I suppose that I'd better try to reconstruct the entry I didn't make and put it up top, or none of my transcribed notes are going to make any sense.
I remember that I planned to begin with a cutesy reference to my assertion that the storm didn't mean anything to us because we were not going to go out into it, but I can't find any such assertion.
I thought I stepped on Al on Sunday and we went to the vet on Monday, but the bill is dated the second, which is a Tuesday. And my notes start on the third with the comment that I'd tried to make an entry on the day before and JOY98 was dead.
It turned out to be a fried power supply, and power supplies for that model are no longer being made. Dave's search for a work-around was interrupted by a prolonged bout with our tax papers, which are finally ready to take to the tax guy tomorrow.
I speak enough cat to tell the difference between "Watch your feet, you clumsy oaf!" and a yowl of agony, but I was distracted -- If I hadn't been distracted I wouldn't have stepped on him, wearing shoes yet -- and he started to eat the moment I set the dish down.
Betwixt the first-responder course and personal experience, I should have known that resuming normal activity didn't mean anything.
The instructor in the emergency-medicine course said that a person who is really hurt will try to keep on doing what he was doing before the crash. If he was going to work, for example, his biggest concern will be that he's going to be late, or that his working clothes aren't presentable.
And when I got my ribs banged up because the boards on the boardwalk are jammed so tight together that what appears to be a drift of dry leaves has a layer of slime on the bottom, I didn't realize that I needed medical attention until my bruises had had time to stiffen up.
Whatever, we went to bed soon after, and the next morning we noticed that Al was limping and had a bump on his left hind leg, called the vet, and went out into the storm.
By good luck, the storm was still doing warm ups and stretches. We were a bit concerned about other drivers and tried to keep our distance, but we got home before it snowed in earnest.
The vet said that it was only a very nasty bruise, but Al still has arthritis and is at risk of developing asthma, so we have to count his breath rate now and again. (In cats, the only sign of asthma is rapid shallow breathing.)
I suspect that the arthritis is why his limp has stopped improving.
I had a lot to say yesterday, but when I sat down to say it just before nap time, JOY98 was deader than a doornail.
Dave traced the problem to a power supply that probably got fried when the fan gave out. I've been complaining of the loud fan for months or years. New power supplies that fit that model of computer are not to be had, so we are going to buy two new boxes and run Windows 11 on one -- Dave assures me that Windows now runs on a Linux kernel and doesn't do all the stuff that drove me insane. We'll see. I won't let him dispose of JOYXP until I've been using JOY11 for at least a month.
The other will run DOSBOX under Linux. I ruled out DOSBOX many years ago because you have to have *all* the working files in *every* folder -- DOSBOX was meant for running games -- but the setting to make 98 read folder PCW came undone and we couldn't remember how we'd set it in the first place, so I've been doing that anyhow. Except for ed.exe, which the shortcuts to the files call up.
Dave *thinks* that he will be able to get the data off the hard disk to put it on the new computer.
In the meanwhile, I had no idea how much I used JOY98 to organize my life. I can get shopping lists, to-do lists, and so forth off the Web back-ups, but I can't update them.
***
Al is walking better, but I think that it's mainly that he has learned how to work around the injury. He still falls occasionally. It's weird to see a four-footed creature lose his balance.
9:55 AM 2/4/2022
The swelling is still there, but I think it's smaller. I went to check and found him asleep on his left side, with the end of his tail over the spot I wanted to look at.
11:47 AM 2/4/2022
Chore cascade: It's past time to carry out the garbage, but before I can do that, I have to shovel the walk. Before that, I must put on my snow boots. Before putting on socks, I must wash my feet. Before washing my feet, I must scrub the comb that I left soaking in the sink. (After scrubbing, I put it back to soak some more.)
But now I've got my snow boots on and I'm working my way back up the list. I might burn the greasy papers while I'm out there.
1:21 PM 2/4/2022
Shoveled to the fireplace, but didn't rake the snow out of it. I waffle-stomped the rest of the way to the compost heap.
Then I came inside, ate lunch, and piled a lot of turkey bones on the garbage plate. That will be the last of them; I poured the bone broth through a tea strainer before putting it back into the fridge. Unlike the giblet broth, this broth gelled -- presumably because there was a lot of cartilage and gristle on the bones.
There is still at least half a cup of the meat I pulled off the bones before boiling them, a cup or so of the jelly I poured out of the roaster, and one light lunch of the creamed turkey I made after boning the carcass. Then all that will be left is the breast meat that I froze. I bought a box of stuffing to warm some of it up under.
Al got the last of the giblet broth for breakfast, and some of the scraps of turkey meat. I'll be surprised if he likes the bone broth; he didn't touch a tongue to the jelly I poured out of the roaster. And Dave thinks the bone broth smells terrible and "stinks up the whole house".
Dave shoveled a path to the picnic table this morning, thinking to make a snow gauge out of a yardstick, then went to Amazon and bought a ready-made gauge. Al escaped onto the ice in the shoveled patch, his bad foot slipped out from under him, and he executed a spectacular roll behind Dave' back and was back on his feet before Dave turned around. I've finally figured out that he falls dramatically on purpose, to spread out the impact the way a sky diver does.
It was *really* dramatic when he slipped on the tile floor at the vet's as he was being set down.
I think that the swelling is smaller -- hard to tell under the fur -- and he let me touch it. (I refrained from poking.) He seems to be walking much better, except for a few minutes after his excursion onto the ice. I don't know whether it was the fall, the chill, or both. Or generalized discombobulation and "I'd better be more careful".
6:49 PM 2/4/2022
The snowplow guy said that this is the worst single storm he's seen in twenty-five years. Weather Underground's calendar view says that we got less than an inch of snow. I wonder where they took the measurements? There's ten inches on the picnic table.
7:41 PM 2/5/2022
Al and I shared the last turkey scraps for supper. He also had a quarter of a can of Fancy Feast.
9:52 PM 2/6/2022
Dave says he was watching a movie on television when whomf! There was a cat in his lap.
I missed making an entry when Al started asking to be picked up and put into his lap.
5:23 PM 2/7/2022
%#@&*!
5:51 PM 2/7/2022
It was a little past time to pop the lasagna rolls into the pre-heated oven -- and I'd looked up the temperature, but forgotten to twist the knob.
6:31 PM 2/7/2022
8:30 PM 2/8/2022
Rode to Meijer and back. Coming back was much easier: the sun had been on the streets -- and I knew better than to use Clark Street. The bike lanes on Fort Wayne were under snow, so I didn't much mind having to use it -- car drivers could see that I couldn't ride in the "Please right-hook me" position. And Clark Street was clean where I had to use it to get around Fort Wayne school.
About the only thing I found in Meijer that I'd come for was cat treats. Well, I also bought a package of safety pins and some extra-fine sugar. And at long-last I found gravy for cats: just gravy, no lumps.
I'd come for sheets, but didn't get any. I'd resigned myself to having to buy an unwanted fitted sheet, and even thought I might like it, but I found that package designers think that nobody cares in the least whether the sheet you are buying can be used on the bed that you have; there were very few that I could find out the size of without picking up the package, king size is rare, and eventually I decided that the easiest way to get a sheet is to go to Lowery's and buy quilt lining even though I can't get it done before washday.
I had a nasty time getting from Meijer to Anchorage Road. I usually cut through Belle Tire's parking lot to get around the one-way section of the exit. All would have gone well, but a car entered before I got to Belle Tire's entrance, and I had to get onto the outgoing side of the road to let him by. I was able to draisine up onto the platform of snow, but I couldn't draisine off. That meant walking the remaining rod or so, and I was well into the parking lot before I was able to get back on. (There have always been places where I could ride, but couldn't start, and with sciatica and what-not, these places have become much more common.)
Then when I got to the exit, and crossed the road onto the sidewalk to the trailer park, I found that pedestrians trample a very poor path for pushing a bicycle, and when I got to the park, I found that the parking lot had been plowed *after* the path was trampled. One set of footprints led around the south end of the wall, but that would have been little or no help, and it was slightly closer to go around the north end.
Plowing through untrodden snow was *very* strenuous until I thought of lifting the bike. And the parking lot hadn't been plowed all that well.
But it was clear sailing after I got to Sunset. Even McKinley, where I'd had to walk all the way up the hill going out, was fairly clean.
I was finished at Kroger in time to buy a "cubano" at Jimmy-John's.
10:34 AM 2/9/2022
Tried the gravy when I gave Al Metacam this morning. Al sniffed it, and said "would *you* eat water with cornstarch, "flavoring", and a pinch of taurine?"
So I put a little slice of Purrfect Bistro tuna in it; still not edible. After he'd ignored it for a while, I put a small pile of cat treat beside it and everything went down. He only disarranged a second helping of Purrfect Bistro, and I know he was hungry because he got only one feeding during the night.
11:28 AM 2/11/2022
Rain is thick on the roads. If this freezes under the snowfall, tomorrow's ride to Aldi is off. If I can figure out how to load the treadle into the car, I may drive to Lowery's instead. I do need quilt lining rather urgently.
This morning I took one look at Boys City Drive and said "Dave, I'm going to need the car.".
And the roads were, indeed, terrible. Didn't need my cane much in parking lots, though.
I was puzzling over my route -- I know how to get from Sprawlmart to Aldi by bike, but didn't think I'd know the correct turns by car. Dave said "Just get on Route 30 and follow it to the Menards exit."
Duh!
I'm accustomed to thinking of US 30 as a barrier.
I stopped first at Rural King. A sign on each door said "We are not open yet! See you in March." The exclamation point made me laugh right out loud.
I bought a bag of pellet bedding and a bottle of meat tenderizer at RP Home and Harvest. The meat tenderizer is in the laundry room; Dave read a rumor that meat tenderizer will take out old bloodstains if you give it long enough to work.
I bought a fifteen-dollar sewing machine at Aldi. I thought at first it was confirmation of the rule that toy sewing machines don't work at all, but eventually I noticed that the top thread was looped around the button that holds the top bobbin. (It also has a spool pin; I don't know why you can't put a bobbin on that, except that they sell it already threaded and the spool pin has to be retracted to pack it for shipping.
It looks cheap and it sounds very cheap, but it does sew. The push-button "on" switch is a complete non-starter. You push it once to start the machine, and then have to push it again to stop it; no way you are going to stop where you wanted to stop. But it also has a foot pedal on- switch, which you push to start and stop pushing to stop.
I think I'll use it to put easing threads into the bras I'm making. That's the next step, and I don't want to unthread and rethread the Necchi twice for four inches of stitching.
Then I had to find a safe place to put a flimsy gadget when not playing with it. My footlocker isn't quite deep enough. Ah, Dave's grandmother's sewing stand is just the right size. I found two drop spindles I meant to get rid of many years ago, bagged them, and put them on the to-go shelf in the garage. I want them to go to someone who has a use for them, so I'm reluctant to take them to Goodwill.
I also found the writing mitts that have been missing for some time, and a small whisk broom.
12:44 PM 2/14/2022
Dave dropped by Smith's and told them to deliver the washing machine. Then he came home and told the bank to send them a check.
He may have sent the check after they called him to say it would be here on Wednesday. When he was there, they weren't sure it was in the warehouse. It was listed as in there, but one of the employees had looked for it and couldn't find it. A special order would take a while.
He also went to Reinholt's. A separately- adjustable bed is about four thousand dollars, but one can adjust it while lying in it.
I've just realized that I'm not really keen on a bed that stops working when a derecho comes through. But we have two single beds, the futon in the living room and the love seat in the parlor.
We actually both sat in the love seat at the same time yesterday. I don't remember doing that before. But we rarely sit in the parlor.
7:05 PM 2/14/2022
Just after nap time yesterday, Dave came home with sixteen wings, a couple of celery sticks, two kinds of wing sauce, and two containers of blue- cheese dressing. We had supper very early. By good luck, I had just cut up carrots, celery, and mini-sweet peppers for the relish tray.
I served them again tonight, and we still have three wings left.
I picked a tablespoon or two of meat off mine, and Al ate it right up. Dave said that if we want to fatten the cat, we should eat wings every night. I suspect that he'd get tired of it at least as quickly as we would.
Today I got fed up with my ragged old Fibernet shirt, picked the pockets off, threw it into the trash, and got one of my old New Salem Fire Department shirts out for house wear.
I promptly dripped Hot Barbie sauce on it.
After supper I rubbed and rubbed soap on the stain on both sides, then rubbed it with a vegetable brush, then rubbed on more soap and used the brush some more, and I think I got most of it out.
Then I dampened the meat tenderizer left in the saucer Dave had used on his pants and a pillowcase, and dabbed it on the brown specks on the back of the shirt. These stains are at least twenty years old because I didn't wear New Salem shirts much after we left New Salem, so it would be a pretty good test on the tenderizer if I were sure that the stains were blood. The pattern of specks doesn't seem probable for blood, or anything else. Pity I didn't think to look to see whether they were bigger on the inside before dabbing them.
The boys have come and gone, and I've washed the sheets I've been keeping in a trash bag until I felt like going to the laundromat -- both in one load!
Then how to dry them? I was going to hang them on the line, then bring them in when the wind started thrashing them, but it started picking up while I was fetching my garden shoes and the clothespin bag, and I didn't want to go out into the wind to hang, only to have to go out again and bring them in before they were dry, so I draped one over each clothes rack. This was not easy.
I was surprised that one sheet was nearly white, and the other wasn't much lighter than it was when I tore it off the bolt. Then I remembered that when the old washer began to refuse to wash sheets, a sheet was submerged in soapy water. So I pinned it to the line to drip and dry, and put it into the trash bag.
So I've found a good way to whiten unbleached muslin.
1:49 PM 2/16/2022
Yesterday or the day before, I used the last of the onions that I bought at the farmers' market, and today I opened a supermarket bag.
I bought about the right amount; the onions were starting to get green centers.
1:20 AM 2/19/2022
Taking out the garbage was a chore cascade again today, but two inches of snow are A LOT easier to move than ten!
***
After my latest tooth cleaning, the dentist told me to start using fuzzy toothpicks to clean between my teeth. I couldn't reach in quite far enough to clean between my wisdom tooth and the molar next to it. This is no longer a problem.
When I started brushing my teeth Wednesday night, the moment the brush touched my back teeth, I found a tooth lying on my tongue. I'd been concerned for some time because I felt a catch at the base of that tooth when I flossed. So in the morning I called and got an emergency appointment for 11:45.
It turned out that the crown had broken off at the gum line and he couldn't glue it back in. To put in a new crown, he'd have to do a root canal and put in a pin, and it was far from certain that the root could take the strain. The best plan was to put a plastic filling over the broken root to protect my gum. This also preserves the root to keep the wisdom tooth in line.
At least *that* could be done on the spot and I wouldn't be fussing with it for weeks. And no restrictions on eating. I didn't inquire into how much surgery taking the root out would require.
So, when "living in the future rocks!" comes up in a conversation on Usenet, I can no longer say that I still have a full set of teeth. But I do have twenty-eight -- the wisdom tooth is functional.
So that's why I didn't start hemming the new sheets Thursday. I'm not at all sure what I did with today, just that it was nap time before I got organized.
10:19 AM 2/19/2022
We had what sounded like a ferocious wind in the night, and there is a deep drift over two or three yards of the walk that I cleared yesterday. But the rest of it is blown clean.
We eat off paper plates and both of us have bad backs, so we tend to wait until we run out of silverware to wash the dishes. When Dave was washing dishes yesterday, he opined that we should put away some of the silverware so we'd wash before stuff piled up. So I took a lot of spoons and forks out of the drawer, put them into a Baggie, and put the Baggie into Grandmother's stovetop oven. I discovered in the process that the silverware tray was filthy and added it to the pile to be washed.
I left the knives because we never have more than two or three dirty. (I use a knife to serve Al's food, then wash it immediately and leave it on the counter for the next meal.) When putting the silverware tray back, I realized that if I put away some of the dinner knives, I could put the steak knives into the silverware tray instead of having to hunt all around the drawer for them, so this morning I put a handful of knives into a quart sandwich bag because they are longer than a Baggie. They are also longer than a quart zipper bag, but can be put in on the bias.
Then I discovered that they are also longer than the diameter of the cake pan in Grandmother's oven, so I put everything into the roaster with the cookie cutters.
The cookie cutters, by the way, are up for grabs.
7:06 PM 2/19/2022
The snowdrift held together in blocks, but wasn't hard to shovel -- except that sometimes the blocks were too heavy to lift and I had to cut them up. Then I carried out Al's secondary litter box and dumped the corncobs on the frozen puddle in front of the fireplace.
7:13 PM 2/19/2022
I finally got around to determining that there is no ceremony to plugging a thumb drive in; the ceremony for pulling one out merely checks that nothing is using the drive you mean to yank. So I pulled Agent (being out of USB ports), plugged in the thumb drive that Dave copied the drive from the dead computer onto, changed the name of folder Pcw on JOYXP to Pcwbak, copied Pcw from the copy of JOY98, copied 2022BAN2.HTM to Pcw, and put the drives back where they were.
Opened DOSBOX -- Yay! I can start editing the February banner, and high time, too; it's almost time to mail it, and I'm very tired of trying to write with Notepad. Notepad is for *notes*!
But what, what? The file contains only running gears, no entries. I looked at the Web copy, which was made after the last entry and before the crash -- also empty. Viewed source: no I didn't put in a comment and not close it.
Finally thought to check the date on the first entry in STOPGAP.TXT, this file. The entry I didn't get to make would have been the first.
7:35 PM 2/19/2022
Finally pinned a shirt-tail hem in one of the raw selvages of the new sheets (and quadruple-pressed a crease into the other selvage; hope it doesn't come undone before I get another chance to sew), but it was nap time before I could change the thread in the sewing machine and sew it. Didn't help that I caused a bookalanche looking for the ecru thread, and had to do a lot of sorting. Found some interesting books, though, including the Navy's _Tools and Their Uses_.
11:31 PM 2/23/2022
I just washed five plates, and two of them weren't Al's.
I like china plates when we are eating baked pork roast.
8:55 AM 2/24/2022
I was planning left-over pork roast for supper, but when I rode to Kroger for cat food, I checked the clearance bin and noticed a very nice strip steak, with plenty of gristle for me, fat for the cat, and marbled muscle meat for both humans, marked down to ten dollars. I baked six one-bite potatoes to have with it. Dave loved it even though I'd forgotten to salt the griddle.
After supper I ran out water to give the silk undershirt I'd worn in the morning a second rinse, and that got the water nice and hot, so I decided to wash the two china plates right away. When the plates, a pettit pan I'd emptied at lunch, and a bunch of silverware were in the rinsing sink, I looked down and said "Hey! None of this stuff is Al's!"
There were two demitasse saucers on the carpet sample, but each still had edible food in it.
***
Our taxes are already done and ready to pick up.
I finished making a sheet, put it on the bed, finished sorting the recyclable paper, and put three stacks under the coffee table with dead UPS batteries flattening them.
Also chickened out of taking my Saturday exercise tomorrow. Riding isn't any fun in cold, gray weather.
I remember when I considered an overcast sky perfect for riding because it kept the low winter sun out of my eyes. But those were the days when it was possible to buy wool tights and I didn't have to wear so many pairs that it's hard to mount the bike.
I might drive to Walmart and walk a mile or so indoors. I've never taken a really-good look inside Lowe's, which is next door.
I think that Google Maps will measure the buildings for me.
Dave said that he thought Al was over his bruised leg, because he jumped off the little table beside the television chair. I poked it yesterday, Al didn't complain, and I felt no deformity.
Roads were clear, but I chickened out of dressing for cold weather and said I'd get my exercise pushing a cart around Walmart. Walmart was frustrating because I couldn't find anything. Why *won't* big-box stores post maps!
But I got some wind sprints in at Lowe's before going to Walmart, and bought a packet of catnip seed. I had also stopped at Our Father's House to dispose of some dress hangers and suit hangers, and a new-in-the-box toilet seat that would have been awkward to carry on the bike.
On the other hand, my favorite hat disappeared somewhere along the way. I know enough to pin my hat on when I'm wearing a scarf under it!
It was well after four when I got up from my nap. Two phone scammers carefully timed their calls to make sure I had to start over from scratch twice.
I think phone spamming is a deliberate effort to take down the communication lines -- they can't be making any money.
I think the programmers for my keyboardless computer thought they were programming a front loader. Even when the machine is set for "deep water", it runs in just barely enough water to wet the clothes.
There may be a bit of March in the February issue. I'm only to the fourteenth of February in re- formatting the notes I took with Notepad, and I haven't figured out how to proofread yet.
I've been accustomed to open the file in a browser on one computer and open the source code in another, so that I can correct errors as I find them. I thought I could open the file with Dave's browser and run back and forth, but his main browser doesn't open files on other computers and I don't know how to use his other machines. Two windows on the same computer won't work because weird things happen when I switch from DOSBOX to another program and leave DOSBOX running.
⁂