The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

I thought it was Friday today, but it isn't. Oh well.

There is hope for this week, however, in that I still can't sing (stupid sinuses), but at least I've stopped waking myself up snoring. More sleep is good. Now all I have to do is persuade Snip to stop sleeping directly on top of my legs and getting offended when I want to roll over.

There is also hope for this week in that I got a six-pack of Guinness from one of the students I wrote about eight externship letters for. When I said he owed me beer for the letter I wrote at 4:45 on a Friday a couple of weeks ago, I told him I was kidding, but he went and did it anyway. And so I accepted the beer, and it's sulking in my bottom file drawer until I take it home.

Speaking of sulking, we're probably going to have to close the faculty practice for a while because they're down to a week's worth of masks and can't order any more on account of coronavirus panic hoarding. We've got to keep the teaching practice open because that's the point of being a dental school, but they're rationing masks. I don't know who I'm more annoyed with: the media for fomenting panic, or the general public for being gullible.

I still have to do massive amounts of grocery and kitty litter shopping, which is going to take at least tomorrow night and Saturday. But it will be good to have food in the house and not feel like I'm living on odds and ends. And having kitty litter in the house is always good.

Thursday the 14th did an excellent impression of Friday the 13th. Suffice it to say that the Oral Surgery course director owes me, again, and I got yelled at three times for (a) providing pizza in the only room we're allowed to eat pizza in (student with dairy allergy, who happens to be on break for board exams until April) and (b) ordering said pizza with my own credit card and wanting to be reimbursed for the $146 (couldn't avoid being charged tax while ordering online, and the PCard is tax exempt). I was not going to win, no matter what I did. I was in a fine old temper when I left to go pick up my new gear bag, which is going to work fine, but is deeper than my arms are long and I think I might need to keep an LED flashlight in it so I can see into the bottom, because it's pitch black in there.

So, on Friday, because it was warm out and because I refused to do anything I didn't think was fun, I went to Zaftigs for brunch and then came home and opened a couple of windows and watched the Hairy Beasts get drunk on fresh air. Never gets old. And I had a massage appointment which sorted out my right shoulder and my left hip.

It was massively windy yesterday, so I stayed home. I didn't feel like being blown all over the landscape. I didn't feel like doing much of anything physical, actually, so I finished The Secret War (too bad Stalin was a paranoid homicidal megalomaniac; that didn't help Russia at all) and The Nightingale, which kept me up until 1:30 in the morning finishing it. It was a quick read, but it wasn't easy.

Having done nothing useful for two days, today was Useful Day. I went out and bought kitty litter, and destroyed the granny cart when I hauled it off the T and one of the wheels came off. I dragged it home anyway and got the kitty litter up onto the porch, and then went out again to Star Market for V8 juice. I've been on a major kick for that lately and Trader Joe's version doesn't come in cans. And I went to Whole Foods for chicken broth, because I want to make bean soup one of these days and I don't have enough homemade frozen broth.

Came home again and hauled the kitty litter and groceries upstairs, put laundry in the wash, and started vacuuming, and the vacuum cleaner made unhappy noises. So I gave the beater bar a haircut, and unclogged the hose (it's not supposed to clog in the first place), and it was happy again and I vacuumed the rugs. And put the laundry in the dryer. And ordered a new granny cart and a new batch of Litter Locker liners. And folded the laundry. And then went out and bought beer (Founders Dirty Bastard, which is 8.5% alcohol and has taken my mind off my right hip, which is not happy because it was compensating for my left hip before Friday.)

Of course, because I have to go to work tomorrow, I got inspired and started designing a scuba gear rack. I don't like the "bags of gear all over the office" storage model I've got going now, and I ran across a DIY drying rack that's made of PVC and fits in a Rubbermaid tub so everything can drip dry. That's exactly what I want, but of course it was only a picture, and didn't come with a cut list. So I started designing one that would fit in the boot tray I've already got. I'm sure there's at least one major flaw in the design that I haven't seen yet, but it's a first draft and that's good enough for now.

Now that it's over, I can laugh about it (partly because after last night, I suspect Matthew Slater feels the same way). On the 23rd, I set up my out-of-office message like a good little cube farm denizen...but I somehow set it to send itself as a reply to all 3500 messages currently in my inbox. Once I figured out what was going on, I tried to pull the plug, but the server is more efficient than I am. So a lot of people got a lot of email. I'll have to send out a blanket "yes, I know, I clicked the wrong thing, sorry" when I get back, unless everybody decides to call me about it.

Christmas this year was about as low-key as last year, but several orders of magnitude more cheerful. Dad actually enjoyed his dinner, for one thing (and it was an excellent rib roast, which made dinner for Christmas and sandwiches for Boxing Day, and an excellent blueberry pie, which made dessert for Christmas and breakfast for Boxing Day). Last year Dad didn't have much appetite and nothing tasted right to him for a couple of months anyway. I gave everybody something to read and something to consume while reading it, and got some mad money from the parents and a hat from the Fairly Godmother.

I also tried a couple of experimental beers: Dogfish Head Higher Math, which is 17% ABV and knocked me on my ass, and Stone Xocoveza, which is stout with a LOT of coffee in it (and might have made a good float with vanilla ice cream, but I didn't try that). Glad I only bought one bottle of each.

Other good news: Grammie gets to go home from the rehab center today. She was supposed to go home last week, but hit a minor snag and they decided to keep her for another little while. But now there's no reason for her to stay there, so home it is. She still wants to go to Florida for some of the winter, and I hope she gets to do that. I think it will be good for her to see that she can still do most of the things she wants to, hip replacement at 93 years old be damned. Thank goodness driving is not one of those things. She gave up her license several years ago.

Also good news: I'm going to see Star Wars today. I wanted to do it before the internet becomes one giant spoiler, which is going to happen soon because the movie's been out for a week now. Besides, I saw all the prequels in theaters, so why not the sequels? (I was two years old in 1977, and I would have been scared stiff by The Empire Strikes Back when it came out, and my parents knew that. So I saw Return of the Jedi in a theater and was scared stiff by the Emperor at the end.)

I suppose if I'm going to take the bus to the movies, I should look up the schedule. This is the same bus I take to work every day, but I never take it after 8:00 in the morning, so I have no idea what it devolves into after rush hour. For some reason that amuses me.

This week seems to have refused to get any better, but at least it doesn't have any choice about whether or not it ends.

Last night I dreamed that the Air Force had commandeered all the computers at HSDM and set them up in a big circle so they could do an astronomy project with high school kids. (That's the IDP flipped-classroom setup headache, although in real life it only involves furniture, not computers.) Of course I was still trying to do things for the CE course, and I couldn't find my computer with the necessary files on it, and I was trying to figure out how to get payment for the course out of people who had no interest in paying for it or insisted that they had already paid even though I knew they hadn't, and...well, anyway, it seems I'm somewhat stressed about next week.

On the bright side, I have discovered Zombie Killer cyser. On Wednesday I had such a bad day that I left work incandescently angry (I scared myself; if the person I was angry with had been physically present, I would have hurt myself trying not to hurt her), and couldn't walk it off. So I decided to apply alcohol to it, because at least then I might not care how angry I had gotten. I was looking for something in the 8% ABV range because I knew that would absolutely work, but couldn't find anything that leaped off the shelf at me, so settled for 6.5% and drank it fast on an empty stomach. It helped, which is good, but I should probably buy another bottle so I can actually enjoy it.

Speaking of enjoying things, I should figure out how to fit the new Captain America movie into this weekend somewhere. I do like going to see comic book movies in the theater, but I keep not doing it because I keep running out of weekend afternoons and not considering weekday nights as viable options. Something's gotta give, here.

Here it is, Monday again, and yet again I look around and wonder where the weekend went, because there are still things I want to do over the weekend. However, at least I feel pretty good about what I did get done this weekend. (Including discovery of Troegs Brewery Java Head Stout, which you can practically spread on bread.)

Does it count as "buying your mother flowers for Mother's Day" if you buy them, keep them for yourself and send a picture? (Dad's allergies are much happier without flowers in the house.)

RIP Lena Horne; her episode of The Muppet Show is one of my favorites.

One of the reasons I'm a beer drinker:

You can't lose half the cork in the beer when you try to open a bottle.

(I was making beef stew with wine in it, and the bottle of Bordeaux I bought decided it wasn't going to go quietly. I shoulda used Guinness, except I didn't have any.)

Am I the only one who isn't having a rather severe case of Monday? My day so far has been downright pleasant. So much so that I'm considering braving the mall after work, because the second of my two old pairs of jeans is giving up its inseams in a rather dramatic fashion.

On a semi-related note, there's got to be something I can use the rest of that pair of jeans for. The fabric everywhere but the inseams is still perfectly fine.

The Kennebunkport Brewing Company should've called their darker beer Kennebunkporter. But they didn't, so I didn't buy any yesterday.

I'm still trying to decide whether I like the beer I bought last night. It's not quite what I wanted, but I'm not sure I actually dislike it.

I've spent the day so far getting the post-SOP stuff for 7 candidates sorted out. Which means I wrote 14 letters and 7 emails, dispensed five copies of each of the 7 packets to various folders, printed the HR paperwork and CVs for all 7 people, turned the underneath of my desk into a fire hazard in the course of consolidating folders (the recycling bin and the confidential trash box under my desk are both overflowing, because I can't cram any more paper into the big confidential trash bin), finally struck floor and desk simultaneously fifteen minutes ago, and am now trying to get motivated to write a letter that's going to take me half an hour to get done. I really don't want to, but if I get it done, I can get a major minor headache off my desk next week.

It really ought to be naptime. Maybe it's merely time for a trip downstairs to see if there's anything worthwhile in the vending machine.

I admit the existence of global warming, but I have a hard time believing that global warming is the only reason we're having a wet summer. There have been wet summers before. I think people are using global warming as a scapegoat for a lot of things it's probably partially responsible for, but isn't entirely responsible for, just because it's a political buzzword lately.

Now that I've got that microrant over with...

Our co-op student from Northeastern had his last day here today, so since we like to feed people, we had pizza and salad and ice cream cake for lunch to send him off.

Last night I made a large batch of Lebanese taboule with quinoa instead of bulgur, and with garlic, which the recipe didn't call for. (I put garlic in pretty much anything savory, if I think the recipe will work.) As far as I can tell, Lebanese taboule is an excuse to eat parsley, with occasional grains and tomato and cucumber bits. I had all sorts of fun making a chiffonade of parsley with the kitchen scissors. (What fun is cooking if you can't make a mess once in a while?)

That reminds me, I have to sharpen knives again.

Other random food-related stuff:

Lindemans peach lambic is quite nice.

I should remember that the orzo salad I never quite get around to making would probably work just as well with couscous instead of orzo.

Bottled lemon juice is never quite what I want, but keeping half a dozen lemons around isn't quite what I want either.

I don't know whether it's the black cherry lambic (which is extremely pink, but otherwise good) or what, but I'm having snickering fits over the Mythbusters firing frozen chickens at airplane windshields.