The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

I didn't do anything worth writing about on Friday, except stay home and cook a mediumish Napa cabbage with a pound of ground pork and a bag of rice cakes so as to have lunches for the coming week.

On Saturday I went out and bought a paint scraper and some sandpaper to get the two or three windowsills that really need it ready to be repainted later this month, when there's leftover paint from the upstairs hallway. And I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought a box spring cover, which I hope will work because the new box spring is split (so is the old one, but it doesn't have a cover). I had to drop it in the washing machine immediately upon getting it home, because the store reeks of potpourri and the box spring cover reeked of industrial chemicals and I didn't want to deal with waiting for either of those to fade. And I went to Trader Joe's and discovered they've got baskets out again, so I can stop being so paranoid about putting more in a cart than I can carry home.

Today I had Easter lasagna in Noank. I was the least vaccinated person out of the six of us; everyone else has had their second shots already, even if it wasn't two weeks ago. So I kept a mask on except for eating, and we all hugged each other anyway because we all needed that. And I got to see what Dad has done with the shop (including, he says, sending literally 2.2 tons of stuff to the dump) and was duly impressed. And the lasagna and blueberry pie were both quite nice.

Tomorrow the new mattress arrives sometime between 2:15 and 4:15, so I can still do laundry and watch movies in the morning and enjoy my last very-long-weekend day.

It is really absurdly windy out. Or maybe it's just loud because I opened some storm windows to let some of the semi-springlike air in when we had some, and didn't shut them again. All the windows need washing, but I don't think we have enough ladder to do them from outdoors and I'm not going to start with gymnastics from indoors.

I hope Lily's renewed interest in food persists when the pain shot wears off this afternoon. Yesterday she got interested in Quirk's crunchies at breakfast (so she got some of her own and ate half of them over the course of the day) and raced me down the hall to be waiting on the cat tree for dinner. I forget when she stopped doing that, but it was nice to see her do it again. She does like the Royal Canin food, though.

There is precisely one person who's allowed to make me cross things off their task list for them, and it is not the person who tried to make me do it just now. And the person who's allowed to do it has been doing it a lot lately and I wish she wouldn't. Just as well I'm taking Thursday, Friday, and Monday off.

Speaking of time off, I'm sorely tempted to take tomorrow afternoon off too, since my vaccine appointment is at 2:20 and I have to get to Cambridge and back by bus. And I want to stick my head in the Coop and the Harvard Bookstore and see if I can find the sequel to Foundryside, which I read yesterday and enjoyed. I think Robert Bennett has read Patrick Rothfuss, because the way magic works is pretty derivative, but Bennett put it in a bag with "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and medieval Venice, and shook it up vigorously.

Yesterday was Quirk's third birthday. I hope it was better than the previous two. At least she got a little bit of celebratory sour cream (her favorite human food so far).

I was supposed to do a lot of chores at home yesterday, but I only got as far as replacing all the smoke detector batteries on the second floor, getting the crud off the tops of the kitchen cabinets while I had the ladder out anyway, Swiffering the bathroom and the hallway, and getting the cat hair off the top of the bathroom door. I still have to vacuum (ye gods, do I have to vacuum...) and clean the kitchen counters and the bathroom fixtures. And make beef and barley and mushroom something or other. And make a list of all the other esoteric things like flipping the futon mattress and finding something that will clean the refrigerator door (so far bleach, baking soda, Lysol kitchen cleaner and plain old elbow grease have all struck out).

Snip decided she had to help with the smoke detector batteries, and in the process of trying not to put the ladder down on top of her, I got tangled up with it and stubbed a couple of toes. Some kinds of help are the kinds of help we all can do without. But after I put the ladder away she came and sat in my lap and was a very good Faithful Catpanion for a while. And I have a reasonable expectation of not being awakened at 2 AM by a chirpy little bastard of a smoke detector this winter.

I haven't been doing a lot of productive gainful-employment work lately. But I thought about it some and decided that it's OK, because the Drama Llama got to pretty much avoid CODA while I worked my ass off for a year and a half. So now he's working his ass off for a while and I'm not, so much. It all comes around eventually.

Well, it was going to be a good week, and then I went to pay bills on Sunday night and discovered that yet again, somebody who isn't me has ordered Netflix on my credit card. So I called the credit card company and they basically said (with an accent that was hard to understand over the phone) go away and don't bother us, call Netflix. Which I did, and Netflix was most apologetic and blocked the card from any further usage, but I'm annoyed at the card company. If that wasn't the card with the longest history and the highest limit, I'd cancel it entirely.

Today was furnace maintenance day, which led to a lot of clanging around in the ductwork, and led me to diagnose furnace maintenance day rather than mice in combat boots. But since the heat wasn't going to come on and it's cold and wet out, I went and shut all the storm windows for the winter. I try to hold out for November, but it's not going to get any warmer in the next four days.

I did get to have bibimbap for lunch, though, because the H Mart bibimbap kit is good for about three bowls. And I had exactly enough rice left to make three bowls. So I get to have the last one tomorrow.

I stopped buying alcohol in mid-July, because I could see it becoming an expensive pandemic-related habit and I don't need the calories. But I'm sorely tempted to go buy something fairly strong for the election results. The question is whether I'll be drinking it in celebration, in which case it should be something I like, or in despair, in which case it should merely be something strong (and should really probably be Blithering Idiot, if I can find any.) Zombie Killer will do for celebrating; it's not as strong, but I like it and the name would be somewhat apt.

I wish this had been another three-day weekend, and I do have personal days to use up, but it wouldn't have been a good idea on account of a meeting tomorrow that I would have needed today to prepare for. Except I don't, because powers higher than me scheduled a town hall meeting for exactly the same time, so my meeting is now canceled.

Grammie is in the hospital, expected home today. The hospital is offering all sorts of home help, but I don't know how much help it will actually be if she does get it, because after all she's 98. How much PT/OT does a 98-year-old need? She would like the human contact, though.

I finally decided to use the frozen rice cakes that have been hiding in the freezer for ages. They came out pretty well, although slightly overcooked, but I'm excusing that because this was the first time I'd ever used them. They need soaking first, and now I know they need soaking in hot water, because they sat in cold water for an hour and a half to no effect at all. The end product was stir-fry, with ground pork and mushrooms and half a Napa cabbage. I had better figure out what to do with the other half today, because it's sulking in the bottom shelf of the fridge and it's already wilted.

The ballot-tracking site says mine was finally mailed last Thursday. I'm hoping it doesn't take ten days to get across town, but even if it does, it doesn't matter because I'm not mailing it back; it's going to the Brighton library drop box.

I shoveled an inch of dead pine needles off the sidewalk on Saturday, because they were getting slippery. Last year must have been a good year for pine needles.

Maybe I should put red meat back in my diet more than once a month or so, because I had steak for dinner last night and woke up this morning determined to Get Things Done. Which I did, and now I have to take the trash out because it's full of vacuum cleaner canister contents and disgustingly dirty Swiffer cloths and wet paper towels. The litterbox and the pantry floor are clean, the bathroom sink and the tub are clean, I'm clean, the floors on the sunny side of the building are Swiffed (Swiffered?), the rugs are vacuumed, and the laundry is in the dryer. And the rust stain is off the kitchen floor. Mostly. I think I need CLR to really get it off, but baking soda and elbow grease accounted for most of it. (Memo to self, buy more baking soda, because that stuff is ANCIENT and probably not fit for cooking with.)

I don't know that it was because of the steak; maybe it was just getting through the week and getting over the bad mood I was in when I went out to buy steak yesterday after work (I hated my boss for sending me three more requests for letters for scholarships after 3:00, the cats for stomping on the laptop, the idiot pedestrians for wearing masks under their noses, the idiot drivers for blatantly running the light at Comm Ave and Washington, the grocery store for making me stand in line outside, etc.). But I haven't felt like springing out of bed and getting things done for ages. I've been getting work-related things done despite myself. Today is different.

In another 40 minutes when the dryer is done, I can go take the trash out and run errands, thereby also getting vitamin D and exercise. And then I can come home and do whatever I damn well please for the rest of the weekend. So there.

The sink still drains, as it should, but it hasn't for so long that I'm still enjoying it (in a "my goodness, will you just look at how much toothpaste there isn't in the sink?" sort of way). It also still leaks, just a wee bit, and I should fix that. But I spent all day Monday being stiff in strange places on account of a couple of hours of under-sink gymnastics, and yesterday I had to glue myself to the computer again.

I really wish I didn't have to be glued to the computer so much. This chair is fine for playing Civ all weekend, but not so much for five days a week for six months. And I don't really want to go on the Great Computer Chair Quest again. It took me long enough to find this one. Maybe it's time to go on the Great Chair Cushions Quest, though.

I'm never going to be able to sort out what day of the week it is, this week. I thought yesterday was Prince Spaghetti Day, despite the fact that I know that today's Wednesday and Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day. Or so I'm told, anyway.

It's been a reasonable week, which is somewhat of a surprise, but I'll take it. I actually got to meet the new Dean via Zoom today, and he at least acknowledged that I'm more than a glorified secretary (partly because I introduced myself as the program administrator for the MMSc in Dental Ed and the DMD curriculum coordinator, and didn't mention that I'm also the assistant to the Associate Dean for Dental Education). New Dean is a periodontologist, and a researcher, so there's going to be some shift in focus because the previous Dean was a clinical oral surgeon. I think I might have wasted all the work I put into curriculum maps for a combined MD/DMD program, but what the hell, I got paid for it anyway.

I took the air conditioner out of the office window today, because I only really need it when it's 95 and humid, and it hasn't done that for several weeks and isn't supposed to do that for as far out as the weather forecast goes. I only really believe any given weather forecast for about three days out, but I'd rather have an open window than an air conditioner taking up all the room. I did at least put the screws back in the holes they came out of so I can find them next summer, if I'm still working from home next summer.

Having looked at the disaster going on around that window (the third-floor air conditioner leaked in the wrong direction several years ago and there was water coming through the top of the second-floor window frame), it's not quite as bad as I thought. Several hundred layers of paint have peeled off the plaster, but the plaster itself is just sitting there. (But ye gods, they must have used paint about the consistency of peanut butter last time they painted this place. I wonder how they got it through the sprayer?)

Anyway, never mind, it's a long weekend and I really ought to do something with it besides getting my hairs cut on Sunday. Still not quite ready to take the time to be a redhead again, but at least I can get it cut and not walk around looking quite so shaggy.

Thank goodness for minor miracles, CODA has approved our interruption of education plan for the class of 2020 (never mind the fact that they graduated in May). But they also decided to put off our next accreditation site visit for a year, so now it's in 2025. That really is a minor miracle, because they mostly make our lives difficult by adding new things they want documented. I suspect that after they meet next week, they'll have a whole new list of things they want us to tell them about the classes of 2021, 2022 and 2023. But that's next week, and besides, we already told them most of it when we told them about 2020.

Having introduced myself, via Zoom, to the class of 2024, I can now put my hair up again and turn on the air conditioner for half an hour. I try not to run it for more than half an hour at once, because it's loud, and it runs up the electric bill since it doesn't shut itself off (it doesn't have a thermostat). But it takes the edge off the humidity quite well after half an hour and then I live with the humidity creeping back up again. And there's a breeze today, so it's not utterly unbearable without the air conditioner. I just want my hands to stop sweating so much and my laptop to cool down a little.

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.