I may have mentioned that there was a shortage of USB ports on JOY98, causing me to swap back and forth when I upload photographs. That problem was solved when it became necessary to switch the data cable on the UPS to the back-up computer — but now when the power supply dings, the reason why is on the screen I'm not looking at, and the program allows just barely enough time to flick your eyes to the bottom right corner of the screen; no time to process the information, remember that it's the other computer, and turn to look.
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Didn't set foot outside except to empty the cat box and carry garbage to the compost heap. Oh, I also dug a few carrots for the canned-beef soup I made for supper. I must dig some more before I warm up the left-overs.
A three-day forecast I saw on Dave's computer screen was photoshopped on the gores of an umbrella. Spent the morning reading _Alphabet of Thorn_. Good book in a classic mold. I think I'll cook the remaining cabbage with some canned corned beef for supper even though I have no potato. Maybe I could dig some carrots.
Ah, the suspense of it all! If I lift the lid to see how supper is coming, all the steam will escape.
I did dig some carrots, but before I scraped the rootlets off, Dave came home and said "So we're not going to First Friday?"
So I put a lid on the partly-assembled meal and stuck it into the fridge, and finished it this afternoon. Fifteen minutes to go, and I'M HUNGRY.
It was bitterly cold for people who are still braced against summer heat, and still is, but we had a good First Friday. Went to the Mexican place closest to the library and had a good meal. No leftovers; I ordered a tripe taco, which turned out to be fried meat on a limp tortilla; I think one was expected to roll the meat in the tortilla, but quite a lot of it fell out and had to be eaten with a fork. Tripe tastes mostly of fried; good, but I see no reason to hunt for it.
The designer of the taco expected one to order three or four, so I dined off Dave's plate, and we ate everything (including at least half a pint of guacamole and all of the tortilla chips) without getting stuffed. I'll have to do that on purpose next time.
Then we walked around the art show and Dave listened to the high-school band for a while.
I haven't had any exercise all week, because of the rain, and the prediction was for low probability of showers until two in the afternoon today, so I meant to stretch my Saturday Tour d'Warsaw out a little today.
But, as I said, fifty-eight is bitterly cold for someone braced for eighty, and even though I wore two pairs of sweatpants, two shirts, a rain jacket, a fuzzy scarf, and gloves, I wasn't very happy out there. Then as I was heading for Fort Wayne Street after examining the meat market under construction on the courthouse square, a raindrop hit my face, so instead of turning left to inspect the construction on Lake Street, I turned right and headed for home. Got my glasses rained on after I left Owen's with a bottle of milk, but didn't get wet.
I noticed the conductive fingertips on my yellow gloves. Only on the right glove, oddly.
I'm drunk. I don't know whether it's the two doses of Valium or because it's naptime.
Maybe I should leave the typos in, just for illustration. Worst part of the biopsy was driving to Fort Wayne and back. I think I fell asleep on the table.
I don't think the Valium was necessary, but I thought I'd be less likely to fidget. Except for the Lidocaine shot, and a faint twinge each time they advanced the needle, no pain at all. I didn't hear the "pop" I was supposed to when they stabbed the calcification. The radiologist's explanation of why reminded me of Dr. Casey throwing hypodermics in like darts — which worked *much* better than pushing the needle in slowly the way the nurses did.
Dr. said if Dr. Darr doesn't call me on Wednesday, I should call him on Thursday. He too thinks there is very little chance that the report won't read "perfectly normal", but went on to say that if it doesn't, only a lumpectomy will be necessary.
I just got a faint hint that the lidocaine is wearing off. I haven't felt any numbness; they must have put most of it inside.
Never did feel any pain I didn't have to pay attention to notice. All that lecture on frozen vegetables etc. wasted!
Sat in the shower to clean the wounds this morning, and forgot to scrub the radiologist's initials off my shoulder. I did remember to scour my corns. We should have gotten a shower stool decades ago.
Only one of the three wounds had bled onto the band-aid, and the one that did appeared to have stopped soon after the band-aid was put on, so I put my bra on without putting a piece of panty liner in it first.
Doing laundry was specifically ruled out (or, rather, carrying a laundry basket was an example of what I shouldn't do), but I *think* that that applied only to yesterday. But lifting a gallon of bleach down off the shelf with my left hand was contra-indicated. Downside of a lack of pain: hard to remember to avoid this and that.
Because its buttons get pushed if I carry it in a pocket, I often put the timer for the wash into my bra, invariably on the left side because I pick it up with my right hand. So the first time it went off on the right side, I was looking all around because it wasn't stuck on the printer stand to my right.
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Got my "portable desk" sorted out, some papers filed, some thrown into the recycling bin, some put back into the "desk". Most of the work was done before I remembered that I hadn't taken my discharge instructions out of my bag and added them to the cluttered pile my "desk" had become.
When I did pull out the papers I was given yesterday, I found that they included a convenient folder that I could put all the biopsy-related papers in. I put the folder into the "desk" instead of the file, because I may want to read some of it again.
My portable desk is a plastic bag with a stiff sheet of cardboard in it, to keep papers neat and give me a firm place to write if I don't have a table. I'd taken it out of my go-bag and put in another cardboard-in-plastic, so that the new papers acquired yesterday wouldn't get mixed into the old ones. When I cleaned the "desk", I found a lot of very old Fellowship Committee notes.
When found, the instructions said I could do anything except soak in a tub of hot water.
Tomorrow will be the only sunny day this week, but I want to be in in case Dr. Darr calls. But Thursday has a very low probability of rain between eight and five.
Dave says that the nurse at Dupont said that she, too, would call me tomorrow. I guess I was pretty high at the time.
The nurse did call, and later on Dr. Darr's office called too. It was a fibroadenoma, they got all of it, and it wouldn't matter if they hadn't because fibroadenomas don't do anything and half of them go away by themselves. I asked about the two red marks, and they were made by the clamp.
Shortened Dave's new pants, and put away yesterday's laundry. Also remembered to wash the radiologist's initials off my left shoulder. When he was marking me, he saw the scar from repairing my collarbone, and said that he'd recently done the same thing. I'm pleased that hospitals seem paranoid about the possibility of working on the wrong patient or the wrong part of the right patient.
I'm developing rather a lengthy shopping list; I may go to the library tomorrow, since I've finished reading _Alphabet of Thorn_, and stop at Owen's on the way back.
Yum! Corned-beef salad makes *great* dip for rye crisps.
I don't suppose that having just finished a thirty-mile bike ride diminished my appreciation any, but I'd eaten a small order of fries and quite a lot of the pumpernickel melba toast plain and with honey mustard before I tried them with the corned-beef salad.
That was canned corned beef, but I've got a slab of the real thing in the fridge, waiting for me to buy a head of cabbage.
It was such a nice day that I went to Spring Creek (where I bought the "rye crisps"). This time I remembered the greenhouses, but they have been emptied for the season. I should try again in March.
I intend to take this ride again at least once before December. There's only one way to go and one way to come back — and the return route follows the out route as far as Pierceton — but running out of Ohio Swiss gives me a little motivation.
As for the book, I'll return it on the way back from the farmers' markets tomorrow. The weather seemed a bit threatening, so I cut yesterday's ride to just to Owen's and back — but I managed to make a major expedition out of walking around Owen's. The corned beef, for example. And a Manager's Special on skewers of meat, which I baked in the oven for supper that evening. Came out quite well, and I think I'll buy strips of beef and try that dish again. (We don't really need the sticks!)
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While fiddling with Google Maps to measure my distance (31.5 miles), I *may* have found a route from Spring Creek to Pierceton that doesn't go through Larwill!
I bought a new pair of sweat pants at K-Mart. It's hard to try on new pants when you are pinned into your old ones, and I had to take my shoes off in addition to un-pinning my ankles. One of the pins had vanished and it was the one on the chain side. Luckily, I carry several safety pins in my wallet.
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I've written down all the turns, and it looks like a good route. Of course, I've no notion of the *quality* of those roads; perhaps I should try satellite view to see whether they are black or white.
For some reason :) I didn't feel like gallivanting all over during today's Tour d'Warsaw. Forgot to take my library book to return, and couldn't stir up any interest in a construction site that hadn't changed in ages.
I did get around some. I bought a bag of Cortland apples at the fairgrounds market, and a mulled cider and some eggplant at the Center Street market. I went into the bookstore, but suddenly remembered that Marsh was very close by and has a restroom. I thought that as long as I was there I'd stock up on Smith Brothers Caffeine Drops, but couldn't find any. I did find some Smith Brothers Cherry Cough Drops at Zales, when I was wandering around in there after not finding any clear ammonia at Ace. From Marsh I went to Lowery's, intending to buy some yellow cotton jersey in case I want it later, but it was seventeen dollars a yard. Cheap if I wanted to make it up right away, but too expensive to buy just in case.
And of course I stopped at the health-food store and bought a bunch of candy. While finding my way from Lowery's to the health-food store, I happened to pass Carniceria San Jose and the lady with the cooler of tamales hadn't gone home yet, so I bought a half dozen chicken tamales and had two of them for lunch after I got home.
Dave wasn't keen on warmed-over tamales for supper, so we went to the Great Wall. We ate less than usual — at least we brought home more food than usual — but we were both stuffed.
For supper tonight I laid slices of tamale on a bed of fried vegetables and steamed them for fifteen minutes. Overcooked the eggplant. I scored some very young eggplants at the farmer's market, and if you cook slices in oil for not *too* long, they taste like meat.
Dave microwaved Kung Pao and rice. We each had a bite of the other dish.
It was a lovely day today, but there's a fairly high probability of rain on every day through Friday.
Having detoured to the teller machine, I passed the pontoon boat on my way home. It looks much happier than it did when it was ours.
I've been trying to use Easy-Fill to order more omiprazole for days now, and the web site is always down. I wonder whether Kroger has stopped doing that?
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Dave poked around and discovered that the page wouldn't load because the URL had been changed. I navigated to the new URL and it worked as it always had. I don't think my new bookmark will work, though, as it has the same URL as the main page that I navigated from. But now that I know where to click, that won't be particularly inconvenient.
The Sunday before yesterday, I cut off the stems of the bronze fennel, put them into a bucket, and put the bucket into the laundry room. Today I needed to get the now-brittle bouquet out of the laundry room, so in intervals of getting breakfast and doing laundry, I cut the seed heads off and put them into a paper bag. I was in a hurry to get the job done before the Roomba was through cleaning the south half of the kitchen. (It cleaned the north half at two in the morning, then docked itself.)
When I finished, I swept the debris that had fallen on the wrong side of the virtual wall into the middle of the room. After a while the Roomba bounced off the pantry-closet door and headed straight for the pile. When it had passed, the pile was gone.
Then it went into spot-cleaning mode.
I wonder how it can tell? I know how it bounces off walls: when researching something else, Dave learned that it has a light shining on a photocell underneath, and when it bumps into something, its bumper moves back and cuts off the light — which causes strange symptoms when the light burns out! (What Dave found was a diagnosis of the strange symptoms.)
I scored seven at Hexavirus!
I spent the morning preparing food, and got a little sewing done in the afternoon.
Went on a major shopping expedition yesterday, and came back with the trunk crammed. Well, I picked up three bags of cat litter at the first stop, which didn't leave a lot of space for two grocery stores, K-Mart, and the bagel place.
At the Owens stop, I picked up two little steaks from Manager's Special, thinking to serve them for supper, but on second thought I didn't want to fry chuck, so I fed him something from the freezer, and today I baked the steaks on a bed of vegetables. I wish I'd given in to the urge to butter the steaks before baking them.
I loved it. Dave isn't all that fond of chuck.
Tomorrow is predicted to be the only fit day for a long ride this week; this morning I was moping around bemoaning my profound lack of motivation when I remembered that I need slopping-around pants that fit tight enough that I can wear jeans over them, and I'd seen what K-Mart has to offer yesterday. They have sweatpants that are too loose — I bought a pair to wear on the bike — and hosiery "leggings" that are too flimsy.
(Note to the younger generation: "jeans" are loose-fitting work pants. What you children call jeans are actually "designer jeans", which resemble jeans the way Welsh rabbit resembles rabbit.)
Google Maps says that a tour taking in the hospital, library, Penguin Point, Walmart, and Meijer is only seventeen miles, but I'll be walking around in the stores a lot.
So I'd better go make a bottle of strong tea.
Oops! I dressed all leisurely this morning because I have until noon to get to the farmers' markets. I should have checked the radar: I had until eleven to get home again before the rain started. It's a very light misty rain, but it messed up my glasses, and if I stayed out in it for an hour I'd get wet. At temperatures around fifty, getting wet isn't a good idea for someone whose metabolism is slowing down. Even young folks can die of it, if they get tired and sit down on a cold rock.
So I'm all dressed up, I do have someplace to go — and I ain't going.
Pause to peel off warm shirts.
Brought Friday's paper into the house when I came back from church — and discovered that there was a nature hike yesterday that I would have *loved* to attend. (And it ended before the rain started.)
I appear to have taken Friday's nap Saturday — when I woke up from yesterday's nap, it was well past time for supper. Dave hadn't eaten yet, so I warmed up a frozen entree and a bowl of peas.
I'd been planning to have corned beef and cabbage today — after buying a potato at the farmer's market yesterday.
Next Saturday is the last market of the year — what will I do for Saturday exercise after that?
Construction has resumed where the Mexican supermarket burned down. I'm pretty sure the display windows didn't have stone sills the last time I visited, and there were piles of lumber and piles of something in white bags.
Discovered why I had never noticed the route along William Street Google Maps wanted me to take. William was closed many years ago. But someone has been mowing it to keep the trees from growing back, and the gate at the Warren Street end is openable. The Old 30 end is blocked with a pile of dirt that extends far enough to the sides to disguise that there is something there to be blocked, but the channel through the treetops gives it away to someone who has been using Street View to find out where it ought to be. I'm wildly curious as to who owns it and what it's being used for, but there doesn't seem to be any way to find out.
I'm not sure that chili-cheese fries at Penguin Point, a can of guava nectar at Walmart, and a quart of buttermilk at Meijer constitute proper nutrition for a long ride. I did eat at least one of my food bars. With buttermilk. Half a glass of left-over buttermilk mixed with half a glass of coconut fizzwater makes a tasty egg cream.
I didn't get any of the things I'd gone for except for a package of sliced swiss cheese at Aldi, but at Walmart I found a packet of plastic bags that should help me organize my spools of thread.
Washday. Managed to repair a couple of worn bras in the intervals, and after supper I drove to Owen's to buy milk and potatoes.
I bought five pounds of potatoes; I'm tempted to make potato salad.
The weather bureau is still predicting that Wednesday will be sunny. I hope that I can think of somewhere to go by Tuesday night.
I could go to Sidney, I suppose, but we haven't eaten all of the jar of pickled beets I bought on my previous trip.
I did go to Sidney, but I didn't buy apples. I forgot my wallet and didn't have one red cent to spend. (There are now three greenbacks in my tire-patch kit.)
Luckily, I had plenty of food bars. I had one "protein" bar and one fruit-and-grain bar left when I got home. I ate one "protein" bar, one peanut bar, and one fruit-and-grain bar.
My tea was pretty good; I'm glad we have lots of that green tea left. But we're almost out of apple juice to put in it.
The tea went down pretty fast, but I don't think I drank quite enough water. I took four bottles, tea included, and got back with one and a half.
The ten-ounce bottle of ice I took melted only a little in four hours and eight minutes. Seemed to keep the whole cooler cool, too.
Looks misty out the east windows, but the first window I looked out faces west. Everything looked normal except that there was no lake, just a white sky starting at the shore.
At second glance, I can see a pier and an anchored pontoon boat.
This morning I Froogled to see what a showerhead on a hose is called (no settled name; I shall say "hand-held") and discovered that you can buy showerheads with various sorts of LEDs in the streams.
I hope I never stay at a hotel where they think that that is a "turn on the fun!" idea.
While reading the latest issue of World Wide Words (http://www.worldwidewords.org), I realized that examples of bad style are as hard to generate as examples of ungrammatical statements. This seems very peculiar. Though I emit true violations of grammar only under circumstances that preclude writing them down for later snickering, I violate style nearly every time I write or open my mouth, and I don't automatically recast into what I should have said when I try to remember what I did say.
I suppose the filter that distinguishes good from bad gets switched on early when I'm *trying* to be bad. And, of course, I want something a bit more emphatic than "this could be phrased a little better".
WWW also informed me that the "last in, first out" management of the stash of spare queens in one of my fantasy stories is called "ultimogeniture", and was once the custom in some counties in southern England. Wikipedia added that it was because the youngest had to stay home and take care of the old folks instead of making a place for himself. (In the story, it was because the youngest queen had the latest updates.)
It was beautiful out today. I not only hung the whites out, I did it barefoot. But the predicted probability of rain shot up at three o'clock, so I took them in before lying down for a nap, and they are on a rack in the garage. The thinnest items were dry, but I put them on the rack anyway. I'd taken a rack to the line instead of the basket.
The rain didn't get here until after dark, and so far hasn't amounted to much.
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Tried to make an off-site backup just before going to bed, and it worked — Comcast's FTP is back up. Which probably means that Dave's web cams are working again.
So I'll make an offsite backup of this entry and go to bed.
It's nap time, and Al hasn't moved from where he flopped down after supervising us while we got out of bed. I wonder what he got up to last night.
25.5 miles — wild guess. I didn't take careful note of where Dave picked me up; I was too busy being glad to see him. And plotting how to get the bike into the truck. (Dave handled it unaided, except that I pulled the heavy bag of stuff out of the cooler.)
My back tire went flat about halfway from Wooster to Winona Lake. We stopped at the Trailhouse on the way home, and both of them came out to help us get the bike out of the truck. I forgot to take the newspaper I bought in Larwill and stuffed in among the newspapers composing my cooler. I had wanted to look up the supermarket in the biggest ad; I'm pretty sure none of the townlets mentioned on the masthead have supermarkets. Larwill and Sidney were two of them.
I had been to Spring Creek, where I bought a pound each of Ohio swiss and colby, a bag of raw peanuts, a bag of toasted corn, and rather a lot of candy. I thought I'd bought chocolate-coated peanuts, but I guess I checked that off my mental list after putting carob-coated peanuts and chocolate-coated almonds into the basket.
I mislaid a Usenet post this morning and looked in Agent's trash for it; was much surprised to find it full, all stuff deleted this year. When I delete spam, I delete it permanently, and I don't delete anything else.
Moreover, I don't see anything wrong with those posts that I looked at, though some of them were in Ignored threads. Perhaps I should check to see what newsgroups they came from.
The missing post was in "inbox", by the way, where I'd put it by mistake for "drafts".
If this rain keeps up, I'm doing nothing at all for Halloween. Might go to the grocery store.
When I put the chicken-boullion powder back after sprinkling some on a dish, I always start to put it on the fourth shelf with the salts instead of on the third shelf with the soups.
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Got a little mending done. It was still raining when I got up from my nap. I dressed to go to the grocery, but Dave had gone in the car and I didn't want to drive the truck, so I made a spam-and-velveeta lasagna, planning to shop right after supper. We have one egg, no butter, no sausage . . . long list.
The best that can be said for the casserole is that it used up the last of the Clancy's CheeseMelt. We ate more than half of it, but that was mostly because I'd had almost no lunch.
When I was about to start putting my hat on after supper, I noticed that the rain had changed to snow. It cleared up before it was quite dark, but I stayed put here. There's a zero chance of precipitation until well after sunset tomorrow.
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