flemmings | Entries tagged with techy

Putting -ai in the search bar doesn't get rid of AI results. Putting a swear word in does, though the results lean heavily to reddit.

My bribe from DoFo has not yet arrived and the gov't webpage which previously told me it was in the queue now rejects the last four digits of my SIN. Or maybe my postal code. Whatever, it won't tell me the status of my bribe.

Being in the middle of a trade war evidently means I must now keep my glasses in my coat pocket when I shop in order to check provenance. I believe I bought produce from Türkiye today, which is not preferable to the USA on any front except the not-USA one.

Snow yesterday was probably freezing rain to judge by the state of the sidewalks up the street. Many households salted, including me; many did not, including my northern neighbour. Some of it melted in the above freezing temps today, and will turn into glare ice as the cold front moves in overnight. In earlier times the yoyo temperatures of February happened at the end of the month, but not anymore.

Put the tablet down and your entry disappears completely. I really want a laptop with a proper keyboard. This tap tap tap with the middle finger is getting old.

Stayed in all day because snow. Will probably stay in tomorrow because cold. Wednesday and Thursday I have to go out, and I hope sidewalks will be shovelled by then. Or maybe I'll just walk on the west side of the street which seems to have been plowed and salted all along its length. Supposing I can get the walker across the street, of course.

Did laundry and dishes today but otherwise sat on sofa reading Lavender House, a dispiriting gay mystery set in the hideous days of the early 50s. Happyish ending but still a downer. Turn with relief to the slightly happier libidinous romp of Mortal Follies. I read the second one first and am only slightly disappointed to discover that the Duke of Annadale is in fact a cis woman and not trans as I'd sort of assumed. Ah well. Can't have everything.

Why won't DW let me unsubscribe from anything, including deleted blogs? Untick, save changes, check manage circle, and there they still are.

Nor can I subscribe to anyone new. Click subscribe, click give access, save changes, check manage circle, and there they aren't.

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.)

Maybe it's vaccine fallout still, maybe it's the current temps, maybe it's just arthritis being itself, but joints are still achy achy. Couldn't get to sleep last night even with beanbags all over, and when I finally did, woke myself coughing. I assume it's an allergy cough from the clear mucous feel of the thing, but may have to try sleeping propped up somehow to let the sinuses drain. Temps are set to plunge come Wednesday night which may help.

Got my credit card registered at Rogers so that's out of the way, then kept walking on Bloor back to Shoppers PO again to ask if they have customs forms for overseas, and if course they don't. It's all digital now. So, what if you don't have a cell phone, I ask, and then yes bring in the info and they'll do it for you. They better, she says grimly, because I remember those digital forms that can't deal with Japanese addresses and that want a phone number for your recipient. At least they no longer ask you to weigh the sucker. But it beats me that people use their phones for things like paying in stores. I must find out how that works because it strikes me as immensely dangerous. I don't even keep my banking info on my phone: can't delete it from my bookmarks in Chrome in case that deletes it from all my synched devices, but there's no number on it. Still haven't figured out how to unsynch individual bookmarks but probably should.

The maples and sycamores have finally got with the program and glow red and yellowly in the warm sunshine. Thus I indulged in Restaurants again and had sushi at the Walmer Rd place I used to frequent in my bicycling days. They sat me in lonely splendour by the front window so I could look at the church across the way and also the variegated passersby on Bloor. Eventually other people came in, one being a woman with her own walker which she tried to park in front of the doors, not realizing that it wasn't the little nook she thought it was. She was sitting behind me and telling her companion about her granddaughter/ niece/ relative called Cassandra, which name the girl hated on account of knowing her Greek mythology. Then she had to explain to her friend who Cassandra was and that got her onto Iphigeneia and the causes of the Trojan War. Trouble was, she couldn't remember the name of the Greek leader and had to talk around this lacuna. And I so wanted to tell her 'Agamemnon' but This. Is. Toronto!! where one doesn't do that.

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."

Weighed myself Thursday morning and sighed at the toll taken by, presumably, vodka and coolers. Well, so, shall try for a dry June and see what happens. Of course it might have been the peanuts I've been eating, in the shell but still. Best stick to pistachios or walnuts, which are expensive and thus conduce to economy.

And I *was* half a pound less than two weeks earlier, but I really thought those two mile walks might have burned a few more calories.

Am not walking anywhere today because of course it rained. Put up my Pride flag in the front window where it won't get wet because, yes, rain forecast all week. Of course it also blocks whatever light comes through the trees which today is none at all. As it's also the last of the coolish days I also roasted two sizable chicken breasts and a load of veg, which filled me nicely.

The online prescription service at the pharmacy has been giving me error messages-- can't connect to server-- for a few weeks now. Asked about it yesterday and the guy said no one else has mentioned it but I should use the report function on the app. Only I can't, because it won't connect to the server. This is only mild arghities, but is argh nonetheless.

I won't say that the successful conclusion to the 'data roaming that wouldn't' problem was due to me getting the female employee while her male counterpart was on lunch break, but oh I shall be thinking it hard. In any case it seems I've had data all along, just very very slow. So she switched me to another of Rogers The Octopus's many many tentacles (from chatr to Fido, basically) with many more gigabytes of data and a grand reduction of a dollar less a month. I might have been able to switch from billing my credit card to deducting from my debit, which I would prefer, but she wanted a three-digit CVV number for it which as far as I know debit cards don't have. However. Set for the future. Though it did take the male employee to figure out how to switch the SIM card on my idiosyncratic phone ie you take the back off. Which beats breaking fingernails to get the usual ports out, but is also, well, idiosyncratic.

Because it was a lovely day I thought to go down to the Royal Bank outlet at Harbord and Spadina, since they closed the ATM by the Bedford subway exit. Takes you through a flowery part of town, all tulips and daphne and little blue flowers that might be lupins but probably aren't. It's also on the way past Bakka and being as chuffed as I was, I decided to get the latest Murderbot in hardcover, since ebook Murderbot won't stick in the head. So did that, and went to the corner of Harbord and Spadina and-- that bank branch was closed. Ohh Royal, how I wish I knew how to quit you. If I'd consulted my newly revived data I'd have seen that there's an ATM across the street in the grad residence, but disgruntled reviewers complain that that part of the building isn't always open. So instead I walked up to the Scotia at Bloor and got money there.

And then walked home for a total of over 8,000 steps. Knees and back behaved very well in the newly returned dry semi-warmth, and I might try doing this again if body and weather cooperate.

Argh of the day is that my phone seemingly no longer has data. Which is a problem only that data appears necessary to access library ebooks when eating out. Shall take it down to Rogers on Bloor to see if they can do anything because online help is very unhelpful. No, I cannot edit my APN, don't ask me to. But it's supposed to rain tomorrow so happy procrastination on that front-- as also trying to release my xrays from the lab which I am so not looking forward to.

Got Exit Strategy back to the library just in time and am now rereading Network Effect because I grasped very little of what was happening first time round, and also have System Collapse in ebook to follow.

Today was a Leg Will Not day, something that happens increasingly often. Seems I need an hour's worth of acupuncture and cupping, and thirty minutes will not do. Yesterday was no fun either, but I walked some of it off. Today I walked as well, to the LCBO, and gin has made things much better. Also took Ibuprofen, that my doctor wants me to limit severely, since NSAIDs after 70 cause heart attacks. But as I pointed out to her, if it's a toss-up between maybe a heart attack and definitely sitting on a sofa all day moaning in pain, I'll run the risk. At least I no longer reach for the ibuprofen by reflex. Let the tylenol do its pathetic best, and then reach for the ibuprofen.

Somewhere towards the end of 2019 or maybe early in 2020, the laundromat guy had the makings of a coffee bar erected in a corner of the building: which then sat untouched for nearly four years. Last time I was in a carpenter was attaching frontage, and Friday when I went in the coffee corner was up and running. The lattes are too strong for me but they also have pastries, oh dear. I could maintain that I only go there once a month but I think it's closer to two or three: and may increase if I keep on having bad leg or bad knee days.

Chuffed to discover there's a government dental subsidy for the impoverished aged, then annoyed to discover you can't apply online though they say you can. But they want you to sign the thing by dling it and printing it and mailing it to them. And how many of the impoverished aged have laptops and printers, I ask me? With Adobe Acrobat reader which you must use, accept no substitutes. Library doesn't expect to be back online before January when the snow falls. I might think the gov't was, good heavens, trying to discourage people from applying.

I suppose for some people who live in the future, Canada Post's 'weigh it yourself, measure it yourself, print it yourself, pay online with a credit card' system may be a boon, but I think you still have to bring it to a postal outlet. And the option of inputting the details to a smartphone and then having them print the label may save time, but they still require that you pay in advance with a credit card, which frankly I'm not prepared to do. And they still require a phone number for your recipient, which one may not have. Yes, I know- invent one because odds are good they won't call. But it's an awful lot of faff IMO.

If I had a printer and if you could just toss the parcel into a post box I might be tempted. But I don't and you can't. So at some point-- maybe the weekend when temps will hit 5C and tomorrow's snow is melted-- I shall limp to the post office and mail my parcel. Or cab it. Physio is adamant that my swollen leg is not owing to the cyst but I think different. And my grumbling knee is certainly caused by it. Ah well. If my doctor us right, using Voltaren will cut the inflammation from six months to four. I should be mobile by (sob) March.

I seem to have spent all of yesterday thinking it was Sunday, being mightily confused when PostSecret hadn't changed since last week, and being mightily confused this morning when the weather page kept showing me Sunday's forecast no matter how often I refreshed. Clearly I need to get out more. Which I did not do today because it kept looking like rain.

Firefox looks as lousy on the tablet as I expected, has no bookmarks bar, and seems to have crashed Livejournal into the bargain. The Down or not? webpages assure me it's up but I can't access it on either tablet. Technology, feh.

Ahah. There was a Chrome update last Monday that evidently didn't take on the downstairs tablet, and now Chrome displays all webpages as if they were feeds with the o-- over --o. Which may explain the hinky placement and fonts changing size. If I were feeling brave, which I'm not, I'd remove it and DL again. Though I doubt that would accomplish anything.

Had massive failure of the will this morning. Simply couldn't get out of bed. Getting up hurts and lying down doesn't and I wanted to stay lying down. Some of the wanhope may be from blooming allergies-- I mean the allergies are blooming, not that they're reactions to blooming things-- with that kind of system wide malaise that ragweed involves; and some may be psychic fallout from deliberately not being my mother and imagining disaster scenarios around my sister's operation, being as I'm antsy about epidurals at the best of times.

As we approach my second anniversary and I'm still chained to my walker, I ponder getting another one that I can rest my forearms on in a standing position. Highway Robbery North had them on sale last spring for $600, down from 1200, and no sales tax because I'm buying, not renting. Same ones go online for under $400 but with sales tax and shipping, and probably having to assemble myself. Still of two minds and hoping my legs would just acquire some more strength so I could go back to my walking stick.

1. Suddenly my webmail interface is wonky. Half the page is crowded beyond the border, but only on the upstairs tablet.

2. Suddenly all the text in Chrome is either too big or too small, but only on the upstairs tablet.

3. The Facebook app won't open at all, but only on the upstairs tablet.

4. The Facebook page lags when viewed in browser on both tablets, and anyway the fonts are all wrong.

5. Dreamwidth is down. OK, now it's back.

In non-techy happenings, I cleared most of the vines off most of the back path so you can actually see it now. Remains all the sodden moldering cherry leaves to be raked up but plenty of time for that. I shall be quite stiff enough tomorrow without overdoing it, and prudently have booked a massage to undo the worst of it.

My money people want to talk to me, as they do every September, and I want to talk to them about maybe I'll take them up on that kind offer to be executors of my will, because if I live to the age I think I will, my current executors may be moribund or as dead as I am. Though I expect that if I do, they may have different ideas about estate planning than I do, they being people for whom money is of necessity Serious Bizness. But cross that bridge when we come to it, because every time I try to answer their email it bounces, or my program won't send it at all. This is concerning, as a similar problem cropped up earlier this year, when I sent an email, apparently successfully, that the recipient simply didn't get. No fun at all when asking for a top up to meet heavy expenses like yanno roofs.

But fine, I have a gmail account, and I send my reply with that, and it goes through successfully. Thus I will be using gmail with them in future. But christ on a cracker is gmail nonintuitive. Is there an address book feature? No, there is not. DL another bloody app if you want to save addresses. Can I keep the email with the date of my consult in the inbox? No, gmail wants to put it somewhere else. Gmail keeps drafts of my emails but doesn’t inform me if my email actually went through. I have to check Sent to see if it did or not, and I have no idea why it saves an email as a draft in the first place.

I never thought of Google as being as evil empire as some I could name, but I'm beginning to see why people do.

Lost day. Too stinky to go out, too achy to do anything but sit on the sofa. At least I got the recycling out, or rather, Sadie's mom put it out for me.

Dream of taking my (really an ebike but I never thought of it as that ) from dream! Daycare, situated sort of across from the museum instead of several blocks west of it, through those tony non-existent restaurants and hotels south of the Colonnade instead of north of it, threading narrow corridors in an attempt to get out of the buildings and finally managing to get out into a conglomeration of the AGO's back lawn, the Victoria College campus, and Trinity-Bellwoods park way down on King St. Accompanied by a person of uncertain gender who might have been the DC cook crossed with someone else. The area back of the Colonnade with the tony restaurants is one of my frequent dream locations, though it never looks like itself, since there are no stores there and it quite often pretends to be in Tokyo.

The downstairs tablet used to stick an icon of anything I googled into the 'most visited' dash, which was a nuisance because I want my most visited sites there. But now it won't put any icons there, including my most visited ones. First world problems but still annoying.

I use a banking app for my Royal account because there are no accessible branches nearby. But now they want me to verify that I am me. You can do this in person-- no-- or via our other app, which download from Google Play. No, because 'this app is not blahblah for your device.' OK, try the upstairs tablet. Upstairs tablet denies the existence of any such app. Go to my banking app, log in, get the 'verify your identity' message with the Google Play link, click, 'this app is not blahblah' again. Read the reviews. The app will not work with Android tablets, period. Android phones, yes. Now I don't keep the login on my phone filled out, though of course it's there with my Chrome bookmarks. But shou ga nai, fill in the required info and wait for the prompt. And this time my account loads no problem.

This living in the future is not all it's cracked up to be.

Definitely into 'grit teeth and endure' weather. 30 temps and 35 humidex isn't that bad but there's air quality alerts to go wth it. Acupunctured today and just those few blocks, masked, had me hacking and horking, so sat on sofa for the rest of the day reading Thorndyke and not reading Master of Poisons which is a little too close to home these days. Was happy with fans alone last night, but last night was below 20/68 when I went to bed and tonight will see 20 at dawn tomorrow. Hence window AC and blessed coolness.

Wanted to get to the hardware store for a weed whacker since next door isn't mowing the lawn for some reason, possibly death of lawn mower, possibly love of dandelion fluff; and the gardener is MIA. I'd intended to go yesterday post-dentist, but dentist left me with no desire to go anywhere but home. If tomorrow is anything like today I shan't be going anywhere either and may have to wait for Saturday's cooler weather: by which time Wiener's will be overwhelmed with gardening yuppies. Aside from supporting local businesses, I want to consult Wiener's oyajis about strimmers, uses of, is why I haven't just ordered from Amazon. Are cordless worth it, do they all use twist ties, nado nado.

The rain started Friday afternoon. It stopped long enough yesterday to let me get to the super for salad and a chicken dinner, then started again last night. It has not stopped all day today. The bunker roof is Kusama-polkadotted with cherry blossoms as the tree slowly denudes in the rain. I should get up and move a bit because not moving only stiffens me more, but I'm on the sofa under a blanket with a hot beanbag against my back and standing up will hurt.

Sent The Ruin of Angels back to the library a scant quarter through. I can't read 600 page books on my tablet in the time given me, and don't want to. I can barely parse Gladstone's action in paper, as demonstrated by my current rereading of Full Fathom Five, now on the third go-around, with nothing sticking in my memory. But I need to reread that and Four Roads Cross and *then*, somehow, I'll get down to Bakka for a hard copy of Ruin.

Meanwhile the whatever you call it in Chrome that usefully gives you your frequent webpages has taken to giving me long ago google search items instead. I can clear cache and then replace them one by one, but mostly I just want Chrome to stop doing it.

A dozen years after buying my sound system I finally got tired of not being able to switch from one CD to another with the remote, haul out the manual and start to read it. Manual says I can press 'next disc' on the remote, except there's no button called that. Then I look more closely at the specs. Manual is for an entirely different system. And I suspect the remote is for quite another system too, one with only a single drive.

So now I'm tempted to spring for a combined record/ CD player. I've been bringing records up to put out on the front lawn and umm I miss listening to them.

Put my tax stuff together last night and for a wonder it was all there. Except. Except my anal retentive accountant had given me a list of forms from last year, please check that you've included them this year, and a T3 from something called Fidelity was missing. Now I know in past years there've occasionally been forms that trot in mid-month, rot them, and in past years I've just ignored them, but anal retentive accountant will surely check his little list. (My godmother said there are three people in your life you want to be OC: your doctor, your cleaning woman, and your acountant. Which is true, but.) And I had the form last year in time to mail off to the accountant by April 3. Had a horrible feeling that this downtown firm (and who are they anyway and why am I dealing with them in the first place?) had mailed their slips into a post box which had then been trashed by one of the angry homeless who now go about trashing mailboxes and stealing mail. So getting a replacement will take forever if it's mailed, because Easter is two postal holidays, and not much less if it's emailed, because no printer, so it will be next week before tax stuff gets off oh woe.

This plus a latish Pepsi meant I couldn't get to sleep, so stayed up and read silly Rivers of London comics till 3 a.m. And was awake at 9, still kuyoing. But Fidelity opens at 8 and I called them, went through the voice tree (*am* I an investor? I still haven't a clue who these guys are and what trust disbursements I'm getting) got a ringing phone that rang and rang and went dead. Repeat three times. Webpage gives an email address, I dash off an email, where's my T3?, get a prompt reply: email is not secure please call us at our dead phone number. Which do, and finally get a person. We go through my ID questions, she says Yes here's your T3 I can email it to you, I'm OK, will take to library and print out and might still get tax stuff off today. Great. But then I ask Look, who are you and why have I no record of dealing with you? and she says Well you were with these two advisors David and Caroline, who are my present guys at Royal, which is weird, and then she says Oh I'm sorry that T3 is for '21 your account with us has been closed. Which is great relief all round if still mysterious.

So my forms get couriered overnight delivery for a hideous price, and now I need only hope they get done in time to avoid paying interest on the money I'm sure I'll owe.

But oh I want a desktop or even a laptop that will connect to a printer. Am really thinking of getting a Chromebook because I also want a proper keyboard, but there's no way of getting files from a dead WinXP to a Chromebook that works off the cloud. (Keyboard, yes, where the language shift button is not right next to the space bar.)

I don't know why I spend so much time doom-scrolling through FB hoping for new content when I should be doom-scrolling through tumblr which just took me a good two hours to get to where I left off yesterday morning. Possibly because FB lacks tumblrs' quirks of hanging forever while it loads clips, and yeeting me back to the very beginning if I happen to leave it for another tab.

Rained today but not heavily enough to cab to massage. So I limped there and back, and of course I first stopped to have a Cosmopolitan before and then went and had sushi and two glasses of wine after, then bought brandy chocolates that finally got me home. Back to salad and broccoli tomorrow.

I'm always slightly miffed when my dreams fade as I wake because these days dreams are the only excitement I get in my life. (Maybe after all I should get a TV, but TVs these days are so complicated that my technophobe self cringes at the thought.) (Also TVs are bloody expensive. There are other things I could spend $400 plus sales tax on. Like a laptop, or even a desktop.)

But I know for certain that I've dreamt about Queen Elizabeth at least twice, once where I believe I had her conflated with Mrs. Bradley, and once set in some vaguely eastern, maybe Chinese, harem setting where she was still the queen but weak and on her deathbed, amid political plots and harem scheming.

And now it's the upstairs tablet that's playing silly buggers and suddenly refusing to charge. Finally managed to get it to 100%, but now I'm worried the cable is loose or something, and of course the downstairs charger is too big. Both Galaxy Tab A but different models.

Decided to go to the first Mrs. Bradley just to get things straight and oh dear oh dear oh dear. Mitchell's love of the stereotype (Irishmen are impatient, Welshmen dour, Jews think only in terms of money) goes supersonic when she has Black characters. Points for including them (does any other Golden Age writer?) but not like *that*. Jeez, even Conan Doyle did it better. And he had Indian characters which none of his later descendants managed, that I've come across.

Is DW changing something around or what? Gives me a total blank screen until I start typing and then I have the entry box again. Unless I stop and then it's blank screen time again until I resume typing.

Accomplished yesterday, though it was one of my owie days. Got my Chrsitmas cards, next year's calendar, and next year's daybook from Midoco, got a new sinus rinse set at the pharmacy because the old one was looking grungy (nothing like squirting bacteria up one's nose) also eardrops for wax buildup though what I wanted and they didn't have was polysporin for ears. Which I forgot to look for at Loblaws today. Couldn't bicycle because knees objected even with the setting turned down a notch, but managed 40 minutes today, so yay me.

Did the math and subscribed to Kindle Unlimited because $10 a month is cheaper than buying half a dozen Mrs. Bradleys at 2.15 a pop and then discovered that the first month is free. Discovered also that it's scarcely Unlimited because after I'd snagged two titles I was informed that I'd reached my borrowing limit. Also it seems that I don’t actually own the titles I'm reading? That I've borrowed them only? Must look closer at the ToS.

Gladys Mitchell was indeed prolific, but my library only has 2/3 of her output, and only half of that circulates. As I suspect I'm incapable of reading a book in one day at the Reference Library, or at least very unwilling to do same, I checked amazon. And amazon has a plethora of her works, most of them e-books. A few paperbacks starting at $25+ once taxes and delivery are factored in.

Now, amazon has kindles on sale for about a hundred once taxes etc, but. But. Six by four inches? No, I can't read on that. Go up a few hundred dollars and I can have a whole seven inches. No, and especially not with amazon trying to push kindle unlimited or amazon prime on me ie hook them for a month and count on them forgetting to cancel. With my Swiss cheese brain I might well do that, though to be fair to me, any time amazon has thrust prime upon me, I've always cancelled it within days.

There's a kindle app for androids that no one has anything good to say about. Can't buy books through the app. Nor do I want to. Touch the screen by accident and the book skips to the end, or goes back to where you last left off, or even to the beginning. How annoying. But it's free. And the ebooks go for pennies, or at least half the price of a latte. Um, well, and that is why I now have a kindle app on my tablet. Go me.

Well, I managed to print out my doctor's blood draw requisition at the library. I'd loaded the .pdf to my phone's drive but of course they couldn't do it that way. It was log in to a computer, google in Firefox to find my online email account, wait for slooow connection to get it, log in to account, wait for slooow connection, be told my user name and/ or password was incorrect, try again, wait for slooow connection, be told my user name and/or etc etc. Log out of FF, log into Chrome, am allowed into my email, find letter, bring up .pdf, send to printer. Which will not print until I scan my library card and pay the librarian in advance for printing. And finally get my printout, which I could have made copies of but I think the librarian had had enough of me by that time, and I'd had enough of technology. Went to restaurant and had two glasses of very ill-advised wine (allergies in full bloom) and a plate of too hot vermicelli and shrimp.

And that was pretty much the sum of accomplishment for the day, though the day itself was quite beautiful. Sun through cirrus cloud making things sharp edged, blue skies, warm breeze. Classic September.

Feeling rather less achy today, though I was hoping I could repeat this weekend's post-chiro limber. Probably requires a drier day because today, though all white and blue, had saturated air as well. August. What can you do?

Brother dropped by after who knows how many months- four? five?- bearing cherry juice and paper towels, the latter being what I'd asked him to bring. They've been largely at the cottage, bar a trip to Montreal that s-i-l and her New Mexican niece took and my bro wisely did not. Because they flew, out of Toronto, on Air Canada. I believe Pearson's understaffing woes may have made the Guardian, and all through July we were regaled with stories of AC's lost luggages: missing for three weeks, or ended up in Dubai instead of Stuttgart, or simply sat in the airport for a week because wherever it was supposed to be, Toronto wasn't it and no baggage handler came to look at it. And as foretold, their flight was cancelled twice and niece's luggage did not make it to Montreal. It did get sent back to NM, and s-i-l took the train home, which was probably what they should have done to get there.

Am supposed to have bloodwork done every three months and haven't. Doctor sends me the requisition form by email and I print it out, or used to when I had a computer. I may have a form left over from before but thought I'd better get a new one, so called the secretary to ask could she send me a bunch. 'No. We don't have the means- no stamps or envelopes.' Which floors me: what do her aged patients do? No idea. She suggests I send her a stamped envelope. Which I may, or maybe I'll forward the old email to my bro or NND and ask them to print it. There's also a way of theoretically getting the library to print it but that's a bit techier than I feel up for.

When I wake up at 8 I roll over and go back to sleep because there's nothing to do at 8 a.m. And when I do that I have daycare dreams after a long absence of dreams with babies in them. Two years of no kids and probably no babies ever again. I'm still in disaster mode because of the realization that both my legs have weakened to the point that I can't stand unsupported anymore. There's a stretch where you put one foot outside the other and bend at the hips and no, just no. I lose my balance doing that.

Current tsuris is having my deskop go black screen of death. Have tried various things with it but so far nothing will bring that floating cursor back. I was getting less and less use out of it but still. New technology is vexatious to the spirit. And although I've been writing these entries on my tablet for years, the last few ones were on the desktop which is so much easier, and now I feel ill-used not being able to do it.

It's April Ghost Tide again when I go back to 1996's return from Japan. Or it was this morning before my computer crashed. But now I'm very much in 2022, worse luck.

Third time's the charm. Which is to say, my LJ exported to DW the third time I tried the 'import content' function. Except the comments didn't Import. Have tried to reimport twice, and as before with the entries, I get an 'import failed' message. I also get duplicated entries from 2015 onwards when I started cross-posting. Not sure if I'll try for a third time with comments, and if those fail again I shall. in my OCD fashion, go through and delete the duplicates. I'm grateful to have my entries, but reading without comments is like missing the frosting on the cake. Let's just hope Russia stays on the net. Or comes back to the net, whichever.

Alas, LJ archive only works with desktops and laptops, not tablets, and my desktop is too old for the app. Or rather, it gives me a nanny 'cannot provide a secure connection' message. Probably it could, but as it has computer dementia (all those clock errors) it thinks it can't.

Speaking of memory errors, I've been having minor glitches in mine. Like not taking my lens out Monday night and not positioning my walker by the bed last night. These are automatic things I do before going to bed, and maybe I forgot simply because they're automatic and I was being distracted by the pervasive ear worm of We Don't Talk About Bruno. (cough) But this morning, seeing my walker on the other side of the room, I had to get out of bed without it and-- my knees and hips did not go into spasm as they usually do? Which is encouraging except that they more than made up for it during the rest of the day, and that with a massage this afternoon.

Gas bill came today, for slightly more than last month's heart-stopper. Yes, well, the markets. But what surprised me was that I used only slightly less gas in February than in January. when I was sure I'd turned the thermostat down more often. Seems to me that I never turned it down at all in that first month. But heigh-ho, we are in the end times, so let's spend what money we have on comfort.

The cordless phone in the bedroom is less than satisfactory, in that I can barely hear the person on the other end. Looking at it today, I saw an unnoticed button in the corner: Spkr. You have to press the speaker button to hear anything, just as with my cell. And my question is, simply, why? What purpose does it serve? It's just another button to press. And on a cordless? The phones at work never had spkr buttons, and I'm annoyed that this one does.

All this made worse by the fact that the person I was trying to talk to- before I transferred to the study phone- was calling from the insurance company, asking questions I'd already answered before, in an Indian accent so thick I had to keep asking her to repeat things, which is embarrassing. Normally I can handle most Indian accents but I've either lost the ability or lost part of my hearing or both. She said things like GAIR-edge for garage, and I heard furnished for finished, and it was an exercise in serious cross-purposes. But at least she called me to ask about updates instead of happily waiting for me to read the new policy and call them and tell them that, seriously, the plumbing *has* been updated since 1910, though the policy itself came back not updated at all. Possibly my new roof and new breaker panel will cut something off my premiums, though I'm not holding my breath. And I could have done without her tut-tutting that I should call them any time I have work done on the place, a bit of information that no one has ever mentioned in the thirty-five years I've been paying insurance.

I grow more and more crippled so must go back to the intellectual doing of exercise, which I neglect because I'm back in the paralysis of the will that began last week, and also because I really don't want to return to those thrilling days of last summer and its three times a day of 45 minutes exercise. I'm *tired* of exercise. 'I do not like this game, I don't want to play it anymore.'

I've also been resisting the urge to read Vlad Taltos because that's a rabbit hole I don't want to disappear down. As a substitute I read Nero Wolfe, or rather Archie Goodwin, who goes down easy and has fifteen zillion ebooks to borrow and isn't quite as addictive as Vlad or even Paarfi.

Oh Google. I know there are five wps that have passwords that were found in a security breach. I don't use any of them. Stop prompting me to change them. Why is there no 'ignore' button?

And Chrome-- I unticked the box for 'prompt to show simpified form'. Stop asking me if I want to see things in simplified form. I don't.

And I now see one reason why people get married. It's so that when you find a dead mouse in the laundry area, your SO will dispose of it for you. Or will at least stand by encouragingly while you dispose of it yourself, and possibly find the tongs you use for disposing of such things which ought to be in the canvas hold-all in the bunker and which aren't, because the hold-all itself has vanished, and will pour you a glass or several of the Christmas wine afterward. Since I am unpartnered I had to do it all myself, and I still can't find the tongs or the hold-all.

My outdated desktop continues to annoy. If it's not clock errors, it's nanny 'this website cannot provide a secure connection'. It's quite secure enough for tablet so what's yourr problem?

Ditto Charles Dickens. I get it, Chuck: Law Bad. Law is responsible for poverty, chid abuse, starvation, and suicide. May have to start JS&MN just to read someone who isn't being paid by the word.

Got down to cellar to do laundry. Very owie because of back and unoperated knee. Everything that used to hurt is ramped up to 10 these days and I wish I knew why.

Made it to the Dufferin Mall and located my watchmaker's stand, today operated by a slender south Asian woman, presumably daughter of the regular guy, who got the back off both watches only to reveal that one is a self-winding watch that has ceased self-winding no matter how much you swing it, and the other is indeed battery operated but will not operate even with a new battery. So, continuing to spend money like water, I bought a new watch, a great turnip of a thing on a chunky metl band, because I need an expandable band and women's watches only have fiddly buckles and such, which generally require someone else's help to do up. Creeping coupledom and watches as accessories that only get removed at the end of the day. Pfui.

But at least I no longer have to rely on my phone to tell the time, something that I simply Do Not Understand. For one thing, it's damnably difficult to read a phone when you're outside, so I have to wonder what all these people walking along and staring at their phones are actually seeing. For another, it requires having your phone in a handy pocket, that thing that women's clothes don't have or don't have deep enough, and you have to pull it out and turn it on and go to the clock app because the time on the lock screen is too small to be visible outdoors. A mystery.

My doctor calls and has never heard of referring someone to rehab, but will see what she can do. Will not prescribe any stronger anti-inflams because oh your stomach lining! (I have coaters) and oh your kidneys! (well, same for my current meds) and oh heart attacks! (I have statins) and have I tried Tylenol? Tylenol is not an anti-inflammatory, dear. Oh well. She'll try to get me this heavy duty cream that athletes use for muscle tears, but only certain pharmacies compound it and mine may not. Life in the time of opioid panic. Not that opioids work for me either. / gloom

Then came back to my 'hood and had a Tom Collins and more pig than I actally wanted at the local greasy spoon, so at least there's that.

Sinking in a gentle pool of gin and tonic.

Screw courage to sticking point, figure Friday before holiday weekend will be empty at gov't offices, get health card stuff together and cab down, to find a line outside the entrance to the building and a sign: Due to the high volume etc etc we will try to accommodate walk-ins but recommend you book an appointment. This information appears nowhere on the government's website, of course. Cab back with a cabby who has no idea where he's going even with his ruddy GPS right in front of him. 'I tried to call you- tried twice-' Did my phone ring or vibrate? No. It rings for spam calls but never for cab drivers.

Come home, go to webpage, find 'book an appointment, drop down menu gives me a list of dates, select date, get message 'this date is not available', select another date', menu gives me a list of times, select time, get message 'this time is not available, select another time' and at least this time I get a list of viable options. So am booked for next week when rain is forecast.

Technology, feh. I suppose it beats doing this by phone.

Because if you do, you'll miss August. No idea where this month went to. Things that happened last week were three weeks ago and change.

Two nights of violent thunderstorms and the heat and mug of the last eternity blew away. It's not cool but it *is* dry and blowy, and my knee is happier than it has been in, well, an eternity. Also of course heat and mug might be why so little of August registered.

People are by and large not wearing masks outside but when I'm creeping along the sidewalk, as it might be to the far coffeehouse, a good 90% of them will step into the street to social distance me. I believe the science says masking is more important, but outside in a vaccinated city, presumably anything goes. Not that we don't have anti-vaxxers screaming about the government destroying our freedoms and heading us straight to a mind-controlled fascist state but loonies we have ever with us.

The Ontario strawberries are having an excellent season. Usually you can count on a bare two weeks, but I've been eating them since the time that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. Also discovered light whipping cream- from an environmentally unsound aerosol- but only 25 calories per 45 ml, paired with a 50 calorie meringue, gives a light and satisfying dessert.

This tablet OTOH, the new one, doesn't have spellchecker, it has autocorrect-- a feature I was specifically told Android tablets don't have. And it autocorrects to precisely the wrong word always always always, causing me to use violent language in response. I've been so much more even-tempered since quitting work, I don't relish going back to the me of eighteen months ago.

A while back my phone had pixilated blotches on the screen. Then suddenly it didn't. But now it randomly turns itself off, kind of ie screen goes blank even though phone still functions, as I discovered while talking to my dentist today. But to get it back I have to reboot it, which argues a dying phone. This is not something I want to happen when I'm going to be in hospital. I doubt they even have standard phones there any more.

The mug it mugs. Temps are not scorching but as ever, the night temps are not quite low enough to keep the place bearable. A couple of lows above 20 and heat creeps in, so I turned the central AC on briefly today and it cooled the house nicely. And relieved me greatly because I've been expecting the system to malfunction one of these days, given it's 30 years old. Back to window AC bumped down to 17, because again, 19 wasn't enough to combat the '22 at 6 a.m.' weather. A few more days and then back to more rational weather.

Am looking at earplugs because I'll need them for my hospital and rehab stay. Can't count on being in a private room for the first, and anyway hospitals are noisy by definition. (Granted, my one experience had me in a room off a corridor and the second night I slept beautifully, so maybe exhaustion combats insomnia. But I'm not betting on it.) Noise cancelling earphones cost the earth and seemingly involve smart apps that shrivel my technopeasant soul. The usual silicone jobbies don't work, as I know to my sorrow. Shall keep on reading reviews and see if there's something affordable that also provides white noise and doesn't require an iphone to operate.

The mug it mugs. Temps are not scorching but as ever, the night temps are not quite low enough to keep the place bearable. A couple of lows above 20 and heat creeps in, so I turned the central AC on briefly today and it cooled the house nicely. And relieved me greatly because I've been expecting the system to malfunction one of these days, given it's 30 years old. Back to window AC bumped down to 17, because again, 19 wasn't enough to combat the '22 at 6 a.m.' weather. A few more days and then back to more rational weather.

Am looking at earplugs because I'll need them for my hospital and rehab stay. Can't count on being in a private room for the first, and anyway hospitals are noisy by definition. (Granted, my one experience had me in a room off a corridor and the second night I slept beautifully, so maybe exhaustion combats indomnia. But I'm not betting on it.) Noise cancelling earphones cost the earth and seemingly involve smart apps that shrivel my technopeasant soul. The usual silicone jobbies don't work, as I know to my sorrow. Shall keep on reading reviews and see if there's something affordable that also provides white noise and doesn't require an iphone to operate.

Cool, grey, autumnal. Foretaste of the reward one gets for living through August.

Apparently after age sixty-five you're supposed to hold stretches for a minimum 45 seconds and an optimal 60+. I hate counting seconds because the proper speed is far too slow for me so I double time it for twice as long, but even then I'm often triple timing. Finally, finally, realized I could use my phone for this and did, this morning. I resent my phone and don't use it more than I have to, but now the timer on my bicycle is bust (the battery I bought for it isn't really thick enough) the phone is the go-to. Unless I use the unsatisfactory downstairs tablet, which has its own quirks, like dropping my internet connection every time it's turned off. Must turn off wifi and turn it back on again and only then does it go looking for networks in range.

Of course this morning the upstairs tablet's keyboard wouldn't work either and I had to google help on my phone. Clear the cache, as ever, which I somehow manged to do even though the instructions were all for android phones, which are of course differently set up and differently labelled from tablets. Technology, feh.

Day began with recurring dream of 'remember that person you murdered that you forgot you did?' Only this time everyone knew I'd murdered her because I was covered in blood. So convincing was it that even after I was fully awake I believed it, and the fact that I literally haven't seen her in over thirty years seemed an unlikely proposition given the certainty that I'd hacked her to death.

The other thing I must do daily is lie with my feet up against a wall for half an hour to combat edema. Boring as all get out but it really does seem to loosen things up somehow. I can be persuaded to do boring exercises if I actually feel better afterwards, which is not always the case. Of course stretches are more immediate gratification than strengthening, but strengthening is long term and stretches aren't. Granted, neither has worked for my lower back after three years, but I live in hope.

I hate when my technology starts playing silly buggers. Was at the desktop this morning, everything fine, paused to glance at my phone, and suddenly no webpage would load. Did all the usual with the broadband, sort of got it to come back, but it's still slow and takes forever to resolve host and so on. Of course I have th3e tablet, which I used for the better part of a year back in '18, but.

Found the rubber tips for the stylus; found also that rubber tips are too small for my styluses. Ordered more from amazon because Staples likes to advertise products that turn out to be unavailable when you click on them. May still have to shell out the better part of $20 for a single stylus because the amazon ones are too short for comfort and the downstairs tablet doesn't like them. Mind, the downstairs tablet doesn't like anything. I can see why it was as cheap as it was, and not just because Samsung discontinued that line.

I swear I have a hidden cache of Dick Francises somewhere because this is the second time a book I know I have hasn't been on the shelf. At least I discovered my hidden stash of Pratchetts while looking for Straight.

Maybe it's my tablets synching with each other, maybe it's just google chrome being arbitrary, but the settings and presentation have switched themselves around again so that everything is in handheld mode, logins won't automatically remember my passwords (but password manager does, so I keep having to click things) and the fonts are teeny. Bleh.

Finished Dodger. Guess it must be historical A/U because Solomon's hairy revolutionary friend Karl, with whom he fled pogroms in Russia, can't possibly be this-world's Karl Marx, that German thinker from a comfortable (more or less) bourgeois background.

The rain they predicted all day didn't show up till 4 so I could have got out for a walk in the afternoon, if I hadn't been reading Dodger and eating A&W order-in hamburgers. Protein cravings: they happen.

The Guardian page has gone back to its former layout, DW has gone back to its former layout, the keypad has gone back to its former fonts, and Postsecret now loads on my desktop. There's no reason for any of this happening but I'm grateful it has, while resigned to it reverting to me-unftriendliness again any time without warning. (LJ however has gone to bitsy fonts.)

Have been reading a couple of books by a woman who went to Japan in 1978, married a Japanese oldest son, and set up housekeeping in the family mansion. Also reading an article on fudo, in which my former and late Japanese lit prof translates a large chunk of Ibuse's musings on pre-WW2 Tokyo. He moves to Ogikubo- or rather, in the casual fashion of the time, approaches a guy in a field and says 'Wanna sell me some land?' and the guy says Sure, and they decide the payment/ rent/ whatever (I think even in those days you only bought the use of the land for a set period of time) would be the contents of Ibuse's privy, since human manure is highly valued. At that time a trolley from Ogikubo to Shinjuku cost 2 sen and could be walked 'at a woman's pace' in two hours.' This confused me because, as I at length ascertained, I was confusing Ogikubo and Okubo in my mind.

Upshot of all this is that I dreamt I was back in Tokyo working for my old boss, who was away on a trip during which there was some problem at the office which was somehow simultaneously in Singapore, butwhen he got back I could start on my work of cataloguing a bunch of yellow-spined Ace SFF paperbacks.

Tablet's Chrome's latest Neat Trick is to show my regular webpages (Environment Canada for weather, Guardian for news) in phone format, so no more at a glance and lots of scrolling down. OTOH the less I use the tablet the happier my elbows will be, and probably neck as well. Silver linings.

Continuing my subconscious raking up of high school memories, dreamed I was in Japan at my private students' place, just returned from a trip and so a tad jet lagged. In my dream I gave their teenage son the same name as my guarantor which was, phonetically, the same name as Ardith's dog (it was actually something ending in -ya) and misnamed my travelling companion, and corrected myself- No, it's Cathy O'Neill. Other details are gone, as indeed are the real names of my students. Because I never throw anything out I found them in my 2002 daybook, but the names are written in kanji and I can only guess at them because my readings ring no memory bells. Hideo and Kumiko, I think, though the name kanji book says Hidezo or Hidenari.

Tablet's Chrome's latest Neat Trick is to show my regular webpages (Environment Canada for weather, Guardian for news) in phone format, so no more at a glance and lots of scrolling down. OTOH the less I use the tablet the happier my elbows will be, and probably neck as well. Silver linings.

Continuing my subconscious raking up of high school memories, dreamed I was in Japan at my private students' place, just returned from a trip and so a tad jet lagged. In my dream I gave their teenage son the same name as my guarantor, which was, phonetically, the same name as Ardith's dog (it was actually something ending in -ya) and misnamed my travelling companion, and corrected myself- No, it's Cathy O'Neill. Other details are gone, as indeed are the real names of my students. Because I never throw anything out I found them in my 2002 daybook, but the names are written in kanji and I can only guess at them because my readings ring no memory bells. Hideo and Kumiko, I think, though the name kanji book says Hidezo or Hidenari.

Vice is its own punishment. Took sheets and bathrobe to the laundromat whose owners are trying to sell it so that an increasing number of broken machines don't get fixed. Went up to cafe in the meantime, got a latte and a choco-chip cookie. Owner was wearing some kind of Axe cologne, got it on the cup and cookie bag, so I got it on my hands, and didn't have my sanitizer so yuck Axe smell on my hands for the next half hour. Came home and washed hands three times and only when I used the 'removes axle grease' soap did the smell disappear.

New tablet came. Won't synchronize with the old tablet or phone- both are too out-dated even though the latter is only four years old- and the interface is different and it doesn't have the option to show tabs open at the bottom and it's different from what I'm used to so I hate it.

Also: I want another long tshirt to sleep in. Plain thin cotton that comes below my knees, because above knees doesn't keep my tush warm and can't be worn in, say, rehab settings. I order from Old Navy, guaranteed 100% cotton. and yes it comes below the knees but it's far too heavy for summer sleeping in. All I want is a long tshirt why is that too much to ask for?

Les lilas are still coupés but of course there were many years when the lilacs didn't bloom at all or bloomed too early or whatever. But still I've been changing all my passwords in Firefox to Pratchett-related ones just because. Except when I sign in on my phone and not my tablet and FB gets hissy and wants me to go get a new one. Then I reference something from my life in Japan.

Accomplishment was finally getting back into my trading account, which has tiresomely gone to double authentication requiring a cell phone, and if your cell phone is lost, stolen, or dropped in the toilet you're plumb out of luck. Couldn't order in the other day because it had run out of charge and was recharging while off, to hasten matters. What do the really old do these days?

Also figured out how to get my ebook back without an app. I must remember that I only started using the tablet in, oh, 2018 or so? when my router stopped picking up the signal from next door. Until then I used this beast, but eventually it's not going to work anymore. Prepare, prepare, for the day of wrath.

Will note that whatever my internet runs off of- is it this fibre optics stuff?- it mercifully keeps running through an outage, so go Ma Bell, I suppose.

It's not as if a cumulative six hours of blackout wasn't bad enough. Tried to go to a webpage on my tablet, wp said 'your browser is out of date please update' so I updated Chrome and thereafter got the message 'Chrome keeps stopping.' Yes I know it does. So I followed instructions to disable Chrome, so I could go back to the earlier version, and that made half the apps on the tablet disappear, including the ones that I thought were Samsung apps, including the Memo one where I record my passwords in a form I can see. Always record your passwords in deadwood because devices are the devil's children.

DLed Firefox onto the thing and spent the afternoon getting a few of my bookmarks and changing passwords in Firefox. But I don't like Firefox. The solution to 'Chrome keeps stopping' is to delete caches and data in Google but Chrome keeps stopping Google before I can do it. Also Libby, the e-reader for the library. And I have a book that I must somehow return via either my ancient phone or even more ancient desktop.

Have rage-bought a new Samsung tablet which should be here by the weekend and I hope it will sync with all my cloud information to, well, get my information onto itself.

Yes, first world problems. But first world problems require gin.

It's not as if a cumulative six hours of blackout wasn't bad enough. Tried to go to a webpage on my tablet, wp said 'your browser is out of date please update' so I updated Chrome and thereafter got the message 'Chrome keeps stopping.' Yes I know it does. So I followed instructions to disable Chrome, so I could go back to the earlier version, and that made half the apps on the tablet disappear, including the ones that I thought were Samsung apps, including the Memo one where I record my passwords in a form I can see. Always record your passwords in deadwood because devices are the devil's children.

DLed Firefox onto the thing and spent the afternoon getting a few of my bookmarks and changing passwords in Firefox. But I don't like Firefox. The solution to 'Chrome keeps stopping' is to delete caches and data in Google but Chrome keeps stopping Google before I can do it. Also Libby, the e-reader for the library. And I have a book that I must somehow return via either my ancient phone or even more ancient desktop.

Have rage-bought a new Samsung tablet which should be here by the weekend and I hope it will sync with all my cloud information to, well, get my information onto itself.

Yes, first world problems. But first world problems require gin.

There are three kanji that essentially mean 'child' or 'infant' and because I constantly confuse them I made a note of them on the little papers where I write confusible kanji, like all the verbs for break smash crush destroy etc. Then in my review of the earliest kanji I come across a fourth one meaning child, and instantly try to write the other three just to be sure of them. In spite of reviewing them dozens of times since the fall, can only remember two. Go to check my papers and of course that's the one that's missing. Try various compounds hoping to turn up the forgotten kanji but no joy. Try English-Japanese online dictionaries with the same lack of success. Drive myself bananas for two days leafing through Essential Kanji, hoping it will leap out at me, and eventually give up. Am idly writing compounds today and realize that I did remember the third kanji- remembeted it yesterday in fact- but at the time I'd forgotten the second one.

Occasionally I wonder why I spend half an hour a day memorizing how to write kanji. It's not like I expect it to have any practical use. It's something to do, I suppose, in that I feel marginally less futile when I do it than when I don't. Like the leg strengthening exercises which, far as I can see, have no effect whatsoever on my leg strength and ability to walk. For a bit there my lower back seemed to be better but now it's in spasm again. Otherwise I'd be writing kani for an hour a day and resent the fact that I can't.

But I did figure out why my bank kept rejecting my password when I used the tablet. Hold a vowel too long and the tablet will automatically give it an accent. e becomes è. This wouldn't happen if webpages actually let you see your password when you type but no, it's there and gone because they assume everyone is touch-typing and watching the screen rather than pressing keys with a stylus like me.

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