Guard cat

    Yesterday was a red letter day for Amelia the cat. There was a bad outside kitty! In the yard! At dusk so she could see him better! And he walked the whole way around the house, so she could follow him from window to window! And then he went away, so she's still the best guard kitty ever!
    It must have been a red letter day, because then she was totally full of beans all evening. I played with her with string, and generally made a fuss over her, gave her scritches endlessly, played with her with string again and again and again, and she was STILL full of beans. It may be because she hasn't seen a yard cat in a long time. The other yard cat is much more shy; this one is pretty much a kitten and is still pretty bold.
    She may still be full of beans. She just got herself caught up under the sheet on the bed and had to be freed. Cats do not embarrass, however; her expression was entirely, "I meant to do that!"
    She is not such a fearless guard cat when the perimeter is broken, however. Because my back has been acting up slightly, I've been spending more time lying down lately. Because I'm 98.6 degrees, she likes to lie on my chest. My friend Gypsye came around the other day. When she knocked, Amelia launched herself from my chest, claws working overtime. Probably the last time I'll lie down when I'm expecting someone to come visit.:)

One-liner delivery boy

    I had this great dream last night. Anyway, it was a great dream while I was having it. Upon further reflection, it's more than a little disturbing.
    I was delivering all the one-liners I had saved up to all the people who needed to hear them. In practice, this meant a girl I had a crush on in high school. In real life, I haven't seen her in 25 years or so, though I've seen on Facebook (though even that was a while ago) that she is happily married with a child. And even in fantasy life, I've been well over her since high school. My brain just wanted somebody safe for me to dream about, I guess.
    No, the aspect that is disturbing is something I posted about before: that I sometimes seem, even to me, less of a person than a joke machine. I guess that's OK, but it's somewhat dispiriting to find my subconscious mind endorsing the idea. Unless of course it's warning me off from the idea. Yeah, that's the ticket!

War zone

    Since even before it was a national park, the rangers at Congaree National Park (though they may have been monumenters when it was Congaree Swamp National Monument) have maintained a Mosquito Meter near the office/ visitors' center. It goes up to 6, or War Zone. Today it was there, for the first time ever in my memory. I think the rangers must think the visitors are really hyper-sensitive; all summer the meter readings have been much higher than they used to be, while I haven't noticed that the mosquitoes were particularly bad at all.
    Still and all, I didn't make a very long visit. Congaree NP features an elevated boardwalk, a low boardwalk, and miles of trails. In general, if the bugs are bad, you keep to the elevated boardwalk. They're worse on the low boardwalk and intolerable on the trails. It's probably just me, but I never have any problem with mosquitoes, because I keep moving. It's buzzing and bombarding flies that make me crazy. I'm not a big fan of them going down the back of my shirt, either. But today there was almost none of that. I made the entire boardwalk loop, including both elevated and low, and had very few flying insect problems. I also went about ten feet on a trail, but the buzzing of flies was so loud that I decided that trail season was probably over once and for all (I know I've said this already) at Congaree NP.
    I dunno; I found it a lovely morning. Maybe the rangers just got tired of visitors. Or maybe they're selling "I survived the War Zone!" t-shirts-- I know I would!

Life of crime

    The first rule of being a crime kingpin is never to put anything in writing. Clearly thus I'm disqualified. (Never put anything in writing MUCH does not count.) Tuesday when I picked Dad up from dialysis, it was raining. It had been really, really pouring, but by the time Dad came out it had slackened a lot. However, it was still a significant quantity of rain falling. The dialysis facility has an overhang over the front door which is quite sufficient for nearly every circumstance... unless an ambulance driver has put his/her ambulance right in front of the front door. That was the case Tuesday, meaning that Dad had to get in the car in the rain.
    Thus, I pulled my car absolutely up to the ambulance to get him as nearly out of the rain as possible. One of the ambulance attendants came out and said, "You know you hit that ambulance, don't you?" I said no, that I was just touching it, which was quite true and quite different. (There was absolutely no impact, and certainly not any damage.) She was on the cell with her dispatcher and strolled back to get my license. I've been expecting the flashing blue lights to turn up at my door ever since, but nothing of the kind has happened. And I took Dad to dialysis today and no one mentioned it. However, the same ambulances tend to serve the same facility, and I'm not looking forward to seeing her again. Ambulance drivers don't have arrest powers, right?:)
    Dad went to see the dermatologist yesterday to check on the recovery from the previous procedures. Unfortunately he already had another lesion on his face that needed to be removed. Tests aren't back, but inasmuch as it grew in less than a month, no one will be surprised if it's cancer. We are at least relieved that it is gone.

Not at my best

    I got the CV boots replaced on the Camry. I'm not thrilled about the $500 expenditure, but I feel a bit safer. I could have gotten a ride from and to the mechanic's shop, but I like to walk and it's only a bit over a half-hour walk one way. Picking up the car at 1 in the afternoon was a bit of a steamy walk, though. Then for lunch, I ate some elderly beef stew and have been feeling urpy ever since. So while I certainly do not feel particularly bad, I'm not sure that this is going to be a great day for adding to world literature. So long as the urps stay down, I think I'll consider it a good day.
    One thing that was especially good today was music. The radio was good. Heck, even the canned music at Publix played one of my very favorite songs, "Been to Canaan" by Carole King. This almost made up for my inability to find "Jennie Jenkins" by Estil C. and Orna Ball anywhere on the Internet. I'm sure everyone has had that problem before. (It was a song I taped off a library CD called "Sounds of the South," many years ago; recorded by one or another Lomax many, many years before that. Now apparently regarded as a children's song, owing to a refrain largely composed of gibberish. So just up my alley.)

Putting the punk in punkin

    Some of the Crazy People on the Internet suggest that nearly all the canned pumpkin sold in this country is in fact butternut squash. Even admitting that we aren't exactly rabid about agricultural inspections here, I don't see how the corporations could get away with this. However, having tried canned organic pumpkin, I'm starting to think that maybe I could get pretty enthusiastic about canned butternut squash. Could it be that actual pumpkin actually tastes like ass? Or do I just not know what I'm doing? (Naaaaah!)
    Regardless, two tries at punkin muffins failed, one slightly and one abysmally. So I spread out the remaining crust on aluminum foil and covered it with the remaining pumpkin filling, which turned out fortunately to be pretty skimpy. Thus, the resulting dish, which I decided to call punkin crisp, is pretty tasty. Once again, all the sweetener is in the crust; I've got to stop doing that. Or to put it another way, I need to throw out all the recipes and wing it. Well, it's almost always worked in the past!
    Margaret had a short in the light in her bathroom, which I told her ages ago that she needed to have fixed. A few weeks ago the fixture finally gave out entirely, and they had to rely on light from the corridor (and the window, in the daytime). Her son-in-law is a whiz with electricity and could replace the fixture. I got into it only insofar as taking her to Lowe's to find a new fixture yesterday in between the thunderstorms. We couldn't find one with the same kind of base (round instead of oval) so it seemed like there would be an unsightly unpainted place. But Rick installed it and you can barely notice the difference. And Dad and Margaret again have an illuminated bathroom (with no electrical short to worry about). So yaay!

Gotta get out of the libel business

    OK, the dudes at Precision Tune weren't so hot at speaking English. However, it is true that the CV boots on my car are split and need to be replaced. So I apologize for suggesting that there might have been any dishonesty involved. Moreover, I'm very grateful to them for pointing out the problem before it got bad enough that the car started making any noise. And I'm sure they would have done a fine job fixing the problem.
    Then again, I'm all but certain that Precision Tune doesn't use Toyota parts, and my mechanic does. Also, the fact that the mechanic literally didn't know what he was talking about (or at least what it was called) did not inspire confidence. My mechanic had a full garage this morning, but was pretty confident he would be clear Wednesday morning, so I'm bringing it by first thing. Hopefully the broken CV axles don't get up in the transmission before then.
    Punkin mini-muffins turned out awful. Apparently it really makes a difference using organic instead of Libby's Libby's Libby's and low-fat coconut milk instead of first pressing. I used the latter ingredient out of both sets above when trying to make pumpkin cobbler and the results were a lot sweeter. But I shall persevere!

It'll get in the transmission!

    Not to suggest that the fine staff at Precision Tune might ever say anything that isn't strictly the truth or anything like that. But when I took the Camry in for an oil change yesterday, the mechanic brought me back and told me that "both your CV axles are broke." Although this sounded pretty serious, even I know that there's no such thing. My CV boots might be off, but my CV axles probably aren't. Also he was mumbling, which doesn't give one a lot of confidence. Also the last time they told me there was something wrong with my car, when I had it checked by a reliable mechanic it turned out that no such problem existed.
    I told him that I would have my mechanic look at it and suddenly he found his voice, telling the office guy not to forget to put on my receipt that my CV axles were broke. The office guy was pushing the job, too, telling me that it was serious, that, "Those things can break and get up in your transmission!" I told him that I didn't have time today (which was true; I had to go get Dad from dialysis) and that I'd take it up with my mechanic Monday morning. I checked in with Malcolm and Gypsye, more mechanically inclined than me; both suggested that I'd probably made the right move. Malcolm noted that if the car isn't making funny noises, I probably don't have CV problems. This was my first instinct, too. (It isn't.)
    This should be a post about punkin mini-muffins, but I'm not at all sure that they're going to turn out. But the fiascoes are all fun, too.

More phone fun

    The Windows phone continues to reveal fun and useful features. But in case anyone surfs in expecting a ringing endorsement (well it IS a phone after all!), I don't think I can give one of those. It's a neat toy, but it isn't necessarily a great phone. It allows Internet sharing (what it calls having a wireless hotspot), but there's some reason to think that the phone doesn't necessarily work when Internet sharing is on. Which is what I would call worrying.
    However, it has its moments, this Windows phone (a Nokia Lumia 521, for the record). It's quite good at recognizing songs on the radio. On the trip to Orangeburg the other day, I tuned in the very good jazz station run by SC State University, and they played a very good song. As I didn't know how long I would be able to hang on to the signal, I IDed the song using the phone. It turned out to be a Hammond B3 organ trio led by drummer Mike Clark. I went right out and got the record (Carnival of Soul) which proved to be an outstandingly good move.
    What makes it neat though, it that it works in Spanish. As I've mentioned, I like listening to Ocho Cuarento (840 AM), but have no Spanish. So there's no way to know what the songs I'm listening to and liking are. Or there was no way. Now my phone can tell me. And as luck would have it, I just found a Latin record store out Decker Boulevard in Dentsville. I tell you, I'm just magic.

Hipsterville

    My buddy Paul and I took a day trip up to Charlotte (NC) this morning. We generally regard this as an excuse to eat Ethiopian food; most times we then visit the Bechtler (modern art) Museum, a very groovy place especially delightful since we've so far gotten in for free every time since they have reciprocity agreements with the Columbia Museum of Art, of which Paul is a member.
    However, up until recently there was a used CD store in the same uptown strip mall with the Ethiopian restaurant we like (Meskerem). We would arrive a little early for lunch and check out the offerings. We noticed that they never seemed to have any business and wondered if they were a Mob front or what? What, as it turned out. On our last visit, we found that they had finally gone out of business. It bummed us out so that Paul tracked down another good new and used record store nearby. After eating, we went there.
    It was really good. I scored three reasonably brilliant CDs ("Morph the Cat" by Donald Fagen, "Concert by the Sea" (or "'Play Misty for Me!' 'NO!'") (of course the preceding needs still another set of quotation marks for "Misty"; too hard for me!:)) by Errol Garner, and "Down Home Blues" by Gene Harris and Brother Jack McDuff) and a cassette of black stringband music from the Library of Congress. Paul found a lot of CDs himself. Then we wandered the neighborhood, which proved to be Hipsterville. There were many antique stores, a Jamaican bistro, a store called Reggae Central which was ultracool but somewhat short on, you know, reggae records, many vintage clothing shops and a bakery/ coffee shop. At one of the antique stores, Paul found a hardwood CD tower for $50, which is what they want for the wire and chewing gum ones at Amazon. We even made it fit in my car, eventually. So a good day all the way around.
    Of course, now the kitty hates me for staying away all day. But I think she'll get over it.

The Return of the Indoorsman

    After today's junket to the great outdoors, I found two ticks on my hands. (At different times. On different hands.) So I assume that they're (you so infrequently get to use this next word correctly) literally crawling on the rest of me. Or I did. I threw my clothes in the washer and myself in the bathtub, so hopefully they're swimming instead. (Note to Terry: I captured and released these two ticks, too. The quality of mercy may not be strained, but sometimes it's really dumb.)
    I'm more than a little creeped out. I've hiked places in the Lowcountry where the tick count was more likely to run to the dozens, but that was a long time ago and maybe you get habituated after a while. Or maybe unhabituated. I'm pretty definitely unhabituated. I don't like the darn things, never did, and am not developing a fondness with greater familiarity. I was relieved that the mosquitoes and flies which seemed to have taken over my favorite local hiking place (Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve) have moved on or died off, but am not feeling that the ticks are a good tradeoff. I think I'll stay here and play with virtual jigsaw puzzles instead. Parasites of the brain!
    Sister Anne sent a replacement walker for my Dad which is an almost exact replacement for the old one, except the buttons work. It was reasonably easy to assemble, but I was glad to have the assistance of my friend Gypsye, especially as there were literally no assembly instructions. As her superpower is non-linear thinking, she drew on it to help admirably and new walker was assembled readily. So yay!

Edisto Gardens

    As soon as I realized I had the power to make panoramic photos (easily I mean; I've been doing it by hand for decades), I wanted to go to Edisto Memorial Gardens in Orangeburg, SC, where a world of roses awaits. It just seemed like the perfect place for a panorama: roses everywhere, surrounded by tall trees hung with Spanish moss. Also, next door is Horne Wetlands Park, a boardwalk along the Edisto River with panoramic opportunities of its own.
    Unfortunately, today promised to be overcast at best with a high chance of rain. However, this isn't the deal-killer that it might be, because the Panorama app on my phone requires you to be able to see the screen, and a sunny day makes this pretty tricky. Also, pewter skies go well with roses.
    So I gave it a try. The rose-centered panoramas went very, very well. I also brought along my Nikon and shot some ordinary closeups of especially striking roses. Generally, I liked these well, too. The Edisto though didn't work out. It was just flat astonishing. On the boardwalk twenty or maybe fifty feet from the water, you would think there were no mosquitoes at all. At the water, however, there was nothing but. Panorama app requires you to hold the camera steady for a few seconds each several times; it was all I could do to manage a single second. So I bailed on smart phone panoramas. I did go back and shoot four shots with the Nikon, panning the river fast enough to beat the mosquitoes. When I got home, I finally put the Nikon's software on this computer, including a Panorama application. So I got my Edisto River panorama after all. It's huge, but it's great. I used a cut down version for my new Facebook cover picture. I like it a lot.
    T-Mobile was pretty good to me on the trip, but by the time I turned around to head home, I was knocked down to 2G. There was supposedly a good Thai restaurant in Orangeburg, but at 2G I couldn't get directions, nor could I get a decent map. So I came home and instead got Thai from a formerly reliable restaurant here, but they seemingly have taken to putting pad thai in their MSG instead of the other way around. Still pretty good, though, and a good enough ending to a crazy fun morning.

Tennis anyone?

    Since Dad got the walker, I've needed to go out and get him a couple of tennis balls to put on the feet so his progress will be less jerky and jittery. No, this isn't the new nuclear-powered walker but the old original one that he got a year and a half ago. What can I say? I'm an idiot. I thought there were special pre-cut tennis balls and was getting around to finding out where you buy them from. Finally I asked my sister, who is both really smart and works for the VA, and she said that you just get regular tennis balls and an X-acto knife and use the latter to cut an X into the former.
    Not having either thing, I asked my friend Gypsye (who sometimes works for a circus, which ran away to join HER) if she did. She did not, but did have a swiss army knife with a saw attachment. When she loaned it to me, I remembered that I have an LL Bean swiss army (lower case indicates non-brand-namehood in both instances) flashlight (I swear I am not making this up) that sister Anne had given me. In the end, I used a corkscrew, scissors (or anyway one scissor) and both saws and made fairly short work of my Xs. As Dad is at dialysis, I don't know yet if the balls will go on the walker, but if not I'm pretty sure I can make the Xs bigger. For the record, the corkscrew wasn't necessary (but was fun). Gypsye also had a useful suggestion for which local courts to search for free tennis balls, so wins all the way around.
    Malcolm's Father's Day visit was very fun. Hopefully his drive home is uneventful; car was making worrying noises that the mechanic at Sears couldn't pinpoint. But he thought it might be the transmission. Talk about worrying! I think he has AAA at least.

Edit: Ha! Completely unnecessary! Sister Anne is sending a replacement walker which is arriving tomorrow and she's already sent hi-tech tennis balls that are pre-cut and fitted with a connection for the feet of the walker. So yaaaaay! This turned out great because putting tennis balls with an X cut into them onto a walker turns out to be really hard, in fact beyond me. So double yaaaay!

Windows Phone is growing on me

    Now that I know how to use voice recognition (including using it to send (albeit very carefully worded) text messages) and the camera's Panorama function, I'm very, very, very taken with the cheap new phone. Granted I'm less thrilled with T-Mobile, which isn't good at providing service ten miles out of town. Or indoors. (or anyway in more than one set of doors.) But the Nokia Lumia 521 is definitely growing on me, and since I libelled it earlier it's probably best to mention that I'm a lot happier with the weird thing now. Unless the package is lying to me, I think it's smarter than this computer. Which is a pretty smart smartphone right there. (I looked it up and it isn't quite, but still.)
    Father's Day went well as the weather turned out friendly and Dad eventually got over the idea that he wanted to go to Outback, which is generally a nightmare on Sunday evenings even when it isn't Father's Day. We went to Grecian Gardens instead and had a very lovely night. Then my friend Gypsye came around to my place to try my very weird pumpkin cobbler. We had a nice visit and though we could never decide whether it's good pumpkin cobbler, we agreed that it's good something. Open pie, I think she called it. Anyway, whatever it is it's really neat. Will I make it again? I dunno. I like stuff that's more portable so I can share, but I might do it anyway. Really neat is pretty good.

Outdoorsiness in abeyance

    The flies and mosquitoes have come out in their numbers on my favorite trails, so nature trekking may be put aside for the season. I don't know why they bug me so; mosquitoes hardly ever bite me and flies don't at all. I just don't care for them perpetually getting under my hat, into my glasses and down my back. The fast-moving ones that rocket off the top of my head make me particularly unhappy, but since I took up hat-wearing that isn't so much of a problem. Anyway, there are numerous parks around here with paved trails which are much less buggy, so it's not like I'll give up walking. There just may be less rambling going on.
    Father's Day may turn out to be a little tricky, as it's gone overcast. Weather Channel app says no rain, though, so hopefully we can take Dad out assuming that he wants to go. Although he may feel that his best Father's Day is to stay in and have take-out brought to him, which would be fun, too. I have a feeling it will work out, regardless.

We dig two-week-long Father's Day

    This weekend, brother Malcolm is down for Father's Day, for even extra additional fun. As odd luck would have it, I turned up at Whole Foods (looking for organic popping corn, which is a LOT harder to find than you would think) on a day when they had wild-caught East Coast shrimp for $5/lb, even if you just bought one pound, but just for that one day. So of course I bought a pound. As it was labeled "previously frozen," I had no choice but to use it immediately, so for one last time, I made my crazy-mad-stupid-brilliant Lowcountry Thai shrimp boil bisque. (This is shrimp boil with some coconut milk thrown in and as such isn't worthy of such a grandiloquent name, but hey, this is how I have fun.)
    I also tried to make maple-pumpkin cobbler. Of the two, the shrimp boil was a success; the cobbler was pretty iffy. I sort of put it back in the cooling oven to let it finish and... forgot it for an hour. Even so, it's a few notches above fiasco. But it's a few below excellent.
    Be all that as it may (Alice used to claim that one day I would have a show on NPR called "Be That As It May." I still aver that this isn't really a phrase I use that often; it just sounds like a phrase I would use often.) Malcolm got into town in time to sample both. He found the shrimp boil to be improved with the addition of Crystal hot sauce and the cobbler to be improved if he aimed at the cobbler part where the honey is. But I think he found everything fairly satisfactory. We also played with my new phone a lot, which proves to have a lot of features I didn't know about. Most of them work surprisingly well. Hopefully the rest of the weekend is as fun.

Rollator

    Sister Anne got Dad a new walker, and it's really great but problematic. It's a Rollator, a four-wheel walker with brakes. The model may be Hugo, or maybe they just named the dang thing. The problems are many. It's quite heavy. It won't fit in my trunk. It's hard to fold up. It's harder still to unfold. It has a seat but to sit on it you have to chock the brakes; the only way I see to do this is to hold the hand brake grips, but if you do that you can't stand up again. I hope that I'm just an idiot and am missing a bunch of obvious stuff. Maybe it will work out brilliantly. But I have my severe doubts.
    Let me stress that none of this is a criticism of Anne, who is one of the world's greats. What I question is who did they design this for? Because you don't need a walker unless you have severe balance problems or weakness problems. A walker that you have to lean down to fold or unfold is not going to be helpful. A walker that's too heavy to lift isn't going to be helpful. A walker with a seat is no use if you can't get up again. Again, I hope I'm wrong about everything. I'll admit that I didn't read the instructions all that closely once I had the thing assembled. But I suspect that we're going to be sending Hugo back, a pity really.
    Yesterday my trip to Congaree National Park the previous day became retroactively a lot less fun when I found a tick attached to the back of my neck. Knowing that I should have put him in a jar and gone to the doctor with him, nevertheless I didn't, freeing him on the front porch. No common sense, me. But I'm reasonably sure that there is very low incidence of Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever in central SC. Knock on wood. But I admit to feeling more than a little nervous about it.

Strife goes to a party

    Oh all right, so I baited and switched you. I've got absolutely nothing on "Strife goes to a party" except that it would have been a great murder mystery title about 70 years ago. There was a popular Life magazine feature called "Life Goes to a Party," and a terrific Benny Goodman number of the same title. Looking it up, I was surprised that I remembered how it goes, not having heard it very many times. But at this late date, I'm not sure anyone would get the pun. Born too late again, I guess.
    Yesterday I took my friend Jim and my new phone off to Congaree National Park to go hiking. I immediately found that I had no signal at all, so it was a washout in that sense. And the trails were very muddy and slick and eventually impassable, so it was a washout in that sense, too. However, we had a real good time. And eventually, somehow, the phone coughed to life and my dad was able to get through to ask me to take him to a dental appointment that afternoon. I did and that went well, too. He had a couple of fillings that had fallen out and the dentist replaced them. And he got around quite well. So in spite of the really astonishing heat out (98 yesterday, 97 today), it was a really good day. And very low on strife.

One Windows phone mystery solved

    Yes indeedy it turns out that the reason Facebook appeared to be very minimal on the Windows phone was because it wasn't actually on the Windows phone. I guess you'd say that the phone was connecting to Facebook, but didn't actually have the program. I just downloaded Facebook for Windows phone and although it looks a lot like Facebook, I have to say that I'm not seeing a lot of improvement. There is still a distinct inability to change Settings, which continues to be frustrating.
    A bigger deal with the phone is not a Windows issue or a Nokia issue (I hope; could be a crappy antenna I guess) but a T-Mobile issue. I took it out to Congaree Swamp this morning. It worked exactly like the dumb (Net10) phone did, which is to say practically not at all. My Dad tried to call me for an hour and a half and by some miracle eventually got through (even though I was seeing no bars); he needed me to take him to a dental appointment this afternoon. I had had similar experiences with the Net10 there, though mostly those were texts rather than calls. The Verizon Android (which would of course be a great band name) worked markedly better there.
    So I may have to bail on the T-Mobile Nokia. Or Congaree Swamp. We had a very nice walk nevertheless, if slippery. I think the floodwaters are still on their way. I may have to miss out.

Boy is the Nokia Lumia Windows phone weird!

    OK, I got the new smart phone up and running with no particular difficulty. Only snafu was when the dumb phone went away and the smart phone didn't come online. But I called my T-Mobile rep and she said to turn the new one off then on again and eh voila! There it was.
    So now my old number is my new number, I can text and phone with abandon and, now that I've figured out how to crank the volume, can even probably hear the phone ring. It has quite a lot of features and uh, approaches? Methodologies? It has a lot of different ways to do things, how's that? But most of them are as good or better than Android phones.
    Unfortunately, one of those better ways is also a worse way. Rather than an address book, there's just a category called People. This is also where Facebook is. So if you look at one of your contacts, you see their most recent Facebook post and any texting you may have done with them. People is also searchable, so unwieldy address books are fairly wieldy.
    Bu-UT... you can't change any Facebook settings. I think in the strictest sense, Facebook isn't on the phone; it just sort of tacks on to People. And although you can make Status Updates, this is almost the only instance in using the phone where Autorotate doesn't work. So you have to type on a very narrow keyboard. Anyway, my Facebook friends will be grateful that I'm posting less.
    On the whole, I'm fairly delighted with the weird thing. But I'd be considerably more delighted if Facebook would work better.

Hide that land line!

    I got a new smart phone today, though as it turned out it was unnecessary. I had the impression that the old cell phone would go away when its two-year contract ran out at some point this month, but this turned out not to be true. On the other hand, it had a Massachusetts phone number, so I never used it as a phone and thus carried around a dumb phone that I used for a phone and a smart phone that I used for a computer. Now, hopefully the new one will serve as both, and also have the dumb phone's number (some time in the next 24 hours or so). Problem is that there's supposed to be a free wi-fi hot spot and I can't so far find it. This would throw a gigantic monkey wrench in the works. But I've barely looked, nor have I read the manual. I'm sure I'll work it out.
    The really funny thing was when the woman helping me needed to call the head office to set up getting my old number reapplied to the new phone. She used a land line that was hidden in a drawer. I said I could see why they would want to hide the land line (them being in the business of selling cell phones and everything). I was pretty tickled about it anyway.

Father's Day early

    My sister Anne couldn't get time off from work for actual Father's Day, and since things seemed to be pretty stressful down here at the moment anyway she figured she would come down for the weekend to see if she could help. She made it in time to bring him home from dialysis yesterday and visit all evening. Dad wasn't up to going out so she, brother William and I went out to supper together and then she brought Dad and Margaret their takeout orders. We are hoping to be able to go out for early Father's Day supper this evening, but if Dad's still feeling less than his best we can always do the takeout trick again.
    Dad and Margaret are also not early risers, so Anne and I are likely to catch the new Star Trek flick in 3D this afternoon. She's seen it already, but is delighted to see it again. I haven't seen a movie in a theater since... oh, a long time ago. I went to a RiffTrax (Mystery Science Theater 3000 successor) screening. I went to the film of the last cast of "Rent." And I've seen a lot of movies in improvised showings and one or two at the local repertory theater. But the last time I saw a big-release Hollywood movie in a multiplex goes back to Alice days, 4+ years ago. Coming back to life maybe?

Is my cat right-handed?

    Or clockwise? When I googled this, I found some interesting stuff. Apparently, the way you're supposed to find this out is to put some tuna at the bottom of a jar. She will go fishing for it, using either one front paw or the other. I think they said that 9 out of 10 female cats are right-pawed and some large number (maybe also 9 out of 10, but this seems unlikely) of male cats are left-pawed.
    I don't feel comfortable experimenting on my cat or using tuna for such an experiment. But what brings it up is when I play with her with string, she's much likelier to chase the string if I drag it along the bed around her from her left to her right (or clockwise) than counterclockwise. Of course, this might just be because I do a better job of going at her preferred speed going clockwise. I'm right-pawed myself.
    Dad is still feeling weak, but at least he was walking indoors with his cane again. He thinks his weakness is due to the hospital trip, but given our previous experiences, I suspect that it's another instance of hangover from the anesthesia. I'm hoping that a second dialysis session will clear more of the stuff out, but there we're up against my ignorance of medicine. Regardless, I hope and trust that he will continue to feel better. Sister Anne is coming to visit just for the weekend as an early Father's Day celebration; hope this helps, too.

Home

    Well the hospital adventure is over. I got the call about 11:30 and went to pick him up. They said he'd be down at about noon, which turned out to be more like ten past, but no matter. The nurse, though little, was very strong and got him into the car by herself. I had asked if he could stand and walk for himself and they said that he was walking with a walker.
    We were very relieved that tropical storm Andrea had decided to drop her rains elsewhere. I got him home and he got out of the car by himself. He had no problem with the walker, but nor did he have any faith in his ability to walk with a cane, so he made it all the way to his sofa, including through two tight doorways, with the walker. He said that he's a lot weaker since he went to the hospital. But he had trouble eating there, and probably didn't sleep too well either. He seemed very, very tired. So I'm hoping that home cooking and some rest will make everything better.
    It's also true that he had dialysis quite late yesterday and supper after dialysis when he was very uncomfortable from that exhausting process. We were visiting until they threw us out at 8:30. I've got to feel that he'll be much better tomorrow. Anyway I can hope, and it's nice to have him out of the hospital.

Day 2

    So eventually Dad was admitted to the hospital. By the time I went to visit to bring him his glasses at 9:30 he still didn't have his breakfast. Unfortunately, he didn't ultimately get it until 11. However, they seem to know that he's there now. There's even a chance that he'll get lunch some day. Some one from nephrology came around and said that he could have dialysis there, but he hadn't heard any further. I told him that judging from our previous hospital experiences, he was waiting for somebody from Transport to come to wheel him from there to there. (Everything takes forever in hospitals.) Anyway, the probability is that he'll be there another day. If we could just get them to send him home in an ambulance and have the EMS guys take him in using the fireman carry (since the stretcher never fits through the doors), my worries would be over. Because obviously my greatest fear is getting him home and having him just keel over again. But it's more like a nightmare than any legitimate fear.
    The funny thing that happened last night wasn't really funny; we just were stressed out so just about anything can hit you funny. When we arrived, we saw somebody in one of the wards of the ER who was old, Caucasian, male, white-haired and otherwise looked nothing at all like Daddy. The only thing that was funny was that both Margaret and I were absolutely convinced that we were looking at Dad. (Later we saw the guy closer up and we were even more astonished that we could have mistaken them for each other.)
    An unusual thing (at least in my experience) is that a prison inmate was in another of the wards. He had a full panoply of guards and they had to take shackles off for him to be examined. Margaret kept bumping her chair into the door. The guards would pull the curtain and look out to check, no doubt to make sure it wasn't part of a cunning escape plan. (It was.)

Helluva day

    Dad's surgery was pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, however, they used a nerve block for his right arm. This means that afterwards, his right arm was dead for four hours. And brilliant folks that they are, they sent him home. So I got him home, and I got my brother to come and help, but in a car doorway you can't fit three people. So I had to lift him out of the car (he has to have two hands to push himself up to stand up) and just couldn't hold him.
    He fell, hitting his head on the concrete driveway, and bled pretty copiously. I called 911 and asked for an ambulance. They got there quite quickly and took him to the ER. Somehow, this was not that of the hospital we'd just left (which I had asked for) but the bigger, farther away one. However, it worked out. Turned out that it was really only a very small scrape. All the bleeding was due to a hematoma no one had known about (under the skin, not subdural, so nothing requiring surgery or anything). However, they will be admitting him for observation, and he'll be able to get dialysis there tomorrow, so all's well that ends well.
    It looks like it will be very, very late before he actually gets admitted. We would have liked to stay at least to see him off to his room (where we couldn't have actually visited since visiting hours outside the ER end at 9), but I had been standing for 3 hours, hadn't eaten in 13, and was getting towards the time when I wouldn't be safe to drive. But I'm expecting a call that will include his room number, and am looking forward to visiting tomorrow. Lots of funny stuff happened after we found out he was in no danger, but I'm much too tired to remember any of it now. Perhaps I'll blog about it further tomorrow.

Getting to zero hour

    Dad has the surgery tomorrow to have a new access for dialysis put into his arm tomorrow. I am scared witless. It's not that the surgery is likely to be dangerous. It's an outpatient procedure and should be wholly routine. Unfortunately, though, previous routine outpatient procedures have left him barely able to move for nearly a week. Today he was already weak, even for him, so the idea of him being even weaker still is scary indeed. I hope that he and Margaret have the sense to get professional nursing help until he's back to something like normal. Regardless, anxiety levels are through the roof. If this blog seems even more phoned in than ever for the next few days or should it disappear, don't be too surprised. Everyone's best wishes are as always abundantly welcome.

Does Lowe's dream of electric sheep?

    If you're a hard core "Blade Runner" fan, you might want to go by Lowe's. Otherwise, you might want to give them a wide berth. They've gone a bit 21st century as an alternative to the Walmart greeter approach. They have a lady TV set. It's a TV set shaped like a (specific) lady's head and torso, with a cardboard cutout for the legs. So you have a TV lady facing you as you come in, welcoming you to Lowe's and presumably telling you where the store layout map is. Or something; she creeped me out pretty thoroughly and I hied by pretty quickly. There was at least one more of her in the store. ("Hi! I'm still watching! No shoplifting!" maybe; again I hastened.) I was just trying not to run afoul of the Voight-Kampff test.

VERY limited audience

    I mean even by my standards. Then again, Google being what it is, this might bring 'em in by the millions. Who knows?
    I've been obsessively playing virtual jigsaw puzzles all year. This is hard to talk about, not due to shame or anything, but because my mild brain damage almost invariably tries to make me say "crossword puzzles" instead, which would be fairly confusing. More recently I found a program called Astra Gift Maker which allows you to make crossw-- I mean jigsaw puzzles (see?) from your own pictures or from pictures off the web.
    It's crazy stupid fun. Key is to find really, really, really colorful pictures, ideally with a lot of colors mixed up as much as possible. Hot air balloons, flowers, Fauvist or expressionist art, etc. The possibilities are maybe not endless, but pretty varied.
    HOWEVER... there's one item that did NOT turn out to be crazy, stupid fun. I made a jigsaw puzzle (got it that time!) of a picture of beads. Lots and lots and lots of beads. Jeez, it was impossible! Took days, and I had to go through all the pieces one at a time at least three times. So what I'm telling you, jigsaw puzzle fans surfing in from Kazakhstan, is to know your limitations. Don't try to make a jigsaw puzzle depicting items smaller than the actual jigsaw puzzle pieces. Or you'll be very unhappy. Unless of course you love challenges, in which case you'll be ECSTATIC!

Surprise! Me crabbing about the radio again

    By the way, why is it that "crabbing" and "carping" mean the same thing? Crabs and carp must be pretty disagreeable fellows, huh?
    Yeah yeah yeah I know, it's of no importance whatever, and if I really cared about this stuff I could just shut off the radio. Still, it's odd. Back when I was a yoot, nearly all broadcasters referred to the NCAA as either the NC2A, the NC  double A, or of course "those weasels who don't have the first idea what they're doing." This of course was because it's impossible, or at least very difficult, to pronounce an A after another A. (Oh no, and we're back to the "plural of A" problem, too!) AA works OK, but apparently the NC throws off the rhythm somehow. Or maybe it's just us Southerners. Regardless, everyone on the radio around here winds up saying NCA, and it's getting on my nerves just a little bit. Really, how hard is it to say NC2A? Worked in the '60s, worked in the '70s, worked in the '80s; ought to work now, too. Or was it a directive from "those weasels who don't have the first idea what they're doing."
    I am far from one of those "Y'all ain't from around here, are ya?" people. Usually, I'm the recipient of that line instead. Still, I'm a little put off by people reading radio ad copy who say our area code funny. It's 803. For whatever reason, we've always pronounced it "Eight-o-three." Lately there's a tendency to say "Eight-zero-three" instead. I don't know why we did it the first way in the first way, I don't know why people are doing it differently now, and I don't know why it puts me off. It sounds really strange though. I guess it's a simple matter of, "You're trying to sell me something, and you don't even know the first thing about how we talk." Or something. Maybe I should send all these companies "Y'all ain't from around here, are ya?" emails.:)