The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

dchenes @ 2021-03-01T11:48:00

2021-03-01T17:15:40Z

This weekend I actually Got Things Done. On Saturday I made another batch of vegetarian tikka masala, and did laundry. Yesterday I went out and got my hairs trimmed, and dashed through the bookstore since there wasn't a block-long line, and did the grocery shopping, and went to the pet store and utterly failed to buy a higher-sided litterbox because they didn't have any. But I did buy more catnip mice. And I went to CVS and bought Kleenex and a Command hook for my printer and scanner cables so I can keep the connectors off the floor and stop worrying about running my chair over them. And I ordered a new litterbox from Chewy when I got home.

Today proved it was Monday right off the bat, because Lily woke me up by standing on my chest and sneezing in my eye. And then I opened my email and found yet another externship letter request and yet another conference registration request, and a couple of "acting like a helpless idiot so I'll do all the work for them" requests. The excuse this time is they're in a hurry and don't have time to format their references, and aren't any good at it anyway, so I can do it for them. Well, yes, I could, but it shouldn't be my problem. And then they have the gall to write back to my boss, who wants to know where it's at, and say they're "working with me" on it.

I wrote to the Computer Loft and asked them if they'd sell me a dead keyboard, because I am so done with Lily perching on the laptop and clicking on things. Even if I never hear back from them, at least I tried. And I hope they get a laugh out of the email.

I need a vacation. I want a vacation somewhere that gets three sunny days in a row. I need to decide if I'm going to sign up for the $2400 all-female dive trip to Costa Rica in mid-January 2022, which I would have to pay for in August. Right now I can't even think as far as August; my brain stops at "when I get vaccinated."

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dchenes @ 2021-01-03T20:24:00

2021-01-04T02:19:31Z

I don't know why I bother making resolutions, especially this year, because who knows when and/or if I'll be able to do anything fun. But, just in case, I would really like to go diving again. Ideally I'd like to get my advanced open water certification, because I only need two more classes and 10 more dives. I would love to do that in Bonaire.

I waited too long and the quilt I was considering buying isn't available anymore. I don't really NEED a new quilt yet, anyway, but I'd like one for next winter. Maybe something I can live with will be on sale in the spring sometime.

I tried to sneak up on Quirk while she was napping and trim a couple of claws, but she foiled me by not napping for quite a while and then wondering what I wanted with that foot. At least she was bemused rather than annoyed. That's a baseline I can probably work with. And I discovered she'll wash every single molecule of butter off the end of my finger if offered it. Useful to know in case I ever have to hide medicine in something that isn't cat food. I haven't tried provolone on her yet.

It was nice not to have to be glued to the computer for a couple of weeks, but I did glue myself to it enough to find out that there was a new No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book out in November. So naturally I went and bought it, and read it in an afternoon, and it hit the spot. And there was actually an elephant in it. The last thing I had read was the third book in the Poppy War trilogy, which is dystopian, and I read it for closure's sake because I'm living in enough of a dystopia as it is. I know that Botswana isn't really like it is in the books, but if it were, I would very much like to go there.

I was supposed to go grocery shopping today, but I haven't even managed to get the laundry out of the dryer. I did cook a bag of dried chickpeas, so now I have six cups of cooked chickpeas in the freezer, but I really want chickpeas and greens and I didn't go out and buy any greens.

Giving a cat a toy that makes noise is almost as good an idea as giving a kid a toy that needs batteries. I gave Quirk a ball with a bell in it because I wanted her to have a non-catnip toy, and she's very fond of it.

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dchenes @ 2020-10-09T13:40:00

2020-10-09T18:32:20Z

TGIF, with bells on. I'm glad it's a long weekend, because I'm done with this week in general and work in particular. I'm tired of being a responsible adult in a pandemic election year and worrying because I haven't gotten my mail-in ballot yet, and worrying about getting a flu shot, and worrying about my parents and COVID and Thanksgiving, and all the other things I either have to worry about doing or desperately wish I could do and can't bring myself to, these days. Like going to Marathon Sports for sneakers, or to the French bakery in Allston, which would be expanding the bubble of places I allow myself to go (so far, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Star Market, Petco, Brookline Booksmith, and the dive shop), and I shouldn't do that before Thanksgiving (see "parents and COVID"). ARGH.

HOWEVER. There are good things, to wit:

- My missing regulator has turned up, so I can go get it tomorrow. Mostly that means I can bring all the other parts back down there and ask somebody who knows what they're doing to watch while I put them all together.

- My favorite uncle had his 45th and last radiation treatment today and I sent him a silly congratulatory email, and got a silly response.

- I fell down an internet rabbit hole and discovered one of my favorite madrigals at the bottom, so now I know it's by Monteverdi and called Ecco mormorar l'onde.

- I'm halfway down page 18 of the embroidery pattern, because page 18 is only one column (roughly a thousand stitches, and most of them are black, which means I don't actually have to stitch them). The pattern is 36 pages, so after page 18 I'll be really halfway done, instead of perpetually almost halfway done.

- I've decided the pet insurance isn't worth $1200/year, so I have that much I'm not spending in October. And Lily is still firmly convinced that little red laser pointer dots Must Die, so if I can't keep her off my desk any other way, I can break out the laser pointer and she has to go kill it.

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dchenes @ 2020-10-06T09:17:00

2020-10-06T13:55:03Z

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.

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dchenes @ 2020-10-05T08:16:00

2020-10-05T13:10:07Z

Somebody owes me a weekend. I woke up on Saturday morning with a well-established headache, and threw Advil at it, which took the edge off but didn't make it go away. So I wrote off Saturday. Yesterday I woke up with less of a headache, which subsided enough so that I went grocery shopping in the early afternoon. Then at about 3:00 the headache came roaring back (bloodshot and runny left eye, ice pick through left temple, stuffed left sinuses, sore left side of neck, the whole works) and laughed at Advil until 2:45 this morning, when I finally fell asleep. Woke up this morning with the echoes of it and threw strong coffee at them. My neck aches and my shoulders ache and my left eye still isn't quite sure what happened.

But at least I managed to get TP to last through Christmas, Advil to last through New Year's, cat crunchies to last through Thanksgiving, and apples to last through the week. And various other odds and ends. And Trader Joe's has angel hair again, for the first time since the lockdown started.

I'm somewhat amused at the trend in the New England scuba FB group; half of it is pictures of the northern puffer fish migration (they're everywhere, by the hundreds) and the other half is "I lost a (insert gear here) at (insert location here)" followed a week later by somebody else saying "I found a (insert unrelated gear here) at (insert same location here)". Apparently Poseidon has received enough sacrifices to start returning some of the older ones.

I guess the coffee drove off the headache; now I just need about three more hours of sleep and I might be approaching human again. Too bad it's Monday and I have to be human now.

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dchenes @ 2020-09-21T12:08:00

2020-09-21T17:15:57Z

Yesterday I was supposed to have a cleaning fit, including washing the floors. But the floors got cold, and I ended up having a lapful of cat when I sat down, and I would rather have that than clean floors. So the floors never got washed.

Saturday was nice, and I had gotten an email on Friday from the dive shop saying my back-ordered regulator was in. So I wandered off down there, and my regulator is still back-ordered, and the email was a mistake. Not that I minded all that much, though, because they're still rearranging things now that the renovations are done, and I think the place is going to look amazing when it's sorted out. The Plan, such as it is, is for me to bring all the parts down there when the regulator really does show up, and have somebody who knows what they're doing watch me as I put them together.

Then I wandered off to the bookstore and Trader Joe's, and didn't buy any books because I find it hard to browse properly when all the aisles are one way the wrong way to get to the sections I want. I did, however, indulge in some broccoli cheddar soup from Trader Joe's and had it for rather late lunch when I got home. It promptly went on the "thou shalt not buy this more than once a month" list, along with mochi rice nuggets and and all the other things I would eat way too much of if I bought them regularly.

Then I sat down with the embroidery for a while, and got it far enough back to normal to feel good about it. Tearing out and redoing knitting is easier, especially because when I put in embroidery, I don't generally think about how I would go about tearing it out. And then I have to read the pattern I already crossed out so I can put it back in. Slow and frustrating, but at least I left myself a couple of good landmarks to start figuring it out from.

Yesterday I decided to have a slow morning (partly because I was flirting with having a headache), and took a very long bath, and then got going around noonish. And by "got going" I mean "got dressed and read email, and had lunch, and then sat down with the embroidery and a couple of football games and a lapful of cat". It was fun watching the Chargers and their rookie quarterback (who found out he was starting half an hour before the game) run all over the Chiefs, who couldn't defend run plays at all. But they won anyway. Sigh. I probably shouldn't hate the Chiefs, because I hate them for the same reason lots of people hated the Patriots: the incessant slobbering over the quarterback. But it's sports, not critical thinking, so I hate the Chiefs.

The embroidery is almost back to where it was before I started tearing it out. Thank goodness. That's what football season is for: football and embroidery and laundry (although Friday is laundry day these days, since I'm home anyway and I might as well get it over with while I have to be home.)

October is sneaking up on me. Usually October involves a pilgrimage to Lexington for cider donuts and Arlington for Penzey's. But last I heard, Penzey's is mail order only and about three weeks behind in their mail orders, and I don't really want to deal with social distancing at Wilson Farm. Yet another fun thing corona owes me, along with my birthday celebration and diving with harbor seals. And Bonaire; I would have gone back this winter. Bazzfazzmatazz.

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dchenes @ 2020-09-01T09:43:00

2020-09-01T16:39:55Z

Made it to the dive shop on Sunday (when the weather was better). Renovations look snazzy, and I bought a couple of trim pockets and picked up the octo, pressure gauge, and drysuit hose of my reg setup. The first stage and primary are, of course, backordered. And I need a clip for the pressure gauge, but I can do that when I finally get the rest of the setup.

Stood in line outside Trader Joe's for 20 minutes, and then they didn't have the one thing I really wanted (carbonated black tea with peach juice), but I don't really NEED that, so I was merely grumpy rather than distraught.

My cousin who has already had one surgery for testicular cancer had some lymph nodes removed yesterday, and my mom's great-aunt who had broken her hip last week died yesterday. I'm starting to dread family emails titled "FYI".

I haven't been sleeping all that well lately, mostly because things outdoors keep waking me up. Friday night it was the neighbors burning papers or something in their barbecue grill at midnight, and I woke up smelling smoke and had to convince myself that it wasn't this building on fire. Then two hours later a couple of raccoons started screaming at each other. Last night it was a motorcycle and this morning it was trash collection (which wakes me up early every Tuesday). But I'm stubborn about open-window weather, so the only thing I shut the bedroom windows for in the summer, besides hurricanes, is if the wind is coming from a direction that rattles the blinds. And then there's the once-a-week hairball yarfage on a rug somewhere indoors in the middle of the night. Hopefully that will be ending soonish when the Hairy Beasts start putting on their winter plumage.

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dchenes @ 2020-08-28T09:58:00

2020-08-28T15:59:16Z

Since my kitchen timer died yesterday (file under "don't make 'em like they used to" because it was only a year or so old), and I had enough other things on the make-life-easier list, I added a box of disposable masks to the Amazon order. Considering I only go out about twice a week anyway, a box of 50 masks could last me six months. I feel a little less awful about that than I would about buying 50 masks a month. I can't imagine how I as a household of one would go through them that fast anyway.

Being a household of one is good in some ways because nobody but me is bringing home any virus. But being a household of one means I'm living in a one-person bubble, and I'm afraid to let anyone else into it. Which means that periodically I get overwhelmed by being lonely and there's nothing I can do about it.

Having said that, I do want to go to the dive shop this weekend for their grand re-opening after renovations. For one thing, I want to see the renovations, and for another, I want to know if they've got my reg setup yet. I've already paid for it and paid the credit card bill for it besides, so it would be nice if I could get the actual gear (I'm not annoyed, just letting the Instant Gratification Monster out for a minute). But if the shop was in pieces all over the place, it's possible they're catching up on orders now that it isn't.

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dchenes @ 2020-07-13T09:37:00

2020-07-13T14:24:24Z

Incredible as I find it, the externship letter demon is rearing its ugly head again. I've written six letters in the last week. I'm not interested enough to go look up whether I wrote some of these for the same students to go to the same places in January and am re-writing them now, but I suspect that might be the case. Sigh. At least it keeps me employed.

On Saturday, in addition to having Fun With Field Trips, I had Fun With Ceiling Fan at home. The living room ceiling fan ticked when it was on the highest setting, and the ticking drove me to distraction. The weather lately has meant the second-highest setting, though quiet, wasn't adequate. So I did what everybody does these days and went to Youtube and found DIY ceiling fan repair videos. Based on how the fan was moving, I thought the problem was either in the canopy over the junction box (which, it turns out, is merely over the wiring) or in the connection between the downrod and the motor housing. So I hauled out the ladder, and climbed up and took the canopy off. It was held on by two screws, and the second screw wasn't seated the way it should have been, I think. It took a lot of unscrewing and then fell out suddenly, and fell right into one of the slots in the motor housing. So there I was with the fan hanging onto the ceiling by the wires, with my arm under the fan blades holding it up, and a loose screw in the motor somewhere. And the downrod is only 6" long, and the screwdriver is 8" long, so I couldn't get the angle to take the motor housing apart and find the screw. I put the other screw back in, and climbed down, and called my father to find out how screwed (pun intended) I was likely to be. He said turn the fan on for a second and see what happens. So I did, and nothing untoward happened, and it had even stopped ticking (I wonder if it ticked because of the way the second screw wasn't in properly). I think I got away with something I shouldn't have. I did have to go back up the ladder and wash the dirty fingerprints off the ceiling, though.

After all that fun, I went off to the dive shop. I missed various buses and ended up walking from home to Fairbanks St and then from Coolidge Corner to Marion St and then from Brookline Village to the shop, in the heat, and was a rather disturbing shade of red by the time I got there (they have a mirror for mask fittings). Then I spent $840 in ten minutes buying regulators. Nick says they've been selling a lot of regulators lately, because people would like to know whose mouth it was in last. I bought the same ones I've been renting, because I don't need anything complicated for recreational dives, and I don't mind that they're expensive, because they're important. Then I missed various buses on the way home and ended up going to the Brookline Village liquor store for beer while I was waiting (limit 2 customers in the store at a time, and when I got there, there were 2 customers in the store and one of them was paying for a pack of cigarettes in pennies, ARGH, so I had to wait outside for several minutes), but caught a 65 bus afterwards and went to Whole Foods for seltzer and cherries.

Came home and drank about half a gallon of water and seltzer, and finally stopped feeling thirsty. I think I paid for the dehydration and nerves yesterday, though, because I spent most of yesterday with intestinal unhappiness. It got better by bedtime and I feel much better today, so I'm chalking it up to dehydration and nerves rather than corona-related GI issues. I did call off doing anything yesterday or going anywhere until about Wednesday, though. And I'm out of Cheerios, harumpf.

Last week I ordered the most urgent items from the "small improvements to staying at home all the time" list (and a DVD). I should get the USB adapters and the DVD today, and the keyboard stand on Friday. Hooray for credit card points, because a $80 order cost $14 in actual money. Now all I need is to take two or three days off to sit around and watch DVDs all day.

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dchenes @ 2020-07-06T09:30:00

2020-07-06T15:23:42Z

Lily hates fireworks. Snip hates thunderstorms. It's been a tough couple of days for the feline population around here. At least the thunderstorm last night wasn't as bad as the ones last weekend, in that it didn't come right overhead and involve earsplitting thunder.

I managed not to do a damn thing yesterday, despite the fact that the chores list is getting obvious again (the rugs desperately need vacuuming, etc.). And I didn't make vegetable curry either, despite having bought the necessary ingredients on Saturday. Anything I might want to do elsewhere is basically spending money, if wherever it is I want to spend money is even open, so I just stay at home indoors all the time. I have a perfectly good camp chair on the porch and I don't even go there. This is not the life I want. It's not even the life the public health authorities tell me I have to have, these days. But they've done such a good job telling me that stores are dangerous and not wearing a mask is dangerous and eating indoors in a restaurant is absolutely fatal that I don't want to go anywhere, even though there are places to go now. The dive shop was open for the 4th and I wanted to go, but I didn't, because I suspected it was going to be a madhouse with tank refills. I do want my own regulators, though. It would be nice to know whose mouth the second stage and octo were in last. Not that I'm going diving any time soon, though, mind you.

I think I need to give up Facebook for a while, because half of my feed is screaming about people not wearing masks and how everything is opening too soon, and the other half is screaming about racists, and I'm tired of it (can't say "sick of it" these days). I tried to filter out the screaming about masks, because that's preaching to the choir, but it filtered out scuba stuff I actually wanted.

Swear to FSM, my assistant would have no luck at all if it weren't for bad luck. Her grandfather passed away yesterday. So, since last September, she's had about six months of medical leave, been subjected to a race-based hate mail campaign, and lost her grandfather. Managing her is getting tiring.

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dchenes @ 2020-04-17T10:31:00

2020-04-17T16:19:10Z

Grammie's 98th birthday is tomorrow and we're trying to get most of the family on Zoom for it. This is going to be interesting, because the family ranges from "I have a landline" to "I live in Zoom, just send me a link." So far I've gotten roughly 35 emails and no link, because all of my aunts and uncles just hit Reply All about projecting Grammie's laptop through her TV. I wonder if anybody will remember to send out the link.

The grocery list is back to nearly as long as my arm, and I can't go shopping tomorrow because it will take too long and I don't want to Zoom by phone in the grocery store. I don't know why I even put flour on the list, because there ain't any. I have about four cups of flour left, which normally would be enough for what I use it for (mostly dredging meat before I stew it), but if I want to make any kind of bread, I need more flour. I do not want to make cookies, because I don't need cookies around here and my oven heat is too uneven for them to come out well anyway.

I do know why I put TP on the list. I'll need it by mid-May, so I might as well start looking now.

Amazon says my litter locker liners were delivered on Wednesday. I know they weren't delivered before 5:00 on Wednesday, and there was nothing on the porch at 3:00 or 5:30 yesterday either. So either Amazon is confused, or porch pirates got the box. We don't tend to get porch pirates in this neighborhood and the scanner and the cat food were fine last week, so I'm choosing to believe Amazon is confused. If I don't get anything today, I'll believe it was porch pirates, and I hope they were massively disappointed.

SSI thinks I'm an official Specialty Diver, with an official virtual card and everything. I think I won't bother getting the actual card for that. I'm going to wait for the Advanced Open Water card, which means something to most people. I need two more classes and ten more dives for AOW. One of the classes is going to be navigation, and the other should probably be diver stress and rescue, both of which will have to wait until we can congregate again. The navigation I had to do for the Open Water certification consisted of "put a towel over your head and walk 15 steps away from the instructor and come back, via compass course." I'd like a little more than that, because I know that if I hadn't been with a group in Bonaire, I would have had to surface to find the boat again. I don't want to have to do that.

The postdoc programs' CODA reports are about to be my problem. I think I need some lunch before I let them do that.

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dchenes @ 2020-03-31T09:38:00

2020-03-31T14:38:50Z

Today is going to have to be a "get the hell out of here for a while after work" day, because I haven't been out since Saturday and I'm annoyed with everything except my internet connection. But I have two Zoom meetings today and three tomorrow, so I have to bless my internet connection.

What I'm annoyed with is the following: my slightly stuffy sinuses, which I dwell on because of course that means I have the plague (despite not coughing and still being able to sing); the laundry, which won't get itself out of the basement; the fact that I have to go ship my old laptop off for recycling in the next two weeks; the gauntlet you have to run in the grocery stores, assuming you don't have to run one just to get in; the 3:30 - 5:00 "be productive while removing cat from keyboard every five minutes" period; the fact that I have to be productive in the first place even though a lot of it is pretending to be productive; the fact that one student out of 140 is being a massive pain in the ass about lack of transparency, when we tell all the students everything we know at least once a week; the fact that I can't go to Noank until about June because Dad is the very definition of an at-risk category; and the fact that we might be going through all this again in the fall.

I made Sally Lunn bread on Sunday and it came out pretty well despite extremely elderly yeast. It tried its best, though, and it did actually work well enough to make bread instead of doorstops. It just took quite a while (although it was also a cool and damp day, which is not the best bread-rising weather in the world). Someday when things are back to semi-normal again, I ought to buy some younger yeast, but there isn't any to be bought right now. GRR.

I also signed up for a nitrox class via Zoom on Wednesday (my third Zoom meeting of the day). I might as well give the shop some money even if I can't go diving, and even if I never dive with nitrox, at least I'll have taken the class and learned the theory. And having taken this class I'll be officially halfway to Advanced Open Water certification.

Unfortunately, the online part of the class involved quite a lot of information about oxygen toxicity, and caused me to sit there staring at the wall for a bit. You won't get oxygen toxicity unless you do at least two or three stupid things, but if you do and you get it badly enough, you get convulsions, and lose your regulator, and can't get one back in, and die by drowning way down underwater. However, having said that, I don't intend to go that deep on nitrox, or use 40% or 36% nitrox at all unless there's no alternative (there will ALWAYS be regular air), and I don't ignore what my computer tells me. But I did the online stuff between 9:00 and 10:00 Sunday night, and had to play mindless computer games for quite a while before I could go to bed without dwelling on oxygen toxicity.

Last night I stayed up too late embroidering, but that's because the end of this page is in sight and I really want to get it over with. At least there will be one thing in my life that makes progress.

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dchenes @ 2020-03-09T10:08:00

2020-03-09T16:36:36Z

It was a good weekend in that I managed to go to Target on Friday and get contact lens cleaner and cat food and deodorant, and make a shelf stocker very happy by asking for lens cleaner and not hand sanitizer (she actually said "I'm so glad you didn't say hand sanitizer!"). And I went to the pet store on Saturday and got kitty litter, and Trader Joe's and got lots of stuff including excellent blackberries. So now I feel considerably less like I'm living on odds and ends, and besides that, it was pretty nice out, so I got to be out in the nice weather.

I also finally got zip ties off the list, where they've been since last summer, because I'm slowly putting together a "save a dive" kit. I still need one of each screwdriver and an adjustable wrench and some wetsuit cement, at the very least. So far I've got zip ties and a spare mask strap and an extra BCD-to-regulator hose. But it's a start.

Since it was nice out, and since it's been relatively nice out for most of the winter, I forgot my annual February reading of The Grey Seas Under. Usually I read that in February when I'm sick and tired of standing outdoors in freezing cold waiting for buses, just to remind myself that it could be worse. I read it this weekend instead, and things could definitely be worse.

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dchenes @ 2020-03-02T11:41:00

2020-03-02T18:11:11Z

I woke up this morning with one of those "don't change the altitude of your head or you'll be sorry" headaches, which made feeding the cats somewhat difficult because I had to bend over to get the dishes off the floor. OW. So I showered, and took a lot of Advil, and fed the cats, and emailed in sick for the morning, and went back to bed for an hour and a half. The cats came and kept me company, which was nice of them.

Woke up again at about 9:30, lay around reading for half an hour, and then sat up to see if my head would fall off. It didn't, so I got out of the house at about 10:30 and walked down to Washington Square instead of waiting 25 minutes for the bus at Monastery Rd. Got to work at 11:30ish with a stop for coffee first, and am now trying to do the usual Monday catching up.

However, good stuff: my new bureau arrived on Saturday at about 2:30, and is just about exactly what I want. And since it's six inches wider than the old one, it doesn't matter so much that the drawers aren't quite as deep. And since the top is no longer covered with Stuff, I put the runner Dr. C brought me from Thailand on it. It even mostly goes, because the runner is dark brown and gold, and the bureau is dark brown in the same family. I've wanted to find a home for that runner for years, because it's too nice not to. So there. Now all I have to do is not point out to Snip that there's a tassel on the end of the runner, because I suspect she'd like that to play with.

Other good stuff: SSI finally got it through its head that I had passed the buoyancy workshop, so now it shows up on my diving app as a completed course. I forgot how long it takes them to get the idea. I am now one course away from being a Specialty Diver, which doesn't mean anything except it's halfway to Advanced Open Water Diver by SSI standards. Three more courses and ten more dives before I get to AOW. Navigation, nitrox and either deep or night diving for classes, and probably another trip for dives.

I wish I had felt well enough to do the major grocery shopping this weekend. Unfortunately, since I didn't, I still have it to do. And I still have to buy kitty litter, which I would have done after the bureau got delivered if it had been delivered at 1:00 instead of 2:30. Not that an hour and a half makes all that much difference, but I wanted the clothes back in the bureau more than I wanted to go out and buy kitty litter, and by the time I got that done, I really didn't want to go buy kitty litter.

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dchenes @ 2020-02-14T15:18:00

2020-02-14T20:51:04Z

I went to chorus rehearsal on Wednesday and actually felt like a human being, and got home at a semi-reasonable hour, and then forgot the Fifteenth (or so) Commandment and tried to get the Bonaire photos I took with the actual camera from my computer to my phone. And that took most of an hour, so I got to bed late, even though I did finally get what I wanted where I wanted it (and, now that I have a phone with sufficient capacity, I got all my music on my phone too). The Fifteenth (or so) Commandment is: Thou shalt not attempt to update or sync anything in any PM hour that starts with double digits.

What I wanted the photos on my phone for was to have coffee on Thursday with a former coworker who also used to dive and wants to get back into it. So naturally she canceled the appointment on Thursday morning. To be rescheduled, which means it won't ever happen. I more or less knew that was going to be how it went, but it wouldn't have if I hadn't gone to all the trouble with the photos.

Thursday night was dive club, which was supposed to be Jonathan Bird talking about Blue World and the IMAX film he's just finished working on. Except he had a server crash problem with the IMAX film files he was about to send for final editing, so he was working on that and we got one of the cameramen on the subject of filming in caves instead, which was good too. I have no particular interest in cave diving, at least not in narrow caves. Cenotes might be fun someday, though (a cenote is a very deep hole, but it opens to the sky). My current plan is to get my advanced open water certification and then buy a GoPro camera and start messing with that. I think by then I'll be confident enough to add video for dives less than 40 feet.

Today I'm getting swamped with externship letter requests. In the last three days I've written about 15 letters, for about four people. And then there's the "oh, and can you fill out the second page of this form for UPenn, and sign this form for VCU, and can I get another letter for this other program?" It's 3:45 on the Friday before a long weekend and the next person to ask me for a letter this week owes me coffee.

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dchenes @ 2020-02-10T10:13:00

2020-02-10T17:14:11Z

Add another one to the "experiences I had never thought of having" list: last night the Perfect Buoyancy workshop ended with a 50-question multiple choice exam, underwater, via laminated pages and grease pencil. I passed it, thank you very much, and I took it hovering a foot and a half off the bottom. And I apparently fall into trim immediately and stay there, which is both good and uncommon. I believe the instructor when he says I'm a better diver than I think I am. I just got so used to being less good at it than everyone else I was with in lessons and in Bonaire, that I don't think of myself as particularly good. (I am better than the other student in the workshop yesterday, though.)

The new BCD has been christened, and is wonderful. It's a 30-lb wing, and the rentals were 35, but it didn't make that much difference. I ended up needing 4 lb of weight when I got down to about half a tank of air, which led an hour later to one of those sentences that makes no sense whatsoever except in context: "Wait a minute, whose pockets am I wearing?" By which I meant weight pockets, because I had taken mine out, and when I needed them, the instructor gave me his.

Unfortunately I forgot about the whole "fall down exhausted at 10:30, wake up at 2:00 and stay awake for a couple of hours" thing that happens to me after three hours in the pool. It's going to be a longish day. But at least S is back from leave, so I don't have to babysit the temp (who was perfectly fine, just not up to speed). And maybe I can shuffle some stuff back off my list again now.

Back on the subject of diving, I read Soul of an Octopus on Saturday. I would not want to go diving with the author, based on her reactions. (Also, I think I got more training from my certification than she did.) I enjoyed the octopus-related parts of the book as opposed to the author-related parts, but I don't need to own it, so it went to the HSDM book swap shelf this morning.

I hope this week is shorter than last week. Last week went on for roughly six months.

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dchenes @ 2020-02-03T10:20:00

2020-02-03T17:16:12Z

Massachusetts got its act together over the weekend, so now my state taxes are e-filed and my federal taxes are accepted and I'm waiting on my $900 or so in refunds. I'm going to turn that around when I get it and buy my own BCD, because I'm sick of renting BCDs and spending ages arguing with the straps that are too long in places and too short in other places and you don't know that until you try to get into it. I want to set it and forget it. And I want a backplate and wing setup because that's what I trained with, and besides I have little faith in a jacket BCD fitting properly.

I have now watched all of the extended versions of the Hobbit movies, and I like them much better than the regular versions. Even if they are about three hours long apiece. And now the next time I find one on TV, I can start the extended version DVD at the first commercial break and still be done with it before the TV version is over. That works with the LOTR movies, too.

Snip has a new nickname, which she doesn't answer to because she only started needing it this weekend. DP stands for Dawn Patrol (a la Disney's Jungle Book), and refers to her new habit of waking up sometime between 3:30 and 5:00, going insane, and running across me at least two or three times. Which wouldn't be so bad if she didn't insist on stomping on pressure points, with claws, when she runs across me. She might as well be an elephant in that case, because that hurts. I need a massage, but not like that.

I also need a new kitchen timer, by which I mean I love my current kitchen timer (Oxo triple timer), but the 0 and start/stop buttons are tired and some of the other number buttons are getting tired (I hit 3 and got 43). So I need the same thing again, because this one is probably ten years old at this point and is (shockingly) still available from Amazon. Yet Another Thing From Amazon. Sigh.

On a happier note, it's nice out, and I might actually be able to go elsewhere for lunch for the first time in at least two weeks. Also, on Friday night I got through Montezuma in Civ 5, and am now working on Napoleon. I'm halfway through the alphabet and more than halfway through the list. And I think, but I won't swear to it, that Catalina and Civ 5 will play nice with each other now, so someday I might get my laptop to stop urging me to update it. And I managed to change the burned out lightbulb in the hall light fixture without dropping the glass dome on either my head or the floor, either of which felt like a distinct possibility. So hooray.

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dchenes @ 2020-01-12T17:52:00

2020-01-13T00:20:14Z

Bonaire was amazing.

( Getting there )

( Sunday )

( Monday )

( Tuesday )

( Wednesday )

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

Today has been laundry and grocery shopping, and I really ought to at least open my gear bag and get the boots out of it even if I don't wash them. They're about the only things that really need washing anyway. I'm glad I got outdoors because it was 68 degrees here today, and I was out of bandaids and that just won't do at all, but I think I'm probably going to bed at 8:30 tonight because I am officially frapped out.

Other things to write about sometime, though:

- Cruise ships and night dives
- The stairs to the dock and the fish thereof
- A tuxedo rash guard
- The room air conditioner
- Drying things on the porch
- Lockers and what happened when it rained
- Cantina
- Eels on Wheels

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dchenes @ 2019-12-31T12:21:00

2019-12-31T17:45:56Z

Went to Noank and back and it was quite nice. Mostly I stayed the hell off my ankle, except for the 27th when I went grocery shopping with Mom just to get out of the house. Christmas in Noank tends to be about food these days, so there was shrimp cocktail for Christmas Eve and standing rib roast for Christmas Day and BLTs for Boxing Day. And the usual run of cookies and various whatnot.

Got back on the 28th and went out erranding on the 29th, including investment in an ankle brace I can dive in and an ankle brace for land-based activity. The braces are "moderate support" where the air cast was "firm support", but basically that means the braces fit in my sneakers (and my slippers) without so much arguing, and I can go up and down the stairs like a normal human being, instead of sideways and slowly.

Yesterday was the 30th and I celebrated the fact that I can go up and down the stairs, by taking out two weeks of trash and recycling. The kitchen felt a lot better immediately. Of course, now the kitchen trash is full of used aromatics from my making turkey stock, so it will have to go out again before I leave.

Yesterday I also got my brain to stop waking me up early just so I can worry, by reserving a room in one of the airport hotels for the night of the 3rd. I wasn't thrilled about getting up at an ungodly hour to try to get to the airport from home, so now the plan is: pack all of my own gear, leave home sometime in the afternoon, pick up the rental gear, go to the hotel, sort out what goes in which bag, eat something for dinner somewhere, fall over and get some sleep, and take the hotel shuttle to the airport in the morning.

I started making a packing list, because I've never packed for a dive trip before, and it's getting mildly intimidating. At least this time the rental gear is only BCD, regulators, compass, and SMB, and that will all fit in a smallish bag. Then there's my gear, and toiletries and clothes and outlet adapters and passport and phone charger. It'll work, I just have to figure out precisely how.

However, all that stuff can wait until tomorrow, because this afternoon I am going to see Star Wars. I'm not sure how much longer I could stay unspoiled, and the statute of limitations on spoilers will definitely have run out by January 12, so I want to see it before I leave. So I am.

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dchenes @ 2019-11-20T15:53:00

2019-11-20T21:17:47Z

Yep, LONG bloody week. And I haven't even been to the second dress rehearsal yet. The weather is not helping, because it's been 40 and solid overcast constantly, and raining most of the time, since Sunday night. If I ran the universe, I would be curled up at home in my gigantic sweatshirt and jeans and fleecy slippers until the sun comes out again.

However, at least this orchestra's concertmaster is nice to look at. He's not handsome in the usual sense, but I think he has an interesting face. He was concertmaster once before, too, but I forget which concert it was.

Also, Snip is slowly getting less sneezy, and never lost her appetite this time. Last time she got a cold, I think she couldn't smell anything, and didn't get the idea that her dinner was food because she couldn't smell it. (File under "particularly dim alien in cat suit", but I love her anyway.)

And, I get to do a good deed for somebody. Last fall I made friends with an alto from England, who was in the Master's in Education program. She graduated last spring and went back to London, and we ended up as Facebook friends. Her dad lives in a nursing home. I think he had a stroke, but I don't know. Anyway, he can't speak, can't walk and can't use one hand. But he still likes art and music and all that stuff, and we just got the CD of last fall's concert and I'm sending her one to play for her dad. Assuming I can get to the post office and dinner before rehearsal tonight.

On Monday I bought the new Half Baked Harvest cookbook, which was worth it just for the scallops and cherry tomatoes recipe. I had better hurry up and get enough dives in so I can go scalloping next summer. Next weekend I've GOT to get back in the pool, even though I haven't been because the D line is running charter buses on weekends, and the B and C lines are running charter buses on occasional alternating weekends, and diving gear bags and charter buses don't play nice. (And also because I'm lazy, and also because I've been worrying about things like Lily's kidneys.)

I really miss the sun.

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dchenes @ 2019-10-21T14:23:00

2019-10-21T19:58:21Z

It turns out, having had a major come-to-Jesus meeting with myself on Saturday morning, that my desire to bite people on Friday was due to a serious case of impostor syndrome. I don't like being stuck in the middle, where the definition of "middle" is "take on everything that isn't getting done by the absent person below you, and also take on everything that isn't getting done because your boss isn't in the office all that often this fall and hands it off to you. Oh, and you're in charge of hiring a temp to get yourself out of the stuff below you, so take care of that too." I am not my boss and I don't like being her without help. So I wanted to bite people, because I was tired of feeling like I couldn't cope and not being able to say so.

Anyway, that piled onto the usual impostor syndrome I get every time I go to the dive shop to ask questions, and I had to sit in Starbucks for an hour and get myself evened out again (I would say get my nerve up, but I was nervous enough already, so it was more talking myself down) before I actually went. The answer to all of my stupid questions turned out to be "We'll have a meeting about the trip in December", and if I'd known that, I wouldn't have had so many stupid questions in the first place. It was rental sale and costume party weekend, and I had had grand plans for a blue lobster costume made of Solo plates, but I couldn't find any blue Solo plates. And I don't own any red pants, so I couldn't do a red lobster costume. I just went as me, and hung out for a while, and didn't spend $500 on a rental-sale regulator setup even though I really do want my own regulators one of these days.

This weekend's book is about one of George Washington's slaves, who escaped. I wish some of my several zillion American history classes had admitted that the founding fathers weren't particularly wonderful human beings. The first inkling I ever got of that was when we watched 1776 in high school (which still venerated Washington and Jefferson, but admitted that John Adams was a general pain in the neck and Franklin wasn't a saint). Time marches on, and all that, but I bet lots of them weren't worthy of the halos they're wearing these days.

I've been trying not to have a headache all day. I really wish it would make up its mind one way or the other.

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dchenes @ 2019-10-18T09:42:00

2019-10-18T16:12:18Z

It's not nice to bite people. And it's a short week, so I shouldn't want to bite people. But the Drama Llama is getting on my last nerve because I can't stop hearing him, even if I'm not listening.

And my boss is out of the office doing semi-work-related things, and since I'm technically her spare brain, I'm getting asked all sorts of questions I can't answer because I am not her actual brain. And I get to interview somebody she doesn't want to interview. She got out of it by not being here. I can't get out of it and I don't want to interview this person either.

And my assistant is now on medical leave until at least December and so we're getting a temp, and I'm suddenly in charge of that, and also in charge of answering "Any news from S?" from four or five different people every week. No, there isn't any news, she's on leave and I'm not expecting any news until after Thanksgiving at least.

And my phone has been stuck in 3G for the last month. It was perfectly happy in LTE when I bought it a couple of months ago, once I finally got the SIM card problem sorted. But suddenly it's stuck in 3G and I've tried airplane mode, I've tried removing and replacing the SIM card, I've tried restoring the network settings, I've tried messing around with the cellular settings, and it's still stuck in 3G. Which only really matters when it wants to update anything, but it seems to always want to update something, and it's frustrating that it takes ages.

HOWEVER. I am still going to Bonaire in January, and I'm going to the dive shop Halloween party tomorrow, and that means I can ask all of my questions about what gear I need and when I'm allowed to arrive at the resort and all like that there so I can start thinking about flights. And I can pick up my official open water diver certification card, which has my picture on the back and everything.

And I am still enjoying my silly tote bag, which fits everything I want in it now that I've added a pencil case to its permanent inventory.

And I got a letter that says I've been here for so long I can cash out up to 10 days of vacation into a TDA. Which I probably should, because I never use up all my vacation. But I think I'll only do five days.

And today is Friday, so I don't have to come back here and Deal With Everything for a couple of days.

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dchenes @ 2019-09-16T10:08:00

2019-09-16T15:19:13Z

I'm annoyed with myself for wasting a perfectly lovely day yesterday staying indoors all day, but on the other hand, putting on shoes was one step too many, and I can't go any further than the driveway without shoes on. So I stayed indoors and did laundry and watched football and wasted a lovely September day.

It was Snip's 12th birthday yesterday, though. I had bought her some birthday provolone on Saturday and broke it out yesterday and she was happy. After next September I'll be living with two official teenagers.

On Saturday I did the running around, and got caught in the downpour because I had just gotten to Washington Square when the dive shop called to tell me my computer had arrived. So I turned around and went back down there, and got rained on some on the way there, and got poured on going back to the bus stop. Fortunately the bus stop is somewhat sheltered and the computer in question doesn't even care where it is until it gets four feet underwater. Although it was in a box, so it didn't actually get wet anyway. I wish it had better instructions, either in the box or online, because I have yet to figure out how to set the date and time on it. Youtube to the rescue, I hope.

I also went out again after it quit raining, and cashed in my collection of quarters. I'd been trying to be patient and fill the whole container, but it was within 1/2" of the top and I couldn't stand it any more because I wanted to know how much it amounted to. So now I know; if using a Coinstar machine and its almost-not-worth-it 11.9% fee, the quarter collection container amounts to at least $130.

Where the Crawdads Sing is a reasonably good book. I borrowed it from a coworker who had borrowed it from another coworker, and read it on Saturday morning. I don't need to own it, but I'm not sorry I read it.

Silly, but gratifying, milestone: for the first time in my life, a comment I made on a NY Times article got selected by the staff as a "NY Times Pick" and, as a bonus, ended up being the second most recommended comment on the article. It was about the high school swimmer in Alaska who was stripped of a win because the referee didn't like the way her suit fit. All I said was that on the swim team I was on in high school, the first rule was no comments about how anybody looks in a bathing suit. And nobody made any as far as I know, probably partly because it was a kicked-off-the-team offense and partly because after the first week we stopped noticing anyway.

I asked my gin-snob coworker last week about what I wanted if I wanted a G&T, because Tanqueray wasn't quite it, and he said Seersucker. So I tried it, and he was right. It shouldn't be drunk neat because there's too much mint in it that way (and I don't like drinking neat gin in the first place), but as a G&T, it's lovely stuff. I don't even want lime in it. Which is good because I never seem to be able to find any limes that aren't rocks with lime rind on them.

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dchenes @ 2019-09-12T15:07:00

2019-09-12T20:07:56Z

It's not even pretending to be warm out any more, which is a massive letdown because it was warm this morning. Right now I want a delivery service that will bring me a sweatshirt and fuzzy slippers in half an hour, because my hands and feet are cold.

First chorus rehearsal last night, and I got home at 10:10, which was nice. Unfortunately I got stuck in front of the person who can't ever quite sing in tune. I find it mentally exhausting and almost physically painful to have to concentrate that hard on not listening. It's like cutting an annoying tag out of the collar of your shirt and then having to live with the remains of the tag rubbing on the same spot. The only thing you can do about it is change shirts, unless you happen to be somewhere you don't have another shirt to change into, in which case you grit your teeth and bear it.

Oh, I am sorely tempted to go to Bonaire in January and get my advanced open water certification. But I can't do it without going diving between now and January, so I need to figure that one out.

TGIF, tomorrow. I don't care if tomorrow is Friday the 13th or not; just get me through today, because Thursday the 12th usually seems to be worse. Anyway, tomorrow I won't have cold feet all day, and it will be Friday besides. I'm ready to stop coming to work for this week, thanks.

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dchenes @ 2019-09-05T10:32:00

2019-09-05T18:53:33Z

I posted a notice to the New England scuba divers FB group yesterday that basically said "I want to go diving but I don't drive except in emergencies, so I'll pay gas and parking and anything else car-related as long as I don't have to operate the car", and got what I was expecting, which was a lot of "fin up or shut up" and jokes about how not diving counts as an emergency.

Today I got one serious response that offered to carpool from Cambridge. That makes me feel considerably better. Of course, Dorian has ruined the diving for this weekend all over the east coast (we're in for high surf and riptides), but never mind. At least one person took me seriously.

If it weren't a short week already, I'd be sorely tempted to shorten it. I don't think I got enough rest out of my vacation. And I've still got 24 vacation days and a personal day left over. And I have 130 sick days because I go years between instances of being sick enough to stay home, and then it's only for a day or so. I use personal days for "sick of".

I'm glad I got home last night before it rained, because it rained rather impressively for a while there. I was actually expecting worse, because the sky was a really dirty yellow and that usually means we're in for something not good. But it merely rained. And cooled off the air, which made the Hairy Beasts happy. At least I assume they were happy, because they were both asleep for a good slice of the evening and nobody woke me up at 4:30 this morning for once. I was happy about that.

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