” = o with umlaut
‚ = e with accent (e acute?)
1995 Beeson Banner
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1 January 1995
The Global bill says $7 for the mouse
pad, $8 for shipping. Dave is extremely
annoyed that they didn't put it into the
box with our CD-Rom, which is due any day
now.
Yesterday I started to learn how to use
my hand-held. Dave picked a frequency
nobody else is likely to want, and
programmed it into the living-room
scanner, one of the three memories on my
hand-held, and his car radio. When it was
time for pizza, he called me from the fire
house, and I heard it on the scanner and
dashed in to unplug and turn on the hand-
held. It worked! But I need a new
battery, as the back-up is dead and the
one in the transceiver is kinder weak.
I'm storing it on the mantel, plugged into
the charger.
I don't think we can rig it to run off
the car battery. Connecting it to the
rooftop antenna, though, should be as
simple as unscrewing the rubber duck and
screwing on the cable.
The other two memories are the local
repeater -- something I'm not likely to
want except in an emergency -- and the
weather channel. I'll probably re-program
the weather channel to the fire frequency
one of these days.
I finally got the last of the curtains
up yesterday -- and embroidered the names
from last year on my tablecloth, with
blood in one eye and the accommodation
gone from the other. Dave mopped the
floor and fetched the groceries for me,
even though the doctor had specifically
permitted mopping, and had let me drive
myself home immediately after the
operation.
I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
Thursday morning, I thought a wad of hair
had fallen down in front of my face, but
it turned out, upon inspection, to be
streaks of blood in my eye. It diffused
out to something like a photograph of a
galaxy shaped like a ring nebula -- one of
those negative pictures, where the stars
are black. I told Dave that night, and he
persuaded me that I ought to call Casey
the next morning. Casey said I should
come to see him five minutes before his
office hours began that afternoon, and be
prepared to travel on in case he didn't
like what he saw. He didn't, and sent me
to Dr. Kieler, who didn't like what she
saw and sent me to Dr. Stern -- with drops
in my eyes, I really hated
driving south on Manning Boulevard in the
middle of a winter day! I spent the
afternoon in Dr. Stern's waiting room,
because he had another emergency, and
there was an elderly couple who had been
waiting for a report since before I began
my odyssey. I knitted at first, but it
was hard to work on fine black yarn with
no near vision, and after getting another
set of drops so that Stern could not-like
what he saw, I gave up entirely. After
the couple left, I lay down on the sofa,
which freaked out the doctor -- though not
as much as my quite genuine fainting spell
during the operation.
The doctor's day wasn't going any
better. I overheard him getting upset
because an operation scheduled for six
o'clock had been postponed until eight,
and his patient hadn't had anything to eat
since twelve, and he had to track down the
anesthetist and tell him or her to come
later.
So it was about six o'clock when he
began to work on me. It was urgent, he
said, because a torn retina could let
fluid leak between the layers and you
could get a detached retina, which would
require a big hairy operation that
probably wouldn't do a bunch of good,
whereas operating right away is a trivial
procedure with a 90% success rate.
(Please, just this once, let me be a
good data point!)
Trivial, but it's done under local
anesthetic, and the patient has to co-
operate, so about three-fourths of the way
through I started feeling dizzy. Told the
doc and he leaned back the chair right
away -- it's like the chairs dentists use
-- and after a bit I was distracted from
thinking very hard about something very
important by an officious stranger, who
turned out to be the doctor, telling me
I'd been completely out of it.
That seemed to get it out of my system,
and I was right as rain during the rest of
the procedure, considering I had a contact
lens jammed up against my eye and was
getting my retina burned with flashes of a
green laser. The doctor, however, was
very nervous, and I couldn't tell him I
was doing fine because talking would
jostle the eye he was working on.
In the parking lot afterward, I closed
my left eye and was surprised to see that
between the drugs etc. and the veil of
blood, I couldn't see anything useful out
of the right eye at all -- but I was still
getting full binocular vision.
The brain's ocular network must be
really something!
Finding my way home in the dark -- with
enormous stars on every light -- was no
fun at all, but Hackett Boulevard has
parking along the full length, so I just
drove very slowly and pulled into a long
parking spot now and again to let folks
pass.
I believe the floater is thinner today
-- I can see things without having to flip
and flip to get a thin part of it over the
macula. The treatment had no effect on
that at all; floaters go away all by
themselves. Which is a bit frightening;
had Dave not talked me into seeing Casey,
I'd have thought nothing had happened --
until the retina detached.
Anyhow, there are nine chances in ten
that this is the end of it.
Though everybody concerned would feel
better if I could report a fall or some
sort of whack to the head.
Floor-mopping is allowed, but Dave did
it for me anyway, and I got ready for the
party. Saturday's weather was fine -- I
think; I didn't go out even to pick up the
mail -- but about the time I started
trying to go to sleep, the scanner got
very busy. Somebody described the roads
as "black ice." One ambulance was in a
ditch calling for someone to come get
their patient, another was saying "We're
available for any call down here, but we
can't make it up the hill." Another said
it was at the top of a hill and wasn't
sure it could make it down; somebody
firmly ordered them not repeat
not to try; he had three cars
piled up at the bottom and didn't want to
add an ambulance to the collection.
Dawned cold and dark with melting ice
on the roads, but the weather was fairly
pleasant by the time the ride started
about one in the afternoon; I went out to
see Vic off without any coat. He reported
the roads clear, but sloppy; he got his
bike dirty.
I was worried, all the time I was
working on the tablecloth, what color I
could use for today's names. The club's
colors are blue and gold, and I've
collected names three times. The first
time, I embroidered the names in china
blue and worked a matching date on the
edge of the cloth. The second time, I
used sun gold. For last year's names, I
used one strand of china blue and one
strand of sun gold -- which turned out
kinder yukky. So I wondered what was
left. Since it's my farewell party, black
would be appropriate, but too
melodramatic.
Victor Skowronski was the only one to
show up and he's already on the cloth, so
I don't need another color.
Since the doctor had banned bike-
riding, boxing, and golf -- nothing that
might cause an acceleration of the head --
Victor took a lap around the block alone,
then we drank the cocoa and had some
cinnamon toast, and he went to a -- not a
square dance, but something of the sort.
He also performed at a First Night concert
yesterday, so he's had a busy New Year's
celebration.
Dave has been messing with our screen
driver again. This one is a higher
resolution, which makes all the icons
teeny, and, he says, will slow up the
games. Also makes the Tetris tetrominos
look funny.
3 January 1995
Much puzzled when ctl-D didn't print
the current date at the top of this entry.
I finally remembered that I hadn't gotten
around to creating ED.95 yet. (PC-Write
is a different word processor for each
file extension; in the absence of a "1995
letters" file, it was using the default,
which I left empty except for the command
to check for special files.)
Just put thirteen Banners into the
mailbox. I wrote a letter yesterday, &
decided to mail all but four -- there are
two I didn't want to mail, and I print it
on four-part paper -- and all but three of
the envelopes weighed (great shock!)
slightly under an ounce. Which is a good
thing, because I can't mail the three
three-ounce letters until I go to the post
office and get a copy of the new rules.
But of course, one of the three-ounce
letters is the one that started the whole
thing.
It's a good thing I fiddled with my
radio this morning, because I'd forgotten
to plug it into the charger when I put it
back on the mantel yesterday.
One of the batteries to my hand-held is
dead and the other is only one year
younger, so Dave called a few suppliers
yesterday. It seems that they don't make
batteries for that model any more,
leastways not any that will fit the old
charger.
Dave is thinking of taking the dead
cells out of the old battery and putting a
voltage regulator into the case, so I can
run the radio off the cigarette lighter in
my car. First he's got to figure out how
to open the case.
I wonder whether he still has a Dremel
Moto Tool.
Eventually we plan to get me a fancy
car radio like his, which beeps when
somebody is calling you.
4 January 1995
It's trying to snow!
It probably won't be any more sucessful
than the last few dozen attempts, but I'm
glad I stocked up on groceries yesterday.
Worried at every bump on 155, though.
Had to pick up a referral form at Casey's
-- which turned out rather complicated,
there being government-style rules
involved, and he looked into my eye while
he had my attention -- he said he didn't
like to refer a patient without learning
something. Then I went to the post office
to mail the referral -- and startled the
clerk by buying two-cent stamps; that
isn't what they are having a run on.
Thence to the bank, where I saw a bunch
of cars parked in front of Super Value &
remembered remarking to Vic that they
opened New Year's Day, & thought I could
save the trip to Guilderland. But after
seeing that the cars belonged to workmen,
I remembered that the grand opening is one
week after New Year's Day,
The Rite Aid drugstore already has all
their Valentine stuff up. Star Market had
one table of picked-over Christmas stuff,
and I bought the last package of wrapping
paper that didn't include a yukky off-red
design. When Dave saw the paper, he said
it was a hint that next year he should buy
me something that can be wrapped.
My Christmas present still
hasn't arrived.
Dave says he got the battery case
apart, but forgot it and left it at work.
The floater is going away so slowly,
and varies so much against different
backgrounds, that I haven't been sure I
wasn't fooling myself in seeing
improvement. But this morning I found
that I can read words in newspaper type
through the fog, and I'm sure that I
couldn't do that at first.
Hey! On the computer screen, I can
actually read text with that eye. Two
days ago, all the white-on-black display
did for me was to keep the floater from
distracting me so much that I couldn't use
the left eye.
I don't think I could read screen-wide
lines, though. Most of a Banner line fits
inside the smoke ring, and I don't scan
enough to make the floater swirl.
Windows programs all want to imitate
paper, and make the text black on white,
which has the same effect as printing
white on black on paper. On the other
hand, I can make the Windows type bigger
than the DOS type, so it didn't bother me
much until a few days ago.
I'm rather spectacularly dusted. I
just sifted a box of soda together with a
box of cornstarch to make another ten-year
supply of deodorant powder.
Ah, my mis-spent oldth -- I pushed
"Julie" down to fourth place in the Tetris
high scores table today. But I've never
again made it to level nine.
I'm planning to cut my new
pants out today. There will be plenty of
cloth left to make a vest; if I choose the
"Ohio dress" for my new blouse pattern,
I'll use the "separate cape" to design my
vest.
Department of "boiler plate can get you
into trouble" -- today's mail included an
ad for an "encyclopedia" of sensational
crimes, blatantly appealing to the lowest
perverted desires that fester in us. It
included the standard "clincher" slip
purporting to be a personal note from the
publisher. Early in the note it pants "I
cannot imagine why everyone
receiving this brochure does not send for
their free copy."
They did have the wit to include a
postcard, not an envelope, so it would be
inconvenient to reply "Because your book
is filthy, and your grammar stinks."
5 January 1995
The UPS man just dropped a package that
looks about right to contain a mouse pad
between the doors. It's probably my CD
rom. Appears to have been shipped from
the maker, not from the dealer.
6 January 1995
The film of snow we woke up to
yesterday still clings to the ground. The
prediction is for around two inches
tonight -- but it's to end in freezing
rain. Sounds like all mess and no cover.
The package was checks.
7 January 1995
Saturday morning: We still
haven't got enough snow to hide the grass.
On the other hand, we haven't got the
freezing rain either.
Yet.
When I cleaned off my car to go to the
post office and the Grand Opening of our
new grocery store, I found that the film
of snow was our freezing rain.
Luckily, the glass of the car was above
freezing by then even though we hadn't had
much sunlight, so the crust was easy to
break up and scrape off.
Just before going to bed, I reached
level nine in Tetris again -- though with
a lower score than a previous level eight
-- and pushed "Julie" to sixth place.
9 January 1995
This snowfall looks as though it plans
to stick. Starting during rush hour isn't
the best timing we've ever had, but we've
had worse weather at rush hour -- though
not this winter; I hope that at least a
few of the drivers remember what that
white stuff is. We had our nasty driving
weather in the middle of the night on New
Year's eve.
This morning I looked out the window to
see that my background fog is so thin that
I have to look closely to see the
speckles. Of course, that could be just
that I'm seeing it against falling snow
instead of bright sunshine, so I dashed
back to the newspaper, and I can read with
my good eye shut with only minor
difficulty when the remnants of the nebula
drift over what I'm looking at. I've
crossed some sort of threshold and now
feel, not just know, that it's going away.
On the other hand, I'm catching a cold. I'm
going to call Casey at nine, because he told me
specifically not to catch pneumonia, and might
want to prescribe some heavy-duty cough
medicine.
I hope he doesn't want me to drive to
the pharmacy.
He wants to prescribe an antibiotic --
can't hurt and might shorten the illness -
- but I don't have to go out until
afternoon, when the roads will probably be
better.
Dave got his cold after mine, which is
unusual, and is taking it worse, which is
usual. When the Wheel of Fortune answer
was "Heigh, ho, heigh ho, it's home from
work we go," I sang "Ho hey, ho hey, it's
home from work you stay."
He said "Grmph!"
He really shouldn't have gone back
after lunch, but he does plan to stay home
tomorrow.
And I meant to use the computer all
day.
Casey had me look at his eye chart
before writing out the prescription, and I
see better with the bad eye than the good
one!
Still keep thinking that my glasses are
dirty, though.
Stocked up on food while I was out --
it is convenient to have a full-
size grocery right in the village --
including two bags of oranges and a sack
of fancy cough drops.
Then I came home and mashed the last of
the potatoes. Never such a thing as a
blank shopping list.
After Christmas, I found that I'd
bought a pound of ground beef we didn't
need, and I'd put too much bread in the
breaded tomatoes and neither of us would
eat them, so I made a meat loaf and put it
in the freezer. Baked it for supper
tonight, and Dave liked it very much, even
though there was a lot of broth on it. I
could have drained the meatloaf to make
gravy!
Should have just skipped the gravy and
let him use meatloaf broth, since there
wasn't much grease in it.
But he does like gravy, and likes a
tablespoon of cornstarch shaken into a cup
of skim milk as well as any. I usually
add a few shavings of extra-sharp cheddar
to give the illusion that there is butter
in it.
Speaking of cheese, the Super Value,
which is an IGA store, has a "Made in
America" brand of colby that is downright
edible! The only good colby any of the
other stores sell is "H<***avagood," and I
refuse to buy it.
Arachne
9 January 1995
Found McCaffrey's Sassinak in
the stash yesterday, and read it before
going up to bed. Got my eye muscles sore,
because it's been a long time since I read
a book in one sitting, and I was no doubt
working harder than usual. (Earlier in
the day, I got my left arm sore un-
knitting a mistake in my gloves, and the
cold I'm coming down with is right under
the muscle in my neck that gets sore when
I play computer games. I'm a mess.)
The beginning of the book is all right
-- I had a little trouble getting into it,
but I think that it was me, not McCaffrey.
And the middle was enthralling; I was much
impressed by the way she skipped over the
twenty years between Sassinak's first
ensign voyage and her first command of a
cruiser; she left the impression that
quite a lot had been going on in the
interim -- perhaps a hook for a collection
of short stories sometime -- and
Sassinak's reflections on how much she had
changed since she was an ensign were
worked in so artfully that I don't think
anyone who hasn't made a study of
transitions would notice that he was being
brought up to speed on the new situation.
But the book ended with no closure, no
conclusion, no overall shape.
Structurally, it might as well have been
the biography of a real person -- the sort
of thing one would like to read before
signing on with Captain Sassinak. I have
the distinct impression that it was
intended to be a proposal for an adventure
series.
Didn't help that the last chapter
assumed that I remembered a lot more of
Dinosaur Planet and Dinosaur
Planet Survivors than I do.
Dinosaur Planet was intended to
be a trilogy, but after the first section
was printed, the publisher backed out -- I
presume the sales were disappointing --
and instead of the proposed two volumes,
McCaffrey wrote a hurry-up, sweep-them-
off-the-stage single volume which fails
utterly to satisfy the expectations
aroused by the first volume.
Intriguing universe, but I've found
nothing in it except good beginnings that
don't develop into stories. I suspect,
also, that it wouldn't bear close
inspection. But then, as far as I know,
only Watt-Evans has created universes that
you could turn a microscope on. Or at
least he makes it look that way.
Sassinak by Anne McCaffrey and
Elizabeth Moon: Volume one of The
Planet Pirates. Copyright 1990 by
Bill Faucet & Associates.
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10 January 1995
It snowed again last night, and we
still haven't enough snow to hide the
grass on the lawn. Between-snowfall
weather has been perfect, though: enough
sun to clear the driveway, but never above
freezing.
Didn't get anything scratched off my
list of things to do today except "change
catbox" and "take pill, take pill, take
pill.
"Take bedtime pill" remains. A while
after Dave ran out of the house saying
something about a fire, I went out and
bought potatoes, but it's beginning to
look as though he won't be home to eat
them. Haven't heard anything on the
scanner except that something was going
on.
Upon questioning Dave, I learned that I
wasn't the first to catch the cold, only
the first to complain of it. Alice, who
called about five o'clock to see whether
Dave can take her to work tomorrow, says
that she has the stomach flu. It doesn't,
alas, sound like the same bug.
11 January 1995
Snowing again. I'd like to have a
smaller number of larger installments.
Another milestone: when I woke up this
morning, it wasn't to a glare of
red in my right eye. It's still more
dark-adapted than the other, but it's much
less distracting. (One day, I took my nap
wearing a blindfold.) I also notice that
the "nebula" part of the floater has faded
enough that it is beginning to lose its
structure.
Dug into the drawer for the last maroon
T-neck this morning; it must be time to
run a load of wash. I think I failed to
include any of my own shirts in the last
batch.
When I put on the first maroon shirt,
it was much too tight. I thought I'd
outgrown it over the summer and was going
to be three shirts short, but after a bit
I remembered that although I'd tried on
all the other shirts, I tried on just one
maroon shirt, then bought two more with
the same labels, figuring shirts from the
same dye lot would match. Sure enough,
the other two fit. This one is a trifle
snug, but it doesn't cut off my
circulation.
Dave's cold is a little coughing and a
lot of sore muscles; mine is a lot of
coughing and a little sore muscle.
Figures.
12 January 1995
Last night's snow ended in a freezing
rain, at just the right time to panic the
schools into closing, but it finally
brought the accumulation to grass poking
through the snow instead of snow among the
grass.
Sudden insight, on observing that the
road looked quite safe at 9:00. It's the
size of the schools that makes
them close so easily; driving a little bit
slower isn't an option for busses that
already truck the kids around for a
significant fraction of their waking
hours.
This morning I reached level 9 again,
and shoved "Julie" off the Tetris high-
scores table. Now what do I do?
The wash, for starters. I'm wearing my
last pair of socks.
I must have socks hidden away
somewhere, and I wish I could find them.
I know for sure that my two pairs of wool
anklets and my cotton knee-hose didn't
make it back into the drawer when I
unpacked after Woods Hole. I can't
imagine where they might be -- they aren't
in any of the places I can
imagine.
Dave went back to work this morning,
saying he felt much better. My cough is
well-practiced, but (knock wood) I haven't
had any of the "heavy duty coughing" that
Dr. Casey warned me against.
You can bet I've been very
careful not to slip on the ice!
14 January 1995
This morning I thought I'd begin this
entry "would you believe there is
still a scaly patch where one of
the blisters was," but the scaly patch
peeled off while I was poking at it.
Them's the blisters from waxing the floor,
reported in last year's Banner.
While examining my legs, I noticed
calluses on my shin bones a little above
the ankle, and am baffled to think what
has been rubbing there. I sit on the
"back chair" once in a while, but the
pressure from that is closer to the knees
than the calluses are. I'm in the habit
of crossing my ankles, but always in the
same direction, and the calluses are
equal.
I felt feverish the night before last,
but seem to be recovering now. Still
coughing, of course. Hope it clears up
before April this year.
Upon writing that, the dime dropped and
I put the five-quart pot on the stove,
with a gallon of water, a dash of salt to
prevent lime stains, and a bay leaf to
improve the smell.
Got it! The explanation for the
calluses, that is. I got up to discard an
envelope, and, upon returning to my chair,
sat on my foot.
Momma told me that when I was forty,
I'd regret getting into the habit of
sitting on my feet, but she was wrong. I
regretted it at thirty. Seldom do it in
the typing chair, because it's high
enough. But nearly every day, I read a
paper spread on the dining table, and to
reach it, I sit on both feet in a dining
chair.
Only one of those chairs is still
sound. I wish I knew where to go to buy
new ones. I went to furniture stores a
few years ago, but they had only fancy
dining sets, not individual chairs. I
definitely don't want to replace the beat-
up old table, because I can put a blanket
on it when I want to iron yard goods -- I
recently got a "canton flannel" (heavy
twill) tablecloth to put over the blanket
-- and because we have gotten rather
careless with hot dishes.
And it's perfectly acceptable for
elegant dining when I put a cloth on it.
Foggy again today. The snow is
entirely gone.
When Dave came home from the fire that
I mentioned on January 10th, he said it
was dumb and dumber. No fire, and
Altamont, Guilderland, New Salem, and
maybe somebody else were all there. Good
thing it was a false alarm. The "fire"
was spotted by a Voorheesville school bus
driver, who drove all the way from
Guilderland to the Voorheesville high
school -- which is two miles farther from
Guilderland than Voorheesville is --
before calling to say he (or she) had seen
flames shooting from a chimney. Then it
took ages to find out which house had been
reported. There was a fire in
the fireplace, but they didn't put it out.
Dave didn't know how the home-owners
reacted to all this.
Arachne
14 January 1995
Read most of the March Ellery Queen the
day it arrived -- I think that that was
the evening that I felt feverish. Except
for Jo Bannister's "The Watchers," which
is better in summary, those that I liked
rode mostly on previous stories in the
same series. There were a lot of series
stories: Steven Saylor's Roman private
eye, a tale told to the author of
Keating's Indian tales, Monica Quill's
nuns, Hoch's king of the gypsies, Clayton
Emory's Robin Hood and Marian, and Terry
Mullins' Chaucer-era Mandeville. I felt
that Gilbert's "Mathematics of Murder" was
a set-up for a series. "Breaking and
Exiting" (Tapply) and "Floater"
(Beechcroft) had the feel of series about
them, but I couldn't be quite sure I'd
seen the characters before.
In "The Watchers," a half-Jamaican
Englishman breaks into the cottage of an
old Haitian woman who is said to be a
witch. To his surprise, she is awake; he
hears her voice out of the dark telling
him that Baron Samedi will protect her.
Knowing that Baron Samedi, the Lord of the
Underworld, is a myth, he blusters on --
until he is cornered by Baron Samedi, the
Rottweiler.
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14 January 1995
60 degree and showers today, and more
of the same predicted for tomorrow. This
is January?
Bikeabout is still an untidy mess. And
one of my contributors plans to include
this issue in her r‚sum‚.
This week's pizza was "Hearty Meat" --
at least three kinds of meat. It was
good, but we ate only half of it.
15 January 1995
This is utterly ridiculous weather for
the time of year, and will mean no
forsythia next spring, and maybe damage to
other plants, but it is nice to get the
house aired out. The cats are enjoying
the open windows, and instead of begging
to go out, Erica is asleep with her head
on the windowsill.
17 January 1995
Yeeouch! I worked on the computer all
day yesterday, and played a few games too,
then in the evening indulged in a
strenuous bout of knitting. Because the
yarn of the gloves is fine and black,
alas, I'm working on them right-handed
even though it's all plain knitting.
Controlling yarn with the right hand is
exactly the same sort of finger-twitch as
pushing a mouse button.
In the night, the charley horse in my
neck got as bad as it's ever been. I'd
have gotten up and taken an ibuprofen if
I'd known where Dave keeps it. Hunted
around after breakfast and found it
upstairs in the medicine chest, for handy
access during the night.
Should have known. That's where I keep
my aspirin. I expect aspirin would be
safe by now, but I'm not taking any until
I talk to Stern next Thursday.
If he okays the resumption of bike
riding, I'd better do a lot of it. I
might get sore, but it's never a pain in
the neck.
I'm beginning to appreciate the saying
"don't do anything you wouldn't do on a
bicycle." I can't bite my nails, eat food
I don't need, play computer games, ...
I can't understand why it is that the
only thing that doesn't hurt is reaching
for the mouse.
Arachne
"The Watchers" improves in retrospect.
I keep remembering the line, given as one
of the reasons that the witching business
ain't what it used to be, "when you
threaten to take a duppy, they think it's
something from a pet store."
Haven't seen "Babylon Five" this year.
The Saturday before last, I remembered to
set the recorder, but it had been pre-
empted by a football game. Last Saturday,
I remembered to set the recorder, and also
remembered to watch the show that evening
-- but I hadn't watched the football game,
so the tape hadn't been rewound. The tape
held one football game and about five
minutes of the show before Babylon Five.
Checked the TV guide, and the show is
now one hour later than previously. Might
have missed it even if things had gone as
planned.
Yesterday Dave's background noise
included an episode of Star Trek the New
Generation. Much to my surprise, I
watched it. Maybe it's only the first
five minutes that are so pawky and
putoffish. Alas, I know that if I were to
watch next week's episode, I'd find Picard
completely regenerated, unable to remember
"everything" about his capture by the
Borg. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
17 January 1995
On the way back from the print shop, I
stopped at Robinson's and bought knee
pads, among other things. Now I'll have
to get on with cleaning the wood floors.
Looks as though the day after Martin Luther
King day is a post-office holiday too.
(So how come I was able to buy stamps?)
Had I known the route man wasn't going to
pick them up, I'd have taken Dave's
letters with me on my tour.
Why is it that the post office is the
only institution caught with its pants
down every time the postal rates rise?
You'd think somebody would tell them that
it is going to happen.
20 January 1995
Saw doctors on both Wednesday and
Thursday this week, but I think I'm
through making up for all those
years of not seeing doctors at all.
Though I was sure that this charley
horse would bug me for two weeks like the
last one, I feel little of it this
morning. Most of it must have been
aggravation from the cold.
Tuesday night I took an ibuprofen
caplet before going to bed, and got no
relief, so when Dave came up to bed, he
gave me another one. About two in the
morning, I got up and took another double
dose. I didn't notice any reduction of
the pain, but in the morning I was covered
with red spots! They were spectacular
only on my thighs, fortunately. That
aspect of it was a little less fortunate
when I showed the spots to Casey that
afternoon. He said that the timing made
it almost certain that it wasn't the
amoxicillin, but he made a note in my
records to give me erithromycin the next
time I need an antibiotic, just in case.
This morning I'm feeling good enough to
notice that the spots itch. They don't
itch much.
The first day I had the charley horse,
I got on with it fairly well, because I
was walking around in stores, which kept
my metabolism up without putting any
strain on it.
On Wednesday, I didn't have anything to
do that wasn't strenuous except stuff that
called for more concentration than I could
call up with my neck hurting so much. And
I wasn't, as you might imagine, inclined
to take any more painkillers! So I spent
the morning reading in bed, which let
everything stiffen up. I got on better in
the afternoon, reading in the big chair,
with the heating pad on my neck. I felt
feverish at bedtime, but attributed the
warm forehead to the heat I had been
applying to my carotid. I didn't think,
under the circumstances, that an oral
temperature would be significant, so I
didn't take one.
Yesterday, Thursday, at my 9:30 a.m.
appointment with Stern, he said that I
looked "miserable" and he would get me out
of the office as fast as he could. He
also said that the retina incident is
completely over, and I may resume bike-
riding and taking aspirin. I didn't ask
about boxing and golf.
On the way home, I felt as though I'd
put in a long, long, day even though I'd
been in the office less than an hour, and
spent most of that time waiting for the
drops to take effect. I went to bed as
soon as I'd put away the milk I picked up
on the way back, got up to fix Dave's
lunch, went back to bed feeling better for
having eaten something, and was more or
less sacked out the rest of the day.
Had trouble getting to sleep last
night, but not as much trouble as I
expected after sleeping all day. Judging
by the way I feel this morning, sleeping
all day yesterday was the right thing to
do.
Casey, by the way, said that ibuprofen
also causes bleeding, though not as bad as
aspirin, and that I should have taken
acetominophen.
My cough is much improved. A charley
horse in the neck and a cold are a bad
combination. Every cough tore up the
charley horse, and I was getting heavy in
the chest because the charley horse was
cutting every cough in half. I'm coughing
more often this morning than yesterday,
but that's mostly because it feels so good
to be able to cough properly.
I've picked up two new doctors. Stern
said that he wants me to be seen by an
opthamologist once a year, him one year
and Kieler the next. I wonder whether
this means that I can drop my optometrist.
I'm to see Kieler next month, and can ask
her then.
We still haven't got our CD
ROM. Global has lost a customer.
21 January 1995
In cleaning out the sewing room, I
found, to my surprise, some papers of
Grandmother's, luckily not shredded by the
cats like some patterns and a magazine
stored in the same spot. Among them was a
twenty-three page letter in an envelope
addressed to Mrs. Fred Bailey, from B.
Lane at Berea College. Berea, Kentucky
was all the address needed to reach
Blanche in those days!
The letter begins:
Kunming China
November 18, 1941.
My own sweethearts,
Just a line to let you know that, by the
time you get this letter, I will have
covered the Burma Road, all 735 miles of it.
I just mailed a letter to you yesterday so
will not try to get this one off until I
reach Lashic, Burma. Perhaps, if I add a
bit each day, I can give you a fairly good
account of my trip.
Each installment is signed "Bill."
Does anyone know who Bill was, and what he
was doing in Burma? The latter question
might be answered when I read the letter;
I intend to transcribe it instead of
reading it, because the type is faded and
the paper is thin and brittle. It was
airmail weight to start with, and he
remarks at the bottom of the first page
that paper is scarce.
Arachne
The TV guide's Tipster said that two
sewing programs that were on PBS this
morning were really good, so last night I
set the recorder to start at 7:00 a.m. and
run for an hour, plus five minutes
clearance at each end. I wasn't at all
surprised when I found that there was
still a football game on the tape, because
the recorder provides no way to tell
whether or not you've actually set it.
The manual says to cycle through it again,
but there's no way to tell whether you're
reading the settings or erasing them, so I
didn't do that a second time.
Then tonight, before leaving for
Smitty's, Dave started the machine going
and left it to record the entire tape.
Feeling like a little TV before bedtime, I
rewound it -- which takes ages -- and
found that we had recorded three hours of
static.
Folks think I'm high-hatting when I say
I don't watch TV -- but it's just too much
trouble.
I've read up all the books in my stash,
too: Merchanter's Luck, C.J.
Cherryh, copyright 1982 Cherryh;
Kavan's World, David Mason,
copyright 1969 Mason, and Oronooko or
the Royal Slave, Aphra Behn,
introduction (by Lore Metzger) c. 1973.
Kavan captained a boat named "Kavan's
Luck," and the books resemble each other
as much as their titles do. Though one
captain commanded a sailing ship of
advanced design and swashed a sword
skillfully, and the other captain piloted
a broken-down space freighter and ducked a
lot, each got the princess. Being a
prince, Kavan also got a high priestess
and a minor goddess.
I thought that Mason cheated a bit at
the ends. After the victory, Kavan became
king, ruled well, founded a dynasty, and
died leaving many statues and fond
memories. He also settled down to spend
the rest of his life in a secluded glade
with the goddess, working as a stable hand
on the side. I thought it more indecisive
than mystical to let Kavan have it both
ways.
Oroonoko, the most famous "novel" (78
pages!) of Europe's first female
professional writer, is of interest
chiefly for referring to
Oroonoko/Caesar's slave suit as
"his Osenbrigs (a sort of brown
Holland Suit)," which shows that
the root of Osnaburg was in use as early
as 1688. She also has the habit of
capitalizing nouns, but she doesn't
capitalize all of them the way the Germans
do it. I've no idea what the rule was.
Perhaps the modern typesetter missed a
few.
It's supposed to be highly romantic,
but her idea of romance and fortitude
seems to be that noble warriors are so
sensitive and fragile that she has to keep
coming up with improbable reasons for
Oronooko to survive the various insults to
which he is subjected.
I was surprised to read in the
introduction that Aphra Behn had actually
been to Surinam -- though the Surinam
scenes were less fanciful than the African
scenes, which read more like a description
of a hidden empire on Barsoom. I don't
think they had yet invented the idea that
fiction ought to be plausible. For
example, the old general, who was carrying
a shield, "was kill'd with an Arrow in his
Eye" because he "bow'd his Head between,
on purpose to receive it in his own Body,
rather than that it should touch the
Prince."
I thought it unheroic for Oronooko to
have a three-or four-day pouting tantrum
every time Imoinda met with misfortune,
but it turned out to be foreshadowing;
according to the introduction, the culture
of the day required Oronooko's rebellion
to be futile, yielding neither escape nor
vengeance; he was painted as so superhuman
that this could hardly happen unless,
after murdering Imoinda to set himself
free to seek revenge, he lay on the ground
grieving for her until he was too weak
from hunger to defend himself when
captured.
According to Caulfeild and Saward
(1887), Holland was a kind of heavy linen,
the glazed variety being used for carriage
or chair covers and trunk linings and the
unglazed for articles of dress. "All
linen textiles were anciently called
Holland in England, as we learned the
manufacture from that country." "Brown"
meant unbleached or half-bleached. "There
is a light make of the unbleached brown
called Sussex lawn, much used for women's
dresses."
There's half a shelf left in the stash:
strenuous books, and books I'm saving for
some time when I'm waiting for something
and don't want to get too interested in
reading.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
24 January 1995
Tuesday -- I must remember to carry out
the trash. I missed it last week,
thinking that the trashmen had taken
Monday off.
On Sunday it misted snow, but none of
it fell. Monday morning there was a film
of snow -- maybe halfway up the grass
blades -- which vanished during the day
even though there was no time that you
couldn't see a flake in the air if you
looked. This morning there was another
film, and it has continued snowing --
light, but actually falling. It has
already reached the stage of grass poking
up through a continuous blanket.
Dave let poor Erk in when he went out
for the morning paper. I usually turn the
porch light on when I let her out after
dark, to prevent just such a catastrophe.
After a light breakfast of a cheese-coated
Vetalog and a third of a packet of Tender
Vittles, she didn't get any farther than
the shoe-changing chair before curling up
for the day.
25 January 1995
When Dave came in last night, Erica was
curled up beside the computer.
I have to go shopping before lunch. I
thought about going out into the cold on a
bike, then gathered up the stuff I need to
copy and took it out to the car. After
looking at the melted-and-refrozen snow on
the car, half an hour spent suiting up
doesn't look all that bad.
All my T-necks are getting tight; I've
got to get back on the bike soon, but not
today.
And I'm going to have a slice of toast
and jam before I go.
When leaving the post office, I saw a
bike rider in clothing less suitable than
mine, and he didn't look uncomfortable.
Bought two books of G stamps; wanted
some real stamps, but he didn't have
anything bigger than a five, so I passed.
Somebody really ought to notify the post
office when prices are going to go up, so
they can print extra stamps.
I pasted most of the G stamps on the
Writers' Exchange Bulletin, and disposed
of the last of the Christmas-stocking
stamps.
27 January 1995
Had to cough while talking to someone
with a soft, soft voice and discovered
that if you switch off the microphone of
my headset, you can hear a lot better.
I wonder whether they make them push-
to-talk? I just got a telephone catalog,
but I'm not curious enough to look through
it to find out.
Snowed again in the night, and it once
again reaches almost to the grass-tops.
29 January 1995
I attached the waistbands to my new
pants today, so all I have to do is to
press the seams, turn the bands down, top-
stitch them, work the hooks and eyes, and
hem the legs. Assembly went pretty fast
once I got started -- partly because I
forgot the passport pockets. I don't
think they would have gone well in such
thin fabric anyway. I left out the patch
pockets in the back on purpose, because
the pants are supposed to be a bit dressy.
Early in the development of these
pants, I added a front waistband so I
could ease the front onto it to allow for
my feminine curves. When I made the blue
denims, I added an inch to the hip
measurement for recent weight gain. There
were still diagonal wrinkles; studying
their pattern, I made the front waistband
half an inch shorter before cutting this
pair. To make them a little less garden-y
I chose a primarily-polyester twill
instead of the cotton denim I've been
using up until now. Put 'em all together
and they spell GA-ATHERS.
In the thin fabric, they look
deliberate in the front, and in back,
where the waistband hasn't been shortened,
I was able to overcome the unyielding
nature of polyester.
I still want to find some washable
[wool] flannel somewhere.
My car has a white shadow where the
snow hasn't melted. I guess I don't go
out much.
30 January 1995
I just transcribed page five of the
letter. It got easier at page four, where
Bill appears to have given up on the old
ribbon and put in his new one. He is a
remarkable typist; there are very few
corrections and typos, not one xxxed-out
word, and, so far, only one mis-spelling.
The type is as even as if done on an
electric, when he was typing by candle-
light on a board propped across sawhorses.
1 February 1995
Just finished page nine. I've been
fastening the fragile, permanently-folded
pages to a sheet of obsolete Certificate
Royale letterhead with bobby pins, then
clipping the assembly to the remains of my
copy holder with a clothes pin and another
bobby pin. The clamp shattered off a
while back. I'll have to try the area's
remaining stationery store the next time I
buy Erica's Vetalog, which will be Real
Soon Now. They might have something a
little better than the junk at Office Max.
I read ahead last night; Dave
complained of the noise of the keyboard
just as a gratuitously-angry mob threw a
rock "the size of my fist" at Bill's
driver. It left him dazed and unable to
drive for hours, but in the afternoon he
was fit enough to drive over a hairpin
mountain absolutely without brakes.
Chen's attitude toward the smashed trucks
along the way, one with a dead driver
beside it, reminds me of the attitude
attributed to test pilots in The Right
Stuff.
2 February 1995
I'm starting page 11, and have learned
that "My own sweethearts" are Bill's wife
and daughter; the daughter may be named
Patsy.
Had my first good day today. Hadn't
realized how much the virus was sapping my
strength until it stopped. Despite the
amoxicillin, I think I had some bacteria
too for a few days.
I went to Sandy's this afternoon and
bought eleven skeins of yarn in ten shades
of brown. I got two skeins of the
darkest. She has sold everybody but the
emus, and if Bonny doesn't lay pretty
soon, they're going too. She has the
incubator set up in her living room, but
so far, no eggs. She fed them right after
I left, and said that she hates going out
into the cold to do it.
She plans to continue selling yarn,
buying yarn made from other flocks' wool.
I asked when the Colored Wool Grower's
convention was due back in Altamont, but
she knew less than I did. It was quite a
while ago, but I don't know whether it was
ten years. It was before Gear '89/Step in
Line for '89, I think. Pity I didn't get
on some mailing lists while I was there.
As I recall, it was the merest accident
that I learned about it; the Enterprise
tends to report events after they get some
good pictures, i.e., when it's all over.
It's the fault of the publicity
committee, of course -- I suppose that
they figure that when they get the word
out to all their members, they have done
their duty. But really, they ought to be
using the convention as a way to promote
the use of colored wool, because it's a
pretty good spectacle even for people who
would need a hint to pick a Jacob sheep
out of a lineup of Shropshires.
(The hint is Genesis 30, verse 39.)
Compuserve says it will be sunny with
light wind tomorrow, and a noreaster will
start on Saturday. I suppose I'd better
run all my errands in the morning. Might
should stop by Indian Ladder; we have
plenty of apples, but Dave has been
hitting the pears pretty hard.
3 February 1995
I'm planning to go to the post office
Real Soon Now, to see whether word of the
rate rise has reached the stamp
distribution centers yet. Stamps are now
three for a dollar -- when I started
writing letters, they were three for a
dime.
E-mail is fifteen cents.
I think we are about to see what
mathematicians call a "catastrophe" -- a
sudden change from one stable condition to
another. For a long time, only people who
loved computers used e-mail, and most
people who wanted to send files mailed
disks. Now a few people who know nothing
from nothing are on Compuserve. Each time
a new customer logs on, he is going to
want very much that the people he writes
to could receive e-mail -- or some of
them; it's still more practical and
congenial to snail-mail the banner and my
interminable letters, but when you write a
short note it is much easier to click
"send now" than "print." Any time you
send a letter to communicate, rather than
visit, e-mail is convenient -- and if both
correspondents are on the same service,
it's included in the monthly fee.
So I predict that, if Clinton doesn't
succeed in simplifying the Network into an
Information Controlled Access Roadway, in
a few years not being on-line will be like
not having a telephone: simply not done,
my dear.
4 February 1995
Storm developed right on schedule.
Upon getting up, I looked out the window
and said, "Look, Ma, no grass!"
Then I put on my glasses.
Didn't take too long to bury the
remaining grass blades, and when Doug came
to plow, the door knocked snow off the top
step even though I had swept the steps and
walk several times before. This time I
settled for digging a hole down to footing
on each step so that I could go out to see
Doug and whoever else was in the cab. I
didn't stay long enough see more than that
there were two of them. Luckily, Dave was
out in the Toyota, so I didn't have to
move it. (Turned out he had spoken to
Doug, and was waiting for the plowing to
finish before coming home.)
The tones went off for a "life
threatening blizzard" but it's been
pleasant all day, at least on those
occasions when I ventured out. At the
beginning, it was just barely cold enough
to keep the snow dry and there wasn't a
breath of wind. The wind has been picking
up steadily, and when we took a lap around
the block on the way home from Smitty's,
snow was starting to blow across the road
on 85. The roads were plowed perfectly --
by some miracle they weren't
using salt, despite having stocked up last
fall and having had no use for it yet, so
the thin layer of packed snow gave good
footing. The drifting had barely started
and the roads weren't anything I'd have
minded driving on, but I was glad we
didn't have far to go.
The tracks we left coming home are
still distinct, so the snow must have let
up soon after we came in. The wind is
supposed to continue to rise, and get
gustier all night, perhaps up to 60 mph.
I never went out to see whether we'd
got any mail. By the time that it might
have come, walking down the drive wasn't
exactly possible, and we went out right
after Doug plowed.
Dave says Doug had a hard day. In the
afternoon we heard a bunch of 23's on the
radio in search of a winch or a four-wheel
drive to pull something heavy -- turned
out that it was Doug's snow plow in a
ditch. Then when they finally got it out,
he discovered that he had a gashed tire
and no spare.
I got plenty of exercise today even
though I stayed in. I've finally started
on the afghan, and I'm changing colors
every four rows. I stretch skeins over
the backs of two chairs while winding them
into balls, so each ball requires me to
walk several times the length of the
thread.
I've decided to use only five of the
ten colors I bought. When I told Dave
that I was leaving out the grays, he said
he liked those best. I agree with him, so
I may make another afghan in shades of
gray. I don't know what I'll do with the
"dark heather" yarn. Sandy was
infectiously enthusiastic about it because
"it has every color I've got" in it. But
the more I look at it, the more it looks
like floor sweepings.
6 February 1995
I started that afghan to keep my mind
off computer games -- so I spent all
evening yesterday, and all morning today
persuading Publisher to print a chart of
the pattern -- very mouse-y work. But
this morning Publisher started responding
very, very, slowly to each change I made,
so I brought the knitting in and got a
round finished between clicks.
The chart looks pretty good. I found that
upper-case Ariel I's and O's make perfect
"knit" and "over" symbols, and an en dash
from Wide Latin makes a tolerable Purl
symbol. But the en dash doesn't appear to
correspond to any keyboard character; I
should have experimented with an Ariel
hyphen in a larger type size. I pressed a
Lambda from the font named "Symbol" into
service as a k-2-tog symbol. That is on
the keyboard; it's a capital L. There was
a better upside-down V in Lucida Math
Symbol, but for some reason characters
from that font didn't want to print in
table cells. That was before I realized
that I had to pare the margins off the
cells; perhaps they would have worked
after I set the margins to zero -- but
Publisher won't Find and Replace in more
than one cell at a time, so I'm not going
to look into it now!
About all I have to do to it now is to
write up a description and send it to
Knitter's World.
9 February 1995
I've got a start on writing the article
to go with my knitting chart.
The flag isn't going to fall down on
the job today.
The flag on the mailbox has been half-
masting itself all winter, which has been
annoying. On at least one occasion, it
led to the mailman not taking the outgoing
mail. After the snow prevented me from
picking up a stick to wedge into the
bracket, I looked at it and discovered
that all in the world it needed was for me
to get a screwdriver and tighten the bolt
that runs through the pivot.
Later: Grump. The mail has come. A
while back I got a clearance-sale notice
from Craft Gallery that included, among
the marked-down "accessories", a chest-
hung magnifier for fine needlework. I've
been needing something of the sort for a
long time. While I was at it, I ordered
several balls of thread that I expect to
need sooner or later and, on a whim, the
DMC Encyclopedia. The thread arrived, but
the Encyclopedia is back ordered -- at
full price -- and the magnifier is
permanently out of stock.
10 February 1995
How slow is five wpm? I was listening,
for a change, to W1AW. The phone rang, I
spoke to a startled fellow who thought he
had been dialing a fax machine, he
apologized, I hung up, I resumed
transcribing. On the paper appeared
"There are many public ser nts in the
state."
When left undisturbed, however, I wrote
"Lylleor is one of the most wrueling
events."
I chickened out when the number-letter
combinations started. That's an
improvement; the first few times, I
couldn't tell that they had stopped
sending text.
Reception is lousy, yet there are very
few characters that I miss because I can't
hear them. I'm seeing what code is good
for -- but I still don't see any reason to
persist in trying to learn, save that I've
set my electronic calendar to nag me.
16 February 1995
The day before yesterday Dave phoned
Global and a while later they called back
to leave the message that they had shipped
the "Multimedia Upgrade Kit" (CD-ROM) the
previous day. Yesterday it arrove. This
morning Dave took the computer all apart -
- and took the opportunity to vacuum out a
lot of dust and spiderwebs.
Then he discovered that the operating
software is on a defective disk. After
two calls to the service center, the
conclusion was: the disk is defective.
So we can't use it.
But the glue has hardened and there's a
cute little speaker hanging on each side
of the monitor. The left speaker to the
right and the right speaker to the left,
because the cable-lengths assumed, for
some reason, that the computer "tower"
would be to the right of the monitor.
There isn't the slightest hint of a
provision for plugging in earphones so you
can play games after your roommate has
gone to bed. Are you sure
there's a push on to sell computers for
use in the home?
I'm finding it harder and harder to get
to sleep at bedtime -- and Dave is finding
it harder and harder to stay up until
bedtime. Pretty soon we'll be seeing each
other only when the shifts change.
It didn't help that I got a headache
this evening and had to lie down for a
while before supper. I think it was
because I didn't eat on time. I did have
aspirin with my supper -- bread and milk
while Dave had a chuck-steak stew which,
at the time, smelled nauseating. (I tend
to turn vegetarian when I'm peckish.) But
I feel good now, not just analgesic, so I
think food was the active ingredient.
Did I ever mention that I finally
figured out why measuring cloth went low-
tech about the time everything had to be
done by machine? The yardage meters
fabric stores used to use nipped the cloth
so that it could be torn off the
bolt, and synthetics seldom tear straight.
Electric scissors disappeared too, but
that's no mystery. They were poorly
conceived, awkward to use, and didn't cut
very fast. Not useful to anyone except
fabric-store clerks with sore fingers.
The highest-tech way to cut cloth is to
revert to the stone-age and use a knife.
Nothing goes out of style permanently.
Read somewhere about plans to make a
factory cutter that uses jets of liquid
nitrogen to cut cloth. Current method, it
said, is to use jets of water & that makes
a mess.
Susan Hankins called yesterday, and I'm
on again with the indexes. I find that
1993 issues are mixed in with my 94s.
Seems odd that I didn't archive them after
indexing them.
17 February 1995
Did it rain last night or the night
before? The night before, I think,
because I slept pretty soundly after
finishing the index to Spring 1994 CWO a
little after midnight. Didn't sleep any
later than Dave this morning, either.
Whichever, it didn't clear the salt off
the roads -- or, luckily, erase our snow
cover. There are bare patches the
wildlife no doubt finds welcome; the day
before yesterday or thereabouts there was
such a clatter on the roof over the
bedroom (where I was sewing hooks on my
new pants) that I ran down to the door
intending to go outside and look. There
were birds wing-to-wing on the patch of
lawn bared by the snowplow, the trees were
full, the power and telephone lines looked
like strings of beads, and I presume that
quite a few were on the roof. When I
moved as if intending to go outside,
everybody left, looking like a cloud of
smoke. I suppose they were blackbirds; in
my astonishment I didn't observe anything
but a rough idea of size, which was
smaller than a pigeon. They weren't
doves.
We were out of bread, so today I got
back on the bike for the first time since
before the new year, and got salt thrown
into my face by every vehicle that passed.
It took me a while to figure out what was
going on; only the many-wheeled -- gravel
trucks for example -- threw up a
continuous cloud. The clouds behind
sedans were visible only when the salt was
extra thick.
Though invisible and impalpable, the
clouds were definitely tasteable.
I knew what kind of ride it was going
to be when I pulled on my shorts and left
a generous swath of white briefs still
exposed. Luckily, my hand-knit tights are
much more elastic than machine-knitted
fabric, and my jerseys come well down onto
the hips anyhow.
Had to hike my windbreaker up to zip
it. But that's partly because it's a
man's windbreaker, and partly because no
windbreaker allows for the stuff in your
back pockets. I guess that I'm going to
have to get around to designing my own.
Several years ago, I bought yellow taffeta
for that purpose.
I wonder whether it's still
enough yellow taffeta?
After several more phone calls, one of
them to Midwest Micro to verify that the
problem wasn't a peculiarity in the Elite,
Global agreed to mail a replacement for
the defective disk.
This afternoon I called House of White
Birches to request the missing issues of
the 'zine I'm indexing. I didn't notice
how long I was on the line, but I'll find
out when the phone bill comes.
Last Tuesday, we went to Meacham to
start him drawing up a will. Very simple;
the survivor gets everything, and if we go
together, it's divided into four parts
among my sisters and Dave's mother. We
should have done this years ago.
It's been a busy week.
Dave took the NSVFD printer and
computer to the new workstation in Station
One. Now he's talking about getting rid
of the table the computer used to stand
on.
First he'll have to put away the
leftovers from installing the CD-ROM.
18 February 1995
This morning Dave pulled out the sound
card and the software installed without
fuss and he has Compton's Encyclopedia
running. But now he has to figure out how
to put the sound card back in without
messing everything up. Seems to me I
recently read about Sound Blaster, which
is the brand we have, causing trouble.
He interrupted the above paragraph by
coming home from the NSVFD Open House (so
far one whole person has dropped in) to
pick up the manuals for the printer and
computer he moved to the engine room
recently. The manuals' space was more
grateful to me than the space vacated by
the machinery! I've already nearly filled
it with the manuals for the Multi Media
Upgrade Kit, some dictionaries that had
been lying on the tops of other
dictionaries, and my recently-purchased
Illustrated Guide to Trees and
Shrubs.
The computer seems to be a good bit
noisier when it's sitting around in its
underwear. I have no immediate use for
the sound card, but I would like to get
the "tower's" jacket back on.
Got to wondering why I couldn't push
Deutsches W”rterbuch back onto the
shelf, then pulled The New American
Desk Encyclopedia out from behind it
and moved Trees and Shrubs into the
living room, where references of that
class belong.
Afternoon: I woke up in the night with
a sore throat and stuffy nose and thought
I was coming down with a cold; then I
remembered all the dirty salt I'd inhaled
and vowed that I'd finally get around to
buying a painter's mask to wear on the
bike.
As the day wears on and I'm still
snorting and hacking, I fear that my
initial diagnosis was the right one.
Evening -- Dave spent a long time
playing the game "Myst" without getting
anything to happen. All it does is show
you pictures; click on a picture and it
shows you another picture. With a little
effort, one can see the new picture as
showing something adjacent to the previous
picture, but though attractive and
detailed, by computer-game standards, the
pictures aren't particularly interesting.
Once in a while you find a door that can
be opened, then clicked to show the
picture on the other side. Even more
rarely one finds artifacts that can be
manipulated -- a handle that can be lifted
or a lever than can be turned, but nothing
happens as a result. We finally decided
that there must be meaningful sounds --
the sound card is still lying on the
table. Tomorrow, Dave will try installing
it in a different slot and see whether it
still messes up the system.
After he went to bed, I spent a while
playing with Compton's Interactive
Encyclopedia, and came off understanding
that the art of "multi-media" is still in
its infancy. As multi-media goes, waiting
a minute or two after clicking on a
picture icon isn't a patch on reading an
illustrated book. Of course, when the
sound card is finally persuaded to work, I
will, after a suitable wait for the data
to be read, be able to listen to a record
of purring while looking at a picture of a
basket of kittens, and there are also
video clips. I presume the mountain-lion
"clip" I looked at would have been
meaningful if I had been able to hear the
narration.
On the other hand, computer text is
pretty well developed. On finding
"carmine" used as a noun on a box of juice
drink, I tried looking up "carmine" "dye"
and "pigment" with no results, then
clicked "idea search" and had the computer
run through all the articles looking for
"carmine." It came up with an article
about a painter whose achievements
included the frescos in the Church of the
Carmine.
"Pigment" got me two or three
screenfuls of titles, which is how I got
into the article on cats. (Siamese cats
have no pigment in their retinas.) The
video clip errored out the system when I
tried to run it at full screen, so I put
the disk away.
And there is one advantage to more than
compensate for the electric version being
so much slower than paper: I don't have
room for twenty-six volumes on my shelf --
the disk box is about three-eighths of an
inch wide.
Of course, the documentation never
comes flat out and says that the
"interactive" version contains everything
in the twenty-six volume version, but
judging by the length of the article on
cats and the way you can click down
several screens in the list of articles
and still be in topics starting with A,
there has got to be more material in it
than in Desk Encyclopedia, which is
two inches wide.
Dave said that NSVFD's Open House drew
about a dozen adults and a swarm of small
children.
Told him they should have kindergarten
tours and an eighteen-year recruiting plan.
He was not amused.
19 February 1995
Dave's at the firehouse watching the
Daytona 500. It was this time last year
that Fred first noticed that he was sick,
but the doctor he went to said he was
tired from having driven to Daytona.
This morning Dave tried installing the
sound card in a different slot, and it
worked! The computer is still sitting
around in its underwear, though.
He tried Myst again. There was a
little narration at the start, but most of
the sounds were merely background -- such
as waves slapping on the piers under a
waterfront walkway, which I took for
footsteps before I remembered that Myst is
deserted. One of the times I walked
through the dining room, he had found a
book that you could turn pages in, but it
didn't say anything except that the fellow
whose diary it was didn't know what the
point of the game was either.
He found Robocop boring. Seems to be
just a carnival-style shooting gallery.
He tried to watch The Making of Myst,
and didn't get any farther with sound than
I got without. The makers appear to be
under the delusion that the video will be
shown in a theater and people need time to
find their seats, figure out what to do
with their coats and popcorn, and stand up
to let latecomers through.
I've half a notion to bring my knitting
in here and find out whether the show ever
does start, or is just dramatic music and
a slide show.
Evening: I did. If you've seen a T.V.
ad for a movie, you've seen this video.
They did assure us that there was a story
to be hunted out if you persist long
enough. I suppose the makers do have a
right to pat themselves on the back --
just as Henry Ford had a right to pat
himself on the back for the Model T. I'm
going to wait for the Edsel.
They claim that it feels like really
walking through a strange world, but the
jumps between pictures are disorienting.
I suppose it wouldn't bother a computer-
game fan who was used to getting crude
symbols instead of pictures, but I'm
accustomed to alternate worlds created by
techniques with centuries of polish.
I don't think much of the first novels
ever written either. The best that can be
said for them is that they were short.
I took a dose of pseudo-ephetc. this
morning and felt much better until about
seven. Dave suggested that I take half a
Seldane at night, but I'm not at all happy
with the results of my last forage into
his half of the medicine cabinet! Not to
mention that pseudo-etc. is the first nose
drainer I ever took that didn't make me
feel worse. Seldane might be different,
but I'm not stuffy enough to take the
chance.
Bob Farley offered Dave a big desk to
put his radio stuff on, and he's going to
go get it tomorrow. Told him to ask Bob
whether he wants a drop-leaf table.
I may drop the leaves and shove it in
beside the rollaway beds. It will be
handy when the piano tuner comes.
20 February 1995
Table still occupied -- Dave has to
borrow a truck, and isn't sure he wants
the desk.
I mounted another expedition to Super
Value today -- to buy four boxes of paper
handkerchiefs! This time I remembered
that I cut through the bank parking lot to
Scotch Pine, instead of going out the way
I come in, to give myself space to get up
to a safe speed before hitting the tunnel.
Hard enough to accelerate when I'm
not still trying to get into my
toe clips, since I can't speed up until I
get off the shoulder and I can't get off
the shoulder until after I speed up. No
nicely-timed holes in the traffic this
time, either, but nobody followed me
through the tunnel.
Dave wanted to know why I was huffing
and puffing while combing the cats. Aside
from handkerchief consumption and
breathing hard, I don't seem to be sick.
So far. Wasn't as hard to breath last
night as the night before, but I'd had a
Pseudo-etc. at seven.
Dave tried some of the games from
Challenge Pack today, and pronounced them
boring. He also complained of poor
quality, in that you can't exit any of the
games without resetting the computer.
That's extremely bad design.
While he was playing Paperboy -- mostly
to find out whether his joystick was
working -- I looked over his shoulder.
The paperboy was repeatedly run over by
trucks and cars driving on the wrong side
of the road. The howitzers in the houses
are all in good fun, and so is the
paperboy's uncanny ability to throw a
paper into a mailbox from across the
street, but showing everybody on both
sides of a two-way street is just plain
sloppy.
21 February 1995
Dave showed the first signs of catching
my cold this morning. And I show the
first signs of wanting to go back to bed.
For a long time, Dave has been
threatening to buy more memory; after
studying the Midwest catalog, he has
decided that more memory is too expensive
and might not do anything for the slowth
of the computer. I am delighted -- if
just adding a drive makes this much fuss,
I'd hate to see what happens when you mess
around with the memory. Slowth doesn't
bother me any now that I'm not using
Publisher much. Would bother Dave,
because he writes with Word, but he
doesn't write much.
I registered the encyclopedia that came
in the bundle, so we should be getting ads
for disks to play on our new drive Real
Soon Now.
I have begun picking the matted leaves
out of the flower beds. It has begun to
snow.
23 February 1995
One day I heard an unconvincing cackle
and looked into the dining room to see
Dave looking at a picture of a chicken.
Then it struck me: what the Compton's
Interactive is, is a pop-up book.
Fun to play with, but little use as a
reference. It admits in the advertisement
that it's a collection of magazine-style
articles, intended mainly to keep the kids
reading. The natural result is dilute
information. And that naturally results
in shallow information. The article "cat"
mentions briefly that the cats are a large
family, including animals larger than
lions and smaller than domestic cats, then
lists a very few breeds of the domestic
cat and lectures on how to take care of
your pet. The first time through, I
thought that the cat family might be
discussed in another article, but aside
from references to such subjects as T.S.
Elliot -- he wrote the book on which the
play "Cats" was based -- they have short
articles about the lion and tiger and let
it go at that, not even discussing such
famous critters as the jaguar, cougar, and
cheetah.
I learned in the process that so far,
"interactive" isn't a patch on cross-
references. You can click on purple words
in the text, but some paper references
print words in bold type for the purpose.
You have a "go back to the previous page"
button, but an old envelope stuck between
the pages works fine.
But when the next generation of
hardware comes out, and they write
references especially for the machines . .
.
Meanwhile, it should be feasible for me
to own my own copy of the Oxford English
Dictionary. Waiting for it to boot beats
driving to the state university.
I wonder how many disks it occupies.
24 February 1995
Remember when your little boy was too
sick to go to school and too well to stay
in bed? "Myst" has been a godsend.
I never mentioned that I caught the
Compton's in an outright lie -- or,
rather, repeating gossip without looking
it up. It has been established for a long
time that the famous striped egyptian
stocking was produced by nalbindung
(looping with an eyed needle). Mary
Thomas, who places the origin of knitting
no earlier than the second century, noted
the odd persistence of "crossed stocking
stitch" in ancient samples of "knitting."
I'm pretty sure that true knitting is
older than the spinning wheel -- which is
younger than some homes that are still
occupied -- but there's no way it dates
all the way back to ancient Egypt.
If it didn't take so long for the book
to boot, I'd look to see who wrote
"knitting" -- they do sign their articles.
When I promised, at yesterday's
meeting, to type up the fish-fry poster
and leave a reproduction copy at the
firehouse this morning, I thought I'd ride
my bike down. When I felt how many layers
it would take to suit the weather, I
chickened out. I was glad I hadn't ridden
when I had to compensate for gusts of wind
while steering the Toyota.
Marilyn called in the afternoon to
verify that the poster was there, but Dave
said that it was still in the mailbox when
he left the firehouse.
Dave says that he wants a world atlas.
I'm going to have to find out where to buy
reference books.
Could ask the reference librarian.
26 February 1995
Mounted my third expedition of the
spring today, this time riding to the
firehouse before going to the village.
Had a coughing fit on the way back from
the firehouse; after each whoop, I drew in
a big gulp of dry, twenty-degree, salt-
laden air, and that called for another
whoop.
Saw one spot where the salt must have
been an inch thick on the shoulder; all
that salt they stocked up on and didn't
get to use until February must be preying
on their minds. Some of the larger
crystals are right pretty; I might pick up
a nut-sized piece of salt if they are
still there when next I go out. (As if I
could get this blubbery frame off the bike
and back on again! It's getting to be
time I traded my diamond-frame in on a
mixte.)
Was a bit chilly on the way out, but
comfortable on the way back. I don't
think I'd noticed before that the village
is, on the average, downhill from here.
Nobody had posted a fish-fry flyer at
the Super Value yet, and I had a
pannierful of them -- but no tape.
I thought I had outgrown my taste for
bread and milk, but now that we're buying
premises-baked bread, I'm eating bread and
milk often. Sometimes I'll cut a slice an
inch thick. Moreover, Supervalue's house
bread will get stale! Brand name bread
gets old, off-tasting, hard, dry, and
moldy, but it doesn't get stale -- I'd
given up saving bread for dressing,
because the packaged bread cubes weren't
any stickier. Now I've started checking
the "reduced for quick sale" basket for
loaves & mean to buy some to age, cut up,
dry, and freeze. It was all rolls today.
We've also developed a taste for Bialys
-- an onion roll that looks like a bungled
bagel.
27 February 1995
I'm looking out the window and saying
"Where were you guys in January?" Enough
snow fell during breakfast that when I
swept the steps, I was surprised to
uncover the footprints Dave left when he
brought in the paper.
I mailed the index to Crochet World
Specials on Saturday, and I'm half an
issue from finishing Women's Household
Crochet, so it should go out today. Have
no work at all done on Crochet World, and
it's six issues, so it's going take a
while.
The crochet mags don't exist
in a time warp of doilies and
antimacassers. The issue before this one
-- Summer, since I indexed WHC in reverse
order -- included a pattern for a lace
business-card case.
When I finish my afghan, I'm going to
knit an antimacasser to cover the dingy
spot where Freida sits on the arm of the
sofa while I'm knitting. Or I might knock
off and do it; it would equal only a few
rounds of the afghan, which is crowding
two of the three 42" needles it's on.
Making the smaller piece would be a
good way to find out whether I want to
work a few rounds of garter stitch before
binding off the large one.
It's been a long, long time since we
kept everything on floppies. I forgot
that I must put the encyclopedia disk into
the drive before I click on the
"encyclopedia" icon.
On the way to "knitting" I looked over
the article on "knots," which displays the
faults of "interactive" to its greatest
disadvantage. About the only way you
could actually use that article would be
to print out the text or the diagrams so
that you could look at the diagram while
reading the explanation.
The discussion of knitting under
"needlework" dates the art to seventh-
century Arabia. That's a lot more like it
than "most-ancient times" and "pre-
Christian." The needlework article,
unfortunately, was unsigned. (Maybe he
knew he flubbed the dub on "quilting,"
which he confuses with patchwork.) The
knitting article was written by Gordon
Graham, which sounds familiar.
Maybe I'm thinking of the Galloping
Gourmet.
Evening: the encyclopedia in the bundle
came with a coupon allowing you to buy a
current version for only $8, and we sent
off for it. It came in today's mail, and
the manual suggests that the writers tried
to address my complaint about the finger-
tapping wait between diagrams and text.
I also gather that even more effort has
been expended to make it a dandy game.
You have to install new software to
read it, so I'll have to wait until Dave
comes home.
I left the manual open to "atlas."
2 March 1995
Dave says that the atlas is a joke.
The directory for the encyclopedia takes
nearly eight megabytes of Drive C, which
annoys me a lot. You get an extra drive
to increase your storage, not to chew up
what you've already got. "Myst" takes
only two megabytes, so I can hope to
accumulate a library of more than two
disks.
I don't know how many bytes the
"challenge pack" occupies; Dave erased it.
The directory, that is. The disk is still
around here somewhere, but I doubt that
we'll ever re-install it.
I wonder whether that directory of
fonts belongs to the font manager that we
erased, or is something that we use?
I was thinking of trying to use
Compton's to find out whether I used
"Rugby Stripe" correctly in today's
installment of the Crochet World index,
but I can't persuade the drive door to
open.
I could stop by the library on the way
to buy milk.
3 March 1995
There are little tables on the lawn,
because the sun is passing through the
layer of freezing rain to melt the snow
underneath.
4 March 1995
The trouble with playing Tetris is that
you always lose.
Guess it prepares you for life -- no
matter how many points you score, you die
in the end.
Stopped at the library yesterday, and
found a picture of a rugby shirt in the
Encyclopedia Americana. Since I was
passing by anyhow, it would have been
quicker than waiting for Compton's to load
-- if it weren't for the hour I spent in
the magazine section afterward.
Complicated trip. I went first to the
bank, because I was down to one five and
three ones, and wasn't sure when they
close. Then I rode across the Super Value
Parking lot to Voorheesville Pharmacy and
picked up Dave's pills. After dithering a
bit, I decided to go to the post office
first and come back for the groceries.
The post office still doesn't have threes
or thirty-twos, of course, but I bought a
few twos, fours, & tens.
When I re-arranged my panniers to put
the groceries in, I found a letter I'd
taken out of the mailbox because I was in
a hurry to get it into the mail and didn't
want to wait for the route man, so I went
back to the post office. From there, it
wasn't out of the way to go by the
library, so I stopped "just for a minute"
to look at the encyclopedia. My
metabolism slowed down while I was looking
at the magazines, so I was a bit chilly
for the first block or two. Luckily,
there is practically no downhill on the
way back, so I soon warmed up.
Yesterday's baking included a few
sliced loaves, so I bought whole wheat.
Dave prefers white, but he'll take
whatever's fresh. I also bought four
assorted fresh bagels. When Dave saw
them, he said "Is that moldy?"
"No, it's blueberry."
We had one each, and it was pretty good
with cream cheese. But the two bagels I'd
taken for onion were just as sweet as the
blueberry. I don't know what they were
supposed to be. The brown spots were all
through the bagel, not just on the outside
the way they usually make onion bagels. I
didn't like it much. Dave hasn't eaten
his yet, but he doesn't mind bread that
tastes like cake.
4 March 1995
Made Frieda a little afghan, and pinned
it to the sofa arm. Working on it showed
me that my chart needed an extra line, and
I made extensive changes in the comments,
so I'll have to make another one to make
sure the changes work. Should have one to
use and one to wash anyway.
I now have my afghan on all five of the
Turbo needles, but only three of them are
42", and I'm knitting each needle entirely
free of the stitches, as if they were sock
needles. It's got a way to go yet, and
I'm running low on yarn. Told Dave I had
to see Sandy soon, and he said she was in
Florida. She's due back Wednesday,
though, and it should take considerably
longer than that to knit up the yarn. The
strand I'm using now is the shortest, and
it will be more than twenty rounds before
I get back to it. Two rounds is a pretty
good sit.
A few days ago I looked over Dave's
shoulder and saw him looking at a screen
with the article "A" in one window and the
pictures showing "A" in four stages of
development in another window, and jumped
to the conclusion that the folks who
revised Compton's had found a way to show
you pictures and words at the same time.
today, alas, I played with the
encyclopedia for a while and discovered
that that is the opening screen; you still
have to switch back and forth when reading
the articles.
Dave has about made up his mind to buy
more memory, which, he says, will make the
Windows programs faster. Won't do
anything for the DOS programs, but those
respond instantly, so you wouldn't expect
it to make them faster. They can't use
the extra memory to process bigger files,
either, but having to cut my files into
installments hasn't been any problem --
the Banner is the only file that gets that
big anyway.
Also tried the "dictionary" while
playing with Compton's. It isn't worth
its disk space. Couldn't occupy much,
though, because there aren't many words
and the definitions are very short. I
guess it's really a glossary.
Dave explained that the drive door
won't work unless the CPU is idle. Seems
kind of silly to put a motor on it anyhow;
the human-powered disk slots work more
efficiently. It's much more natural to
push the thing that you want to move than
to push a button. Perhaps the designers
were afraid that we'd push it too hard;
except for "Myst," all the disks that came
with it were strictly for children -- and
when Dave was trying to get into Myst, he
kept saying he needed a ten-year-old to
show him how it works. He's now trying to
get out, having blundered into an
age that doesn't appear to have an exit.
6 March 1995
And Crochet World hits the mail.
That's the end of that.
7 March 1995
Today the UPS man left off the new
memory, which surprised Dave -- the fellow
at Midwest Micro had said it would take
three weeks. He came home from work early
bearing a new mouse -- whereupon the old
mouse resumed working; you just have to
threaten these little rodents. We put the
new one on the shelf unopened; it's as
well to have a back-up, since Windows
programs won't work at all without a
mouse.
Dave is going to Binghamton tomorrow.
He'd rather have left tonight, but there
are a couple of meetings at the firehouse.
He's going to miss the annual corned beef
and cabbage dinner, which is tomorrow
night; I'm thinking of calling up Sandy
and going anyhow, but she's not due back
from Florida until tomorrow and probably
won't feel like going out.
And I don't know what time of day she's
due back, either. I presume that she
flew.
Dave's due back Thursday, but I've
packed two night's shirts and shorts in
case he has to stay until Friday.
While Dave was at the computer store --
the new one which recently opened amid
torrents of fanfare -- he picked up an
answer book for Myst. I read it and
discovered that the object of the game is
to retrieve a page hidden in the dock
marker and take it to the secret room in
the fireplace of the library. Unlocking
the dock marker is very simple -- once
you've been told how -- so I did it, and
found the end of the game rather
anticlimactic. Hey, Penguin doesn't take
near as long and isn't near as hard, and
when you solve it, the joker jumps out of
the deck and dances. In Myst, you are
left to find your own way home. I suppose
I'd have figured out sooner that you get
out of Dunny by clicking on Atrus's desk
if I'd gotten there the hard way.
Seems to be a sequel planned, since
Catherine remains to be rescued, and four
of the eight marker switches weren't used
to reach other ages.
Better hide this; Dave is coming home
from the meetings & won't want to read the
above.
8 March 1995
Dave thinks the bagels with brown spots
were applesauce.
Yesterday, Dave came home just as I was
leaving for the supermarket, and when I
got back, he had the memory installed and
the computer put back together; he was
surprised at how easy it was. Almost all
he had to do to get the computer to use
the new memory was reboot.
Then he asked me to see whether my
Windows programs were any faster, so I
called up the knitting chart I made in
Publisher, which had gotten so clogged
that it was almost impossible to correct;
it loaded, I found the row of shaded cells
that should have been white, cleared it,
shaded the row above it, and closed -- all
while Dave stood there watching. It was
slow, but before we got new memory, every
time I moved the window to view a
different part of the chart, I had plenty
of time to get up and refill my water
bottle & maybe get a snack.
Now that it moves so fast, I'm going to
try putting the chart on the clipboard and
copying it into a new document, to see
whether it leaves some of the garbage
behind. I created the chart by adding a
few rows or a few columns at a time,
working my way up from two stitches in the
cast-on to fifty-three stitches in the
fifty-second row.
Later: thank goodness I didn't try that
before we got the new memory.
The old file occupied 111,616 bytes and
the new one occupied 103,424, so I deleted
the old one and re-named the new file to
the old name. Then I fiddled a bit,
putting white boxes behind the borders to
make them stand out, resizing the insets
so that their edges don't line up
precisely with the grid, etc. The file
now occupies 108,032 bytes. When it gets
back up to a hundred eleven kilobytes,
I'll schleppboard it again, though the
reduction hardly seems worth the bother.
Ah, March! Whatever weather we get,
it's seasonable. 60 degrees out today. I
may go out and inspect the garden.
And I'd jolly well better scrub my rims
and brake blocks.
While putting on my new pants this
morning -- I've given up on my old pants
even for slopping around the house -- I
noticed that they were too loose even when
hooked in the last loops on both sides,
and felt that my few bike trips had had
some result.
Then I remembered that the loops
weren't sewn quite right. The last loops
have stretched a quarter-inch beyond the
middle loops, making the waist an inch and
a half bigger.
Afternoon: it's 40 degrees out now. I
rather expected it to get warmer as the
day wore on; I should have started washing
my rims sooner. It started to rain when
I'd washed one side of the back wheel, and
though 60 degrees is warm enough to work
barefoot, it's not warm enough to work
wet. It isn't a job one can quit half
done, and it wasn't raining hard, so I
persevered -- but it's going to have to be
done over Real Soon Now. Took a bath and
a nap, then took after the brake blocks
with an old toothbrush.
Before starting on the rims, I had put
the brake shoes into half a glass of water
with enough soap for a whole sink of
dishes, and the dirt came right off. The
last time I cleaned my brakes, I had to
use an abrasive on the blocks to get down
to rubber. The long soak didn't rust the
hardware, either.
Played a game of Minesweeper -- and
won, oddly enough. It wasn't any fun; the
mouse has gone mushy again. Minesweeper
is a sensitive way to find out whether the
cursor is going precisely where you put
it!
I guess this will confine my addictive
to behavior to Tetris.
Soggier and colder than ever. I don't
think I'll call Sandy; this is a good
night to stay home and knit.
And I found that the ball of mustardy
brown was smaller than the others because
there had been a knot in the skein; there
was another small ball in the bottom of
the bag.
9 March 1995
The places where the grass pokes
through the snow owe themselves to March
winds during the night. I still sometimes
see a snow devil near East Road, where the
wind comes off the school yard. The
sheriff described the roads as "extremely
dangerous" before I would have left the
party. I think the boys had finished
eating before the power pole went down
without tripping the breakers, and draped
live wires across three lawns.
It was a good night to knit.
I also transcribed a few more pages of
Bill's letter. He refers to Dunn a couple
of times and appears to mean himself.
"William Dunn" sounds familiar, but I
don't place it. A few weeks ago I was
noticing that he talks like a kid of
twenty or thirty, and realized that if he
were forty-one then, he would be only
ninety-five now. Bill could easily still
be around, which is causing me to re-think
my intentions of copying the transcription
into the banner.
The descriptions of the scenery make me
want to take a bike trip -- with very low
gears -- along the Burma Road. But is it
any safer now than it was then?
They're probably not still whacking
rocks with hammers to make gravel for the
road.
Gone be work to fetch the paper. A
substantial part of what gets blown out of
the back yard gets dumped on the door to
the entry, because it's in a recess
between the house and the garage.
Paper got, and I find that it isn't as
calm out as it looks from behind the
windbreak. The wind is out of the north,
and both windbreaks run east and west. In
the stem of the driveway, my footprints
were blown full when I came back. As soon
as I got into the parking lot, it was
calm, sunny, and much warmer.
I knew that you have to turn off
Windows to run Super Morse, but all I
wanted was the version number from the
opening screen, so I used the DOS icon.
Forgot that the program sends the author's
call letters when you close it. Took
about ten minutes. Luckily, I wasn't
planning to use the computer.
11 March 1995
Today, Dave has installed the new
mouse. The software that operates it
allows you to program the middle button to
replace the double click. It's a
tremendous relief -- when I remember to
use it.
The boys decided that Dave was entitled
to all the leftovers from the corned-beef-
and-cabbage dinner. He brought home
several servings of beef, two slices of
pie, and an untouched half-gallon of ice
cream. Hardly any vegetables, oddly
enough.
13 March 1995
Sigh. I remembered to turn on the VCR
last Saturday -- and a chore it was,
because it hadn't been used since the
power failure, and it won't let you turn
it on unless the clock has been set. Then
I turned on the TV and saw, instead of
Hercules, Flash Gordon. A rather curious
show; the special effects were from the
1940s but it was in modern color and the
costumes and sets looked expensive. I
guess this is what they call "camp." So I
looked at the TV guide and didn't find
Babylon Five, even though I read the Fox
listings for the entire week. It was
still blacked out on the other channel, I
happened to notice when channel-surfing
last week, so it must still be around
somewhere -- but this is an awful lot of
trouble to go to just to find out whether
I like a show. I think it's time to give
up.
Found out that there were three bowls
of cabbage and carrots in the fridge; Dave
just didn't bring them home. Saturday, on
the way home from Smitty's we stopped by
to finish cleaning out the fridge and we
emptied the bowls into one of the big
plastic food boxes & on Sunday I emptied
the box onto the compost heap. The boys
like their vegetables boiled for several
hours, and I'm not terribly fond of
carrots when they're cut small and cooked
right.
The snow that fell last Wednesday is
reduced to patches, the temperature is in
the forties, and the sun is bright and
warm. I really ought to go outside.
Here it is six o'clock and it's still
light out. I did go out; started to tell
Margie that I could buy stamps and get
back before dark, then amended it to I
could ride to the post office and back,
but wasn't sure I could buy stamps. They
had no two-ounce, three-ounce, ten-cent,
or two-cent stamps, but I got two packets
of Gs and some fives and fours. Heard him
tell the fellow after me that they were
out of threes. As if it weren't enough to
refuse to start printing extra threes as
soon as they decided to raise the rates,
they can't even keep the G "threes" in
stock!
That was fast! Decided to fool around
with Myst, since Dave is dallying about
coming home for supper & I don't have to
start spaghetti until I see him. I've
been curious to see what happened when you
let the wrong guy out of a book, so I set
out to start collecting pages, and decided
to start with the pages which, if you
don't cheat, you can't find until you've
collected enough pages to let the boys
speak clearly. Turns out that his
fireplace page is the only one a boy needs
to get out! (Though each one dramatically
ripped out all the pages that I hadn't
fetched.)
If you are curious -- and I don't think
this spoils the game -- what happens is
that you swap places with the boy that
you've let out of the book, and then he
disables the book and you are left staring
at a black screen.
And it serves you right, you fool.
14 March 1995
This morning I knitted up the last inch
of my pinkish tan yarn, and can't use any
of the other colors until I finish this
round, so I guess I'm going to have to get
around to calling Sandy.
15 March 1995
Haven't called Sandy yet. I may have
to resort to finishing my gloves.
It was actually too warm while I was
hanging up the second load of wash.
'course, I was wearing my black elbow-
sleeved shirt, whereby hangs a tale.
Erica didn't come down for her pill
this morning, and Dave found her still in
bed looking rather limp. A couple of
hours later I decide to take the pill to
her; she sniffed the cream cheese and
turned away, whereupon I called the vet.
After calling the vet, I went back
upstairs and found that Erica had moved so
that she didn't have to smell the cheese,
so I put it in the fridge.
Dave came home for lunch and took us to
Erica's 1:20 appointment. Erica did not
appreciate this, which made us feel better
about the state of her health. The vet
found a slight fever and not much else,
but when she asked me to put Erk on the
floor so we could see her walk, I felt a
lump in her fur. Turned out to be a scab
on a fang mark. The vet felt around &
found the other puncture, noted that they
weren't infected yet, & prescribed
antibiotics & told us to cut off her
Vetalog for the duration.
Dave dropped us off and went back to
work; I carried Erk upstairs and put her
back where I found her, whereupon she
trotted down two flights of stairs and
flopped on the cellar floor under the
staircase. When I brought the basket back
after hanging the clothes -- on the line,
for the first time this spring -- she was
gone, possibly because Frieda was sniffing
through the steps to see what was going
on.
The night before last, Rascal came home
beaten up, leaving us to wonder whether
they fell afoul of the same beast or each
other. I'm thinking a third party is
responsible, because there was mud all
over Rascal but none on Erk, because I
doubt that Erk was injured any earlier
than yesterday -- and because Rascal
appeared to be worse off than Erk, and I'm
pretty sure he can clean her clock. I
doubt that he could leave fang marks that
big, either, or so much bruising
underneath the punctures. Looks like a
dog bite that almost missed.
I told the vet we didn't expect any
trouble keeping her in -- but cats bounce
back fast.
When I fetched in the mail, and decided
to sit in my favorite chair to read World
Radio, I found out where Erk went.
17 March 1995
Erica decided to come downstairs while
I was out helping to set up the fishfry
and doing the shopping. She still isn't
eating, but she asked to go outside.
New complication: a tuft of fur on the
back of Frieda's neck has been ripped off.
Doesn't seem to bother her. I don't know
whether to exonerate Erica on grounds of
feebleness, or to accuse her on grounds of
short temper. Fred and Freid do have
their sibling spats.
We had a patch of May yesterday; today
we're getting April. It's supposed to
snow tomorrow. Typical March weather.
The crocus, which have been out for days,
chose to stay furled today.
Much to my surprise, there were two
Winter Aconites among them. That was what
the seed catalog called little yellow
crocus-shaped flowers that have no leaves
except for a ruff around the neck of the
blossom; I thought they had died out.
Hey, "aconite" is in the desk
dictionary. It's "a perennial plant of
the buttercup family, with a poisonous
root."
Later: When I fed the kitties this
evening, I chose tuna -- that seems to be
the food that sets easiest on a cat's
stomach, like fruit for us -- and put some
water on Erica's. She lapped it up, so I
put more water in it, and she had two or
three tablespoons of tuna soup before
turning in for the night. We are still
giving her antibiotic by the grab-and-
stuff method. Was a little harder to get
down her tonight than it has been. I hope
that she gets frisky enough to con with a
cheese ball before she gets frisky enough
to be hard to catch. The swelling is much
less, and she didn't growl at us for
poking around.
Despite the cold, I turned a couple of
sods today. Earth doesn't seem to be too
damp to work -- the rain didn't amount to
much, and most of the snow has been gone
for days.
18 March 1995
Erk had a little more tuna soup for
breakfast, but insisted on taking her
antibiotic by the grab-and-stuff method.
I'll try the colby method again after
supper.
The SpellBinder came in today's mail.
There's a column of excerpts from real
court records on the back cover. Perhaps
you need to slip up on it in a list, but I
nearly rolled around on the floor when I
read this one:
Q. When he went, had you gone, and had
she, if she wanted and were able, for the
time being excluding all the restraints on
her not to, gone also, would he have
brought you, meaning you and she, with
him to the station?
Mr. Brooks: Objection. That question
should be taken out and shot.
Got another half a square yard turned
over in the garden. Just might be ready
to plant potato sets when they arrive.
19 March 1995
When I dished up the tuna for the
kittens' supper, I held back a little for
Erk's breakfast -- but I guess that
was breakfast. Erk not only
climbed up on the bachelor chest for her
share, after lapping up the broth, she is
eating the tuna.
That was quite a party -- and it's
continuing at the firehouse. Dave said it
was a cheaper installation banquet than
last year, but when I asked what made it
cheaper, he remembered that he hadn't
added in the check for the band.
The evening started out very badly. A
couple of months ago I tried on my
glitter-and-black dress and verified that
it went well with pearls -- but when I cut
the price tag out of the dress and tried
to put it on, I discovered that it was
designed to be worn with a strapless bra!
Now who could do such a good job of making
a fat lady look good without a corset, and
be unaware that fat ladies can't wear
strapless bras?
I hastily switched to a slightly-tight
dress that wants mending in one sleeve.
It looked lousy with pearls, but I wore
them anyway.
I'm two for two on buying dresses with
glitter and not being able to wear them.
20 March 1995
Well, well -- I offered Erica a dish of
tuna pap, and she said that she would much
prefer her usual Tender Vittles.
I had to use the grab-and-stuff method
to get her morning pill down, but I think
it was mainly because the antibiotic is
more obtrusive in the cheese ball than the
arthritis medicine. The vet assures us
that Vetalog tastes good; she didn't say
anything about the flavor of amoxicillin.
I had some recently, but don't recall
tasting it.
Clear weekend, but the wake-up show
said showery tomorrow and the next day, so
I've got a load on the line and another in
the washer. I plan to wash the blacks and
reds when the shirts and socks are done.
I started raking mulch off the
asparagus and rhubarb yesterday, and today
I began moving the heap of rotten leaves
toward the patch of sod I mean to turn
under for garden. I find that they are
still too coarse to mulch potatoes with,
because I foolishly threw weeds and other
debris on that pile all last summer.
I raked the mulch off the New York
garlic and the elephant garlic a few days
ago. I think all the bulbs are up. Quite
a few of the wild garlics are in places I
didn't plant them -- whether from cats or
missed harvest isn't clear. The tender
garlics were planted deeper, and then
buried in mulch, so every last bulb is
where I left it.
21 March 1995
If it were later in the year and we
needed the water, I'd find this rain
frustrating: it is raining just barely
fast enough to keep things wet and
unpleasant.
I decided to skip garden work today.
Ah, well, I realized, early in the night,
that I shouldn't have taken a second stint
of raking leaves off the asparagus, so I
can use a rest.
The first batch of spruce trees came up
today, and the seeds I planted the
following day appear to plan on coming up
tomorrow.
Ought to dampen some more pellets and
plant the seeds still in the fridge. I'm
running out of dishes to put pellets in,
though. Been washing & saving the
containers cantaloupe comes in for
leftovers, because I've got pellets in
most of my storage dishes. A square
Corningware "petit pan" perfectly fits
four peat pellets.
I've got six pans of pellets now --
three of them moldy, so I suppose I ought
to give up waiting for the seeds in them
to sprout. But I got one lavender
seedling after the pellets molded, so I'm
waiting a little longer.
After those three molded, I got smart
and started using boiling water to
reconstitute my pellets.
When I got up from my nap, the sun was
shining brightly, so after having a heel
of whole wheat with cream cheese and
raspberry jam, I went outside -- to find
that the sun had gone back in and the wind
was wet and cold -- and worked about
twenty minutes. The north end of the
garden is covered with catnip, which
reminded me to check the stumps. Only one
of the catnips that I planted made it
through the winter. On the other hand,
one of the tall cottonwood stumps was so
rotten that I could kick it to pieces, and
a cluster of three little stumps was
rotten enough to pop out of the ground
with my spading fork. Next year, I think,
all of the smaller cottonwood stumps will
be gone.
Another lavender seed sprouted today.
In the same pellet with the sprout I
already had, of course.
I have been finishing my
gloves. At first, I was impressed by how
quickly one can finish a sixty-stitch
round. Then I got into the left index
finger, and was impressed by how many
rounds there are in a square inch. I did
finally finish the finger, and tuck in the
ends, too. Now I've got to pick up
stitches for the next finger, and without
a proper light, it won't be easy. Maybe I
can bring the 150-watt bulb down from
upstairs and put it into the reading lamp.
22 March 1995
One day I reflected that the "seeds" on
the surface of a strawberry are really
nutlets -- small, dry, indehiscent fruits
-- and commenced to wonder whether the
seeds in raspberry jam were really seeds.
After chasing through dictionaries for a
while, I concluded that raspberry seeds
are pits.
Drupes in compound fruits such as
raspberries are "drupelets". Shouldn't
the pits of drupelets be "pitlets"?
Got the stitches for the middle finger
picked up. Couldn't see the wee black
cast-on even sitting at the table almost
touching the lamp, but brushing the point
of the left needle across the spot where a
stitch ought to be picked it up. Part of
the difficulty in seeing the stitches was
that they were tightly curled, which made
them snag on the needle, which stretched
them open
Changing needles every five or six
stitches doesn't get less tedious with
practice, and I have six and a half
fingers to go.
I put some Eaton's Berkshire Parchment
Bond into my letterhead drawer, and threw
out the box. In the process I noticed a
$3.00 price sticker. That was a fearfully
extravagent price for a hundred sheets of
paper when I paid it.
And "heavy weight" meant 20 lb.
Poor Dave! He finally got
some e-mail, even if it was only a
magazine -- and I was the one to hear "You
have new mail waiting."
I'll say it happened because I was
sending a message, and tell him (again) to
say "Hi" to somebody.
I'm seeing why folks love e-mail; if
you want only to transmit a message, not
to visit, it's ever so much more
convenient than trying to catch somebody
on the phone, even if he uses an answering
machine. And you don't have to spell any
names or wait while he writes it down.
This was to tell the MHCC board a piece
of their mail came here, but most of my e-
mail has been with the Writers' Exchange.
Several Neffers are online, and it's
getting cheaper all the time.
I'm trying an experiment. I've set the
"Q" font for double strike, to see whether
that improves the seeing for you guys who
get the fourth carbon.
May be a hiatus in the Banner if I
don't get around to buying more four-part
paper soon.
23 March 1995
Burning trash is a sure-fire way to
raise a wind.
Erica tried to go out with me, but took
"no" for an answer. She did escape
yesterday, when I was coming into the
house with a bag of potatoes. I worried
for a while, then realized that I was
about to feed them. Fred escaped when I
was bringing in the first load of
groceries, but I didn't worry about that
at all; before I was ready to go out for
the next load, he was at the door meowing
to get in out of the cold wind.
Wish he could teach that trick to
Erica. When she wants in, she sits on the
step looking pitiful. Works if someone
happens to look out the window.
There were three messages when Dave
opened WinCim at noon: replies to the two
messages I was sending when I collected
the magazine, and a message saying "oops"
about the three hundred lines of garbage
appended to the magazine. I could see for
myself that the file was appended by
mistake; what I wanted to know was what
the file was.
I'm still finding frost inside the pile
of rotten leaves. I'll have pretty soon
shoveled through the original location, so
I shouldn't find much more.
I wonder why I was so generous
when I put leaves on the asparagus last
fall? It took only a few minutes to clean
off the much longer row of garlics.
The April Bikeabout came in today's
mail. The president's message says that
Darryl is glad to have put the name change
behind him. Poor soul.
I'm still forwarding mail; Dave was
upset when he noticed that one of the
messages was from MHW; I told him that
after twelve years, a lot of
people have my name as contact point &
I'll be forwarding mail for months, if not
years.
The phone calls are easier to field
than they used to be -- I ought to post
Frank's number beside the phone so I
wouldn't have to look it up each time.
24 March 1995
Today I dug one of the two lavender
seedlings up and replanted it in another
pellet. Hope I didn't kill both of them.
Cold and raw out; I didn't do any more
than token leaf-raking today.
26 March 1995
Checked leaf-raking off my list of
things to do -- now it's time to start
hauling leaves from the piles in the
windbreak. I've got the east edge of the
garden straight enough that I have to keep
re-stretching the string while spading.
And, for the first time, I didn't find ice
in the compost; I think I'm shoveling only
stuff that has been shoveled before.
I gathered up the pieces of rotten
stump and laid them on the sod that's due
to be covered with compost.
Also burned a bag of trash, which was a
mistake; I was swatting escaping paper
wads with the shovel most of the time I
was out there, and ended by burying a
bunch of black paper that I'd ordinarily
have left to burn itself gray.
Both lavender seedlings look healthy,
knock wood, but aren't growing. The
round, bright-green seed leaves don't look
anything like the gray, needle-like leaves
of the mature plant.
Yesterday, we dug out the electric
chain saw and cut off the stub I left when
I pruned the butternut with a hand saw
last fall. I acted helpless and Dave did
the work. When we reeled in the extension
cord afterward, Erica tried to kill it, so
I guess she's feeling better.
Thursday, Dave went to the store before
the Enterprises were delivered, and had to
go back again -- and then they hadn't used
the picture of him receiving the Fireman
of the Year plaque, just the group shots
of the officers.
The photograph was of a re-enactment of
the scene; I wanted them to also re-enact
the presentation of the bill for the
plaque -- they hadn't been able to turn it
in sooner because it had Dave's name on
it.
Dave wasn't just surprised; he was
shocked. I'm still not sure they can name
one guy Fireman of the Year twice.
This plaque is in much better taste
than the previous one; less flashy &
dustcatching, and it's on a maltese-shaped
piece of wood that can't be used for
anything except fire-company awards.
I wonder how a maltese cross came to
mean "fire company"?
Just spent considerable time with the
"interactive encyclopedia" without
learning anything except that there is a
maltese cross on the flag of Malta -- one
that doesn't broaden at the ends of the
arms, as described in the Oxford American.
Looks rather like the plan of a fort.
Maybe I should have called up the
picture of a fort that went with the
"Malta" article.
28 March 1995
Now he tells me that he
doesn't like italian sausage.
I'm not fond of italian sausage either,
but I'd promised sausage gravy for
breakfast, and Mike's sausage is italian.
And it was thin gravy; of the half-
gallon of milk I bought yesterday, there
was only half a cup left.
I've been needing safety pins for a
long time, and would like to get the coil-
less kind sold for needlework, so I
decided to ride to Super Value by way of
Beyond the Tollgate; it's only twice as
far as my previous trips. Since I don't
like to come back the same way I went, I
went out by way of the hills on Route 85.
When I got into granny gear on the first
upslope -- still on 85-A, yet -- and was
hurting, I started to think maybe I'd got
a little frisky, but I warmed to the work
& the hills were tedious, but not
strenuous.
Then I arrived at the fabric shop and
remembered that they don't open on
Mondays. I bought some beef boullion at
Stonewell; I'd been doing without for a
few weeks because Super Value doesn't sell
Knorr boullion.
I've half a mind to go back today, to
get the safety pins and some more milk.
In the afternoon I got the garden edge
that I've been stretching a string on as
straight as it's going to get, and started
on the short curve joining that part of
the border to the rhubarb bed. Shoveled
some compost, but decided to put off
starting to haul leaves out of the
windbreak.
30 March 1995
I did go back -- and she'd sold the
magnifier & had never heard of coil-less
safety pins. I bought a package of brass
pins anyway, since I don't have enough to
mark the afghan & a great many of those I
do have are inconveniently small or large
for the job.
Today I hauled one cart of leaves
between showers, but didn't attempt to get
any serious garden work done.
Auxiliary meeting tonight. We set up
for the fish fry first, then had to un-set
two of the tables so we could hold the
meeting. Learned of a craft fair next
Saturday, but I doubt that I'll go all the
way to Colonie to attend it.
31 March 1995
Hauled another cart of leaves -- and
two fish dinners. Judging by the crowding
in the parking lot, we've been doing
pretty well. The cheesecake had sold out.
I ordered a piece of apple pie, but didn't
get it. If I'd added up the prices of
what I'd ordered, I'd have seen that Kay
left something out.
Just as well; there was twice as much
fish as we needed (which didn't stop us
from eating all of it), and the pie was
from B.J.'s, not anything special.
Pulled a final proof of the Writer's
Exchange Bulletin. Must remember to buy
forty stamps when I go to the village
tomorrow!
Also started moving the hollyhocks. I
hope I remember where I stashed the
plastic bucket soon. I've been hauling
water in gallon jugs, but a few more
transplants will make that impractical.
Didn't look to see what became of the
hollyhocks I moved last summer.
The crocus are fading and the leaves of
the paper-white narcissus are starting to
show. The tulips are in vigorous leaf.
The lavender seedlings have second
leaves.
The last time I was at the post office,
I picked up a copy of Publication 51:
International Postal Rates and Fees.
Whoosh! If you think dealing with
one national government is
complicated...
Luckily, all I really need to know is
that one ounce to Canada is forty cents.
3 April 1995
I bought only twenty stamps, that being
all there was -- and the count was
actually over fifty. I'd counted the
listed members; we also have a few
unlisted members and ten or so ex-officio
members. I've got the envelopes
addressed, and stamped as far as the
stamps went. I'm planning to go to the
library to print WEB#41 & to the post
office to mail it today.
If I ever wake up. We got up an hour
earlier today than we did last week. Dave
forgot the thermostat when he was re-
setting clocks & cooking breakfast was
cold. Especially since we decided to have
oatmeal for a change & I came down to
start it before putting on any clothes.
Sandy called Dave yesterday to try to
dispose of an old fire truck that Fred
left cluttering a back field. When I'd
cleared the table, I called her back, then
went over to buy six more skeins of yarn.
I didn't know Precious was visiting,
and her fur matches the dead grass along
the driveway; I might have hit her. I
scared her even more, though she was
unaware of the close encounter. When
Sandy finally lured her into the house,
she was so nervous that her tail-feathers
hung straight down, which is as close as a
part-Peke can come to putting it between
the legs. When Andy returned from his
trip to Atlantic City and claimed her, she
included me in the people she jumped on --
and as soon as she calmed down, she began
an investigation of the intriguing smells
clinging to my purse and knitting bag.
Andy said he'd never heard Precious
growl. I told him he never would; when
he's around, she doesn't need to.
4 April 1995
I started wanting a laptop computer
about ten years before the word was
coined. I've been waiting patiently for
the price to come down to where I could
afford one, but laptop prices have been
going up instead.
Then Clinton, with a perfectly straight
face, says that we can buy a laptop for
every child in America -- and, no doubt,
buy each one another when he leaves it out
in the rain. (If I were buying computers
for random children, I'd get the kind that
can be nailed to a desk.)
I've known almost from the beginning
that our poor President was living with
his head in a virtual-reality bucket, but
this is the first proof I've had that his
bucket isn't plugged in.
W.E.B. is out in the mailbox, if the
mailman hasn't picked it up yet.
Winter is getting a last gasp in today.
I hope. It's fighting with summer: the
storm started as a thunder shower.
5 April 1995
Knitting from the center out means
looking at a two-inch ball of yarn and
knowing that you aren't going to finish
the round.
So I wound the skein of "oatmeal" that
I bought on Monday. I've hung the others
-- "willow," "dark willow," and two skeins
of natural brown -- on a curtain rod, and
mean to wind them as I knit up the old
balls. I had, of course, already wound
the "spice" (pinkish tan).
I'm going to have to slow up the pace;
I've got all my #3 needles (except the old
steel-cable needle I bought in a thrift
shop) in the afghan now, and it'll
probably be six weeks before the two 47"
needles I ordered from Patternworks
arrive. I dither and dither over buying a
$20 blouse, but didn't turn a hair at
spending $75 on knitting needles. Of
course, that includes fifteen for a book
about socks and thirty-five for an
illuminated magnifier with an AC adapter.
Hmm. fifteen, eighteen (two nine-
dollar needles) and thirty-five add up to
only sixty-eight.
I wish I'd known about the neck-hung
magnifier when Mother was still alive.
Assuming that those fresnel lenses work,
it would have been a great convenience to
have both hands free to hold the
newspaper.
I'm on the index finger of the right
glove now, and have finished the left
glove and tucked in all the ends, but I
may wait for the magnifier to continue.
The catalog describes the Principles
of Knitting as "controversial." I'd
have called it "monumental, magnificent,
essential, and tragically flawed." Worst
flaw is that the author made up her own
language, but did not include a Hiat-to-
English glossary. When she refers to
"looping" there is no way to find out what
she means by it except to read the whole
book -- which was intended as a reference
-- hoping to stumble across the
definition. She also believes that
knitting is so much fun that it's
essential to slow down the experience by
dropping the yarn, picking it up again,
and waving your hand all about for every
single stitch you take.
That's one way to economize on yarn,
but I prefer to slow down the experience
by using finer yarn.
But I'd prefer not to work any more
black fine yarn!
I'm hoping that the growth of
electronic publishing will someday permit
the publication of an annotated edition.
It's hardly practical in paper when it
already runs 571 pages and weighs three
pounds.
Someday I'll make a magazine article
out of Hiat's dozen reasons to produce
seamy work, not one of which will hold
water: as a review of a Star Trek episode
said, you could drive the Starship
Enterprise through the holes in the logic.
I don't think she mentioned the only
plausible reason: to be able to carry a
bedspread-in-progress around with you to
work on in odd moments. I'll have to
check the book out again sometime. It's
too irritating to keep in the house, so I
won't be buying a copy even though
$11.67/pound is dirt cheap for a
hardcover.
Again, I look out the window to see
people in orange T-shirts (covered with
coats today) coming out of the highway
building and striding purposefully down
the road. When I first saw them, I
thought it was the 4-H club responsible
for this stretch of road, but a group that
large could clean up two miles of road in
one day. And did, last summer.
Not to mention that they aren't
carrying trash bags.
6 April 1995
Dave thinks it's an exercise club.
Printed the Banner this morning, and
ran out of paper eight copies short. I'd
already ordered more paper, and Quill is
usually fairly prompt.
Spring planting has begun. There was a
furrow left over from planting the garlics
last fall; today I ran the cultivator
through it to freshen it up, then buried
some of the sprouted and under-sized
onions.
11 April 1995
It's time to kill all but one of the
spruce trees in each pot. I'm not going
to like doing that.
I just deleted another darling from my
query to Threads for Shuttle Solitaire. I
think it will be ready to mail soon.
Looked out the window, saw some
packages on on the step, and said "That
might be my needles, but it looks more
like my paper.
It was both! Alas, the order was short
one Turbo needle, and the "balance due
customer" is about what one needle costs.
I suspect that somebody didn't believe
that I wanted two circular needle the same
size and length.
After all, I order only one of
everything else.
The magnifier appears to be useful. On
opening the package, I thought the light
was awfully heavy, but it weighs nothing
(sans four AAA batteries). The weight of
the box was the three fresnel lenses!
They are a good, heavy optical plastic and
I was able to read through them easily --
and I could put my hands in a comfortable
place while looking through a lens mounted
on the chest light. They came in three
vinyl envelopes, which should help to
prevent damage to the delicate grooves.
Clever design: the battery box rests
flat on your chest; you turn the light on
by pulling it up at right angles to the
box, and turn it off by closing it down
against a protective cover. Looks as
though it could take a moderate beating
without damaging the bulb. And there's a
stash for a spare bulb in the battery
compartment. Comes with two spare bulbs
(where do I keep the other?) and an
assertion that the bulbs are standard; I
think that I've seen them at Radio Shack.
13 April 1995
I tried to work on my gloves while
using the magnifier yesterday, and was
disappointed. I can read with the lenses,
but the circles are much too distracting
when I'm doing needlework, and the lenses
do more harm by intercepting the light of
the reading lamp than they do good by
making the image bigger, even the 6X lens.
So I plugged in the AC adapter -- I
haven't bought batteries yet -- and tried
the light. It flickered on and off, as if
there were a cold-solder joint somewhere
in the circuit, and the DC connector got
hot enough that it hurt to pull it out.
This made me very nervous, since the wire
was draped across my body, and I haven't
experimented with it any more.
Come the weekend, I'll have the
resident engineer try to find out whether
it's the light or the power supply that I
should send back.
The circles are uniform in width, not
equal in area like Fresnel zones. Which
leads me to wonder what the point of
Fresnel zones was, and whether it's
possible to make a fresnel lens of
identical crescent-shaped sections. Since
they would be wider in the middles,
identical sections probably couldn't be
made as fine as concentric circles,
though.
I served a "bailey loaf" yesterday.
That sounds better than "leftover loaf."
I had a serving and a half of hamburger,
an Italian sausage, and a stale bialys
that I'd sliced thin and dried. I mixed
them with chopped onion, thin-sliced
celery, grated carrot, and an egg, patted
it into a loaf pan, and poured on top
about a cup of Dominick's pasta sauce left
over from a dish of "sausage without
peppers."
14 April 1995
Have you seen the "attractive and
stylish" long waisted dresses that look
like costumes for the extras in the Grapes
of Wrath? I guess it goes with the hand-
me-down trousers the boys are wearing.
Found a dried-up flax plant in the
entry today. I was sure I planted that
the day before yesterday; indeed, I went
out this morning and watered the dug-up
place where I put the topless plant. Must
have been two. This one has a ball where
the roots join, which I presume to be a
crown; the other was only a cluster of
roots. I put the plant to soak, but don't
have much hope for it.
The Gurney order arrived at the same
moment as a prolonged rain, but I got the
apricot tree into the ground yesterday &
hope to get into the garden today.
15 April 1995
Finally finished my black twill pants.
For a long time the weather was so chilly
that I didn't have a strong urge to finish
pants that are no heavier than sheeting.
Then, when I finally got around to sewing
hooks into the waistband and trying them
on, I found that they were just long
enough with the edges raw. Then I hung
them up for a few more weeks. When I got
at it again, I found that I have only
enough black one-inch tape to do a leg and
a half. I also found an entire reel of
5/8" gray tape in my foot locker of sewing
notions. I didn't know that twill tape
came in gray, let alone that I had some.
The gray was the widest non-white tape I
had, so I cut off some, wet it, hung it up
to dry, and fooled around a few more days.
Yesterday, I wondered what I'd wear to the
Tory Tavern tonight -- I've been wearing
the blue denim pants in the garden, the
gray pants fit so tight that I can't put
anything in my pockets, and the black
cords are transparent where the fuzz has
worn off in an embarrassing place.
Turns out that it didn't matter; I was
chilly when it was time to dress, and put
black tights on under my pants. And then,
reflecting that it was a Tory Tavern, I
put a long flowered skirt on over the
pants. With my black mock turtle and
pearls, it looks very dressy; I wish I'd
worn that outfit to the banquet.
And then we went to an expensive
restaurant and I ordered pork tenderloin!
In rhubarb chutney. I doubt that the
recipe was colonial, but George Mann (the
Tory who built the tavern) would have
liked it. Dave had a sirloin steak. He
had escargot as an appetizer. Escargot
taste good, but don't strike me as a
special treat -- Dave liked them; he said
"they taste like sauce." The sauce
was a special treat.
For dessert, Dave ordered hazelnut
torte & I ordered flan, but we traded
after tasting them. The torte could have
done with some Tory clotted cream. (It
was served with whipped cream.)
We agreed that the Tory Tavern was more
worth repeating than the Swiss Fondue.
The staff dressed in Colonial servant
costumes. I'll bet the waitresses were
glad of the excuse to wear sensible shoes.
The potatoes served with the meat
looked like tapioca pudding and tasted
like butter. I didn't ask what they were
called. The vegetables were carrots,
nicely cooked -- you know cooked carrots
are good if I eat them at all -- and
something I thought might be pieces of
some kind of squash.
When we sat down, I was glad Sandy
couldn't make it -- and I just might tell
her so! They gave us the bay window
looking over the Schoharie Valley, and it
wouldn't have held three.
They put a candle on my custard. After
we swapped desserts, Dave handed over the
candle.
Dave looked at my reading light, and
found that the problem was a
loose connection. When you push the
connector in, it seems to click, but you
are supposed to give it one more shove.
So I tried it again, and found that the
problem with the magnifiers isn't so much
that they intercept the light as that the
lines between the circles dim the image,
like looking through a window screen.
I'm better off, as Dave told me in the
beginning, if I take my glasses off and
hold the work close to my face.
But I think the 6X lens might enable me
to finish the cross-stitch on the hem of
my tablecloth. I must get at it before I
forget what year is to be marked.
After I get around to buying batteries,
I may start carrying the light in my
purse, as it's quite small -- it was
designed for such use -- and dim lights
are all the rage in this area. One of the
"poets" complained because the light in
the library's meeting room is bright
enough to read by!
I still haven't planted my onions and
potatoes.
We were shoved out of the meeting room
by a bunch of Boy Scouts last Thursday.
The librarian's office was a bit cozy when
the last latecomer had managed to find us.
The poets have inspired me -- I was
thinking about making some High Calorie
Muffins to take to one of the meetings,
and about to reject the idea because it's
so much trouble to make them cookie-thin.
Then I realized that when I tried making
muffin bars, I'd baked them in a cake pan
and sliced them thin. They
probably would have enough tensile
strength if I baked them thin.
Though I don't think my cobbler pan is
quite big enough, and my jelly roll pans
might make them a too thin.
I laughed at an article in the Life and
Leisure section trying desperate measures
to make a muffin without shortening. My
muffins are supposed to be fattening, and
I don't put in any fat at all -- I figure
there is plenty in the sunflower seeds.
But they do taste much better when I
put in mashed bananas.
16 April 1995
Grump. I went into the living room to
replenish my supply of cheap white paper,
took along a book I'd been referring to,
and got distracted into straightening up
the bookcase. As I was making room for my
new copy of the DMC Encyclopedia, I
discovered why the introduction had seemed
so familiar when I received the book.
Oh well, said the fox, I wanted a
hardcover copy anyway. I'll take the
paperback to Canterbury Tales if I ever
go.
I guess I'll make room for Folk
Socks on the shelf too; it's thin.
Arachne
Folk Socks, by Nancy Bush
(Copyright 1994 by Joe Coca and Interweave
Press). When I ordered the book, I
thought it was a collection of museum
photographs, or maybe a book that did for
stockings what Robin Hansen did for
mittens in Fox & Geese & Fences.
When I started reading it, I thought it
was going to be a history of socks, and
that was even better. Alas, it is only a
pattern book -- and one that thinks that
there are only two sizes ("for men" and
"for women"). The patterns give you
precious few hints for making the sock fit
your own personal feet beyond the
occasional assertion that larger needles
will make a woman's sock into a man's or
that smaller needles will make a man's
sock into a woman's.
It does have forty-five pages of
history in front, and it must have taken a
lot of digging and delving to find all
that -- but it is painfully obvious that
all that research was done for the sole
purpose of writing a book -- Bush writes
like the writers addressed by the article
in Writers' Digest (or was it
Writer's market?), who were
presumed to be unaware that one could
recycle research, and get more than one
book or article out of a subject.
For needlework books that I give shelf
space to, I want a craftsman who has
learned to write so he could share what he
knows, not a writer who has learned about
a craft so he'd have something to write
about.
Bush gives herself away in the first
page of the introduction -- which is on
page five, so I guess there are fewer than
forty-five pages of history. But the
patterns refer to their inspirations, and
there are photographs of the original with
a few of them, and that should make up for
the introductory pages.
Anyhow, down near the bottom of the
second column, Bush says "I had spent
years researching knitting traditions and
ethnic patterns, learning how knitters of
old created their masterpieces. I had
never given the sock a thought...."
And then in the history section, she
says that through vast sweeps of history,
socks were about all there was to
knitting! Her idea of "research" is
plundering for ideas for her own designs -
- which is entirely legitimate, and why I
wanted the book in the first place -- but
it isn't proper preparation for a book
about history or tradition or folk design.
For example, her re-design of an Estonian
sock moves the "tassel for hanging" from
the toe to the cuff to keep it from
causing discomfort -- but she does not
address in any way the question of why
strings on the toes didn't irritate the
Estonian's feet. I'm pretty sure the
socks weren't worn with open-toed sandals.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Just dug out the latest Threads to get
their address for the query I'm writing
for Shuttle Solitaire, and found a
rave review of Folk Socks. The
reviewer particularly praises the sidebar
on measurements, so I read it again.
Well, there is enough information
in there to tell you what measurements to
take before beginning a sock, dispersed
among amusing accounts of various pre-
Bureau of Standards methods of measuring
socks. But there is no clue as to how
much length to allow for the toe-shaping,
except that in introducing Wedge Toe
Variation #1, she comments that it's
longer than the Wedge Toe, and Variation
#2 is "a mid-length version of the two
previous toe shapings."
I could work it out by noting my gauge
and calculating how many rounds it will
take to work off this many stitches by
this method, but Socks is supposed
to be a book for beginners.
If I seem hard on the book -- I've
rediscovered my split-mitten pattern that
I'm making into a leaflet, and it's much
the same in intention. I need to see all
of Bush's mistakes in order to avoid them.
And I suppose it's a good pattern book
-- but I didn't want a pattern book.
Upon coming in here in the dark to
finish this, I was surprised that I needed
the light on to read the computer screen.
Too much contrast between the black screen
and letters glowing bright enough to see
in daylight.
Elizabeth Zimmerman noted, perhaps in
Knitting without Tears, that there
is no such thing as a mistake in knitting,
only inappropriate techniques. That was
brought home to me when I was knitting the
last bit of the dark-brown skein before
starting the new ball, and noticed that I
was using Hiat's "whole hand" method to
control the yarn.
No technique is so silly that it hasn't
got a use somewhere.
And no technique is so good that there
aren't occasions when it's silly to use
it.
Dave varnished his new hamshack desk
with polyurethane. I told him it looked
so good that Bob would be wanting it back.
And to think, the idea was that he
wouldn't mind cutting holes in it or
bolting down equipment!
He eyed the dining table after that,
having both sandpaper and varnish left,
but I reminded him that I'd start fussing
at him to keep his coffee on a coaster.
My real reason is that I love being able
to throw a "canton flannel" tablecloth
over it when I have a big job of ironing.
17 April 1995
Wasn't there an iron-shaped brown spot
on Mom's kitchen table?
We finally got a lovely day -- and I
played computer games yesterday and got my
arm so sore that I don't want to pick up a
gallon of milk, let alone a spade.
Not to mention that I ran two loads of
wash in the morning and had to fetch
Erica's pills in the afternoon. Stopped
at Super Value on the way back &
replenished the supply of TV dinners.
I was planning to ride my bike to
Colonie tomorrow, but I expect I'd better
put it off until Wednesday & work in the
garden tomorrow. The weather, I hear,
will get nothing but warmer until the
weekend.
High time I bought a summer jersey.
18 April 1995
Just before sunset, I discovered that
pushing a cultivator didn't bother my arm
at all. Of course, the problem wasn't
that the arm hurt when I did things, but
that it ached constantly, so that I got
used to ignoring it and thought I was
tired. Anyhow, I got the established
garden loosened up, and did some half-
hearted hoeing at the newly spaded parts.
So this morning I got the two pounds of
onions sets from Gurney's, the few
dividing onions, and the multipliers into
the ground. Then I had lunch, took a nap,
and planted the potatoes; I feel as though
I'd done a day of work even though I'm not
quite as soft as I've been some springs
when planting time came, and I didn't have
to do the work that was spread out over
the last two months all in one day, as has
happened some springs.
So I'm glad that Dave called and said
that he wants cold cuts on a steak roll
for supper. He'll be late because Frank
and Gert are at Smitty's.
Never thought I'd be out in the garden
measuring fertilizer with a teaspoon. The
instructions said that one ounce was two
heaping teaspoons, so I put one on each
side of each hill, but even though I
heaped the spoon up as much as I could,
there was nearly half the bag left. I
scattered it along the westernmost of the
three rows; now we shall see whether the
potatoes do better toward the west, do
better toward the house, or peak in the
middle.
This was as pre-meditated a planting
job as I've done in a long time. Usually
I just plow a row, set out the seed as far
as it will go, and put a stake down to
show where I left off. Since the
fertilizer had to go down first, I had to
know where every hill was going to be
before I put any sets down.
Dave's home. Time to "cook".
19 April 1995
We had a good rain in the night.
By the time I bought bread and milk and
put the groceries away, it was time for
lunch. My life is on fast forward.
Trip to Colonie postponed yet another
day; it's supposed to be warm and sunny
tomorrow, and on Thursdays I don't have to
be home by suppertime. I've no intention
of staying out that long, but it's
comfortable to know there's no rush.
Dave brought new turnouts home from
drill -- boots and bunker pants, but no
jacket. I hope there's a jacket coming!
Y'know what? Firemen really do wear
red suspenders. Four buttons in front and
six in the back. I thought I was never
going to persuade the two outside buttons
to go through the slits in the suspenders.
I absent-mindedly bought a chicken,
forgetting that we have meals only on
Mondays and Tuesdays, so I roasted it
while Dave was at drill and we are having
it as cold cuts. I ate the wings while it
was hot, and Dave disposed of a leg and a
thigh as a bedtime snack.
A crypto-vegetarian wrote a letter to
the Times Union inveighing against a
recent article saying that fish are good
for you; he argued (without quite using
the word) that fish are unclean. All of
the noisiest "animal lovers" are pushing
the idea that animals are unclean, though
they seldom come as near the surface with
it as did this fellow.
20 April 1995
The Roadway Express man dropped off a
package the size, shape, and heft of a box
of computer paper, and opined that Dave's
antenna ought to be up on the roof or at
least up in the spruce tree.
When I ordered the four-part paper for
the Banner, I verified that Dave had
plenty of everything he uses, so it can't
be paper. I do hope he comes home for
lunch. I told him I wouldn't be home
unless the forecast said rain, but I
chickened out after I heard "15 mph" on
the weather station, and looked out the
window to see tree limbs waving at me.
I'll ride in wind like this when the
weather is warmer and I'm in better shape,
but not today.
21 April 1995
In the afternoon, I rode to Indian
Ladder by way of Helderledge, then came
home to drop off the pears and the Stella
D'Oro daylily -- I don't think I'll
mention to Dave that I paid good money for
a daylily -- and found myself ravenous for
supper, so it was after five before I went
to the grocery. Got back from that
exhausted, so I went to bed at eight.
Guess it's a good thing I didn't go to
Colonie.
Maybe I should throw an air mattress
into the car when I finally do go.
Just dashed down to the road to watch a
paint truck pass. They were doing only
the center line; they usually paint the
center line and one of the side lines in
the same pass. I hope this means that the
state has some work on the edges of the
road scheduled -- there's a pothole in
front of the grade school that's downright
dangerous, particularly since this is the
weekend that all the little kids will be
nagging Daddy to dig out the bike and get
it ready to roll.
Another paint truck just rolled by --
doing the same side of the road where the
pothole is. The line probably doesn't
extend all the way to the village, though.
24 April 1995
The post office finally got me to ask
for a G stamp, instead of trying for
alternatives first. Posted on the
bulletin board were two samples. One was
a book of the first regular-size 32
stamps, which not only charged extra for
using glue I don't like, but had a dim and
murky design which I presume to have been
intended to represent our flag, though I
never saw one with black stripes before.
The other was a small pane of oversized,
kindergarten-drawn commemoratives
promoting panic and stupidity.
25 April 1995
Good news today: for the last few days
I've been noticing that Erica's white spot
isn't white any more, and wondering
whether it was getting sunburnt or she was
licking it too much. This morning, as
Erica crowded past Dave as he was leaving
the house, he exclaimed "your fur is
growing back!"
So I followed her out, and she was
obliging enough to pose with the injury on
her sunny side -- sure enough, what I'd
thought was red skin getting a little
scabby was really brown and yellow stripes
in very short fur.
I sure hope she's done with bald spots.
I see that Clinton has finally
encountered a situation he knows how to
handle. I'm not sure about the rest of
us, though. He appears to intend to re-
enact the Civil War, with every state
playing the role of Kentucky.
Sure hope I'm wronger than Dave was
when he looked at a newscast of Waco and
predicted fire.
Sigh. When is somebody going
to market a cat-repellent mouse pad?
26 April 1995
That afternoon, Erica hopped up onto
the keyboard shelf and stuck her formerly-
bald hip into my face. Figures that she'd
start letting us see it as soon as we lost
interest in it.
Cain't blame her; we kept poking it
when it was sore and swollen.
Last spring the grape vine at the north
end of the row failed to leaf out; this
spring the other two look dead, and this
morning I noticed that the seedless
Concord on the south wall of the garage is
losing its bark. Well, that last I won't
miss; it was never an attractive vine, and
the bunches ripened one grape at a time,
so there was never anything you could cut
and bring into the house. When I bought
it, I thought I might make a grape pie.
Seeding the regular kind would be less
tedious than saving up those pea-sized
fruits. And they weren't very good; the
seeds were undeveloped, but they were
present.