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November was another month in which I didn’t do much. We did have a book club meeting to talk about The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, which had some interesting things early on, mostly having to do with the 8-year-old brother, Billy, and the adventure book he admires. But it completely fell apart in the last 60 or so pages, with an ending that didn’t hold together. I also had my Litvak genealogy group and my needlework group.

Getting my water heater tune-up for winter proved to be extremely annoying because they sent me both a text and an email telling me I’d be notified of what time the technician would show up by 11 a.m., but I didn’t hear a word and when I called back, they told me that was an old message and I just needed to wait. He eventually showed up at almost 3 in the afternoon. Still, it’s one of those things that has to get done.

Of course, there was also the election. I did early voting at the community center near me. Both that and the elementary school where my normal polling place is are easy walking distance from where I live and I would normally walk, but not with my knee problems. At any rate, there was almost no wait to vote. There was really nothing contentious in my district since, as I have said before, VA-11 is so blue that it is practically indie. (Gerry Connolly got about 67% of the vote. Interestingly, I hadn’t gotten any mail or any phone calls from his Republican opponent.) There were also a couple of bits of good news. First, Eugene Vindman squeaked out a victory in VA-07. This is important because it suggests that Abigail Spanberger has a decent chance in her run for governor. (Note that Virginia has its gubernatorial and other state / local races in odd years. I am fairly sure that this is Thomas Jefferson’s fault as is everything I find weird about Virginia.) The other bit of good news was from NY-04, where Anthony D’Esposito lost. For those who don’t recognize the name, he replaced George Santos in the House of Representatives and had already gotten in trouble over hiring a woman he was having an affair with. Though, to be fair, the main reason I paid any attention to him at all was that he is from my home town.

The most annoying thing that happened in November was falling in my kitchen and being unable to get up. I called my friend, Kim, who rescued me and took me to urgent care, where I got examined and x-rayed. Bottom line was: 1) nothing broken, 2) a diagnosis of osteoarthritis, 3) advice re: painkillers (including an injection into my shoulder, 4) coming home with a knee sleeve, a cane, a sheet of exercises, and general advice. The doctor said I will eventually need knee replacement surgery but “not for a long time.” I am doing better and have been pretty much pain free for a while now. I do need to work on exercises more, however.
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I also did some things in July. I will spare you details about home repairs and household paperwork.

Fourth of July: Aside from dealing with condo woes, described in a locked entry, I went to a friend’s house for holiday socializing. That incl I uded dinner - and the inevitable smoke alarm going off as the steaks were grilled - and lots of good conversation, as well as sitting out on her balcony to watch fireworks. Lots of fireworks, since Kathleen lives in Crystal City part time for now, though she’s giving up her apartment in October to live full time in her house in South Carolina. You can’t see the DC mall fireworks from her apartment, because part of the building is in the way, but there are a lot of fireworks in Maryland (and some in southern DC) which you can watch. And, of course, there are lots of planes taking off and landing at DCA also. Overall, it was a nice evening, despite my being stressed out over my AC woes.

The Flushies: A few days later was The Flushies, one of the two big Loser parties of the year. (The other is the post-holiday party in January.) There was the typical potluck array, to which my contribution was cheese and crackers (and some leftover hummus) because I was going away right after the party. There was plenty of good conversation, followed by the awards to various people for their accomplishments. Judy Freed won Loser of the Year. Her inkblots included this particularly brilliant take on a bad idea with the book title Self Esteem for Dummies.

Big-D Con: This year’s NPL con was in Dallas. It is worth its own entry, which I will try not to be so bloody slow in writing.

Book Clubs” R.E.A.D. discussed Mad Honey by Jodi Picot and Jennifer Finley Boylan. It was an interesting book with great pacing and, surprisingly, everyone liked it. The Travelers’ Century Club read The Curious Case of William Baekeland by Harry Mitsidis, which has to do with a con man who ripped off a lot of extreme travelers, including TCC members. It was an interesting book, but not particularly well-written, in my opinion.

Speaking of TCC: The book club meeting ended a while before the monthly virtual exploration, which had to do with Fernando de Noronha and the Falklands. I’ve done a fair amount of reading on the latter, but I really knew nothing about the former except for its existence. Bottom line is that it looks very appealing, though it is also expensive and possibly a bit too resorty for my tastes, since I’m not a lie on the beach and do nothing sort of person.

This past weekend was our chapter’s regular lunch meeting. There was plenty of wide-ranging travel conversation. I particularly enjoyed talking with one of the new people, who appears to have similar tastes to mine.

Bad News: My brother had a heart attack. Apparently one artery was 100% blocked, while the other two were 60% blocked. They put in a stent in the blocked one and he goes back to the doctor this week to learn about the way ahead. He said he feels okay and he is home and resting.

Good News: I got some resolution on the household crisis. It turns out that there was a clog in the main drain clog, so it is the condo association’s responsibility to pay for repairs related to it.

Eye Have Really Good News: I had my second cataract surgery last week. It went well. My vision was still blurry the next day when I went in for my follow-up appointment, but cleared up by the next day. Really, these intraocular lenses are quite miraculous. As for the surgery, I remember being more conscious than I was for the first eye, but the only specific thing I remember them doing was cleaning my eyelashes. And there were some purple, green, and yellow blobs, presumably due to the laser dissolving the cataract.

Eye, I, Ay

Jun. 28th, 2024 01:21 pm
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My post-Portugal life has been busy and a bit stressful.

Bionic Miriam, Phase 1: I had cataract surgery on my right eye about two weeks after I got home. My friend, Kathleen, drove me to and from the ambulatory surgery center. I had a bit of a wait while they asked me a lot of questions, often more than once (by different people). I know I was awake, but the only thing I really remember was that I saw Escher-like tessellations against a background of changing colors as the surgeon was using the laser to destroy the cataract. I didn’t feel any significant pain, just a little bit of scratchiness. I spent most of the afternoon and evening sleeping on and off. In the morning, when I took off the eye shield, I was astonished to see clearly out of the operated eye. That is, I could read the titles of books on the top of the stacks on the floor without putting my glasses on. Anyway, the surgeon had left me a voicemail that everything went well and that was confirmed at my follow-up appointment the morning after the surgery.

In the meantime, there are lots of eyedrops and I’m still under restrictions about not lifting anything over 30 lb and not bending over. Fortunately, my friend Kim came over to help me with the laundry, since I wouldn’t have been able to get it from washer to dryer and from dryer to the back of the sofa without bending.

Other Stuff I’ve Done: I had my usual meetings - the monthly Litvak genealogy mentoring session, two Needles and Crafts zoom get-togethers (which includes people working on their projects and book discussions), a Better Said Than Done board meeting to work on casting for next year’s Women’s Storytelling Festival, the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap (at which I told “Ida Black,” a ghost story involving an actual tombstone that I photographed in Maine some years ago), a Grimm Keepers discussion of “One Eye, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes,” and a Loser Brunch at a Mexican restaurant in D.C. Re: the latter, I should note that my preferences for variations of that cuisine in the U.S. is New Mexican (e.g. Santa Fe), California second, and Tex-Mex third, with the mid-Atlantic region about 199th, just above New England. I missed a second Grimm Keepers meeting (re: Snow White) because I badly needed a nap. Oh, there was also a JGSGW meeting with a talk about some complicated immigration situations in the post-World War I era.

I also had a couple of book club meetings. Crones and Tomes discussed Remarkably Bright Creatures which was enjoyable. And the TCC Book Club discussed Blood River: the Terrifying Journey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Country . I’ll write about both of these (and other books in my quarterly update, which should get done in a little over a week.

I had a routine dentist appointment. My dentist retired (largely because of her back problems) and I’m not sure how I feel about her replacement.

Finally, I played board games over zoom at least 4 times. (I might have missed writing one down on my calendar.) Er, yes, I do keep busy.

Still to Write About: Home annoyingness. Travel planning. Why is decluttering so bloody hard? A couple of sets of blog prompts. The quarterly update.
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I've had a pretty sociable week.

Storytelling Show: Saturday night’s storytelling show went well. We had a good and responsive audience. The venue was easier to get to than I expected it to be. And they had an excellent sound system. My story went okay, but I left out a couple of things I had planned to say, but so it goes.

Medicare: I had my appointment on Monday to go down to the Social Security office to show them my proof of age. I am sure that I clicked the “I have an appointment” button on their check-in kiosk, but somehow it gave me a number for a drop-in, instead of an appointment. Which meant that I ended up waiting much longer than I should have. But I got everything sorted and should have my Medicare card any day now. I still need to get my Social Security account on-line sorted. They could reset my password, but not my cell phone number for two-factor authentication. So I had to fill in the stuff on-line that has them send me something to fix that. (Last night, I stumbled upon the piece of paper on which I’d written down my password, but the old cell phone number would still have been a problem.) What is particularly annoying is that, if I hadn’t set up the account a long time ago, I could have circumvented all of that, because I could have logged in using my login.gov account, which I set up to get global entry.

Knitting Group: We normally meet at the police station, but the community room gets used for early voting, so we were at Wegman’s instead. We had a good group, with two new people. I’m making progress on my Tunisian crochet afghan, but it may not be completely done by the end of the year. It’s still a good project for social crafting as it is pretty brainless. Also, I brought some knitting pattern books from the 1950’s to give away and Tom took two of them.

Needles and Crafts: My other crafting group, which meets on line, had been on hiatus over the summer and just started up again yesterday afternoon It was great seeing everyone and I got some more done on the afghan. We’ll actually be meeting at a member’s house on alternate weeks, which is, of course, less convenient, especially because she lives in darkest Maryland.

Buy Nothing: I got rid of three things last week. So far this week, I got rid of one item (two furnace filters that were the wrong size) and am waiting for someone to pick up another thing (a trivet made of wine corks.)

Baseball: I had been rooting for the Marlins, primarily because I think Kim Ng is cool, but, oh well. (She is being talked about for the BoSox GM job.) I find the Dodgers the most tolerable of the teams who are left. The Twins are okay, I suppose. I wouldn’t mind the Phillies so much (I do like their GM, Sam Fuld), but I hate mascots in general and the Phanatic is the worst of the worst of them. I detest the Orioles because of all the effort their leadership put into trying to keep Washington from getting a team, as well as their failure to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch.

Genealogy: Wednesday night was the Litvak genealogy group I am the subject matter expert for. One of the good discussion topics had to do with what resources are worth paying for. My opinion is that it is perfectly fine not to renew relatively expensive sites like Ancestry and My Heritage until you need to use them. They don’t delete your account, so you can start up again when it makes sense to.
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The Aftermath: The day I took the bus from Seward to Denali, I was feeling a bit sniffly. I was assuming it was allergies because it was still springtime (i.e. tree sex season) in Alaska. My symptoms were pretty much insignificant in terms of not interfering with my energy level and I’d been masking (with a KN-95 mask) everywhere I went. So I didn't think much of it, but I was continuing to have mild cold symptoms when I got home. So I dragged out one of the home COVID tests - and, damn, I had an unwelcome souvenir of Alaska.

As I said, I didn’t feel particularly sick, but it did put a damper on my plans. Missing the Circumnavigators’ Club Happy Hour was not a big deal. But the gentleman with whom I conducted the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling was scheduled to visit. Obviously, that had to get canceled. Sigh.

By the way, I tested negative yesterday, so all is well, other than my annoyance.


HVAC Fiasco: A few days after I got home, I got a call from the manager of my condo complex. My downstairs neighbor had water leaking into her unit. He looked at my AC unit and saw water. The bottom line is that I ended up having to get the whole AC system replaced. While I had the money, there are many other things I would rather have spent this on. And, of course, I will at some point probably have to deal with an insurance claim for whatever damage there was to her hardwood flooring.

They had to cut into the wall to install the AC unit. I have someone coming tomorrow to fix the drywall and paint. The bigger thing is that now I am paranoid about things that can happen when I am out of town.
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One quick follow-up. It turns out that the experience of starting to dream before falling asleep is not actually uncommon. It’s called hypnagogic hallucination and about 70% of people experience it. I am less unique than I thought.


Celebrity Death Watch: Steve Wilhite invented the GIF (and still managed to pronounce it incorrectly). Ralph Terry was a pitcher who spent several seasons with the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Peter Bowles played Guthrie Featherstone in the Rumpole of the Bailey TV series. Scotty Mitchell was a television actor, who often appeared on game shows, as well as having recurring roles on a couple of sitcoms. Winfield Scott Jr. was an Air Force general and superintendent of the Air Force Academy in the mid-1980’s. John Roach led the development of the TRS-80 microcomputer. Kip Hawley directed the TSA from 2005 to 2009. Charles Boyd was a combat pilot in the Air Force and was the only Vietnam War POW to reach 4-star rank in the military. Edward Johnson III ran Fidelity Investments from the 1970’s on. Taylor Hawkins was the drummer of the Foo Fighters. Kathryn Hays was an actress, best known for appearing in As the World Turns for almost 40 years. Bobby Hendricks sang with The Drifters. Cat Pause was a fat studies activist. Bethany Campbell wrote romance novels. Patricia MacLachlan wrote Sarah, Plain and Tall.

C.W. McCall was a country singer, best known for the song, “Convoy.” Estelle Harris played George Constanza’s mother on Seinfeld and voiced Mrs. Potato Head in the Toy Story movies. Sidney Altman won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his studies of RNA. Nehemiah Persoff was an actor whose roles included the father in Yentl. Bobby Rydell was a pop singer who played the role of Hugo in the movie version of Bye Bye Birdie. Mimi Reinhardt was Oskar Schindler’s secretary. Gilbert Gottfried was a comedian whose shtick included a really annoying voice. Mike Bossy played hockey for the New York Islanders. Liz Sheridan played Jerry’s mother on Seinfeld. Wendy Rieger was a news anchor in D.C. Barbara Hall was a British crossword constructor and puzzles editor for the Sunday Times. Cynthia Plaster Caster was a groupie who went on to create plaster casts of famous men’s erect penises. Guy Lafleur was a Hall of Fame hockey player. Mike Summer played football for the Washington Redskins. Susan Jacks sang the song “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” Andrew Woolfolk played saxoophone with Earth, Wind & Fire. David Birney was an actor who is probably best known for the TV series Bridget Loves Bernie but also performed in a lot of serious theatre on Broadway. David Walden contributed to the development of ARPANET. Neal Adams was a comic book artist. Joanna Barnes was an actress whose movie credits included Auntie Mame and The Parent Trap. Naomi Judd was a country singer/songwriter.

Regine was a singer and nightclub owner. Jerry verDorn was a soap opera actor. Rick Parnell was the drummer for Spinal Tap. Norman Mineta was the Secretary of Transportation in the 2000’s. Mary Fuller was a sculptor. Midge Decter was a neoconservative, probably best known as the wife of Norman Podhoretz. Randy Weaver was a survivalist and the key figure in the Ruby Ridge siege. Robert McFarlane was the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan and a key figure in the Iran-Contra Affair. Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan was the president of the United Arab Emirates. Ben Roy Mottelson won the Nobel prize in physics for his work on the geometry of atomic nuclei. Vangelis was a musician and composer, whose work for films included Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner. Bob Neuwirth wrote the song “Mercedes Benz.” Rosmarie Trapp was one of the Von Trapp Family Singers.

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to be the U.S. Secretary of State. She was also famous for her collection of brooches, which I once saw at the Smithsonian.

Ann Hutchinson Guest was an expert on dance notation. She lived to the age of 103 and earned me 29 ghoul pool points.

Robert Morse was an actor. He won a Tonyin 1962 for playing J. Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying and another in 1989 for the one-man play Tru about Truman Capote. He later appeared in the TV series Mad Men. I believed in him.

Orrin Hatch was a Republican Senator from Utah for 42 years. He also wrote and recorded Christian music.

Roger Angell wrote about baseball, primarily for the New Yorker, for about 75 years. Saying that is like saying that Herman Melville wrote about whaling. He was eloquent and insightful, a true poet laureate of the sport. He earned me 21 ghoul pool points.


Non-celebrity Death Watch: Ernest Cravalho was an MIT professor of Mechanical Engineering. I don’t remember if I had him for Thermodynamics, but I am fairly sure we used a textbook he had co-written. He died in April 2021 but I only just learned of his death a couple of weeks ago.

Suzy Pietras-Smith kept an on-line journal at https://www.mutteringfool.com. I met her only once and briefly (at Journalcon several years ago.) She wrote well - not surprisingly, as she was a professional journalist. She had been in the hospital for well over a year, so her death was not a total surprise, but still sad.

I knew Patricia Hansen from FlyerTalk (where she went by the handle, Lili). She was a lively person and a good traveler and I always enjoyed seeing her at FT Dos.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I worked in the offices of a large corporation. There was some sort of invasion by armed intruders. I locked myself in my office, but somehow I could see what was going on. Several people ran down a hallway to try to escape, but even though they were wearing hazmat suits, they got trapped in a hallway and mowed down. Two women started running in that direction but got away and ran into an office catty corner from mine and, like me, were able to see things happening. The intruders were mostly in a big open room downstairs and were trapped there, where they were killed, so all three of us survived.

Yemandja: I saw this show (play? opera?) at the Kennedy Center a couple of weeks ago. I went to see it largely because of Angelique Kiddo’s involvement. In addition to co-writing the music (with Jean Hebrail), she played the title role. Yemandja is the Yoruba goddess of water and healing. She has a running conflict with Oro, the god of wind. The story involves the influence of these spirits on a girl named Omulola as she tries to rescue her uncle from the slave trade. This is made more complicated because her fiancé , Olajuwon, is the son of the slave trader, De Salta. Throughout all of this, music is used to influence events and, eventually, provide healing. Overall, it was an interesting show and worth seeing.

Maryland Sheep ad Wool Festival: The first weekend of May brought the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which is, essentially, a cross between a county fair and the world’s largest yarn shop. I met up with a few friends there, but mostly shopped on my own. I did not buy any sheep and confined my purchases to two books - one on sock architecture and one called What Would Madame DeFarge Knit? because how could I resist that title? I also bought a gradient yarn kit - several skeins in a blue, green, and purple color way called “They’ll Be Writing Songs About This.” That will eventually get turned into a shawlette.

Re-Boosted: I got my second COVID booster last Monday, I had gotten Pfizer previously and opted for Moderna this time because there is some evidence that mixing the vaccines might give more protection. I did have more side effects (arm soreness, headache, fatigue, mild nausea) but nothing intolerable.

Leading Jewish Minds - Daniel Jackson on Software: MIT Hillel has a series called Leading Jewish Minds at MIT and the most recent speaker was Daniel Jackson. His talk was on software and why it does and does’t work well. A lot of what he said had to do with user interfaces. But the broader question was what the key concept is that makes a technology useful. He was worth interesting and entertaining and I plan to check out his blog in the future.

Story Swap: The monthly Voices in the Glen story swap was last Saturday night. I told a story from Azerbaijan that I had heard from my guide when I was in Sheki. There was also a story about - and a lot of discussion about - pigeons.

Genealogy Meetings: I went to two genealogy talks over the past week. One was on Immigration and Naturalization correspondence files, which had a lot of information, but I need to go back through the slides to see how useful it is. The other was on tracing ancestors before they had surnames. That one seemed less useful, because almost all of the sources the speaker talked about were from southern Germany and Galicia.

Lunar Eclipse: I had looked forward to the lunar eclipse / blood moon of Sunday night. But, alas, the weather here in Northern Virginia did not cooperate. Damn clouds.

White House Webinar on Jews and Baseball: This was, apparently, an event for Jewish Ameriican Heritage Month. The moderator was Chanan Weissman, who is the White House liaison to the Jewish community. The speakers were baseball historian John Thorn, former player Shawn Green, Justine Siegal (the first woman to coach a professional baseball team), and Misha Halperin from the Museum of American Jewish History. Overall, this was entertaining, but I can’t say that I learned anything new out of it. Well, one thing - Shawn Green is still astonishingly good-looking I suspect that wasn’t the message the event was intended to get out. (The real subtext was that baseball was viewed by Jewish immigrants as a means to Americanization. In fact, Thorn said he learned to read English from the backs of baseball cards.)

Abortion Rights Rally: I went to the Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice on Tuesday. That deserves its own post, which I will try to write in the next couple of days.
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Good news. I got my COVID PCR test result back (yes, earlier than they’d said) and it was negative!

I have a few other things to write about, but, for the moment, let’s have some shameless self-promotion!

Namely, I am part of a huge storytelling blow-out for New Year’s Eve as part of Voices in the Glen. We’re up from 4:00-5:00 pm EST. I’m the fourth of the 5 tellers in that session and will be telling an original fairy tale.

STORY BLOWOUT 2021-2022 will begin on Friday, Dec. 31 at 11 am EST and end at 1 am EST on January 1. The program is FREE, however registration is required:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYpf-6trzsvH939Iec-1lH8RCQKwxJojIuc

This year Artists Standing Strong Together (ASST, pronounced “assist”, www.artistsstandingstrongtogether.net) is hosting this day of story and community along with our partners: Voices-in-the-Glen & Virginia Storytelling Alliance (VASA). The day begins with stories perfect for all ages. There are 2 very special hours sponsored by our partners:

Virginia Storytelling Alliance (VASA) at 2 pm EST with Emcee Paul Armstrong and Featured Storytellers: Les Schaffer, Jane Dorfman, Leslie Oh and Victoria Phelps

Voices-in-the-Glen at 4 pm EST with Emcee Jennifer Hine and Featured Storytellers: Noa Baum, Tim Livengood, Miriam Nadel, Penelope Fleming

Feel free to come and go from the program as you’d like; consider this event like an audio/video podcast to accompany you all day. Throughout the day there will be ASST highlights of 2021, along with a honoring of those who left us in body this past year, but remain in our hearts and ears. Starting at 9 pm more adult-themed stories will be shared. Our night ends with dancing and celebration from 11:55 pm to 1 am EST.
Our storytellers are from across the nation beginning with Donna Washington (co-founder of ASST) at 11 am and ending at 11:30 pm with Anne Rutherford (ASST Board Member), and youth storytellers interspersed throughout the day. Many other storytellers will also regale us with stories from a variety of genres, including, but not limited to: Melissa Hobbs (CA), Carol Birch and Nina Lesiga (both from Connecticut), Andy Offutt Irwin and Gwendolyn Napier (both from Georgia), Nicolette Nordin Heavey (MA), Andrea Young (MD), Lona Bartlett (NC), Mike Agranoff (NJ), Chester Weems (OK), Juliana Person (OR), Oni Lasana (PA), Jess Wills (SC), Elizabeth Ellis and David Thompson (both from Texas), Bonnie Gardner & Jay Johnson (both from Virginia), Susy Irwin (WA), and Katy Daixon Wimer (WI).
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I am too tired to write anything interesting tonight. I had to get up early because I'd scheduled my COVID test for 7:35 a.m. This was probably a smart move, because it meant I had a short wait - maybe 10 minutes. The place I went to does drive-thru testing, with them coming around and scanning the QR code they'd emailed you while you were waiting. It was all quite efficient and I was actually done before 7:30. They said it would be about 72 hours for results.

On the way home, I stopped at the post office and stuck the last batch of holiday cards (and one bill) in a mailbox. I decided I didn't have time to go back to bed before one of the sessions of Yiddish New York that I wanted to watch. Some day I will learn that caffeine is not an adequate substitute for getting enough sleep.
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This has been a frustrating day. I did succeed at finding a COVID testing appointment for Wednesday morning, which is better than Friday afternoon, but it took me a couple of hours of searching. The most irritating part of that is that a drugstore very close to my house claimed that they had some appointments available, but there was nothing at all for at least a week. And you can’t find that out until you have entered a whole lot of information. Couple that with searching multiple sites to look for appointments and I was annoyed. It would be much better if they set up a centralized system with the county health department.


Aside from that, I spent pretty much all day on various zoom calls. Part of that was for Yiddish New York, which was mostly enjoyable. I will write more about that when it is over. I also tried to attend a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting, but had problems with their zoom. When I rebooted my computer and tried to get back in, apparently nobody was monitoring the waiting room, so I gave up. (The other zoom sessions were for my mystery hunt team and for the friends I play board games with.)

Exposed

Dec. 25th, 2021 08:17 pm
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The friend I’d gone out to dinner with on Wednesday night called me yesterday and told me she was feeling a bit unwell (congested and fatigued) and went to get a COVID test. Today she called and told me she was at the emergency room because her blood oxygen level was low and she was having chest pains. She did test positive. But her blood oxygen was fine when she was at the hospital. And they gave her an EKG and said she was okay, so she is back home. She called me back and said that she was feeling better and, in fact, had felt worse during her reaction to the booster shot.

Of course, this means I have now been exposed. I have no symptoms, no fever, and my blood oxygen level is 96. Kaiser said I should wait 7 days from exposure to get tested, but the first appointment they had for a PCR test wasn’t until Friday. I don’t really trust the rapid antigen tests given that: a) they have a false negative rate of approximately 20% and b) there are some questions about whether they can detect the omicron variant at all. I’ve looked online to see if I can find somewhere else to get tested sooner, but no luck so far.

There is some question about whether I have to quarantine, given that I am vaccinated and boosted, but I will stay home out of an abundance of caution. That means I won’t go to a get-together on Thursday for a friend who is in town in Texas. At any rate, I am pretty much occupied for most of the week with Yiddish New York. (I have two other zoom meetings tomorrow, too.) I have plenty of food in the house. And, alas, no shortage of household chores to get done.
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I had an overdue dental appointment on Wednesday. Technically, not overdue, since it had been scheduled 6 months ago, but I normally alternate between my general dentist and my periodontist and I’d missed the cleaning at my general dentist’s in April when everything was shut down. The protocols were fairly strict – mask until actually in the chair; hand sanitizer, symptom checklist, pulse oximeter, and temperature check before being allowed to go into the inner sanctum. This was mostly a routine cleaning but I also had to schedule removal of a broken splint on a front tooth. At any rate, it’s done with.

I took my car in for service on Thursday morning. This was, perhaps, less urgent, but it is coming up on a year since I bought Twain and, despite driving so little, I like to keep up on general maintenance. At any rate, it amounted to an oil change and replacing wiper blades (and doing an overdue state inspection, so I now have an up to date sticker). I was not very impressed with the COVID protocols there, however, as the seats in the waiting room could have been further apart and some of the staff were wearing their masks below the nose.

I took advantage of being in Manassas to stop by McKay’s used books, for the first time in well over a year. I am making more of a point of not building up a balance of trade credit after Hole in the Wall Books in Falls Church closed last year, leaving me with roughly $30 worth of unused credit. (Their system was annoying to begin with, since they only let you use credit for half the price of a book and some books were cash only. But they had a particularly good selection of genre fiction, i.e. mysteries and, especially, science fiction. By the way, they closed mostly because the owners were in their 70’s.) Anyway, McKay’s took 18 of the 33 books I’d brought in to trade. I came home with only 5 books in exchange and still have about $9 in credit. I have plenty more books to get rid of, but I need to find time to record them in my tracking system. The other bookstore I trade at is not accepting books now. And The Book Thing of Baltimore, where I used to donate the books the stores I frequent didn’t take, is completely closed. Someday, I should try Book Bank in Alexandria, but they are not taking books in yet. And, while there are several stores in the District, driving and parking in D.C. is too stressful for me. I will probably just drop a few things in some nearby Little Free Libraries.
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Three things for now:


  1. I am really frustrated with the sleep issues I’ve been having. I fall asleep just fine, but wake up 4 or 5 hours later to pee and then can’t get back to sleep. Usually, I give up after at least a half hour and get up and futz around on-line. I may get another hour or two of sleep later on in the night, but I’m definitely not getting quite as much sleep as I need.

    Oddly, heavy rain seems to help me sleep. What definitely does not help is waking up from a weird and violent dream like the one I had last night that involved hiding from a guy with an uzi and several biological weapons.

  2. I really enjoy being able to bring together people who can help each other. I’ve had two opportunities to do this in the past couple of weeks and both made me happy.

  3. I am still enjoying what I refer to as cooking for the end of the world. This week’s grocery shopping was at Wegman’s and they had kosher Italian sausage, which led me to buy peppers as well. When I got home, I had a quick inspiration and found a recipe for Cajun jambalaya, which apparently differs from Creole jambalaya in not containing celery or tomatoes. I made it last night, which also used up the last of the chicken I’d had in the freezer and it was really delicious.

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I am insanely busy right now. So what else is new?

Hexagon: This is a political satire show, which one of my friends performs in. He also writes songs for it, as do two other people I know. It’s all volunteer and raises money for local charities. This year’s beneficiary is SMYAL, which advocates for LBGTQ youth.

This year’s show was called One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State and, because it is Hexagon’s 65th anniversary, they included some pieces from older shows. As you might guess from the title, there are Seussian references, such as a piece called "Congress Hears a Who" (about Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing). Some of the funniest parts were the newbreak segments. There was also a cute song called "District of Champions" about the Capitals and the Nationals having won their respective championships, an ode to Hechingers (a defunct hardware store), and songs about topics ranging from the Space Force to Trump’s wives. There was also the traditional kick line at the end of the first act. Overall, the show was quite funny and worth seeing.


Jonathan Richman: I went to see Jonathan Richman at the Lincoln Theatre on Saturday night. The opening act was Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (accompanied by Emmett Kelly), who is a bit more countryish than I would normally listen to. He brought up a guy named Oscar (who does merch for him) to sing "Dang Me," alleging it had been written by Oscar’s mother. But, as far as I know, it was written by Roger Miller, who popularized it in the late 1950’s. I did like one song, "At the Back of the Pit," but, overall, I found myself impatient for his set to end. He does, however, apparently have a following of his own. No accounting for tastes.

As for Jonathan, I wanted his set to go on for far longer. He started with "That Summer Feeling" and performed a number of familiar songs – and some unfamiliar ones. I was particularly amused by a song about cold pizza, which was quite different from Christine Lavin’s song on that subject. Who else but Jonathan would rhyme "stadium" with "palladium?" He also sang in multiple languages (Italian, Spanish, French, possibly Hindi). And, of course, he danced in his unselfconscious, lovably dorky style. Oddly, he didn’t do any of his songs about artists, but focused more on philosophers with pieces from Rumi ("He Gave Us the Wine to Taste") and Kabir. And his encore song/poem was about Walter Johnson, though oddly never used Johnson’s nickname "Big Train."

Overall, it was a wonderful performance by a truly original musician. The friend I went with was also raving about how great he was.


Travel Adventure Show: I’m not really sure why I keep going to the Washington Travel Adventure Show, because I am, inevitably, disappointed by it. I went with 2 friends this year and we got "free" tickets. I put that in quotes because we did have to pay a service fee.

There were a few snippets of good info in some of the talks we went to. (We split up and did not go to the same ones.) And I got some good info for a few trips I am interested in taking.

Anyway, the crowd was thin, due to virus fears. There was a lot less swag than usual. Of course, nobody had any hand sanitizer to give out. I did get a couple of little containers of sunscreen, however. I only got a couple of tote bags, which I consider something that one can never have too many of. And I nibbled on more chocolate than I really should have. Of course, I picked up plenty of brochures though, actually, I haven’t finished going through ones I picked up last year or the year before.


COVID-19 My friends have pointed out that I am the most likely of people in our circles to contract the virus as I am out and about constantly, including traveling. I have some risk of severe illness, due to my age and preexisting conditions. I remember a particularly bad bout of flu, 20 some odd years ago, during which I alternated between a fear that I would die and a fear that I wouldn’t given how awful I felt. (That made me religious about getting the flu vaccine, by the way.) And, what with this being tree sex season, I often have some sneezing and coughing. It also didn’t help that the controlled burns in Occoquan last weekend ended up filling the air with smoke. (I don’t entirely understand why things were so smoky in my neighborhood, but it replaced the snake catching guy as the big topic of discussion on NextDoor.)

However, I think there is some overreaction. I am used to having a couple of weeks worth of nonperishable food around because I lived in Los Angeles, which has events in lieu of weather, for 17 years. I’d probably be bored with eating lentil soup, but I’d survive. And I buy toilet paper in 12 roll packages which I replenish when I am down to 2 or 3 rolls.

It is way too early to think about cancelling plans for vacation at the end of April.
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But, first, a local oddity and some politics...


Strange Ad: This is on the Nextdoor group for my neighborhood: "As we enter the warmer months, I want to remind everyone that I’m available to identify and relocate snakes from your property FOR FREE. I offer my relocation services as a last resort, in other words, if the snake is in danger of being hurt of killed. The majority of the time there’s no need to intervene."

Is it just me or does this make anybody else wonder what the advertiser is doing with the snakes? And, by the way, a disturbing number of the replies (i.e. more than one) are asking specifically if the advertiser will deal with copperheads.


Super Tuesday: Amy Klobuchar’s withdrawal from the Democratic primary race left me with a tough decision. In the end, I decided that Biden’s positions are closer to mine than Warren’s were and I voted for him (along with most of Virginia). Sanders was not even a consideration – if I want to be yelled at by an old Jewish man with a New York accent, I have plenty of relatives who can do that.

Now Warren has pulled out so it really does look like a two person race. (Yes, I know Tulsi Gabbard is still in it, but she has no chance. And she’s a bloody lunatic.) I thought I would reiterate something I’ve said before and was reminded of when Hillary Clinton lost. Namely, I still believe / fear that the first female president of the U.S. will be a conservative Republican. That drive for ideological purity is what it would take for a lot of men (and some women) to overcome rampant misogyny.


One More Thing re: Politics: My other takeaway from Tuesday is that early voting and, particularly, requiring vote by mail (as Colorado does) continue to be bad ideas. Absentee / early voting is fine for situations that require it (travel, disability, etc.) but it should not become the norm precisely because too many people will end up voting for candidates who are no longer in the running. That is less true of the final elections, of course, but there have still been situations where, say, a candidate has died before the election.

We do need to fix the problems in some states that led to long waits, but that can be handled by having adequate numbers of polling places with sufficient voting machines at each.


Hand washing: So we all know we are supposed to wash for 20 seconds, right? I have traditionally used the alphabet song to time myself. But I’ve seen some interesting alternatives, of which the ones I liked best were "Karma Chameleon" and "Africa." It occurred to me that nobody has suggested any particular show tunes, however. (Well, there was one Andrew Lloyd Webber song mentioned, but no. Just, no.) My offering, based entirely on what song I am most likely to think of when standing at a bathroom sink is "I Believe in You" from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. (You just need to do the part from "You have the cool clear eyes … " through "I believe in you." That should be about 23 seconds.)

You can thank me (or curse me, as the case may be) later.
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Generation Gap: I saw a blurb with a picture of a couple who looked to be about my age and the words "Millennials are lazy and entitled says the boomer generation that could get full-time jobs with benefits right out of high school and afford a house and a car at 21, but selfishly destroyed that option for future generations by electing anti-tax, pro-cut trickle-downers like Ronald Reagan."


There are really at least two boomer generations. The early boomers got pushed into going to college because they didn’t want to die in Vietnam. The later boomers couldn’t get jobs without going to college because, by that time, it took a college diploma to get pretty much any job that wasn’t sweat labor. The cars people my age had "right out of high school?" Usually those were older cars passed down from their parents. And buying houses? Ha! Not with double-digit interest rates on mortgages.

I was 22 during the 1980 election. Of people who were 22-29 (i.e. late boomers), 44% voted for Reagan, with another 44% for Carter, and 11% (which included me) for John Anderson. (The 18-21 year olds, who are arguably Gen X-ers, have similar figures, by the way.) And, by the way, much of the focus of the election was on Carter’s foreign policy failures, e.g. the Iran hostage crisis, though the economy (with high unemployment and runaway inflation) was also an issue.

Sorry, millennials, but you need to be blaming your grandparents, not your parents.


Jewish Nationhood: A number of people are up in arms about Trump’s Executive Order that allows Jews to be considered as a nation and not only a religion. While I am: 1) no fan of His Orangeness and 2) sure that most of the people who have been commenting on how terrible that order is mean well, I think the critics have gotten this wrong.

First of all, what the order actually says is that federal agencies should apply Title VI to anti-Semitism. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is slightly strange in that, unlike other parts of that law, it prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. That is, it does not explicitly bar discrimination on the basis of religion (or, for that matter, sex. At the time the law was being debated, Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania said that it applied to anti-Semitism on the grounds that anti-Semitic acts discriminate against Jews under a broad definition of national origin. His point was that, Jews can be discriminated against even if they are practicing some other religion.

The concern is, of course, that defining Jews as a nationality plays into the trope of dual loyalties. The problem with that is that mainstream Jewish thought considers Jews to be both a religion and a nation. Jewish liturgy is full of references to the Jewish nation, with admonitions to be a light unto other nations and such. Also, the accusation of dual loyalty has been applied to other religious groups, too. It’s why there was anti-Catholic sentiment directed against JFK, to give an obvious example.

Really what disappoints me the most is that there are some Jews who fall for Trump’s faked concern and ignore his adoption of actual anti-Semitic tropes. But that’s a whole other subject.


Other Political Rants: Nah. My blood pressure was quite good at my doctor’s appointment on Wednesday, so let’s not screw that up. I will note that I got the second shot of the shingles vaccine and my arm is still sore two days later.
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Celebrity Death Watch: Boro Maa was the matriarch of Matu Mahasangha, a Hindu reformist sect in West Bengal. Carolee Schneemann was an artist. Charlie Panigoniak was an Inuit singer, best known for his version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in the Inuktitut language. Carmine Persico was the head of the Colombo crime family. Ralph Hall was the oldest person ever to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Dan Jenkins was a sportswriter, as is his daughter, Sally, who wrote a particularly excellent obituary of him in the Washington Post. Jed Allen was a soap opera actor. Raven Grimassi wrote books promoting an Italian form of Wicca. Asa Brebner was a guitarist who, among other things, performed with The Modern Lovers on a couple of their albums. Hal Blaine was a prolific session drummer.

Jerry Merryman was one of the inventors of the handheld electric calculator. I am old enough to remember when calculators were not ubiquitous. If I recall correctly, it wasn’t until 11th grade physics that we were allowed to use them for exams. And those early calculators just did addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and – if you had a really fancy one – exponents. That fancy one was, in my case, the Bowmar Brain, which cost $75. It was only a couple of years later, when I started college, that I got a Texas Instruments scientific calculator. I think it may have been a programmable one. It cost over $100 and had terrible battery life. By the time I graduated, I could buy a Sharp scientific calculator for about $20. That used AA batteries and lasted a couple of decades.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Another former colleague, Sy Horowitz, died last week. He was a really nice guy, always interesting to talk with during a lunchtime walk on business trips. I wasn’t completely surprised, given that he was over 90, but having lost so many colleagues over the years makes me feel old.

Mostly Better: However, the cold viruses grabbed my vocal chords with them on their way out. Sigh.

Daylight Savings Time: I think I have found all the clocks that need to be reset. I cannot, however, figure out how to reset the owl that is nesting in our courtyard.

For the record, I would favor staying on DST year round. I love lots of light late in the afternoon. Please don’t remind me I said that if you should happen to be in the car with me at sunset, when I am likely to be whining about glare.

Social Media Annoyance: I can’t update my facebook status for some reason. Nor can I see my timeline. So, of course, I have all sorts of clever things I want to say.

That College Admissions Scandal: What I really want to know is how much the students involved were told about what was going on. I don’t think that, in general, students care as much about the alleged prestige of various schools as their parents do. (And, by the way, there are only two schools on the list that I would consider actual elite colleges, but that’s probably my academic snobbery at work.) I know there are students who have unrealistic views of what their dream school is, but it isn’t doing them any favors to get them into somewhere that isn’t a good fit for their abilities and interests. Of course, It appears that in some cases, their interests are partying and skiing, so I can understand why parents might not want to finance their little darling's dream education.
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1) I am still sick. I am particularly tired of being tired. On the plus side, I am somewhat glad to be lacking much appetite.

2)There is someone who has been trying to have a half hour or so conversation with me re: a work-related matter. I'm happy to talk with him and, while it sounds a bit vain, I am pretty sure I am the right person to explain the issue to him. However, I'd be more convinced of the importance of this if he hadn't had his admin reschedule the meeting three times so far.

3) I am sadder about Tom Seaver's dementia diagnosis than I am about Alex Trebek's pancreatic cancer.

I hope to be back in shape to be more interesting after spending much of the weekend in suspended animation.
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Celebrity Death Watch: Nick Cafardo was a sportswriter, who specialized in covering the Red Sox. Jeraldine Saunders wrote the memoir that inspired the TV show, The Love Boat. Mark Hollis was the lead singer of Talk Talk. Katherine Helmond was an actress, best known for roles in Who’s the Boss and Soap. Kevin Roche was an important architect, whose works included the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Denver Performing Arts Complex, and several corporate headquarters buildings. Ted Lindsay was a Hall of Fame hockey player for the Detroit Red Wings. T. Jack Lee directed NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in the early 1990’s. Carrie Ann Lucas was a disability rights advocate. Janet Asimov was the widow of Isaac Asimov and a writer, primarily of science fiction for children, in her own right. Andy Anderson was the drummer for The Cure. Doug Sandom was the original drummer for The Who, before Keith Moon. Andre Previn composed music for a lot of films and conducted several orchestras. Zhores Alfarov won a Nobel Prize in Physics for work involving semiconductor heterostructures, which have something to do with solid state devices. Johnny Romano played catcher for the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox in the 1960’s. Luke Perry was an actor, who became a teen idol for appearing in Beverly Hills, 90210.

QOTD: "I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if he had his tongue notarized." – Alair Townsend, ca. 1990

Discovery of the Day: There is such a thing as Picture Yarn. This is a step beyond self-striping yarn. Alas, all the ones I really love are sold out, but it isn’t as if I don’t have way more yarn than I will use in my lifetime. Still, Abigail Grasso is a genius.

Ah-choo: I got struck with a cold on Saturday afternoon. What’s weird is how suddenly it hit me. I was fine one minute, and had a sore throat and couldn’t stop sneezing the next. I stayed home and in bed both Sunday and yesterday, but made the dubious decision to go into work today. I have not been particularly productive, however. Sigh. I did make plans for various entertainment events and some travel (both work-related and not). But I have a high priority task I am struggling to finish. It looks like it will have to wait until the snot production lessens.
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Another Colleague Gone: I heard that Lance Newman passed away recently. I worked with him for many years, including being his manager for a few of those and having him support me from one of my program office jobs. The last time I saw him was a couple of years ago, when our former secretary organized a luncheon reunion of sorts. It was just after his picture had been in the Washington Post, in an article about the first four African American students at a school in Arlington. He was a good engineer and a nice guy, smart and easy to work with. I will miss him.


A Rant About Scheduling: I am trying to be a responsible adult and schedule a couple of routine medical things. Labs are no issue, because they don’t require scheduling, per se, but just a drop in. The problem is that the person who schedules mammograms is not the same person who schedules anything else. So I had to go through the scheduler to get to the mammogram scheduler and then go back to the regular scheduler to schedule the blood pressure check. (Mammogram slots are a rarer commodity so it made snese to schedule that first.) The fact that I couldn’t do this on-line is particularly annoying to begin with, given my feelings about telephones.

I still have to schedule an ophthalmology appointment, but that is even tougher because I need to do it in the afternoon and I have more afternoon conflicts.


Speaking of Blood Pressure: The Red Sox – and, specifically, Craig Kimbrel, seem determined to raise mine.

Roy Zimmerman: I went to Roy Zimmerman’s house concert in Derwood, Maryland on Friday night. The drive there was really irritating, with two accidents along the way. I noticed the engine temperature in my car rising as I was crawling along and was afraid it would overheat, but it dropped rapidly once I began driving at a faster speed. I probably need to get something looked at.

Anyway, I got to the house just in time for the concert. Fortunately, it was worth going to. Roy sings funny songs about politics and they went over well with the crowd. There were some I’d heard before and several I had not. If you want a sample of his material, my favorite song of the evening was Psychedelic Relic:



By the way, the drive home was only mildly annoying, as they start doing roadwork on the Beltway at 10 p.m. on Friday nights. I really prefer going out to places that are reachable by metro.


Richmond Folk Festival: My friend, Paul, invited me to come down to Richmond and go to their annual Folk Festival with him. I made life far less stressful for myself by taking the train down, instead of coping with the inevitable roadwork on I-95 on the weekend. The catch is that only a few trains serve the Main Street Station downtown, but Paul picked me up at Staples Mill, which also meant a drive along Monument Avenue (and his tour guide commentary) along the way.

The festival is in downtown Richmond, close to the James River. There were 8 stages, though we ignored the children’s area and the Virginia Traditions Stage (which had things like an apple grafting demo and an oyster shucking contest). I wanted to hear Josh Goforth (who tells stories, but focused on ballads for what we were there for) so we went over to the Lyft Stage. That meant we also caught part of Lulo Reinhardt, Django’s great-nephew. He’s an excellent jazz guitarist and I liked his performance so much I bought one of his CDs later in the day, when we found one of the sales tents. Josh’s ballads were more familiar and also worth a listen.

We walked down to Brown’s Island, where we listened to Leroy Thomas and the Zydeco Roadrunners at the Dance Pavilion. I thought they were just okay. Then we got some gelato and walked out on the bridge for Paul to take photos of how high the water was after last week’s storm.

We meandered back up to the Lyft Stage and listened to Tamburaski Sastav Ponoc (a Balkan tamburitza band), who I enjoyed. I wanted to check out the crafts marketplace, so we went back down towards the river. The crafts were, alas, not generally to my taste. Then we walked (slowly, as my knee was aching by then) up the hill to stake out some space within earshot of the Altria Stage, where Mavis Staples was performing. She was, in my opinion, one of the must-sees of the festival, though rather too many other people thought so as well.

By the time she was done, we decided we needed dinner. All the festival food areas were downhill and I didn’t want to have climb back up the hill, so we trudged up through town to Perly’s, a Jewish deli I had heard good things about. I thought it was quite good, which is surprising for Richmond. The matzoh ball soup had lots of stuff in it (chicken, carrots, celery) as well as a matzoh ball with a good texture, though there was rather more dill than I’d have preferred. The tongue sandwich I got was excellent. Paul got something called a Jewish Sailor, which had pastrami, chopped liver, beef sausage, and red cabbage. (Apparently, the Sailor sandwich is a uniquely Virginia and mostly Richmond thing, and normally has pastrami, knockwurst, and cheese, by the way. Supposedly it originated with sailors studying at the University of Richmond during World War II.) I also had potato salad (reasonably good) and Paul had French fries, which he said were light and fluffy. Bottom line is that I would eat there again.

We walked back to Paul’s car and he drove me to the Hampton Inn, where I was spending the night. It's slightly weird, as it occupies the upper floors of a building, with a Homewood Suites on the lower floors. I got a train in the morning from the Main Street Station (much more convenient and quite grand, though with only limited service). Overall, it was a good trip and I got home in time to get a few things done at home, though I always have more to catch up on.
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  1. I went back to the periodontist on Wednesday. The area that had the laser surgery is healing well. And I'm done with the giant amoxicillin pills.

  2. I changed the furnace filter this week. I know you're supposed to do it every month, but I don't manage to get around to it. Anyway, it was long overdue and it was pretty disgusting when I took the old filter out.

  3. I ordered check refills. It had been over three years, so maybe it isn't surprising that the website address the old ones had for reorders was no longer correct. Surprisingly, the directions on the bank's website were actually helpful. I don't write a lot of checks, since I pay most of my bills automagically. So I figure the new supply will probably last me as long as I live in my current place.

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