compilerbitch

Adrian made strawberry pancakes, blueberry pancakes, and raspberry pancakes, partly because we have all these strawberries to use up, and partly so I could try cooked strawberries, after the fresh ones made my lips itch on Friday.

I ate a bite of a strawberry pancake, and found it bland and uninteresting. I didn't react to the berry, but it was one small piece of strawberry, and I don't know whether a larger amount would have been a problem.

I may yet try something like a strawberry sauce over cake or ice cream. Adrian noted that raw and cooked strawberries are almost different fruits, but it also seems possible that a strawberry sauce will taste more like raw berries than like strawberries baked into pancakes.

redbird

The three of us went out to the No Kings Yaas Queens combined Pride/NoKings demonstration today, despite my worries about my various joints. Or, at least, that was the plan. It didn't work out, but my knees, hips, and ankles are OK.

We got to Park Street and the Common, and found other people who were looking for the same event, a stage where someone was introducing the next speaker?performer?, and some tables and tents, but no focus. We wound up walking to the side of the Common next to the Public Garden, where we found the parade, smaller than we'd expected but with enough of a crowd I couldn't see much. So we went home, pausing moderately often to rest my joints and watch another bit of parade, which seems to have been heading for Government Center as originally planned, not the Common as we thought.

I'm both glad I went, and disappointed that I didn't actually make it to the first protest or rally I've felt physically capable of in too long.

I will probably update this tomorrow, to note how my joints are feeling. This afternoon, they've felt good enough for some PT exercises.

firecat

My fave is the semicolon; however, I refuse to cede em-dashes or any other punctuation marks to ChatGPT.

These attacks on the em dash — a ChatGPT hyphen? How very dare you! — have in turn blazed across social media spaces populated by the kind of folks who will tell you, unprompted, that they have a favorite punctuation mark and what it is. (It is very likely the em dash.) — https://www.salon.com/2025/06/11/ai-cant-have-my-em-dash/

redbird

I fear that I may have developed an allergy to strawberries.

Cattitude came home from the farmers market with two quarts of strawberries, so we sat down to eat strawberries this evening. Adrian washed a plateful of the berries, and we all started eating.

They're very good strawberries, but I realized after eating a few that my lips were starting to itch. They were tasty enough that I had four or five more before saying anything. When I did, Adrian suggested I go wash my face. I rinsed my lips with plenty of cool water, took a benadryl, complained about the situation, and got Adrian to make me herb tea. I hope I haven't developed an allergy to a fruit I like, after eating them without problems for more than fifty years.

ETA, after responding to people's comments:

It may not be just strawberries. Raw kiwi makes my mouth itch, and I think I remember having a problem with the kiwi on a mixed fruit tart. Possibly-underripe figs also made my mouth itch once, but cooked figs (fig Newton cookies) are OK, and a fig that was ripe enough to fall off the tree at my feet was fine. I think I need to do some reading.

Current Mood: unhappy

redbird

I had telemedicine with the GI doctor this morning. ( mostly for my own reference )

skibbley

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3102/

[desperately] Maybe this is from some country where they use commas as decimal points, and also as digit separators after the decimal, and also use random other characters for decoration???

https://xkcd.com/3102/

redbird

Cattitude and I got up at 5:45 so he could pill Kaja, preparatory to her dental surgery. Both the pilling and the medical care went well, and she is on soft food only for 10-14 days. Therefore Molly is too, and we have to give them different treats than the usual dental Greenies. (Kaja will also be getting anti-inflammatories for a couple of days, and gabapentin for five.)

I got email from my brother about Mom's estate. He has done the necessary formwork so Vanguard can give us the money from her account there, where we are co-beneficiaries. His share is already in his account existing account. I tried setting an account up online, which apparently failed at the last minute, so I called and got a helpful person to walk me through the process again, step by step. I had gotten far enough earlier to create security questions, including some that I can actually remember my answers to, and haven't used repeatedly elsewhere. Separately, I need to talk to someone at Amalgamated Bank about the account there, a joint account with both our names on it. I hope they'll let me, as co-owner, close the account and transfer the money elsewhere, rather than sending them a copy of the death certificate, getting the account just in my name, and then closing it.

Mark also said he's thinking of going to London next month to sort through Mom's belongings, photos, and paperwork. So he wants to know whether I'm going as well, and if so, what dates worth for me. (Putting this here so I'm less likely to forget to talk to Cattitude and Adrian and then write back to Mark.)

green_knight

Anyone can be shouty, edgy, and black.

There seems to be more than one band with a pink logo, but this song surely features the most metal instrument of all times:

the recorder.

Watch on YouTube

(For Germans: This is Torfrock. Brings back memories. I got there via Platt folk songs: Dat Du meen Leevsten büst -> Nakich bün ick gor nich mehr so schmuck (from recommendations - c'mon, I had to listen to that [*]) -> other Torfrock songs -> WTF???)

[*] There's an English language folk song, 'I just don't look good naked anymore' of which this is riffing off. And in typical Torfrock manner, it's a lot more direct. ('schmuck' is an adjective used for attractive people, so... yeah. I still understand a fair bit of it. Not all, though, which is annoying.).

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: amused

redbird

Last week:

*Cattitude read Blue Moose, by Daniel Pinkwater, aloud to us, because it's one of his favorites and Adrian had never read it. I've reread the book several times, and was happy to hear it out loud.

*I read Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire. Decidedly weird, funny fantasy. A lot of the humor is in the footnotes, which seem to be at least a quarter of the text. Also, the title does in fact describe the book. Isabella lives in a poor, out-of-the-way village, whose wizard keeps the local goblin market in check, until one day he doesn't. The goblins sell one thing, unnaturally tempting and dangerous fruit.

*Did not finish: Girls Against God, by Jenny Hval. I don't remember where I saw this recommended, and just couldn't get into it.

Currently reading:

*Installment Immortality, by Seanan McGuire, the latest book in her InCryptid series. I started it late last night, and only read a few pages before turning the light out.

*Twelve Trees, by Daniel Lewis, nonfiction about trees and climate change. I picked this up at the libraru, as a "book with a green caover" for the summer reading challenge.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3101/

If you think curiosity without rigor is bad, you should see rigor without curiosity.

https://xkcd.com/3101/

green_knight

I wanted to make a post about shiny math rocks, and will do so at a later time, but my experience has been marred a bit by customer service issues.

( Same problem, different solutions )

I definitely need to find more opportunities to play DnD.

Current Mood: disappointed

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3100/

With a good battery, the device can easily last for 5 or 10 years, although the walls probably won't.

https://xkcd.com/3100/

redbird

My right knee is healing, and stretching worked significantly better than yesterday. I even did a few carefully selected PT exercises this afternoon.

I can do more things standing up, and walking around the apartment is easier. However, I seem to have been leaning too much on the other leg, because my left knee started to hurt earlier. Not badly, but enough that I am putting the cane aside for the moment.

update Monday, 6/9: my knees feel mostly OK today. I am still being careful about walking a lot or standing too long. I just got the mail, figuring the two steps down to the mailboxes would be a useful check of how I'm doing. It was doable, but did hurt a little; I'm glad I decided not to go out. (The sidewalk is down another half dozen stairs, which are a bit more difficult than the ones inside, but the main thing is that this way I only had to climb back up two stairs.)

I heard from the GI doctor's office this morning, and have an appointment Friday at 10:30, which will be telemedicine. I hope my knees will be feeling a lot better by then, but if she had wanted to see me in person, I would have called a lyft and taken the quad cane with me just in case.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3099/

The installation of the pipes on the inside of the insulation can be challenging, especially when the neighbor could come home at any minute.

https://xkcd.com/3099/

redbird

We had a *weird* power outage today: most but not all of the apartment lost power. Mercifully, we did not lose power to the study, where I've been sitting quietly in the air conditioning all day (the high was 35C/95F). Our first thought was that something weird had happened to our apartment's power. Cattitude spent some time on the phone with the management company, which sent a technician. The technician looked things over and told us to call Eversource.

Some piece of their equipment broke, leaving 37 customers without power, according to the outage map, including us and our upstairs neighbors who also had power in part of each apartment. It took them several hours to fix, but fortunately we got our lights back before it was entirely dark out. The oddest-feeling bit of this was realizing that I could plug my phone in to charge, in the middle of a power outage.

I have been doing almost nothing today, to avoid straining my knee*. It's feel better now than last night, but still not great, and I'm having trouble using the quad cane correctly: even moving slowly, my foot and the cane are landing with one an inch or so ahead of the other (sometimes the foot is forward, sometimes it's behind). Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot cooler, but I'm still planning to stay home, and hopefully do some stretching.

* Yes, I buried the lede in yesterday's post, because the googly-eyed train was more interesting.

redbird

Since my last reading post:

Nobody Cares, by H. J. Breedlove. This one is good, but dark: it's dedicated this to Black Lives Matter, and fairly early on I got to the first mention of Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It's also book 3 in the Talkeetna series, with further developments in the friendship-turning-romance of Dace and Paul.

The Disappearing Spoon, by Dan Kean: a history of the periodic table, with a bit about each of the currently-known elements and the people, or groups of people who discovered them. Someone recommended this after I mentioned liking Consider the Fork, but the two books have almost nothing in common.

The Electricity of Every Living Thing, by Katherine May: a memoir, about walking and what happens after the writer hears a radio program about Asperger's and thinks "but that's me." (I don't remember where I saw this recommended

Return to Gone-Away, by Elizabeth Enright: read-aloud, and a reread of a book I read years ago. Sweet, a family's low-key adventures in an obscure corner of upstate New York. As the title implies, this is a sequel; read Gone-Away Lake first.

Beautiful Yetta, the Yiddish Chicken, by Daniel Pinkwater, a short picture book that we read aloud after Adrian and I realized Cattitude hadn't read it before. Conversation in three languages, with translations (and transliterations) for the Yiddish and Spanish. Not Pinkwater's best, but fun.

Thimble Summer, by Elizabeth Enright, because I enjoyed rereading the Gone-Away Lake books. Several months of a girl's life with her family on a farm. The plot and adventures are relatively low-key. I liked it, and am glad I got it from the library.

Also, it looks as though I didn't post about the summer reading thing here. It started June 1, and the bingo card has a mix of kinds of books, like books in translation, published this year, or with an indigenous author; some squares with things like "read outside" and "recommend a book"; and some that go further afield, like "learn a word in a new language" and "try a new recipe." Plus the ever-popular "book with a green cover." (OK, last year it was "book with a red cover.") I do a lot of my reading on a black-and-white kindle, so I don't know what color the covers might be. Therefore, I walked into a library yesterday, looked at their summer reading suggestions, and grabbed a book with a green cover.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3098/

Ultimately, history would imperfectly record the story of the Foal of Troy.

https://xkcd.com/3098/

redbird

Two minor amusing things from a trip downtown this morning:

I saw (and rode) one of the googly-eyed trolleys for the first time.

And on the way back, an ad in a subway car for some AI thing. The headline is something like "offload the busy work." The steps given below that are "AI drafts brief" and "brief accepted." Almost anything would have been a better example, after repeated news stories about lawyers getting in trouble for submitting impressively flawed AI-drafted legal briefs.

The trip was to try on sandals at the Clark's store. There was one that was slightly two big, so I have ordered a pair in my usual style, to be delivered to the store, so I can try them on there and return them if they don't fit.

I stopped to grab some lunch at the Quincy Market food court, and then wrenched my knee while sitting down on some stairs in order to eat it. The trip home was not fun, but I came home, sat down for a couple of minutes, then got out last fall's cane and went into the kitchen to make tea.

Current Mood: sore

skibbley

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3097/

Pontoon bridges are just linear open-sided waterbeds.

https://xkcd.com/3097/

firecat

"Peter Stormare Gives Update on ‘Constantine 2’; Keanu Reeves Reportedly Unhappy with Script" by Meagan Navarro (very similar articles seen on a number of other entertainment news sites).

"'But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes,' Stormare said."

I think I agree with Keanu. We already have the John Wick franchise. IT IS AWESOME. But we don't need the Keanu-as-Constantine franchise to turn into another John Wick franchise.

I hope they resolve this soon because I am DROOLING at the chance to see Stormare play Lucifer again.

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strawberry follow-up

#NoKings

Hey AI — hands off my em-dash

strawberries

talked to the GI doc

Torbay

Reading a Big Number

it's been a busy day

The true meaning of Metal

Wednesday reading

Good Science

Of Dice and Bots

Alert Sound

boring knee update

Neighbor-Source Heat Pump

weird power outage, and knee update

semi-recent reading

Trojan Horse

(no subject)

Book: Pink Pilled

Bridge Types

(Keanu-as-) Constantine 2!

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January 2016

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