Playing Catch-up

Got my ‘puter fixed.  It was the power supply. Took him ten minutes.  $37.89,  including shipping!  But it’s fixed.  It’s been fixed for almost a month now, but I’ve not been doing much of anything else blogworthy except doctor’s appointments.

I had an EGD (upper end) and colonoscopy (other end) last Monday which had had to be rescheduled because my cardiologist wouldn’t let me stop the clopidogrel (Plavix) (in case they had to do a biopsy or remove a polyp) until he saw me, and I couldn’t get in to see him before the day after my procedure was scheduled. The prep included drinking, like, 64 oz of what is essentially salt water, which is just plain nasty, followed by FOUR Dulcolax, and, not one, but TWO Fleets enemas the morning of the procedure.  June 14 was Slosh Sunday, spent prepping for the procedure the next day.  My mom could take me to where they did the procedure, but she couldn’t come in.  Between the prep and the procedure, I felt like somebody owed me damages, or at least pizza.  Once I got home, I had some lunch (Pedro’s tamales, refried beans, etc.), then I crashed and burned, because I had gotten no sleep at all the night before.  Let me tell you, making somebody drink all that salt water and then take four Dulcolax is cruel and unusual punishment in my book, y’all, never mind the enemas.

Today was kinda exciting.  My mom put out the call for the trained chimpanzee (me) to come help her change out the SIM card in her cell (flip) phone.  Her carrier, Consumer Cellular, is upgrading their cellphone network from 3G to 4G with the intention of phasing out all 3G phones by the end of the year.  So yrs trly bebopped over and did it for her.  Once you change out the SIM card, you have to call them to “activate” it, which I also had to do, twice, because my mom’s age-related hearing deficit (she turns 96 this year) is so profound in the higher frequencies that she has terrible trouble understanding girls/women over the phone, even with her hearing aids set on stun.  She has always had trouble understanding anyone with an accent (read: anybody who is not from our particular neck of the flatlands) even before she started losing her hearing.

Turns out she’s had her phone for so long that once they’ve updated their network, it won’t work any more. Fortunately, I went on their website and was able to get her another little flip phone just like the one she has now, except it will work on a 4G network. Her phone has voice mail, but she doesn’t know how to use it, so I had them just deactivate it. When she gets the new phone, I will have to see if I can download her phone book to the SIM card without having to do it entry by entry so I can just change out the SIM card, and won’t have to retype all her phonebook entries into the new phone. (Again.)  People keep telling her she needs a smart phone, but no.  Just no.  She’d probably stroke out from sheer frustration just trying to learn how to work a touch screen.

In the knitting news, I declared the The Assassin’s Daughter shawl finished at 6 skeins.  Here are some close ups for detail.  It was done in worsted weight yarn, but you can do it in any weight yarn you want.  I still have the ends to weave in, which I will as soon as I can remember what I did with the durn roundtoit.  Sigh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Naturally, I’ve started another shawl.  I’m calling it “Trio Sonata.”  It’s in Malabrigo sock yarn (Ooooo! snob yarn!) in the colorway “Teal Feather” on a US 6 (4.0 mm) 32-inch circular needle.

Another one of those short, sweet patterns. It has a repeat of three kfb’s (knit front and back) with an ssk as a border on one side and  yo, k2tog, p1, ssk as a border on the other side, with a garter stitch center.   It’s got a nice, shallow, crescent curve to it.

What am I reading?  If you want something short, light and hilarious, check out Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher.  An inept mage whose familiar is a snarky armadillo. Not T. Kingfisher’s usual fare, which can be a tad dark.  This is a delightful little gem at a delightful little price.

The Greyola* (my 2015 Toyota Corolla) (far left) was recalled for a doodad glitch on the passenger side air bag mechanism that might cause the air bag to fail to deploy in a crash.  The Toyota dealership here was forced by COVID quarantine policy to furlough their courtesy driver, and in order to avoid having a wad of customers of unknown COVID status socially distanced all over their waiting room while their cars were getting fixed and potentially exposing their employees and each other to COVID, they cut a deal with Uber.  So now, instead of their one driver of unknown COVID status driving  customers of unknown COVID status to and from their homes, they have multiple Uber drivers of unknown COVID status driving customers of unknown COVID status to and from their homes.  So, when I took the Greyola in for the recall repair, not only did I get my first Uber ride, I got my second Uber ride.  Yee-haw.

What  other exciting things have been happening in my life . . . Oh, yeah.  I did a purse dump yesterday.  For the benefit of the non-purse-wearing crowd, that’s when you take your purse over to the kitchen (or dining room) table, turn it upside down and dump everything out of it.  Then you pick through the pile of stuff and put back in what needs to go back in, in a neat and organized fashion, and you sort through what’s left and deal with it appropriately — throw out the dead tissues, cash register receipts, other pieces of paper, candy wrappers, etc.  The two most important inventions in the history of the human race (and the wheel isn’t either of them) are shoes and pockets.  Both of them were invented by women.  Men are hunters.  All they have to carry home from hunting is a couple of pointed sticks and a dead animal or three.  Women are gatherers, and there’s no way you can do any serious gathering without some way to schlep all the produce back to the cave.  And what is a purse — our symbol — but a big pocket with a strap on it.  I rest my case.

 

*The 1987 Toyota Corolla I had until I traded it in for the 2015 Corolla was known affectionately as the Crayola.  The 2015 one is silver, hence the Greyola.  See?  Makes perfect sense.