The Nightmare

I'm not going to write a full entry because I want to get back to bed.  But to hit the high points, t he day after things were "fixed" they were not fixed, the desktop did not see either hard drive again and I had no internet connection on either the desktop or the laptop, so I couldn't even write an Airy Persiflage
.
The next day Walt and I went to an Alzheimer's convention and midway, I started getting a bad pain in my side and went out to the car.  i told Walt to take me home, which he did  By night I was nauseous an felt awful.

In the morning I called Kaiser and got an appointment.  The dr said it sounded like appendicitis and sent me off to the ER in Vacaville, where the nightmare began  There was a long line waiting to register, and once registered I had to have blood drawn before seeing the doctor.  It took 4 hours to get blood drawn and after 5-1/2 hours it was so cold I had to ask for a blanket.

For the next couple of hours, I was texting messages to Facebook:

* The waiting room is FULL and most of us have been here for hours. The ER sucks!
* This is only HALF the people waiting for hours to be seen. (I have a photo, but am not posting it) I'm thinking just letting the damn appendix burst might not be so bad.
* ...and they keep pouring in...
* Someone is now barfing very loudly
* How does "The Night Shift" get a whole bus load of injured people triaged and treated in an hour? And still have time for hanky panky in the linen closet???
* Now it's SRO in the ER. I'd gladly give up my spot for a seat in on an exam table.
*And now we have the screaming (and I do mean screaming) child.
* A group of us who came around the same time are starting to get chummy. This includes pink hat lady and Rip Van Winkle, who have been here LONGER.
* Yay! Pink hat lady got called. I felt we should have cheered for her. There is HOPE!
 
And then this

 
* Finally in the room where I hope it starts to happen!

I made no entries for the next 2 hours, while I was poked, prodded, evacuated and scanned.  After the CT scan. they said it would be an hour for results.

While I went to sleep, Walt wandered the ER and checked out our "buddies" from the waiting room.  Apparently the wait was due to a massive computer glitch, which it would have been nice if they explained!

When the results finally came back, they were inconclusive.  Appendix looks fine.  Lab tests show some slight irregularities, but in places where I am not feeling pain.  He offered to admit me to the hospital for the weekend so they could continue to run tests, but my back was killing me (nothing to do with the presenting pain--my back ALWAYS kills me) and when he gave me the option of following up with my PCP, I took it (dismissal papers say I left "against medical advice" which was not the case!)

A mere 11 hours after we arrived, we finally left and were home by 3:30.  I think I was asleep by 3:35.

This morning the nausea is finally gone and I can eat again (though only "boring" food the doctor says -- fruits and vegetables).  I have an appointment with the PCP on Monday.  Physically, I don't feel "well," but I don't feel "sick either."  NOT being nauseated is a HUGE improvement, but I'm weak and sore like I'd been exercising.  But no pain like the pain that started all this.

In the meantime there is a computer, which miraculously has given me a connection, but no F drive again.  Waiting for a follow-up visit with the guru

And now back to sleep...

Squirrel

Did you see the movie Up with the cute little dog who got distracted every time a squirrel passed by?

Or maybe a better analogy is the Wizard of Oz, and that fire and brimstone machine that pours out smoke and speaks in a loud scary voice when really it's just a little old man behind a curtain ("Pay no attention to that man behind the screen")

I thought of those two examples yesterday.

* We are on the verge of nuclear war with North Korea, and each country has a little kid at its head just itching to try out their war toys.

* We're talking about a troop surge in Afghanistan.

* We have just been through the worst storm in this country's history and people are still digging out their homes.

*  A storm which has the potential of being even bigger is rolling around the Caribbean approaching Florida (please let it hit Mar-a-Lago!)

* We are dealing with the rise of white supremacists.

* Mueller and his committee are apparently finding more and more bad stuff.

* FEMA runs out of money at the end of the week and there is nothing to give the victims of Harvey the assistance they need

And in the middle of this, POTUS decides to cancel DACA???  What was the reason for doing it NOW?  What is the urgency (other than that he is determined to erase every thing Obama ever did.)  He put the entire country in turmoil, headlines, talking heads, demonstrators, all concentrating on nothing but the Dreamers (whom the president claims to "love.")

The man is the master of distraction.  When things get uncomfortable, find something else to divert attention. Just like he stood in the White House to answer questions (like that is going to happen) and said "SQUIRREL!" and everybody stops thinking about all the bad stuff and goes chasing after the damn squirrels.

The ridiculous thing about this all is that now that he has put the future of 800,000 people who have only known the USA as "home" all of their lives and who, for all intents and purposes, have led blameless lives and are living productive lives and contributing to the country, in jeopardy, he claims to love them and to leave it to Congress to find a way to protect them...and THEN at the end of the day he tweets that Congress has six months to solve this problem and if they can't solve it "he will reconsider."

What the hell is THAT????

_________________

In the meantime, the guru is coming today to check out the computer and we'll see if I'll be back in business tonight or if he will take it with him for another week.

The Empty Vessel

As I was going to sleep last night, I was thinking that somewhere I had read a poem...or
something...about an "empty vessel," as a symbol of a feeling of emptiness.  Of course I couldn't
check it out because you need a COMPUTER to check Google and, once again, I was without a
computer.  (checking today, it apparently is used in a religious connotation, which is not the way I meant it!)

It was that kind of a day and by mid-afternoon I was feeling like an empty vessel and just...nothing.

So the day started, as it usually does, with my going to the computer to check e-mail, but I saw a
message on my screen that I had been logged out of whatever page I had been on when I went to
sleep the previous night. I didn't think much about it until I went to my F drive to get a file and
discovered that the computer did not recognize the F drive.  This is what happened when it didn't
recognize the E drive and Steve (the guru) told me the drive was toast.

I groaned bigly [sic] but was SO glad that if I had now lost ALL of my files, I had thought to copy the most important ones onto a flash drive the day before.  All that "I am hating my life" work was not for naught.

I took out the flash drive and plugged it in, but the computer didn't recognize IT either.  What was going on here?  Naturally it was a holiday and Steve was not at work.

I checked and the computer didn't see my iPhone either.  And it told me I was not connected to the internet, but I was because all of my other devices were using the local connection.

So I gave up on the computer before I ruined anything else, and I went to the iPad.  But iPad was
giving me problems too.  Mostly, all of the passwords that it has been keeping in memory for me were gone. Whenever I went on to ANY page, I had to re-enter the password, which was very annoying.

The topper was when I went to take a big swig out of the glass of water that I always have next to
me and discovered 2 flies swimming in it.

The main thing I had to do yesterday was write the Octoroon review for the Davis paper and I finally realized that what my computer had become was a glorified word processor and I could at least WRITE it and PRINT it and take the printed copy to the paper. Before I did that, I did a test print to make sure the printer was working, and it wasn't.  The computer didn't know I had a printer, so I decided that it was definitely the COMPUTER that was the problem, not the external hard drive(s) ... at least I hope that is what I am going to find.

That was when I began to feel like an empty vessel.  I felt like my mother knowing there was something I was supposed to do, but not knowing what.  Only I knew what I was supposed to do and couldn't do it.  Any of it.

It's hard to explain how I felt.  It wasn't even upset at losing every file that I had (including every photo). All my special photos are also on Facebook.  I care less and less about a lot of other things I have stored because if I really need some of them, I can find those on the Internet.  But it was just like someone had reached in and ripped out my guts.  I felt like one of those demented people wandering the halls of Atria looking so lost.

Maybe the main problem was realizing that my mother turns 98 in 2 days.  That's a part of it.

I didn't even plug in the laptop.  I just didn't care.

(fortunately there was a 48 hour M*A*S*H marathon and I just sat and stared at it, though I didn't really pay attention to most of it.

But by this morning, I was starting to come back to life again.  I'm waiting for a call from Steve and have once again set up my faux office on the dining room table--this time with a big fan blowing cool air on my face, which helps an incredible amount.

And I'm OK for whatever "the duration" is.  I have work-arounds and I know how to use them. Especially a work-around for Funny the World, which is the thing that starts to fill my vessel up again.

So, who knows how long I'll be using Airy P, but I HAVE Airy P, at least!

I'm Hating My Life

I did something smart many years ago.  I decided to start a database of FTW entries.  I had no idea that this many years and over 6,700 entries later, I would still be keeping it.  The database was in this format
 

Date

Title

Description

Photos

Videos

I have been incredibly grateful over the years to have this record because if I'm looking for a photo, for example all I have to do is search the database and within seconds, it lists for me where to find all examples of that photo.  Same with "I think I wrote an entry about and such...did I?"  Just do a search and voila...all entries that match that subject.

Now I stored the database on my E drive, which was where I stored all of my database stuff.  Long ago, I decided to store NOTHING on the desktop hard drive because computers are forever dying.  But surely external hard drives didn't do that, did they?

Most of my documents are on the F drive, where the word processing, and journal documents are.

In about March of last year, I decided that JUST TO BE SAFE, I would make a back-up of the journal entries on my C drive and so did that  All the entries from March 2000 to March 2017.  Occasionally I am smart.

And then the E drive crashed.  At first I was disconsolate, thinking that the record of all 6,700+ entries were gone.  But then I remembered the backup and...voila!  There it was.  Only five months of entries to bring it up to date.  I usually update the database at the end of each month, not daily.  And when I do it it takes me about 30-60 minutes to do and almost always involves my skipping an entry somewhere in the middle and having to go back and do a week or so over again.

BUT at least I had not lost everything.  AND I was going to be smart about it.  I was going to save the database on the C drive, on the F drive and on a flash drive.  And I would keep all three copies updated monthly.  I bought myself a couple of 36 gig flash drives and first copied ALL of my WordPefect files on that (surprised to discover that it took only a teeny corner of the drive, so all my WP files are now backed up) and then I started updating the journal database.

After two days of this I am so bored with my life!!!  Updating involves at least skimming thru every entry to remember what subject(s) I talked about, and which photos I used.  So it's essentially re-reading everything for the last five months and I am bored silly with my life over the past five months!

I took lots of breaks.  When I finished a month, I would go and Do Something (like watch National Velvet, for example, which gave me an hour and a half break and a big catharsis so I could sit and cry and not feel self-conscious about it), or have a second or third lunch before going back to the next month

But it is FINISHED!!!

I also keep a database of all the books I read and that hadn't been backed up since March either, but that was a fairy simple thing to do -- the hard part was adding all the pages I'd read for the year, but I will assume that I didn't make any mistakes on the calculator--and if I did, nobody will ever know or care.

The movie database is much easier.  When you only see one or two movies a year, it's not a big database and, miraculously, I had already backed up our one movie for 2017 (Beauty and the Beast, which we saw when Caroline was here) so I just had to copy it onto the flash drive.

In the morning I wrote the review of Octoroon, which we saw last night.  I reviewed it for the Sacramento paper and now I have to write the review for the Davis paper.

It was one weird show and very difficult to review.  It's a revision of 19th century anti-slavery melodrama written by an Irish playwright.  The revision is written by a 32 year old African American playwright

It is your standard melodrama plot (plantation foreclosure, sweet thing to be ravaged, slaves to be sold and in the end salvation at the last minute), but I never heard the N-word used so many times in my life, by both the slaves (3 of them) and the plantation owners.  The situations are meant to be broadly funny to get people thinking about the issues and though this was written a couple of years ago, in light of Charlottesville and all that is going on right now, it is very timely.

The situations are so horrendously offensive that you find yourself sitting there wondering "is it ok that I'm laughing at this?"  The hero is a back man playing a white man in white face, then there is a white man playing a Native American in red face, and a white man playing a black man in black face.  (there's even a white baby doll in black face).

(The Southern Belle, however, was perfect).

Walking out of the theater at the end of the show, I heard someone say something like "I really enjoyed that, but don't know what I just saw."  A white woman told me it was the worst thing she had ever seen at that theater and was a total waste of 2 hours, while a black man said he loved it and had seen it three times before.  The reviewers stood around and discussed it.  A woman who also writes for the Sacramento paper told me that usually when I'm the one writing for this theater, she's jealous, but this time she was glad it was me and not her.

The shorter Sacramento review turned out to be easier than I expected...it's the longer Davis review that is going to be the tricky one!

Sunday Stealing

This month, kids from all over will be going back to school (if they haven't already gone back).  I thought it might be fun to look back at our own school days, some of them more recent than others.  I couldn't find a meme to steal, so this was cobbled together from a bunch of "questions to ask students" sites, and a couple of my own ideas.  Have fun!

 
1.  What kind of school did you attend (Big? Small? Public? Private? Specialty? One-room schoolhouse?)
I attended a small Catholic school for both grammar and high schools (two different schools).  My high school had only 200 students.

2. What did you wear to school (uniform? dress code? Whatever you wanted?)
I wore a uniform for 12 years -- pleated skirt and middy blouse with Navy tie in grammar school, plaid skirt and white blouse in high school.  (Age 10 and 15, below)

 
3.  How did you get to school?
In grammar school, I walked (about 3/4 mile--only uphill in one direction) and in high school, I took public transportation.  We lived a block from the cable car in San Francisco, so I took the cable car most of the way and transferred to the bus the rest of the way.

4.  Who was your favorite teacher?  Why?
Sister Anne was my typing teacher.  We became friends working together on various projects.  She became my lifelong friend, until her death 20 years ago.  Our daughter is named for her (Jerilyn Anne)

5.  What was your favorite subject?  Why?
Obviously I loved typing, but I also loved English and languages.  We studied Latin and French.  I always wanted to speak another language (and can bumble along very badly in French today).  I loved English because I got to read and to write and I was good at both.

6.  What was your least favorite subject?  Why?
Math!!!!  Loathed it.  I still can't add 2 and 2 and come up with the same answer every time.  I also was not fond of Chemistry because it required math.  In later years, when I was typing for a psychologist who assessed learning disabilities, I learned that one can be intelligent and still not understand specific subjects -- so I'm generally smart, but math-stupid.

7.  Did you belong to any clubs?
I can't remember any except the Legion of Mary, a religious club.  I don't think we had a lot of clubs in my school.  I sang in the choir for 4 years and was on the yearbook staff for 3 (editor my senior year)

8.  Were you a picky reader?
Not sure what "picky" means, but I loved any books about animals and, it being a Catholic school (especially in grammar school), read the lives of all the saints our library had books about.  

9.  What did you do in your free time?
Mostly, I read.

10.  Did you get good grades?
I was pretty much an A-/B+ student, with Cs in math.

11.  Did you like/participate in sports?
Hated sports.  I remember playing volleyball in high school, and spending a lot of time on the bench because I was so uncoordinated.

12.  Did you have a boyfriend/girlfriend in high school?
I met Bill the summer before I started high school and we dated through my junior year, when he entered the Jesuits (I drive men to the clergy!).  I briefly dated my leading man after our Senior Class Play, but we didn't see each other after I started college (I suspect he was gay, so I didn't exactly break his heart)
13.  When did you get your driver’s license?
On my 16th birthday.  I became a hit and run driver that night.

14.  What kind of kid were you?  (Popular? Class clown?  Shy? A nerd?  Teacher’s pet?)
I was the shy kid in the corner with my book, or teacher's pet, depending on the teacher.

15.  Who were your heroes?
St. Therese of Lisieux.  I wanted to be a Carmelite.

16.  Were you ever bullied?
I can only remember once, and it wasn't so bad.  I was a year younger than everyone else ('cause I excelled at coloring in kindergarten!) and so was slower to develop and I remember being surrounded by a group of girls all checking to see if I had boobs yet (I didn't) and teasing me about it.  But that's the only thing I remember.

17.  Did you learn how to touch type?
Yes.  I took Typing I in my junior year and by the end of the year, I typed faster than anybody in Typing II.  We learned on big clunky black manual typewriters like this, with the keys covered.  There were two electric machines in the class and toward the end of the year, when we knew how to type, we got to take turns using them

18.  Who was your best friend?  (Are you still friends today?)
Gayle was my best friend in grammar school.  We are friends on FB, but our opinions on EVERYTHING are diametrically opposed, so it's good we don't see each other.  I did have lunch with her and a few other grammar school friends recently and we stuck to "safe" topics.  Joyce and Anne were my best friends in high school.  We still exchange Christmas cards, but haven't seen each other in years, though we keep taking about getting together.

19.  What is one thing you regret about high school?
I honestly can't think of anything

20.  What were you most proud about?
I am proud of the yearbook I put out in m senior year.  I had practically zero cooperation from other seniors and my friend Anne and I did it all on our own.  We missed every deadline and the books came out late, but I'm proud of how they turned out.

Bonus:  Did you like high school?
 Loved it.  Those were the best years of my life to date.  I wouldn't want to go back and repeat them today, but I loved almost everything about high school.

A Dip in Temps

Yesterday was the only slight dip (mid-90s) in an otherwise triple-digit week, so my body responded by getting out and Doing Stuff.

I stayed home for a call from Eargo--my second--to find out if I am having any problems with my hearing aids.  I'm not.  But it's nice to know they care.

At noon, Polly had a vet appointment for an annual exam and to get her rabies updated so we can license her for another year. 

Leaving for the vet was not without drama.  Lizzie was determined to get out of the house.  Normally that's not a problem, but she saw Polly was on a leash and she was going to go out or die trying.  Despite all my attempts to block her or grab her or pull her back by the tail, yet she persisted and in seconds was half a block away.

I can't chase the damn dog down the driveway, so trying to chase her down the block was out of the question.  I got Polly in the car and tied to the brake handle so she couldn't jump out after me and I drove to where Lizzie was sniffing around a neighbor's yard.

Lizzie was just thrilled to see me and eagerly got into the car without a problem.  I drove her back home and got her in the house.  We had been asked to get to the office 5 minutes early, but what with chasing Lizzie we were exactly on time. 

Polly weighs about 11-1/2 lbs.  When Caroline was here (a veterinarian resident), she always called Polly a "sausage," and said that she needed to diet, but the vet had no comment on her weight.  But after taking her to the back to do the exam, she is reported to be in good health and able to live a long life.

They did recommend a dental appointment and said they would give me an "estimate."  She said a couple of her front teeth is a little loose and she might need an extraction.  Well, her check-up was $90 and her estimated dental appointment was anywhere from $350 to $650...but the estimate is only good for 3 months, as prices will go up after that (and I had to sign an agreement that I was aware of that).  I suspect we will not get the dental appointment!

We went to Jack in the Box for a quick lunch, which made me angry because my standard order is a plain cheeseburger (bun, patty, cheese), only when I parked to eat the burger, I discovered they had not included cheese, which just made it a dry burger.  I had 3/4 of it and gave the other 1/4 to Polly (who was thrilled).

They had given me a web site to fill out a satisfaction survey, so I came home, dropped Polly off and immediately filled out the survey.  Maybe I'll get a free burger out of it.  But not so far.
I knew if I sat down for a few minutes, I would never get up, so I headed over to Atria while I was still in "doing stuff" mode.  I noticed on the way over that gas prices have already started to reflect Hurricane Harvey's effects.

My mother greeted me as if I hadn't been there in a year and she was amazed that I was coming to see her (it had been 3 days since I'd been there).  We went to her apartment and talked for an hour.  They had given me some papers of her latest assessment that they wanted me to read over and sign.
 
When I left the apartment, I went to the office to drop the form off and they told me she has been acting "mean" and has been locking her roommate out of their apartment (Marge is not really a likeable person and my mother has told me on more than one occasion that she doesn't like her, but I didn't realize she was being mean).  They suggest I get her a urinalysis because they suspect she has a urinary tract infection, so that's on the docket for next week.

I went off to the supermarket.  I don't think I'd been there in a month and we were out of everything, including two critical things I went there specifically to get and then forgot to pick them up (flour and yeast).

By the time I got home, my back was killing me and so I rushed through putting refrigerated things away and leaving all the packaged things until later  Walt had been at work and came home with a bad back as well, so we both took Aleve and settled in to watch Master Chef's 2 hour special and let our backs rest

Oh the Humanity

I had planned to write this about the unimaginable tragedy that is unfolding in Texas, but first I need to address the near tragedy that started my morning here at home.

When I first got up, I came to the computer to check e-mail.  That went just fine.  Then I tried to send a happy anniversary message to Jeri and Phil and wanted to include a photo but the computer stalled.  I decided to do a reboot.

I recalled what happened a couple of weeks ago.  First I got the "rebooting" message for about 45 minutes.  I was going to turn it off, but decided to leave it be and then I finally got the dell logo which sat there for a long time.

Miraculously, after a very long time the log-in screen popped up and I was able to log onto the desktop.  Whew.  Problem solved.  Oops.  No.

When I went to call up yesterday's entry so I could write today's, the computer didn't see the external hard drive on which I save all these entries!  When I brought it home from the guru last week, it wouldn't recognize the second external hard drive that I have, but I've been able to work around that.  Now it didn't recognize either of them.

I put in an SOS call to the guru, who managed to fix the problem by suggesting that one of the external drives was toast and he was right, when we disconnected the one which hadn't come back on line and just connected the one I use all the time, it saw it again.  so I'm back in business.  Sort of.

The problem is first Steve can't understand why I need two external hard drives, and second, he assumes that I handle external hard drives the way a computer person does.  In truth, I saved things to drives willy nilly.  The F drive holds all of Funny the World, the E drive holds all of the database files and lots of other stuff that I can't remember, but it does include all The Funny the World files from Day #1.  I did this because I was paranoid that the main computer would break down and I wanted to be sure I was covered, so now the regular stuff is NO on the main computer, but on the drive that broke down.

Thank GOD at some point around June I decided that maybe I should have a back-up back-up, and so the main database files were copied onto the F Drive, so I only have two months of FTW entries to add. I have now copied THOSE files on to the C drive, since the E drive is toast.  I don't do system backups like I should do, I just limp along and the more Steve tries to explain to me what he thinks I have been doing the more confused I get.  But anyway, thanks to a phone call I am back in business today and over the next couple of days I will be copying things in various spots so I don't lose them again.  I may put FTW on flash drives as well as hard drives!

However, I have sad first world, dry world problems  It is cool today (mid 90s) with 100s predicted for the rest of the week.  I have no reason to complain when I watch those poor people in Texas.  I actually sat here in tears this morning watching day #3 of people saving people, people walking in chest-high water, carrying babies and/or dogs.  Flotillae of boats from wherever they could come to reach people who needed saving.

And then the centers housing thousands of flood refugees which started to flood and the attempt to move 5,000 people to some other shelter on roads that are washed out.

There have to be thousands of stories that will come out of all of this.  And I hope that if nothing else, POTUS, who has requested reduced funding and staffing to FEMA has now realized that maybe that's not such a good idea.  (But at least he got good crowd for his appearance. "What a crowd, what a turnout,” Trump said from atop this fire truck, addressing hurricane victims.)

AND he can honestly say this was the GREATEST flood in the history of the country.  Would have been nice if he had something comforting to say to the victims and to the first responders, but I guess you can't hope for everything.  He does get brownie points for GOING to the flood area. 

I've been watching the pleas for donations.  Those poor victims need everything.  I hadn't thought about it until they said they needed diapers that those thousands and thousands of people have no bathrooms.  I can't even imagine.

I have been to Houston a few times, when our friends Mike and Bill were still alive and my friend Lynn still lived there in her "magic cottage" along one of the levees.  I enjoyed the city, even with the humidity.  I also had a teeny taste of how it can flood there, when friends took me to Cirque de Soleil and it was raining so hard, we were drenched just running from the car to the theater.

It saddens me to think that the famous beer can house is probably gone.

I was just listening to an interview with a woman who is trying to get on a list for help and who says that POTUS has not yet declared this a disaster area (a technicality, I'm sure!).  I have a feeling that as bad....as horrendous...as this tragedy is, the hardest part lies ahead of the thousands of affected victims -- dealing with the bureaucracy as they try to rebuild their lives.

At least the DOJ has decided NOT to round up illegals in shelters.  Probably only because there is no place to PUT them.

My heart hurts for all of the victims and for the beautiful city I remember so fondly.

[dumb things overworked reporters say after the third day:  "I hope that man's house gets better soon."]