Off the Cliff

Well, that was the year that was. It rained. A lot. Which may be why I remember virtually nothing of it aside from the downpours. New year is set to snow, though tonight will just be more rain. Was going to go to the laundromat but it looked like, what else, rain so I just stayed in. Maybe the next clear day.

Ordered a new back brace in XXL since I'm not losing the tummy weight that would make the old one fit. It's the size of a Japanese obi and about as stiff, and of course it smells. Nothing will ease my lower back pain, including the things supposedly designed to do so.  Woe woe is me.

As for reading, yes I read a lot but of course it was all detective fic: all of Flavia Alba, a lot of E F Ferrars (good for a minimum 30 vols)(ETA 47) and E C R Lorac. Did at least reread Sense and Sensibility and a good ten Pratchetts and a couple of nonfiction books. Thus my uneventful retirement.

Paupers is only having its turkey dinner on the 24th and 25th so it was today or never. (Yesterday had too much snow to go out.) Crunched out over salt and/or untreated snow on twinging feet (feet do not like boots) and had a reasonable dinner with a lot of wine because wine is exempt in the HST holiday. Then discovered the wine store was unaccountably open so threw caution to the winds and bought pseudo-Bailey's Irish Cream and will stay drunk on same until Friday.

Have finished at least two or three of Martin Edwards' collection of Golden Age detective stories. Go down easily, leave no traces. Have another on the go plus a Michael Innes, Lament for a Maker with its pleasant Scots vocabulary, most of which I understand either from R L Stevenson or my childhood or, for all I know, those Middle English classes in uni. (Which have me puzzled. I remember taking Chaucer my last year, and remember that somehow I knew Gawain in either  '71 or '72 because I remember telling the plot to a sick housemate to distract her from her acheypains, but can't for the life of me recall anything else from that course.)

Got a promising mystery from the library about a mummy in the Brit.Mus and various shenanigans attached thereto, but it began with an amateur yobbo assistant at same measuring and weighing and unwrapping the specimens. Then I come on a sentence where said assistant is vivisecting a mummy and no, I really can't go on.

So am reading Thief of Time instead. Oddly, because that and Night Watch were what got me into Pratchett finally, back in 2008, I'm finding it rather a mishmash. But second class Pratchett is still better than most people's first class, so shall continue.

And boy is it bleak. Snowed a little but not enough to brighten the grey day. Having located my broom I went and swept the front steps, then took my cogito ergonomic shovel and scraped the snow from the front path and sidewalk. Occurred to me as I went in that maybe I shouldn't leave the shovel propped against the recycle bins out front because someone might think I was putting it out for the garbage but hell, up against the porch itself, why would they think that? Of course someone did, within ten minutes of me coming inside. Ah well. At least someone intends to shovel their snow.  Temps will be above freezing next week but it's still supposed to snow this coming Monday, *and* we have a polar vortex on the weekend that will mean no long walks outside to say Wiener's Hardware, so have ordered another from the Mighty River who are the only ones able to deliver in two days. And maybe my good neighbour will shovel for me that day.

Mail delivery has resumed but spottily. A month's backlog plus Christmas season means things may be back to normal by ohh February? Some ass at the CBC is saying privatisation worked for Switzerland and Germany and the Netherlands so why not try it here? What do those three countries have that Canada lacks? Could it be a small(ish, in the case of Germany) land mass with dense population? that means post can be profitable? While here, any company that buys the PO will keep the profitable southernmost routes and let two thirds of the country go hang. People. Sheesh.

Mh so the posties are ordered back to work. The posties are, rightly, not happy about this. Also a month worth's of mail and parcels to be delivered. Nope, lunar New Year's it is. Expect nothing before that. Especially as I have no stamps.

Otherwise, it rains. I make hamburger stroganoff. I dream of leaving the daycare with my two bicycles, which is behind the doors to the UC quad, only instead of leading into the quad they take you to.. East Hall? West Hall? The junior common room? A lofty barn-like structure in any case. Some place I haven't been to in going on fifty years,  whatever. Can't remember where I wrote my Chaucer exam in '77 but that seems right.

Mercury dropping in the mouth of the dying day. Should do a laundry and hang to dry in the heat of the furnace that I will bump up to a giddy 18C tonight. Only, knees are unhappy at the cold and dank etc. and not wanting to use basement stairs. At least I got the recycle out in good time.

Mice are back. They scorn my trap. Have bought a wintergreen cleaning spray and hope it's pepperminty enough to keep them off the counter. Alas that I hate the smell of peppermint too.

Finished?

Derleth, The Chronicles of Solar Pons
-- with a Dickensian story to round it off in happy synchronicity with A Christmas Carol 

Blake, There's Trouble Brewing 
Blake, A Question of Proof
-- really enjoying these. Very twisty plotting. C. Day is classic enough that kindle prices him accordingly, but I'm still working my way through the library's copies

Reading now?

It appears I have an untouched Elizabeth Ferrars, The Doubly Dead, that I somehow completely forgot I owned. An unexpected pleasure, especially since if I want to read her at the reference library I must put in a stack request and either wait two hours, or put the request in the day before and hope it will be ready when I drag my bed-bound self out the door. Given winter narcolepsy and the difficulty of being anywhere before noon, this is not optimal.

Also have Dark Matter: Reading the Bones for bicycle readig.

Reading next?

Shall see what those Father Brown/ Sherlock Holmes pastiches are like.

What I'd really *like* is a Marcus Corvinus, but somehow I've managed to remember the plots of all the ones I own, including the ones I only read once. This is very unusual, and I don't care for it.

Down the salty sidewalk.

City has come by doing its pointless 'fight that millimetre of snow!' salting routine, and leaving the occasional berm behind to torture the poor dogs' feet. Oh well. Will be 6C and rainy by Sunday and will all wash away.

But Blawblaws finally has turkey roll in, even if it hides the cranberry sauce who knows where, so I am content. I suppose turkey roll is also ultra-processed food, but I don't  care.

Equally the barista at Starbucks now knows me by sight , not to mention my invariable order of a sweet cream vanilla cold brew, and suggests changes to the regular products to suit my tastes. I've never been one of those customers who customizes their order because either there's a line behind me, or the barista is alone while the other is on break, or both.  But it makes for interesting drinks in any case.

Snow on the roof tops when I got up this morning already melting in the sun. Parts of the province have had several feet already and I moved my physio appointment because it's supposed to fall heavily on Wednesday, my usual day. I hope the downtown microclimate will come to my aid, but best to be safe.

Went to get myscle relaxants at the pharmacy yesterday but the case that has them was closed and locked. I was afraid this might be a new gov't restriction or something. Inquired of the pharmacist. No, it's that the lock was broken. Still was today. It won't hurt me to go without for a bit. I don't think methocarbamol actually works; more a placebo effect.

Scotia Bank informs me that they've sent me a replacement card for the one that expires in January and I should activate it ASAP. This is nice of them except that they sent it by mail. How, I wonder, since the postal workers are on strike and post offices aren't open. I shall hope the strike gets settled some time in the next six weeks. Luckily this is the card I don't use for online payments, and that I also have cheques on at need, but I may have some heavy expenses that it would come in handy for, like dentists. Eh bien. Bridges when I come to them.

Meanwhile my lenses appeared promptly on Sunday, belying the '3 to 5 business days.' So am set for the next three months and change.

They said it would rain today. I don't think it did but stayed in anyway because my knee is doing the Kleinzach thing of clic-clac any time I move. Dunno if it's bone spurs or tendons. Hope for the latter, suspect the former. Vacuumed a bit, roasted a hubbard squash which I like better than the usual run of squash, and started a crockpot beef 'n' veggie thing going in red wine, which I hope will turn out better than my last crockpot beef.

My cousin Maryse has died at the age of 105. She's actually the widow of my mother's cousin but in France anything up to a 20 times removed relative is a cousin, tout simple. A good life, and apparently she was trotting off to Madagascar regularly at an advanced age. ETA she had her 100th birthday there. Sugoi. The only trouble with that long a life is that you outlive some of your kids,  which she did- my cousins Pierre and Lucien IIRC. Of course, if you don't have kids this is not a problem.

The rain continues to rain every day and no matter how much I sweep, leaves I didn't even notice fall out of my walker's wheels where the rain has plastered them on my brief forays outdoors. The joys of the season. So I stayed in and swept up the dust elephants on the front bedroom. However useless I thought the air purifier, it must have done some good at least. Ordered in alcohol because I was out of everything but the cheap red wine intended for a shoulder of beef some time. Did laundry, did (some) dishes, changed furnace filter, read. Did not vacuum the hallway and kitchen where the leaves are. Will some day when things stop hurting. 

Otherwise, nowt.

The other pain of the postal strike is that my contact lenses come by mail, and I must always order at least a month in advance in case there are supply line issues. I have forty lenses left (one a day, remember) so in the ordinary way of things I'd order in a week. But even if the strike is settled soon-- not likely-- there'll be a backlog and the Christmas glut. The one option is to go see the optometrist, which means having eyes tested, which means big bucks because the province no longer pays part of the cost; and no guarantee they'll have the lenses in stock. The other option, not recommended, is wearing my lens two days in a row. But I tried it today with yesterday's lens and suffered no ill effects. I wouldn't do it every day, but once every other day should be doable. Thus my remaining forty lenses will stretch to sixty, by which time either things will be back to normal or the online lens places will have decided to courier.

Procrastination is sometimes a blessing. I have a bag full of papers to be shredded, that I've been dragging my heels on. Occurred to me that I've been dragging heels so long that most of the credit card statements are very out of date and can be put in the recycle. So I spent an hour this evening separating stuff out and the to-be-shreddeds are now much more manageable. So go me, I guess.

Mnh. So postal strike is a go.  People will get their Christmas cards come Easter, I suppose. But then I had to sign up for online billing from Enercare (the water tank) only they won't do email billing even though the flyer said they would. Pre-authorized payments how about, huh? huh? huh? No, I don't think so. Shall check online in early December to see what I owe so that increases don't sneak past me. Yes, and how lucky I didn't throw the last bill in the recycle that went out yesterday so I had my account number handy.

But Enbridge (actual gas) is another matter, because I did throw out my last bill. Oh well, there's all those bills up in the study from years gone by. Only they're all credit card statements. Eeps. Seems gas bills are always floating around the house until you actually need them and then they vanish like dew. In desperation I pawed through the box of even more ancient cc statements that I have yet to take to the United Express place to be shredded and unearthed a bill from 2020. And they *will* do e-billing, so that's settled.

There's a place that will come and take your books, records, and cassete tapes for free, so I can finally get rid of the box of cassette tapes in the study that's been gathering dust for years. Only they won't take the ones you record yourself. Once separated out,  that's only half the tapes, but it's a start. And I can add a few bags worth of records to that as well, instead of sticking them on the front lawn.

And finally took the bag of flannel sheets and pillow cases that I'd separated out from the linen closet as being surplus to requirements, that had also been sitting on a study chair,  down to the Orthodox church drop-box. One thing accomplished at least.

Nice to get a gas bill for .17. Yes, seventeen cents, because the hot water heater now bills separately and I overpaid last time because winter is coming. Though not that fast because we seem to get a resurgance of summer weather once a week or so.

This was all cancelled out when I went to vacuum today and couldn't get the canister back on. Pulled and pushed the little button and it wouldn't click in and it was never this hard before ohh why isn't there some strong-armed person around to click my canister in place?? Eventually realized that canister looked a mite... short? Oh, the bottom part is missing. Must have come off when I rinsed it out the other day, it'll be in the drying rack. It was not in the drying rack. I looked carefully about the kitchen in case of Johnson Spot Blindness and no, no grey plastic circle to be seen. Could it have come off when I actually emptied the canister? It's not supposed to but, like, there's the lower catch and there the bottom isn't. In which case I'm SOL because the garbage went out yesterday, presumably with the canister bottom inside. So now I've ordered a new Dirt Devil for what gas ought to have cost me this month.

Spent the week reading Unseen Academicals. Still think it's a good book and Pratchett is always a consolation.

Did another foot-dragging thing and emailed the physio who does assessments for walkers etc. Email promptly bounces: no such address. I double checked it with the woman who gave it to me, the rehab head at the LTC residence down on Bloor, when she gave it to me, so either she got it wrong or that physio has vanished in a puff of smoke like the other one. 

FB reels has started showing me clips from The Crown and I'm unwillingly fascinated. It feels indecent to be showing the life of someone who was very much alive at the time. Yes the Queen is/ was a public figure but not in the same way as  an actor or even a politician. Biopics of them are fair game because their raison d'être is to be in the public eye. The Royals, I dunno, are different, even though the scandal sheets make hay out of them all the time. Which is considered vulgar where I come from.

For once the kidlings had a dry (and warm! and windy!) Halloween so were out in force up and down our well-decorated street. SND is having a porch party on hers and I think NND had a bunch of M's friends over as well. All Hallows doesn't usually encourage people to be outdoors so make the most of the unseasonable temps: especially as the forecast was for rain and thunderstorms. My only sadness is that the golden tree across the street shed half its leaves in the winds. And eventually I must start bagging the leaves that carpet my front walkway.

Ordered a backbrace that came today. Reviews said it was sized large so I ordered one size down. Am just on the cusp of XL and XXL so got the former and it just fits. I *think* it helps with... something, though not with today's locus doloris which is the hip flexors, or maybe the TFL. Was doing the step-up thing which occasionally unkinks that area on my way back from shopping and a young woman asked if I was OK. Something off about her since she seemed unwilling to accept that I was just working out the stiffness. It's Toronto manners to ignore this sort of thing, or at least to accept whatever explanation that's offered. But this was by the Baptist church so maybe that's what her problem was. Especially since she left me with a 'Bless you.' 

Succeded in cutting down a swath of the creepers out back and inflicting some damage on the mulberry that's trying to take over the AC compressor, but clearly I need to rake up the leaves that have fallen from the cherry tree. A nuisance, because stoop labour hurts, dammit. Have been looking at ads for back braces but I *have* back braces, they just don't brace enough. Will core strengthening ever have an efffect?

We're getting the brocade effect on the trees now, and about time. The maples in particular decided to turn red about three days before they began to fall. My poor  physio booked a bus tour of the fall colours up north a fortnight or so ago, and there was nothing to see.

That Guardian article about Horrible Histories has me ear-wormed now, because I was so taken with faux-Simon and Garfunkel singing the praises of the kinder gentler Vikings that I watched it about five times. And of course it referenced one of my two favourite codas of all time, so now the mental muzak is playing The Boxer nonstop. (The other one is Layla, of course.) Must admit I've lost my ear for Brit accents because I couldn't make out the lyrics of anything else the article linked to, and especially not Rowan Atkinson's Henry 8.

This living in the future is not all it's cracked up to be. So I fill the online customs form, get a barcode on my phone, and trot off to the Shoppers PO. Yes, the Ossington real PO is closer but the reviews of it are damning and anyway I need to buy a sheet pan and some smoke alarms on the way. So. Arriving mid-afternoon there's none of those endless lineups that outlet is so prone to. One clerk is helping a little old lady (which,  come to that, I suppose I am too, though I'm not little and hardly a lady of that ilk-- no dress or heels or make-up, and why would one want to wear any of those into one's 80s I wonder) (except my great-aunt, born in the 1890s, absolutely had to wear a girdle or else she didn't feel dressed, so custom doth make somethings of us all.) Other clerk attends to me. I proffer my phone. 'You've prepaid?' Uhh no, it's the customs declaration wot I have to have because you don't have forms anymore. So she gets her little scanner and-- it won't read the barcode. She tries about five times, asks can I turn up the brightness level, but it's already at 100%, holds her hand over the top of the screen, tries to enlarge it and can't, on and on as a line forms behind me and then finally on the 20th try it clicks. Next time I do this, if I do this, I shall use the tablet. Which might work and might not.

But anyway, that's done.

Had been reading about wines and saw an article praising Lambrusco. A fizzy red wine? I might actually be able to drink that. So yesterday went over to the LCBO and looked for same, with no luck. Asked a clerk who took me to the fortified wines, apologizing that they only had the very sweet and the sweet but not very types in. I should have realised that fortified means even the regular will have sugar in it. Got the not very sweet, and it's pretty close to soda pop. In my youth, when Canadians were not sophisticated enough to drink good wine, the local vinyards made a wide variety of cheap sweet fizzy wines to rope people in. Lord knows why: beer drinkers, which is what most Canucks are, will not be going after sugary tastes. But Lambrusco is very reminiscent of Baby Bear and Baby Duck et al. (Baby Duck was the best selling wine vintage in the 70s, which tells you all you need to know. They still make it. Baby Bear seems to have ceased, but there's now something called Pursued By Bear, which pleases me, though I don't know if it's any relation.)

Fiesta had its jellied fruit candies in, which it does from time to time, this time presumably for Halloween though they're hardly the kind of candy one distributes to the tinies. In any case, they're much loved by J in Tokyo so I bought her a box, and today walked over to Shoppers on Bloor to get mailing envelopes from the PO there. We're having what in my youth was called Indian summer, which nowadays means the last time the Indians-from-India will be comfortable, though even so the delivery bike couriers were all wearing heavy jackets like Arizonians bundling up in mid-70sF. Dropped by my fave Japanese restaurant and Nadège for macarons, and will admit I do like it when people open doors for me even if I could manage myself in a pinch. Also the Nadège clerk complimented my outfit, which was summer trousers and short-sleeved shirt in shades of rose pink.

And  someone did indeed take both bags of records, and left the box they were sitting in, which I appreciate. I can't prop the bags against the corner of my front lawn where an ancient election sign frame is rooted into the ground, because that's where the dogs pee en passant-- and have succeeded in killing my peony bush-- so I need something to hold them upright closer to the hedge. Last time the someone took both the bags and the box, which was annoying.

Disturbed night last night, natural fallout of having to be up at 7:30. Taxi was fifteen minutes early and at the wrong address (seriously, what is it with 543 not registering as itself?) but we got that sorted and he delivered me at TO Western in good time, in spite of Bathurst being its usual parking lot. Construction on the hospital side, sewer replacement on the other, plus what I suspect to be a condo going up near the corner.

Saw the orthopedics guy who says sorry, elbow is too foutu for arthroscopy, wanna replacement instead? Umm, do I? You can't lift things when you have a replacement, something like 'no more than five pounds, 2.5 kilos.' And me having to flip  mattresses and heft walkers up stairs so no I don't think so.

But being only a subway stop's distance from the AGO I walked over there, because streetcars are hard to get onto with a walker and anyway Dundas is as much a parking lot as Bathurst, and for the same reasons. I wanted to ask why my membership card hadn't arrived yet, and answer is, because they're going to a phone code but haven't got the bugs out of it and it will be available in November. Didn't ask them What if you don't have a smart phone, because they assume everyone does. But anyway, took myself to the AGO Bistro for lunch, at hair-raising prices for not much food. The waitstaff were all very nice but were not the middle-aged professional waiters of the Before Times, and the coffee isn't as good, and the cocktails were a tad uninspired. Also, the membership I got no longer includes the discount. That's for people who shell out $110 and up. The waitress gave me the discount anyway but explained that even if my ticket said membership, it wasn't the *membership* membership.

Succeeded in getting myself home via TTC and only screwed up once at Osgoode Station, asking the attendant where the elevator was when obviously it was the big square thing just past the gates.

However, the day's other downer was yesterday's mouse who bypassed the tiptrap (and just as well because you have to remove the beasties something like 1000 feet from where you find them, which I measured once as the far side of Christie Pits) only to fall into the plastic rinse tub from the dishes and drown. I should empty it when I'm finished them but for some reason I never do. Fished him out, bagged him, put him in garbage, emptied tub and filled with highly concentrated bleach and water solution. May buy a new tub as well. But at least that's farewell mouse.

Dream of being in a library looking for books to fulfill a project for a class that was happening in the library, on Victorian literature I believe, and not finding them because the shelves were all in different places and I wanted Kipling but the alphabet went from H-I-J to Dj and variants thereof and no Ks at all.

Yesterday's turkey dinner at Pauper's was really very good. The most indifferent part was the turkey itself but that's par for the course. Would be tempted to do it again except today system is taking exception to the onion bhajis I had for dinner last night, tomorrow is going to rain, and I weighed myself this morning to discover my attempts to lose weight has gained me almost a kilo. I know some of it is water weight but the rest is-- I don't know. Starch of any kind, no matter the calorie count? So, protein and veg it must be from now on.

Went looking for turkey rolls to supply the protein but no one has them this year. Got turkey burgers from Farm Boy, that most useless of supermarkets. Useless because all it has is food. You want toilet paper or cleaning supplies, you must go to one of the other area supermarkets, and if you do that, might as well buy your food there as well. Shrug: people.

As always when the temps first go below 10C/ 50F, everything feels cold cold oh so cold. I toy with the idea of turning on the heat. But checking the thermostat, turns out the heat is actually on and will kick in if things go below 15C. Thermostat currently thinks it's 20C/ 68F so the cold is pretty much psychological.

Finished Delicious in Dungeon 2-4 and Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1&2, have subsequent volumes waiting at the library, and will get them tomorrow probably. Will also return Shigidi which have given up on. It should be fascinating but the execution is so lackadaisical that I really can't be having with it, even skimming. Yes, there's a succubus in it, no you really needn't tell us how every man she meets salivates over her meticulously enumerated charms. Or what happens every time she copulates with the protagonist. A pity.

The catscan went ok, aside from my first cab driver turning left when he should have turned right and preparing to take me up Christie instead of down Bathurst, and my return cabbie not having room for my walker in his trunk and having to put it in the back with me. Diamond assures me that they have 'collapsible walker' noted on my record, but maybe I should ask them to add 'tall' to that. It will be worse if I ever get an upright one, but I doubt I'd take that in a cab.

Catscans are a doddle compared to MRIs, with no tube, just a City on the Edge of Forever donut. And they took me first of my group, possibly because a simple unfractured elbow is easier to do than what the other two guys had, which seemed to be indeed a fractured elbow and a somethinged ankle. So I was in and out in less than fifteen minutes. But now I'm wiped for some reason and thinking about hot showers and bed.

Reading Daemons of the Shadow Realm before bed yesterday got me a very unpleasant nightmare of being a Japanese girl being stalked by a something, or a menacing someone,  in an obscure city landscape. This will not stop me from reading vol2 because I'm such a sucker for backstories, but yes, this manga is quite as unpleasant as James Nicoll said it was. I mean, I was forewarned because it was his review that made me put a hold on it in the first place,  but that's no consolation.

Went to get a scrip at the pharmacy yesterday, pharmacist wanted to review my meds with me, so after the lunch break scrum cleared a bit that's what we did.  She recommends the pneumonia vax which enh, because I'm never near enough to anyone to catch it, though I always blamed the walking pneumonia of '85 on my friends' unheated Amsterdam apartment in December. But it was just as likely from the flight back. I think the pneumovax is free to crones my age, I just don't know if I care for the side effects. The shingles vax she also wants me to get is *not* free, and costs big bucks, and also has side effects.  I had the old vaccine somewhere back in the day, but they still want people to get the Shingrix. And I did have chicken pox as a kid back in the dark ages, so caution suggests...

But also the covid vaccine is now available and she was all ready to give it to me after I'd filled out the form. Only I have appointments next week, so I'll do it when my schedule is clear. And a good thing I triple-checked said schedule, because I had it firmly in my head that the catscan was Tuesday the eighth and it's actually this Monday. The follow-up is on a Tuesday, the 15th.

Today was something of a bust since all I did was get sheets and towels to the laundromat and got caught in the rain doing it,  but that's one foot-dragging chore over.  Was pleased to discover that the trucks which were blocking the route to the laundromat the other day were actually replacing the broken and uneven sidewalk, both sides, that makes getting there with a loaded walker a pain. They still haven't made good the curb: asphalt is down but not the concrete yet,  so there's a bit of a gutter in the roadway one must bump over, but it's a definite improvement over what it was before.

The minor drawbacks of living in the future include informing people who automatically debit your credit card that you have a new one with differing expiry dates etc. And especially when one of them is Patreon which has the most useless and infuriating webpages imaginable, starting with their Login page not giving you a login option.

Not that I've activated my new card yet because my old one doesn't expire until October, and I want to get the 'beginning of month' charges out of the way first. But then I'll have to trundle down to Rogers and let them deal with updating my phone plan, and somehow figure out how to deal with Squaredle. Possibly by getting a new plan.

Blood draw finally happened Friday so I'm fine till the end of December.

The light these days is autumnal even if the humidices are August. But a 22C / low 70s with a breeze isn't the same as a breezeless 27. So I'm quite comfortable in a tshirt for the present. Went out and had Eggs Bennie on a patio this afternoon, with blue skies and very white clouds, until the grey clouds moved in and the landscape became autumnal indeed.

Unruly, about the monarchs of England, makes for very dispiriting reading. That might just be that Mitchell doesn't think much of kings in general, but equally it could be that those were nasty times period, in which a king could be effective and bloody, or ineffective and bloody-- if only in the wars caused by various rebellions against him-- but nothing else, given the way things were settled back then. "Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."

Phone call before 9 ayem woke me, and because my cordless phone was out of charge I had to limp down the hall to the study to answer it, but of course it went to voicemail before I could. So put cordless to charge and checked study phone to see if there was a voicemail, which no, so not likely to be one of the 'so and so has died' ones. (Get three or four of those in your life and it kind of scars you.) Only the cordless will tell me who was calling and wouldn't until there was sufficient charge.  Briefly debated going for my blood draw but if it wasn't actually raining, it certainly had been. So I went back to bed, telling myself I'd just meditate for a while, and of course back to sleep. And every time I woke up I just rolled to my other side and sank back down into oblivion. I didn't want to get up, I didn't want to get out into the cold grey achy day, so I stayed where I was until noon. Even contemplated staying in bed all day, which I don't think I've done since I got back from Japan.

However, once up I did weigh myself before breakfast and found that low carb has lost me two kilos in the last ten days, which is very satisfying. And it's not water weight either, because my ankles haven't shrunk any. Still a kilo over what I was in July, but I expect that will come.

It may have stopped raining during the day but I didn't trust it not to start again, so I stayed in. Vacuumed and did dishes and read Simenon in America, which depresses me for no good reason. And now it *is* raining again and will continue to do so all night and possibly into tomorrow, the long rains of September. They say it hasn't rained for at least a fortnight but I can't remember what that was like at all.

The trees are starting to turn colour, even if we still have summer temps going. And because we have summer temps and summer allergies still, am not sure what I've been reading lately. Delicious in Dungeon with its stock RPG cast of paladin, dwarf, healer elf and light-footed lockpick, makes a nice synchrony with Dark Lord of Derkholm, except that the latter isn't really grabbing me. DWJ is not a fluffy writer. So I reread a Marcus Corvinus, Old Bones; two Maigrets, Yellow Dog which I have in French and got nowhere with,  and I now see why, and Tall Woman, which is oh well; and at some point, now forgotten, a Ferrars.

City dinged me for my property taxes this month where they usually forego them in September if they're going to forego them at all. Tried applying online and was told they've already received my application, so it didn't get lost in the mail. Insurance premium is also due in early October so may have to ask my money people for a top-up, which should ensure that the city will forgive October's installment. But I've been pretty saving this year-- usually by now I've had two top-ups with one more to come, so we'll see. At least the market is high at the moment and better now than in November with its unfortunately uncertain election.