Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

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.

I took the bus to Cambridge today to visit some lilacs near Harvard Square. These lilacs are in the front yards of several houses near Mount Auburn Street (on Ash Street and Story Road), not the impressive collection at the Arnold Arboretum, but they're much closer to transit. There was enough rain yesterday and today to wash away some of the pleasant lilac scent, but there was enough to enjoy when I leaned over to smell the flowers. Most of the flowers on those lilac bushes were already open this afternoon, and they're forecasting more rain for each of the next several days, so this may have been my best chance (especially given my upcoming medical appointments), though I may look for more lilacs near my apartment tomorrow or Tuesday.

I stopped on my way home at Lizzy's to replenish my supply of ice cream. I wasn't thinking about ice cream until Adrian reminded me this morning to take the insulated bag with me, so I'm glad she mentioned it. (Ice cream without nuts, seeds, or pieces of fruit is on the list of things I can have as part of the pre-colonoscopy low-fiber diet tomorrow and Tuesday.) or I might have bought a pint of strawberry or ginger.)

I have done several useful things this afternoon, including two of the three things from today's list. Unfortunately, the one remaining is the one I'm least looking forward to.

I don't usually have a to-do list anymore, but enough things had piled up that I grabbed some scrap paper and wrote a reminder that I would definitely see when I sat down at my desk this morning.

The two list items were to make appointments for the cats to have their annual veterinary exams, and to get an itemized bill for my last couple of dental appointments. The appointments are made, using the veterinarian's app; it's part of a small chain, so the first question was which office I wanted appointments at.

I called the dentist's office this afternoon and explained what I wanted (itemized bills for the last couple of visits, for insurance purposes), and the receptionist said they'd send me the bills. I actually had an itemized bill for one of these, but didn't keep it, because I didn't expect to need it. But Aetna has sent me a patient reimbursement form, and it asks for the date of the visit, what they did, and the amount, which has to match the itemized bill. So, I need an itemized bill, not just "on X date they cleaned my teeth and charged me Y dollars."

After talking to the vet's office, I paused and did some useful things that are routine enough they weren't on the list: taking out trash and recycling, and a little PT.

The remaining item is calling Aetna yo ask about colonoscopy coverage, since Mt. Auburn doesn't appear to be in-network for this. Whether or not it's in-network, I am hoping for some idea of how much I'll be charged. I don't expect to like the answer, but that's partly because the answer may be "we don't know," and is more likely to be that they pay X percent of total, which the hospital won't tell me in advance.

A couple of hours after I posted yesterday, the building fire alarms went off. They are very loud and bright, designed to be sure that you notice them and go outside.

This time, there was actual smoke in the back stairs, and I believe a bit of fire in one of the laundry machines. The firefighters came in good time and did a thorough job, but I unexpectedly spent half an hour or so outdoors, in lightweight pants, at about 38F/3C. It wouldn't have been that long, except that the firefighters didn't have the code to turn the alarm off, and had to get someone from building management to come over and deal with it.

Once we got the all-clear, we could only find one of the cats. This looked like a problem, because Cattitude had led a firefighter through our apartment to the back stairway, and the door was open for a bit. We looked around, worriedly, including me climbing the stairs to the fourth floor looking for Molly. I came back, and soon after she emerged from hiding. She'd been under a dresser, which is not one of her usual hiding places.

After all that, nobody was up for cooking, and our usual pizza/Indian food delivery place is closed Mondays, so we pulled the lentil-and-walnut pasta sauce out of the freezer.

I am feeling basically calm today, but when I went for a walk, my quadriceps were reminding me that I don't climb a lot of stairs these days, because they can be hard on my knees. I've also been more distractable than usual today, but nothing seriously bad has happened, and I remembered my pills and to use the flutter valve to clear my lungs.

Adrian continues to soothe herself with the useful task of not just loading books into bookcases, but sorting as she goes. Cattitude and i haven't bothered with much sorting of our books, figuring that we had too few shelves and still a lot of boxes to unpack, but I am quite happy to have it done. One of the bookcases they brought over yesterday is now in the kitchen, with the cookbooks arranged so the ones we use most often are visible and also in easy reach for me.

Cattitude went downstairs today, to see if he could do laundry (no), and thus discovered that the firefighters had broken the lock on the back door of the building, and also the locks on all the small storage units, presumably checking to make sure nothing was smoldering. He went looking for a new lock today, but what we want is a padlock with keys, and the nearby CVS only had combination locks. So we will look elsewhere tomorrow, and not worry about it for a day or two.

This was, necessarily, an in-person appointment. Carmen listened to my heart and lungs, did a breast exam, examined my back for moles, and looked at the back of my throat. (She asked if I was willing to take my mask down for a moment so she could do that, and I said yes.) Carmen also had me leave a urine sample, but didn't ask for blood, since they'd done some blood tests last month.

Today is warm and clear, so I had lunch at Mr. Crepe in Davis Square before my appointment, stopped at McKinnon's market for (frozen) ground lamb, and got a small serving of sweet cream ice cream at JP Licks. Sweet cream is one of the November special flavors; I was hoping for a last serving of October's caramel apple. JP Licks' sweet cream isn't as good as Tosci's, but it's good.

Cattitude came to Somerville with me, and joined me for lunch, before I went to the doctor's office.

I forgot to mention: I asked about timing for mammograms, and she said every two years, even though Mt Auburn MyChart is still sending reminders after one year. And I asked if I should get the new pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine, having had an earlier version in 2015. Carmen said she is generally in favor of getting me vaccinated against everything, and I noted that I wasn't sure the vaccine would take in my case. So, not doing it at the moment, but if I want it I can have it. I don't know whether I could have that covered by Medicare if I did it at a pharmacy, or if I'd have to go to her office.

Adrian and I are planning to be seeing a friend of hers, outdoors in the friend's backyard, this afternoon. Crystal is even more covid-cautious than we are, so we both took covid tests this morning, which were negative, as expected.

The thing about having bronchiectasis is that yes, that cough isn't anything contagious, but also I might not notice if I was coughing for some other reason.

I'm going to use the iota carrageenan nasal spray before I leave, because it might help and won't do any harm.

By dinnertime yesterday it felt like I had overdone things a bit, so I am trying to take things a little easier today. That mostly seems to mean staying home rather than going for even a short walk, and using the cane when I remember.

However, I did some standing-up PT things, including one (shrugs) that I had modified to do while seated when the leg pain was bad.

I heard back from Carmen today, and she said that the "wash-out period" for the steroids is five days, so I should avoid NSAIDs until the weekend, and not restart the Yuvavem until them. I'd already taken a naproxen this morning before I heard from her, but made a note not to take any more until at least Saturday.

I now have three prescriptions waiting at CVS, and may try picking them up myself if I can go in the morning (to avoid crowds), or I may get Cattitude to pick them up. (Adrian is doing a lot of High Holidays prep, both baking and other cooking, and organizing things at/for Havurah Shalom, so I'd rather not ask her to run extra errands.

Unrelated: I have now written four more get-out-the-vote postcards, for a Michigan Congressional race, and want to get those in the mail tomorrow. I don't want to strain myself by doing a lot of these (or anything else that has to be hand-written), but even four postcards is better than zero.

When I saw Dr. Koster in March, she had me make a three-month follow-up appointment, in case I was feeling worse by then. Since I am feeling about the same, and not short of breath, I have rescheduled, and will be seeing her on September 25th.

Also, it is hot and sunny outside, and I went to the store and back this morning. By the time I got home, I thought that might have been a mistake, but was feeling much better after a couple of hours of rest in the air-conditioned apartment. I'm less heat-tolerant than Adrian or Cattitude, but she wasn't feeling well this morning, and he was still in bed when I got home with the groceries, so my reasonable options were to go out when I did, or not at all.

I went out this afternoon, hoping to combine a look at lilacs and a trip to Penzey's, for less total walking than if I'd done them separately.

The trip to Penzey's was basically a success, except that I hadn't thought about how much that many glass jars would weigh: seven things we definitely wanted, plus free-with-purchase ground cumin and taco seasoning. We don't need ground cumin right now, but we will use it, so I figured I might as well. The taco seasoning might be redbird_safe, containing no capsaicin, but it won't be Adrian-safe, because it has lactose. So, I may try sprinkling it on my food; we commonly have things like sriracha, chili-lime seasoning, and hot paprika on the table for her and cattitude to add to their meals.

At Adrian's suggestion, I stopped at the Arlington library to look at lilacs in the gardens near the library. There were a lot of flowering trees and shrubs, but almost none of them were lilacs. Impressive rhododendrons and some fine ornamental cherry trees, along with a variety of plants I didn't recognize offhand. So, I proceeded as planned to Ash Street in Cambridge, where there are a few adjoining yards with a lot of lilac bushes. Those were worth the visit, but it's still a bit early in lilac season; I will probably try again, there or at the Arboretum or something, if there's a non-rainy day soon.

The last stop was Lizzy's, where I bought a strawberry cone and two pints of ice cream. Unfortunately, at least one of the two was partly melted by the time I got it home, and the lid came off, spilling on an upholstered chair. I wiped up the spill, and put the ice cream in the freezer, with a note to check later and see if the just-purchased ice cream is worth eating after refreezing.

Oh, while riding the green line today, I saw a child with a green line T-shirt; his father told the driver that the child had dressed up as a green line train for Halloween. I asked the child about the costume, and told him it was a pleasure to meet other people who like subways.

Three things: heat, the Boston city council election and the ballot drop box, and the farmers market

The building heat is broken, and it was cold last night. I sent in a maintenance request after breakfast this morning, and a couple of hours later a maintenance person knocked and told us that there was a problem with the boiler, and they had sent for someone to fix it.

A few hours after that, someone knocked to tell us that the problem wouldn't be fixed at least until tomorrow morning, and offered to lend us space heaters. At my suggestion, adrian_turtle accepted two (they offered three, "one for each bedroom"). We had by then gotten out the two space heaters we own, and hadn't used (or needed) since we moved in. We have mostly been sitting in the study, when not doing things in the kitchen (cooking, making tea, washing the dishes from lunch) or exercising: cattitude did some VR gaming with Patricia, and I've done three sets of PT exercises.

I took the trolley to Copley Square today, in order to drop off my absentee ballot for the city council election. When I got there I discovered that the drop box was closed for Halloween. The sign was ambiguous, so I went into the library and asked the information person whether she knew whether the drop box would be available later, but they hadn't told her. So I called 311, and learned that the boxes will be usable again from tomorrow around noon through Election Day, so I will go back sometime in the next few days (or ask Cattitude or Adrian to do so).

While I was in Copley Square I went to the farmers market -- the chance to do that is why I decided to drop off my ballot today. I got a loaf of bread and a slice of a "chocolate loaf" from Hi-Rise Bakery, plus three Macoun apples from one vendor and an unexpected small box of raspberries from another. Those three apples were the only unbruised and unblemished apples in a half-full box; it has not been a good year for local apples, and the Macouns have been small, but tasty.

ETA: This election is for city council, four at-large seats and one for each district. Both the candidates for the district seat seem reasonable; I voted for the challenger (Jacob deBlecourt) rather than the incumbent. For the at-large seats (eight candidates for four seats) I eliminated the two anti-vax candidates quickly; one is also an insurrectionist. That left six people, which came down to three I like and one who seems OK. In the end I voted for Louijeune, Mejia, and Santana, the three I was sure of, and Murphy as my fourth vote, because I really wanted to vote against Vitale and Nelson (they're the anti-vaxers) and Nee-Walsh after she said that Black Lives Matter had set the cause of Civil Rights back by fifty years.