The current version is usually posted at http://wlweather.net/LETTERS
I April Fooled myself yesterday. I set out to make a quick trip to Zales to pick up the levothyroxin I ordered on Sunday, and absent-mindedly followed the route to Lowery's. I didn't realize what I'd done until I saw the store.
Being a Loveless, I couldn't turn around and go back the way I came, so I crossed Winona and came back as if I'd gone to the store. This involved a great deal of walking, and I took quick tours of Karma and Chimp's along the way, so it was nearly an hour after departure before I got to Zale's.
Where I got April Fooled again. It was thirty-three days before the Feds would let me have more levothyroxin. I don't have thirty-three Levothyroxin tablets; I must count them and go back soon. If the feds are Medicare, I can simply pay for it myself, and levothyroxin is cheap. If it's the nanny state, we'll have to get a prescription from Dr. Darr.
In addition Alendurinal and Lisenoprill were ready even though I hadn't ordered them. I'm still ahead on Alendurinal from when I mislaid the pills and had to buy an extra box. (I did find the mislaid pills, just twelve hours before time to take the next dose.)
It's a reasonable lead time on the Lisenopril, but the new pills are duplicates of Levothyroxin except for being slightly pink. I'm going to have to be very, very careful for ninety days.
We also learned yesterday that we'd have won the bet that the nanny state wouldn't let us make even though our financial advisor told them that we could afford that much risk. You aren't allowed to gamble on the stock market unless you can prove that you are already so rich that winning won't make much difference to you.
April fools in my comic strips were sparse and lame.
I edited and mailed the March Banner late yesterday. No fooling. Some fooling around about getting on with it.
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Countdown timer just told me to take out the trash, but there's hardy any trash in the barrel and a thunderstorm is brewing. Weather Underground says that there will be little wind next Thursday.
There it is again: a faint whump, whump, whump like a washing machine or a motor turning an unbalanced load, which I can hear only while lying in bed. It's happened only once before, but at half-past three in the morning, that's once too often.
Part of the April fool is explained: I told Dave that I would have to count my pills and go to Zale's again, and he wanted to see the date on the bottle.
There are plenty of levothyroxin pills in the bottle. ?? I distinctly recall that there were very few when I took it to the computer to send in my order.
There are only four pills in the old Lisenopril bottle. When I order pills, all I read on the bottle is the prescription number.
But where did the Alendurinal come from?
Weather Underground says that my Saturday excursion will be by car. I told Dave that that meant that I couldn't go to Carniceria San Jose, since there is no way I'm going to back a car into SR 25. He reminded me that Chimp's Comics' very large parking lot is right across the street.
On Thursday, Chelsea finished all our chores in two hours, which was very awkward. And I never thought of asking her to take all the stuff off the sewing machine that we use as a sideboard so that I could shake the peanut skins out of the towel.
Gone be a two-page chore list next Thursday.
I made colcannon (seasoned mashed potatoes) Friday, and baked an Omaha Steaks bacon-wrapped filet.
It took me a long time to notice that the toasters flying through a black void reflect a blue sky, but I haven't once seen them not reflecting a blue sky. Until I looked up just now and saw dead white toasters flying into my face. They are back to blue sky now.
The airplane-wing toasters have a much more complex choreography than the bird-winged ones did. Dave says that the original screensaver had no wings at all.
Pushing four in the morning, lying awake, my thoughts wandered to George climbing the screen in the duplex on Nimitz, which had a kitchen floor that could be swabbed like a deck, and for the first time I wondered:
What on Earth was the navy doing in Indianapolis?
[In the afternoon, I asked Dave: making naval avionics — controls and what not for airplanes.]
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Grumbly gripe. The latest automatic update to Windows 11 made DOSBox full-screen stop working, but only when I'm on the monitor where I want full screen. Working in a window on the vertical monitor is convenient for quick notes, but the tiny type is a royal pain for serious editing.
Resetting didn't help. And full-screen on the vertical monitor merely puts a black border around a patch only slightly larger than the window.
Checking with a ruler: full screen top line 8 1/2"/21.5cm.
Window: 9"/23cm.
No wonder I couldn't see the full screen as bigger!
What *are* these programmers smoking?
On the horizontal monitor, alt-enter now alternates between two windows. I hope the next involuntary update unbreaks it.
I learned something good about Facebook today: a video doesn't start making noise until you click an icon. On the other hand, it continues to suddenly page down a random number of screens while one is reading. And I presume that it continues to be full of malicious links. I've stopped clicking on anything other than the "see more" at the bottom of a truncated post, and it's been a while since I've been deceived by an impostor.
Chelsea finished two hours early again. We raked sticks off the roof, and after a while I remembered that I needed help to put the broken clothesline back up, but we still sat around for quite a while.
I took a stitch in my sewing today, but feel too stupid to write it up for my sewing log. I should have had a second can of energy drink with my lunch, or I should have made tea.
The Boathouse is penciled in for my birthday lunch this coming Tuesday. If we go, pork ribs are written in ink. (Pencil literal, ink metaphorical.)
Full screen is mysteriously working again.
Further good news:
Ever since we moved here, every time I walked down Ninth Street, I fantasized about raising one more step at the top of the stairs to make the slope leading to the steps less dangerous. Several weeks ago, that exact part of the walkway was torn up by a fiber-optic company. (Why they buried cable in a place so expensive to tear up, I don't know.)
On the way home from church this morning, I saw that (aside from letting the concrete cure and installing hand rails) they have finished replacing what they tore out, and they've added *two* more steps, so that the walk at the top is perfectly level.
Le bad news: at breakfast I dripped oil on my new silk tights. Not much, I can't find the stain now, and I was planning to wash clothes today anyway.
Change of season: instead of putting my velvet slacks on over my silk tights, I wore black knee socks.
Note for future reference: I'm planning to heat the oven to 300°, brown one side of a small chicken breast in my smallest skillet, turn it over, cut a freshly fully-zapped potato in half to fill out the sides of the skillet, cut side down, dump in a can of Alfredo sauce, zapped to make it easier to get out of the can, cover with the other smallest skillet (the lid isn't oven proof), and bake for half an hour.
Also a pan of baked vegetables.
Last Thursday I noticed that some of the asparagus is up, but it's nowhere near tall enough to harvest. [Had asparagus omelet for breakfast on Saturday, and steamed asparagus with supper on Sunday.]
Posts will be incoherent from here until Friday, 19 April 2025.
On Friday, Dave started bleeding.
After my nap on Sunday, I decided to get an early start on the vegetables, and had pared a carrot into a shape that would fit beside the chicken and begun cleaning a potato that is still in the carrot sack in the crisper drawer when Dave announced that he had a clot in his catheter. We went to Lutheran emergency and they flushed the clot out, but it clogged again in the night, and again after the thermostat guy had left on Monday. (I'm writing on 25 April 2025 and a bit fuzzy on details.)
When it clogged a fourth time on Tuesday, we went to Parkview. It was obvious to all concerned that Dave needed a prolonged flush to stop the bleeding, but no coudé three-way catheters were in the county. Very reluctantly, we agreed to let — I think it was the NP — attempt to [resumed writing 27 April 2025] put in a straight three-way, and by a miracle, it went right in!
All were much relieved, thinking that Dave wouldn't have to go to Fort Wayne, but it became apparent that he needed the attention of a urologist, so an ambulance took him away. An examination that required general anesthesia and a blood transfusion were involved.
I've lost track of the number of times Steve drove me to Fort Wayne to visit. We went again late on Friday to bring Dave home. He's over the incident and recovering well from the treatment. It's going to take a while to regain the muscle lost from spending most of a week in bed.
I take it back. If it takes ten minutes to figure out how to shut off a video that Facebook has conned you into clicking open, it comes on at full volume with no mute or volume control.
The thermostat guy is here. I'm going to take a nap as soon as he's finished.
I didn't finish that nap. Got to bed before eleven, slept until after five, took levothyroxin, slept until after eight.
Caught up on sleep, I'll try to untangle the weekend. Involved three trips to the emergency room and three shots of antibiotic.
8:43 AM 4/15/2025
The old thermostat didn't do anything a mechanical thermostat couldn't do — it didn't even have a timer; we had to turn it down at bedtime and turn it up when we got up — but it had to phone home to function, and the maker decided to stop supporting it.
The new one is an even worse design. Dave wanted one he could control with Alexa — forgetting that having a built-in timer would obviate the need to turn the heat down after having gone to bed — so it has an excuse for needing to phone home. (Alexa, however, has no excuse for needing to use the Internet to turn off a lamp; silicon is now cheap enough that she could have a few bytes of local memory.)
However, if there is a momentary glitch in the electric supply it goes blank and all the data has to be reset, and it took the expert half an hour to figure out how to set the data. When he told us that, my first reaction was "It needs an uninterruptable power supply.", and the old one *did* have batteries to tide it over outages.
4:05 AM 4/16/2025
I had a weird dream that probably came of reading a Hitchcock magazine on Monday, and continued the dream after I woke up, composing an entire diary post from the point of view of the demented villain. Who got more demented and villainous as the post continued.
11:17 AM 4/17/2025
Spam callers are getting unusually short shrift today.
4:31 PM 4/18/2025
This week I've been saying "Where did you get my number?" right away instead of trying to string them along and use up time that could be spent annoying other people.
The latest one didn't scurry away, but said he got it from Medicare, or who-ever it was he was pretending to represent. At least he waited until I'd woken up to call me while I was still in bed. That was the first good nap I've had all week. I lay down for an hour while Chelsea was here yesterday, but didn't sleep.
The scammer before that said that she was returning my call. Since I was expecting a call from Firefly to confirm Chelsea's change from noon to four to eleven to three, I stayed on the line until she said she was selling funeral insurance.
I found my summer knife! When I'm likely to be out in the garden, I carry a knife with serrations on part of the blade so that I can saw off weeds I can't pull. It wasn't on the dresser next to my bicycle keys the last time I looked for it.
This morning, after Dave said that it would be after four before we needed to go to Fort Wayne, I changed into my old jeans, which are much more comfortable than the newer jeans, and found the garden knife in my pocket.
Months after another time it disappeared, I found it while cultivating the garden. I was surprised that it was as good as new after I rinsed the sand out of it.
8:56 PM 4/18/2025
After we got home, I remembered that I'd forgotten to give Dave's ring to him when he came out of surgery, tried to reach into my pocket, and discovered that I'd put my shirt on backward.
When I got up this morning, the patio was clean. When I got up from my nap, it was covered with cottonwood stickypods.
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Make that four trips to the emergency room and two trips to Fort Wayne.
As if I didn't have enough stress, the internet is down. [It was up again in the morning.]
I guess I don't need to cut the frayed hems off the sleeves of my late-evening gown and re-hem them — when dressing for Usenet-reading tonight, I found that the back of the skirt is worn throough. Time to tear it up for cleaning rags.
It will hang together until time to switch to the short dress I bought at Aldi.
Washed clothes, including some tights that I'm putting away for the summer, and two shirts that I plan to take to Mary Anne's Place. (charity thrift shop)
I also freshened all my backups, put the drive in the box of drives, plugged in the staler of my two other back-up drives, and deleted all the back-up files on it. Deletions don't copy, so backups can get cluttered if you don't start over now and again.
We've been eating asparagus every day since Saturday. Twice an asparagus omelet, twice boil-steamed. (Bring the bases to a boil, add the tips, cover, remove from heat.)
I've started untangling the Banner, but intend to spend this evening catching up on funnies, the newspaper, and Usenet.
7:06 PM 4/24/2025
After supper, I was all set to waste the rest of the evening when I remembered that I'd left clothes on the line.
8:08 PM 4/24/2025
When you see ducks, it's one duck and one drake.
8:55 AM 4/25/2025
Surprise! I have an adequate number of summer pants. But they don't all have adequate pockets.
While I was in church, Dave got the sounds back on my computer. Count-Down Timer is much less useful when it doesn't ding when it pops up a reminder, among other annoyances, so I'm very grateful. He thinks it was the speaker itself, so the next time this happens I'll try swapping the speaker for the one that I never got around to installing on my Linux computer.
Linux is on a table in the parlor now, herding majestic fleets of toasters. Dave opened it up and found that all the capacitors are swollen, so I discarded it just in time. It's working well now, perhaps he can have some fun before it dies.
I've finally got GIMP on my computer. (It turns out that Draw, a vector program, can't do anything at all with photographs.) It bears almost no resemblance to the GIMP that I had on XP, and I have yet to figure how to get the image I want to edit out from under the things that were on separate windows that one could shove out of the way on the older version.
The asparagus has been getting ahead of us, so I took some to Steve and Martha and we had a pleasant visit. Dave wanted to go with me, but he can't walk that far.
It was raining crab-apple petals when I went outside to comb my hair — on the west side of the house, and the apple tree is on the east, but it isn't very windy.
Changing of the seasons: I soaked my ragged unbleached wool-challis scarf overnight in water with a few drops of vinegar, in the hope of drowning any moth eggs that might be in it before putting it into the blanket box for the summer. A few days ago, I rinsed the red lambswool scarf I wore as a toddler with plain water, but put it back on the scarf rack with the silk scarves. I didn't soak the red scarf long, because it bleeds like crepe paper.
I mend the red scarf, partly because it's over eighty years old, and partly because having worn it as an underscarf saved me from lying unseen in the ditch for hours after breaking my collarbone.
I don't recall how long ago that was, but the scar was white when we moved here in 2001.
Dave got a blood draw for his cancer doctor today, and we stopped at the bank to pay our taxes on the way home.
Left-overs for supper.
The flower-bud stickypods are starting to dry up enough that some can be swept and blown off the patio, though still sticky enough that I can't clean them off my shoes.
The leaf-bud stickypods have started to fall. They aren't doing it in unison like the flowerbud stickypods.
We brought the patio chairs down out of the barn attic today. One of them needs repair. The cushions, which were old when we moved in, are still going strong.
13:00
The call from firefly was good and bad news. Chelsea is no longer with them, so I have to start over with a new helper. They will skip this week, so I don't have to spend an hour writing detailed instructions for how to proceed when I'm not here. But I'll have to spend that time washing dishes myself.
Time and helper not settled, but it's definitely Thursday of next week. When Dave has a blood draw, but I think we'll be back before the helper comes. I said eleven to three or noon to four, but much depends on who else the helper has to see. Early enough that I answer the door in a nightgown does have its advantages — she would leave before nap time.
Yesterday, when preparing to print my shopping list for today's trip, I struck off "opaque hose". There is no such animal, and I've accidentally acquired three pairs of white lightweight knee socks.
When Dave wanted more diabetic socks, he went to Amazon and clicked "buy again" on the only socks he found, slightly surprised that he had to change "black" to white.
When the socks came we were puzzled, because we'd both forgotten that I'd had him buy some black knee socks to hold the bandages on my laceration in place. (I'm wearing them on Sundays, now.)
I had bought the diabetic socks at Zales. It felt odd, when I bought three more pairs, to check out without getting a prescription.
I've checked that we have all the ingredients to make chocolate cake tomorrow. We are also going to have a chicken breast baked in the alfredo sauce I bought today.
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