dchenes: (katana)
Snip is lucky she's cute. Last night I bought myself a new laptop, and transferred everything to it from the old one, and was just about to start erasing the old one when Snip popped the 2 key off it. I tried for the next four hours to get the spring back on the computer and the key cap back on the spring, and couldn't do it. By now the spring is probably inside out, upside down, and backward, because I reassembled it so many times. I am not about to pop another key off on purpose to see what the spring looks like, because the way this is going, I'll end up with two keys I can't fix. And the Computer Loft is closed this week, so I hauled the laptop to work today for nothing and my shoulder is not pleased with me. And the pull chain for the lights in the ceiling fan in my office at home is stuck (off) too. That's less of a disaster than it might be because I tend to sit in there in the dark anyway when I mess around on the computer, but it would still be nice if it hadn't decided to break last night.

Remembering the Good Things, however, the new laptop is very nice. Continuing the tradition of naming computers for bands that don't exist, the new one is called Huge Happy Hedgehog Face. And the fan part of the ceiling fan still works, and the chain repair doesn't look like it's horribly difficult even if I do have to buy a new switch (I hope not, but I'll probably have to anyway). And at least I have a ladder, so I don't have to improvise with the kitchen chairs. But I have to not electrocute myself, because it's an aluminum ladder.

Still haven't decided what Sunday is going to consist of. Right this instant I'm tempted to run away and eat a lot of something I most likely shouldn't. But that's because I want the computer and the ceiling fan fixed and I want not to be at work and I want a lot of other things that I don't have any particular control over. (Why is it so impossible to get human beings to stop shooting other human beings?) (Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question and I don't want to discuss it.)

I suppose the fact that the weather is cold, humid and solid overcast is pretty appropriate. I'd rather have London's weather in London, though.
dchenes: (katana)
Some day somebody's going to have to explain to me how cats can just hang around with one ear inside out. I would think that would feel extremely weird. (Observation brought to you by Snip, who pretty much fell asleep in my lap last night with one ear inside out.)

I took yesterday off on account of the marathon, and got the following things done:

- Made soup (somewhat uninspired, because the stock was bland to begin with, but I threw a lot of herbs and garlic at it and it's edible)
- Tried out the steam mop I bought on Friday (works reasonably well)
- Despaired briefly over the thought of having to do complicated math to finish the embroidery, and then started working back from the other end and discovered no math is required (hooray!)

I also managed to get outdoors for at least half an hour every day over the weekend, and that was good. Sunshine and fresh air and all that. And I bought and consumed some really excellent strawberries, and some fairly excellent champagne mangoes.

But, I had a new and exciting anxiety dream last night, and I know it's about the faculty retreat on Friday. I was in some variation on the Cape house, and had to bicycle to a school somewhere to do something. But I had to take a shower first, and I couldn't because the bathtub was full of dirty dishes. One of my cousins had had a frat party or something. So I had to do the dishes so I could shower, but Grammie wouldn't let me do it without helping, and she's 94 so she was helping very slowly. I eventually gave up on going anywhere and was about to find out the consequences when the dream stopped. I'm sure things will work out fine on Friday, but I wish I could stop with the 24/7 can't get it off my mind stuff. Especially when having it on my mind won't help.

Is it next week yet?
dchenes: (katana)
I did not order any snow. I particularly did not order any snow on a Monday morning in early April. But I seem to have gotten it anyway.

Since it started yesterday, I stayed home and made soup. So now I'm out of homemade soup stock, and I probably ought to do something about that the next time I find chicken wings on sale. Turkey wings make excellent soup stock, but you can't get turkey wings except between Thanksgiving and New Year's. And I don't have enough freezer space to keep both soup stock and ingredients for the next round of soup stock in the freezer.

Anyway, the soup I made was a variant of C&F soup. Stock and diced tomatoes and corn and lima beans and chickpeas and small shell pasta, and all the herbs for meatballs, and chives. And a piece of parmesan rind. Good stuff. (Slurp.) And I used up the steel-cut oatmeal making granola, so now I have to decide if I want to get some more and make granola until I run out of pumpkin seeds (a pound is a lot of pumpkin seeds) or if I want to stop for a while. Apparently eating granola for breakfast means I shouldn't eat any lunch at all, but I don't work like that. So I gain a pound every week I eat granola for breakfast. Sigh.

I finally got video of Snip in the presence of Provolone cheese. "Mugged" is about the word for it. Silly beast.
dchenes: (Default)
I'm officially annoyed with myself. I went out today and discovered that walking tweaked my back. So of course when I got home, I spent half an hour clearing snow that fell out of the pine trees off the sidewalk, and reaggravated my right shoulder.

Tomorrow we're supposed to get more snow. And I'm supposed to run an orientation for the oral health session. Combine back spasms, a sore shoulder and a huge snowstorm, and I don't want anything to do with going anywhere tomorrow. But I don't have any choice.

At least I have Snip curled up asleep in my lap right now. Even if I can't do anything physical right, I can still provide adequate lap space.
dchenes: (katana)
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.
dchenes: (katana)
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.
dchenes: (katana)
Cortisone shots in both shoulders next Tuesday. I wish it could have been today, but of course it don't work like that. I just want the whole "hand somebody a copay once or twice a week for a couple of months" cycle to stop. If the cortisone can stop the inflammation cycle in my shoulders for a while, that would be nice too.

Since embroidery is sort of out these days, I picked up a Japanese-patterned coloring book the other day and was hanging out in Harvard Yard with that and some markers yesterday before rehearsal. I ended up in a half-hour conversation with a woman from Bosnia who was traveling on her own for the first time in her life. She and her mother and brother escaped from Kosovo in the Balkan wars and were cheated by somebody who said they could get them to Canada, so they had to sneak back into Bosnia eventually. She wanted to have a conversation in English because she's staying with somebody who speaks Bosnian and doesn't get to use her English as much as she wants. So that was nice. And my coloring will hopefully get better with practice (and maybe with less major consumption of coffee ice cream immediately beforehand).

Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, helped along by Snip, who woke me up half an hour early making hairball noises. I scared her off the bed and she went and yarfed in the hallway, which is infinitely preferable. But I fail to see why she should be allowed to go back to bed for the rest of the morning. Actually, what I fail to see is why she should always be allowed to go back to bed for the rest of the morning, yarfage or otherwise. (And yes, I just invented that word.)

Because there's good stuff regardless of how much I complain, I'm glad I bought this sweater. This morning it was like wearing a hug. And it's an excellent shade of green.
dchenes: (katana)
Despite being Friday, and the Friday before a long weekend besides, today is not ideal. Today is, in fact, annoying. But on the un-annoying side, I met a Great Dane who didn't force me to do the Statue of Liberty act with my coffee, probably because it was coffee, as opposed to ice cream. It could have been ice cream. I wanted it to be ice cream (see "today is annoying"). But I shoehorned myself back into the size 8 pants this morning, so no ice cream.

Today would probably be better if Snip hadn't woken me up twice screaming about her puffball and the weather hadn't woken me up twice rattling the blinds. The puffball situation is all my fault, though, because I hadn't seen it for three days and went looking for it. If I hadn't found it, Snip wouldn't be screaming about it. That'll learn me. (But her puffball is her favorite nonedible object in the entire world. I've found it in some very random places because Snip had been there earlier and left it. On the floor in every room in the apartment, on my keyboard, in my bed, in the water dish, on one of the kitchen chairs, etc. Haven't found it in the tub yet.)

(Couple of hours later) OK, progress is being made, which is making today slightly less annoying. But the Curriculum Committee, the LOHPC, the PD2 Oral Health Session and the faculty retreat can all go suck on a warthog until Tuesday.
dchenes: (katana)
Yesterday I got an hour and a half of exercise breaking between 1/4" and 1 1/2" of ice off the sidewalk (marvelous thing: it was warm enough to loosen the ice enough for me to do that!). Today my right shoulder, which was just about speaking to me again after the massage on Friday, is still sulking. But the sidewalk is mostly down to bare cement, and I wasn't sure that was going to happen until May given that we're on the shady side of the street. So I helped it along some.

Now that I've arranged not to kill the mailman, who I actually met on Saturday (so I know precisely whom I'm trying to not kill by taking the ice off the sidewalk), I wish he'd deliver my new T pass. On Saturday he said he was delivering Friday's mail, so maybe he'll deliver Saturday's today and my T pass will be in it. I am now playing the "don't make me put more money on the stupid paper ticket, since I had to buy the stupid paper ticket to begin with" game with myself. Life tends to be easier when I can keep the T pass in the wallet and forget about it, instead of getting halfway up the street and then remembering I left the stupid paper ticket in the other bag, or the other set of pockets.

I seem to be gaining a pound or so per week for the last three weeks. Part of it was the not walking on the sprained ankle last month, and then it snowed some more, but part of it might be the discovery of single-serving Haagen-Dasz containers. I think I'd better forget that those exist for a while. And start walking home more often than not, again. At least walking is somewhat more predictable than public transportation these days.

On the weight-gaining side of the coin, I finally thawed out the oxtail and bought a bottle of wine to braise it in, so I ought to do that sometime this week. But maybe not until Friday, because most of the braising recipes I've seen consist of "brown it first and then braise it for three hours or so", which is a bit much for a school night. (Although the recipe I'm looking at says it gets better if it sits for a couple of days, so maybe I'll do it on a school night anyway.) Hopefully it turns out better than the disappointing oatmeal cookies I made a couple of weeks ago. I should have made granola instead. Let that be a lesson to most of us.

Speaking of cooking, Snip has decided that Muenster is a barely-adequate substitute for Provolone. I suppose that's good to know in case Provolone ever disappears from the human experience, and the earnest look on her face was very cute, but I don't want to encourage her if I can help it. (But she is very cute when she's earnest.)
dchenes: (katana)
I feel a little less like the Titanic immediately after encountering the iceberg, which is good. Apparently Dad still feels like the Titanic immediately after encountering the iceberg, but open heart surgery will do that. At least they "took all the tubes out" yesterday, and I expect that helped a bit.

In an attempt to stop thinking, I spent most of yesterday curled up on the couch with the embroidery and at least one cat. They were all for that idea, although I kept having to get up for various reasons (brushing of teeth, brushing of semi-dry hair, consumption of lunch, etc.). I think Snip might not have been feeling great yesterday either, because she curled up very tightly in the corner of the couch after washing a 6" square of it (and bits of me, when I tried to get her to quit washing the couch). Then she curled up in my armpit for a while after I went to bed. She was better this morning.

In between trying to get Snip to quit washing the couch, I was trying to figure out how this embroidery pattern is going to work. It's not as symmetrical as I thought, and in places where there's no reason for it not to be, I'm modifying it. Somehow I lost a stitch somewhere, so part of it is coming out even more unsymmetrical than it's supposed to. The trick is that since it's a repeating pattern, whatever I do once I get to do another seven times, so I'm trying not to drive myself insane figuring it out the first time. Oh well. I suspect it's one of those "nobody will know it's wrong unless I tell them" errors, but right now I would dearly love to know where I screwed up.

Having watched Prometheus (or whatever of Prometheus is allowed on cable TV), I can still state that horror movies aren't my thing. But at least some of it was a little less horrific because I've seen Alien. (Didn't keep me from yelling "BAD IDEA" at the TV in a couple of places, though.)
dchenes: (katana)
I admit we needed rain. And ordinary rain would have been fine, but we're into the third day of a nor'easter that's supposed to think about going away tomorrow. So it's rain and wind from all directions, sometimes simultaneously, and at least one thunderstorm last night. The thunderstorm itself didn't bother me, but it meant that I spent most of the time between getting home from rehearsal at 10:15 and going to bed at 11:00 persuading Snip to (a) come out from behind the toilet, (b) eat her dinner, and (c) come out from behind the toilet again. Granted, missing one meal wouldn't hurt her, but since I actually interrupted Lily in the act of eating Snip's dinner, I thought I ought to do something about that.

While the home improvement train is still rolling (yay, new furnace, but I haven't gotten the gas bill yet so I reserve final judgment until then), I ought to go up on the roof after the storm and find out what's wrong with the gutter over the back kitchen window. Well, I know what's wrong with it; it leaks. A lot. And the leakage hits the outside of the window in such a way that it sounds like it's coming through the ceiling and hitting the kitchen floor. But for some reason it doesn't do it consistently, and that makes it hard to sleep sometimes. So I want to know why it does that, and if possible make it stop doing that. Besides being annoying, it can't be good for the window or the surrounding wall to be living under a waterfall like that for several days.

The little invisible man with the enormous invisible ice pick is after my left ankle again, and means business this time. I had to go buy another brace, because the usual one is at home and the ankle needed some help. It may be partly Achilles tendon (because it hurts in the back of my ankle and also the back of my knee), but it's partly something else, because it hurts up the side too. I guess now I have one half-assed excuse for not walking home (the weather, if it isn't raining by then) and one legitimate excuse.
dchenes: (katana)
The calendar says today is Monday. So does everything else about it. Lily decided to keep me awake from 4:15 to 5:30 this morning for no particular reason, it's hit-in-the-face-with-a-hot-washcloth humid, the bus took about half an hour to get from Route 9 to Francis St., my email is full of things I don't wanna deal with, and my vacation is still two weeks away.

On the positive side, however, the weekend was lovely. I woke up on Saturday morning feeling like doing something silly, but got the grocery shopping out of the way first. Along about lunchtime, I figured out that the definition of "silly" could be "get a frame put around the arm tattoo", and found a place that does walk-in appointments for small tattoos on Saturdays. So I got myself all psyched up for that and went down there...and was just barely too late to have the tattoo done and still make it to my voice lesson. That left me with all sorts of extra adrenalin and nothing to let it out with, so I went pelting off to Coolidge Corner and calmed myself down by wandering through the bookstore. I bought a book on the Borgias and went pelting off to the park around the corner from the voice studio, and sat there in the shade with no shoes on for an hour or so, reading about 15th century church politics.

The voice lesson itself went fairly well in that we figured out what to do about what I'm doing wrong now. And then at the end I became the billionth person on the planet to try singing Let it Go, and we had to stop after the first phrase because it turns out I can sing the lowest note in the song as originally written. It's the first time I've ever heard "You have an F!" in an educational context and had it be good news. (I didn't know it was an F, because we had one set of music and one set of just lyrics and I was the one with the lyrics.)

I was waiting for thunderstorms on Saturday night and we never got them. It's disappointing when the whole back half of the state is under a bright red band on the radar map, and by the time it gets here, it's either so broken up that all we get is rain, or it breaks north and south and we don't get anything. I'm sure it would make Snip happy if she could read weather maps.

Lily is going through one of her "wake me up, demand attention, settle down for five minutes, jump off the bed, sharpen claws on box spring, jump back on the bed and demand attention" cycles. Unfortunately she does it between 4:15 and 5:30 AM, which is less than ideal. She usually gets over it in less than a week, but I wish she wouldn't do it in the first place. She started on Saturday night and continued last night.

Anyway, on Sunday I got some useful things done, to wit: vacuumed the living room and the pantry, did laundry, and made apricot crumble again. (I should see if this recipe is any different points-wise; I used half a pound more apricots, half as much sugar and twice as much oatmeal as last time. The sugar and the oatmeal probably cancel each other out, though.) After that I decided to be outdoors for a bit, so went down to Marathon Sports for more socks and then to the Public Garden for my birthday swan boat ride. I always enjoy that, even though I don't quite know why. After that I came home again and pretty much merfed around for the rest of the day.

This morning (after not giving Lily flying lessons, tempted though I may have been) I discovered that Snip had dropped her puffball in the water dish. Which rendered the water undrinkable on account of the puffball being in it, and also made the puffball untouchable on account of being wet. So I fished out the puffball and dried it off a bit, and provided fresh water and breakfast, and all was right with Snip's little furry world. Silly beast.
dchenes: (katana)
I wish "burst blister over a third of my left pinky toe, making it very uncomfortable to walk anywhere in any shoes at all" was an excuse to stay home from work today. But it ain't, so here I am (in sneakers, which are the best option so far).

It was a good weekend, though, especially the Sunday part of it. On Saturday I got up early for no apparent reason and got a mess of errands done before lunchtime. Unfortunately I also gave myself a pretty excellent set of blisters, and ended up having to go sneaker shopping in the afternoon just so I could have some shoes that might not give me more blisters. Laundry happened in the afternoon, too. In the evening we had about four rumbles of thunder and fifteen minutes of rain, including about five minutes when I was convinced it couldn't rain any harder...and then it did. Snip headed for the bomb shelter, of course. If I knew a thunder shirt would work on her, I'd get one.

On Sunday I decided that since I was up early again, also for no apparent reason, I might as well do something about the bagel craving. So I took myself off to Kupel's, which was an excellent idea, in Tevas, which turned out to be a four-bandaid idea when I got home again. (OW.) The bagel was exactly what I wanted, though, and it came with a pink carnation on account of Mother's Day (which my mother couldn't care less about as far as I know).

After Kupel's I came home, did some embroidery, inhaled some lunch, and then went off climbing around the Skyline trail in the Blue Hills with L&C. That was fun. I should probably have been wearing shorts, but I don't have any shorts that fit me these days. Replace "sneakers" with "shorts" on the list of Stuff I Need All of a Sudden.
dchenes: (katana)
It was a pretty good weekend, in that it was three days long and it only snowed once. That meant I could go stomping around outdoors, breaking in my new sluck-puddle boots (after Sunday) and breaking out of a case of the fidgets at the same time. The new boots have stiffer soles than the old ones, which is taking some getting used to, especially when walking on ice. But they also have shorter laces than the old ones, so Snip can't destroy them quite so much. (She has her very own set of shoelaces; why can't she play with those?)

Speaking of Snip, I have discovered that she Does Not Like human beings under the age of 10. I have no idea why that is, but she got VERY upset, to the point of hissing at me for a while after the perceived threat had gone home. She's only ever hissed at the vet before. At least she had calmed down again by bedtime, so whatever the trauma was, I've been forgiven for it. And I got to be social, and got rid of a significant number of pairs of pants that don't fit me these days, so it was all good in the end.

Today hasn't been quite so good. I managed to scrape my hand and tweak my ankle this morning in the process of getting the ice-encrusted lid off the trash can. Trash day isn't until tomorrow and I could have waited, but I wanted to get rid of a couple of pounds of chicken bones I had made stock out of. (I wanted black bean soup, but got sidetracked by Whole Foods selling chicken bones for soup and ended up making stock instead of soaking beans.) I'm having to learn to cook all over again, sort of; it's not so much that what I cook is bad for me, but I have to get used to smaller portion sizes and either cook less of whatever it is, or eat it for two or three straight weeks, by which time I'm thoroughly tired of it. Freezing some things would be lovely, but I don't have enough freezer space to keep ingredients and meals at the same time. Someday I'll figure this all out.

Then I got to work and, of course, Dr. C had to come tell me there's something wrong with his online course materials. He comes at least once a week and asks me why things don't work the way they used to when it was all on paper and how am I going to fix it. (First, have an orientation meeting with your tutors, like we asked you to three times. They can do what you're asking me to do as easily as I can; they just don't know that because you didn't tell them, or they don't want to, or both.) This course ends at the end of March and I hope March goes quickly (although I'm not expecting it to, between the weather this winter and the fact that it's never even warmish by the end of March).

In cheerier news, yesterday I treated myself to a latte, and it was wonderful. Part of me thinks it's silly to make such a big deal out of the existence of coffee with milk in it, and the other part thinks it's great that it made me that happy and can't wait (another three months?) to do it again. I generally side with the part that thinks it's great, because it's fun to enjoy things. I wonder what the next thing I enjoy that much will be?
dchenes: (katana)
Yay, I can lift things (up to 15 lb, until I think I can lift more than that)! The surgeon said "Go have a life!", so I intend to. (I meant to come home and pick up Snip off the floor instantly, because she hates that and I owe her one for waking me up four times last night, but I missed my chance.)

Apparently the scale wasn't lying last week, because this week it said 151.8. The End Is Nigh! And not before time either; today wasn't a mess, but it was intense (first day back and functional after vacation, and three or four Major Projects to be dealt with) and I'm beat. Now that I can drink again, I think I might have to go out for a drink on Wednesday. I'm mostly writing this right now to keep myself from going to bed at 8:00.

On the subject of Major Projects, sending a Save the Date email to people in at least six or seven different countries for a CE course to be held in April, before the CE committee has officially approved the existence of the course, is a tad bit nervewracking. Fortunately the CE committee got itself in gear and approved the course an hour after I sent the Save the Date email, so anyone who wants more information can actually be sent it. (And I got Outlook to stop having a fit over one of the lists of people I was trying to send the email to. Fortunately it was the 70-person list, not the 90-person list.) And I got the latest tutorial course's cases printed out and copied. Now all I have to worry about this week is the evaluations for the restorative dentistry course that ended in December, and the faculty retreat in February, and the MedEdPortal submission I was trying to get done in December and couldn't. Apparently it used to be easier to submit things there, but now they want all sorts of membership info I don't have handy since I don't have a membership (my boss does).

I don't think Kerala is going to happen in February. It might happen in March, but there are too many things, work-related and otherwise, that have to happen between now and February. Maybe Kerala happens next March and something closer to home (but warm, thank you) happens this February. I don't know yet. I do know that the mere idea of spending most of 24 hours on planes or in airports is making me tired, though. If I had a *pop*-you're-elsewhere cloak, and could tell it which elsewhere I meant, going on vacation would be easier.
dchenes: (katana)
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.)
dchenes: (katana)
I was rather annoyed at the alarm clock this morning, because it went off right in the middle of a fairly interesting dream. I was just about to find out who made the gorgeous quilt I was dreaming about, and now I'll never know. (The quilt had a blue border but otherwise was mostly white, embroidered with an Islamic tile design, and quilted in a way that separated the design into individual tiles.) I know that it was in New Orleans, but I have no idea why I was there. Dreams are odd that way.

Speaking of odd, Snip has taken up sleeping next to my pillow. I have no idea why she decided to do that, and she's kept on doing it despite the fact that I smacked her by accident the first time she did it. Light off + dark blue sheets + mostly black cat = camouflage. I had no idea she was there. Silly beast. (But gregarious, and an excellent lap warmer when she feels like it, and a Good Cat in general.) Maybe she's just tired of Lily always using her as a pillow. That tends to happen a lot in cooler weather.

Speaking of cooler weather, I need to have a Discussion with my new thermostat. It seems to be confused, in that it wants to turn the heat on regardless of the room temperature. It's not supposed to turn the heat on until the room temperature gets to 61. I think I hear a "take the thing off the wall, remove the batteries and start over" situation coming.

There ought to be some sort of medal you can get from Weight Watchers for turning your back on mac & cheese because it isn't Wednesday, and eating a beet/goat cheese/green apple sandwich for lunch instead. It wasn't bad, but it REALLY wasn't what I wanted. However, 170.0 was a lovely number to see on the scale yesterday morning, so I guess I'll take the beet sandwich if that's the sort of thing that happens when I do.
dchenes: (katana)
I thought Friday would never get here, but it seems to have defied all expectations and showed up anyway. Thank goodness. It's not just me, either; it seems like everybody who has any opinion at all about this week thinks it's been going on for way too long. In my own particular case, I blame Tuesday. It should have been Friday immediately after Tuesday night.

I can't decide whether to be amused or annoyed by the fact that every time I woke up last night to extract my foot from underneath a cat so I could roll over, the cat in question was Snip and she was snoring. I did know that she snores when she curls up very tightly and turns her head upside down, but I didn't know she could do it all night. At least it fell within the realm of "occasional noises I recognize enough to sleep through", instead of "occasional noises that keep me awake wondering what the hell it is". (Although there was a period of the latter category last night too; it sounded like water dripping off the roof onto the kitchen window, but it didn't rain last night as far as I know.)

Tomorrow is New Smoke Detector Day, because apparently they get cranky when they get old and the warranties on most of them expired in 2002 or so. I'm in favor of anything that keeps me from having to track down which of the nine or so options is being a chirpy little bastard THIS time. On Wednesday, the energy audit people are coming. They're probably going to suggest programmable thermostats, which I'm in favor of, but they can't have my (low-flow from before they were ubiquitous) showerhead. So there. I like being able to rinse shampoo out of my hair in something under five minutes.

What color stockings does one wear with a matte-finish black satin cocktail dress, in late November?
dchenes: (katana)
Today I walked eight miles, because I had someplace I wanted to go but no particular time I wanted to be there. I started in Harvard Square, walked to Wilson Farm (straight shot up Mass Ave, so why the hell not?), and then walked back to Arlington Heights to get the 77 bus back to Harvard Square. I shouldn't have sat down when I got to Arlington Heights, because I sat there for about ten minutes and stiffened right up, and then had to lever my carcass off the bench and onto the bus. And then I stood around waiting for the 66 bus for about ten minutes and did my good deed for the day by giving a confused Chinese man who was at Harvard for an alumni event $2 for bus fare. (He didn't have any change and was either going to miss the bus and wait another 40 minutes if he went to get change, or he was going to get $18 in change on a Charlie Ticket, which wouldn't do him any good. So I gave him $2.) When I got off the bus, I stood around in deep shade for fifteen minutes waiting for the green line, and got cold. Sigh.

I think eight miles of walking almost entitles me to the two cider donuts I inhaled at Wilson Farm. But only almost, because if I start cheating like that, I'll find all sorts of excuses to keep doing it. So the donuts got counted. I think it might be Pasta Day on Wednesday, though. I've got about 20 exercise points to use up on account of all that walking.

What didn't get done today on account of all that walking was a cleaning fit. All I really need to do this instant is vacuum the rugs and Swiffer the floors and sweep up after Snip the Feline Bulldozer, who shoves her head in on one side of the food bowl and shoves the dry food out the other side and then refuses to eat off the floor. But I went walking because I was putting off having the cleaning fit, and now I'm too tired to start. I wish this were a three-day weekend.

Speaking of three-day weekends, I probably should have taken more than three days of vacation between jobs (even though that made it a five-day weekend). Especially since I now have 28 1/2 vacation days saved up, and they max out at 40. At some point before you max out, HR starts sending you gentle reminders to start using vacation days. Apparently I haven't hit that point yet. Unfortunately I also haven't hit three months at the new job yet, and I don't want to take any major vacation until after that. Decisions, decisions...
dchenes: (katana)
Today was Wednesday the Friday the 13th. I started it with a night of anxiety dreams, including one in which my parents and I were trying to pack the car to outrun a hurricane or something like one, and Snip kept escaping and I had to keep trying to find her, and we were supposed to have left an hour ago, and Snip got more upset every time I put her in the car, and the sky kept on getting darker, and I woke up somewhere around the time I knew that I would never be able to find Snip again. And there she was, sleeping on my ankle.

Then I pelted off to work early again, and spent half an hour running all over the place obtaining pastries and coffee for the Tokyo people who should have been there yesterday. At 11:30 I started running all over the place obtaining lunch for them and for the curriculum suggestions meeting with some fourth-year students, which led to me spending approximately $60 of my very own money on feeding people at meetings I wasn't even at. (I'm getting reimbursed, and the Dental Education Catering Company is now closed, thank you very much.)

After that I got absolutely nowhere with the setup for the curriculum blueprint meeting, on account of not being able to get anybody to make up their minds about how many tables of what sizes we want in which room when. And then I got absolutely nowhere with the lunch menu for the blueprint meeting besides. At least I got most of the handouts printed, because those didn't require anybody else's input.

Fortunately today is extravagance day, so I came home and drowned my sorrows in beef tenderloin. That helped some, and the fact that tomorrow is Thursday didn't hurt either. And I don't have to feed anybody else tomorrow.
Page generated Jul. 12th, 2025 01:22 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios