The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

Well, it's been vet day. Lily has a grade 2 luxating patella in the right rear, but she only has to have urinalysis and blood pressure checks once a year instead of every six months. Snip has an illness, which I think is her annual November viral URI, and she peed on me because she was already muzzled and burritoed and there was no other way she could express her opinion of being stuck with needles. She got blood drawn to make sure it isn't a bacterial illness. Lily has forgiven me, but is loopy with rabies shot, and Snip retreated to the bedroom and hasn't bothered trying to bite me when I go see if she's inclined to get up and eat. (Not yet. Loopy with rabies shot and sluggish with illness.)

So, a thousand dollars and a load of laundry later, it's been vet day. And it was a damp and grey and gloomy vet day, too. If we hadn't all gotten stressed out, I would probably have made a lot of popcorn and watched a lot of movies. I guess I can do that tomorrow. Or maybe I'll break into the horseradish chive potato chips I got from Trader Joe's. I admit I got them partly because I was so amused when Lily tried horseradish cheddar potato chips. I think she can't smell horseradish, but she could most certainly taste it and didn't like it at all. But I also got them because I like horseradish. And because if I have to stay home until Thanksgiving, I'm going to have some not entirely healthy snacks in the house, dammit.

Yesterday I put on my Data Wrangler hat again and went tracking down information all afternoon and putting it in the giant spreadsheet. Today I thought up a workaround for the information I couldn't find yesterday, and put that in a secondary spreadsheet and sent it off to the biostatistician. If he wants to get a headache extrapolating students' ages from the year they received their undergrad degrees, more power to him. At least there's only one class he has to do that for, out of the five I found all the other info for yesterday.

I had just sent that off and was congratulating myself when I got a request for updates to all the info we have on the MMSc program, for the new dean. So, brochure, application form, program guide, curriculum blueprints, checklists, current program personnel directory with biosketches/photos/primary interests, course syllabi, all like that there. Fortunately it's not required until next week, so I have a little while to assemble it all and make it pretty before I turn it into one giant PDF and bookmark it. And I suppose somewhere in there I ought to try to take a picture of myself that I don't hate, because I'm the only program staff member and it looks silly if I'm the only one with no photo. But I haven't seen a picture of myself that I didn't hate since two drivers' licenses ago. (Well, OK, the picture of me and everybody else in front of the lionfish burger stand in Bonaire wasn't awful. But it isn't suitable for work either.)

Lily took over Snip's bed in the sun this morning, and poor Snip got completely confused. She couldn't figure out that there was another bed, and so she came and stared at me and hollered for a while. I finally got the message and went into the living room and opened the window, which woke Lily up and got her out of Snip's bed to come be friendly. Then Lily realized the windowsill was available, and Snip got her bed back, and all's right with the world. And I got to have my second Zoom meeting without confused and hollering cat.

Online chorus tonight, to consist of a singalong to Vivaldi's Gloria. I'm not sure I want a third Zoom meeting today, though. Even if there is singing involved.

It turns out that Trader Joe's broccoli cheddar soup has gone on the "not to be eaten by person who no longer has a gall bladder" list, and the less said about that, the better.

Unglued-from-computer, day 1: pet store for kitty litter, home, Trader Joe's for groceries. Spent more than I really meant to on groceries, but hadn't been for a week and a half.

Also canceled haircut appointment in September because hairdresser has moved next door; next step, make appointment at place hairdresser went to (Brookline Arcade? Didn't know there was a hair salon in there. Apparently there are three of them.).

Got things done today so I can do only and precisely what I want to do tomorrow. Gotta buy cat crunchies on Wednesday, and if the weather cooperates, going whale watching on Thursday.

Day 2: Decided to get it over with and went and bought cat crunchies, and went to the bookstore and dropped $60 on books I had already read and donated, but felt like owning again (in paperback, because paperbacks take up less space). Bookstore atmosphere is still weird; one-way aisles and no browsing to speak of if you want to spend less than 15 minutes indoors.

Useful note: smoked salmon will practically raise both cats from the dead. They shouldn’t eat fish on account of the phosphorus and the elderly kidneys, and they got fish last month when I gave Snip a happy pill, but they didn’t get very much smoked salmon (despite their best efforts).

Day 3: Did only and precisely what I wanted, including embroidery (now I remember why I stopped where I did; there’s a mistake in there somewhere and I hadn’t found it) and watching movies on TV. I should have watched DVDs instead, because the usual trick of “watch one thing until a drug commercial comes on and then switch to something else” just leads to watching a drug commercial on the other channel.

Work intruded upon me to the extent of a text from the Drama Llama, who got stuck dealing with the faculty member who was giving me a hard time last week. No, I hadn’t gotten as far as ordering any supplies yet; I only got as far as who’s going to pay for them.

Talked myself out of whale watching on account of probable lack of social distance on the boat. Sigh.

Day 4: Spent lots of the day tearing out embroidery, because I was tired of faking it around the error. Tearing out takes longer than embroidering.

Accompanied the tearing out with Season 1 of Vikings, because I own the first three seasons and didn’t really get into it when it was on TV until partway through the first season. Still enjoyable, although the end of the season consists of “let’s kill off all the female characters we don’t know what to do with.” And Travis Fimmel and Clive Standen are perfectly acceptable eye candy.

Day 5: Another work intrusion; had to log onto a Zoom meeting and change the host so they could present slides.

Spent more of the day on the computer, in general, than I really wanted, but it got humid enough to notice when I tried to embroider. Pried myself loose for the purposes of reading an actual book for a while.

I haven’t bought new music in a dog’s age. I think the regiment is going to invest in some Wardruna.

I wish we'd had yesterday's massive thunderstorms on Friday when I felt like breaking things. But at least we did get the massive thunderstorms, so I feel better. Or at the very least less scrambled.

Long story short, sometime in the next 3-5 years I have to come up with $200,000 or so to put a down payment on this building with. A $40,000/yr second job would be the quick way, but my ideal second job would be something like the transcription project that I could do from home, and I don't know how likely that would be. Data entry, maybe?

The plan has always been for me to buy this building, but there was never a timeline before. Now there is, so I need to get my hat and pants on and make it happen. The less money I have to borrow, the better.

Yesterday was probably not Lily's favorite birthday ever, since we had five or six thunderclaps that scared me, never mind scaring the cats. But she got real chicken scraps for dinner, and that's one of her favorite things in the universe, so it wasn't all bad. And Snip got the chicken cat food mush that Lily would usually get, so that was fine with her too. As of September 15 I'll be living with two official teenagers, so sometime in the next 3-5 years I will probably have two very bad days. But not yet.

Lily decided to put up with the blood draw, so Dr. P got a good blood sample, and the kidney results came back better than six months ago, slap in the middle of stage 2 disease instead of beginning stage 3. Since feline kidneys don't get better, Dr. P thinks the reading six months ago was probably because Lily hadn't tanked up on water at the time. Anyway, we get to keep doing what we've been doing. I'm going to need another prescription for feline happy pills before the appointment in November, though, because that's the "needle in the bladder for urine sample" appointment and Snip needs a happy pill to get a normal physical.

It was nice yesterday, when it got hot but there was still some breeze coming in. Less breeze today, and I turned the fans on, so it's still nice indoors. I feel like I should apologize to the garbage men, though, because I had to take the trash out yesterday for want of doing it at 6:30 this morning, and there was some badly freezer-burned shrimp and most of a half gallon of awful ice cream in it. I don't want to think about what was in the trash can this morning after it sat there overnight.

Awful ice cream, by the way, is Whole Foods store brand vanilla. It's cheap for a reason, and it's gummy and orange. It's orange because they were going for French vanilla, despite there being no eggs in it, and overdid the food coloring rather a lot. I do not want orange-colored vanilla ice cream. So I threw it out and bought some from Trader Joe's, which I haven't tried yet (I want to put dalgona coffee on it, but I have to figure out when. Possibly on a Friday night when I want to stay up for quite a while.). I do like TJ's coffee ice cream, though, so I have hope.

I have an eye appointment on June 11. I'm still not sure I want to go, although it's nothing I'd have to unmask for; it's that the T is still running the Saturday schedule and the 65 bus runs once an hour, which is a pain in the ass.

I am out of cereal, but supplied with kitty litter for at least the next three weeks. All in all I'd rather have the kitty litter. Guess I'd better decide what's for breakfast this week if it isn't cereal. If I had some ham, I could have some ham and eggs, if I had some eggs. I suppose I should make an actual grocery list for Friday, too.

I hope whatever foreign object has been in my right eye since Friday night has now been washed out. At least it stopped hurting. It didn't hurt as much as having an eyelash in my eye, just enough to remind me it was there. I suspect the object in question was a cat hair. They're not shedding seriously yet, but they both seem to delight in jumping on the desk and sticking their tails in my eye. At least somebody's delighting in something, these days.

Open window weather would help, but it's March. This is one of the reasons I dislike March. I want it to be warm, and it won't be warm until the middle of April at the earliest (discounting the 70 degrees we got on Friday, which was wonderful, and I want it back).

Hopefully I have now sorted out whatever problem Apple Music decided it had with music I bought right after grad school. By which I mean now it actually plays. Fortunately, because I was going to be very annoyed at how much of my Fruit & Bait list wasn't playing. I don't actually remember the last time I bought any online music, or CDs, come to think of it. The last time I bought sheet music was January.

New phone case is not RFID-proof, which means I can keep my T pass in it, and also allows me to keep the HSDM PCard in it without being obvious about it, and on top of all that, new phone case is smaller than old phone case. So it was a good idea. Old phone case looks a little classier, though.

New sneakers tried to happen, but Marathon Sports in Washington Square seems to specialize in having the shoe I want but not in the size I need, and it was too cold on Saturday to stand around waiting for the 66 to go to the Harvard Square store. So I'm waiting for the Washington Square store to call me, and wearing my snow boots in the meantime.

Kitty litter didn't happen, because every time I tried to plan for it, there was something else I needed or wanted to do first, and I didn't want to go back out again afterward. We'll be OK through at least Thursday, though.

Speaking of cats, I seem to be collecting measures of "if X doesn't interest this cat, call the vet", and I've got a new one: skin off the back of a chunk of smoked salmon. It applies to both cats. So far the list for Snip is provolone and having her feet messed with. The list for Lily is little red laser pointer dots and rotisserie chicken.

Working my way through the Honor Harrington books, in plot-thread order rather than chronological order, and deciding that the earlier ones are better. Best I can remember, I've read 1, 4, 2, 3, 5, and am now working on 8. I'll read 9 just to find out how that plot thread ends, but then I think I'm done. Although at least Honor is a little more tolerable as a character than Hornblower.

GAH. We just started 2020, and already people are bugging me for standing-meeting dates in 2021. Chill the hell out, willya?

I might have overdone it just a bit yesterday, ankle-wise, but I had a case of cabin fever, and stuff to do, and I wanted to see if I could do it without the Iron Maiden. When I got down to the driveway with both sneakers on, I wanted to celebrate (although dancing still is not a good idea, so I just stood there and grinned like an idiot).

After I got done standing there, I hiked down to Washington Square and took a picture of the divot I sprained my ankle in, and then went off to REI and finally bought more socks. Walking back to Kenmore afterward maybe wasn't a brilliant idea, but it was Sunday, so there was no 65 bus. That's the really annoying thing I'm finding about this whole saga; I either get to stand around for 20 minutes waiting for a bus, or I get to walk too much. And I usually come down on the side of walking too much, because standing around with a sore ankle isn't all that much fun either. I went home after REI because I couldn't face waiting for the C at Kenmore (having just missed one) and taking it to Coolidge Corner and then waiting for the 66 down to Brookline Village (every 20 minutes on Sundays) and then walking out to the dive shop. I really ought to do that today, especially since work ends at 1:00 and it's easy to get there from here.

Since the Fenway movie theater is around the corner from REI, I also went there and tried to buy a Star Wars ticket for this afternoon. Wasn't gonna happen unless I wanted to sit in the front row. So I guess it'll wait until I get back from Noank.

Today the ankle hurts worse than it has been, but it also hurts in a very specific and different place than it has been, so I don't know if I did that yesterday or if it's just that tendon's turn to hurt. Advil does seem to be the thing to do about it, though.

In other news, I don't know what they put in Purina NF Advanced Care kidney wet food as a binder, but it might as well be Elmer's glue. The stuff sticks to utensils when wet and holds onto the dishes like cement when it dries. Fortunately both cats seem inclined to eat it. Hopefully it sticks to their ribs, too.

Second fancy cat bed obtained. Cats now spend large chunks of the morning asleep in fancy cat beds. Hooray!

On the other hand, I get to spend very large chunks of the next week or so in a compression boot. I was running for the T at Washington Square and tripped over the dent in the pavers. Gave myself road rash on both palms and the left knee, and realized my right ankle felt wrong (and my vision went white for a while, which was very upsetting in general. Fortunately it came back again, but it felt like it was out for five minutes.). When my brain started working again I tried to walk back to the intersection, just to see if I could walk at all, and realized I couldn't walk home. The next best thing I could think of was to go to Coolidge Corner on the T and then take a cab home. Except I remembered there's a Partners urgent care in Coolidge Corner and my ankle hurt all the way up to my thigh, so I went there instead.

Examination led to x-rays, which led to inconclusive diagnosis. It's definitely sprained and righteously swollen, but they can't decide if it's slightly fractured or not. (But I am most likely still going to be able to go to Bonaire.) They were going to let me go home and put on my pre-existing air cast, but I had only gotten as far as the post office when the NP caught up with me and brought me back in for the boot. I must admit it feels better in the boot than it did in my sneaker.

Anyway, then I went to Trader Joe's because I was thirsty, and then I walked up to JP Licks (for lack of buses) and applied ice cream to my wounded dignity, and called my parents lest my mother see what I had posted on FB and start worrying. In lieu of reading Winnie the Pooh to me (which was part of the aftercare for stomach flu and broken bones and other such disasters when we were little) she narrated some of the Patriots game, which amused me. And then I walked up to Comm Ave (for lack of buses, again) and got on the T and then walked home. By the time I got home, I was ready to get the hell off that foot and stay that way until Tuesday, but I couldn't, because I had to do laundry because all the warm socks were in it. (Sock shopping was one of the errands I didn't get to do today.) So I did laundry and have been mostly staying the hell off that foot since. But only mostly, because the bathroom is at the other end of the hall. Lily has been freaking out about the velcro noises the boot makes when I walk.

I have to go to work tomorrow. But I'm sorely (ha ha) tempted not to go to work on Tuesday in the snow with the boot on, because I don't want a cold wet foot and I don't want to put a plastic bag on the boot and then slip and kill the other ankle. And I don't really want to try the air cast until the swelling goes down.

All in all I can think of better things to do with a Sunday afternoon.

I'm glad the one reasonably nice day this weekend was the one I was out running around in. Saturday was haircut/grocery shopping/more grocery shopping/laundry/more grocery shopping day. I went to three grocery stores because TJs wasn't going to have a dishpan, and it turns out Star Market didn't either. But while I was at Star Market I bought donations for the food drive at work, which turned out to weigh enough that I didn't want to buy seltzer right then. So I went to Whole Foods for seltzer after coming home and running the laundry through the wash. Of course, I also came home from Whole Foods with a rotisserie chicken and a cabbage and some cheese ends and a bag of 10-minute farro and...

Yesterday I took the cabbage, two boxes of sliced mushrooms, two cloves of garlic, two boxes of grape tomatoes, a quart of chicken broth, and a cup of 10-minute farro, and made soup that doesn't know it isn't a grain bowl. Today and Wednesday are dress rehearsals, which means that on Tuesday I need something I can eat for dinner that doesn't involve a lot of thought (dump soup in pan, reheat, dump in bowl, add parmesan) and on Thursday and Friday I need something I can eat for dinner that doesn't involve any thought at all (open container, add parmesan, eat cold). I never have enough working brain cells by the Friday of a dress rehearsal week, because I get home stupid late on Monday and Wednesday and then can't sleep on Thursday because the music is stuck in my head so hard it keeps waking me up.

I also won't sleep all that well this week because Snip has her annual post-vet cold, and is very sneezy. But that doesn't keep her from wanting to curl up right next to me and wake me up when she starts sneezing. And it's very wet sneezing. Fortunately it only lasts about five days or so, but still, it's not convenient for anybody. I wonder if a humidifier would help?

Lily doesn't have a UTI, which we knew anyway, but I had the test done just in case that's why one of her kidney numbers was weird. So she has one weird kidney number, for which the only treatment is a prescription diet. Sigh. At least the vet said it's not imperative that she goes on it now, so I can finish up the current round of expensive but non-prescription food first and try to find something she'll like, that doesn't have corn in it (really, Royal Canin?) in the meantime.