The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

Because today is Friday, and because I would really rather be thinking about other things than the things I am thinking about, I'm going to catch up with the things I haven't written about Bonaire yet.

( 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 )

( Eels on Wheels )

( Cantina )

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.

Went to Noank for Easter lasagna, which was mostly a success, but I probably should have come back later yesterday. The timing did work, but it wasn't ideal. Live and learn, though.

Oh well. Never mind. The train was on time in both directions, which is practically unheard of, and I didn't get rained on as much as I might have. And when I got home, there weren't any hairballs anywhere.

The daffodils have come up with a vengeance in Noank, too. I wish they'd get around to it here, but I guess that's what being a hundred miles or so north will do for us. The grass is getting green around here, at least, and that's nice. I'm ready for the end of bare trees on brown grass all over the place. (Of course, that also means it's sneaking up on pine pollen season and my living room will be faintly fluorescent yellow for a while.)

Speaking of fluorescent yellow, the marginally adequate curry was slightly better than adequate after it sat in the fridge for a couple of days. It still wasn't worth writing home about, but at least it wasn't inedible. And it had vegetables in it.

It seems that despite the fact that I wasn't planning on making a huge deal out of my 43rd birthday, work was. So I have now had flowers and sushi and cupcakes (twice; Georgetown Cupcakes delivered two orders instead of one, because the first one tried to be delivered to Norfolk instead, so they sent out a second one.). And a bottle of wine, and a Starbucks card.

Grammie called me the night before my birthday, just to tell me that she hadn't forgotten my birthday card, but it was going to be late because she couldn't get to the post office, so she had to send somebody else. I thought that was very sweet of her.

Completely unrelated to work, somebody sent me a book on the feline folklore of Japan, and I have no idea who it was. I thought it was the copy of The Ordinary Princess I had ordered for myself last week, so I didn't particularly think anything of it until it turned out to be very much not what I was expecting. But my name is on the package, and whoever sent it knows me at least a little, so thank you, whoever it was!

I took the plunge, and Lily has a consultation appointment for radioiodine treatment on August 7. Neither of us is enjoying the battle of wills about pills, and as soon as I get over feeling horribly guilty about making her do things she hates (getting in the carrier, going somewhere in something with an engine, leaving her in a strange place while she feels funny, etc.), I'm hoping it will be better for everybody. It will be interesting to see if Snip realizes she's an only cat for a while.

It's going to be an expensive summer. Friday after next when I get back from Falmouth, I'm going to the dive shop and sign up for classes. I said I was going to do that, and dammit, I meant it. As soon as I can stop living in Harvard Square two nights a week, getting home from which is a pain in the ass, I can start going to dive classes on weekends.

I think the next huge trip, not this coming winter but the winter after, is going to be an African photo safari, possibly in Botswana. I know that Botswana isn't like the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books make it out to be, but I've seen safari pictures from one of their game reserves (I forget which) and it looks amazing. And they have elephants, and I want to see an elephant in its native habitat. And doing it the winter after next gives me time to psych myself up for all the shots I'm going to have to get. One of them is Hep A, again, and that hurts like one and a half tetanus shots. I know that because I got a tetanus shot at the same time, in the other arm, before I went to India. Maybe this time I'll be able to get the second dose of Hep A and then I won't have to do it again EVER.

Thanksgiving consisted of all the usual stuff, plus four pies for six people. Which is a perfectly fine ratio if you ask me. And I don't even like one of them (Greek walnut, which is sort of related to pecan, only with walnuts and honey and cinnamon. I don't like nut pies in general; too sweet, and too much goop and not enough nuts.). But I certainly had my share of the other three.

I wasn't quite in the mood to deal with my sister's overachievements and nondiscussable opinions (professional football and anything related to Christmas are on the Everyone Should Hate This Because I Do list) again, but I got through two separate showings of pictures from two weeks of business trip in Japan and a week climbing rocks in Utah, and sat there feeling like a lump of Crisco as usual.

My uncle, who never does anything halfway once he gets interested in it, has been playing Himalayan singing bowls for the last four years or so. He brought ten or so of his collection of 18 or so bowls and played them for us, and it was actually very nice. They're meditation for him the way embroidery is for me. I wish I lived a little closer so I could go hear him in public. He plays on Tuesday evenings and the commute down to Salem, CT and back is a little much for a school night. He did give me a CD of him playing, and I still have the technology to play CDs, so that's good.

I came back to Boston on Saturday and discovered that yep, Lily flat out doesn't like the New and Improved dry food. I wondered if she would eat it if there was nothing else available, but she didn't. Or at least not much. So I caved, and bought the two-pound bag of the original formula for $22. Good thing for her that she's cute. I haven't actually given her any of the original formula yet, because I'm trying to figure out how to give it to her without Snip eating it instead. Snip is all about dry food. Fortunately she only likes the cheap wet food, so Lily has been eating her expensive extra protein wet food without help.

A List, just because, of places I haven't been yet but want to someday:

- Africa (photo safari)
- Scotland
- Grand Canyon
- South America (possibly Machu Picchu, possibly somewhere else)
- Caribbean (after scuba classes; I might do the final certification dive at a resort)
- New Zealand
- Iceland outside Reykjavik (I liked Reykjavik very much, but I want to see actual volcanoes)
- etc...

Back from Noank, which was nice, and Falmouth, which was quite nice. I helped Dad with the maintenance on the generator battery (meaning he told me how to do it, and I did it), and helped Grammie with crossword puzzles (she's 95 and doesn't care much about pop culture) and rooting for the Red Sox and fetching things for her if she didn't feel like getting up again right after she had sat down.

I spent large chunks of yesterday at the beach, and had the unheard-of privilege of having the entire beach to myself all morning. And it was low tide, besides, so I went swimming even though I know better than that. Generally, thou shalt not go swimming unless there's somebody else on the beach. The water only came up to my hips, though, and there aren't any worrisome currents. I went swimming properly in the afternoon when the tide was high and I had company. And I stepped on a rock underwater and cut up the sole of my right foot some, but that's the sort of thing that happens. At least I didn't turn myself into an entirely crispy critter in two hours, like last time.

And I am still on vacation, and there are only three things on my List of Things to be Up To between now and the end of the 27th. (And two medical appointments, but I can get Up To things after those because they're both in the morning on two different days.) Today is a day for making friends with the Hairy Beasts again, since I've been gone for four days and they're not quite sure I am who I say I am, yet.

It took two hours of overtime last Thursday and five hours of overtime last Friday, but I got the 2197 pages of DMD accreditation documents sent to the printer yesterday morning. I might as well apply for a PhD somewhere, since we've pretty much written a thesis. (Problem being, I don't want a PhD in higher education, which is the only thing other than translation that I'd be qualified for a PhD in.)

And here it is, several hours later, and I've been through Books 1, 2, 4a and 4b making a whole lot of niggling little corrections (sent to me as cell phone pictures in my email; I got a picture of what page the error was on and a subject line of what to fix), one of which was a redundancy problem that meant I had to update the appendix numbers in the section and the table of contents; three of which were line spacing problems that meant I had to replace the entire section; and two of which were infuriating "page number melded with the actual document content and had to be extracted" problems and sent them off to the printer again as final versions. I want nothing to do with these documents for the rest of the week, except for the last bits of window dressing I have to do for the PDF versions (linking the table of contents so you can click in it and go where you want; bookmarks are so 2010, but I put them in anyway).

I've decided to be Not At Work for two weeks starting Aug 14. I know I'm going to the Cape with Mom for some of that time, but I'm trying to decide if I want to go to the Bay of Fundy and watch the tide come in for some of the rest of that time. I've always wanted to see the tide there, and I don't need either a car or an airplane to do it, but it's another Thing To Be In Charge Of and I don't wanna be in charge of anything complicated. Too bad responsible adulthood comes with a certain level of complicated.

Now that it's not All CODA All The Time, I need to make the eye doctor appointment I didn't make in June, and the regular doctor appointment I need so I can keep not having cramps, and probably a mammogram appointment because I haven't had one yet. Whee.

Is anything awesome lately? Well, the lunch I was treated to at the Gardner Museum cafe yesterday was awesome. The ant invasion seems to be over. My DVD collection now has a shelf in which it all fits, so I can find what I want when I want it. I have a 90-minute massage appointment for Friday, and I remembered to reschedule that when they called and said my massage therapist would be on vacation in July. Lily is the poster child for well-controlled feline hyperthyroidism. I finally washed the kitchen floor last week.

Charleston was lovely for vacation in April, but I don't think living there in August would be much fun. I may go back again on vacation someday, though.

I met a man from Reno walking down Tradd St with a camera while I was walking up it with a camera. He said he wasn't used to all these old buildings. I said I was used to old, but the stucco and palm trees were what I wasn't used to. I'm not used to privacy doors, either, and they amused me no end.

I'm also not used to horse-drawn carriage tours all over the place. I must say they have the whole system down to a science, or as close as it can come without using any technology more advanced than cell phones (with which you call a pickup truck with a great big water tank in the back, and they come and hose off the street where your horse has done the necessary). I went on two different tours with two different companies on two different days, and was carted around first by Riley (possibly a Percheron cross?) and then by Trevor (a Belgian with the biggest head I've ever seen on a horse). Charleston has all sorts of rules about who can go where and how often, which I suppose is good because as a citizen of Charleston I wouldn't want a carriage full of tourists looking into my living room every five minutes.

This was not a low-calorie trip, and I had decided that before I went. I ate fried chicken and green bean casserole and shrimp and grits (twice) and fried green tomatoes and pimento cheese and biscuits and an excellent whoopie pie and pulled pork nachos. And pizza twice, yesterday, because I had it for lunch and then JetBlue bought us pizza because the plane was four hours late. The weather in Boston was apparently just about done being completely awful when we landed at 8:57 last night.

If I had been there longer, I would have done the Fort Sumter tour and actually found the Hominy Grill and had shrimp and grits there too (I've discovered there's nothing I don't like about the basic principles of shrimp and grits) and and and...but I got to spend some time Not At Work and Not At Home simultaneously, and that was what I needed. And the weather wasn't terrible for what I was doing in it; it rained like hell on Wednesday night, but after dinner.

I like the Vendue, even though it wasn't cheap. It's half hotel and half art gallery, and I fell in love with one piece of art, but couldn't afford it. It's a picture of a woman in an orange sari, and the orange peacock-feather pattern on the sari is escaping off onto the background. But the whole background is gold leaf, so the piece is for sale for several thousand dollars, and it's staying in Charleston. I took a picture of it, though. And the gallery is doing an exhibit called Homage, so all the art in it is parodies of other (usually famous) art. My favorite one was a parody of Magritte's The Son of Man, only instead of an apple, he has an iPhone taped over his face. And I loved the fact that right next to the elevator on the third floor, they had three of those sand and water frames mounted to the wall. But the elevator always got there before the sand did anything interesting, so one night I stood there and played with them for twenty minutes. The maintenance man who came up in the elevator with me was somewhat amused to find me still there when he was going back down again. But I was on vacation, and I wanted to play with the interactive art, so I did, so there.

Just so I wrote it down, the piriformis spasm took six days to sort itself out and I think a massive amount of walking might have helped it some. But if I ever get another one, I'm not sure I can convince myself to walk for at least five hours a day for a couple of days.

As it turns out, I am a legal adult with a driver's license and a credit card, and as of ten minutes ago I have plane tickets and a hotel room in Charleston, SC for four days the week after next. So there. I need to be Not At Work and Not At Home at the same time for at least a little while. Right this minute I don't even care if it rains on me for four days; at least I'll be somewhere different and being rained on.

Welcome to New England! Black ice on Wednesday morning, 50 degrees on Wednesday afternoon, 10 inches of snow on Thursday and 10 degrees on Friday morning.

I managed not to wipe out on the black ice, but I did cross the street on my hands and knees. It just wasn't going to work unless I lowered my center of gravity. It was nice to step onto the bus and not have to worry about the floor being slippery.

Yesterday I was going to shovel at 2:00, and then it got dark and proceeded to snow HARD. So I waited until dinnertime, and cleared off the sidewalk and the plow berm (which, surprisingly, wasn't that bad yet). And when I wasn't shoveling, I did some embroidery and rotted my brain on various electronic devices and provided lap space for various cats.

What I should have done, of course, is get a jump on the weekend chores and do the laundry and clean the bathroom and wash the floors. But of course I didn't do any of that. Maybe that's why I had another frustration dream. New one, this time: I was trying to get across to somebody that I don't disappear when I'm talking to them and a specific third person joins the conversation. Somewhere in there was a bottle of hot sauce with a label on the bottom that said "Scientology supports this hot sauce." I don't know why Scientology, or why hot sauce (or why I was on a charter bus with the hot sauce). Maybe as long as my brain was bringing up things I don't like, it threw those in.

I'm not trying hard enough to get back into my size 8 pants. Every time I think I'm doing well, my willpower explodes and I end up buying and inhaling cheese ends or pork rinds or something. As much as I'd like to blame it on reading bad news every time I read the news, I can't; it's plain old lack of willpower on my part. Helped along by the fact that there's usually leftover meeting food lately. There are too many damn meetings going on around here.

I think I want to go to Seattle on vacation, whenever vacation ends up being. Sometime in April, maybe. It depends on CODA. But I don't need a passport to go to Seattle and I haven't been there since 1984. I know that because my sister got a souvenir shirt that said "I spent my 1984 summer vacation in Washington". I wonder if they still make those shirts?