The Mandelbear's Musings

Today I am grateful for...

• The healing power of stories and storytelling. Stories in general, really.
• MASKS. Also C-R boxes.
• Pi Day. Which is also the International Day of Mathematics! Cool! Also the local pizza joint that has a "buy one 11-inch pie, get another for $3.14" special today.
• Yesterday, birthday cake. Also drunken chicken with wine on the side.
• Bling.

Today I am grateful for...

• The JWST, bringing us incredible views of the sky in infrared. I was just watching Night Sky News February 2024, and thinking that my father, whose specialty was infrared spectroscopy, would have loved it.
• My friend Ted Kaehler, for introducing me to the Smalltalk programming language when we were roommates at Stanford, and for many long, fascinating conversations. Including this morning, when he realized while taking his girlfriend's dog to the vet that he was only a block away from our house.
• Getting back into walking, which I have neglected for way too long. It's almost the only form of exercise I get on a regular basis, and the only form I actually enjoy. (The PT exercises that I do semi-regularly to strengthen my back, legs, and (more recently) pelvic floor are not particularly aerobic, and they're also incredibly boring.)
• Friendship. NO thanks for having lost touch with so many friends -- that used to be Colleen's specialty.
• Having lived on Whidbey Island -- it's a beautiful place, and so was our house there, and I'll always miss it.

Today I am grateful for...

• A reasonably functional urinary tract. Transitive thanks for pelvic floor PT and abiraterone.
• More frequent walks, for (apparently) improving my mood. Big surprise, right? (I haven't had time for one today, so...)
• Seattle's curbside recycling. (Wish Whidbey Island had it too.)
• New owners who want me to leave the woodworking tools and the shelving.
• Wire transfers. (Proxy thanks on behalf of my son and his partner.) NO thanks for my clumsiness in misdirecting the previous transfer.
• Suitable containers for cats. I'm looking at you, Bronx, and your leather fetish.
• git pull --rebase

Today I am grateful for...

• My genetic testing results, which came back Tuesday and are completely negative. Meaning that my prostate cancer is not hereditary, and my risk of getting any other kind is no worse than anybody else's.
• Free Flu and COVID-19 Tests and Treatments (via this post by siderea).
• Cocoa powder in my coffee. Also, double-wall-insulated coffee mugs.
• Beneficial microbes, in particular the yeasts responsible for bread and wine; the molds that flavor cheese; and the bacteria responsible for yoghurt, pickles, and kimchi. (And let's not forget antibiotics and the human gut microbiome.)
• Recognition in the press for people with no religious affiliation. A group in which I belong most of the time (I have been known to perform marriages as a Druid). Also, this Eulogy from a Physicist. "According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen."
• [irony]Standards for charging cables -- there are so many to choose from.[/irony] See also, xkcd 927.

Today I am grateful for...

• Comfort food. (Comfort eating is problematic, though, and I'm not particularly thankful for it.)
• Rabbit holes. (Although they enable procrastination, which is also problematic.)
• ADT. (The side-effects are not problematic, but I'm not particularly thankful for the reasons why they're not problematic.)
• Zabar's.
• Curbside recycling. It's something I missed while living on Whidbey Island.
• Checklists. I should use them more often; they help a lot when I remember to. See also, The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.

So... the day before yesterday was Mom's birthday -- she would have been 103 years old. (In fact, she died in 2020, a couple of months shy of her hundredth. If I'd been thinking, I would have mentioned something in Thursday's gratitude post. I've always felt grateful to my parents, and more abstractly grateful for them -- for having had the good fortune to have been born into a particularly good family.

Better parents than Colleen and I turned out to have been, anyway. I miss them.

Note: this was originally written yesterday; posting failed due to carelessness on my part. Anyway, here it is.

Today I am grateful for...

• The December Solstice and the sun's returning, about an hour ago as I write this. The seasons of my grieving don't follow the sun, but now's not the time to write of them.
• My kids, especially my daughter E, at whose house in Tacoma I celebrated the Solstice this afternoon. NO thanks to the setting winter sun, which was in my eyes most of the way down.
• The Jewish tradition of Chinese food on Christmas, which I am celebrating with my chosen family this evening because N will be out of town on the day.
• Kegel exercises, and the only workout video I have ever exercised along with..
• Gratitude exercises, which are apparently good for one's mental health. And because I think recursion is cool.

Today I am grateful for...

• This week's medical-adjacent appointments (patient navigation, integrative medicine, and genetic testing).
• Ticia. Someone soft and fluffy to sleep with.
• ( CW: excretion )
• Plastic grocery bags, oddly enough, which make excellent liners for small trash cans, which I am suddenly needing more of. [See above].
• Bagels, lox, and cream cheese. Real bagels, as opposed to torroidal dinner rolls.

I like to let the Thanksgiving gratitude post cover not only the previous week but the year since last Thanksgiving. Which is why I'm starting this on Tuesday. I am grateful for...

• having been diagnosed -- hopefully soon enough -- with one of the most treatable forms of cancer. NO thanks for my prostate gland and its immediate surroundings.
• (mostly) online support groups, particularly The Healing Center. Also other support websites, like Whats your Grief. (I'm not going to list them all, partly because I don't appear to have made a canonical list. Yet.) NO thanks for recently having to broaden this category beyond grief support. I'm glad those sites are there, it's just...
• rabbit holes, which appear to be my main coping mechanism right now. Particular thanks for the axiom of choice, group theory, Evolution, Wikipedia in general, Bandcamp, YouTube, ...
• my family. Or is that families? Kids R and E, sister N and brother-in-law G, niblings m, j, and c; and nearly-niblings(?) foster-niblings k, s", and g". (It's complicated.) (What's the opposite of family of choice, anyway? None of the alternatives I've seen, like "of origin" are anything more than adequate, and some are awful.) Additional thanks to Colleen for introducing me to the concept, and welcoming me into hers.
• Mom's cranberry relish.
• being financially able to afford health care and to help other family members. And pets -- vet bills have been astronomical recently.
• our cats. Cricket, Bronx, and Brooklyn in the house; Ticia in my Lair. Thanks too for Desti, who left us far too soon, earlier this year. Special thanks to Ticia, who has been my sleeping companion since Colleen died.
• the filk community.
• electric washing machines, dishwashers, and vehicles. Particular thanks for Molly.
• lithium-ion storage bateries and USB-C.
• Dreamwidth Studios (dreamwidth.org), my blog host, and dreamhost.com, my web host. (Not related, despite the similarly of names.)
• free-to-use artwork (both public domain and CC-licensed). Particular thanks to Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons, and pexels.com.
• open-source software, including Linux, Git, Make, Bash, Emacs, Audacity, WordPress, and Xmonad; also the computers I run it on, mainly my laptop, a Lenovo X230 called Sable. Additional thanks for the "spare" laptops, and Git's ability to synchronize them.

Today I am grateful for...

• PET/CAT scan results being (as far as i can tell without an official diagnosis) much better than the worst case.
• New patient appointment scheduled with oncology. (See last week's mention of referrals.)
• Better leg bands. (But not on my thigh where I'd been expecting to use them.)
• My bin full of meds. (Too many to thank individually, and NO thanks to the conditions they're treating, with mixed success.)
• Dresses with pockets, and warm things to wear over them (also with pockets).

Today I am grateful for...

• Having a figure-eight power cord in my backpack that I didn't need, to use with the CPAP whose(???) cord I forgot. Was not, unfortunately, able to pull the same trick with chopsticks.
• Thanks to ChargeASAP for a reasonably compact USB-C charger.
• Purrfect Cat Boarding.
• Lyft.
• Moldex N95 masks -- reasonably comfortable and one can actually breathe in them. It is claimed that one can sing in them -- I expect to find out this weekend whether that's really true.
• Being able to find amusing rabbit holes starting from modern medical diagnostic technology. (Case in point: a PET/CAT scan, which I have on my schedule for next week. (The current terminology is CT, not CAT, but it's a better pun the other way.))

Today I am grateful for...

• not hurting much,
• lidocaine,
• antibiotics,
• getting a diagnosis (not too happy about the diagnosis itself, but it's good to know),
• Ticia.

Note: The last two items include a considerable amount of circumlocution and vagueness. Approach the links with due caution if you think you might be squicked by details about the digestive tract and the (male in particular) urinary tract.

Today I am grateful for...

• Sleep, when I can get it. (And Ticia, when she lets me sleep.)
• Being able to read books on my phone.
• Podcasts with transcripts.
• Phenazopyridine. NO thanks for BPH.
• Osmosis.

Today I am grateful for...

• Finding some important things that I misplaced when I re-organized my EDC luggage.
• Masks, especially the highly-breathable Moldex 4200, and the cloth masks by Sonovia (which are washable and foldable).
• Fried (leftover) rice.
• Wet cat food in single-serving packages.
• Free online language lessons.

Today I am grateful for...

• The ASPCA's Animal Poison Control hotline | (888) 426-4435. If I'd known about this hotline when Ticia scarfed up something that may have been one of my meds on the bathroom floor, I would have saved myself a lot of unnecessary anxiety and guilt. (She's okay. Whew! I have since changed my bathroom routines to prevent re-occurrence.)
• Ticia, for cuddles and comfort. Also nose-boops.
• Cats in general, for having something to talk about with strangers.
• Eggs and English muffins.
• Family of choice. N in particular.
• Not being alone.

Today I am grateful for...

• Ice water in hot weather. (And just about any kind of weather except very cold. But if it's that cold, ice water may count as "warm".)
• Magnets. Especially, magnetic fidget toys.
• Sleep. (I rarely get what most people would consider "enough" -- thanks in part to Ticia -- but I manage.)
• A cat to sleep with. Thank you, Ticia.
• Left-over pizza bones. Rubbed with a clove of raw garlic, preferably.
• Amazing hacks, like this Turing-Complete CPU In Sunvox modular synth.

Today I am grateful for...

• Desti, our household's lap-cat, pocket panther, and incarnation of Bast, for ten years of love. NO thanks to cancer and acute kidney failure.
• My nibling-of-choice, m, who went out to the vet hospital in the middle of the night to give Desti a familiar person's touch, voice, and scent in her final hours, and set up the call for the rest of the family nine timezones away so she could at least hear our voices. (Additional thanks to m's stepmom, J, who provided transportation and support.)
• The folks at PurrfectCatBoarding for taking care of our kitties during our trip, and for noticing that Desti needed emergency care. Also the folks at Animal Medical Center of Seattle, for providing that care.
• Financial resources, for flinging at the above in emergencies.
• Coffee. Also coffee grinders and brewing equipment.

Today I am grateful for...

• PurrfectCatBoarding - a really nice place to board our household's five cats while G, N, and I are in the Netherlands for the next 12 days.
• Actually being in shape to travel -- hopefully.
• Adapters that let me power my (oldish) Thinkad with USB-C power delivery. (NO thanks for USB-c cable and charger weirdness, that makes me use a charger that delivers a lot more power than the laptop actually needs.)
• Finding a forgotten pair of slacks hiding in a dresser drawer, where they have apparently been lurking for at least the last year.
• My right eye finally recovering from the latest infection. (NO thanks for my lower eyelid, which apparently folds in half and irritates the eye. Frequently.) (Thanks for finding that out, though.)
• Experience packing light. Having a medical device with extra space in its carrying case.

Today I am grateful for...

• Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in The Netherlands. See also, [PDF, translated]
• Antibiotic eyedrops. Lubricant eyedrops. Eyelid wipes. NO thanks to eye infections.
• The #Fediverse. (Except for the rabbit-hole factor?)
• Friends who reconnect. (Note that I'm unlikely to reach out, because introvert and I don't have much to say these days.)
• Air-quality monitoring websites. Clean air when I can get it. (Pro tip: never breathe anything you can see.)

Also no thanks to clumsiness and stupidity, especially when they're mine. The gadget I fried wasn't doing much good anyway.

Today I am grateful for...

• Finally getting an email through to someone we (me, my brother, and Mom's executor) have been trying to get a response from for months.
• Sleeping pretty well (for values of "pretty well" greater than six hours) for most of the last couple of weeks. (It's not clear whether this is because of the cats, or in spite of them.)
• But anyway, the aforementioned cats, Desti and Ticia.
• Wire transfers, and figuring out how to make them after Union Bank's merger with US Bank.
• m and k, for sorting through boxes over last weekend.

Today I am grateful for...

• Being on the opposite side of the country from the smoke, for once. (I'll enjoy it while I can -- it looks like the West coast will have its turn pretty soon.)
• Not being so dependent on my CPAP that I can't handle the occasional malfunction, Having an adjustable bed so that I can raise my head helps a lot. So does having kept the old machine after it was recalled. NO thanks to the DreamStation 2 it was "replaced" with -- that's the one that crapped out on me.
• Also, having had the good sense to call customer support to confirm that Respironics wouldn't care if I didn't return it, after finding out how badly it sucks.
• Having a phone that I could use as a backup video camera to record k's (high school choir) concert this evening. NO thanks to my Tascam video camera, which didn't work when I tested it.
• Cuddly cats.

Today I am grateful for...

• Exit plans.
• Fidgets.
• Insulated cups and tumblers. And French presses, for that matter.
• My support groups.
• Masks, and the people still wearing them.

Lately I've been having a lot of trouble with these gratitude posts.

Today I am grateful for...

• Dreamwidth. I keep thinking about doing something for Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, but since all of my social media posts are (only) here anyway, I haven't done anything about it so far.
• Also, Mastodon. Although it's hard for me to avoid the rabbit holes there.
• Thrift stores willing to send out a truck to pick up things I don't need. Today it was Habitat for Humanity. Not too happy about why I don't need them anymore, but that can't be fixed.
• Finally getting off my arse and making some appointments. See above. Also another COVID booster (bivalent 2).
• Left-over garlic butter to put on my rice. Having made garlic butter earlier in the day. Not to mention my garlic press.
• Pleasantly warm weather. (I don't think I'm going to be grateful for the hot weather predicted for the weekend.)

Today I am grateful for...

• Buyers for the house on Whidbey. They're now making sure they can finance it. Fingers crossed.
• Nice weather. As long as I don't have to drive into the sunset.
• Sleep, when I can get it.
• Rabbit holes when I can't.
• Grep.

Today I am grateful for...

• Appearing in Florida, Newsom shows Democrats how to campaign in a culture war - Los Angeles Times. Hopefully not too late, but I worry.
• The Fediverse.
• The Event Horizon Telescope, "an international collaboration capturing images of black holes using a virtual Earth-sized telescope." -- There's a post about that in the works.
• A zoom-based grief support group at The Healing Center.
• Good weather -- defined as warm enough to be pleasant but sufficiently overcast to keep the sun out of my eyes when I'm driving.
• A tax refund presumably on its way. (On the other hand, I still have estimated tax to compute and pay on Dad's trust, and there are a lot of other annoyances around that.)