, and apparently I agree with the Boston Globe that there was way too much pop (and none of them can sing, damn it) and not enough orchestra. And I didn't particularly like the cinematography for the fireworks; I don't need a new camera every five seconds. Maybe I'm getting old.

On account of yesterday being Monday, today isn't, as hard as it's trying to be. Actually it's not trying all that hard and my boss is in Florida for the week, but I did have to be at work at 7:45 this morning because somebody decided that today was the ideal day for postdoc orientation (really, the day after a holiday weekend?) and they needed some extra bodies. At least I got breakfast out of it, and it was pretty good breakfast besides. And then I spent most of a couple of hours shooing predoc students away from the breakfast food, because half of the postdoc students took a while filling out the six forms they had to fill out before breakfast and then got herded into the auditorium in which food is not allowed. So I had to guard the breakfast until the postdocs got out of the auditorium. Regardless of what generation students belong to, they will ALWAYS fall like starving hyenas on free or leftover food. I've been observing this phenomenon since 1998.

I'm about halfway through the stack of books I bought last weekend. So far: the English translation of HHhH is OK, but not great (I might have been able to do it better; it's a faithful translation but its word choice sort of diluted the original); Georgiana was interesting, but long; I couldn't get into Medical Muses; I can't decide whether I want to keep The Death of Woman Wang or not, because it's short and some but not all of it is worth re-reading; and I think Dad would be interested in When Books Went to War once I'm done with it.

One of these days when I feel like spending money, I'm considering taking one or two of my best or favorite (not necessarily the same thing) photos from each of my major vacation trips, and having them printed on aluminum. The thing is, I don't know where to have that done around here. Anybody got any suggestions?

The best of my Iceland pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdeschenes/albums/72157669347869641

The Buy list is dead. Thank goodness. The Pack list and the Clean list are next. And the accreditation narratives, and the summatives, and the competencies, and the tutorial case, and the year 2 course directors meetings, and the Canvas/OASIS meetings, and the course guides for the new medical school courses, and why didn't I go on vacation in March? My brain is very crunchy, and has been since after April 22, and here it is May 23 and I am in desperate need of not being at work for a while. And my right shoulder is giving me grief again, although at least it still has the range of motion I require of it. But I just got the feel of the new embroidery, and would like to keep on with it.

I could start packing tonight if I could decide which sort of luggage I want to pack into. I can pretty much guarantee I won't need a bathing suit between now and June 7.

The Buy list managed to contain a new catnip toy for Lily, since I have absolutely no idea where the last one went and I've looked under every piece of furniture that has enough under to hide it. So she has a catnip turtle, and she seems to think it's quite nice. She also decided to charge up her ventral solar cells this morning, so when I left she was sprawled on her back on the living room rug looking completely unlike a Guardian of the House. I told her to guard the house, anyway, because that's what I tell both of them when I leave in the morning. So far they seem to be good at keeping anybody from walking off with it, because I always have a house to come home to.

I wish I could have spent more time outdoors photosynthesizing. And I kind of wish they hadn't put up the enormous tent all over the quad, so I could have had a nap on the lawn. I need a nap anyway, because I stayed up way the hell too late last night trying to get to the end of Nemesis Games. I didn't make it, of course, and it was after midnight when I gave up. Not a smart move on my part, and I knew that, and I did it anyway. That's the bit of my brain that just doesn't care whether it has to go to work in the morning or not.

Bought tickets for Iceland. And I am in fact staying in the hotel that made me giggle incessantly. So is it June yet?

This week wasn't terribly long, but it was pretty intense yesterday and today. The dental public is finally getting its mitts on the new curriculum map next week, which means I've spent the last two days tweaking it. I've sent it to the instructional technologist, who's putting it in a newsletter, three times in the last two days and I've given up telling him that this is absolutely, positively, I mean it, the FINAL final version. Add that to the new (interim?) course director for the oral surgery course coming in yesterday so I could walk him through the course, and it got sorely tempting to say "I don't care if I end up having to lose twelve pounds, this calls for ice cream." But there wasn't any ice cream. But I'm not trying hard enough to lose the ten pounds I should be concentrating on.

Today at least we had an office Powerball pool, so I got to distract myself thinking about what I would do with at least ten million dollars. So far it boils down to "spend two on acquiring and updating the building I live in, give away five, and figure out what to do with the rest if the situation ever arises, which it won't". But it was fun to dream about for a little while.

Speaking of things to do with money, I forgot that Iceland is in my self-imposed travel distance limit (eight hours one way by airplane), and it's been on the list, so I think maybe I'll go there in May or so.

I probably should not have stayed for the whole three and a half hours of dress rehearsal last night, because this morning I practically had to haul myself out of bed with a crane. (And the first thing I did was step on a teeny little piece of glass I had missed cleaning up on Tuesday, and cut my foot.) But at least I managed to go buy a SD card reader before the rehearsal, so I know that I got a couple of pretty decent underwater videos, one of which ought to be called "Photobombed by Fish". I also got some pretty good still photos of on-island stuff. I guess my photography is getting better.

The Hairy Beasts seem to have remembered how the routine goes when I'm home, although they do still want to be wherever I am most of the time. That's fine by me, except I have to keep telling Lily she makes an absolutely piss-poor window when she's trying to park herself between me and the computer.

I quit counting what I ate while I was gone, but I also cut back on actual meals. Partly because while the resort food was quite good, it wasn't cheap ($28 entrees for dinner), partly because I was there for long enough to have gotten bored with the menu if I had eaten lunch and dinner every day, and partly because trying to count what's available to eat in any given airport is just adding hassle to being in the airport in the first place. I brought trail mix with me (and had to declare it on the way in; Australia wants to know about nuts, seeds, etc. on their customs forms, although I think they mostly want to know about anything that might sprout if you planted it) and had that for breakfast most days, and for either lunch or dinner depending on the day. The weather was such that I didn't really want more than one big meal per day anyway. Now that I'm home, I start counting again tomorrow. I still fit into my work pants, so I don't think I gained that much.

All that aside, I have now eaten kangaroo and liked it (tastes like beef, only more so, and the grain is a little different), eaten Vegemite and filed it under "would eat if starving" (smells like brewer's yeast, tastes like salt), and eaten the best scallops I can ever remember eating (seared, topped with garlic and sitting on some sort of foam that was very tasty).

Because I volunteered to be bumped off my original DFW-BOS flight, I got a $200 voucher. Mostly I volunteered because I was having an acute attack of tour stomach (also known as stomach saying "You're exhausted and you want me to process WHAT? And eating it was a good idea WHY?") and was perfectly happy not to get on a plane with it at that instant minute. By the time I finally left DFW, I was feeling better in the innards, although still exhausted. The airline moved my seat from back row window to middle row aisle to put a young kid and her mother sitting together, and then when I got on the plane I switched seats in the middle row with a slightly older kid who wanted to sit next to his sister, so I ended up with a middle seat. And then the 60-year-old perfect stranger in the aisle seat fell asleep on my shoulder for half an hour, and woke up 10 minutes after we had taken off. After 20 minutes of being slept on and having the kid and his sister laughing at me across the aisle because they weren't being slept on, I decided that the whole situation was so completely absurd and I was so completely brain dead that I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or be Zen about it. By way of recording it for posterity, I took my first and only selfie. I utterly loathe selfies, but that was about the only thing I could do. And now I know what I look like after 17 hours of airplanes, nine hours of airports, two hours of sleep, and a bout of tour stomach.

So what am I going to do with a $200 airline voucher? Something domestic, I think.

Murphy almost won today.

I discovered that I'm missing six months of Yahoo email, between November 13 and March 13. Unfortunately, the trip itinerary was a February email. OK, says I. Annoying, but I can get the itinerary from Travelocity. Only Travelocity said "there are no itineraries associated with that email address." EEK! There had damn well better be, because I've got the credit card bill that says so.

Followed one of the more harrowing half hours of my life, which I spent on hold waiting for somebody at Travelocity to pick up the phone. Fortunately, once they did and we got past the "what's your itinerary number?" "I don't have it and I can't get it, that's what I'm calling you for!" bit, they found the itinerary and sent it again and I went to print it and found that my printer wanted new toner. Of course. Printers just know the worst time to stop working, and generally that's when they do it. The one at work is famous for it.

So I took myself off to Walgreens for odds and ends and Staples for printer toner, and arrived at Staples half an hour before it actually opened (it has short hours on Sunday). At that point I was feeling rather like I had tried to swallow my tongue, so I went and swallowed some coffee for a while instead. Eventually I arrived at home again with printer toner, and promptly installed it and printed the itinerary and packed it with my passport.

All's well that ends well, but I've probably got a dozen new grey hairs. And I have PT at 8:00 tomorrow morning, so getting some decent sleep tonight is important. I parked my brain in front of a couple of comic book movies this afternoon, and Snip parked herself in my lap, and now everybody's at least tranquil if not happy.

Now I have a Buy/Pack/Clean list, and shockingly enough (or not) the Clean list is twice as long as the others. But the Buy list keeps having things appended to it; as of last night I added "pliers" and "7/8 aerator" because the bathroom sink faucet is now dispensing water at an angle, and the aerator seems to be a common culprit. In order to get it off, I need large pliers. Which I don't have. How can I have two different socket sets and a framing square, and no pliers? This must be remedied. Fortunately, I know how to do that.

Tomorrow I really hope the world works in such a way that I can get all of the important running around done. And by "the world" I mean the weather, the shoulder, the motivation, the T and probably six or seven other things I can't control. I can control the shoulder and the motivation, at least, and if I do it right, I blow out the shoulder with the last of the running around (to wit, kitty litter).

If I get the important running around done tomorrow, I can get the truly necessary cleaning done on Sunday and then pick at the rest of it until I leave. Fortunately I got the laundry done last night. There's nothing that puts a cramp in running around getting things done like having to stay home for a couple of hours while the dryer is running. So, having avoided that, pull out umbrella and yell CHARGE!

On a completely unrelated note, Lily tried (and tried, and tried, and tried), but couldn't figure out how to make pistachio shells edible. She really really wanted to, though. Silly beast.

I have now experienced fire drills on two different Harvard campuses in the same week. If the smoke detectors at home start chirping this week besides, it's definitely contagious and I'm carrying it.

Today's career development class was the "looking outward" portion (there are three: last week's was "looking inward" and Thursday's will be "looking forward"). Lo and behold, it's perfectly fine to hate networking as long as you know you hate it, and are willing to try to get better at it. And you don't have to go from hating it and not being good at it to being amazing at it all in one swoop, either. Progress, no matter what size the step is, is the important thing. So I need to make some progress of some sort. In my particular case, I have just enough social anxiety to put networking on the pleasantness scale somewhere around periodontal surgery. So the next step is "actually talk to people when the occasion arises".

In a semi-related vein, I start PT for my shoulder with an evaluation on April 7 at a place three blocks from work. Which beats the first week in May, which was when the hospital-affiliated PT had their first available appointment. I hope the PT helps; last time I remember the exercises being tedious (although I did them religiously at home). But last time my shoulder wasn't this bad, either. Get me to the point where I can sleep on that side again and I'll be happy.

Speaking of being happy, I should start packing for Australia. I'm reasonably certain I'm not going to use either of my bathing suits between now and then, for instance.