Getting off the ball

From a video seen on Xitter.  Rory McIlroy helps remove an insect from his golf ball during last week's PGA Tour playoff.  That's two in two weeks.  

On the ball

In 2022, the sports photo of the year award went to this image of Naomi Osaka as she moved a butterfly to safety.  

This past Sunday, another butterfly achieved 15 seconds of fame during the St Jude golf tournament in Memphis.  Sam Burns's birdie putt rolled by the hole and, just as the ball stopped, a rider hopped on.  CBS didn't replay it, so I recorded it off the screen the old-fashioned way.  

Back yard, late afternoon, the day after a foot of snow

What do you have to say for yourself?

Getting done what has to be done, whether it's getting PG to her medical appointments, keeping the household chores up to date, or fulfilling my duty as a citizen by reporting to the court house and making myself available for a jury.  Well, the last one wasn't necessary, as word came down this afternoon that those scheduled to report tomorrow morning were no longer required to show up.  Can't say I'm sorry for that, since PG has two appointments on Wednesday and another one Thursday morning, and I need to drive her to them.  

Trying to appreciate each day as it happens.  I saw it put in a different way:   if you count on a bad situation resolving quickly, or if you lose hope and feel that a bad situation will never get better, it can break you.  One day at a time, or The New Normal, is the least likely to send someone into the abyss.

Satisfied with the new mini-trampoline so far.  I was on it for 25 minutes today; five minutes here, 8 a little later, then 12 late in the day.  Anything to keep me from rotting, immobile, through the weeks of winter.  One thing I have to unlearn is that when I'm relaxed, I tend to close my eyes, which is bad for balance on the rebounder.

Besides that, by end of day, I had done some charting of one old videotape; I practiced my instrument or watched/listened to instrument-related videos for about an hour; and did the chores that needed to be done. 

Tomorrow, nothing on the schedule since jury duty is out.  Let's see how disciplined I am then.  

Winter weather and its effects

Lousy weather making it too hard to go for a walk, and I was not looking forward to two or three months of that.  Then I got a Facebook Messenger message from a family member that showed someone demonstrating a mini-trampoline, or as they call it, a "rebounder."  Stationary bikes and treadmills are too heavy and take up too much space, and besides they're out of my budget range.  But I did some research and decided on a $409 model that had a 15% discount for the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  That ought to get me through the winter without becoming dangerously sedentary.

Getting better at getting things accomplished:  "What's the next action?" comes to mind, or as they like to say where I get my music lessons, you eat an elephant one bite at a time.  Now, some Christmas decorations are up in the family room, there's a timer on the wreath lights above the fireplace, and electric candles with LED lights are in place in the downstairs street-facing windows.  Maybe Friday I'll work on one room upstairs.  Then, another one.  And so on.

Time to do something

PG has been less than 100%.  Last Friday, the PCP sent her to the ER, although a CT scan found nothing serious and sent her home four hours later.

Music lessons were going steady until PG became ill.  Now there are more important things.

Even though PG is improving, her health plus an outbreak of ringworm at TP has me reluctant to go.  Did manage to write this month's Kitten Fund letter.  Next month, though?

I do some reading; a little French and a little English, so there's still that.  But the past few days -- after turning the clocks back -- the 5:00 p.m. sunset and an early taste of wintry temperatures, compounded by 15-20 mph winds, make the customary afternoon walk undesirable.  

Leaves quite a lot of time to do something... I've been doomscrolling, playing solitaire, playing Strat, wasting time.  Time to do something, but what?

Late night visitor

On the wall of my bathroom, a drain fly, also commonly known as a moth fly.  Not a good sign.

Something's leaking somewhere in the plumbing and giving these something to live on. Oh boy.

 

Fatal accident

Yesterday morning, at about 11:15 I began driving to Tabby's Place.  Four miles later, I saw a line of cars and their red tail lights on the part of Route 309 that connects to I-78.  Fortunately, the long line hadn't reached the Cedar Crest exit, and neither had I.  

Shortly before, a 20-year-old guy on a motorcycle had been boxed in the middle lane behind a semi slowly climbing a hill.  The motorcyclist tried zipping into the fast lane to get around it, but clipped the semi and rebounded into an Escalade that was already there.  All this at high speed.  

One news report said the accident had been reported at about 9:45, and a different source said the young man was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:15.  

When I took the Cedar Crest exit, I stopped in the parking lot of a medical building and checked local news sources plus a map/traffic app.  After collecting those facts, I understood that the road would be closed for some time (in the end, it was two hours), and turned around and went back home.  

Thoughts While Scrolling

Barclays US?  Or Barclay Sus?  

What do you think?  Is it AI or not?  Looks like he has a normal amount of fingers, but rescuing children in uniform and the "Dodgers quarterback" description make me wonder...

A long day

Swirly's been under the weather, up one day, down the next, and after the past weekend Pat and I wanted to take her right away this morning to our usual vet. Trouble was, they said they were completely booked for the day.

We went to one of the 24-hour vets they recommended, and within minutes of getting there, Swirly was checked over and triaged, and we all sat down to wait our turn. Then a person arrived whose dog was having seizures. Then a couple walked in with an old dog with difficulty breathing.

It took longer than anyone would have wanted, but staff members kept us informed throughout, so we never felt like saying "Remember us?" Eventually we and Swirly were taken back to an exam room, and after they took a closer look, they found one bladder stone stuck to her fur, and more still inside. Vital signs good, no damage to kidneys, but a UTI in progress.

She's staying overnight with an operation scheduled for tomorrow, and we should be able to pick her up before the end of the day. Jack and Jennie loaned us one of their dog enclosures on short notice, which will really help with our Good Queen's recovery. 

Forget it

The internet is forever.  Even irrelevant little online journals like this.

Which is why I'm giving no details of a meeting PG and I had this afternoon.  That's the when, but nothing else.  Not the who, the what, the where, the why, and not even the how.  

Maybe 20 years ago I would have put it all down in black and white, and never mind the consequences.  At 68, I'm less adventurous. 

It was a totally mundane, yet stressful scene.  Anyway, it's over.  This, I can forget.

At least, I hope so.

Calls

Calls all day... along with the usual spam callers who wouldn't leave a message, there were calls from PG's dentist office, her sister-in-law, three calls from the pharmacy with status updates on a prescription, along with a call we made to one of her specialists to postpone a scheduled appointment due to a time conflict.  

In between, PG rested, which with prescription meds helped keep her pain level manageable.  We're waiting for test results from last week and when they are posted, we will see what options are available next.

Look out

 

Down it goes, too

Remember that red maple we planted on April 14?  Here's a good close look at it now.  Rabbits?  The missing parts were seemingly too tall for a rabbit to reach them.  But something nibbled them off.

Down it goes

At 8:00 this morning, work began on roof replacement of our next-door neighbor's house.  Good Cat Nora has her eyes on the workers as they strip away the 25-year-old shingles and roofing paper.

Outside looking in

Good Queen Swirly makes the acquaintance of the visiting neighbor cat from a respectful distance.  The little moocher was here to eat breakfast early this morning, again for a mid-morning feeding, and showed up late this afternoon to ask for another meal.
 

A Good Day

I baked a cinnamon streusel coffee cake early this afternoon.  Then, went to Costco for one or two things and came home with four or five.  (The eggs were $5.79, but that was for a dozen and a half; the Diamond Crystal salt was 37 cents a pound; the pint of Kirkland vanilla, as yet unaffected by the Trump tariffs, was $10; and the Kerry Gold butter and the Rao's marinara sauce both had sale prices that put them below those on supermarket shelves (less than $6 a pound for the former and less than $5 a quart jar for the latter).  

As mentioned above, the coffee cake was made with cinnamon, but our open container of Kirkland (again) cinnamon, although it contained enough for the cake, was at a low level that made it difficult to reach with a measuring spoon.  The answer was readily at hand, though.  

Both PG and I save glass jars just for occasions like this.  There's a shelf in the pantry that holds a dozen or more jelly jars, home canning jars, and other glass containers, and from the stack I picked out one that had held Bonne Maman preserves.  

Maybe a visitor would wonder, but maybe not, if they understood that's how both of us were raised.  Our mothers and fathers had to quit school in their early teens and were thereafter blocked from high-paying jobs, which is why they insisted that their children get as much education as possible.  My mother said again and again that when you had an education, nobody could take it away from you.  

I got there in a roundabout way, which I can attribute to being the first in the family to go to college, but the inexperience that led me to take the scenic route on the road to a diploma also resulted in lasting memories of interesting detours.  That was back when a young person and average student could pay for college with federal grants without signing up for student loan debt.  Any advice I might give now based on that era is as out of date as cookbooks from the 19th Century.

Supper was homemade pizza, washed down with Pepsi, which I've otherwise given up to keep my blood sugar score out of triple digits.  It tasted terrific.  I'll be craving it for days to come.  

Rather than buy Pepsi in bulk, which would be a mighty temptation, I got two cold 20-ounce bottles at Wawa.  The price was $2.59 each, or two 20's for $4.00.  (Don't want to forget that I saw a caramel Lindt bar at Wawa and picked one up for PG.)

That's enough detail about the past day.  Time to go upstairs.

Still at it

Just nothing particularly noteworthy these days.  I'll know it when I see it, and then I'll write about it.

Change of view

June 15, 2024

February 28, 2025

 

Don't ask...

A day in a hospital, a day visiting the TP cats, and then three days down with some kind of virus.  Still hacking, but appetite is coming back, as is energy.

Sunday morning, I woke up in a dark bedroom.  It was darker than usual because the power had gone out.  The electric company's website said the reason for the outage was unknown, but that it would be back online by 10:00 a.m., or eight hours later.  It was hard to get back to sleep, so my eyes were closed when it came back on at 2:35.  At that time, PG's iPad lit up, making the room bright enough to get through my closed eyelids.