mdlbear | Done recently (20130817 Sa

The big news this week: Colleen has been ok'ed for full weightbearing on her formerly-broken ankle, and my tax refund finally showed up. (I found out about that today, but they post deposits at 11:30pm so technically it counts. Or something.)

The downside, of course, is that I get to spend the entire weekend writing checks for the many (mostly medical) bills that I've been ignoring for the last several months. And making the house ready for Colleen to come home to.

Apart from that...

We have a huge new cat tower in the Great Room. The cats mostly ignore it, of course, in favor of hanging out on the floor. Though Desti does like curling up on top of the old tower, which is now in the master bedroom.

The guinea pigs' cage fell off its table; I suspect the cats. I managed to recapture the two that fled the scene. Whew! We moved the cage downstairs to the basement, which is a cat-free zone because G. is allergic.

("G." is of course ambiguous; as well as being Naomi's daughter, she shares her initial with our housekeeper, and her name with the housekeeper's daughter. Fortunately, the youngest G. (g.?) has a nickname.

I "fixed" the YD's old laptop, by first dual-booting it with Ubuntu, then booting up the restore partition and doing a nuke-and-pave on Windows. Surprisingly, the operation didn't affect Ubuntu's Grub bootloader, so I won that round.

It took six hours to install all the updates. Vs. about half an hour for Ubuntu.

I bought a double-edge safety razor. Fairly expensive, but I'll save it on blades over the course of a few months. It also gives a very nice shave.

I spent a lot of time last weekend puttering, and managed to get several boxes emptied, and brought several more down to the garage for storage.

0817 Sa
* up 7:20ish; W=202.4; d, shower
* Connected tablet keyboard with Nexus7. Works well.
@ How to Become A Morning Person | LinkedIn
: The wheelchair ramp I ordered has been sitting in a box on the front walk all week.
I really need to be a little more curious about things left near the door.
* 15min: set up one of the two chairside tables that N had ordered way back when
* 15min: wrote/mailed a couple of paper checks that have been waiting far too long.
* 15min: (actually more like an hour) assembled new cat tower. It's huge; not clear
where in the Great Room it belongs. Perhaps in the corner where the musk ox is now.
The cats have not yet discovered it.
* 15min: OK, that corner works. We will probably want to move the rocking chair; it's
pretty crowded there. But it works. The musk ox is turned sort of the wrong way, but
he's ok where I put him, to the left of the bathroom door.
@ Wire Jewelry Making Instructions
: 7:24pm both cats have sampled the cat tower. By jumping onto the third story from the
klik-klak, of course.
@ Shyness | Psychology Today How to Finally Overcome Shyness (ysabetwordsmith)
Lots of great psych links in that episode.
* Stopped at PCC on the way back from Colleen's; picked up salt (for nose-watering),
tofu, tortilla chips

0818 Su
* up 5:30ish; W=203; d, n; shower
@ When Women Wanted Sex Much More Than Men | Alternet f(Mary Anne Mohanraj)
@ 19 Totally Ingenious Ways To Use Empty Food And Drink Containers f(Mark Poliner)
* Shopping: TJ's with Kat, MM with both kids.
* attempting to recover YD's old Acer laptop, using Ubuntu 12.04. There's a recovery
partition, but the boot menu doesn't list it. :P
Oops. It may take forever to resize the NTFS partition. -> ok, then. Done.
* Now that I can get to the recovery partition... Surprisingly, it didn't mess up Grub.
Now on its 4th reboot, or thereabouts.
* 15min: clear a cube box of mostly cables. Ditch cat5 and an ancient 100bT hub
* make that the 5th reboot. "Installing Cleanup" 44/45 Right. Now "Installing
Sysprep - Factory Mode" 45/45. Then probably more reboots after user setup.
* ... and there went reboot #6. Taking a break and installing chrome on Ubuntu, which
of course is fast as a bat. Updated.
* 15min: Took sawhorses down to garage; found music stand desks and acc's. Cleared the
box that had Kat's mixer in it.
* ... and that appears to have been the final reboot. Except that it's now downloading
updates. So that'll be a while. And of course a reboot. And another update, because
of course Windows Update is yet another thing that has to be installed. :P
* Lovely full-body Swedish massage from N. Windows Update is still updating.
: I believe I started working on the laptop around 3:30. It is now 8:45.
-> 9:04 and it wants a reboot. Of course. An another.
: OK, 9:19 and I finally have a login prompt.

0819 Mo
* up 6:35; W=202; d, n
: The loud noise I heard turned out to be the piggie cage. Shona was still there. I
later found Mariek in the milk crate where I usually keep my wastebasket. Clea is
still missing. The cats have been locked up. The cage is now On The Floor. Eeeep.
* found Clea wedged in behind the speakers. Pulled her out, with some difficulty.
* The cage is now on in the downstairs living room, on the hearth shelf in front of the
fireplace. Whew!
" If you swallow a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you
all day. " (Variant on a quote attributed to Mark Twain.)
* Mom's check arrived. OTOH my social security "check" hasn't. Neither has my IRS
refund, though I did get a call from the advocate. He'll call when he hears
something, but no later than Aug. 31.

0820 Tu
* up 6:30; W=201.2; d, n
@ Groklaw - Forced Exposure ~pj - sad. Last post.
* Deposited Mom's check
* On the way back from the bank, passed a "men's grooming" store and bought a safety
razor. Merkur Futur. Nice. Expensive, but I'll save it on blades in under a year.

0821 We
* up 6:20; W=201.2; d, n
% The new razor is very nice. Much closer shave than the multiblades I've been using.
@ Breast cancer survivor awareness | angelahighland.com
* All expected checks arrived (except the tax refund), so I have money for once.
: N. has a job!

0822 Th
% dream: I had gone racing in the van (?!); now the back tires were blown and I had to
figure out how to get the van to someplace that would replace them. Meanwhile I was
having some kind of medical procedure done that would involve sitting around and
reading for two hours; I wanted to have the tires replaced then but wasn't sure the
timing would work out.
* up 6:32; W=201.2; d, n
@ The seven deadly sins of software deployment [LWN.net]
* ordered blades (2 different kinds: Feather and Gillette Silver Blue)
* PAY BILLS!!!!

0823 Fr
* up 6:15; W=202; d, n
% nicked myself shaving. Need to buy a styptic pencil.
* bought styptic pencil in Walgreen's on the way home
* 15min: some puttering around reorganizing boxes and drawers in the MBR bathroom,
dresser, and closet.

0824 Sa
* up 6:05; W=202.4; d, n; shower
: I found out how the little pentagonal area rug gets rumpled -- Curio crawls under it!
It probably feels a lot like being petted; I remember doing it when I was a kid.
@ Your Ancestors Didn’t Sleep Like You - SlumberWise
* 15min: much box-diving and puttering. Found computer glasses and a stack of coasters
Cleared a box, and found an empty file box. Found a Gig-E switch.
* 15min: used the file box for archived hard drives.
* 15min: cleared out two plastic boxes (one missing its lid, one sterilite flap-lid)
% 4pm: where in hell did the day go?
~ unrolled the green dragon rug in the Great Room. It's in far too poor shape to be
used there. *sigh*
! 7:30ish-8 depressed. Don't know why. Touch hunger? Worry over Colleen? Feel that I
haven't done anything, though there are actually 3 fewer boxes here than this morning.
% 8:55 restless? Should have gone out for a walk this morning. Or afternoon.
% There is a Curio on my desk.

0825 Su
* up 6:40; W=203; d, n; shower
@ From a skin flick to bluetooth. One woman's ama... - The Fourth Wave - Quora
f(Mary Anne Mohanraj) - good write-up, even if the surprise ending isn't.
* Found the switchplates -- in a box labeled "desk sortme"
Fellowship Foundry: Pewter Switchplates
* out with YD to see Colleen, then grocery shopping
* 15min: cleared a moving box. Found printer paper (about 100 sheets, but still...)
* 16:20 3 boxes moved downstairs, plus two empty plastic bins, and 4 empties
* Rollyfile moved under desk. Crosswise in back, but still. Out of the way.
* New bootlaces installed in one pair of Keens (the ones where a lace broke Thurs.)
! depressed. Getting better about noticing, though I think it was N who pointed it
out. Hugs, cat-cuddles, and sleep seem to help.

0826 Mo
* dream: on a college campus, first day of class. Had trouble finding the room for my
second class, which was interpretive dance. Worried about fitting all the classes I'd
picked into my work schedule, and worried about having to go out and buy a leotard for
the dance class.
* up 6:30; W=202; d, n
@ Teaching Naked, Part 1 | Tenure, She Wrote f(Mary Anne Mohanraj)
@ Healthy Facts about beer and wine!
" The report concluded that moderate drinkers had a 32 percent lower risk of dying
from a heart attack than those who didn't drink alcohol. Moderate drinkers,
according to the researchers, were defined as people who drank at least seven drinks
a week. Light drinkers (less than seven drinks a week) had a 21 percent lower
risk. The findings were similar for men and women. "
* Pay bills
: Why is my phone bill in Spanish?

0827 Tu
* up 6:25; W=201.2; d, n
* Call about my phone bill, which was converted to Spanish about the time my landline
number was supposed to have been ported to CenturyLink. Which it hasn't.
* My house number *still* hasn't been ported back to CL. GRUMP.
* Colleen's ankle is healed! She starts PT tomorrow, and comes home the 6th.

0828 We
* up 6:30; W=200.6; d, n
% Guess not much happened. Stayed home and didn't visit Colleen -- N insists that I
take care of myself and take some downtime, whether I like it or not.