The creek was up when I crossed the bridge by the rifle range. I suspect that the National Guard boys are up to something, because there was a guy up a ladder outside what appears to be a storage building when I went out, and when I came back, there were some orange-painted stakes I hadn't noticed before by the bridge and their driveways. Woke up Sunday with a sore left arm, and couldn't think what I'd done to myself. Helped Dave set up his antenna on Saturday, but though the thing is huge, it's aluminum, and weighs very little. The stiffness worked out through the day, but this morning it still hurt to turn my head to the left -- and roadies do that a *lot*. Was thinking of complaining that "nothing hurt" when I was working out at the gym, i.e., that none of my exercises were for the injured muscle, and that might be why it got hurt. When I did the wide pulldown, I felt that I was doing my neck some good. I suppose that the pulldown works the muscles that oppose the ones that are sore. I was significantly improved when I left the gym. The cold and damp soon put me back where I'd been when I left the house, but it doesn't seem bad now. So it's just as well that my shopping trip was rained out; when it hurts to look, you might not do it often enough. Traffic gets to be a consideration after I cross 20, even when I cut over on Rapp. I hope the grass gets dry tomorrow --and that I notice before it rains again. A calico cat wandered into the yard and it was shoulder deep on her. Scrawny little thing; you could hardly stroke her back for the bones, but she was wearing a flea collar. She had a deep notch in one ear, but didn't have the slightest fear of humans. The sight of Fred peering out through the glass bottom of the screen door sent her into a tizzy. Fred was much interested, and followed her from window to window, knocking the scanner off the stereo speaker in the process. 19 August 1992 Yet another dark, gloomy day. I feel like crawling back into bed and sleeping until the sun comes out. This morning's prediction said that tomorrow will be partly cloudy and dry; I'm eagerly planning to wash clothes and mow the lawn. The pine limbs I cut off weeks ago are as green as the branches still on the tree. They are predicting a lovely weekend. I hope Danny hasn't got something planned that will stop him from mowing our field. I've been thinking of mowing a ring around the burning-spot with my little mower so I can get rid of the prunings. Won't tackle that until I get at the lawn! I pronounced it shaggy at least a week ago. Haven't seen the calico cat again. Perhaps because the wet grass is too hard on such a small cat, perhaps because she saw Erica first. I hope she made it home all right; she was terribly thin for a pet. Dave got a mysterious pain in his knee at about the time the mysterious pain in my neck disappeared. I told him I didn't want it back. 21 August 1992 Grump. It's only August, and PCW tells me that it's time to divide the Banner again if I want to continue using the spelling checker. I must have been fairly verbose since June. We are having a glorious sunny day today. Mowed most of the lawn yesterday, but clogged up the discharge chute when I nicked the tall grass in the field, and since I had to turn the mower off to clean it out, I decided to sit down and rehydrate myself. I must get around to buying a bottle cage for the mower. The one I had on the old one vanished, and it was too cheap for the job anyhow. It was made of wire where it ought to have been steel rod, and didn't hold under off-road conditions. Later: When I was splitting the file, PCW said that the June file (renamed BANNEP.92 to keep the files together) was too big to read at all! The score, in round thousands, is BANNEP, 218; BANNEQ, 65; and BANNER, 52. I finally realized that I had XTREE in memory too. Mowed the patch of lawn under the hose, and the patch in the trees behind the yard where I was when I nicked the tall grass, then mowed a channel out to the burning place and mowed a ring around it. Now that I've had sunny weather to mow, I have to wait for rainy weather to burn. There isn't any way one can burn pine branches without making sparks, and the field is full of dry straw. I'll have to burn the trash out there if I forget to haul it out next Tuesday. The Enterprise says that that is the last day the town will haul off trash in black plastic bags. From now on, it has to be sorted out and placed in bins they will graciously sell you at the town hall on August 26th or September 25th, between 8:00 am and 1:00 pm. My novella came back at the height of the Bikeabout. Now I don't remember where I put the marked-up manuscript. Eric made several useful remarks; I must get them read before the next Bikeabout hits. Dave and some of the boys took 2370 to the Altamont Fair yesterday, to be on exhibit from 6:00 until 10:00 (turned out they had to stay until 11:00). Another ladder truck from the Fuller Road fire company was there, which I thought extremely poor planning on the part of the fair board. One ladder truck is quite enough, and they could have had towers on two days. Also, 2370 was wedged in behind the other truck. People had to hike in to see it, it was very noisy with two trucks running in a confined space between two buildings, and it would have been difficult to get out if there had been a fire. They were parked close to the gate where I came in, but I turned right instead of left, having no idea where they might be, and didn't find them until late in the night. I hadn't realized there was a fire- truck museum and I knew a temporary exhibit wouldn't be on the map, so I didn't read all the fine print. They have scads of museums at the fairgrounds, including the preserved pre-plumbing home of the former owner of much of the land the fair is built on. There is a sink and running water in the kitchen -- and a *lovely* pantry; I can't imagine why people ever ripped pantries out of their homes. Though I suppose that some of them were converted into bathrooms. The fair seemed much more crowded than it was when I went several years ago; I think that last time I went earlier in the day, intending to get home by daylight, so there would have been fewer people anyhow, but there was also less space for people to walk in than before, and every possible place to put a booth of some sort seemed to have been rented. I don't think they were using the infield when I was there before, and I think that the midway was only one layer thick. Even though there were two walkways through the midway, it was impossible to walk through looking at the offerings; either you stopped and looked at what you happened to be in front of, or you devoted your entire attention to finding holes to slip through. Food booths run by churches and the like seemed nearly as common as the professional booths, and offered lower prices. I got a strawberry shortcake from the 4-H, a carton of milk from the VFW, and an ice-cream cone from Hiawatha Grange. I was surprised to see the girl at the 4-H booth open a package of Freihoffer's biscuits. That was much better than the aptly-named "sponge" cake all too often used to desecrate strawberries, but I had had no idea that there was a market for stale biscuits when fresh biscuits are easy to make, and when there are countless forms of bread that keep longer than five minutes. 24 August 1992 I had planned to go on a shopping ride today, but when the time came to suit up, I wasn't feeling energetic -- so I ran a load of wash, cultivated the garden, and moved some violets. After lunch, I think I'll take a nap. Or maybe get around to hemming those blouses that have been lying on the ironing board for days. Yesterday I got my code-training program about finished. There were a lot of printable ASCII codes that I couldn't find any morse for -- I was astonished that "@" is not one of them; I'd already put in didah dah for it when I learned that the official code is didahdidahdit. Seems pointless to have a code longer than spelling it out! I put in periods for the non-printing codes, according to convention, and used the code for error to represent the rest. This the second time I've finished it; I had it working at sending random letters and numerals, then re-arranged it into ASCII order (which required adding all known punctuation and fudging a bit) so that it could translate a file. Thank goodness for BASIC's option of saving a text file that can be edited with a word processor -- I never gave PCW's box-move such a workout before. I found that I could line up the statements so that the array subscripts were in a column, and re-number 26 or 50 at a time. When I found that I'd left a statement out, it was easy to insert it, then move all the numbers up one notch. Having polished enough to demonstrate that I can practice longer when the output makes sense, I'm thinking of re-writing it to let the user choose between single characters and whole words. Might could be I'll learn the code before I stop fiddling with the program. 27 August 1992 The cellar smells rather appetizing, for the moment. Several days ago I harvested the onions: multipliers and dutch shallots to cook whole, and ebenezers for slicing and chopping. Today I decided that the ebenezers were dry enough, all but one thick- neck, and spent more than an hour cleaning and trimming them and putting them into a sack. I handled them gently, because onions won't keep if they are bruised. I carried the sack in, went halfway down the cellar steps, and reached out to hang the sack on one of the nails driven into the beams alongside the stairs. The nail bent so suddenly that I thought the drawstring had snapped, and there I stood with an empty sack in my hand and onions bouncing all over the cellar floor. 28 August 1992 My program works fine when translating one character at a time, and the code is all written for translating word-by-word, except for one teensy little detail: every time I run it, all I get is a message that a subscript is out of range. I've read it and fiddled it and fudged it and studied it: there just isn't any way in any universe that any subscript in any line of that program could be out of range! I hope I can get Dave to read it. Queer weather: though the sky is overcast, it doesn't feel the least bit damp outside, and it doesn't smell like rain, but in every direction things start looking dim and foggy about as far away as the house is from the mailbox. Makes me want to clean my glasses. I suppose Andrew is up to something. Now that there's a good breeze, it's quite pleasant out -- perhaps I should push the cultivator through the garden and pull up a few weeds before the rain starts. 29 August 1992 Dave did read it, and pretty soon spotted a line where I'd left out ",1". I suppose that "subscript out of range" was the message nearest to "subscript is nonsense." Then he found some more bugs and the next thing I knew, he'd translated the entire thing into Quick Basic. I don't write QB and we don't have a manual. I can read QB code, though. It's easier than BASICA code, because you name routines instead of numbering every line. Which enables me to see that the give-up routine, which works, is practically identical to the verify- response routine, which doesn't. Bugs that are swatted re-appear, etc. And now I realize that I really should have a third switch to make it send sentences, which will require adjustable speed ... I've named the program "MILL" because it is supposed to teach you to take code on a typewriter. I'm beginning to think that that is also what it is sending me through. This morning the Town deigned to sell me the bins it required me to start using last Tuesday. Good thing I got there when I did, because the line was twice as long when I left as it was when I got there. Spent an hour or so sorting the biggest wastebasket into the two official bins and two old laundry baskets I'm using for stuff they will someday take down at the firehouse; I stopped at the paper shed on the way home, but it was still full of newspaper and there was no sign that they ever intend to install the bins into which, ever since last Tuesday, we have been required to sort our non-news paper and cardboard. The *is* one improvement. Packing newspapers into paper grocery bags to take them to the firehouse has been a pain; now I can drop them directly into the "bin" (plastic box) that I am supposed to take out to the road on Monday night whenever there is no chance that it will rain before Tuesday night. (Early risers can carry it out as late as 6:00 am Tuesday.) Got all the residue into one knotted-shut plastic grocery bag, which would have warmed an ecocrats heart. Don't spoil the fun by telling that I sorted out a much larger bag of kindling to use when (if?) conditions are right to burn the brush. It took many months to get a chance at the last one, but this time there's only one entire tree and it's smaller than some of the branches; I plan to make a much smaller fire. I think I've spent too much time thinking about MILL. When I inserted an overlooked period into a sentence, I "heard" "didahdidahdidah" as I pressed the key. I've got a book review to type, and I haven't punched in the changes to my novella yet. Or, for that matter, thought about them. 31 August 1992 MILL is working now. I don't recall finding the bug. The messages need a little editing. 14 September 1992 Yesterday some fellow got mad at a frequency hog, and went on and on and on and ON about it. Dave kept tuning around and kept coming across him again. After half an hour or so of working crossword puzzles with my fingers in my ears, I came into the radio room and told Dave I'd decided to quit practicing code. I might practice more often, but when I think of it, it's because Dave is using the radio. The computer doesn't have earphones. On Saturday, the fire department had an affair I marked on the calendar as "golf roast." Dave left the house at 6:00 AM to play golf, and I ran over to the golf course a little after noon to eat an oversized steak. I ate all of it, too, though Max got some of the blubber. The golf-course dog has been trained not to eat anything unless it is directly handed to him; I wonder how they managed that? Later he got several big pieces of lean from a plateful that one of the firemen was taking to his own dog. I guess the golf course doesn't cater picnics very often, because Max isn't fat. Dave several times said "My very first time out and I won! I got more points than anybody." Later on someone else made the same claim (not quite so loudly) but I think he was talking about a single hole. Dave said the golf outing was the most fun he's had in a long time, and he intends to learn how to play. Sunday night, I rubbed his shoulders with Ben Gay. I got a pleasant surprise. I haven't been wearing my dancing boots much because they turned out to be too tight to wear with the socks I had on when I bought them, I loathe the slimy feeling of nylon hose, my silk socks wore out, and that left me nothing but one pair of cotton argyles that Dave had discarded when they shrank half a size. On Sunday evening Dave called to invite me out to pizza, and there I stood in my house slippers. My sneaks were downstairs, and the argyles were in the laundry because I'd worn the boots to the picnic. Having been forced to think about the matter, I realized that it might be that the boots had stretched a bit and the socks I had on had worn thinner, and it turned out to be so. On the other hand, I need new socks and Wigwam has stopped making the fitzall that happened to be size ten. Maybe I should try buying 10« and washing them in hot water. On the third hand, it's sock- liner season and someone may have come out with something new. Time I went to Klarsfeld's and looked. They've probably got the cleat I ordered last May, and the one I want to replace was worn out then. Haven't ridden enough to wear it significantly since; my odometer still reads only 767.3, and a few of those miles were put on before New Year. I haven't even been to the used-book store. 14 September 1992 Astonishing: only two weeks into the month, and already I've been to the gym four times. Partly Dave's fault: he sent me to Altamont today to order some envelopes for the calendar drive. I dawdled on the way back, of course, and wasn't home until after five. Stopped by Star and got a box of salt and a little hamburger. Cruised Clapps of Guilderland on the way out, and thought the selection of books was even more cramped than on my previous visit. Someday I'm going to drop in and find that it's cards all the way to the back wall. Must get around to going to the used-book store while it's still there. It seems to be prospering, but the last time I was there he was complaining that he thought he'd have to move to larger quarters again. 16 September 1992 A while back, Evelyn wrote me that I hurt myself too often. "Oh, motherrrr!" I complained, and then noted that I'd had a hard time opening the letter because my hands were full of thorns from moving the locust prunings. I popped one out with a seam ripper; the others refused to respond to a darning needle, but bleach in the dishwater drew them out. About the time the last one -- which was, of course, in the tip of a finger -- departed, I whacked the other index finger with a hammer. That prevented typing for only a couple of hours, though I expect the little blue thread under the nail will have to grow out. The following day, a bug bit me on the lower eyelid while I was picking up the dutch shallots in the shed, which I noticed at the costume- cutting party when I stopped right in the middle of a bat to locate a mirror and learn the origin of the expression "bags under the eyes." I thought at first sight that it must be a humongous blister dangling down. It had been itchy earlier, but I hadn't seen anything when I combed my hair. Doesn't feel swollen this morning, though it still looks like -ten- five miles of bad road, but the sinus under it seems to be inflamed. If the swelling has gone down tomorrow, I think I'd better stay inside and sew. If I can find one of those big clumsy feet they put on sewing machines when small children are using them. I was helping to make costumes for the Mardi Gras parade; real ambitious: they've made a paper, paste and chickenwire float in the shape of a Batmobile that looks remarkably like an arabic tent -- I suppose that I'll get the point when it has been painted. Jan got nine yards of black felt & I've no idea how much yellow, and yesterday we were cutting out cowls while she sewed them together, and when I ran out of mask-size pieces, I cut out bats to be appliqu‚d to yellow moons that had already been cut when I got there. Jan got twenty of the forty hoods, and twenty-three of the emblems, sewed together. We got all the cowls and all but five or six of the bats and moons cut out, so the job is more than half done. There is a sewing party tonight, to which I'm glad not to be invited. I must remember to sew nametags inside my two black turtlenecks and whatever black pants I find in the closet, so that I can lend them to the marchers. If I get around to replacing my shabby weight-lifting tights before the parade, they can certainly have those. Good grief. John Lawrence is mowing his lawn again. It started at half the height that mine is when I've just finished. He claims that he hates to ride his little tractor around! It's about time I had at ours; it's high enough now that I think I can tell where I've been, most places. In August -- we had September last month -- that's shaggy. Though we had a lot of rainy days this summer, we haven't had much rain. When I pump the laundry water out onto the lawn, I never have to move the hose to keep it from making a puddle, and have no concern at all if it pumps out under the line where I'm going to want to walk as soon as it's done. I seldom see running water when I cross the steel-deck bridge over the Normanskill. Howsumever, only the plants in the raised flowerbed ever look thirsty. There are at least three rooted runners on the Joe Rickets strawberry I brought back from Alice's. I've been trying to weed the wild strawberries out of the other two flowerbeds so that I can plant Joe Rickets berries there next summer. 21 September 1992 If you don't count getting chewed up by bugs at the Century, I managed to get rid of the swollen eyelid without taking on another ill. On the other hand, Dave woke up with a sore neck this morning; perhaps as a dutiful wife, I should go out and haul some locust limbs around. There were some gray blurs hovering just above eyebrow level at the site where I was to hand out water and bananas to the riders. Luckily, they didn't come down for fresh targets, but I got some bumps on my forehead before I got my hat on. I've no idea what they were. A pretty little bright-brown bee or fly lit on my thumb, but I'm not at all sure he was with the rest of them. I was more interested in sending him on his way without lunch than in making close observations. The bumps disappeared almost suddenly while Dave and I were having pizza that evening. Another mexican pizza; we're almost spoiled for the other flavors -- and mexican pizza is too definite a dish to eat every week! It varies some from time to time, which is what keeps us from getting bored with Smitty's pizza. It's John and Jon's now, but they bought the name on the sign, and also the use of a set of trains. I hear that Smitty drops in now and again to change them, as part of the conditions of sale. This time it was black with olives; at first I thought they had slacked off on the hot peppers, but it turned out that they had turned the light-dimmers lower than usual; the pile of peppers on the last slice was twice as high as usual. I put two minced slices of the peppers into what I called a "mulligan omelet" this morning. Had one ear of corn left over; takes three that size to make fritters with one egg. Scraped it as for fritters, added some firm outside snips of tomato, a few shavings of cheddar cheese (we had no swiss), the peppers, and two eggs; cooked as for eggs aa, though I think that I could have called them scrambled, since they were beaten before hitting the skillet. Took a bagful of needlework to sit my post with, but I had to stay after the last rider had gone to make any progress on my bootie. I've got my new jersey down to hand work, and there was a surprising lot of it. I should have hand-sewn the reinforcing patches at the pocket- stitching, because the feed dog tore the fabric and had the opposite of the desired effect. I ruined the front pockets by attempting to sew the hems by machine. I thought at first I'd cut new pockets from the scraps, but then thought it would be better to cut long-grain strips to replace the spoiled hems; then the tops would be firmer and hold stuff in, and the bottoms would still expand on the cross grain. Besides, it was possible to machine-stitch along the lengthwise grain. I'm going to sew them on entirely by hand. I got a surprise when I finally put the side-seams in and tried it on. I used the same pattern (minus five pockets) to make a blouse of an interlock somewhat more amenable to machine stitching, and it surprised me by looking very good. I put on the yellow jersey and it looked like a maternity top. Partly yellow versus black, I suppose, but a great deal of it is the give of the fabric. But it doesn't require an undershirt, and that is a great thing in a summer jersey. I hope I get another one finished by spring; it might could be I'd have gotten more exercise this summer if I'd been decently covered while I was doing it. Hope Alfred's still has some of the yellow interlock with the white flowers that they had a month or two ago; it's the same brand as the black stuff and should be easy to sew. And I should be alert for Beyond the Tollgate to clear out their summer stuff. I got a some limbs cut off the locust limb I want to take down, but can't see how I can get the main limb; I can reach the spot where I want it sawed off, but it's too heavy to be safe to take down in one piece and I've taken off all the branches that I can reach. I sure wish I'd nipped that extra trunk with the pruning shears five years ago! There's some major surgery to be done on the butternut tree, which is trying to reach towards the power lines, but I intend to trim it after it goes dormant this fall. Maybe we'll get a nice deep snowdrift to stand on while I work. Was getting some untidy results from MILL; read the source code and found that my end-of-paragraph detector trapped carriage returns and paragraph symbols, but ignored line feeds. I added one more OR and recompiled. I also added a title page. After struggling with the BASIC book, the DOS book, and the Operations Guide, I used PC-Write to draw a big "MILL" with a box-drawing character, then inserted "PRINT"" before every line. Upon looking at the two other code-practice programs, I think that their authors did something similar. 22 September 1992 Good behavior at an end: I dropped a letter, grabbed for it without thinking, and banged my head on one of the struts sticking out from under the printer. Thought at first I was going to get a conspicuous goose egg, but it's beginning to look like one of those things that are sore for a couple of hours and then go away. Dave cleaned the keyboard today, and the "S" is once again reliable and I can "alt" with either key. He found a large amount of cat hair inside. 25 September 1992 I was ready to send MILL to a member of the Writer's Exchange to make sure the messages were adequate, then I decided to write a simpler program called SENDFILE to send morse in sentences or continuously, without checking to see whether you guess right. Naturally, I began it by editing a copy of MILL so that I could use the code tables already set up. In the process, I realized that SENDFILE could be a subroutine in MILL, and that MILL would benefit by incorporating the adjustable speed I was working on for SENDFILE. So here I am, back at square one. After a lengthy struggle caused by trying to use "SELECT" without access to the manual (not to mention QB's sudden objection to code that had been working fine), I discovered that my speed adjuster did indeed work -- but at 15 wpm, "S" sounded like "O" and "T" sounded like a train whistle. Restarted and asked for 60 wpm (the current max); it sounded like 15 wpm to me. &%#@! I *knew* my calculations were right. Back to the manual (I do have a manual for "PLAY"). It seems that "Tempo" sets the number of quarter- notes, not the number of whole notes, to the minute. My goose egg was more like a robin's egg, but change "a couple of hours" to "a couple of weeks." The lump shrank to the size of a pimple a few hours after it appeared, but seems to be holding at that point. The pink mark (which began as a quarter-inch circle) has shrunk to a triangle about an eighth of an inch across, so I suppose that what remains represents the corner of the strut. 28 September 1992 Neither I nor my black shirts made it to the mardi-gras parade at the convention. Dave went, to drive the truck pulling the float. They took "most comical." He said, "It wasn't the prize we were trying for, but a trophy is a trophy." The last time he saw the float, it hadn't been dismantled yet; I should get down to the firehouse before somebody gets industrious. On Saturday, I reflected that I hadn't been to the gym for a dangerously long time, and drove through the rain to Guilderland. But I went shopping first, and by the time I got to the gym it was 5:00. They close at 4:00, and it takes me an hour, so I should have gotten there by 3:00. Sunday morning I woke up with a backache. Meant to ride out for exercise this morning, and it was a lovely day for riding today, but I did this and did that -- including yet another revision of MILL --and by the time I got dressed, it was 3:00 in the afternoon. So I rode to Stonewell and back, picking up some apples and corn at LeVie's, and some ground beef, hamburger rolls, and olive loaf at Stonewell. It helped, but not a bunch. I need the hip and back machine. Didn't get around to mailing the classified check to the treasurer yesterday, and today we got a money order for another one. I don't know where all these non-members are finding out about us. Maybe I should hold off until deadline in case there are more. Members advertise free; non- members send checks. We try to point out that it doesn't cost much extra to join, but when a fellow is selling his bike, you don't have much chance to sign him up. I finally cut out my black denim trousers yesterday. About time. A week or two back, my gardening pants split across the seat while I was digging up some violets, so I ripped two strips off one leg to appliqu‚ over the frayed inseams of my "good" pair. I've also ripped an open- bottomed patch pocket off the "good" pants, and wonder whether it is worth the trouble to rip a still- good pocket off the garden pants to replace it. My jersey remains in the state it was in when I took it to the Century. There won't be many more days when I can wear it. One thing I did in Guilderland Saturday was go to Alfred's to look over the sale fabric, for I have decided that I should have yielded to the temptation to buy new fabric and begin my curtains again. There was, of course, nothing suitable. My next project after the pants is a flowered dress to wear to meetings. I've got until October first. This being September 28th, I'll be lucky if I have new pants to wear. There's always my flowered skirt and blue sweater, though the last time I wore that outfit, I looked so short and wide you'd think I'd been computed portrait and printed landscape. I think I'll make my dress in three parts: a short-sleeved slip, a broadfall skirt, and an overshirt with long sleeves. I'm glad that long skirts are in style this fall; a dress long enough to wear with the same socks I wear with pants won't look eccentric. Pantyhose are worlds better than those dreadful garter belts, but I still don't like the slimy feel of nylon stockings. Not to mention that a long skirt can conceal my polypropolene long- johns, and if they hang on into summer, long skirts can conceal the lack of any socks at all. When I woke up this morning, I found my "goose egg" itchy, rather than sore, and I was able to feel the bump only by virtue of knowing exactly when my finger was on it. Dave said that he couldn't see it any more, and hastily added that he wasn't wearing his glasses. It's readily visible and tangible this evening, perhaps because of irritation from my helmet. 30 September 1992 The meeting is tomorrow and I haven't got any farther with my trousers than to carry the pieces up to the sewing room. Didn't want to wear jeans anyway. Hope I remember to stop at the club and pick up the tennis racket I'm trying to find a home for. (We have swap shops before every meeting.) I've got to run over to Delmar tomorrow; Erica isn't limping, but with the weather getting cold, we figure we should have Vetalog in the house. Vet says I can pick it up after 3:00. Maybe I can stop at the hardware store afterward to see whether that is where I saw the cellar-window bubbles and didn't get any because I didn't know what size. Got to the gym yesterday, but instead of helping my back, the hip and back machine hurt, and I had to stop. The other machines were all right -- at least using them was; lifting the seats and bending over to move the pins was another story - - and I felt a little better when I left, probably only from getting my metabolism up. Much improved this morning anyhow, which was lucky because we were out of clean clothes and yesterday I wouldn't at all have liked running up and down the steps with baskets of laundry. Weird: it hurts to bend over, but doesn't hurt to get back up. Dave went back to work today, but isn't feeling much better. He got a magnetic resonance image done yesterday, and Casey said that he couldn't understand why both arms didn't hurt. Whereupon his right arm began to hurt. The Normanskill was running when I crossed the steel-deck bridge, and there was water on both sides of the pier in the middle, though the water on the dry side looked stagnant. Saturday's rain must have amounted to something. A while back, I found a wooden comb at the thrift shop, and paid ten dollars for it even though it wasn't finished. Thought it worth less than half that, and would have estimated it even lower had I known that the teeth were saw-splintered on one side. But it was the first mama-bear comb I'd seen in at least five years, with teeth neither too coarse nor too fine, so I bought it. Worked over the splinters with an emery board several times, and coated it with hair oil so that I could wash it, and it works fine. So yesterday at the health-food store, I saw the same kind of comb, varnished and more neatly-made, for $4.60. I bought it. It might be another five or ten years before I see another, and wooden combs break if you drop them. There's a panda-bear design on one side. I wonder what the writing on the other side says? 7 October 1992 There was water in the Normanskill when I came across the bridge, but I won't swear that it was continuous. It wasn't green- scum stagnant either, at least not to the hasty glance. I rode to Wolfe Road (Computer Drive, to be precise, but you folks would be doing well to recognize Wolfe) to attend a planning- committee meeting. Some subcommittee with "Bicycles and Pedestrians" in the name; I've got it written down in the pocket of my suitcase. Wore my older party dress, thinking it more subdued than the other. Took Dave's flight bag, which is amazingly big when you get it away from my flight bag; I should have yielded to the impulse to go to ToughTraveller and buy a purse big enough to hold my knitting. Before I realized how big our small flight bag is, I intended to try to pass it off as a briefcase; instead, I took my purse out of it, folded one sheet of paper into the outside pocket on my purse, and left the suitcase and my helmet under a settee in the waiting room. If I'm going to get on committees, I suppose I should get an office-style dress. I don't even know what's in this year --except for shorts suits, and I wouldn't wear one of those to a dogfight, not even if I had a chance to win. When I saw how the suitcase with my dress in it filled up one whole pannier, I thought I wouldn't be able to stop at Kim's for saimen, but the dress didn't fill up the suitcase, so I put the bag into the basket with the zipper-pulls on top, and put the packets of noodles into the suitcase. Best way to carry brittle noodles I've ever had. Also stopped at Canterbury Tales, where I blew all my credit and $1.16 cash. Thanks to an egregious error in arithmetic, I left an hour early. I realized my mistake somewhere in Voorheesville, and thought I'd stop at Klarsfeld's to kill an hour, and see whether they had my cleat yet. Turned out Klarsfeld doesn't open until 11:00. So I verified that I could find the right building and suite, then went hunting for CompuAdd Superstore, which I stumbled across while looking for a way back to Wolfe. Looked over their printers -- I like the $600 wide-carriage 24-pin Epsom -- collected a catalog, wandered back to 5 Computer Drive, and changed clothes. It was still a long time until 12:00. I checked in with the receptionist, settled on the settee, and before I'd found the table of contents in my CompuAdd catalog, she called me into an office to have a talk with the fellow who'd called the meeting. The actual meeting was just more chit-chat, but I did come out of it with an announcement to print in the Bikeabout. (Haven't I written those words before?) Though my backache hasn't bothered me since the last writing, I can still feel it. Probably rested it up some today, since I've had no call to lift anything. Except weights; I stopped at the racket club & had a pretty good workout. I was surprised at how little strain the long ride was; I expected to get home totalled, but I was in better condition than I was after my trip to Guilderland. I think I must have been sick that day. Dave came home for a nap this afternoon, so it's lucky that I was out; it's almost impossible to rest with someone stirring around in the house, and I'd have wanted to be sewing upstairs, trotting in and out of the bedroom. Precisely two weeks, and I can still locate my robin's egg. Itches when I concentrate on it. I found a bug in MILL yesterday, but haven't swatted it yet. Not long after the previous entry, I dropped my ten-dollar comb and broke it. I put it back together with contact cement and, to my surprise, it seems to be holding together. I've got my second pair of pants cut out and some of the fold-unders pressed. Still have to work buttonholes in the first pair. We started giving Erica Vetalog this morning. LeVie has closed for the season. I'm going to have to get cracking on the Bikeabout. MHW's Program Chairman is going to retire and move to Florida. He's trying to sell a gorgeous tandem bike that he doesn't want to pack. Also assorted cold-weather cycling gear. 10 October 1992 Dave left the window in front of his radio open while he was operating. Fred fell out, and later on Frieda jumped out on purpose. Each jumped back in before I could get the door open. I shut the window. At the meeting before last, one of the poets asked whether we'd mind if he brought in an erotic poem. Knowing this guy gets steamy when describing a muskmelon, we nonetheless agreed. Perhaps inspired by the prospect, everyone else brought poems that were weird; I myself forgot that I'd intended to read from Orson Scott Card's essay on how to use criticism, and gave a dramatic presentation of "Your exclamation points! Alas and Alack! Convince me! That -- you! are sitting on a tack." (at least I was brief!) We had a new member. It will be interesting to see whether she comes back. I came home and wrote an erotic free verse of the now-we-pull-the- shade school; someday when they have forgotten this episode, I'll take it in and see whether anybody gets it. Then as I was drifting off to sleep, I wrote a poem just to be writing a poem; I think it's the first time I ever thought of writing a poem first and picked a subject later. The rhyme suggested the subject. Casting about to tell a story, I began, "Once upon a time, a long, long, time ago..." and, since it wasn't long after the fifth anniversary of the October fourth storm, the line "the autumn leaves came crashing down in umpteen feet of snow" suggested itself. So I had to get out of bed and write it. I intended the usual camaraderie stuff about the impromptu pitch-in dinner etc., but it turned out to be about how wonderfully quiet it is when the lights are out. 12 October 1992 Nothing like a barn fire before breakfast. The alarm went off a little after six this morning and I've just got home at 13:08. I just heard Dave's car, so I guess they've got the hose put away etc. Since none of the boys had had breakfast, Kathy bought some bread and cold cuts and we served lunch in the radio room while they were washing the trucks and hose. We also helped lay the hose on edge to dry. Someone brought two big trays of fancy doughnuts from Grand Union, and the first one went down well but long before noon the boys had been fed up with doughnuts. Late in the morning, I ate a second doughnut and immediately regretted it. 13:23: 2351 just reported out of service en route to a rekindle on Picard Road. Not surprising; you simply can't put hay out. And if they don't get the residue spread out thin, it will start up from being wet after a while. No animals in the barn, but he had a fine crop of what looked like first-cutting hay when I got there - - it didn't look like much after the Town of New Scotland's tracked loader got through with it. I heard people saying that he had a brand- new Troy-Built tiller in the barn, and that the barn itself was put together with hand-cut nails. And I told John that I could finish the Bikeabout today. Sunday night I was already thinking Tuesday. Still haven't had time to swat the bug in MILL. I saw in the Extra-Class Manual that one needs to know *BT* and *DN* in addition to *SK* and *AR*, but I've been searching the Operating Manual in vain for a definition of *BT* and *DN* so that I could add them to my table. It uses *BT* in its discussion of cw traffic handling but does not define it, and the list of code signals includes only letters, numerals, and punctuation marks. 18:50: It's rekindled again. 14 October 1992 As far as I know, the hay is still burning. Dave wonders why the boys keep going back; he thinks it better to let it burn and get rid of the mess. Yesterday I finished laying out the Bikeabout, pulled hardcopies of eleven pages, and then decided that before I took a rest I'd make it a clean sweep by correcting the table of contents and hardcopying the cover. The pages were in reverse order because I'd hardcopied from the front; I started by comparing the back cover to the table of contents and planned to end by laying the freshly-printed Page One on top of the pile. The third or fourth line from the bottom was "Ride Calendar." I hadn't left room for it. I found that by postponing "Cycling in the Canadian Rockies" until December, I could get by with re-doing three pages, and now the job is almost finished again. I think I'll do a preliminary check of the T.O.C. before I pull the three new hardcopies! Haven't called the publisher yet to say that I'm going to be late. Earlier in the day, the power went out while I was working, but when I came back to work after a reasonable wait to see whether the power was going to stay on, I was able to reconstruct the item I'd written after the previous save. I thought the new transformer at Voorheesville was supposed to stop this sort of thing. Horrors! Now I think I recall Jeff telling me that there is no November calendar. At least I haven't destroyed the old hardcopies yet. I do hope somebody is home at the Resnik house. Thank goodness I decided to write this before going back to work. I'm even more grateful that after I put the December issue together the week after next, I'm off until January. (We have no January issue.) As I was dialing Jeff's number, I remembered that he told me that he would deliver the ride calendar to the printer on Monday. Therefore, there is a ride calendar. I scared myself over nothing. It's *December* when there isn't any ride Calendar. Hoo, boy, am I looking forward to two months off! I must get back to CompuAdd sometime and find out whether the scalable font is proportional- spaced. I don't think we could tolerate a fixed-space font when the president is thinking that a new printer would let me put more words on a page! If I told him it would put on fewer, the whole deal would be off. There is amazingly little data in the catalog, but loads and loads of fashionable white space. Gimmy a crowded layout! (So I've exceeded my "!" allowance. This *is* a first draft.) 17 October 1992 Yesterday, I finally started work on the jeans I'd cut out, and got all the pieces attached despite spending the afternoon taking a nap, fetching groceries, & being generally disorganized. All I've got to do is to turn down the back waistband, top-stitch the inseam, hem the legs, make eight buttonholes, and sew on sixteen buttons. That's four buttonholes per pair; I postponed buttonholing the other pair. About time to get with it, because I've been pinning the pants on and wearing them anyway. Topstitching the inseam will be a chore despite my free-arm machine; I'm not surprised that cheap-jeans manufacturers don't do it, but sewing the allowances down improves fit and makes the pants wear longer. I tried the unfinished jeans on, and it looks as though my last round of alterations is going to work -- somewhat to my surprise; I was nervous about making three changes at once in a pattern that was tolerable. I may want to increase the hips another eighth of an inch per seam to compensate for the fullness that I removed from the lower part of the center-front seam. That will increase the waist too, but not more than can be eased onto the waistbands. Each band already soaks up an inch of ease without any special preparation. I'm going to have to duplicate that prototype blouse I made of cheap black flowered knit; every time I want to leave the house, I throw it on over my T-shirt & look dressed. 18 October 1992 Besides, I want one with properly-spaced buttons. Almost finished the jeans yesterday, but Dave came home and used a five-letter word: "pizza". After getting back from Smitty's, I read "Clarion" for a while and was pleasantly surprised. I don't expect much from stories picked out by Kate Wilhelm, and I don't expect much from stories written in a workshop, but some of that stuff was pretty good. Also learned that Vonda McIntyre's teachers were uniformly poor, or so she says in an essay the editor sneaked into the collection of stories. Pity there are so few Jesse Robinsons. 19 October 1992 I wanted to ride my bike to Westmere today, to get some exercise, five pounds of whole-wheat bread flour, and a sack of cornmeal. It was raining when we got up and the radio said it was going to snow. I postponed the trip. The buttonholes were more of a struggle than I thought they would be; one expects machines to work well on stiff fabric, but I had to pick one buttonhole out, and redo two by hand. I wonder whether my bobbin case is wearing out? All through the straight stitching, I had to stop at intervals and put the bobbin thread back into the tensioning thingumbob. All I've got to do now is to sew on one button, then I can put away the ironing board and the other clutter --and cut out a blouse and start over. 21 October 1992 Today I pushed through some clothes I left airing in the doorway after doing the wash yesterday, then I did a double take and fetched a ruler. My house-gown is just seven inches longer than Dave's gingham shirt -- and the gown draggles down in the back. We have taught Erica that she doesn't get out of the house in the morning until she has swallowed her Vetalog, but today she streaked out when Dave opened the door to go out for the paper. I wrapped the pill in cheddar and went out after her. She sniffed the coated pill without much interest, and I wanted to get on with cooking breakfast, so I grabbed, pried, and stuffed. When I left, she was sniffing the pavement as if looking for her cheese ball. Frieda caught two mice a few days ago. I threw one out alive, and took the second away from her just as she was about to chow down. Meant to go out in the morning and bury it under the mulch, but we haven't had any decent weather since. Something seems to have disposed of it for me. Nearly froze my hands hanging out the wash yesterday, and the third load didn't get dry. Should have washed the shirts last; I dried them indoors anyhow. 22 October 1992 Yesterday I looked at Fred standing on Dave's chair next to the bag of water, and wondered if I'd been a trifle hasty. The bag is marked with two gauges, one to show how much sand to put in and one to show how much water. There wasn't any sand about, so without a single thought, I went to the sink and put in water. Might could be I should have run down to the hardware store; even without three cats in the house, plastic bags sooner or later start to leak. Backtracking a little, we were somewhat alarmed when Casey told Dave to take his sore neck to Mincy, who is a neurosurgeon. All the more because we have an idea of what sort of surgery is required for spondylitis! But Mincy said that putting the neck in traction for an hour a day for a month or two ought to do the trick, and Dave says that his arm already feels stronger. The traction gadget is a clever device that hangs over a door, so that you don't have to drive bolts into the ceiling. Just one little problem: the doors were ripped out of our doorways sometime in the fifties. Dave sat in the hallway with the half-bath door open behind him. He was trapped with nothing to do but watch TV, he blocked the hall, and sometimes I'd forget he was on the other side of the door and try to close it! It wasn't long before he figured out a better way: he cut a board to door height and strapped it to a chair with cable ties. Now he can play with his transceiver while he is "hanging himself." While hanging himself yesterday, Dave discovered that his radio has been modified, and transmits on frequencies that aren't mentioned in the manual. Alas, he has a new clock to use: a program called "GeoClock" that puts a map of the world on the monitor, showing which areas are dark and which are in sunlight. That means that I can't play with the computer while he is playing with the radio. Maybe I'll get caught up on my sewing. I've got the pants done now, and I've cut out a blouse. When I get the blouse pattern working, the dress is next on the list, followed by dust covers for the printer and radio (time to start a serious search for fabric), turnout gear for the auxiliary, and a suit. At the rate we're going, I'll have a design for the turnout gear done in time to present it for a vote at our next meeting. There is no meeting this month (a dinner, I think), and next month's meeting date is Thanksgiving, and I don't think we have a meeting in December either because it's too near Christmas. I'm basing the uniform design on three models: the cobbler aprons that were so handy when we did housework in dresses, the carpenter's aprons we use for cash boxes at the Punkintown fair, and the highwayman's vest I wore on the Five Boro Bike Tour. It's a square of fabric front and back, with velcro straps at the waist. I'm thinking of making the shoulders adjustable too, since women vary more than highwaymen do. The only problem I foresee is finding reflective letters; could spell out "NSVFD" with half-inch reflective tape, but I haven't seen tape lately either. Alas, I never think of the design except when Dave and his turnouts are off somewhere, so I don't know what style of lettering to choose. I have a key to the firehouse, so I could go look at the coats stashed in the big pumper, but I haven't gotten that energetic about designing yet. I've resumed work on "Shuttle Solitaire: tatting as a tranquilizer." I think I've about got it down to the hard part: putting it into logical order and creating the illustrations. Went shopping and iron-pumping by car yesterday. Left right after lunch and didn't get back until after five. I did take a turn through Stuyvesant Plaza, hoping to find a paper-towel holder. I went into Different Drummer's Kitchen, a new store --I'm still snickering at the name, for the merchandise is high fashion, not "different" -- hoping to find a towel holder. They only had one, a wooden holder that cost twenty bucks and looked as though a careless yank would send the dowel flying -- not to mention that it can't be mounted vertically, as my narrow cabinet demands. A stainless steamer basket hanging next to a double-boiler top of the same shape caught my attention, because I've been intending to pack up my Miracle Maid cooking set and take it to the Salvation Army as soon as I buy a double boiler and a steamer. I never looked for the matching pot -- they wanted $65 dollars just for the basket! This wasn't any high-toned, stainless- clad, cast-aluminum creation, it was plain, thin, sheet metal. I don't want to know what they want for the pot. I once again looked in vain for a price tag on the intriguing pots nearest the door, but this time I noted a jar of $17/pint cleaner made just for those pots. If they're *that* delicate, they're overpriced if they pay you to take them. Afterward I went to Woolworth's and found a $2 towel holder that looks exactly like the one I want to replace. Maybe there's something medium at Crossgates. While in Woolworths, I took a look, out of habit, at the stiff stuff they are selling under the label Woolworth used to put on bedspread cotton, and on the next shelf I found "Grandma's Best," a mercerized-but-unstarched imitation of bedspread cotton. I bought the holiday pack of three balls: red, green, and white. Thread looked a smidgeon thicker than the larger balls sold individually. I should say "longer balls," because they appeared to be about the same volume. All that air in the middles of balls is a nuisance when you want to carry your crocheting in your purse. 24 October 1992 Today I decided that before I went downstairs to feed the cats, I'd get ready for the potluck dinner that the Voorheesville Library's poets are holding at seven. For some time I've been looking at Fred's corpulence and wondering how I could get him to take more exercise. All I need to do is to change my clothes at six o'clock! He dashed down to the kitchen, thundered back up the stairs to see what was keeping me, dashed back to the kitchen . . . . 25 October 1992 Yesterday I conducted an experiment: I poured olive oil into my little iron saucepan, peeled a lot of garlic, gently heated the oil until the garlic was more-or-less cooked, and froze it in a couple of spice bottles. I was wondering whether the expansion of the garlic or the contraction of the oil would predominate. This morning, neither jar has broken and one seems to have drawn away from the side, so I guess the oil won. I was silly enough to turn the heat on low when I started peeling; it takes a long time to peel half a pint of garlic (especialy when small urgent chores keep popping up), so some of the bulbs have cooked a lot longer than others. I also sliced a few bulbs and put them into the oven on waxed paper, and put other peeled bulbs into a small bottle of 10% vinegar. I haven't seen another bottle of 10% vinegar since buying that one; I hope I don't forget and throw the bottle out, because I want to take it back to Kim's to ask whether they can get more. The rest of the harvest I threw into the crisper, where it may or may not get used up before it spoils. I've thrown some bulbs out already. Before putting the garlic in, I picked out last year's onions and threw them on the compost heap - -they were still around because I had thought I might plant them. Under the onions, the paper was wet, moldy, mildewed, and generally yukky. Took a while to scrub out the drawer. I took "The Dying Demon" as my contribution to yesterday's festivities because I already had a hardcopy, but before my turn came, I heartily wished I'd taken the time to hardcopy "Private Kossell," because I could have read all of it. Also, the obscurity of "Kossell" seems more in keeping with the style of the group. Howsumever, one of the guys said he hoped that I'd read the subsequent chapters at meetings, so it must have gone over reasonably well. Two of the guests read from published books of poetry, at least one of them distributed by a professional publisher. I got the impression that he had been paid in copies, but that beats paying to have it printed. 29 October 1992 Dave caught a nasty cold and brought it home to me. I don't take viruses as hard as Dave does, but I haven't felt like doing much. I was hoping I could get to sleep without pseudo-ephetc. tonight, because one doesn't sleep much *with* pseudoetc. (Dave's night medicine has a cough suppressant, which I ought not to take, and I don't feel like going to the drugstore.) But I'm breathing with my mouth open sitting up, so I took some now hoping it would be worn off enough but not too much by bedtime. Yesterday I got all the pieces for my blouse, except the lower front, together. There's some pressing and hand work to do before I sew the side seams. Hope I haven't overlooked any bits of the Bikeabout. I've a whole page with nothing on it, though, and I've hope that the nominating committee won't call tomorrow, so that I'll have the whole weekend to work on it. Busy day for deliveries. My printer ribbons and Dave's new shoes arrived, one UPS, one by mail. Also got a lengthy something or the other from the Capital District Transportation Committee's Subcommittee on Bicycles and Pedestrians. Tentative date for the next meeting is November 12th, so I've plenty of time, if I don't forget that I've got it to do. They "Ms"ed me on the distribution list. In the format, though, they couldn't use "Mrs." because Mrs. David Beeson has nothing to do with this. I don't see why folks insist on using unearned titles with full names. I suppose it's some sort of convention for government people to add meaningless titles to lists of names; goes with "my esteemed and respected colleague, the honorable Senator..." 31 October 1992 I've always figured Dave took colds harder than I do because he keeps going to work after he starts feeling sick, but this time around I've realized that working in a office aggravates colds another way too: you either go full out or you stay home. Yesterday I was too sick to leave the house, but I still changed the bed, mowed the oak leaves off the lawn, and worked an hour or so on the Bikeabout. I spent at least as much time in bed as Dave does when he stays home, but I didn't feel nearly as disabled. Today I need to mow the maple leaves off the lawn, but I think I'll take a nap first. Hope winter doesn't set in before I feel ambitious enough to mow off the locust leaves. I think the maple leaves will be the most work, though they cover the least area. I'll have to empty the bag every swath and may need to make narrow swaths. I'm hiding the maple leaves under the windbreak, to deal with next spring. I mulched under the oak tree with the oak leaves, and had a yard or two of edge left to cover -- most of the leaves are still on the tree, so I expect more than enough to finish. I was breathing easily when I got up this morning, but I don't know when I got up to take pseudoephidrine; I suspect that I was still under the influence. It's supposed to be an upper, but I sleep better with it than without. Which isn't very well because of all those naps. There's a trap shoot in the morning, so I'd best get the Bikeabout together today. It's all done except for re-writing the meeting announcement, filling in a quarter- page here and a half-page there, and cleaning up the dining room to see whether I've overlooked anything. Also to find that CDTC report that I want to read while settling down for my nap. Dave, disgusted with this morning's paper, suggested that I apply for Rosenfeld's job. Then he said that the dining room would be messy every day and I would stay up late typing every night. We discussed how I would go about editing the T.U. quite seriously until I reminded him there is no way I could supervise a staff. While cleaning up, I remembered that I promised a reproduction copy of our flyer to someone, but I can't remember who. Probably someone who attends meetings, though. I've gone from hoping the nominating committee would hold off to wondering what's keeping them. The last I heard, we were short only a vice-president. We are re-using last year's president, and I presume that the treasurer is re-running. I hope so; it's tough to break in a new treasurer. 1 November 1992 Still no word from the nominating committee. I'm not at all sure what I'm up to with the Bikeabout My cold seems to be getting worse instead of better. I went back to bed instead of to the pigeon shoot, and didn't get up until afternoon. I'd better call Casey in the morning. Leaves still need mowing, and it's a sunny day, but I imagine that it would be foolish to go out there. I thought I spent a restless night, but this morning Dave told me that he got up at two and spent an hour hanging himself, and I never noticed. He isn't back yet. If they are having fun, they may stay through supper. I wonder if they are reloading shells, as was suggested yesterday? I've no idea how many boxes of pigeons are on hand. I could go over to visit for a while, but there are sure to be children present & I'm probably contagious. Good thing I went to Fred's and took a couple of practice shots yesterday. Also left some needlework with Sandy for Indian Ladder. Took forever to figure out a wild guess as to appropriate prices, in part because I took the lamp that belongs on the secretary upstairs to the sewing machine, so I was trotting back and forth and forth and back because I couldn't use the "solar" calculator anywhere near my records, booties, and mittens. Sandy thought the best item in the batch was a bag I crocheted when I realized, half-way through a bootie, that the thread I was using was unsuitable for baby clothes. It will probably sell first, because I put a low price on it. I suppose I should look harder to find a ribbon that will stay tied and look decent, because the kindest word for crocheting drawstrings is "tedious." (Look up "boring" in your thesaurus: they all apply.) 2 November 1992 I got to feeling better before bedtime, and was able to breath at night without drugs --or even a hot shower before retiring -- so I decided that instead of going to see Casey today, I'd go shopping. We're down to our last apple, out of milk, low on bread.... Still no word from the nominating committee. Just as well, as there is over a quarter page on page seven that I'm going to have to write an editorial to fit. Else are only two ten-line vacancies and a twenty-line void, must be some fillers on file, though the file is always short of short ones. Maybe Bikecentennial's clip art includes something of the right shape. I hate to put in totally irellevant art, but some of them are self-contained. The elated cyclist standing on a mountain of spaghetti is definitely too big, though.... Absent-mindedly put Peggy's carolling party in the spot reserved for Eliot's ad, but the ad precisely fit the gap on the classified page. Things do not usually work out that way. 3 November 1992 We are having goose for thanksgiving; Dave went out with his shotgun one morning and that night he came back with a bird in his hand. Luckily, the morning in question was the day of the pigeon shoot, so the goose was dressed, plucked, and frozen -- it was one of the prizes. Dave was thoroughly pleased with himself. Considering how few times his shotgun has been fired, I'm impressed too. I fired two shells through it, but have no interest in shooting at clay pigeons. Not only no chance of connecting, there's no way to tell where the shot actually went. Dave said someday we'll pin up a big sheet of paper so I can get an idea of how the gun works. I was surprised at how little recoil there was (It *was* birdshot); the noise hitting my infected sinuses bothered me a lot more than the stock kicking back. On the other hand, Sandy fired Fred's gun only once and got blue all down her arm, Dave says. Wella well. The trash truck just picked up our trash. That's what comes of contracting out instead of using town employees. I must remember to run over to the Voorheesville firehouse later on. Perhaps after the rain has stopped. Yesterday evening I saw my first speech by Perot. Rather wished that he had a chance; it would make all those presidential appearances more endurable. Marrou beat Clinton in Dixville Notch. The paper actually mentioned it, down in the last paragraphs of the story. The radio was careful not to say anything except that Busch won Dixville Notch. (Perot beat Marrou.) I don't see how Trudeau can be so enthusiastic for Clinton. You expect a politician to tell lies, but Clinton lies so badly! If he can't even tomcat discreetly, how is he going to conduct negotiations with foreign countries? 4 November 1992 Egad. I set out to hardcopy the Bikeabout before the piano tuner got here and restricted me to quiet activities such as pasting up, and suddenly remembered that I'd forgotten to ask for a ream of ledger paper when I picked up the originals. I hastily counted the sheets remaining in the previous ream and found that I had twelve. There are twelve pages in this month's issue -- but I've never in my life gotten an issue hardcopied without having to do more than one page more than once. I suppose I should do first those pages that require lots of pasting up, so there won't remain much to do after I get the new ream. This sort of thing is dispiriting. I put a half-pound of beans on to soak last night. Looked like a small amount, but the kettle was full this morning. I turned the fire on before starting breakfast, then forgot to put any seasonings in before I went to keep my 8:45 appointment with the dentist. When I got back, the house smelled like ham even though there was nothing in the kettle except beans and water. I hastily added the bones from yesterday's smoked pork chops, and the package of frozen pork neckbones I'd bought for this batch of soup. I think the chop bones would have been enough on their own. Also added a tablespoon of grits, a teaspoon of rice, a rib of celery, a small onion, and a small clove of garlic. I may have soup for lunch. I've got a little smoked yeast left, and plan to add that later; also some marble- size whole onions. Pity Sovex stopped making smoked yeast. Wasn't good for anything but bean soup, but it was very good for that. When I went out to mail a letter this morning, I found that the mail had come yesterday. Nothing but ads, though. Monday was a famous day for this family. When "Quick Notes" came in the mail, I was surprised to find that they'd printed my "mini macro" ("redefine to when typing boring material"), and they made a bit of fuss about it. Then about 6:15 Peter van Zetten called to ask if Dave had seen the 6:00 news. They did a feature on small local businesses, and included a shot of Dave at his desk. He never did see it -- we are asleep long before the 11:00 news -- but he says that the boys at the firehouse say that they got a good view of his left elbow. Quick Notes left out a comma, and caused a singular verb to refer to a plural subject. Demonstrates Strunk's dictum that one should avoid having a "which" refer to an entire clause: technically correct, but easily misconstrued. Not to mention sensitive to typos. 8 November 1992 I picked up the slate at the meeting last Thursday (also a bunch of important news items I had to kill that carefully- fitted editorial for), and the Bikeabout is finally all together -- except for a diagram to paste into page six. I'll deliver it in the morning, and then forget the Wheelmen until January. Weel, I'll have to think about them a little bit sooner, because the New Year's Day Wake up Ride at 1:00 is here, and I'll have to clean up a bit. Not to mention finish the living room curtains. I'd have them done by now if only I could remember where I put the pleater tape. I finally sewed up the side seams on my new blouse today, and find that I'm going to have to make the back wider without making the front wider and without introducing a sharp curve into the armscye seam. I also want to convert the front from a yoke and placket to a princess-style cardigan. I think I can make both changes at once, since I don't want to make any fitting changes in the front. Anyhow, I'm definitely not going to make another cotton shirt that can't be opened down the front when I iron it! The cardigan opening could be introduced without disturbing the yoke, but later I want to extend the blouse into a dress and princess seams will make it easier to shape the skirt. I think I'll rip open the side seams of this blouse nearly to the waist and finish them like the side seams of my Busch Garden shirt, so I can get into my pants pockets. Oh, yeah, there's a CDTC Sub- Committee on Bicycles and Pedestrians meeting on November 12th at 3:00. Followed by a writer's meeting at 7:00. And an MHW board meeting at Platt's on the 19th. I can't skip that -- it's to discuss my request for a new printer. Hope I can work up something decent to wear by Thursday; my party dress packs well, but isn't really suitable. I've got to find something smaller to carry it in, too. And I mustn't forget to darn my tights. Won't need them tomorrow, because I'm taking a package to Altamont on the way to the printshop, so I'll have to go by car. I plan to go the gym afterward, which should help a little. I'm not sure I've been on the bike since the first CDTC etc. meeting. I certainly haven't been out since I caught cold. Outdoor exercise is good for a sick person - - if a chauffeur follows you around and picks you up the instant that you've had enough. Lacking a chauffeur, I haven't even mowed the lawn. Erica wants to go out, but freezes her paws when she does, so she hisses at Fred and Frieda. Fred and Frieda find this a diverting change in the routine, and stalk her. They must have some other entertainment too, because I found a pile of guts at the foot of the staircase yesterday morning. I thought patching the holes in the foundation was supposed to keep prey out of the house. While I was working on the Bikeabout, I found a letter that I thought I had mailed, and then it got shuffled back into the pile. When I find it again, I'm going to have to write an apology on the back. Maybe I should just slap it into an envelope and mail it. 11 November 1992 Yesterday, while I was doing the wash, I reflected that it was high time we took the hose to the outside off the pump outlet and put the hose to the septic tank back on, so that I could shut the cellar door. Then I realized how the prey got into the house! It's a horror story: the small opening guarded by tall mint must seem ideal to little creatures seeking shelter. Little do they know that three ogres lurk within! Yesterday I did the wash; today, in a burst of energy, I pressed the side seams of my new blouse, but did not think to press the hems. And tomorrow is the CDTC meeting. I'm going by car. If it's raining, I don't want to get wet. If it's not raining, I'll want to get some leaves mowed up before I go. Nobody responded to CDTC'S plea for help in the Bikeabout. I'm not surprised, but I'm disappointed. I made a rather fervent speech at the club meeting, and one of the guys told me he thought he ought to write up his area. I wonder if it would have helped if I'd told them the date of the next meeting; put some urgency into it. 12 November 1992 A while ago the dispatcher played a symphony -- takes quite a while to send every set of tones on his board -- and announced that there were going to be damaging winds this afternoon. I sat down intending to say that there wasn't a breath of wind outside, but the leaves on the little oak are waving slightly. I guess the edge of the storm is getting here. So now I not only don't want to go to this meeting by bike, I've got my doubts about going by car. I moved the bike into winter quarters this morning. It's beginning to look as though we are going to get snow before I get the leaves mowed. Where was all this rain when things were still growing and could use it? My nicotina held on for a surprisingly long time, but looks ratty now. There's still a patch of healthy green peeking over the edge of the bed. The Joe Rickets strawberry has multiplied and looks healthy. I might actually get some fruit next spring. 13 November 1992 I went to Delmar to pick up Erica's prescription first thing this morning, and got back about noon, exhausted. I dropped in at the Bethlehem Library (Delmar is in the Town of Bethlehem) to see what they had on Bicycling, noticed Steve Allen's "Bigger than a Breadbox" in the card file, paused in Humor on the way to Transportation, and read part of a book by Bennet Cerf. Then I realized that I'd forgotten the call number of the section I was headed for, and left. They ought not to scatter those little stools through the stacks. Stopped at Beyond the Tollgate on general principles, & found a sale fabric that might do for the background of the patchwork covers I mean to do for the printer, radio, and rollaway bed. After getting home with the yard-and-a-half piece, I realized that I wanted to make the printer curtains the same color as the background, and I can't buy more of this pattern. I'm planning to make the printer cover a rectangle with a curtain sewn into each of the four sides, to make it less voluminous than the tablecloth I'm using now. Perhaps there's enough cloth in the two curtains left over from the windows. After a nap, I got a good bit of the maple leaves mowed up before it got too dim to see what I was doing. After Thursday's hairy trip down Central Avenue in darkness, rain, and rush-hour traffic, I've become a fervent proponent of year-round daylight-saving for the Capital District. After supper I stitched the hems of the new blouse, a bit of a chore because there was no logical place to stop hemming the side seams and I hemmed them right into the sleeve hems -- quite difficult when the blouse doesn't open down the front. I'm definitely going to make the next one a cardigan! I think a long skirt will be the next item on my agenda. I need one, it shouldn't be difficult to make a simple pleated skirt, and there is ample fabric in the length that I bought to make a calf- length skirt when I was in Indiana. There isn't enough to make pockets, but those will be completely concealed anyway. I wonder whether I should make the waistband black, or of a strip off the selvage of one of the panels? If I wore a black waistband with a black blouse, it might make me look less short-waisted. On the other hand, with any other color, it will be a horizontal stripe just where I least need one. On the third hand, the only solid-color blouse I've got hides my waistband. So do I have black fabric, or is it back to Beyond the Tollgate? Anyhow, I ought not to do anything about it until I get started indexing that stack of magazines. Some of them are past due. The winds never arrived here, but after we went to bed, I heard some moderate blustering, and Dave said the scanner was busy all night about wires down in Knox and Berne. The firemen borrowed barricades from the roads department because NiMo was so far behind they didn't want to stand there stopping traffic until the linemen came, and the county ran out and Dave heard a request start towards the State highway garage here in Voorheesville, but managed to get back to sleep before he learned whether they got them. Sounded like a limited-area version of the October Storm of '87, but everybody had lights again by morning. Despite Codiene and Darvon, Dave hasn't been sleeping well, so he didn't object as much as he should have when Mincy scheduled him for surgery on his pain in the neck. He's going to Memorial the day before Thanksgiving, which leaves me wondering what to do with the goose. I think I've decided to cook it after he gets back, because we will be distracted beforehand, and an all-day dinner should help to keep him quiet and in the house. He's not supposed to drive his car until the brace comes off; I don't know how long I can hold him to that. Hey, ho! I've realized that I can make Dave's radio cover now, and appliqu‚ the compass rose on it later. Since it's just a hemmed rectangle -- he's using a dishtowel now -- I can do it in between issues of Women's Household Crochet tomorrow. 15 November 1992 I didn't start the indexes until today, but I've got three-fourths of Women's Household Crochet done. Should have taken time out to mow up leaves; I'm blurred out from sitting. Yesterday I dashed to Beyond the Tollgate to buy 5/8 yd of black muslin. (They didn't have any pocketing, twill, or poly-cotton, and the all-synthetic lining was much too thin.) Then I stayed up until 9:30 copying the waistband and pocket patterns onto interlining, with adjustments. The front waistband, for example, must be an inch longer on each side to allow for the overlapping pleat. This is the first time I've used this batch of Pellon pattern paper, and it's fuzzier than I expected. Yesterday I also measured the cloth against Dave's radio, and realized that I want it heavier around the edges, to make it stay put, and that means a patchwork border, so I'm holding off until I get the other fabrics. (Not to mention that I don't have a border design.) As exactly what I want for the brown parts of the pattern gets more and more refined, I pause occasionally to reflect that patchwork started as a way to use up scraps. Hmm. A false hem would be prettier than a patchwork border, easier to make, and just as effective. Right now he's using the uncut fabric to keep dust off his radio. I hope I get around to the furnishings before my New Year's Day party. 18 November 1992 On the fifteenth, I ran a load of wash and indexed three-fourths of WHC. On the sixteenth, I somehow managed to finish the remaining quarter of the job and take it to the post office. Yesterday was the first snowfall of the season, and the ground is still white, though the driveway has cleared itself. There were three ambulance calls before our alarm clock went off, and NSVFD was called to the first crash to guard some downed wires until NiMo could get there. (I ordered Dave to stay home & for a change, he did.) Uncounted vehicles parked in unexpected places, and someone complained of "about twenty cars all over the Letter S." "Letter S" refers to a stretch of 85 where it is also 443. I thought at first that it was so named because it curves a lot, but after seeing signs that said "Upper Letter S" and "Lower Letter S," I checked a map and found that two C-shaped side roads form a perfect letter S. The name has spread to the top of the climb, and I heard one fellow using it to include New Salem Hill. Yesterday, I spent the whole day working on my new skirt. I did a lot of handwork that won't be necessary on the next edition, and made the pleats deeper at the sides because I curve more there, but I should have made them fewer because they overlap there, and I should have made the overlap only half an inch. Doesn't spoil the looks, but the extra pleat on the back makes it difficult to find the pocket. I sewed up the main pockets before attaching the "passport" pockets. I put the small pockets into the pattern envelope in case I miss them enough to sew them in by hand. I don't use the patch pockets in my pants much, but if I were to try to do without a purse, I'd need the passport pockets to substitute for a billfold. My wallet works in a purse or a jersey pocket, but is too thick to carry in a skirt pocket. Because the raw edges dragged on the floor, I pinned up a four-inch hem before trying it on with pins in the waistband. I was pleased to see that that happened to be the perfect height, and sewed the hem in the intervals of sewing on the hooks and eyes. (With four hooks and four eyes per hook, I needed a few breaks. Haven't finished the job yet.) Then I discovered that with hooks and eyes, the skirt rides an inch lower. It still clears the floor, so I'm going to wear it a couple of times before I rip out two and a half yards of hem and do it over. I planned to wear my new skirt to the board meeting tomorrow night, but my blue sweater looks awful with it, and all my other blouses are strictly for pants. Perhaps one of my turtlenecks will work. Meanwhile, back at the indexes: one down, three to go. 20 November 1992 Susan Hankins Foster called Thursday just as I was putting two safety pins into my new skirt so I could put it on. (I haven't sewn all the eyes into the right side yet.) We talked for ten minutes, which made the rest of my schedule tight; as usual I was getting off at the last moment, & I had to stop at the drugstore and the gym on the way to the MHW board meeting. My part in the meeting was a disapointment: before I could defend my proposal, Bob introduced it by moving that we skip the discussion and vote yes, which they did. I turned in an expense account that used little more than a third of my budget, then asked for four years of budget all in one fell swoop! I wonder if I forget to record something; it doesn't seem natural to spend so little money on editing supplies. Haven't been using much clip art, though, and I think that I had a lot of stamps from last year's budget. Now I've got to select a printer. I told them I wanted a 24-pin broad- carriage dot matrix. I do hope the Epsom I was looking at has a decent proportional-spaced scalable font. I checked the scalable part, but I'm so spoiled by the daisy that I forgot that not every printer offers good PS type. When I was complaining that the DWII had developed squeaks, Dave said "It doesn't owe us a thing." I vacuumed it out and worked over all the visible moving parts with sewing-machine oil on a Q-tip. It helped some, but the major squeaks are coming out of the rollers under the platen, and I don't see how to get oil into the bearings, let alone how to do it without getting oil on the rubber. Dave isn't in the mood to look at things that he can't pick up and move into his field of view right now. He went to Memorial for "pre- admission tests" this morning. He hates hospitals, but I think he's looking forward to Wednesday. Today, I indexed Summer and Fall of Crochet World Specials. That leaves only Winter, but I don't think I can do it before the mail leaves tomorrow. Then the six issues of Crochet World, and I'm free of it, because I don't think that the editors of Old Time Crochet want an index. If OTC was sent me by mistake, I'm pleased to have it, because one issue includes an article on tatting that I read with interest. I might make the tatted baby booties sometime, if Indian Ladder gets rid of my crocheted booties for me. The tatted booties are on the same plan as the booties Mom taught me to make: work an oval for the sole, work even to make sides, fill in the toe -- a medallion sewn in instead of working back and forth -- then work a round to form the ankle. The writer "did not weave in the ribbon on the bootees shown so that the construction can be seen more clearly." The photographer carefully arranged the bootees so that you can't see anything except the medallion that fills in the toe. Turning the underneath bootee upside down wouldn't have injured his composition in the slightest, and would have given us part of the sole and a hint at the sides. I've spent some time reading "The Encyclopedia of Needlework" and "The Dictionary of Needlework" lately. The instructions of our founding giants are harder to read than the klutziest of printed instructions today. When the books were written, verbal needlework instructions weren't part of the culture. We've also developed systems of notation since then -- not to mention the boost given to the field when pre- printed "squared paper" became available in every dime store! Offset printing, which made illustrations cheap, helped a bunch too. One of the old newspapers I worked puzzles in recently (I never work the puzzles in today's paper, but fetch one off the bottom of the stack) reported that the last dime store in the Capital District was going out of business. What a pity I didn't know about it when it was still there! It was at the intersection of Central and Colvin, not at all hard to reach. When I was unlocking my car after leaving the MHW board meeting, my skirt dragged on the pavement & I thought I'd better take up the hem before it got dirty and worn. Then when I was letting myself into the house, I tripped over it and thought that I'd better do the job before I wore it again! I found that my blue sweater presented an acceptable appearance when worn over the white mock- turtleneck that Evelyn gave me, but the skirt calls for something high- necked and Victorian, with ruffles. Even though it was too long and I couldn't get into the pockets, I enjoyed wearing the skirt, and plan to make some more. The next one should be much less work. I've seen an ad for a man's "square cut" shirt pattern that intrigues me, and Dave will put up with a lot if you give him big, big pockets. That "American" shirt was what I was looking up in the Dictionary of Needlework; as I had thought, it came from England. I wonder how far back it goes? Cutting a shirt is described on the same page with an "ordinary Chemise in the old-fashioned, and but slightly gored style, suitable for poor persons" that sounds very like the 14th- century shift described in Threads. 27 November 1992 Mincy gave Dave back to me a day early. This afternoon, when Dave was trying to settle in for a nap without the trapeze, the side rails, and the buttons that raise and lower the bed, he wondered whether leaving the hospital was a good idea. He's upstairs now, and seems to have figured out how to lie on a flat bed. The lamb pelt helps. I wish I knew where to buy a wedge pillow. I saw one in the window of a pharmacy when I went to Carman Road to buy selzter, which I quit doing when the "bottle bill" made the beverage place on Carman give up selling the cheap brand in re-usable bottles, so it was a long time ago. I don't think the pharmacy is there any more. When I was following the "escort" pushing Dave's wheelchair along the convoluted path to the main entrance, I felt delighted to think that I could start forgetting how to find my way around in Memorial. When we left the escort to begin the trek across the parking lot to the car, he said "Do me a favor --don't come back," which we fervently promised to try not to do. Then when we got home, Dave's nurse called up to say that she'd forgotten to give him his prescription, and couldn't legally mail it. When I got back to the hospital, the page who had wheeled Dave out was in the lobby talking to the volunteer at the desk, but I didn't say anything to him. For the first time, on that last trip, I bore too far right at the Northern Boulevard exit and ended up on Livingston Avenue. There was, luckily, a sparsely- populated parking lot at the first corner, so I pulled in, opened the glove box -- and realized that my Albany map was still in Dave's car. I'd driven the Saab to pick up Dave because its seats give better support to the head than the Toyota's do, and switched back to my own to drive alone. I intuited my way to Northern Boulevard, and guessed right about which way to turn when I found it, so I got to the hospital without much delay, but the uncertainty was exhausting. Turned out to be quite a trip. I decided that since I would pass Beyond the Toll Gate on my way out, I might as well buy the reflective tape I want to sew on the backs of the cycling mittens I recently finished knitting, and said that I'd better come back by the pharmacy and fill the prescription, which reminded Dave that his nurse had recommended milk of magnesia, then some old shopping lists that I found while clearing the table made Dave want a bottle of Mountain Dew, so on the way to the pharmacy I stopped at Stonewell and got the soda and some buttermilk and some hamburger, and while I was at the Mobil station buying skim milk I remembered the milk of magnesia and went back to the drug store. And when I got the tape home, I noticed that it is iron-on, not sew- on. I howled in frustration for a while, then decided that I could use it to spell "NSVFD" on the turnout aprons -- if I ever make them. Time to hit the telephone: Beyond the Toll Gate and Alfred's are the only fabric stores in my orbit, but there must be a lot of fabric shops within driving distance, and one of the bike shops might have some. On the third hand, maybe another search in the bottom of the foot locker will reveal that I didn't use all the tape I bought for the previous pair. Might even turn up the previous pair. Long-lost things have been turning up lately. Wish somebody'd tell joggers you put reflectors on the front and back. Caught a flash in the corner of my eye a few days ago and glanced toward my right-front fender to see a man in a navy-blue jogging suit with stylish-but-useless reflective stripes down the sides. If he had been in front of my car, I don't think his stripes would have caught the headlights at all. Why *will* they wear navy blue at night? I can understand the guys in black coats, who put on what is warm and handy, but why would somebody buy a cloak of invisibility to be worn only while jogging in the dark? When I pulled in the second time, Erica was sunning herself on the hood of the Saab. She jumped off and jumped onto my hood. Dave thought it clever of her to know that the engine which had just been switched off would be warmer than the one that had been sitting a while. 29 November 1992 I'm wrapping the last index up to mail now. I thought one pattern was clever: it was a baby sweater with a button-on drool bib, and three patterns for bibs. I imagine you'd want to make two of each! One could adapt the idea to any pattern or technique. Doug and Fred came by this afternoon and took Dave to the firehouse for an hour. I took a nap while they were gone. Dave seems better today. When he woke up this morning, he said that he was a couple of hours overdue for his pain medication and didn't feel too bad. That plastic collar is starting to irritate his skin, though. I wonder whether I could buy some stockinette like that used to line casts for him to wear under it. I'm cooking the goose tomorrow. Dave would rather we had it next week, but he wouldn't say so until after it was half thawed. 2 December 1992 We had a good time with our goose. I made some "cranberry sauce for people who don't like cranberries," mashed some potatoes, baked a sweet potato, and made some mushroom gravy. Dave thought the gravy very good even though it was politically correct: skim milk, corn starch, two mushrooms saut‚ed in a few drops of oil, and a few shavings of cheddar cheese. Danny mowed some of the field yesterday, and was at it again this morning; thus inspired, I went out and mowed up the maple leaves. I'm going to leave the oak leaves and locust leaves where they are. Or try to. Some of the leaves have been blowing onto the Lawrence's lawn. Dave, over my loud objections, drove to the firehouse to pick up the mail. I'm driving him to his surgeon's office to get his staples out this afternoon. 4 December 1992 The last time I was in Alfred's I touched the yellow "interlock" I've been keeping an eye on, and discovered that it was really jersey. What a disappointment! Yesterday I went to Colonie Center to buy Dave a pair of sweat pants, dropped my bike off at Klarsfeld on the way out, and crossed over to So Fro Fabrics in Northway Mall afterward. I'd forgotten what a big fabric store it is. There were some cotton prints on clearance at four dollars a yard that made me wish I had my dress pattern finished. There was also a sale on woolens, but I didn't remember until this morning that I wanted some wool to make a blanket- bedspread. I bought a box of #3 hooks and eyes -- and learned another reason to prefer the old- fashioned package (hooks sewn to cards) when I threw half of them all over the sewing room while attempting to remove tape from the box. I also bought 250 glass-head pins for my magnetic pin cushion, and a pair of 3«" "Stitch Remover" scissors. Ever since my current sewing frenzy started, I've been wanting thread snips to keep by the sewing machine. After looking at everything from kindergarten-shaped "pocket scissors" to stork scissors, I decided that scissors that could also be used for ripping would be convenient, and 3«" is about the right size. The little scissors I had up my sleeve when I worked at the Singer store used to park by the sewing machine, but they and their sheath ended up in the sewing kit that I keep in my locker at the gym. I wonder how many sewing kits I have scattered around? I found one of my film- can kits in my knitting bag when I finally found my partly- knitted cycling mittens. I've finished them, all but the reflective tape on the backs, which is what I was doing in So-Fro. When I left there I stopped at the center hidden behind K- Mart to ask at Fountain of Fabrics -- a pitifully sparse fountain after seeing So- Fro -- and while I was there, I inquired at the craftie store beside K-Mart, asked a clerk in the sports department in K-Mart, and looked at K-Mart's shelf of sewing notions. At the meeting yesterday evening, Peggy Day told me that you can special- order reflective tape at Tough Traveller in Stuyvesant Plaza. Since I can easily inspect their few sewing notions (primarily stuff for making mountain-climbing harness), I never thought to ask. Danny has finished mowing the field. 6 December 1992 After realizing that I had to go back to Colonie to pick up my bike, I hastened to pills alter my blouse pattern once again. This is its fourth incarnation, and it's not as good a blouse as the first one. I'm beginning to think that my methods leave something to be desired. I cut it out on Saturday, with much ado and bother: I just couldn't get the cloth to lie square on the table. It isn't permanent press, so I can't see why I couldn't straighten it. This morning I ds, realized that I'd had plenty of fabric to cut long sleeves, and short sleeves aren't much use at this time of year. After Dave went to bed tonight -- about seven; he's getting into sleep patterns that are going to be inconvenient when he goes back to work -- I sewed the front yoke, back yoke, front, and back together, and assembled the collar. Then I needed to press the seams, which I do in the bedroom, so I came down here. The latest alteration puts such a hump in the back that I half hope that I'll have to alter again, but when I drape it over me and look in the mirror, it looks as though it's going to come reasonably close to fitting. We went to Smitty's tonight, and had a Mexican Pizza. I must be starting to take after Dad, because there weren't any peppers piled up on the leftover slices. For the curious, it's a hamburger-and- onion pizza with black olives, raw tomatoes, and hot peppers. Poor Frieda doesn't get enough attention. She asks for it only when I'm reading, writing, or working a puzzle, so she's more likely to get blown on than petted. I've found that blowing at her discourages her where pushing her aside brings her back for more. (Maybe I've got bad breath.) I don't know how long that will last; it took her about three episodes to learn to love having her fur rubbed backwards. Fred likes his humans horizontal, so he gets rejected only when he plunks down against Dave's ear and starts purring like a steam engine. Or gets fur in my face. 8 December 1992 Sigh. First I discovered that the scalable fonts in Epsom's 24-pin printers weren't proportional and the proportional fonts weren't scalable, then I found that CompuAdd had discontinued the broad- carriage printer. The salesman led me to an ink-jet printer which had good enough resolution that I could (reluctantly) live with doing all my work on legal- and letter-size paper, and it cost about half as much as the printer I'd been considering, but the paper supply is dreadfully fussy. It won't print on thick or thin or rough or slick, and there is no way to hand-feed sheets. If I wanted to print the first page of a letter on letterhead and the second page on plain, I'd have to change the whole stack in the middle of the letter; it specifically forbids mixing papers in the stack, and even if it didn't, you have to remove the stack and jog it each time you put a sheet of paper on top. Aside from the fuss and bother of constantly handling the paper, the manual emphatically assures me that the feeder won't work if the paper is the teensiest bit mussed. An automatic sheet feed would be wonderful in an office where all letters are printed on the same letterhead, but I need something better. At the least, paper trays that can be swapped without touching the paper. Then as near as I can make out, it won't work with DOS. Windows is miraculous and indispensable for some users, but if all you do is write and edit, Windows does nothing but clog up your RAM. So I've not only got to find another printer, I've got to find another store. It was inconvenient enough to go to Colonie; I think the next-nearest place is Schenectady. Sure wish there were such a thing as a printer catalog. I've got to choose something before January, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to go about it. On the other hand, I bought six yards of a lovely 45" print to make a dress. It's not paisley, but the design is like paisley. It seems to be too late in the year to buy winter fabrics. All the wools were on sale, but I didn't find any wool I liked, except one piece marked "dry clean only." There was a lovely black corduroy at a good price, but I couldn't convince myself that I wanted corduroy pants. Finding a non-denim fabric to make pants of is going to be difficult. I can get the pants out of 2« yards of 36" fabric, but no width short of 68" would let me get them out of an inch less. If I make them of 58" or 60" cloth, which seems to be the new standard, I'd waste nearly as much as I used. Maybe I could get a better layout by making two pairs at a time. Where did the 39.37" fabric that seemed to be taking over go, and why are so many fabrics so wide? it isn't as though circle skirts were in fashion. I wonder what to call cotton prints now that so many of them aren't made of cotton, and so many corduroys, twills, ducks, etc. are being printed? "Calico" has been reserved for the small and reproduction prints quilters buy. I saw one calico at So Fro that was a dead ringer for an old snippet in my scrap box. The completed blouse does have a bubble in the back, but it's not so pronounced that I won't wear it. My first thought for removing the diagonal wrinkles was the right one. When I went through my fastener collection and selected a card of black Prim's rustproof brass #0 hooks to sew onto the blouse, then dropped my unlabeled box of new hooks into the box of snaps etc., I came up with yet another reason to prefer hooks on cards. The new package looks more expensive than the old one, as well as less satisfactory. I hope it's only Dritz that's changed over; there must be stores somewhere that carry other brands. The print I chose is on a black ground; they had the same design on a blue ground and on a red ground. The red ground wasn't much, but I tried to persuade myself I had a reason to buy some of the blue. Had about made up my mind to buy it to make patchwork printer, radio, and rollaway covers when I realized that some blue stuff I already have would look better. The dress design, by the way, is back to the blouse and skirt that it started with. Wearing a plastic collar all the time is irritating Dave's neck, but otherwise he's doing well. I wash it with a saturated solution of baking soda while he's shaving, so it doesn't stink any more. It's certainly lucky that Dave switched to an electric razor shortly before all this started, so he can shave and imitate Frankenstein's monster at the same time. (Mincy told him to walk like Frankenstein when he has his collar off.) He's allowed to drive "on quiet country roads." Most of his miles have been between here and the fire house. When I picked up my bike, the mechanic complemented me on the neatness of my patches. I was scarcely less puzzled when he explained that he meant the patches on the tube he had discarded while replacing my back tire. (I hadn't put a lot of miles on it, but I seem to have hit a lot of glass.) Later on I realized that it can't be very often that he changes a tube for someone who knows how to repair a tire. In the ordinary course of events, I'd have bought a casing and installed it myself -- using the old tube that had six patches on it. (Mechanics always discard the tubes they find in tires they repair, because they don't know where they've been.) 9 December 1992 I went to the gym first yesterday, and thereby got there for the first time in two weeks. Made my stiff arm feel better, but it still hurts. I thought I'd be skipping many of the upper-body exercises, but the only thing that hurt was my warm-ups. If I'd just remember to stretch and bend at home, maybe I wouldn't get so stiff. I wish I'd taken note of the brand of the cotton print I bought. I washed it today, then took it to the laundromat and ran it through the "jeans and towels" dryer. It came out without the slightest wrinkle or crease. 10 December 1992 Made some carob pudding using my cocoa-pudding recipe. Looks more like chocolate than chocolate pudding does, but doesn't taste anything like chocolate. It's delicious served hot on chocolate ice cream. The poets' meeting was tonight. Since the fourth Thursday is Christmas Eve, we won't be meeting again until January 14. I took "Pseudoephidrine Hydrochloride," the first non-rhyming poem I've read them, and they loved it. (They insisted that I read the title aloud!) They intend to compile a tape of readings and try to sell it through local bookstores. I opted out of the project; my plate is overflowing the way it is. Speaking of which, I haven't transcribed George's criticism of the City of Saratoga yet. My arm was feeling better until I drove the car -- maybe I should round up my woolies and resume using the bike. I'll try to stay home for a few days; what I was out for today was stocking up before the Noreaster, so that shouldn't be difficult. The Noreaster is six hours overdue, thank goodness. I was afraid it would catch me at the library. 13 December 1992 I'm getting ahead of myself. I tried to type "Banner.93" to open this file. How's this for absent-mindedness: the grits I had for breakfast were so unsatisfying that I moped about the kitchen nibbling dates & muttering "If you haven't had any bread, you haven't had anything to eat." When I started to cook breakfast for Dave, I found an untouched pot of grits on the stove. After a session with Gray's Anatomy, I've decided that what's sore is the upper end of the Supinator Longus. I've really got to get an anatomy book that was written for someone who doesen't have a cadaver. The class told me my poem was worthy of publication, so here it is: Pseudoephidrine Hydrochloride To sleep or to breathe, that is the question whether 'tis wiser, in the end, to swallow two small red pills or to lie down without them, wherupon my nose shall, by congestion, swell shut. I choose to breathe. As I lie in the darkness noting that the clock reads one hour later each time that I look, as I dwell upon boring subjects, and count the stones in an imaginary garden, I see, in a flash like the line between two classified ads, a crimson cupola. It stands upon four gable roofs which join into an eight-seamed dome. The roofs bend upward around the cupola as if it were a tack holding them down. Or maybe I saw a strawberry pincushion, the kind Woolworth's used to sell, somehow bereft of its dangling emery bag and displayed upon no background at all, not even a void. The vision is quite logical, and makes perfect sense. ------------------------------------ One comment was "Just how many pills did you take?" I prefer: The Moth The moth has compound eyes. He lets some distant light fall on one ocellus to guide his path aright. It is a clever system when light comes from afar. His wings are singed and broken when he picks too near a star. ------------------------------------ Pity I don't have any winter poems; this will probably be the last mailing before Christmas. The noreaster arrived late Thursday or early Friday and was still at it Saturday morning. Lots of traffic on the scanner about minor smashups and disabled vehicles. An ambulance killed a deer. A boy sledding at Connelly's went headfirst into a stump and they carried him out on a Stokes, but rumor says that when they got him to the hospital it turned out to be nothing much. The high winds never did arrive, for which I am grateful. The sun has cleaned off my car, and has a good start on what the snowplow left in the driveway. I shoved some of the slush off with the snow shovel, but quit after a minute or two for fear that I'd move the wrong way and aggravate my sore arm. It is much improved, and I'd like to keep it that way. And the drive is clear enough that I can go out in house shoes. It was a pleasure to watch the truck clearing the whole parking lot in minutes. Dave gloried in not running a snowblower. The snow was heavy and wet, but I'm hoping it will stick until the next snowfall. I'm still trying to get rid of the Thanksgiving goose and it's time to plan the Christmas menu. I think I'll vote for roast beef; a small roast cooked on the rotisserie is very good. Dave plans to go back to work tomorrow. He's pretty much resumed his normal schedule: I look out the window and his car is gone. I've been meaning for quite a while to go to Sandy's and buy some black 2-ply to knit with my natural- white 2-ply into a stranded jacket, probably in the fuzzy stripe called "spruce." Sandy says that her weavings are selling well, and that she is delighted to have an excuse to spend a lot of time at her loom. 18 December 1992 I've got a Christmas present -- maybe. I thought I had this settled once before. This afternoon I finally steeled myself to start calling computer stores and asking about printers, starting with the one closest to home even though I was in there months ago. Lo and behold, when I finally got a salesman on the line, he named one right off, and it's an Epsom. Judging by the model number, it replaces the one that disappeared just as I discovered that it wouldn't quite do. So I just might be telephoning Herb tomorrow and telling him to write a check. One little fly: if I go to a store in Karner Plaza tomorrow, I won't have any excuse not to cross the street to Capitaland Racket and Health. Wednesday and Thursday they were packing boxes at R&P, and today they moved into larger quarters. They sent Dave home early yesterday, and told him not to come in at all today, but after sleeping late he went in until lunch, then went back after his 1:30 appointment with Casey. Prescription renewal, not his current problem. The new place is on the same road as the old place and the Racket Club, but at the back of the loop. I haven't seen it yet. I wonder what's causing all the traffic over at the county highway garage? Every time someone pulls out of their driveway, it sounds like somebody pulling into ours, so I keep thinking Dave is home. Lucky for Erica -- the last time I looked out to see if the Saab was there, I saw her waiting patiently to be let in. Claude used to knock. I think this time it is him. At least, I see tail lights. Later: we have settled on roast duck for Christmas. I'm glad ducks are scrawny -- we still have a half- pint of goose salad and a serving of breast meat from Thanksgiving. I cut myself a long-sleeved blouse today, and made it loose enough to wear over an undershirt. This cloth laid square and easy to cut. The previous fabric drove me nuts. I found a piece of needlepoint linen while choosing the blue cotton, and wondered why I'd bought so much of something so expensive. Finally remembered that I once made a linen bra, but the fabric was too thick for comfort, and it didn't wear any time at all. It should be just right for making a poncho shirt, and it might make two. 19 December 1992 The check is in the mail. I remembered to call Herb and ask for it just before going out for pizza; it should get here in time for me to pick up the printer when it arrives on Tuesday. I set out early, and got home just in time to be taken out for pizza. Went to look over the printer, and read the entire manual. Then, in the back matter that I almost skipped, I came upon the casual remark that it wouldn't print pages more than fourteen inches long! I asked the salesman about it, but whether it was because the idea was totally alien or because English wasn't his first language, I couldn't communicate the idea that I wanted a broad carriage so that I could print oversized pages and have them reduced. He was also convinced that no printer in the entire world had ever been capable of printing a page more than eleven inches long, which kinder undermined my faith in him. I went home to pick up some 11"x17" paper to see if the floor model would accept it, and Dave mentioned Logical Micros on Central, and called them to see if they had the printer I was looking at. They didn't, but suggested an Okidata at a lower price. Dave likes the Okidata at R&P, so I went to Colonie to look at it. I looked over the narrow carriage version of the Okidata 24-pin, liked it better than the Epsom -- especially hand- feeding: just adjust the paper guides and drop it it; no insert it "firmly" and try again. And the Okidata adjusts itself to the paper thickness, so you don't have to worry about damaging the print head by forgetting to change the lever. It doesn't offer film ribbon, but seemed to be printing dark enough with the nylon ribbon, and the cartridge is easier to change than the daisy-wheel ribbon, let alone the Epsom. So I ordered the "Microline 591," among considerable trepidation because I hadn't fed it an oversized sheet of paper and because I hadn't picked out suitable software. And I may have to buy the current version of PC-Write to get a printer driver for it. I don't think the differences between the current version and mine are worth the trouble of upgrading just yet. When they get column-snaking . . . Just realized I forgot to ask for spare ribbons. Well, I was in Colonie at a stage of the day when I expected to be in Guilderland, so instead of pumping iron I went to So Fro Fabrics. I had thought it was far to go to Stuyvesant Plaza for pleater tape! So Fro offered an embarrassment of drapery tapes, but none looked like what I was after. Decided to visit Northway mall while I was parked, and noticed a huge sign saying "JoAnne Fabrics," which I had overlooked on my previous visit. If there's anything to Colonie Center (across from Northway) at all, Colonie is definitely worth a day trip, even though you are required to use a car to cross the street. JoAnne's is as big as So Fro, and I thought it better organized, because the prices are posted instead of the "original price" and a discount. On the other hand, they don't mark the fiber content on the remnants even when they use the bands with a blank for that. Went through the rest of Northway without seeing anything worthy of note, save that Woolworth's still looks gratifyingly healthy and the ice cream shop is gone. I was pleased to see that St. Francis' chapel is still at the same old stand, and people seemed to be using it. As far as I know, this is the only church in a shopping mall. Deja Vu has changed from a head shop into a clothing store, but still has jewelry and wierd items along one wall. There was a wider assortment of postage scales than any stationer has, and two of them looked like the cheap, reliable, easy-to-store mechanical balance I have been wanting. Alas, nothing in the case had a visible price tag and I didn't feel like attempting to get a clerk to confide secret information. The crowds were terrific, as you would expect on the last Saturday before Cristmas. I like unto never got my pleater tape cut at JoAnn's, and if I didn't particularly want to get the curtains up before the holidays, I would have left without it. I had been amazed to find an ample selection of spaces close to So Fro -- later found that when the lot is crowded, you get into this lobe, but you don't get out. After realizing that I didn't really want to turn left, I escaped by by bulling across a steady two-way stream of traffic. So I was surprised to get my lettuce, dried beef, and cat litter soon enough that I still had a chance to get to Falvo's before six. Couldn't check the time because I'd belted myself in and moved into traffic before remembering that my watch was in my pants pocket. I was relieved, upon arriving at Falvo's, to find that they were still lit, two cars were in the lot, and the watch said that it was ten after five. The sign on the door said "Saturday: 9-5." I believe that Falvo's is open on the Monday before Christmas, and even if they are keeping the usual hours, there will be time to thaw a duck bought on Tuesday -- but I'm glad I bought frozen game hen at the supermarket in case I don't get the duck. Dave keeps saying, "Game hen is good." 22 December 1992 Bought my duck today, first thing in the morning. Then I ran over to Central Ave to pick up my printer -- they get their shipments in the afternoon. Decided while I was there I'd buy some second- hand books; Canterbury Tales doesn't open until 12:00 on weekdays. Stopped at the gym on the way home and got through in record time by dint of skipping most of the upper-body machines, and cheating on the rest. On my previous visit, on the eighth, I'd cheated on some but hadn't skipped any. No doubt this is not unconnected with my attempt to hang some drapes yesterday. I stepped on something I knew wouldn't bear my weight, and it didn't. Landed on my feet, but I must have made some sort of violent balancing motion with my sore arm & it hurt like fury for a minute. Went upstairs to read so the arm could lie flat; Frieda wanted to jump onto the bed and sank her claws into what would have been mattress if I'd been holding "Uller Uprising" with both hands. She nicked my knuckle, I yelped. She gained at least a yard more altitude than originally planned, came down on my pillow, rebounded in another yard- high hop, and came down on the far edge of the bed watching me with the same "what was *that*?" expression I was wearing. When I got home about noon today, Dave (who had come home for lunch) said that Dr. Casey's wife had returned my call & I have an appointment for tomorrow at 2:00. Hope yesterday's little incident sharpened my symptoms enough that he can find out what's going on. Dave keeps saying "does your neck hurt?" The snow is still sticking where it hasn't been disturbed, but the definition of "disturbed" is getting mighty loose. For Christmas, Dave is getting radio toys and I'm getting black knitting wool. 26 December 1992 Dave ordered his radio toys, but I haven't gotten around to seeing Sandy yet. On Christmas afternoon, I filled out orders for books and newsletters totalling about half what Dave spent on his radio toys, though. "The history of *underwear*?" Dave said, peering over my shoulder. He was even more bemused by the history of numbers. The third book was "The History of Costume," so I guess I was in a historical mood. On the other hand, the two newsletters promise to tell me where I can buy needlework supplies. Dr. Casey said that what is wrong with me is that I'm 51 years old. He gave me a prescription for thirty Seldane capsules and orders to find out what I'm doing and stop doing it. He thinks it most likely that I'm sleeping with my arm in an awkward position, and it did start about a week before Dave's operation, when his arm hurt so bad he was piling up his pillows in new patterns, then it took off when his arm stopped hurting and he stopped piling up pillows at all. So now I'm piling up the pillows, and whether it's that or the Seldane, I'm much better. I'm also inclined to take my afternoon nap in the morning; I'm going to have to ask the pharmacist whether Piroxicam (which is what it says on the bottle) makes some people drowsy. Don't think I'd stop taking it for that, though; I can easily ignore the drowsiness if I have work to do. While he had my attention, he gave me a prescription for a blood test and orders to see my gynecologist every year. Since the blood is to be drawn before breakfast, when I haven't had rich food for supper the night before, I haven't dropped it off yet. Monday would be a good time to do it, and I might be able to pick up my new printer afterward, if it is delivered today. We made a surprisingly small dent in our duckling. We roasted a lot of fat off the bird, but there was a lot of meat on it too. Just as the duck was done, while I was standing in front of a serving dish with a rubber spatula in one hand and a pot of mashed potatoes in the other, New Salem's tones went off. I put lids on things, but it turned out to be an alarm drop, so we went on with our dinner. We had goose dressing and goose gravy with our duck, which used up all the goose broth. I took all the lovely white goose greese out to the compost pile; Dave said I should have rolled it in birdseed first.