Thou breath of autumn's being

[pameladean]

It's actually almost still and calm today, but it's been windy for weeks. The leaves are crisp and dry because of the drought, and I could hardly go outside for days without thinking, "How Shelleyesque!"

In the past week, I have:

Sent two vegetarian and two vegan pizzas to Occupy Minneapolis.

Made a rash of tiny donations for Give to the Max Day. I forgot a couple of places, though.

Taken Aristophanes to the vet for his third thyroid test. The vet wants to catch it going over into the high range, but it sticks stubbornly at high-normal. I don't really want him being poked so often, so I might ask for a longer interval before trying again. After they took the blood, the vet tech told me, she took out the remaining mats in his tail. He is mat-free for the first time in I don't recall how long. Since half his fur is also shaven, maybe I can groom him well enough to keep him that way.

Arranged for the thermocouple in the downstairs furnace (the newer furnace) to be replaced. The repair guy had to walk past the older furnace, and, like the last furnace guy, said, "Wow, you might want to get that replaced on your own terms instead of waiting for it to fail." We hope it will get through the winter and will seriously consider replacing it next spring. It won't celebrate its hundredth birthday, but will come close -- the house was built in 1916 and this is the original furnace for the upstairs.

Broken through the defective child-proof cap of my new bottle of metoprolol with a hammer, a screwdriver, and a pair of scissors, and decanted the pills into an old bottle whose cap worked.

Finished rereading the Aubrey/Maturin series. I was Not Really Happy with the last five or six volumes when I read them as they came out. I apparently have never reread them, stopping earlier in my rereading, but this time I did, and, aside from a couple of events most readers of the series will be able to think of at once, but that I will not mention for fear of spoiling those who haven't read them yet, I was much better pleased this time around.

Watched, with Raphael, a really annoying one-hour movie starring Alan Rickman and wasting Emma Thompson. It's based on a poem that in my opinion would have been far better if it had been told from Thompson's character's viewpoint. It had "lunch" in the title but I'm too annoyed to look it up. Emma Thompson was excellent. Well, so was Rickman. But the situation was cliched and did not rise above that at any time.

I continue to be far, far behind on everything from yard work and laundry to writing.

Pamela

Comments

[alexfandra.livejournal.com]

I hope they get the thyroid stuff worked out soon - one of my Hounds went through that a few years back and it did take quite a few tests and a long time before they got him settled on a dosage. He's been fine for years now on the meds, though.

I think I enjoyed the latter Aubrey-Maturins better than the earlier ones, simply because of the increased history between the characters. Glad you enjoyed re-reading them. That's on my To Do list, too!

-Alex

[pameladean]

We haven't got a dosage yet because the numbers aren't high enough; it's just that the vet, who is quite a good one, has A Feeling. So we'll see. I'm glad the Hound is all stable on his meds.

That's a very good reason for enjoying the latter ones more, but for some reason it didn't kick in the first time I read them. Maybe I was just feeling fretful for some reason.

P.

[kore-on-lj.livejournal.com]

OMG, my sympathy with the mats. The Pouf is once again matted up and she gets annoyed when we try to snip them. When dark threats about an electric razor are muttered, she sneers.

Broken through the defective child-proof cap of my new bottle of metoprolol with a hammer, a screwdriver, and a pair of scissors, and decanted the pills into an old bottle whose cap worked.

"A Song of Lunch" -- heh.

The woman is now living a glamorous life in Paris, married to a world-renowned writer, whilst the unnamed editor has failed in his writing career, detests his mundane publishing job and regrets the end of their love affair. When he arrives at Zanzotti's he finds it under new management and much changed, and this seems to fuel his resentment about growing older and being left behind.

Oh dear. That sounds -- unappetizing?

[pameladean]

I have to imagine that long hair in domestic cats is solely a result of human stupidity, because it is so very much not good for the cat's survival. I am sorry the Pouf is matty. She's so pretty.

This vet tech is the one who (unknowingly) seduced us into trying to remove mats with our fingers ourselves and landed us in the emergency vet at one a.m. But if SHE wants to do it, that's fine.

Hee on "unappetizing." The food actually looked great -- well, aside from the carpaccio, but that's no doubt just my vegetarian prejudice -- but they end up only eating a few bites because the Rickman character is being so obnoxious. Sea bass and asparagus! She sent away a whole plate of it! Not the major annoyance of the piece, but very annoying just the same.

P.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Juan and I were infuriated by the disappointingness of that show. (I feel it's more of a show than a movie, what with being so short; is there something that is to a movie as a novella is to a novel?)

[pameladean]

I could not believe that anything with those two in it and nobody else could be so bad.

"Show" is a nice all-purpose term. I think the DVR program called it a movie, but I don't plan to let the DVR program dictate my terms. It's a bit narrow-minded.

P.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

And it was so clearly the writing that was lousy, I thought.

Juan was worried that Rickman's character would take a particularly precipitous action, at one point. That's a measure of how bad we thought it was.

However, when he's snarking about authors, that's pretty funny.

[laurel]

I'm realizing that I downloaded "Song of Lunch" shortly after it aired in the UK and started watching it and . . . er . . . I think I drifted away and never finished it. Which seems just plain wrong given it's Rickman and Thompson for crying out loud. But I'm pretty sure that's what happened or else I completely blocked out the end of it. It's still on a hard drive somewhere.

I might have watched something else with Rickman in it afterwards as a palate cleanser. Possibly Snow Cake.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes--the last three or so O'Brians didn't work well for me, but there were good moments.

[pameladean]

I was amazed at how well they worked for me read all in a row right after all the others, instead of in isolation. I don't think any of those last ones has much closure.

P.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I dunno, that furnace is the more stable of the two. Besides, it'd be NICE to get it up to 100 years.

[pameladean]

Only because it has fewer moving parts. If we want to get it up to its century we should maybe have it furbished up a little bit.

P.

[aedifica]

I hadn't thought about sending pizzas to OM! Do you just say "please take it to the government center plaza and give it to someone standing there," or how do you direct the delivery?

[pameladean]

I told them to take it to Occupy Minnesota on the South Plaza of the Hennepin County Government Center, and gave the address. I think it's 350 South Fourth Street, but I could misremember. I had to look it up. I told them to take it to the Free Food Table, which is what the Occupy site asks people to do. I'm not doing well at navigating their site, which got hacked recently; and I am not on FaceBook; but I googled around and found some articles about people sending food, and that's where the information came from.

Pizza Luce Downtown and Galactic Pizza will both deliver to Occupy Minnesota.
Some other restaurants in the area will too -- Sawat Dee is the one I remember -- but pizza seemed more manageable under the circumstances.

P.

[arkuat]

You are quite splendid for many different reasons, but one of them is having taken the trouble to figure all this out and follow up on it.

[pameladean]

Awww. *smooch* I feel so guilty about being too cowardly to be down there -- I am just not willing to be arrested -- that I had to do something.

P.

[arkuat]

Well, I'm not down there either and the only reason I'm particularly averse to being arrested is that I'd hate to miss work, but you've done more than I have.

I've been reading more news about Occupy Oakland than about Occupy Minneapolis lately, because of all the Bay area Quaker mailing lists I haven't unsubscribed from or filtered out yet, and things haven't gone as smoothly there as here.

[pameladean]

No, things really sound pretty grim in several different directions out there.

P.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about the problem with the pill bottle -- the outer part of the cap wouldn't engage the inner? If I needed to break off one of those caps, I think I'd do it with a gradual crushing, with something like a vise or vise-grips.

[pameladean]

Yes, I think that was the problem -- no matter how hard I pushed down, I couldn't get the threads to engage, it just clicked away, the way they do.

Now that the top part of the lid is partially crushed and has pieces missing, it all works fine.

I honestly thought a blow with a hammer would crack the side of the cap, but that stuff is very resilient. I could have found a vise grip, but the tools that happened to be on my desk worked fine.

P.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I just have to mention in this connection that I had a college friend who pronounced "Vise-Grips" as "vize grips," and when I pronounced it as "vice grips," insisted that that sounded terrible, like another word for love handles. Much hilarity ensued, including grabbing each other just below the waist and muttering "Vice grips!" at every subsequent opportunity.

[pameladean]

This totally cracked me up.

P.

[thinkum]

Do you need child-proof caps in your house? I have trouble with them because of early (very, very mild) arthritis, so the pharmacy has my account flagged to put arthritis-friendly caps on all my prescription bottles. All it took was a quick verbal request from me, and it makes life much easier.

[pameladean]

No, we don't need child-proof caps. But I've never had trouble with one before, either. The other three bottles of meds I got at the same time all opened quite meekly. Of course, regular caps are not subject to much if any malfunction, so it might still be a win to switch to them.

P.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

like the last furnace guy, said, "Wow, you might want to get that replaced on your own terms instead of waiting for it to fail."

Uh oh. He said this where the furnace could hear him? The furnace tech made this observation about my 20-something-year-old water heater back in September, so I resolved to replace it this month, and got a new water last month after three days of washing in cold water. I'm just sayin'.

[pameladean]

This is far from the first such remark that that furnace has heard. I think they probably make it more stubborn.

P.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Well, then, FURNACE, YOU ROCK!

I guess water heaters are more sensitive.

[pameladean]

I think they have to be, really, given their role in life.

P.

[guppiecat]

If it's the older sort of furnace I think it is, then it's probably just there for #Octopi Blaisdell Polytechnic. Like a Brownie, it'll hang in there doing it's job until you give it clothes or send it a pizza.

[csecooney.livejournal.com]

You have been busy!

I am always happy when I come back round to something and find I like it better this time. I've only read Master and Commander, but remember enjoying it thoroughly.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

It took me YEARS to bring myself to read the last couple of Aubrey-Maturin novels, after I'm sure you know EXACTLY what incident... shall I just say Dangerous Bridge? Once I got past that, I managed them as part of a re-read, and while I was absolutely outraged at He Deserved More Than Half A Sentence Dammit, I was better pleased with them than I'd have thought.

I was very pleased to be able to hook my housemate on the series, after reading a sufficient quantity of humorous snippets out to her -- "goat's milk? Perhaps without milk, then" and "they do it voluntary-like-- puja, puja, they say" and assorted similar bits. Then she got busy on writing projects of her own, but at least she knows the characters better than a mere movie can convey.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I sympathize about sticking Ari repeatedly. No fun for anyone involved.

I haven't had any real mat problems with Nanook in a while--at this time of year, I feel around for potential mats and pull them out. I do also try to brush him with a wire brush every week or so. But I don't bother dematting his tail--he can reach it himself, and it's not like he's a show cat.