The Mandelbear's Musings

Well, all I can say is that it felt more productive at the time. Morning and most of the afternoon were taken up by an LHH webinar and filling out the job application for Planetary Resources – The Asteroid Mining Company. As it turned out, yesterday was the last day they were taking them, so I was cutting it pretty close. Grump.

And after dinner Colleen and I went out to the local mall for a st/roll. Which was probably healthier than it would have been going out in the heat during the afternoon.

I spent the morning working on my resume, adding to the projects and publications lists, and expanding some of the more interesting projects. And I finally made an HTML version of the resume, though the formatting leaves something to be desired.

I'd originally been planning to spend the afternoon at Stanford, at the memorial for my old professor John McCarthy. But when I signed up for that I'd neglected the fact that it was the YD's 20^th birthday. So instead, we went shopping at Target (we'd given her a gift card) and out to dinner at Kobe.

In between, Colleen and I went out for a two-mile st/roll. The scooter started running dangerously low on power about 3/4 of the way through, so I went home by myself and fetched the car to retrieve her. The scooter isn't in terribly good shape; I'm glad we're getting a new one.

In the evening, I started moving stacks of cookbooks to the card table. Colleen promptly rebuilt the stack with a second round of culling. And that's just cookbooks!

Linky: Record Heat Wave Grips US. But Is It Climate Change? Cute little video about trend vs. variation.

It didn't feel like a terribly productive day, but between a 1-mile walk, a dentist appointment, looking at scooters, and helping Colleen triage cookbooks, I must have gotten something done.

Work was basically more of the same: file triage and backups.

There's nothing like an empty shelf and piles of books looking for a new home to make the move start to feel real.

As for scooters, we're looking at the Pride Celebrity X - it's bigger and more stable than Colleen's current one, which we'd keep for travel because it's a *lot* lighter and can be stuffed into the Honda's trunk.

Hmm. The day had its ups and downs, I guess. I feel particularly good about my st/roll with Colleen around the Rose Garden, and I got some practicing in, and major bug-fixing done the new makefile for recording directories. And quite a lot of decluttering, and a verse and chorus of a parody (still in progress).

On the other hand, I got very stressed in the early afternoon -- not sure whether it was sensory overload, family friction, or what -- the walk helped a lot.

On the gripping hand, I actually noticed at the time that mailing my filk to Naomi and getting thwapped for it made me happy. I may be getting better at that.

On the fourth hand, I wound up feeling very discouraged, especially when Colleen pointed out that I hadn't gotten any of my usual oddball stocking stuffers. She sent me out into the cold; Fry's was closed, but CVS was open and had gift cards and some suitable small tools.

So the day ended pretty well, at least.

No links. Must have been busy.

So... yesterday was Black Friday, which we observed by staying home, eating leftovers, and going out for a nice st/roll.

The battery pack in Colleen's scooter seems to be dying. We bought it less than a year ago, but OTOH we got it from a local store, so there's really no telling what its history is.

Cygnus, the new netbook, continues to be a pleasure to use, though it also shows signs of instability, and the WiFi connection seemed to be distinctly weird. Rebooting the WAP may have fixed it. Or I could try turning off 802.11n, which I know we were having trouble with back at EWS.

I still need to string new ethernet cable to the living room; right now it's CAT-5, and with Cygnus running Gigabit, that just won't cut it.

I've noticed that I seem to have trouble telling when the person I'm conversing with is done talking. It may even have gotten worse recently; I'm going to have to work on that.

Still very worried about my friends up north. Very worried.

Some links. This is disturbing: Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window » ACLU blog.

Not a very eventful or notable day, which is on the whole an improvement on Sunday. I came home for lunch, after buying Colleen a 4-footed cane and looking at some scooters. The cane was an obvious next step for her, since she's been using her walker one-handed since breaking her arm; she gets around very well with it.

I looked at two scooters at Bischoff's. One was a Pride Celebrity X, they advertise it as disassembling into 7 pieces, but that includes the two batteries, for which one has to remove the cover and disconnect cables. One could do that for a long trip, maybe, but it's impractical for a quick jaunt to the store. Not that it would fit in the trunk of my Honda anyway -- we'd need a lift.

The other was clearly a travel scooter, used, no bigger than Colleen's current one, but the seat was lower and it looked a lot more stable. When I came home, I found that the seat-post on Rosebud could be lowered about an inch and a half. We determined that Colleen could still get in and out with the lower seat, so that's a big win. I'll have to see whether we can get the seat any lower, though I suspect not without power tools.

I think we will get a larger scooter eventually, since it would give her a lot more confidence and stability on streets and sidewalks. But we'll probably keep the GoGo for travel and indoor use. How we'd store the two of them is, of course, an open question. We might have to enclose the porch or clean out space in the garage.

It wasn't a very productive day at work, but once back home I managed to get in some practicing, and made progress emptying out the old Rolly.

No links, oddly enough.

A pretty good day, with a nice st/roll with Colleen to the Rose Garden. We keep forgetting to bring books, so we can sit and read in the sun. It's a great place for people-watching, too. I like summer. ("Summer" being our code word for "women in skimpy outfits", many of which would have been considered underwear when we were young.)

We had a good, though ultimately unproductive, talk about the YD's state of mind. It's pretty clear that she's depressed, but she rejects our suggestions that she seek professional help. Not much we can do about that.

I was feeling rather unimaginative, and made a pot of black and white beans with Polish sausage for dinner. Very tasty.

Had some trouble with my right shoulder in the morning, which I dealt with by switching shoulders on Minnie and wearing the strap higher up, close to my neck. That seems to do it, at least for now. And my left ankle started hurting in the evening after I took my shoes (hiking boots) off; I put a brace on it. Both joints are mostly ok this morning, but grump.

Things have been breaking. The lumbar support on my aeron chair broke clean in half sometime yesterday. It looks as though it can be splinted; that's good, because a replacement is $60. The one at work has been broken for a while. Grump. My things and I are getting old together.

I verified by experiment that I can pack a weekend's worth of clothes into the Eagle Creek organizer, so I could theoretically go on a weekend trip with nothing but Chami (the Antler rolling backpack, for those who haven't been following closely) and Minnie (the REI shoulder bag), and maybe the CPAP case. In most cases that probably won't be necessary, but it's nice to know that it's possible.

My doctor contacted me about my labs; PSA (which doesn't show up on the web -- grump) is down a little, as are my triglycerides. So, ... good.

My mood continues to hover somewhere between ok and good.

Some links in the notes, as usual; the Solar-Powered 3D Printer that Prints Glass from Sand is pretty awesome. Especially when you remember that it's not your ordinary soda-lime glass but fused silica, which has a significantly higher melting point.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. It included, after all, a st/roll with Colleen, dinner, and some singing for Naomi. I also added a new flag character to my raw notes: "'" (single quote) marks a piece of "internal dialog". Talking to the voices in my head, to put it more simply.

They're not really voices, of course; they're pretty-much indistinguishable from the interior narrative that goes on all the time in my head. But Naomi has, over the last couple of years, taught me the usefulness of labeling parts of that narrative as coming from different "characters". More on that later, probably. Someday.

I also noticed that I like it when people add to comment threads, especially when they answer someone else's question. I guess it makes me feel that my blog is useful?

Among the day's few links, I can recommend elf's post, Growing old fiercely

The high point of the day was a nice st/roll with Colleen. The sky was overcast and the air cool; just right for brisk walking. Colleen, of course, needed her cape because she wasn't walking.

The wireless access point seems to have gotten its configuration corrupted; that's the second time this has happened after a power failure. Grump. (Reset-to-defaults fixed it this morning, but still.) I'm glad I decided not to use the thing as my main router! Grump anyway; I could use the power saving.

I tried the gluten-free matzoh-like objects Colleen got (a whole lot of) at Lunardi's (FKA Cosentino's). Meh. The taste is slightly off, and the texture (thin, dense, and brittle) is very off. Grump.

Dinner, boiled artichokes and rib-eye steaks pan-broiled with caramelized onions, was delightful. The artichokes were the first of the season, slightly small but very tasty. Colleen got the idea from some of her food porn shows of putting a lemon and some fresh thyme in the water; that worked very well.

I started getting sleepy around 8:15; getting up, walking around, and doing some dishes helped.

The day's most amusing link, by far, was the tale of Amazons $23,698,655.93 book about flies. I, for one, welcome our new algorithmic overlords -- as a filker, anyway.

This last weekend we went to Las Vegas and met Callie and Naomi there, celebrating our 35th anniversary and Naomi's birthday. (The joint vacation was N's idea, of course; she's good at coming up with evil schemes.) It was mostly good. Parts were very good. As it turned out, I didn't need to worry about getting enough walking in.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, of course. And when an ambitious list of "things we want to do" meets the reality of low energy levels, injuries and other physical limitations, sleeping in, missed connections, and the fact that slot machines no longer have coin slots, there are bound to be some disappointments. But it was good. The buffets were tasty and cheap, some of the restaurants we ate in were very tasty and not at all cheap, the scenery (architectural, natural, and human) was fascinating, and Cirque de Soleil's Zumanity was... interesting.

Zumanity was my first contact with Cirque; it probably wasn't a very good introduction. The acts that were supposed to be funny I found painful, and none of it was what I would consider sensual. Some of it was beautiful, though. I could have done with more of that.

The official birthday dinner was at Joe's Steak, Seafood, and Stone Crab in the Forum Shops at Caesars. It didn't help that we got a late start, went in separate cabs, and C&N ended up getting dropped off at Caesar's, a good block or so away. And owned by a different organization altogether. We had to send out a search party (i.e. me). But it was yummy.

A lot of st/rolling with Colleen. At one point Saturday night her scooter simply and suddenly died, with symptoms (including inability to charge) that indicated a bad connection in the battery box. Fortunately we were already back in our hotel (the Excalibur), and I pushed her back to the room. After calling up the house engineer with a cart-full of tools only to find that his four-in-one screwdriver was hopelessly short, I set out to Walgreen's (about 2.5 blocks away) and bought their only screwdriver set. Too short. But somehow the act of flipping the box upside down and shaking it a few times knocked the connection back together, and it held up through the rest of the weekend.

And we made some good music, especially Monday afternoon -- we extended our checkout times to 3pm so that we could have more time. I'd been afraid that Colleen would have trouble keeping herself amused, but as it turned out she needed the time to catch up on her sleep. I have half a dozen new songs to learn, and it put a great cap on a busy, exhausting, but basically good weekend.

Quite a few good links. A good 6-article series on the music industry. Among other things.

So, yeah, a good weekend for the most part, and awesome in spots. And a big success at work yesterday for the team that I'm part of. Can't say much about that, unfortunately, but it took a heck of a lot of pressure off. So I'm a well-fed and contented bear right now.

Hmm. I seem to have gone a little too long without updating; this will probably be sketchy. Hazard of trying to get more sleep on workdays.

I finally got around to pulling out the audio for "No Greater Love", as Callie sang it for me during my Seattle trip, and have been working on the chords as well. (A9 and Am9 can both be faked with Asus2 if necessary, but sound better if you can get the third in.) And I'm working on the lead sheets. Tempered Glass has a half-hour set a week from Saturday at Orycon.

Sunday morning I noticed that I was feeling particularly good, and went so far as to mention it to Colleen. Probably a combination of being able to breathe all night, and some good news in the morning. I also went for a st/roll with Colleen around the Rose Garden. The good mood had mostly evaporated by the evening; I was foggy with sleep, and worried.

Monday, a conversation reminded me about an earlier exercise where I was asked what makes me happy. I didn't know then, and still mostly don't. It's made more complicated by the fact that one of my other problems is not being very aware of my emotions, so that if something makes me happy I sometimes don't really notice. Broken feedback loop.

Tuesday I voted.

Links include Mind, serotonin, anxiety - a student paper that suggests a link between low serotonin and fibromyalgia and CFS.

Mostly a good day, with some web work, a shopping expedition (coffee, and a bus pass for the YD), a lovely st/roll with Colleen, and a particularly good series of IM conversations with Naomi. Some useful insights into what's going on at work, and its connection to my personal life. (More on that later, I hope, once I get it sorted out a little more.)

On the other hand, Colleen was in a lot of pain from arthritis, and could barely walk. She's started taking glucosamine/condroitin again, and it seems to be helping.

Some useful links, including some sources of gluten-free frozen dinners that Colleen turned up, and a Consumer Reports article on people food that can poison your pet.

A good day, though less productive than I wanted it to have been thanks to catching up on sleep. Sleep is for wimps. Healthy, well-rested wimps, but...

Highlights were a st/roll around the Rose Garden with Colleen, and making yummy (if I may say so) guacamole and fajitas for dinner. A small amount of minor system administration.

There are minor advantages to sleeping badly -- I remember fragments of dreams. Mostly images: a motel, a shopping mall, several parking lots, driving (or watching someone drive) a powered wheelchair through a tricky left exit on a freeway, Callie meeting me at the mall and suggesting we go out for a walk. The disadvantage, of course, is waking up and missing a nice conversation. Or does that make sense, given that if I'd dreamed through it I wouldn't remember it anyway?

A few good links under the cut. I'm starting to wonder whether I should keep them separately -- a "weblog" in the original meaning of the term. Not twitter or some other external service, though I might want to cross-post there. I want something with room for a complete link and short description. Thoughts?

A pretty decent day, but no walk. It was raining at the time. Didn't go to the building's fitness center, either; I'm a little disappointed with myself on that. One of those things where the longer you put it off, the harder it gets; I've been working there for 17 years now.

And I caught myself comfort-eating, too. Just grazing out of habit. Well, at least the snacks I have at my desk are mostly high protein (beef jerky) and high fiber (prunes). We just won't think about the two little bags of M&M peanuts, ok?

Finally googled for info on webcam drivers for Debian, and got that set up both at work and at home. Turned up a fascinating article on Wikipedia on depressive realism. Hmm.

Strongly on the plus side, I moved our Conflikt plane reservations from an impossible 7am to an easy 5:30pm. No way we were going to make it to the airport two hours before a 7am flight -- Colleen's usual wake-up time is 10am, mine is 6:30, and the airport doesn't open until 6am anyway. I also extended our hotel reservations to cover Thursday night.

We'll still have some time up at Promusica Monday and Tuesday. Fortunately, Tempered Glass doesn't have a concert slot this year, so the fact that there will be much less rehearsal time available than last year (when I flew up on Wednesday) won't be a problem.

Lots of tasty links under the cut, as usual. Some rather old ones, from clearing my tabs at work, plus a few from the day's Wikipedia ramblings.

ETA: I almost forgot the best thing: Colleen had me put away the 2-wheeled walker (Frankie) and get out the 4-wheeled one (Johnny). Much better for regaining her ability to walk, since she can't put much weight on it. Also, it has a seat, so she can walk outside or into the kitchen and sit down when she gets tired. Yay for the RollyCat!

The big news from yesterday was that Colleen walked from the toilet to the bathtub without using the walker! (She was presumably holding on to the tub for most of that, but it's not the same as the two-handed support that a walker gives.) This is major progress. She also had me haul out the rolling walker, which is also progress. It has a seat, so she can use it for more extended strolls.

I'm still having issues with my knees; I would probably have had to cut my walk short even if I hadn't thought that I'd have to leave early for an appointment. It's next week. But even five minutes in the fresh air and sunshine helped.

I've already posted about my success in upgrading the hard drive on my fileserver. It goes nicely with cflute's finally getting the external drive I sent her to work. The problem turned out to be a connection that got shaken loose in shipping.

On the down side, the buyer at Batteries and Bulbs called to say that the bulb in our fan is indeed made of unobtainium. In a way that's OK; the problem turned out to be in the fan. (We have two; I have verified that both bulbs work in the front fan, so we have a spare anyway.) The options for the back room are: A. replace the whole thing, and B. keep the fan (which is working for now) and install some extra lamps. We'll go with Plan B.

In connection with my weight, several people suggested exercise. That's probably worth a separate post; it's not simple: in addition to time and motivation, I have problems with both knees and ankles.

I have added embarrassment to the list of emotions I don't feel -- several times recently people have told me I'm blushing, usually in response to an unexpected compliment. I wouldn't have noticed if nobody had mentioned it. It does make me wonder whether it's a good idea to go messing with what's obviously an effective defense mechanism.

And I need to go back and work on my list of affirmations, which I've been neglecting of late. I need to add a rather obvious one: I am a Middle-Sized Bear.

Links later, I think.

The main thing yesterday was our trip to the San Francisco Zoo with the YD and her boyfriend. Forget about the animals -- the best part was seeing Colleen zipping around on her scooter, and walking fast to keep up. I got my walkies in for sure, and Colleen had a blast.

We went out for sushi afterwards. A tiring day, but a good one.

Good article on using twitter to promote your business, from this post by ysabetwordsmith.

A very good day. I woke up to find myself still happy from having finished writing my presentation about git the night before. And it went well; it was planned as a half-hour talk, but ran to nearly an hour with a lot of good audience interaction. Go me! It helps that git is just plain cool; I expect to have the presentation up on the web soon.

The Cat and I went to the Valley Fair mall for our evening out. Parts were almost deserted; I could walk fast enough for exercise, and Colleen could keep up. Delightful.

I'm going to have to re-investigate LJ's set of pre-defined moods; I'm almost completely unfamiliar with the "better-than-OK" range.

As I mentioned upstream, an email from cflute left me cheerful and optimistic, a very unusual sensation for me. It was a good day in spite of getting comparatively little accomplished.

Well, OK, I took a walk, and got the quilt washed, and a bulk CD order shipped, and ordered a walker holder for Colleen's scooter. But still.

It was a rather small party -- I forgot to make fliers before Baycon, and only posted one announcement on LJ. Some of the regulars were busy elsewhere, as well. I did my usual thing of holing up in the office with one or two other people (maxed out at three, but that didn't last long) and had some good conversations with friends who might otherwise have left sooner. And on IM as well. So everybody wins.

(I finally verified with Colleen that she likes this arrangement, too. She's the one who pointed out that the people who hang out in the office are the ones who, like me, can't handle crowds well and would probably leave early otherwise. Odd that I never noticed that before.)

Colleen was bemoaning the fact that Rosebud doesn't have a good horn; I went into the bedroom, pulled out the train whistle, gave it a good toot in the living room (startling several guests in the process) and put it in Rosebud's basket. I win.

The party wound down earlier than usual after Colleen went to bed around 10pm. It was a good party, though: relaxed and enjoyable. There's still a lot of beer and soda left.

Yesterday was a very good day for Colleen, right up until she tried to sit on the rolling walker with the brakes off and something in one hand. Oops. After several attempts involving me, figmo, and W. we established once again that getting Colleen to her feet is a two-able-bodied-person job, and called 911 for backup. We got her into the folding chair, and from there by walker to bed.

Plopping herself down a little too heavily on the bed resulted in the drive shaft that runs between the head and foot ends popping out; it took a while for me to figure out how to get it back in place. We both went splat.

One complicating factor was that I hit my foot on the filing cabinet that we're using as a side-table, and said "ouch" while trying to help her back onto the seat. This made Colleen stop letting me help her, as she apparently assumed I was incapacitated. It was about the third time that day I've hit my foot on something -- the other two were chairs. This indicates that there's too much clutter, and that I really need to wear shoes or slippers all the damned time in the house. :(

On the gripping hand, I got some actual work and some actual songwriting done, and finally got a cup-holder installed on the scooter. And a short walk, and some meditation. So... progress? One step forward, one step back, and one step sideways, maybe.

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth, though I sometimes feel as though it might be a welcome vacation. This is just a quick note from Baycon -- I haven't even had time to update my to.do list with completed items. No, I will not tweet them.

High order bits:

The Tres Gique concert kicked serious ass -- probably our best yet. In spite of (or perhaps because of) our having to vamp for half an hour or so while the next act got unstuck from traffic. And we were afraid we were running a little long...

The Tempered Glass concert kicked ass, in spite of Callie losing her voice mid-song toward the beginning of the set. And Naomi having a blood-sugar crash, and my voice flagging a little. We adjusted, moved on, would have had to drop a song anyway, and made it through.

Filk tonight was great fun, though I wish we could have stayed longer.

Caring for Colleen took up a good chunk of time and energy. So did caring for a five-year-old, even a fun, articulate, well-behaved five-year-old.

And finally, an Announcement: Colleen and I are fan guests of honor at next year's Baycon!!!

More if I ever have time.

Colleen wanted to go to ABC Medical to look at scooters. She immediately fell in love with a Pride Go-Go Elite Traveller 3 Wheel Scooter, which they wanted some $1500 for. A little outside our price range, seeing as Costco has a somewhat similar scooter for $799. We nearly bought it anyway, but one arm was damaged and wouldn't be in until later in the week; we left my contact info and went out for a drive.

When we got home, I found it for $899 at 1800wheelchair.com. Much as I like to buy things locally, $600 is a lot of money. They quote delivery as 3-5 days, so it ought to arrive before we need it next weekend.

Colleen and pocketnaomi can have scooter races at Baycon.

Colleen called a little while ago to say that she took eight steps in her physical therapy session this morning. She may be home in as little as a week!

She was using a walker, and had a spotter on either side and one behind her keeping the wheelchair where she could sit down when she had to, but still it's a huge step in her recovery. Next week they're going to have me come in so she can practice getting in and out of the car.

I'll be getting my Cat back!!

A little background, for those coming late to my friends list. Colleen (AKA flower_cat) is my wife. She's had arthritis since she was a teenager; over the last few years it got bad enough to seriously impact her mobility. A little over a year ago we experimented with using a wheelchair for getting through airports; we bought a nice Nova transport chair a few months ago. We'll be getting a scooter soon, too.

Careful readers may notice that one of the tags on this entry is colleen-200903, in spite of the fact that it's April already. I change the dated tag for major events; the transition from "02" to "03" happened when she moved from the hospital to the nursing home.

It was a rather strange day. Mostly good, but strange.

I think the strangest bit by far was remembering, more-or-less out of the blue, the name of my high school history teacher. (Although I was thinking about history, and how my interest in biographies differs from pocketnaomi's. She seems to be most interested in how people affect events, and how those events affect their lives. I'm more interested in how people think, and events are interesting mainly in how they affect what goes on in their heads.

I really don't know how I feel about remembering Mrs. Ryan.

It was also very strange to see my Younger Daughter's boyfriend; they make a cute couple and seem to care about one another. On the other hand, they're both gamers. Strange indeed (though both amusing and delightful) to go upstairs and find that both daughters have visible carpet on their floors. As the Wolfling said, "it's green, not stuff-colored."

And my evening conversation with pocketnaomi about I Never Promised You a Rose Garden got into some strange territory as well. I am still getting used to the fact that there may not be words for some of what's going on in my head, and that even when the words -- like "love" or "embarrassment" or "self-image" -- exist, people rarely have the same definition for them. How can one discuss things without a common language? How can I think about things without using words?

The 3am phone call wasn't strange at all. A friend needed someone to talk with. That's what Middle-Sized Bears do.