Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

The landlord texted us a week ago to ask if we wanted to renew; we replied with "if the rent is the same, definitely." It sat there for a week, and then I texted him again, to ask him to send us the renewal lease.

In reply, he said that the last two years had been costly, and he's raising the rent by $50/month, do we still want to renew? I wrote back to accept, then decided that between that and doing a bit of tax-related arithmetic for my mother, I had earned a reward.

So, despite the rain, I took a bus to Watertown and bought chocolate (at the place I'd checked out a couple of weeks ago), and then went to Sophia's Greek Pantry (which is appropriately named( and "Super Vanak," which has Mediterranean and south Asian foods. We now have pita, taramasalata, and olives; this was more exploration than grocery shopping, so I didn't get yogurt, cheese, nuts, or spices. Things to consider getting include dried shallots, curls of dried orange peel, and dried celery leaves, as well as more common things like pistachios.

I had a brain MRI this morning; this is routine monitoring because of the MS.

Things I noticed before, during, and after the MRI:

• Mount Auburn Hospital has changed their Covid screening in the last ten days, and didn't point a thermometer at my forehead.
• The hospital's earplugs were effective (usually I bring my own, Earplanes)
• Some bright yellow daffodils on Mt Auburn Street
• The MBTA has resumed collecting bus fares on the outbound 73 when people exit rather than when they board. Right now they seem to be doing some of each: When my bus arrived, the driver gestured me to back up so someone else could pay and get off the bus, so I also paid on exiting, but saw other people exiting in the back, presumably having paid when they boarded the bus. And yes, it's still urging people "if possible, exit through the rear door," like all the other MBTA buses these days.

I just shoveled the sidewalk, and a path down the driveway to the back stairs. I was shoveling a mix of ice and slush, rather than snow. We didn't get anything like the foot of snow that was in some of the forecasts--it looks as though Route 128 really was the line between heavy snow and only a few inches.

That's not walking, but it is cardio exercise, and I am noting it down as such.

I did quite a bit today, several different things rather than one large one:

• I proofread an article for Queue, this issue's first.
• I made dinner: lamb chops and rice, and the last of the cherry tomatoes from the garden , which I'd been ripening in a paper bag since the unseasonably early first snow a month ago. The tomatoes weren't very good; as cattitude said, they tasted like they'd been picked before they were ripe, because they had been. But I had a few left, and it was worth a try.
• I went for two walks, one in the morning with Cattitude because it was 7=61F at 11 a.m. and forecast to drop steadily through the day. Then the sun came out mid-afternoon, so I went out again, to walk in the sunshine and look at blue sky. This time of year, sunset is early enough for long shadows and not much shade at ground level, but I did find some bits of sunny sidewalk, and enjoyed pausing to look at the blue sky, with trees and some white clouds.
• We tried out our new (Olson) masks today; I liked it better than Catitutde did, either because I'm happier with this design or because the ribbons to fasten the masks with are short enough to not work well for him. I think these will be mine, and Cattitude may order some of this style from Etsy or somewhere.
• I did several of my PT exercises, including one I hadn't done as recently as I'd like. [That's one of the exercises I would ideally do more than once a week.) And I did one that isn't part of my PT, and gets done every week or three, as convenient.
• I did a little bit of text-banking, urging Georgians to register to vote by December 7th.

We also played two games of Scrabble, and I did some Duolingo French, and spent a while doing online jigsaw puzzles.

Socially distant lilacs meant going out with a bandanna in my pocket in case I needed it for a mask, walking around near home, trying to stand downwind of lilac bushes, and hoping.

I smelled a bit of lilac, and am going to try again in a couple of days: the lilac nearest my front door hasn't opened any of its buds yet, and most of the the lilacs I passed in this part of Belmont weren't yet at full bloom.

It was a good walk, on a pleasant quiet morning; in addition to the lilacs I saw a lot of violets (both purple and white) and dandelions, and some cherry trees that still have a lot of flowers.

This cherry is in bloom at the edge of a bank parking lot:

( cut for size )

today, in brief:

I:

• told Matt I'd do some queue copyediting for $47/hour, and he said yes (mostly I proof for them, for a lower rate)
• did some proofreading and a little copyediting for queue

cattitude and I

• checked out the "Hollingsworth 5 and 10" near Cushing Sq, and bought a replacement tea kettle

• tried Aram's Cafe, tiny place on the same block of Trapelo. I had mujadara, because I could--the mujadara itself was heavier than I wanted or expected, but it came with a nice-sized serving of cucumber pieces and yogurt. Not tzatziki, just the plain yogurt and cucumber. Cattitude had an omelette with Armenian sausage; I tasted a piece of sausage and liked it.

Meanwhile, I think the tennis elbow is healing, slowly -- I didn't need any tylenol today -- but I bruised the thumb of the other hand. icing both hands at once is a little odd.

The landlord warned us that he was having electrical work done and the electrician would have to turn the power off, at some indefinite date in September. I got a call a few days ago saying it would be Friday, from someone who thought "morning" was sufficient information. Turned out he meant 8 a.m., and I talked him into making it 8:30 instead. He wouldn't give me an end time, just "until it's done." *sigh*

Then I spent Thursday night with adrian_turtle, and cattitude got up early Friday and left before they started.

We each got home several hours later: I deliberately stayed out until mid-afternoon instead of coming straight home after seeing the eye doctor. This included a stop at Penzey's, whose latest email offer is a free small jar of anything that costs $5.95 or less, so I replenished our supply of dill.

This morning, not too early, we heard more work/construction noises from the basement, and a van in the driveway. Around 2:00, with no warning at all, the power went out again. We went outside (in the rain) and asked what was going on; the electrician seemed to think the question unreasonable, as if we should have magically known that he would be turning our power off after lunch. We convinced him to turn it back on for ten minutes, so we could put on long-sleeved shirts and turn off most of the lights, then headed out to run some errands. We added long kitchen matches to the shopping list, so we could have tea when we got home (our gas stove has electric ignitions, rather than pilot lights).

The power came on again at about 5:30; the electrician called to say he had turned it on and was leaving. I managed to keep him on the phone long enough to learn that he will be back Monday, but won't be turning our power off. However, I am not at all sure I believe the latter.

Fortunately, I ran the dishwasher in the morning, Cattitude hadn't started laundry, and neither of us was doing anything else that was harmed by a sudden power cut. But the electrician had no way of knowing that, because he didn't bother to check what we were doing (though he would probably have noticed someone doing laundry).