Beeson Banner for June 2022

Wednesday, 1 June 2022

Beta test for Linux Mint:  I'm creating the June issue on it.

Now if I can learn to use sneakernet without fumbling around for ten minutes, doing so many things that I have no idea what I did to get into copying mode . . .

5:52 pm

On Monday, I wrote in my sewing diary "I must find another pair of 4.0 for the futon sewing kit, and admit that the pair I used to keep there are now the cat's."  (I need a strong magnifier to read the fine lines on the Metacam syringe.)  This was a despairing sort of note, since even as strong as 3.5 is hard to find, and I expected to be looking everywhere for months or years.

When I was standing in line to pick up my levothyroxin and Tricor this afternoon, 4.0 magnifiers were prominent on the display of readers, and one of them was half-glasses, intended to be looked over when I look up from my sewing.

Today was a pill-fetching day.  This morning Dave got five chewable tablets from the vet to hold Al over until his anti-thyroid transdermal arrives from Wedgewood.

Next, how do we get the pill inside the cat?

Al loves Temptations treats and I frequently use them as croutons to make wet food more appealing.  So I said, let's put down two croutons and a pill, and maybe when he's built up momentum on the croutons, he'll eat the pill.

He ate the pill *first*!

Friday, 3 June 2022

I keep forgetting to wash my wallet because I can't leave it in the hamper until washday.  When I was undressing into the washing machine after yesterday's trip to Leesburg, I realized that a sweat-removing rinse would take care of whatever splop had gotten on the wallet, so I emptied it into the top drawer of my dresser, turned it inside out, and threw it in with my clothes.

Today, when I decided it was time to Quicken my receipts, it soon became distressingly evident that I had put them Someplace Safe.  I ended up dumping the drawer onto the bed, and this time I made sure the front was to the front when I put stuff back neatly.

The wallet is also neater, and I know about stuff I'd forgotten I was carrying around.  Also threw out some obsolete stuff, and made sure that the check I carry is on an account we still have.

Before the tidying was done, I thought to look in Dave's room, under the spare fan that I use for a paperweight when I want to enter some receipts but for some reason can't do it right then.

Duck, Down, & Above was hardly worth the trip.  It's much fancier than it used to be, with much less stuff.  But I should have paid attention to the down items scattered around the artistically-empty room.

Stacy's Sports Bar was at least as good as ever.  I ate two and a half of my five taco sticks — something like egg rolls stuffed with taco meat instead of vegetables, and a little bit thinner.  I put the extras into the plastic bag I keep in my wallet before I started eating, to avoid stuffing myself.

The dollar store and the two gas stations sell groceries, but none had frozen juice to chill my leftovers with.  So I stopped at Walmart.

There is a sign in downtown Leesburg saying that a grocery store is "coming soon".  A peek through the windows suggested that "soon" isn't this year or the next.

I washed clothes today.  It was so windy that they were dry by naptime.

Al ignored his nine-O'clock medication, even after I rattled his treat bag and ostentatiously added a crouton, and I thought I'd shared too much of my chicken wings at six, but while I was doing my sciatica exercises, he came back and licked the plate.  So I gave him another sliver of the food I'd mixed his Coseqin with and, later on, another bite of chicken.

Tuesday, 7 June 2022

I thought I'd get back into sewing mode yesterday, but first, I really must print out and mail the letter I wrote two weeks ago, and somehow it was lunchtime when I put it into the envelope.  I made asparagus gravy, toasted some sourdough bread, and had just started eating when the Trailhouse called to say they'd replaced my broken spoke, so as soon as I'd eaten I put on my cycling suit, put the letter into my pocket and a straw hat on my head and walked downtown.  I walked fast because it was threatening rain, and I did come home rather damp.  So was the hat, which I'd put into a pannier when I retrieved the bike, but I left it on a flat surface overnight and the curl flattened itself out.

I must have gone to Leesburg and back with the spoke broken, because the only incident that might break a spoke that I remember is crossing US 30 on the way to Leesburg.  (When I crossed back, I got off and walked, or rather ran, because the light doesn't give one much time to cross four lanes, two breakdown lanes, and a median wider than a lane.)

It's plausible that I wouldn't notice:  even when I was on the Beyer Farm Trail, I could barely hear the broken spoke tinking against the other spokes.  Instead of stopping at Kroger, I went straight to the Trailhouse.

That was on Saturday, on the way home from the Farmers' Markets, and they had it repaired Monday morning!  And they'd replaced my back brake blocks.

Yay!  I tried to copy this file onto JOYXP, and it went, and I could read it!

I must upload it to the server at once.

Friday, 10 June 2022

I've been moping around all day, not feeling like doing anything useful, and wondering whether I'm old and feeble.  Duh!  I had stimulants instead of a nap yesterday — I'm *supposed* to be tired.

I went to Spring Creek for the first time in ages, a pleasant ride by way of Ryerson Road.  I walked some hills:  that *is* being old and feeble; knees are the only body part that can be damaged by the normal operation of a bike, and I really, really don't want to strain them.

I walked through all the greenhouses, and saw some pepper plants I would like, but not enough to carry them home and plant them and cultivate them.

I'd planned to go through SprawlMart on the way home and eat supper at Arby's, but I bought some nachos at a baseball game that I found starting up when I turned into the playground on 700 E for a pit stop, and I couldn't buy anything at Sprawlmart with $66.49 worth of cheese, chocolate, and spices in my panniers, so I came home by way of Fairlane trailer park and the Heritage Trail.

I've used that shortcut many times going east, but I didn't know where to find the path between Heritage and the park going the other way.  I did remember the view from the end of the path, so I knew that I'd found the right one.  I usually ride going down because the path is too narrow to be comfortable walking beside the bike, but I walked it going up.  Turning from good asphalt onto hard-packed dirt is easy, but starting from a dead stop on grass isn't easy.  And the path slopes up:  see "old and feeble" (not to mention fragile) above.

I think the ball game was using aluminum bats.  Occasional random clanks are un-nerving to someone on a bike.

When I was unpacking the bike, one of the freezer baskets blocked access to the bin I wanted, I shoved the basket aside — and it went!  While I was out galavanting, Dave was chipping frost out of the freezer.

He also repaired the leaky cold-water valve in the shower, and when I got home, he was in the truck bed cleaning out a gutter.

Monday, 13 June 2022

Denise finished cleaning the gutter today.  We had a long talk while she was doing it.

The winter-onion bulbils have gotten to the place where I need to peel them, but they are still easy to peel if one cuts them in half first.

I imagine they have gotten to "not worth the trouble" down south and, as far as I know, none of the folks here in the north grow winter onions.  But if you want to change that, it looks as though I'll have quarts and quarts of seed that I don't know what to do with.  I could give you enough to plant them two inches apart and dig every other one for scallions from late February through April.  Those left to make clumps can be dug up the following year, and one plant in each clump re-planted.

Tuesday, 14 June 2022

Got up before Dave did because of a nine-thirty appointment.  Dressing in the dark, I found my cell phone glowing like a flashlight:  an emergency alert on the outside screen.  (Before dismissing it, I used it as a flashlight to find my shirt without turning on a light.)  I was annoyed that it had been squandering charge all night, but if it hadn't been on the charger, it would have been in my pocket and I'd have heard it.

I think.  I must check the settings.

Neither of us heard anything at all during the night, but when I opened the curtains, there wa a huge limb off one of the cottonwood trees, and a lot of twigs and small branches around.  As near as I can tell without stepping on wet grass, there isn't one leaf off the willow tree, which shed large limbs in light breezes before the boys from Beaver Dam worked it over a few years ago.

The cottonwood limb is right under the stub it broke off of, which seems odd when the wind was strong enough to break it.

Wednesday, 15 June 2022

Not a chore cascade, but a distraction cascade.  I started to do some mending, noticed that a faded inventory mark that has inconvenienced me on many wash days is now completely white and invisible, remembered that I've been meaning to sort a resistor code of embroidery floss into a snack bag and put it into the pattern trunk, opened the foot locker to get brown floss, noticed that I still have the hand drill I borrowed from Dave to wind spools and bobbins with.  I've been using the electric screwdriver in the kitchen drawer for many years, and Dave happened to be standing by, so I asked him whether he wanted it back.  Much discussion of where to put it:  "somewhere in the shop"; "it can stay where it is if you remember that you have it".

Then we remembered that David Gales collects such things, which reminded me that I'd never put Kathy's and David's numbers into my new phone, which (side trip) made Dave look at his phone and see that he had David's but not Kathy's.

When I returned to the thread sorting, I found a mixed bag of stuff I'd bought at a garage sale, which reminded me that I'd bought the contents of a basket at a garage sale on the way home from the farmers' markets on Saturday, so I fetched that and sorted it, and bringing the latch hook in here and putting it into the pencil mug beside the computer made me think of writing all this.

I *will* get back to the mending!

Friday, 17 June 2022

I went to Fort Wayne with Dave yesterday.  There is very little chance of needing a driver after a CAT (now CT) scan, but I'd rather run no chance at all of being stranded in Fort Wayne with no way to get home.

A remarkable co-incidence:  when they took Dave to the lab, I went back to where I'd been sitting beside him.  A few chapters of _The Vanished Seas_ later, I went to the restroom, and when I came back, I realized that it was rude of me to take up three seats.  I looked around, saw a single seat beside the door, picked up my stuff, and met the woman sent to fetch me.

So I was all set to get back into the car — except that I forgot that for a journey of a few steps, I hadn't zipped up the sides of my attaché case.  When I put it onto the back seat, I dumped its contents all over the parking lot.  It didn't take long to pick it up, because I no longer cared what order it was in.

We planned to go home by way of SR 14, and stop for a very belated lunch at Shigs in Pit.  This didn't work out twice.

We had a satisfactory meal, but it wasn't the treat we were expecting.  The creamy cole slaw was exactly as expected (I think all restaurants buy it at the same place), but the potatoes in the potato casserole were distinctly warmed over, and where one would expect fried onions, they had sprinkled corn flakes.  The big disappointment:  there was so much seasoning on the ribs that I couldn't tell which mammal I was eating.  Dave suspected that they were hiding a poor quality of meat.

As we were cruising along Fourteen, smugly reflecting that it was as good a road as Thirty and didn't have orange barrels all over it, suddenly there was a barrier and a "road closed" sign with no warning or explanation.  The only place to go was into a housing development, so Dave turned left expecting to make a U turn, but the GPS chirped up saying it knew the way, and it led us zig-zagging around in a way that convinced me that the development had another entrance on the other side of whatever the road was blocked off for, but it was only a ludicrously extremely-elaborate way to make a U turn.

Today, more distractions on my way to putting in new elastic — right now, hauling water to the multiplier onions.  But I did finish Wednesday's mending on Wednesday.  Sitting on the porch with a tall glass of fizzwater, fruit juice, and ice.  Got up to put in more ice a couple of times.

Saturday, 18 June 2022

Today I learned that the thread-narrow frame around the OK button on my phone is another button.  Explains the erratic results I got when doing what the so-called manual tells me to do.

Now I can edit messages without fear of sending them by mistake.

A few days ago I figured out how to capitalize proper nouns:  put a period after the previous word, then back up (newly reliable!) and delete the period.  You'd think that this would be in the manual.

Because of a rummage sale at the Warsaw Church of God, I came back from the farmers' markets by going around the south end of the lake.  I can check that route off my list of things to do at least once every five years.

If I ever ride to the Warsaw Church of God again, I'll take along an extreme close-up of the map of the schools.  I never did find Tiger Lane, and emerged from the schools on Union Street instead of Fisher Avenue.  I was right beside Dr. Hollar's office, and was tempted to go in.

Miller's Merry Manor has, wisely, changed its name to Miller's.  I turned in to see whether any of the county-farm buildings remained, and there at the end of their landscaped driveway was a glorious 1899 building that I hadn't seen when I went in there several years ago, when it was still "Merry Manor".  I think that they moved the driveway to showcase the building.

I could see where carriage steps had been removed and replaced with pedestrian steps — and, come to think of it, the concrete wasn't the least bit weathered.

I went on around the loop, and it was less magnificent behind, but in good repair.

I stayed on 225 S to 275 E, and came back through Sprawlmart.  Had a roast-beef sandwich at Arby's.  To my surprise, it came with fries and a pint of tea, so I brought some of the sandwich home, between my two bags of ice.

Sunday, 19 June 2022

When I gave Al his eleven o'clock feeding, he didn't find a plate of fresh food with *two* croutons in it anywhere near as interesting as staring at the door into the garage.  Could it be that we have a chipmunk?

Wednesday, 22 June 2022

I washed diapers yesterday.  We found a half-dozen old diapers in the house when we moved in, and have been using them as cleaning rags ever since.  Because Al can't always quite make it to the shower, we hang the bathmat over the lintel of the shower and I put down a diaper to stand on when I'm using the sink.

Hanging the bathmat up serves three purposes:  Al can't piss on it, It dries faster after a shower, and it keeps the shower door from closing.

There are already two damp diapers in the washing machine, and a shop towel that should be rinsed before it's washed.  Dave found it in the garage while the load of rags was in the rinse cycle.

Thursday, 23 June 2022

A few days ago, I saw the gray-and-white cat in the herb bed, but it never gave a glance at the catnip.

The catnip is in bloom; when the seeds ripen, I plan to sprinkle them on Fred's grave.

The diapers, shop towel, and a rag are on a rinse cycle.  I have decided to wash my underwear today, so I have to clear out the washer.

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Turned out there was nothing but underwear in the load.  I should have looked around a little before starting the washer.

Kroger has a "pergola" (start to build a roof and stop when the beams are up, but don't go on to plant vines to make a pergola) over most of the walkway where I park my bike.  I usually try to park in the shadow of the awning over the door.

On the evening of the twenty-first, I ran out for milk.  Arrived at the store thinking "sun low in the west, no shadow to be had" — and the entire walkway was in shadow!  Took me a bit to realize that on the summer solstice, the sun is *north* of the building.

Made it comfortable to ride south going home.

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Today, Dave came home from Fort Wayne with an appointment to get a new heart valve on the thirteenth of July.  I hope I've got clearance to drive by then:  I'm scheduled for Mohs on my eyelid on the seventh.

Which means that sending this on the thirtieth will leave y'all in suspense.

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Yay!  Dave just cleaned out the turds -- and discovered that Al had pissed in the box.

He's still not much interested in his food, though, and spends most of his time lying down.  And I don't think this much vomit is normal.  He *is* twenty, and twenty-one-year-old cats are fairly rare.

Friday, 24 June 2022

Al's appetite is better today.

The Times-Union says that KCH is changing its name to LKH.  That is going to take some getting used to.  They are also going to improve the lobby "a little bit more for wayfinding."  That's good news for new patients, bad news for those of us who know our way around the old lobby.

Monday, 27 June 2022

Hanging a king-size sheet on the line has always been a problem, then I bought six yards of quilt lining that was too wide, and cut it into two sheets without measuring to make sure that it wasn't six and a half.

Today I untied the cotton clothesline, the middle one of the three on a five-line post, and tied it to the nearest trunk of the maple tree so high that I had to use grabbers even though I'd taken out the stepladder.

Part of that was that I couldn't get the ladder very close to the tree, and part that the trunk is too thick to reach around.

Pulled it up as tight as I could and re-tied it to the post.  That is pretty tight if you put the line through the eyebolt, pull hard, and wrap

around the post a couple of times before tying off.

I can't see the new line from the house; I hope I remember to hang up a couple of yellow handkerchiefs before the fourth-of-July party.  But anybody young enough to run heedlessly would clear the line by a couple of feet.

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Light in the sewing room has been a problem from the beginning.  There just isn't any place where I can put a lamp.  Dave took care of that by installing a ceramic ceiling socket.

Then I had the problem that a bulb bright enough to sew by was eye-searing to type by.  I tried all sorts of tricks, including plugging night lights into the outlets and a rube goldberg with a socket splitter, a pull-chained socket in each socket of the splitter, and a hundred-watt bulb in one socket and a red bulb in the other.

That's even worse than it sounds.

So Dave swapped out the switch for a dimmer switch.  Perfect!  It also met my desire for less blue light when working after sunset.  Dim an incandescent, and it gets redder.  I could retrieve the socket splitter, install two bright bulbs, and have reasonably-bright reddish light.

This worked fine for years, then incandescent bulbs were gradually illegalized and a few weeks ago I burned out my next-to-the last incandescent, the remaining one being a low-power decorative bulb.  Other types of bulbs don't redden when underpowered, and those not labeled "dimmable" — I don't *want* to find out what they do when dimmed.

So I began searching every bulb display I saw — I'd been doing that for years, but now I spent time on it.  Some bulbs looked like incandescents, but if a bulb isn't an LED (and, I strongly suspect, many that *are* LEDs) the label reads "You don't need to know what kind of bulb this is.  Nothing to see here, move right along."

Then yesterday on my way to a bunch of garage sales, I happened upon another bunch of garage sales, and found a box full of light bulbs priced "make offer".  I offered two dollars to pick out what I wanted and put the rest back, and she accepted and offered bubble wrap.  I declined with thanks and spent half an hour sorting light bulbs.

Things went faster when I realized that I could put everything on the grass, pick out the fluorescents and non-standard sockets, put the box back on the table, and get on with my packing.  (I missed two undersized sockets; since they were still in the package, I put them into the Our Father's House bag.)

I filled up the pannier and used up all my crumpled plastic bags.  I counted over a dozen bulbs in the top layer after I emptied the pannier into a box today.

That should hold me for a while.