If it wasn’t for bad luck, we might not have any at all.

Oh, some good stuff happened this week. I finally had the staples removed from my head–hurrah, I can brush my hair properly again!–and then the next day I went out in the yard and finally did the tidying I wanted to get done when it was cold: I used the Wolfgarten "lopper" connected with the extension pole and took down a bunch of tree branches before they leafed out, plus cleaned around Pidgie’s and Schuyler’s graves and tossed out some broken resin lawn ornaments.

And now it’s really spring: we’ve had the grass cut for the first time this year.

The nicest part of the week was going to Barnes & Noble.

The lousy surprise was going to Dr. Friedman on Friday and discovering James had a new blister on his foot–it wasn’t there last night! He’s at the point where his leg is almost well, but there’s always this one tiny little thing that keeps it from being back to where it was in December. Thankfully, the doctor didn't decided to put him back in the calamine unna boot.

The even worse surprise was James intending to call his mom for her birthday later on, and discovering she was in the hospital. She had bradycardia from high calcium; something is wrong with her parathyroid. I know that one; I remember the awful calcium drip I had to have when I had my thyroid out (since it messes with your parathyroid, which controls your calcium), and also the liquid supplement that the night nurse brought, and even after I left the hospital I had to have a special prep of it mixed up at Wender and Roberts, which was a real apothecary and not just a drugstore. It sounded as if she might need to have the parathyroid removed, but maybe there's some sort of medical therapy for it.

James also had to return the new (refurbed) laptop he’d bought because the wifi quit working. It was a crazy week for technology period, since one of my most-used phone apps stopped working completely and I had to reload it twice before it “took” again. Both phones seemed to have trouble connecting to the wifi for a couple of days; we even considered rebooting the router. But then it straightened up out of nowhere, so maybe it was the phones.

Anyway, I noticed when I brushed my teeth Friday night that my gums were very sore and bleeding. They’d been fine previously and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I immediately started myself on salt and water rinses, and even that hurt! By Saturday morning I could barely brush my teeth and I didn’t feel very well. As a precaution, I took my temperature before we went to Hair Day and it was 97.9℉, so I didn’t know what the problem was. Now, we were supposed to leave Hair Day at one to get to my appointment at the Kaiser Gwinnett office for my second vaccine. Instead about noon I asked James if we could go home so I could lie down for a half hour before we left for Gwinnett. The first thing I did upon getting inside was take my temperature again and it was 100.5! I took some ibuprofin and then kept taking my temp every ten minutes and it never got lower than 99.9. So I had to call Kaiser up and cancel the appointment again. [Later: I got an e-mail on Sunday and was able to reschedule it for April 3. What a pain in the neck!]

[Sunday my gums were still sore but…of course, no fever.]

Labels: books, chores, electronics, health, illness, outdoors

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:22:00 PM

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It was our last full day in Helen, so we celebrated by having a long, long breakfast with everyone. Hopefully next year we can go back to proper breakfasts and we won't have to juggle cereal bowls and cups over to the conference room; previous years they brought us eggs and sausage and we could use trays. (This year the tables used for breakfasts were covered in their extra inventory of paper products.) Luckily it was a little cooler today than yesterday, so the fact that we didn’t go out until almost noon was okay. Once again we traversed the back street and took the bridge over the Chattahoochee, and this time we did find the Olive Tree–it is now downtown on Main Street next to the coffee shop, in a terribly teeny space (I think it was formerly a T-shirt and sunglasses shop!), but we did manage. They didn’t have their sign out yet, so they had to keep shooing people in, though. (They can't leave the door open because the vinegar samples attract flies.) We already had a second bottle of the white peach balsamic vinegar, but we had loved the honey ginger as a finishing sauce for pork and chicken last year, so we got a larger bottle of that.

This time we walked all the way down to Hofer’s bakery and sandwich shop, where the nice broad sidewalk ends and turns into a narrower path not suitable for the power chair. James wanted a slice of German chocolate cake, but the ramp at Hofer's is not wide and kind of hard for him to navigate, so I went in to get it for him, and found a bonus: Ritter dark chocolate-covered peppermint cream bars. They were terribly expensive, but I got two as a treat. We used to find these all the time at Nam Dae Mun, then they quit carrying them, and I'd wondered if they had quit making them.

On the way back we peeked in the other stores on the opposite side of the street and I bought my yearly half-pound of almond bark from the Hansel and Gretel candy shop, and got James some sugar-free caramels as well. It was another lovely, breezy day, and we loitered under the overhangs of the different little shops, listened to the live music being played in the performance area, then walked/rolled under the bridge again, along the river, and wound through the parking lots through the back via Edelweiss Street.

Once again we had leftovers for lunch–James had the big chili bowl he didn’t expect last night at Bigg Daddy’s and I had the other half of my personal pizza. People wandered in and out, and we always had someone to talk with.

A big group went out for dinner tonight at Bodensee, the German place down the road, but it’s rather expensive, and Bodensee is not a large place. I was also kinda jonesing for barbecue. We found two likely places, both a few miles away in Cleveland, but one was going to close in a half hour. So James and I, plus Alice and Ken, and their former church pastor, Amy, went to a place just past the Walmart we went to yesterday, Rib Country BBQ. We had to wait about 20 minutes, but, boy, what great food and the service was terrific! I wanted ribs and James said “Let’s splurge!” and we got a dinner for two: a rack of ribs, a pound of barbecue, a pound of brisket, and half a barbecue chicken, plus french fries and I had applesauce on the side and he had baked beans. I ate every single rib except for the one I gave to James, he ate a little of everything, and we had two big containers of leftovers to take home. [Later: James used the fries to make eggs, Spam, and potato breakfasts, and we ate off the leftovers as well!]

By the time we got back, people were already playing games. Oreta had the new anniversary edition of Chronology, and she, Melinda, Shawn, and I played both versions. The new version has a lot more modern stuff and isn’t as “nerdy,” I think. She also showed us how the locked room mystery games work, but we didn’t play one. There were different “conversation pits,” and James partook of several, and we wandered sleepily off to bed sometime after midnight.

Labels: food, friends, games, outdoors, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:58:00 PM

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We actually did something amazing on this long, long weekend still in effect: we went places that weren't supermarkets, buying clubs, or a doctor's office. And we did it safely, too.

As usual, on Wednesday we went to Publix (there I am, going the wrong way up an aisle again) and Lidl, early enough that we found everything we needed. But we also stopped at Walmart; while James did get sugarless candy for himself, mainly we went there to get him more sleep shorts. We thought about ordering them, but wanted to look at what was available and what material they were made from. I don't know names of material from Adam; I just know I hate jersey. And even when I looked up men's sleep shorts on Walmart's site, I kept getting directed to items that were fleece. Fleece shorts? Seriously?

So we masked and I carried my trusty squirt bottle of isopropyl alcohol and some folded-up paper towels, and I liberally sprayed and/or wiped the cart and the self-checkout machine. The fabric department was completely out of cloth; lots of mask-makers have gone through here. Bet you can't find bandanas at JoAnn right now, either.

That was enough for a Wednesday; on Thursday, another novelty: James had his hair cut! (His hasn't been cut since February. I've been trimming it, and was told I did a good job, and James has his beard trimmer, but he was still looking like a sheepdog.) His stylist was taking one appointment at the time, cleaning and wiping down between cuts, which were scheduled at one an hour. We also got to see friends leaving there (within social distance, of course) and waved at friends arriving (we all use the same stylist, and this day had been arranged). On the way home we made a call and—calloo! callay!—our favorite Chinese restaurant, Dragon 168, had reopened! They're a real hole-in-the-wall place anyway, and you don't really go in there to sit inside and eat, although you can, there are tables and chairs, but they have fashioned a plywood pass-through structure that fits into their door. You call in your order with your credit card number, and they give you a number—we were number one on Thursday! number two showed up as James was waiting—and then you get your order through the pass-through.

Before we went home to eat, we gassed up the Kia at Costco because it was $1.29⁹!

Friday we had a real treat: talking to live friends in an outdoor setting! Alice had scoped out Heritage Park, which had a pavilion with picnic tables. She and Ken and Aubrey had showed up early to wipe down a picnic table (they were still covered in pine pollen from the park having been closed for six weeks) with disinfectant, and we sat in chairs at one long end of the picnic table, and they sat in chairs on the other end, six feet apart and sitting so that neither group was downwind from the other. We had a nice lunch and a nice chat, and I think it only broke up because all of us needed to use the restroom (the park facilities were still closed though the park was open, and the trash cans had not been maintained).

Saturday we decided to go out and see if we could see the tribute flyover the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels were doing for the healthcare workers. The flight plan was published on Facebook, and it looked like it was going right down highway 41 or I-75. We picked up lunch, then went to a couple of places before settling in at Akers Mill shopping center. (Alice and Ken went to the parking lot near the closed AMC theatre and they got some nice shots, but it was too crowded; in retrospect, the way the flight came in, we should have stayed in Barnes & Noble's parking lot, as we could have seen from the top of the whole hill.) The planes came in from a totally unexpected angle so we were just able to gape as they zoomed over.

On the other hand, everyone we saw at Akers Mill was pretty cool about social distancing. Cars parked in every other parking space and many people wore masks. We were sitting in the shade in front of a closed restaurant and no one was near us. We saw footage on the news later on about people crowding together on overpasses to see the planes and were glad we didn't go there, although the overpass over I-75 near the Monstrosity (Truist Park) would have been the best viewing spot of all.

Best of all we discovered Hobby Lobby was back open, so we put on our masks and went in, mostly to use the restroom, but just to look at something different. We stayed away from other people and when we got home quarantined our few small purchases in the library until next weekend.

We also finished watching both seasons of Star Trek: Discovery (yes, second season was a big improvement; my favorite characters are still Sylvia Tilly, who manages to put her foot in her mouth more than I do, and Jett Reno, the engineer with attitude) and Star Trek: Picard, plus all the behind-the-scenes "Ready Room" shows on both series. I'm about Star Trek'd out for a while! To my surprise, I found the most recent animated Lassie cartoon with the kids' programs. I managed to download all 26 English-language episodes from You Tube, as apparently the series was never shown here in the US, just in Canada, Europe, and parts of the Middle East, and figured they were just repeated here, but was gobsmacked to discover a 26-episode second season on CBS All Access instead, labeled as season one. This left me in a quandary: our free subscription would end on May fifth.

So I sat down Saturday after we got home from the flyover and binge-watched for five hours. (Later: and then I watched more between chores on Sunday and four final episodes on Monday and got through them all. I canceled on Tuesday as scheduled, since I couldn't see any reason for keeping it any longer. If I want to watch other Star Trek, it's on Netflix, and the other shows on CBS All Access I might be interested in (Perry Mason, I Love Lucy, Caroline in the City) are not intact. Oh, the episodes are uncut, but they don't show all the episodes in each season. If there are thirty episodes in a season, for instance, CBS All Access carries only fifteen or twenty of them. In addition, with Perry Mason they don't show any season six or nine episodes. What kind of a deal is that? Why say you "carry __________ series" and then not have every single episode of every single season?

Labels: food, friends, hobbies, outdoors, outings, shopping, social distancing, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:23:00 PM

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I joked to James at one point that to keep me on the "straight and narrow," so to speak, maybe during my retirement I needed theme days like they used to do on The Mickey Mouse Club. You know, one day would be Laundry Day, Wednesday would be Grocery Shopping Day, etc.

Today could definitely have been classified in Mouse Club terms: Anything Can Happen Day.

It didn't seem unusual at first. James got up before seven, alas unable to sleep late; I followed at eight. It was warm this morning, in the high 40s, and it was, as always, Laundry Day. I started the first load after breakfast, but before walking the dog, and then proceeded to do little things like get the last Xerox paper box out of the way in the garage (we'd sorted all the junk from the old truck into boxes), bringing in the box of garbage bags, taking completed books and magazines downstairs, repairing the buttonholes on the hood of my winter coat and the top of my winter hat, unloading and loading the dishwasher, etc. I also put away the gifts Lawsons gave us for Christmas, quite taken with the Woolrich throw; I thought it was a blanket, but it's more like a loose throw/poncho type thing with an open front. I used it going back and forth into the garage since I was in short sleeves.

Somewhere along the way, around lunchtime, I checked out the weather forecast. Bad news: this warming trend continues! Warm tomorrow when it rains, then high fifties, and then more rain and back into the low 60s for the foreseeable future. While the Northeast would probably be dancing at that forecast, I was dismayed, because here it is February and I still hadn't tackled the bushes in the front yard. They are dormant right now and it's the perfect time to cut them, and I can't seem to get our lawn folks to come back in February to do them for me. Ideally I want them taken back to where they were when we moved in, little individual bushes that can regrow and we can keep them low this time, but I would settle for making them smaller and shorter. The patch that is in front of the porch annoys me most: the firecracker bush is too high and nearly blocks the view of St. Francis, and the two nandina bushes on either side of Francis are too bushy and too high and sending out runners to take over the whole bed.

Which is why I abandoned anything else to be done (except the laundry), got into old clothes, found my work gloves, pulled out the hedge clipper and the heavy-duty extension cord and got to work. Now, I had a bad habit previously of not watching where my electrical cord was and chopping it eventually with the hedge clipper, but in the last five years I've tried to be mindful of it and I've kept the latest one for a while. Alas, it met its end today; I was trimming a corner, pivoted without looking, and !zap! went the cord with an acrid smell of ozone and scorching. Thankfully I had pretty much finished the two nandina bushes and the firecracker bush in front of St. Francis and only had to drag out the loppers and the secateur to finish up, and then rake up all the waste. Sadly, I did not get to the bushes to the left of the front steps (as you leave the house). I have had problems trimming them anyway, as the yard slopes on the other side of them, so I can never shorten them as much as I like, but I sure would have liked to try.

Tomorrow it is going to pour rain; I don't know if I'll ever get to the store for a new power cord and get to do it. Bother. James helped me clean up the waste later on so it won't get drenched in the wet weather.

Anyway, at around 2 p.m. or slightly thereafter, I was sans hedge clipper and raking up clipped branches—I really did hate to cut off those pretty red nandina berries!—when I heard some kind of odd noise coming from the south. As it got closer I thought it was geese, but it wasn't honking, more a sort of gurgling noise. I paused, looked over the back of the house, and saw an utterly ginormous flock of large birds flying overhead, and indeed they were not in the traditional Vee of the goose, nor had I ever seen such a large flock of geese before. We've had big flocks overhead, but only about fifty or sixty at the most. I watched the two separate groups that approached meet, cross each other, intertwine and turn, just like a big ballet.

Then I remembered I had James' little camera in the pocket of my coat and dashed inside to grab it. They were flying right around the area of the sun, so I basically had to point and shoot because all I could see in the LED screen was my reflection, but I did get a few pictures. They swerved and soared and crossed and rearranged for another five minutes—there were at least one hundred, if not two hundred or more. I did get one close up picture that showed they were some type of crane or heron! (On Facebook later Jerry said they looked like herons; looking at my photos enlarged I think they were blue herons.) Finally it was if they had rearranged themselves sufficiently and the two groups, still separate, but still following each other, disappeared toward the northern horizon. It was so very cool, and maybe it was providential that I cut the extension cord, because I wouldn't have been able to hear them over the hedge clipper. (Click on images below to enlarge.)

Migrating herons.

 

A closer look at heron maneuvers.

This was such a huge flock of birds!

Here you can see they are probably blue herons.

The flock heads north.

 
Well, that certainly means spring is coming, dammit!

Did not notice until I brought the dog in (my bad) tonight that Mom's lamp in the foyer was out. I figured the bulb had just burned out, but when I replaced it, it still didn't work. Oh, no! Then I noticed the lighted snowman we have as part of the winter decorations was not on, either, so I went into the garage. Sure enough the breaker had been tripped. I turned it back on, and the lamp came on. The snowman did not, but the timer on it had presumably been stopped. Sure enough, stopped at 2 p.m., which, of course, was the moment I zapped the electrical cord outside. Wait a minute, you mean the foyer plug and the heavy-duty porch plug are on the same breaker? And why didn't the GFI switch on the porch plug work instead of triggering the breaker? Odd.

Anyway, finished up the evening with PBS's American Experience and "The Gilded Age." Interesting story about Henry George and more information about Coxey's Army.

Labels: birds, chores, outdoors, retirement, technology, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:49:00 PM

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