The Mandelbear's Musings

Today I am thankful for...

• Cooler weather.
• My cats being helpful (see, e.g., this incident.). Also, little furry alarm clocks. (Though, unfortunately, Bronx does not have a snooze button.)
• Good customer service. Special thanks to Sweetwater. NO thanks to FedEx. Also no thanks to my stupid mistakes with the order. The main one being trusting FedEx.
• Pretty good airflow. Using the kitchen's hood fan with the back sliding door is a hack, but it's a working hack.
• A new website building and maintenance project that will Make Money for HSX.
• Leftovers for lunch, and occasionally dinner. Not today, unfortunately.
• A fridge with a working ice-maker.
• A telehealth appointment with my oncologist getting rescheduled automagically after yesterday's outage.

Today I am thankful for...

• Thomann and Sweetwater. Minor grumps at Thomann for having a US site that looks tempting until you find out that shipping and tariffs are added at checkout. Major grumps at my old standby, Musician's Friend, whose site is totally broken when seen from Europe. Major grumps at ME for not having installed a VPN yet.
• Online filk circles. NO thanks to the weird audio problems I was having tonight during Eurofilk. But I got one song (The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of) out. (I wrote it for my father, who died 26 years ago. And Father's Day is this Sunday.)

Not feeling terribly thankful today. Sorry.

Today I am thankful for...

• Coffee (my stimulant drug of choice).
• Dark chocolate (my cough suppressant of choice, among other things).
• Tasty fish.
• Framework | Framework Laptop 12 pre-orders are now open! NO thanks for websites that only function in a private browsing window.
• Classic filk CDs like Keepers of the Flame — Phoenyx, back in production thanks to Prometheus Music.
• Finding a moving box tucked away under a table with several things that I feared had been left behind or lost.

Today I am grateful for...

• Good company -- j -- while putting together flatpack furniture. More of that queued up for tomorrow.
• Filk, filkers, and filking. Also filking over zoom.
• Public transit.
• Perfect walking weather. (No thanks for letting myself get out of shape -- my own damned fault of course.)
• Blue cheese and apples. (A combination Colleen introduced me to.)

For once, I seem to be mostly okay today, and on the whole I think it was a pretty good week, modulo worry about what's going on in the US. I noticed after the household seder last night that I wasn't shivering, which supports the theory that it's psychological rather than thermal. (Does not rule out something else, like iron deficiency.)

I got quite a lot done, including backing/ordering a Roamate Mobility Device (a combination rollator and powered! wheelchair), going to an initial appointment at the local hospital (mostly for bloodwork; I have another this week to discuss it, and another next month with the oncology team), helping N and N" clean up the living room (prep for Saturday's seder), filing my income tax extension, and singing at Eurofilk on Thursday (only one song, because I still suck at deciding what to sing),

And I completely forgot to include the fact that we have tulips blooming in the planters on our back deck in this week's Thankful Thursday post. I still sometimes have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I live in Nederland now, but I have to admit that tulips next to a canal are very convincing.

In case it gets omitted from wherever you get your news, yesterday Protesters gather[ed] for 'day of action' against Trump administration, Anti-Trump protests build momentum in WA: ‘We’re just getting louder’ | The Seattle Times. There have been a couple of promising court victories, but we all know how much respect the current administration has for the courts. On this side of the pond, Thousands of trans rights protesters on Edinburgh streets following court ruling.

A few nice things in the links: there's a Capybara Cafe in Florida, and last month was the first on record when fossil fuels drop below 50% of US power mix,

( Notes & links, as usual )

Today I am grateful for...

• The Return of the Dire Wolf. Well, sort of. ysabetwordsmith has more to say about that. But they're floofy!
• Referrals (oncology and cardiology -- appointments next Monday.)
• A housemate (G) who loves to cook. Having three different sites we can order groceries from.
• Git. Read 20 years of Git. Still weird, still wonderful. by Scott Chacon, one of the authors of Pro Git, and one of the founders of GitHub.
• Learning about galinstan, an alloy of gallium, indium, and tin, with a melting point of −19°C(−2°F). It's much less toxic than mercury, which it has replaced in bulb thermometers and sphygmomanometers.
• Dried apricots and dark chocolate.
• Cat cuddles in the morning.

Today I am grateful for...

• Hot ginger tea. Ginger.
• Warm things in general. I always feel cold in the evening; sometimes I can't stop shivering. Anxiety, I think, not air temperature.
• A good rehearsal tonight.
• Finding the box with my TBR shelf. And the associated rabbit holes.

NO thanks for anxiety, procrastination, and my lamentable lack of organization.

Today I am a record. I am also grateful for...

• Still being alive. At this age that isn't necessarily a given.
• Having gotten out of Amerika in time. (Hoping I'll be able to go back and visit. But that's not a given, either.)
• Help. In particular, this week, help from pocketnaomi putting up four bookcases in the living room.
• Finding some beloved books and a few other things, in the process of unpacking. In particular, some songs I wrote at Carleton, and sheet music -- with chords -- for a song of N's that we'd both forgotten the tune for. It might have been performed once.
• Kids who remember my birthday, including an hour-long video call from my daughter E. (Still waiting to see if I get anything from R on top of the "in case I forget" email they sent a couple of days ago.)
• Support groups. It's nice to be among people who "get it". Different "it" in different groups -- widowhood in one case, cancer in another. But still.

Today I am grateful for...

• Finally (Tuesday) getting approved for health insurance. This was a day after submitting a stack of forms with information that as far as I can tell they already had, which they sent after a phone call that also shouldn't have been necessary, so no thanks for whatever fscked up process caused that. Finding a doctor will be another adventure we're not looking forward to.
• Finding the box with N's two Ganesha statues. Of course, this was after the tower of boxes, mostly containing books, containing it fell over sideways. Also gratitude that no damage was done, either to the statues or to the window that the tower fell over and slid against. Whew!
• Singing practice with m and N. (Yesterday; see Music:)
• TIL what those little clay balls are doing in all the planters we inherited from the previous owners.
• Orders being delivered at the short end of the promised (2-3 business days) interval. Particularly grateful when I'm nearly out of cat food. Very grateful that the cats never found out how close I cut it.
• Reasonably reliable sources of news -- NPR, Associated Press, DutchNews.nl for local news, and Seattle Times for previously-local news. AAAS's Science magazine for science, including policy news. The day before yesterday I might have included the Washington (com)Post in this list.
• The Fediverse.

Today I am grateful for...

• Good bread, when I can get it.
• Progress, however small.
• My cats. (Modified gratitude for Bronx. My capacity for is somewhat limited at 03:30.)
• Fountain pens and other distractions. I'll probably need them tomorrow.
• Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

Today I am grateful for...

• Political sanity where one can find it. Obvious exclusions apply.
• Wherewithal. Enough for now, anyway; the future is uncertain. So is the stock market.
• Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive. Also, the Public Domain. NO thanks for ridiculous copyright extensions.
• Alternatives not owned by billionaires. To which I might add StartMail and Startpage, which are not listed there, but are local to me.
• Having formatted my lead sheets so that they fit on two pages, and monitors that can display two pages at once. And looseleaf notebooks and music stands, for when I'm not in front of a large monitor.

Today I am grateful for...

• Our Stuff, which arrived Monday. We now have a house full of boxes. I have unpacked some, but by no means all, of the stuff I was most anxious to get to. Presumably the rest is still in boxes that we haven't unpacked yet.
• Cardboard and paper recycling, which gets picked up next Monday. Also thankful that they will take as much as we put out, since it mostly won't fit in the bin.
• Registering our DAFT partnership with KvK (chamber of commerce) yesterday. There are a few loose ends, like setting up the bank account.
• First walk with m since they got back. Energy is more of a problem for them; motivation for me. But we got it together.

It's Friday, but it was still Thursday, nine timezones away in Seattle, when J picked up my abiraterone and prednisone at the United Pack and Smash Store on Aurora Avenue. So, an especially heartfelt thanks to

• Eric and company at the Fred Hutch Outpatient Pharmacy, for browbeating talking the people at the UPS store into allowing someone with a different last name to pick up a package addressed to me. It probably helped that I authorized them to release my medical information -- presumably the fact that the package contained drugs for treating cancer helped in cutting through their red tape.
• J, for going back two or three times.

NO thanks to UPS's insistance that the person picking up the package had to have an ID with both the same address and the same last name as the addressee. This is the 21^st Century, idiots. No two people in the family living at that house have the same last name. (Strictly speaking j and his father do, but j's away at University of Leiden right now.)

Welcome to a special(?) Babbage's Birthday / Boxing Day edition of Thankful Thursday, on this, the last Thursday of 2024.

Today I am grateful for...

• Having a roof over my head (that I am half-owner of).
• Surviving another year with a body that still mostly functions despite decades of neglect and over three-quarters of a century of wear and tear. Some of it self-inflicted.
• A slightly more solid ETA for the stuff we shipped.
• Having gotten out of the US ahead of its now seemingly inevitable slide into theocracy, authoritarianism and corruption. I fear for the ones we've left behind.
• My families, both of blood and of choice. Most of my family members still put up with me, though I'm sure many of them wish I was more diligent and attentive.
• Our cats! All of whom survived the move. Special call-out and cuddles to Bronx and Ticia.
• Linux, Emacs, Firefox, Make, Git, and their friends.

Today I am grateful for...

• LWN.net (Linux Weekly News), which logged its one millionth database entry with a comment on Thanksgiving.
• Scraping together enough cash from two different US bank accounts so I could load up my Dutch account with enough to buy a scootmobile. NO thanks for not remembering that I had another debit card that I could have stuck the whole thing on when we were in the store, instead of putting 10% down and waiting for the invoice to show up.
• The cats of Zoom. (And the ability to go from a Eurofilk song circle to a Seattle-based cancer support group without leaving my desk.)
• The stuff we ordered from Land's End showing up five days early.
• Music on YouTube.

NOTE: This was, obviously, supposed to have been posted last Thursday. Due to some weird error on my part, it got overwritten with garbage instead. So here it is, thanks to the magic of git revert.

As has become customary for me on Thanksgiving Day (or thereabouts -- I'm actually starting this Wednesday evening), I'll try to cover a greater expanse of time than my usual top-of-the-head, in-the-moment gratitude post.

• This morning's music, "The Great Remember", VERY Extended Version- Steve Martin Clawhammer Banjo Tune, played by Phoebe Sanders and particularly appropriate for the occasion. Also grateful for Phoebe and other youtube musicians too numerous to mention.
• BECU technical support, for helping me track down (more or less) what's blocking their site. There's a VPN in my future. I'm also grateful for Proton VPN's Black Friday sale.
• My Sherpa fake fleece blankets and fluffy bathrobe, because we have not yet completely figured out our new house's complicated electronic thermostat.
• Eyelid wipes and hypochlorous acid spray. NO thanks to demodex mites and blepharitis.
• Our household's members -- four humans, me, N, G, and m; and four cats, Ticia, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Cricket -- having made it safely over to The Netherlands. (I will also be very grateful for the large amount of our Stuff that we couldn't stuff into suitcases for the flight -- when it gets here. Right now it's on a boat. NO thanks for the shipping schedule, which just got pushed out to arrive here around Groundhog Day. :P)
• Apropos that, thanks to Delta, Airbus, Starwood pet transporters, and the Dutch public transit system, for getting us here.
• Finally getting off my arse. I may very well come out with an album next year.
• The way Linux makes it trivial to set up a Raspberry Pi as a print server and git host. (I owe you a write-up about how that's working these days.)
• Having been foresighted enough to mirror my fileserver onto a laptop drive and pack it in my carry-on bag. So the fact that its main drive is still on a boat doesn't matter.
• Good housekeepers. We miss E', our housekeeper in Seattle. (The woman we interviewed this morning looks like a good prospect. And the cats like her.)
• Roasted nuts and dried fruit. Getting my fiber the tasty way.
• My health holding up so far (knock wood -- or plastic).
• Support groups that meet in the morning, Seattle time, via Zoom.
• Grocery stores that let you order online and deliver, some of them with about the same speed as fast food.
• (Added 2024-12-01) Huge thanks as well to Git, gitk, and the awesome git revert. This is your thanksgiving bear reminding you to always use version control.

You should also go visit last year's Thanksgiving Day post, which is included here by reference because all of it still applies. I'm also kind of grateful that I didn't attempt to make a connection in that post between my family of choice and the axiom of choice. Anyway it's trivially true for finite sets. But Oh! what a lovely rabbit hole!

Today I am grateful for...

• My support groups. I think I'm there more for the conversation and occasionally being able to help someone, rather than gathering information. I'm rather bad at asking questions.
• In general, opportunities to be helpful.
• A solid internet connection.
• Recycling. Cardboard and paper only get picked up once every four weeks, so I was a little skeptical when people assured me that they'll take any amount. But they took everything I put out. (Although I ran out of spoons before I ran out of cardboard. Next month...)
• Chicken soup with rice.

Today I am grateful for...

• All of the human members of the Schildhaven household are HOME! G and m landed yesterday morning and were here before noon.
• The household felines are on the continent -- they landed in Frankfurt this morning, and will be here tomorrow. My stress level has been a lot lower since they and their paperwork got checked in yesterday.
• Phones with local numbers and unlimited internet, because the house line doesn't get switched on until the Fifth of November.
• Closely related, my old phone being able to stay connected in airplane mode with WiFi. NO thanks for the fact that SMS cannot be delivered over WiFi. It's quieter, but every once in a while I need to turn it on for a verification text. Blarg.
• Finally getting the utilities signed up for, which involved a phone call because the website was weirdly broken for me.

Today I am grateful for...

• Not injuring myself too badly when I tripped and fell yesterday. NO thanks to whatever I tripped over -- quite possibly it was my own feet.
• My bladder behaving itself while I was out for an explore.
• Getting set up (but not quite fast enough for comfort -- we're still very short on seating, and still short on groceries).
• The Netherlands' near-total lack of hills.
• The local bread, which is excellent.
• Finally getting our BSNs (Dutch sort-of-equivalent of US Social Security Numbers)

Today I am grateful for...

• A moderately functional back.
• Kegel exercises. Pelvic floor physical therapists, live and on line.
• Gentle Giant moving company.
• N, without whom my life would be a lot less interesting..

I would be grateful for another week to pack, if I had it.

NO thanks to Past Me, who was supposed to have gotten a lot of stuff done years ago.

Today (well, actually I wrote most of this yesterday, because I was tired and confused) I am grateful for...

• Professional organizers.
• Not having permanently damaged my scanner by improperly removing a jammed original. The fix may have involved an undocumented reset button on the bottom of the unit. Whew!
• USB3.1. Wired connections in general. I have Problems with Bluetooth.
• Walking. Four (too short) walks in the last week.
• Getting a little more paperwork done. There's still a lot left, though.
• Getting the house payment in, more smoothly than I expected. My financial advisor, Jerad.
• Having caught my mistake in the date yesterdat before I actually posted.

Today I am grateful for...

• Coffee. NO thanks for getting so distracted that I fail to finish my cup before it gets cold and disgusting.
• Fiber (both dietary and optical).
• International wire transfers (their existance, anyway -- not the sometimes confusing details of international financial transactions).
• The fact that somebody in the household (not always the same person) can usually notice when something has fallen through the cracks. Usually.
• Good fidgets. (I like my 5mm cube magnets.)
• My cats. Always my cats. Also the ability to take the havoc they cause in stride without losing my temper. Damned if I know how I do that sometimes.

Today I am grateful for...

• An old friend who sends me silly cat pictures every day.
• Luggage.
• Polyethylene glycol 3350. Senna.
• Ticia and Bronx. The other household cats, too, but Ticia and Bronx are the ones who sleep with me.
• A slight but hopefully real decrease in decision paralysis.
• E'. More than just a housekeeper; we're all going to miss her after we move.

Today I am grateful for...

• Being non-binary (with pharmacological assistance). (See also Non-standard positional numeral systems. I'm partial to balanced ternary and quater-imaginary.)
• A house inspection with no red flags, and three different (and affordable) bids for the stair-lifts we need for accessibility. (See also technoshaman | Points of departure) for motivation.)
• Starwood Pet Travel | Global Pet Shipping & Animal Transport.
• (Sister-of-choice)N, who in her role as household manager is coordinating the whole operation brilliantly.
• Nobody else in the household wanting to load the dishwasher. Dishwasher tetris as a mindfulness exercise.

Yeah, so this was actually written on Friday the 19th, but I somehow forgot to post it. No idea why, except maybe having too much fun following the Cloudstrike debacle. Anyway, ...

Today I am last week I was grateful for...

• Not running Windows, so being immune to this morning's Cloudstrike outage. (But UPS is running late, and if they don't deliver my cancer meds by Wednesday I'm going to be annoyed.) NO thanks to the local Bartell's, which doesn't even have that for an excuse.)
• Not not having had any travel planned for today.
• Also not being in a hospital.
• Prime Day prices.
• No longer working at $A, so not being on call for Prime Day.
• Being more resilient than I thought I was.