Written on Halloween

Today was pretty great. I had to do a thing in front of the company, which I did in concert with my colleague from the archives. My walk-on music? A harp. Pretty fab.

When I came home I watched the birds vs the dodgers, and it did not go well for us so we go to Game 7.

Then the phone rang with the special ring set aside for my sisters. I assumed it was my oldest sister telling me that my brother-in-law was dead, because he has dementia and things are rough up there. But no.

It was my middle sister, the one I call The Hammer.

I have been joking rather seriously for the last few years that I would like to own a big diamond that belonged to my grandmother, who thought herself quite fancy. This was her wedding ring for marriage #2. I had it appraised a while back, and started wearing it, while tabulating the amount of money that I was spending on my mom. Starting with plane tickets in 2017 and adding all of the things that I bought for her between then and her death, her tab is in the low 5 figure.

So my mom dies and I ask my sister about the jewelry, because she'll want to let the estate attorney know about it. In the past years I've been wearing the diamond, which is hilariously large, but I know it's not really mine until after the estate settles. Or maybe that won't work out. Anyhoo, a while back my sister asks about the 1990s appraisal of the jewelry. She wants me to mail her paper copies. For some reason I didn't do it at first. It made no sense to me. I could have sent her the pdfs that day. I hate mailing things. She is afraid of taxes. I don't know what she did with the appraisal. 

A few weeks ago my sister calls to tell me that she's going to tell the estate attorney about the jewelry. Either then or during that weekend's vortex of power meeting she tells me that she's going to tell the estate lawyer that I'd found the jewelry in a box of documents or something. She let me know that I had to decide what the story was because I'd be telling it. Wait. She told a lie about me and now I had to participate in that lie also? I didn't tell her at the time, but if the lawyer asked me I planned to tell the truth. My sister's lie is not my problem.

She calls tonight at 10:30 her time. We are planning to have a family meeting tomorrow morning with the lawyer. My sister has called because she wants to know if we can talk in the morning. She wants to be able to take a Xanax or whatever tonight and go to bed knowing that we can talk in the morning. I asked if we could discuss whatever it is now, because now *I* wasn't going to sleep well wondering what the topic was that she wanted to discuss. I mean really! So I coaxed her into a conversation. It was about the jewelry, and what we were going to say about it. I can't recall all of what was said but I told her that I wasn't going to lie. She tried to manipulate me by saying "You can't possibly know how much I'm doing for the family" etc. I do know this, but the fact that she lied about whether my family had jewelry as part of the estate and now she wants to come clean and lay it on me has nothing to do with that. She said I was "un-generous" and "selfish" and that she was sorry that she had misunderstood what I wanted to have happen to the jewelry (or something). In the meantime, mrguy could hear everything that she was saying and was performing an extraordinary pantomime of nailing himself to a cross and such while I was on the phone. It was highly entertaining / distracting. I stuck to my guns and did not back down and there were empty silences in which I think she might have understood that I was immovable. Mrguy said he was proud of me. I was proud of me, too.

The Latest

This is what the candles looked like in the light of day. Very different from each other!

And now this is the latest: mrguy's most recent scans are in.

"IMPRESSION:

1. No evidence of metastatic disease."

The other stuff is still in the report, the things I call "old guy stuff". He has an enlarged prostate and some arthritis in his neck, and a cyst on his "robust pancreas". Even his original tumor site, the esophagus, shows only "Stable trace circumferential wall thickening" which makes it seem as if it might be returning to its pre-cancerous appearance? Dunno. Mind you, this cancer often snatches you back at the slightest hesitation. But this is great. Mrguy has been worried. I have not. 

He seems so good on his good days. This morning he made us an avocado cheese omelette using his new favorite pan, and I imagine that right now he's in the man room dancing the tarantella.

So Yesterday Happened

We left the home together! And we bought camel shaped pastries at the Italian bakery in the rain.

After a while, I started making pumpkin salmon soup in advance of watching Game 2 of the World Series. The Blue Jays are my team and I've been looking forward to this for 30+ years. So I got my ingredients and was cutting my many vegetables and listening to an interview with Roy Wood Jr. and Trevor Noah. I began to feel settled, looking out of my kitchen window with my headphones on, while making my cozy soup. Then the day took a turn for a worse.

I saw a woman and her dog pass from my side of the street to the island and deposit a huge bag of dog doo on the island, leaving it there and walking away. I snapped. I ran out of the house, grabbed her bag of poo and shouted down the street "Don't worry. I'll take care of your dog shit for you!!!!" Surprisingly, she heard me, came back halfway and said "I always do that and come back for it later". I turned my back and yelled "I've got it this time!!"

Not my finest moment, and I feel somewhat ashamed, but there I was making something yummy and if I didn't move the dog shit I was going to have to look at it. How did I know she was coming back, and WHATEVER. I regularly see dog doo bags in our front yard left behind by dog owners. And on top of it I was just thinking today about maybe planting something in the barren island in the middle of the street.

So I finished the soup -- and if you use this recipe it really isn't quite the same if you use celery instead of celery root (there was none at the store). But I was just thickening it and putting in the corn and salmon. Mrguy replayed the Canadian national anthem for me, and after the top of the first the power went dead.

The power company told us that the outage would last until 7:45, which would be the end of the game. I decided to pull out some fun candles -- the kind that turn colors as they melt. They did not give off much light, so I added a regular candle. And we listened to a Canadian broadcast of the game on SiriusXM.

The soup was delicious, but we lost Game 2 and are now tied 1 - 1 with the team that mrguy calls The Hated Dodgers.

Here's what caused our outage. 

Bot Fun

I wore out a bot who reached out to me last night while we were watching Game 5 of the ALCS. 

The bot reached out to me because I subscribe to a fan page of a musician I once worked with. In my experience he is a terrible tipper! 

Also we only played music, just so you know. This was my first attempt at bot torture. We have a friend who is really great at it, and that's what inspired me to engage when the bot wanted to talk to me. I made a point of not telling it anything revealing.

No Kings II

Updates: The New York Times today says "thousands" came out to protest. The president then posted an AI video of himself in a fighter plane dumping feces on crowds of protesters, who are then covered in shit. The president is so icky.

++++

Sometimes you just need to get your yayas out. I met with a bunch of (mostly) older folks out on the pavement and waved to cars, getting them to honk.

Woooooo!!!!

Honk if you love America!

Honk if you love Democracy!

Thank you!

and for those who did not honk:

Honk in your heart!

At one point the most beautiful parade of lowriders came through, with gorgeous paint jobs and delightful joie de vivre. Two little kids rode their illegal tiny motorbikes, which would usually make me angry, but they were with the program. We had one student driver pass by who was freaked out by the commotion, but her instructor honked the horn for her.

One lady early on approached me to ask what the fuss was about. I explained the thinking behind the movement and she thanked me. I hope she comes out next time.

I would say that there were close to twice as many people out today. The signs were amusing and heartfelt, the police were respectful, but the shade was sparse. I met a really nice lady who, if I see her again, I want to share contact info with.

I went hard at sign waving and fun making for my fellow protesters, and I hydrated because it was really warm today. After giving my all for an hour, I went home to scoop up mrguy. He had chemo this week and was not feeling well, and also disappointed that he wasn't well enough to go out. He was making himself some toast when I got home, and I took him down in Tiger Brown to see the local protest for himself. He did not, as I suggested, try out my sun roof. We honked and wooed at people and then went to the store to get some juice. It was lovely. He felt great that he got to participate. 

We'll see if I have any voice tomorrow. I was singing in the store and my voice was cracking a bunch...It felt great to go out there and express myself and amuse the people. 

First Amendment, baby.

Thank You, Mr. President

Thank you for ranting about the restoration of this awesome-looking church, the United States Air Force Academy Chapel in Colorado Springs. Without your passion for whatever it is today I would not have known about it. There is a similar looking structure near the airport on Oahu, and I wonder if there is a connection between the two.

The offending church

Here's an interesting interview with the architect, Walter Netsch. By the spelling of his last name I'm guessing that his ancestors were Wendish, by the way.

Here is the Netsch family home, recently restored. He really took "death stairs" to a whole new level.

Loooove this cool library. 

And without the inflammatory post about the church, I would not know about

Cats_Of_Brutalism

Thank you, oh great one!

A Week in October

It's felt really busy at work this week. I wrestled with this guy, that had a document from the 3rd forklift line on it. I had to get the floppy reader, coax it to engage with the floppy, and then I attempted to put the files straight onto the server because I was worried I'd never get the floppy to connect again. That was not permitted by the operating system, so I had to drag it to the desktop. Could not be read by Word, so I opened it in TextEdit, from there into Docx, then tried to put it on the server. Apple, right now you are on my bad list. You know there is a bug in your software that is making my life impossible, and you won't fix it.

So I get my newly converted elderly digital file on the server and it's greyed out. I had to use some backend code that my coworker taught me in order to put a new version (and my all-important readme about the machinations that led to this file still being alive almost 30 years later) on the server without being greyed out. 

Also work -- I wonder if there is a term for something that has been on the free table on multiple occasions. I found this on the free table before the pandemic. I wore it for a while, trimmed the beads off, got tired of it and put it back on the free table. Just found it there again.

This is my beautiful handbag that I found on the free table a few months ago. I love it so much! It contains a special package -- cat poop from my baby boy, to be sent to the vet. All good, but he had a tooth cleaning this week and now he is a little wiggy and sometimes fears me.

I have been very social this week. Talked with the Rev after work on Tuesday. Went out to dinner with Precious Nephew on Thursday. Burned my tongue on Immunity Broth, which I had to get because of its name. Still hurts two days later. Yesterday I went to a luncheon for work (lots of people-ing) and then went out with a girlfriend from the restaurant for dinner (more people-ing). But it was great.

There were some gorgeous skies this week.

My Christmas cactus seems to be an October cactus. Pretty!

And my team is going to the division series for the first time since 1993. There was a lot of baseball. Vlad Guerrero Jr. is so great. I will be rooting for you, young man!

I had two hours of people-ing this morning, attending my Irish genealogy group meeting. By now I am pooped, both literally and figuratively. There's something going on with my innards that is unpleasant and makes me suspect that I should stay home this evening instead of watching a Japanese horror film with friends as I had planned.

More in these pages.