Much Belated Trip Talk ("Boston" trip, part 4/?)

Yes, I took this trip in May; yes, it is now August; no, I haven't finished recapping it; yes, I'm going to! For my own sake, at this point. (Part 3 here.)

That Sunday morning was rainy and chilly still, which was a real shame given that my friend's house has this lovely little porch that I would have been so happy to sit in, except for the weather. At least I got the garden tour on Saturday!

Before I left town, we had to check out the Bookmill, which was a lot of fun to roam through. It's a super cool store, though I will say that the hill it's on is steep! The website says they're open in winter, but I can't imagine it. Unless they put up a little ski lift?

Anyway! I didn't take photos inside (so that I wouldn't look like I was comparison shopping), with this exception, as I liked the light and angles.

Later, I took a picture of the book I bought, totally at random. I do love odd old novels.

Being in an old mill, the store is of course on a river. And they have a little cafe, where we got treats (maple milk, anyone?) and sat chatting for a while.

Western Mass. is an interesting place.

Back at the house, it was time for me to pack up and get ready to go east again. Though I actually went south first, since my host suggested I might enjoy visiting the North Hadley Sugar Shack. Spoiler: I did!

The bucket is (was!) maple cotton candy, which we had been talking about since we've had that at Rhinebeck. The little jars are jams that I brought home for Mom, and the rest is various maple candy items. The maple peanut brittle was excellent!

Despite buying all that, I really wanted actual food for lunch, not just maple sugar. Since I was in the area where I went to college (UMass Amherst), I decided to see if the diner we all loved was still there---not as much of a reach as it might have been, since I had been there in the years since (in 2013, anyway, thank you blog for memory). And it was! Just as full of hungover college students eating as it was back in the day.

And the food was still really good and an excellent value.

I drove around the UMass campus a little, being so close, but it's hard to look around and drive safely at the same time, and it was still so rainy and chilly that I didn't want to get out and ramble on foot, so I didn't stay there long. I did stop in Amherst to get a coffee and visit the bathroom before heading out, and I liked their sign:

The drive east was fine but unpleasant, since it rained pretty hard the whole drive. I was glad to get back to F1's home! We went out to dinner, but otherwise just hung out Sunday evening.

Monday, F1 invited me to join her in taking her father out to breakfast, something they do regularly. We were also joined by her brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, and though the wait for the food to come was long, the food was delicious, and it was nice to get to see everyone.

We had a quiet afternoon, then went to a friend gathering held at someone's house, very close by. The weather was nice enough to sit out on their deck, and do some catching up as well as eat delicious food. 

On Tuesday, F1 had to work, but was able to take a break midday and join me for lunch with a friend who hadn't been able to make the Monday party (F5). It was another beautiful day:

And we very much enjoyed our lunch at the Colonial Inn in Concord. while having one of those good deep conversations friends can get into, given enough time.

Having left F5, and with F1 back at work, I did some wandering around the area where I grew up. I drove past my old house, and continued to disapprove of what the current owners are doing with it (wrong house color and bad landscaping: it's a mess). Then I went to the library! I appreciated the lines of the walls and some quilts they had on display.

As well as this multi-level view.

It's a lovely old building.

I sat on the town common for a bit, and after a few minutes, realized that although I hadn't seen any lilacs, the season for them being mostly past, I could smell some.

I looked around and followed my nose, and there they were, off to one side. I love the scent.

Walking on, I noticed these chairs in front of a nearby church. Good for you!

That's probably enough for one post. I'll try to wrap things up before the end of the year!

Getting Things Done. Not Exciting Things. But Things. Done.

On Friday, I started making a list of things I could do over the weekend, since without a list, I tend to drift through free time and that is pleasant but unproductive. Sadly, life requires productivity some of the time! Thus, list.

I did pretty well at the list. Probably the biggest one was that I bit the bullet and booked my flights to Syracuse, choosing neither the way-too-short nor the ridiculously long layovers, and also reserved a rental car. I went directly through Budget, since the last two times I've rented a car, it's been from them, but the lines to pick up were silly-long, so I'm hoping their claim that it's quicker that way will come to fruition; stay tuned.

In other news, so far the being-without-a-dishwasher situation isn't as bad as I was afraid it would be. We're taking the time* to figure out exactly what we want, which after the obvious (I assume that all new machines made these days will do a decent job of washing dishes) are that it be quiet, not the most expensive, and Mom wants it to be white. 
*The we-assume-no-one-will-carry-it-up-five-flights-of-stairs time, that is.

For the noise question, I watched a video on relative decibels in order to see how much difference it really made (this one, chosen at random, but gave me the info I was looking for). Essentially, all the new machines will be quieter than our old one (which, as a reminder, Mom got in 2009), so we're not super worried about the decibels. Wanting it to be white is actually helpful at narrowing the field, since stainless seems to be much more common. So we'll go from there. We stopped in at Lowe's yesterday to look at what they had, and see if any design features in particular struck as us being important, and agreed that the only thing is we don't want a handle that sticks out; the kitchen is not big enough for that, and neither of us is interested in having perpetual bruises.

I will leave you for today with this from Lowe's:

Love a rainbow!

But Wait! It Gets Worse

Here’s what I already hate about getting dental work (in today’s case, two crowns):

• Painful; I am a real wimp about my teeth especially 
• Sitting still, not one of my strong suits
• Sensory overload; I have an oversensitive gag reflex, and all the hands and tools in my mouth are very overwhelming 
• Expensive, even with dental insurance 
• And I have to make myself go, even with all of that.

But on top of that? Adding in ten flights of stairs is just the icing on the cake.

However, I did leave (almost five hours later) with a question for you: why do you think there's a power outlet in the ceiling?

You Can't Get There

It's time for a game we've played before, folks: Why is it so damned annoying to book decent flights from Ft Myers, Florida*, to Syracuse, NY?
*RSW is my closest airport, an hour away. Next closest would be Punta Gorda, but flights from there go to smaller cities instead. Fort Lauderdale is easily two hours away, not counting rush hour and accidents, and the last half hour is through ungodly east coast traffic. And even from there, there aren't many nonstops.

(You may remember my mother's "I-grew-up-in-Syracuse" answer: They don't make it easy to get there because they know no one goes to Syracuse unless they have to.)

There are essentially no nonstop flights. There are and/or have been some on bottom-of-the-barrel discount airlines, the kind that fly one flight a day, a few days a week, but not on 'real' airlines.

Layovers are either ridiculously short (I saw one for 34 minutes!) or insanely long (no one wants to spend 6 or 7 hours at JFK). I want a layover that's long enough to be realistic, meaning probably 90 minutes at the very least, but not more than three hours. Ideally not more than two hours, but you can't find that, either.

Flights tend to either leave at 6 AM, or get in after midnight---and how could they help it, after that 6 hour layover?

I want to go. I want to visit my aunt and go to Apple Festival. But I have to gripe a bit before I get over this annoyance and book the least bad itinerary I can find.

Stupid travel industry. I need teleportation.

Oh Noooooo

Our dishwasher died the other day: the cycle ran much shorter than it should have, there was water still in the bottom, and while it did drain when we told it to, it then would not start a new cycle. From Mom's records, it was installed in 2009 and expected to last 10-15 years, so it's right on schedule.

HOWEVER.

Can we really expect the service people to carry a new dishwasher up five flights of stairs? Probably not, right? I mean, it seems unlikely to me. Which takes this right from annoyance into disaster, within the class of first-world problems. 

The whole well-documented elevator situation has been awful, but in a straightforward way, if you follow me. The annoyance has been awful from day one, but it hasn't gotten harder to carry everything up and down. The increasing length of time has sucked, but the difficulty of each individual trip has been the same. The thing is, it requires a lot of coping and planning to handle things that used to require next to none. 

And now we add the fun of hand-washing every dish for a month. I don't know what ancient spirit I pissed off, but I'm sorry already.

Sigh. Anyway. We are soliciting opinions on brands of dishwashers, either ones you love or ones you've hated, and where to get them. So far, some of the advice is contradictory, but I welcome your take on it just the same.

Fucking Hot Flashes

(Yeah, language warning in this one.)

As I mentioned last month, earlier this year* I had switched my estrogen patches for gel formulation, only to find that it wasn't working the same way. 
*Specifically, on May 7, aka the day the elevator broke. What a day.

For those who might not know, there is a shortage of patches this year, in the US at least. An old study that showed their use caused increased heart attacks and strokes was debunked, so more doctors and patients are willing to try them. But since women's health is a joke these days, that doesn't mean more patches are actually available, so they've been hard to get.

I ended up being on the gel for over two months; I messaged my doctor at just under 8 weeks to ask for a patch prescription because the symptoms were returning, and then there was a slight delay in getting the prescription filled, but I was able to get back on it a month ago. However, my damned hormones are still not settled down back to where they were*. 
*Let us not consider that they may not do so easily. Leave me this hope.

• The mood swings, otherwise known as incandescent rage at small annoyances, were my first sign, and have very much not settled down. 
• The hot flashes started off as occasional, but are happening more often. I had one this morning and I, who loves a hot shower, kept turning the water temperature down and down and down. Argh.
• The joint pain in hips and shoulders maybe isn't as bad as it was for a while there. What with having arthritis, it will probably never go away completely, but it isn't awful. Today.

I don't have any conclusions, or anything more to say. Just need to vent, because this fucking sucks.

Twenty Years. Twenty. 20?

The passage of time can be so weird to acknowledge. I was in high school how many decades ago? People my age are grandparents? I'm how close to retirement?* How can I be this old, I don't feel like it.
*Answer: Not close enough

One of those signs is hitting me this month, which is twenty years since I started a blog. How?

My first post started:

And here I am, more than 4500 posts later, boggling at time. And enjoying a good mental wander from pillar to post.

Recently at work, someone was emailing an update on something that didn't get done that day, and wrote casually, "Time's winged chariot and all that." I knew I recognized the quote, but had to look it up. We studied some poetry in I think it was a high school English class, and I remember that I did like the start of To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell:

Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

But the phrase my coworker used comes later:

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near

Quite the thing to throw into an email, though, isn't it?

There's one other quote from this poem that links to something else, in my head:

The Grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Has anyone else read A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle? I read it a long time ago (there's time again), and remember it as a good book.

What Is So Rare

(as a Thursday off work)

When I originally put in for August 6 as a day off, it was so I could take the cat to the vet for dental work. But when I learned that the elevator was in fact not going to be fixed in time, I decided to put off the vet* but keep the vacation day. 
*Not only do I not want to carry his weight up and down the stairs, but I don't think he would like it, and after anesthesia, it seems like a shitty thing to do to him, when we can wait a little longer.

The fact is that other than my Boston trip, I haven't taken much time off this year, just a day here and a day there, and taking more is both good for my mental health, and also a shame to waste the vacation time---no, wait, that's almost a joke, I never waste my vacation time. But even if I take off time around Thanksgiving and Christmas, I still have days to spare, and no plans to use them.

So, I kept Thursday off. I slept in a little, took the morning easy, then went off to the chiropractor and to do some other errands. I also made time to sit in a cafe with a treat and bound off the shawl I was knitting, more to come on that, but it was good.

Getting up for work today was not exciting. But I got through the day, and now I have the weekend! Pretty good deal all the way around.

Do Not Buy Up High in a One-Elevator Building

When my parents were condo-shopping 30 years ago, they had a list of features they wanted: Three bedrooms, two baths, a garage, a view of the water, and a short walk to the beach, as well as two bridges if on an island (my dad did some business travel, and didn't want to miss his plane if there was a bad accident on "the" bridge). This condo ticks all those boxes, and I can't blame them for not having the foresight to insist on a building with two elevators.

However, in hindsight, yeah.

We got another update yesterday.

As a refresher, here is the timeline so far:

• May 7: The piston breaks. The first estimate is that it will take "about 30 days" to fix.
• May 9: In an update to include the cost, we're told it is "a 10-week process," which means mid-July.
• May 26: There was an owners meeting to discuss costs, but no change to the date.
• July 20: The updated, updated estimate is now August 10, based on 2 weeks for shipping and a week for installation.
  
  
• August 3: Now they say the piston won't even be completed until August 21, which combines with the 2 weeks for shipping and a week for installation to give an updated, updated, updated guesstimate date in mid-September.

As I replied to the condo board president, "Is there any reason to believe them now?" (He didn't have a real answer, not that I expected him to. I did specify that I'm not blaming him for this, although I will tell you that I did not appreciate him saying, "I'm as upset as you all are!" He's upset in theory. We're upset in reality. These two things are not the same magnitude.)

If it gets pushed out again, we'll be getting into time for the snowbirds to start coming back. I wonder if they will, or if they'll delay until it's actually working again? Maybe not the people who are one flight up, but more than that?

I'll also tell you that the first neighbor who tries to laugh, ha ha, at how annoying it was is going to get the bitchiest bitch face ever from me. I might start to find this funny in 2032. Maybe. 

Maybe not.

Bookishly Happy

A few months back, one of my favorite authors announced a special edition set of one of her series, one I loved, and I decided I wanted to own it. 

The author is AJ Sherwood, and she writes many different series, some with slight overlap, usually but not always fantasy, and I love (almost all of) them. She is very prolific and regularly updates on social media regarding where she is with which projects, which is also fun to follow along.

The series in question is a romantic fantasy trilogy, kind of: the first two books are in order and focus on one couple, and then the third is kind of a companion piece alongside the second, with the main focus on other characters. I've read it multiple times and own the ebooks, but not print copies. Until now!

From here, be warned, there are spoilers for the contents, which included some ephemera and a surprise item.

The set arrived in this fun box:

Pretty inside as well as out.

The books themselves had tissue around them, and a seal.

They had actually bumped around inside the box, tearing the tissue, but no damage was done to the books.

Spines:

Painted edges (at top and bottom as well):

Lovely dust jackets:

But also pretty under the cover:

The backs of the dust jackets as well.

I am happy to say that the books also feel nice. Do you know what I mean? The covers (both dust jacket and book) are smooth, the paper is good, and the font size isn't too small. (Yes, all things that I have found not always the case.) They make me happy to hold.

The set had a postcard of the covers, as well as one with a list of Ren's Rules.

One of the main characters is a man of very few words, which is why the rules include:
Rule One - When giving orders, said orders must be more than a location.

Rule Two – Grunts are not answers.

Rule Three – You have to at least try words before relying on gestures.

Rule Four - You’re not allowed to argue with just one word.

Something else that was included kind of puzzles me. Not in a bad way, but in a "what even are these" way. Each book has an accompanying sheet of, well, not quite tissue paper, but sort of? I mean, what is it?

It matches the painted edge:

And it fits neatly inside, but, really? What is it? I guess you could use it as a bookmark, though I would rather use the postcard, which is a little stronger.

Anyway! The books are also signed:

And have a couple of fun notes on the copyright page. Villains ARE a different story!

And of course, the typos are there on purpose. Boo to AI!

The chapter pages are illustrated:

And there's a map of the countries as well.

This is the first thing I saw when opening the box.

Opened the vacuum bag and found a blanket of the cover images!

Which made for a very cozy reading experience.

All in all, this set made and makes me very happy.

Randomly for a Monday

Just a few random things as my mother was clearing off a shelf:

She found a folder of letters she wrote home before her marriage, and laughed about the letter where she casually mentioned meeting some people from Brown Engineering, naming my dad among others. Then there was a letter when she talked about driving Sammy Davis Jr. around Trinidad. As one does, right? For someone who has lived the last 30 years in Florida, and whose life might seem predictable based on that, her past contains multitudes. (Related: When she tells stories that include the lines "the second time we were in China" or "my luggage was lost for a week when we went to Ethiopia.")

On the same shelf, there was a copy of Columbia magazine from winter 2016, and she asked me if I had any idea why she might have kept it. I flipped through and said, well, this article is about Sarah Sze, and I went to nursery school with her, maybe that was it? Pretty random all the same.

What else? Well, how about a file of printouts of my blog from 2006/7? Yeah, no, I don't know why she printed it, or hole-punched it, or kept it all these years. I think this one can hit the recycle now.

It's possibly even funnier when you look at the holder she reused for it:

Sure, why not?

There was another folder of things related to me, and while I was able to discard my performance reviews from 2005 and 2006, the letters that she wrote to me from Liberia when I was at boarding school are worth a read through.

Another folder was a collection of cards I had sent over the years, holiday and birthday and thank-you notes and the like. This one, from 1979 (so I was 10), was for Valentine's Day:

It reads:

Mummy Dearest,

Roses are Red, 

Violets are Blue,

There's no one I like better than you.

P.S. Except Daddy who I like the same

Don't ask me to explain the art within the heart, I have no clue what I was going for. I can tell you from holding it up to the light that it was cut out from one of my father's business cards, but beyond that? Who can explain the art; not even the artist.

Finally, a few cards showed that my interest in yarn and knitting is long-standing, in case we needed proof of that: