Dichroic Reflections

Looks like our respite from snot is ending; Oolong has been hacking and coughing though not quite as mucus-y as she was in spring (yet). It’s not surprising; due to fires across the PNW, our air quality is currently rated Unhealthy. Oolong is an indoor cat so she spends her life in an air-conditioned climate, but clearly she’s especially sensitive to pollens and pollutants.

It was nice while it lasted.

Meanwhile Tuesday was an expensive day. On the way back from last weekend’s family reunion, somehow my water bottle tipped over in my bag and wasnt completley closed. The water didn’t go all over the bag, but seemed to end up in my iPad, Kindle and knitting. The knitting is fine, of course, and luckily so is the Kindle. The iPad, not so much. I left it sitting in rice for two days, but when I pulled it out and plugged it in it still refused to power up. When I pulled out the sim card, it was still damp. That two-day delay also convinced me that I really missed having a tablet around; I use it for knitting patterns, GPS (easier to see than a phone), recipes, missing object games (hard to do on a phone) and generally just having information at my fingertips on a screen big enough to read it. So Tuesday after work, I first tried taking it to the Geek Squad and was informed they pretty much don’t fix water damage and that Apple might but it would cost weeks and hundreds of dollars. Then the Best Buy salesperson informed me they had no iPad Pros and no 9.7″ iPads with cellular capability in tthe store, so I went across the steet to Verizon. The person there confirmed the same story about getting it fixed, but sold me a new iPad. At least I “saved” around $400 by buying a regular iPad instead of replacing my iPad Pro; the Pro has a better display but not $400 better. Also one of the reasons I bought the previous one was to use the Apple Pencil – the regular iPads can do that now. I debated getting a Mini, but am not sure I want to go that much smaller – it’s enough bigger than my phone to definitely be useful, but I can imagine it still being hard to read street names or find hidden objects in a game.

Surprisingly, and very unlike the last few times I bought a device, I was out of there in under half an hour clutching my new toy. Of course that meant I had to go home and sync it to my computer but at least that can be done while I do other stuff. Unfortunately it had been nearly a year since I synced the old one! But it’s not like I keep a lot of data updated on the iPad; most documents I use are on the Cloud or Google Docs and other apps like Pepperplate, which I use for recipes, sync to an online account so nothing is lost. I’ve also been mostly storing new Notes in the cloud. The only thing I seem to be missing is all of my knitting patterns (even though I keep them in Goodreader, which was supposedly synced to the cloud). Ravelry saves me there; I can just re-load most of my patterns from there.

The one remaining issue is that the keyboard/cover from my iPad Pro won’t fit this one, and I hate carrying it around naked – it feels too fragile and too easy to drop.  In my experience it’s much, much cheaper to order a cover from Amazon than to buy one in either Beet Buy or Verizon; if I’m lucky the ones I bought Tuesday (separate cover and keyboard) will arrive before we head to the lake tonight. Yesterday I had a brilliant idea: I went looking for iPad keyboards on Amazon Prime Now, which delivers in just a few hours (the one I’d already ordered was only about $10, so having an extra would be OK). Not only did I find one, I found one that was $17 for a cover with built-in keyboard, that normally retails for $119. It was only an hour or two later, with the thing already out for delivery, that I realized I’d ordered an iPad *mini* cover. Oooooops. Not expecting this to work but figuring it was worth a try, I called Amazon to ask if I could just, like, give it back to the delivery person to return. Amazingly, they were able to cancel the delivery, refund the delivery fee, and even give me back a $5 credit I had that was used on the purchase. Shocking, in a very nice way.

We had a great weekend with Ted’s family celebrating his maternal grandfather’s 100th birthday (with luck, we’ll be able to do the same for his other grandfather in 3 years). All of his descendants were there except one who’s currently living abroad – the most exciting part was getting to meet the new baby who made this a five-generation gathering. I got some fabulous photos of people, though I won’t post them here because some family members don’t want pics of them online. Everyone was on good behavior and I got to spend time with some people I like a lot and don’t get to see often, as well as some of the kids before they reach an entire new life stage.

One downside, though – I came back to work Monday all peopled out. I am really not looking forward to an intense week of work (we specialize in those, around here) and then houseguests next weekend. Very welcome houseguests that I invited myself but still.

On the other hand, I’ve spent most of today in my cube typing, so now my wrists hurt and dealing with people sounds like a good break! (I’m sure that will change shortly, as I have to go deal with Best Buy. On the way back home, my water bootle spilled in my bag and it all seems to have gone in my iPad. Either the Geek Squad can fix it, or I guess I’m replacing it. Not the fun kind of ‘dealing with people’!)

Your friends understand the concept of RSVP, and let you know if they’re coming in time to figure out how much food you have to buy.

In related news, we are hosting the fourth more-or-less annual Black Sheep Knitting Retreat the weekend after next, which should be a lot of fun even though the Black Sheep Festival has moved away from Eugene, so we will just be hanging out at the house (unless of course people want to visit the Animal House weekend in nearby Cresswell, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the movie there where much of it was filmed). Knitting, companionship, wine, hanging out, kayaking for those interested – should be fun.  

This weekend should be even more fun, as were flying to California for my GFIL’s hundredth birthday. It will be odd, being social two weekends in a row.

The other thing I’m currently enjoying is Anne Fadiman’s biography of her father, The Wine-Lover’s Daughter. As a fan of Clifton Fadiman, Anne Fadiman, and wine, it’s completely up my alley, though I do feel sorry for Anne, who apparently has never managed to enjoy wine as much as she’d like to.  At least she is totally qualified to participate in her father’s equal passion for books; his New Lifetime Reading Plan is an achievement, but her Ex Libris is a love letter and a friend to any bibliophile. Friends on the shelf (or Kindle) I are not the worst sort of friend.

I still don’t understand the whole ultralight packing thing. (It’s annoying mostly because people who are into that are often so self-righteous about it.) Like, I’m traveling for a three-day weekend, so it should be super-easy to pack carry-on only, right? I’m a small-ish person and it’s summer, so clothing is tiny. But here’s what I need: an outfit for Friday daytime, Friday night dinner, Saturday at a waterpark, and a formal-ish dinner Saturday night. Currently I have three dresses and a t-shirt/shorts, plus a bathing suit. Plus shorts/tank to sleep in. Not going to wear a bikini because 51 years old and not feeling like I want to show off every bit of jiggle (I have seen bigger people than me rock a bikini, but the way I’m proportioned means it’s not the most flattering for me – instead, a longer top and quick-dry shorts make me look athletic). Plus I would like to have dressier shoes for Saturday night, and it would have been nice to have one pair of casual shoes that look nice with a dress as well as shoes for the waterpark. I may combine the latter two, though it would mean wearing leather Keens to the waterpark. In an ideal world I would also take my work laptop / charger so I could work some to make up for leaving early Thursday, but I probably won’t unless I want to take a larger backpack for my plus-one bag. This is a 100th birthday party, so the whole family is there plus a new baby (5 generations) so camera gear is non-negotiable; between us we will probably take an SLR with a couple of lenses and a Go-Pro, plus of course my phone. And I need a cardigan for the plane / over-airconditioned spaces, plus a kindle and iPad and their chargers, plus my knitting.

I think the ultralight packers’ advice would be to wear only one outfit Friday (I’ll be in Sacramento and it will be around 100 degrees F – I expect to sweat). Granted, I could probably find dressy flats that would be lighter than the wedge heels I’m packing. But do these people not get cold on planes? Or sweat and want clean clothes? Or read enough to want a non-backlit device? Or work on weekends? Or take good pictures of special occasions? Or need lots of sunscreen and not have an easy way to get to a store? It also ticks me off that the advice tends to assume that anyone who travels a lot will of course be in the carryon-only brigade. Anyone who reads this knows that I have traveled a lot; it’s mostly convinced me that I usually appreciate having choices and a change of clothing available.

Currently I have a messenger bag plus a carry-on-sized suitcase, but I still might need to take more of the camera gear, that would drive a larger bag. Ted doesn’t even try to pack light, so we may end up having to visit the bag check anyway; it would at least make packing sunscreen easier.

Today’s odd experience: Just outside the work cafeteria, they often have a table with vendors selling something and offering samples – local honey, local chocolatiers, new energy drinks, and so on. Today they had someone offering samples of a product billed as “a meal in a bottle”. It’s call Soylent. I did not take a sample.

The other thing I wish I’d been blogging about is Oolong, our cat with chronic rhinitis. All spring she was a complete snot factory – I mean, it was fairly disgusting – and now for the last month or more you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with her. Around here, the tradition is that July 4 is when summer begins; any time after that you can plan outside activities without worrying about getting rained out. I’d like to know if her symptoms abated round then, which could be due to sinus stuff from pressure changes, or early, so I could check how well they track with pollen count. Anyway, she’s a fairly cuddly cat, who unlike her sister doesn’t claw or bite, and I am enjoying being able to snuggle her without a high risk of getting sneezed on with extreme mucus-ness.

With her sister Macchiato, the challenge is more about how to convince her that love-bites are not the best way to show affection to the furless members of your family.

So…. my blood pressure was 177/88 last Friday, 122/80 Monday, 144/82 today. I believe I have identified one component of the variation (other than the obvious one, that work in general seems to raise my BP).

I realized today that since with their system they have to read the numbers off a big round analog dial,
It looks like the humans who take the measurements are biased toward double numbers. With as fast as the needle moves, I doubt there’s much visible difference between, say, 144 or 145.

This is what happens when you send someone whose whole job is based around data and evidence to see the doctor!

That blood pressure that was 177/88 Friday …. was 122/80 today. I self-prescribe more time on the water! (Or possibly more Ted time – he was sleeping in the spare room all last week, until the weekend, due to a sinus infection and lots of coughing.)

Last week at my dermatologist checkup, my blood pressure was higher than I’ve seen it for a while. Also, I had a mild headache or felt on the verge of one all week. So I dropped into the clinic at work (I love having a clinic at work!) and asked them to take my BP …. and it was another 20 points higher, 177/88. That is, apparently, not high enough to cause your brain to spontaneously explode, but it’s still scary high for me. I dithered a bit about whether to go to my primary care doctor (which would have to wait til Monday at least) or see one at the work clinic. I decided on the latter because I could be seen the same day, and also because I’ve only seen my PCP once (the previous one left that practice) and I’ve need the Nurse Practitioner at work once also, and liked her better. So now I will be going back on blood pressure meds, but first I have to go to the lab this morning to get my kidney function and electrolytes checked. This means I can’t eat anything or even have sugar in my tea until 9:15 this morning (my workday starts at 7).

The other bad thing that happened Friday is that I drove my car home with the sunroof open, then when I went to close it, it THUNKED loudly and refused to close all the way. So I also have an appointment with the mechanic this afternoon.

Couple all that with a potential issue at work that will need either lots of escalation or a creative way to avert it, and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be lowering my BP.

Well, actually, I do know how I need to lower my BP; I suspect a relatively small weight loss, 5-10 pounds, might have a big effect. Apparently, the thyroid meds I take only because the numbers in a blood test were high and not because of any actual symptoms can also raise BP. (There have been a bunch of articles on how thyroid meds are widely overprescribed – here’s a sample.) So I think I’m going to go off the Levothyroxin, and we’re going to try to eat smaller portions at dinner, having realized that we do eat more than we used to (because we cook better!).

Here’s hoping the car issue is easily fixed.

On the plus side, we finally had good weather on a weekend when we were both home and not sick so we finally got on the water! This is the first time in months, whereas usually we row almost all year round. I rowed one lap around the lake Saturday and it was glorious, though did abstain from kayaking Sunday because it was extremely windy. (I think I should have gone – from what we saw on the way home, the water wasn’t too bad. Oh well.

This day is not starting off well, but at least the weather is still beautiful – a good thing, since I can’t close my car’s roof!! Hopefully I can sustain the glow from the weekend a bit longer.