River: Thankful Thursday--Addendum

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.)

River: Remembering the FlowerCat: 49

If things had gone differently in July of 2021, Colleen and I would be celebrating our 49th anniversary today, and embarking on our 50th year of marriage. Things didn't, and we're not.

I never know just how it's going to hit me. This year -- yesterday -- I hit an emotional landmine on the last page of Cordwainer Smith's story "The Game of Rat and Dragon.

... as he buried his face in the pillow, he caught an image of the Lady May.

“She is a cat,” he thought. “That’s all she is⁠—a cat!”

But that was not how his mind saw her⁠—quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, [...]

Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?

Colleen was always some kind of cat to me. Objectively, she didn't share all that many attributes with the Lady May, but there it was, and objectivity has nothing to do with it. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed silently for a few minutes.