Off the Cliff

Got my water meter reading yesterday. They said I could add a photo of it if I wanted to, which was dicey because I needed three hands to do it (one for the flashlight, one to hold the tablet, one to click the icon) and I only have two. But got something, then went to the city's website and entered my info and meter reading and attach photo, and it wouldn't attach. OK then, reenter info, click on send, it wouldn't send. Ohhhkay, here's a phone number for reporting, call, sit through five minutes of useless information, press button for enter reading, get told mailbox is full. So much for that.

To library today to print my blood draw form. Guy says I can do it from my phone. Log in to library's wifi, bring up the DL, press print, phone does not try to find a printer but sits and snickers at me. Fine. Go to a computer, wait for it to load Chrome, why are library computers so slooow, get Chrome, call up webmail's login, enter my info, Chrome says the password is wrong. Enter it again, still wrong. Check password on my phone, yes it's the same one, try again, wrong password, three tries and you're out,  try again in fifteen minutes. Sit there glowering at computer, remember that I forwarded the email to my gmail account, call up gmail, login, there's my forwarded message, where's the link to the form? It should be at the bottom, where's the link? Could this be it? Yes!! Press print. Then go to printer, enter my library card number, enter my password, last digit doesn't enter but printer tries to print anyway. Can't. Go through it all again, enter password veeery carefully, printer prints my form. Success, I have slain the beast! but sheesh is this amount of faff necessary? 

And now I must once again go down to the lab only this time in the rain, or snow if I leave it to later in the week. However, today my water meter reading went through no problem, so go me.

 The upstairs tablet is an ancient beast (eight years old! Methuselah!) so no surprise when it wouldn't load Kobo. But it was last updated in '21 when it had conniptions and had to be restored to factory settings, so I DLed the newest version. And of course, as ever, the icons are too big and things are Not What I'm Used To and cat-nature me is disgruntled. And now it transpires that it won't charge past 72%. The old one would stop at 85 but I could get it bumped up to 100 usually. This one is adamant that 72% is all I'm getting. Oh, and it still won't take Kobo and it still won't let me add an input language to default American English.

OTOH it *will* finally give me word suggestions as I type. When I bought it the clerk said Samsung was feuding with some company so predictive text was unavailable. For all I know he was on crack and the feature's always been available, only I didn't know to look for it because it's squirreled away in a nonintuitive place. But anyway it's here now and will correct my typos for me unless they start with the wrong letter. Shall note that my phone doesn't have that tic, but phones are useless for typing on and I'm amazed that anyone can.

Hoped to get out today when the rain stopped but sullen clouds loured unmoving all afternoon, making it dark at 4, and nothing dried up. Maybe tomorrow before Sunday's forecast snow moan groan tremble.

The downstairs tablet's keyboard suddenly and arbitrarily refuses to print two letters, l and o, making them both p. Did I somehow code a macro? This is driving me batty.

ETA as ever, turn off and turn on again. But *why* did it do that?

Yeah, so, the upstairs tablet will not DL any new languages. They all reach 50% and hang. And if you somehow deleted English from Input Language (but how? I didn't even realize it existed) you are left with a tablet that will only write in Japanese. Oh crap. Maybe buy another tablet? but I can't google Samsung tablets in Canada because, yanno, Japanese.  Noodle around in the language settings and finally see Restore factory default. Which do. So now the tablet is in English again, and only English, but fine. I don't write in Japanese much anyway.

I am of course flush with money right now and a new tablet would only cost one month's worth of property taxes. But my eyes have been objecting to my glasses, both dollar store cheapies and hideously expensive good ones, so maybe it's time to have my eyes tested again: and that too will cost a month's worth of tax and more. Of course this would happen when I just snagged 120 days' worth of lenses. *And* I have a crown coming up next year which insurance won't cover, and there's the cherry that must be trimmed for many thousands of dollars, and so economic prudence is advised. Henh. Maybe it's just allergies.

It wasn't supposed to rain all day but of course it did. Got out to the library with my rain cape for a couple of holds and a sandwich at Pour Boy. Pour Boy has the virtue of always giving you lots and lots of vegetables whether you want them or not so I don't feel too guilty for having had bread (whole wheat FWIW). But no way I was getting to the laundromat this afternoon so might try tomorrow, though Saturdays are not optimal ever. Otherwise not till Tuesday and maybe not then. October rains OK.

Mercury is in retrograde: my tablet has gone wonky, the Libby app on my phone won't open my book, and the email I sent my money woman seems to have got lost in the ether. This happened with the old one as well. Maybe I should start calling her instead. 

Finished Northanger Abbey, a leisurely reread. Since I remembered the what but not the how, I was subject to embarrassment squick in the last chapters, but Austen was kind to my sensibilities. Probably should reread Persuasion next.

Continue with The Way Spring Arrives, skipping some of the essays, though the one on translation suggests just how much I'm missing. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is a favourite with me precisely because I know who it's talking about. And I know, from what various friends have said, that there are probably a million allusions in the original that either can't be translated or that I simply don't know. Maybe I should go through those slim volumes of Chinese sayings I bought ages back and find the equivalents of 'Meng's mom moves three times' as applied to, I don't know, birds or food or something. Which won't help with the present volume, of course.

Started but on hiatus is a Victorian-set mystery, A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch. Pleasant, but Spring has several people waiting for it and I must finish it first. Should probably send it back for the nonce because the earlier volumes might come in in the meantime. This one is something like vol.6 and was the first available.

The library didn't have a dead tree or ebook version of The Masquerades of Spring, just the audio which, no, not with Aaronovitch and his infinitely confusible white bread names. Hardcover was some hideous price so I bought it from Kobo. And a good thing too because dead tree would have me tearing my hair out. The names are bad enough even with a search function, but the action defeats me completely. I still don't know where that blasted saxophone came from, much less which version of its origin is fiction and which fact. Doubtless this has something to do with my occasional inability to parse text on screen, but maybe the action really is that twisty? I suppose three rereadings might straighten it out but am not hopeful. OTOH it's a lot less silly twit Wodehouse pastiche than I had feared, so otherwise an enjoyable read.

This morning's dream was again of AJC and an apartment she rented and a disabled-indeed, moribund-- roommate we had to get down the stairs somehow. Segued somehow into a rewrite of Autumn Term, with Nicola home for half-term thinking how different everything looked after three months at school. Of course she'd only been gone for half that time, but dream!Nicola didn't know that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.