The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

Ugh. That's all. It's still cold out, and my touchscreen gloves are still no good under 35 degrees or so, and I got blindsided yesterday by the Oral Health Session having moved to the first year class and being in February, instead of the second year class in October. HMS did tell me that, but they told me that last September as an aside to the October session and I promptly forgot about it because the October session was using all the neurons not occupied by the October faculty retreat six days after it. So here it is, late January, and I've got to do the Oral Health Session dance all over again already. Ugh.

Also, the director of admissions is retiring next week, her assistant left at the end of last week, the registrar is retiring at the end of next month, and the longest-serving Senior Tutor is leaving sometime before next fall. If the registrar's assistant is also leaving, there goes most of the institutional memory in the office. Just what we need right before an accreditation site visit (in 2017, but you'd think it was next week). Ugh.

Good things, lest I get mired in a rant: at least it looks like we're not in for a foot of snow this weekend. I don't want a foot of snow, so that's fine with me. And I have two more weeks before I get my Sundays back from voice lessons, which was definitely the right decision. And I have wing sauce that isn't a biohazard, and another head of cauliflower, and therefore I have dinner for two days. (And I have some excellent frozen poultry jello, so I can also make soup if I want to.) And Trader Joe's has baconesque popcorn again.

Maybe not the right decision: I have ordered myself a Thorgi. I probably shouldn't be spending money on frivolities like that, given how much I'm about to spend on sneakers and chorus dues after spending a lot on a Kindle and phone protective gear and adless apps in the last couple of weeks. But I also ordered my coworker, who had a corgi until last week and has a birthday this week, a Waldo corgi, because when I showed her that, she cracked up all over the place.

If tomorrow wasn't Friday anyway, I would have been sorely tempted to declare it Friday and have another long weekend. Someday I'm going to get somebody to listen to me when I say I'd be perfectly happy to work four long days and have consistent three-day weekends.

Whatever it is I'm trying not to come down with is still skulking around, and I wish it wouldn't.

But yesterday I spent several hours embroidering, and I can't find language for how happy that makes me. Embroidery is how I distract myself from all sorts of things, like eating too much because I'm bored. I wandered off into playing word games on my phone when I couldn't embroider, but I was running down the phone battery too fast and Screens Are Evil and all that jazz. And when I embroider, I'm accomplishing something while distracting myself. Accomplishing something is satisfying.

Gotta go grocery shopping tonight, since I managed not to do it yesterday. I went into my voice lesson with no energy and came out of it with the same level of no energy (despite endorphins and caffeine), so I decided not to drag myself to the grocery store besides. Apparently having no energy is good for being less uptight when I sing. Less uptight is good, and I'm good at overly uptight under normal conditions.

This here is excellent cider syrup weather. Based on it being 49 this morning, I have a hard time believing it's going to be 70 on Wednesday. But in either case, cider syrup is good stuff, so I should get some cider and boil it, and get some seltzer to put it in. And I should get some zucchini and finish the grated zucchini experiment. And I need fruit and cat food and string cheese and almonds and maybe this is going to be two shopping trips...

I was wrong, but not entirely. It's tendinosis in three of the four rotator cuff tendons and a possible degenerative SLAP-1 tear. (They're not positive about the tear.) An -itis is an acute inflammation; an -osis is a chronic one. So I was right about the inflammation, anyway. On to cortisone shot, as soon as I get around to scheduling one.

In other news, I attempted a new recipe this weekend and it was such a disaster I threw it away. (And this from somebody who ate oxtail-flavored red wine and shallot jam with carrots stuck in it. But the oxtail was too expensive to throw away.) It was supposed to be Smitten Kitchen's zucchini rice gratin, but I oversalted the grated zucchini, and the whole thing never really stopped being runny in spite of the fact that I didn't use as much liquid as called for. So it came out as inedibly salty Green Goop (related to Green Soup, which is an infamous extended-family cooking disaster), and I threw it out. I think I'll go back to sauteed zucchini with a little olive oil and a pantload of garlic, which is how I usually do it. Although I don't usually grate it. Maybe I will, next time, just to see how it goes.

New voice teacher gave me some new things to think about. Apparently just because it sounds like mush in my head doesn't mean it sounds like mush to anybody else, so worry about airflow rather than diction for a while. Seems my diction is interfering with my airflow. I suppose that explains a couple of issues, but I would never have thought of it myself. That's why I take lessons.

I went clothes shopping this weekend, because although I'm not wearing through the inseams of my pants so much these days, the fact is I own a lot of cheap pants and eventually they're going to fall apart somewhere. So I went and bought three pairs of pants, a shirt and a sweater. But I tried on a lot more things than that, and my shoulder didn't like putting on and taking off a lot of shirts in a short period of time. (At least it kept me from buying a dress I looked good in, but couldn't zip.) And then the weather got humid again. At this point I'm about ready to go to the orthopedist on Thursday and say "I'm done messing around with this thing. Cortisone shot, right now." But they'll probably want me to make Yet Another Appointment for that. And my right shoulder has started complaining (albeit quietly) again too, although it seems to have a little more range of motion than it did when it hurt before.

Other fun stuff: no voice lessons this winter unless I find another teacher. My current one is only teaching in Boston on Wednesdays, which is the only day I can't have lessons because I have chorus rehearsals. Paying for a Zipcar once a week to drive myself to Stoneham after work, on top of paying for lessons, doesn't appeal at all. The question is, given that work is going to be a bear until at least the end of October, do I just give up on lessons this winter and start again in the spring? And if so, with whom? I have a suggested substitute, but I have to decide what I'm going to do. Especially because last year, voice lessons were my chance to have fun singing, and chorus rehearsals were less fun. Decisions, decisions.

Today is Tuesday, not Monday. That means there could be ice cream tomorrow. Of course, there's also HRC EC meeting tomorrow night, but at least that involves less time than a rehearsal does.

I guess I must be making progress with PT, because today I got to use three-pound weights for one of the exercises. Good thing I had PT today when it was less humid, because yesterday all I wanted was for the joint to fall apart and get it over with. (Although it won't fall apart; the problem is mostly that things in there are too tight.)

I wish I could get cherry tomatoes like the ones I can get right now, in February. YUM. Ain't nothin' wrong with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella balls. Especially when the cherry tomatoes outnumber the mozzarella balls 5 to 1 or so. I'm trying to take a surplus 8 lb off, which I put on by eating what I wanted when I wanted for two weeks. I had to break out the size 10 pants, and that makes me disappointed. So, back to 26 points per day for a while and as much walking as I can stuff into weekends. Too bad I have to spend a good chunk of both days this weekend in Stoneham for dress rehearsal (Saturday) and studio recital (Sunday). I'm only singing We Shall Wear Midnight this time, and I think I might be doing it early in the recital although we don't have a real concert order yet. I usually end up somewhere in the last half of the program, but this time I was given a choice and I said I didn't want to go last. Which I guess means I go early.

Speaking of concerts, HRC is doing Purcell's Ode to St. Cecilia this winter. I listened to it the other night and observed that it's a good workout for a tenor soloist and probably less work for the chorus than the Rossini from last fall (thank goodness). I still have "sing the alto solo in the Messiah" on my bucket list, too. I'm debating how long I want to stay with HRC; I'm clerk for this year and next, but I'm not sure I want to put up with this director for the foreseeable future after that. Maybe with a different director. Who knows, though?

Heavily medical week last week. GP on Tuesday leading to orthopedist on Wednesday and cardiologist on Thursday, for ECG. The unofficial opinion is that I haven't inherited a bicuspid aortic valve; since it was a holiday weekend, I probably won't get the official opinion until later this week. But I'll take the unofficial one to start with.

The holiday weekend was good; I haven't had a holiday weekend including a Friday in years, or so it seems to me. It feels different when the weekend starts on Friday, because you can get all the Saturday stuff done early if you want to. When the weekend goes Saturday to Monday, you get all the weekend stuff done as usual. Or at least that's how it works if you're me. This weekend I did a lot of walking by way of buying fruit and kitty litter on Friday, and made a massage appointment for next Friday at 4:00 since I was in the neighborhood anyway. Saturday I had a slow morning and was shocked at how deserted Coolidge Corner was at 2:00 in the afternoon. That's what July 4 will do for you, I guess. I watched the fireworks on TV and wished they had spent less camera time on the angle that showed the smoke with the fireworks behind it. But I have to say that Melinda Doolittle and the Sons of Serendip are both worth listening to. (I think I'll try "I Lived" in my next voice lesson. This semester we're Messing About With Anything, so I never sing the same thing two weeks in a row. Steeleye Span, Jimmy Eat World, random show tunes, random arias...in short, Messing About.)

Yesterday I decided that it was too nice out to spend all day indoors (although it was quite nice indoors too, and unhumid enough to get embroidery done), so I went out to Coolidge Corner again and spent $80 on new books and ice cream. It's peach ice cream season again, which could be a bad thing except that JP Licks peach ice cream is reasonably peachy but way too sweet. I could fix that if I owned an ice cream maker, but that's one of the reasons why I don't. Some of the others include storage space, freezer space, and available electrical outlets in the kitchen. If we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs...

Onward, through the morass of meetings this week. One of them shouldn't be happening this week, but somebody got antsy and made me schedule it despite half the people who need to be there being unavailable. Makes no sense to me, but despite it giving me agita, it's not really my circus. All I can do is what I'm asked to do. So I do.

I'm trying not to be gloomy, but it's a losing battle at the moment. The weather is gloomy and I had to go to a lunch meeting with indifferent pizza. I know it was indifferent pizza, but I could have eaten about five slices anyway. (I stopped at two.) And my feet are cold, because I'm wearing my work-appropriate spring shoes and no stockings and the meeting room was on the frigid side. That was an hour and a half and a very large mug of tea ago and my feet are still cold.

However, I have no more mandatory lunch meetings until next Wednesday, which is good. And theoretically the sun will be out again tomorrow, so I can go elsewhere for lunch and photosynthesize for a bit. And tomorrow I have my first voice lesson since the middle of March. I didn't turn in the registration form on time on account of being out of the country, so I got stuck with lessons on Wednesdays at 6:00 instead of on weekends, which I had requested. Last time I tried weeknight lessons, I had to stop because I wasn't getting much out of them except frustration. But last time I was still working for OFA, and that was a whole other ball of wax. Last summer when I had glee club rehearsals at 5:30 on Wednesdays, that was OK, and hopefully starting at 6:00 will give me time to get there and chill out a little before my lesson. And there are all sorts of dinner options on the way home afterward, too (and Wednesday is still my eat-anything day).

Speaking of eating things, HSDM is starting its own private (not officially led by WW) WW group. So that's an optional Thursday lunch meeting. I think the first rule ought to be "no judging anybody else's lunch". I know what worked for me, but it will be interesting to see what works for other people. If I had a car, or if I lived somewhere that meant I couldn't get to the grocery store unless I drove, things would have to work differently.

Speaking of things that work, I think I'm back on the right track embroidery-wise. Or at least, if I'm making a mistake, I'm making a different mistake than I was last time. I had to tear out the whole top of the current repetition to get back to the place where I made the initial mistake, and fix it. As of last night I'm almost back to where I was when I realized I couldn't fake it and had to actually fix it. Progress, our most important product. (Progress is also the opposite of Congress, and that is as political as I'm going to get on the internet.)

Still working through HHhH, and starting to get slightly annoyed with the "That whole last section? I made it up. But I think it's a good piece of writing even though it didn't happen, so I put it in" bits. I suppose I should be glad he admits it, but I wish he would stop doing it so much.

February is over, which is good because it can't snow any more in February. That does not, however, keep it from snowing any more at all, and that's where I wish we'd get to. (This sentiment brought to you by the 2" of snow we got last night.)

On Saturday morning I did the usual grocery shopping, and got run over by at least four or five groups of runners in training for the marathon. There just isn't enough sidewalk space for packs of marathon runners and everybody else at the same time (and a lot of everybody else on Saturday mornings is elderly Jewish people trying to get to their synagogues and getting run over. That annoys me more than getting run over myself.). But the sun was out, anyway, and I got slightly carried away with buying fruit and vegetables and thereby massacred my shoulder again. But the blackberries were quite nice. And I spent the afternoon wandering through the MFA, because I hadn't been since the samurai armor exhibit, and that was nice too, and finished with a trip to Super 88 and the food court. Yay, saag paneer!

Yesterday I paid bills and did laundry and then decided to go out and find a new mattress pad and plug adapters for Australia, and possibly a new electric toothbrush. I ended up coming home with none of the above, because the T on the outbound leg was so slow that I didn't have time to go find things before I had to come home again and then go to my voice lesson. Which I am now not having until May, on account of logistics. Mostly it's on account of my teacher's now-four-month-old only letting her get four hours of sleep a night and her husband not wanting her to drive so much on four hours of sleep. Which is a good point, but I can't get out to Stoneham on Sundays, so no lessons for me unless I find another teacher. Sigh.

The worst part about not getting the acquisition-of-stuff errands done yesterday was that I didn't have time to cook either. I really want to braise that oxtail, but that requires about four hours and I didn't have it when I got home last night. I don't know why I'm so grumpy about that, but it seems I am. I also (courtesy of the Super 88 trip) have a rather large daikon radish I want to turn into refrigerator pickles, but that only takes as long as dissecting it and making brine takes. Maybe I'll do that tonight.

I reversed this weekend due to the concert on Saturday, and did most of the domestic stuff on Saturday and most of the errands on Sunday. And I still somehow managed to leave laundry sitting in the dryer. Drat.

The concert went well, although the weather was absolutely disgusting. But we were in tune for all the a cappella parts, appropriately loud for the loud parts, and appropriately quiet for the quiet parts. Had I been in charge, we wouldn't have split the mass in half and stuck an opera chorus in between the halves, but I wasn't in charge, so that's what we did.

I really wasn't up for a voice lesson yesterday, but went to it anyway (fighting furiously with my inner four-year-old all the way down there, because the inner four-year-old wanted to be home, where it was warm and use of brain was optional). Next week is my last lesson with the substitute teacher, which is probably good because the two teachers have almost opposite approaches to getting me to do the same things, and I'm getting somewhat confused. After two and a half years of being told not to be breathy, now I'm supposed to be? Oh well, if I have to spend another three months getting unconfused, so be it.

Speaking of being confused, the cats have been furry little limpets lately. Partly it's because the dress rehearsals and the concert meant they got dinner five and a half hours late three times in the last week, and partly it's because my brain has been full of things other than "pay attention to the cats" for the last two weeks. So they've decided to make themselves impossible to ignore, mostly by taking turns having at least one eye and preferably at least one foot on me, and bellowing a lot when they don't. Lily gave me such a harangue last night that she was actually meowing by the end of it. She wanted the Patented Double-Barrel LilyBeast Scritch, after which she purred so loud she practically busted a grunion. Snip likes to be whistled at, so I gave her a piece of the New World Symphony and she came and sat in my lap for a while. They'll probably be happier this week.

I'm somewhat happier this week because I think I've solved the dextrous vs warm glove issue. My right mitten decided to go off and have adventures on its own sometime during my commute on Friday morning, so on Friday night I went to REI and found some windproof, leather-palmed, water-resistant "lobster" gloves. They give me my thumb and index finger free and keep the other three fingers together, so I can get my keys out of my pocket without taking the glove off. The only problem I have with them so far is the amount of fit-adjusting hardware they've got on the backs of the wrists, but I think I can live with that. So far my hands have been warm down to 19 degrees, which beats hell out of all my other gloves that give up at 35. And I know the water-resistant part is true because I got coffee everywhere this morning. The regiment may invest in a pair of glove liners anyway, but so far I think we have a winner.

Come tomorrow I will have had six lunch meetings in the last two weeks. I'm not sure what that says about it being busy around here, but it is. I really can't afford to get any Insidious Grue until about mid-November.

We have a winner on the cooking front, I think. I actually like savory steel-cut oatmeal, and I like it better cold than warm. The first batch was 3:1 oatmeal and water, and I put salt, garlic, sage and walnuts in it. It was 7 points per serving, which is a bit much for breakfast if I'm going to have lunch meetings.

I realize that it's my coworker's first time having anything to do with a faculty development day, and that this particular one is fairly huge, but I really wish she would chill the heck out and stop asking me to beat little tiny details to death. I've been doing that for her for three weeks now and I keep having to resist the urge to say "not if it has anything to do with faculty development" every time she asks me if I've got a minute. (She's asked me three or four times if I'll be helping to clear away the food after breakfast and after lunch.) Oh well, that will all be over with in...26 hours. We'll be running late by the end, because we always do.

Last night I dragged my carcass off to a "sing for your sub" workshop, involving the four people who are taking students over from my voice teacher when she goes on maternity leave in November. The woman who's taking me over lives in the same neighborhood I do. Somehow that figures. It was a good event, but it was long for a school night and the T was not cooperating. At least I got an extra 10 minutes of walking out of it.

When I got home, I discovered that the rest of the linen I was about to get annoyed over the absence of had arrived in the mail yesterday, so I can stop remembering to get annoyed about not having it. I wasn't really all that annoyed in the first place, because it's for the project after next. I'm trying to get the current one done by Thanksgiving. The next one is going to be white embroidery on burgundy linen, and it's geometry, so it should go fairly fast and be gorgeous when finished. The one after next is going to be grayscale on black.

Speaking of things arriving, supposedly the new furnaces are arriving today and/or tomorrow. Nice day for it, though, since it decided to be warm at night again. That means it's warm in the daytime too, and I don't need the furnace. Now here's hoping that making this New and Improved doesn't screw up everything else. I've noticed that things have a way of doing that; sometimes a system that's perfectly happy being held together with string and chewing gum doesn't know what to do with a shiny new something-or-other and difficulties ensue.