Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

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.

I just got back from having the dentist place my dental implants and bridge. The main aftercare instructions are about flossing--I'll need to go a little deeper at the edges of the implant, and to make a C shape with the floss to be sure I clean next to the implant. He also told me not to chew on bones or shells, but added that I shouldn't do that with the natural teeth either. I will try to remember this, in case I ever get a whole lobster again, because I have generally used my teeth to get bits of meat out of the lobster's legs.

The dentist is in Watertown Square, so I stopped off on the way home at Arax Bakery and Market to get good oregano. Since I was there anyway, I got a package of pita bread, kalamata olives, some little cucumbers, and four Moroccan mandarins, which I like a lot better than the clementines we can get at the supermarket. I wasn't expecting to get fruit or vegetables, but the produce was right there in front of me, and the shopkeeper clearly knows he has customers who will pay extra to get that kind of mandarin orange.

I also stopped at Flour Bakery for a slice of lime cream pie, having looked online to see what kinds of pastry have right now. If I hadn't been planning that stop, I'd have either bought a few more mandarins, or looked at things like baklava.

Adrian, Cattitude, and I had lunch outdoors in Coolidge Corner, then went to the farmers market. I had mushroom borekas for lunch, because I don't get mushrooms as often as I like, and I knew I liked Rami's borekas.

We came home from the farmers market with tomatoes, yellow (shiro) plums, two kinds of berry, St. Nicholas red bell peppers, a baguette, some merguez sausages, and a few apples (and I think that's everything). Cattitude is eagerly looking forward to making tomato sandwiches tomorrow, now that large-enough good tomatoes have arrived at the market. It's early for the St. Nicholas peppers, but we were expecting tomatoes large enough to slice and put on a sandwich sooner.

I also tried ice cream from a truck that parks at the Brookline farmers market on Thursday afternoon; I got red raspberry chocolate chip, and ginger, and was unimpressed: the ice cream was nothing special, and this is Boston. JP Licks has peach ice cream this month, and the branch where I bought a pint of peach ice cream yesterday is also in Coolidge Corner. Still, I'm glad I tried it, and I have some Lizzy's ginger ice cream in the freezer.

I walked slowly and carefully today, because my hip was hurting this morning, and I walked a bunch yesterday (JP Licks and Trader Joe's, via green line C.) Part of being careful is that we took the shuttle bus that's replacing green line B this week, and then the 66 bus, which saves a bit of walking distance, and the trip home by that route avoids the uphill-all-the-way walk from green line C.

We had cattitude's birthday dinner today, a little early so we could celebrate while my mother is visiting. We had excellent tapas outdoors at Cafe Barcelona on Beacon Street, which has real tables outside (but uncomfortable chairs). Given how pleasant today's weather was and the forecast for the next few days, it looks like celebrating early was the right move since we wanted to eat outdoors. It was 76F/26C when we headed over there at 5:00, and about 68F/20C when we were done. The forecast for tomorrow and the few days after that has highs in the low to mid 50s (10-12 C).

A lot of people had the same idea: when Cattitude called on Thursday for a reservation, they offered 5:30 or 9:30, nothing in between. It was a fine evening to be sitting outside on Beacon Street eating interesting food and talking about life, family stories, and the local turkey population. [That's the actual bird, not an insult to someone non-avian.]

I seem, however, to have overdone things a bit, and I should have taken a naproxen before we left the house, rather than after the walk to the restaurant.

The three of us stopped at the library in Copley Square before going to the farmers market, so adrian_turtle could hand in her summer reading bingo card and get a(nother) free tote back, and so I could pick up a book I had on hold. While we were doing that, cattitude browsed the displays, saw a biography of Terry Pratchett, and checked it out.

At the farmers market, we got red raspberries, blueberries, and heirloom tomatoes. We then grabbed a slightly early lunch at Clover, because the branch across from Copley Square has outdoor tables and it was early enough to not be oppressively hot.

We had a zoom call with my mother scheduled for this afternoon, but she called about half an hour before the scheduled time and asked to postpone it until tomorrow, which we're doing. We didn't so much hurry home because of that appointment, as look at a clock and confirm we had more than enough time.

It's adrian_turtle's birthday. and her birthday cake was an impressive chocolate cherry cake she and cattitude made. In place of dairy whipped cream, they used whipped coconut cream; on the cake, the cocunut flavor was overwhelmed by the chocolate and cherry, and it was mostly a fine rich texture.

For lunch, we went to the branch of Mamaleh's on Beacon Street in Brookline, which has a few outdoor tables. I had sable (yum), Adrian had smoked sturgeon (decent, but I'm glad I got the sable), and Cattitude tried the pastrami burger, which was less impressive than our fish.

(And then I went to the dentist.)

I am stressed because of [redacted], and feeling creaky, but cattitude and I just went for a walk, and there are lilies of the valley in bloom a couple of blocks from my apartment.

They're in a sloped yard behind a retaining wall, which puts some of the flowers at or near my nose level, so much easier for me to enjoy. Many years, I crouch or even lie down next to lilies of the valley growing on flatter streets, which would have been a bad idea right now.

Clarification, since someone was confused by my description: these are the usual small lilies of the valley. It's the ground they're growing in that was at about my chin height, in a sloped yard next to the sidewalk. It's a hilly neighborhood.

I got a call from my neurologist's office ten days ago, reminding me to have blood drawn for tests before my next Ocrevus infusion (which is scheduled for April 20th). I had in fact forgotten all about it, and asked them to send me a reminder note in MyChart.

I went over to Mt. Auburn this afternoon, checked in, and walked down to the walk-in clinic, which is also where they collect blood samples. When I handed the phlebotomist my sheet of stickers, he looked at the record, and asked if I wanted this done, because the order was from last year. I thought about it, briefly, and then asked him what the tests were. One of them was hepatitis B, so I told him to go ahead: they won't do the Ocrevus infusion without a negative hepatitis test within the previous year.

It did occur to me that I have friends who would almost certainly have said "never mind" or "can we call the doctor's office to check?" rather than asking what the tests were after the answer to "when were they ordered?" turned out to be September. Me, I'd rather give them some unnecessary samples than make an extra round trip from Brighton. (All my medical stuff is on the other side of the Charles River, in Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington or Watertown.)

I treated myself to a hot fudge sundae on my way home, because it was a pleasant sunny afternoon and nobody was sitting at the table outside Lizzy's.

[I already have the negative hepatitis B test results, released automatically through MyChart.]

I went for a walk today, and saw a variety of early spring flowers: a witch hazel bush on my way to the store, and on the way back I walked along the sunny side of Beacon Street and saw three or four colors of crocus (depending on whether the light purple and royal purple count as two colors), and one early daffodil.

I took a photo of the daffodil to send cattitude, who'd said that he expected there would be crocuses in bloom here by the time he got back from Niskayuna, but he thought it was took early for daffodils.That was right after sending him a photo of a clump of crocuses, in the hopes that he would find it cheering. There's still some snow on the ground in Niskayuna, but he sent us a photo of a dwarf iris that's growing in one of the sunnier bits of his father's yard.

(The icon photo is crocuses from Inwood Hill Park, at least ten years ago.)

My mother is staying with us for a few days. She took a cab from the airport Saturday night, and discovered a couple of hours later that she had left her backpack in the cab.

She was upset at first, then relaxed a bit because there was nothing in her backpack that she couldn't do without for a few days. Her kindle was in the pack, so we found her some hardcopy books to read.

Yesterday, adrian_turtle got in touch with the cab company, who told her that anything left in a taxi was turned over to the airport police. So they filled out forms online, and this morning got a phone call saying the Boston police department had Mom's pack.

This afternoon, my mother and I took transit to police headquarters (green line B to 66 bus and then a bit of a walk), and retrieved her bag, which also contained a folding walking stick, which Mom used for the trip home. They don't have a lost property department--this is just for things that people have forgotten in taxicabs.

The walk was useful exercise for me and my mother, and by the time we got back to Brighton I was very glad to sit down.