Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

My Ocrevus infusion went smoothly. I got to the hospital half an hour early, partly because I woke up a bit earlier than the already early time I had set my alarm. So, I also left the house a little earlier than planned, then made very good transit connections.

This time, I asked the nurse to use my right arm for the IV, but she had trouble finding a good vein, and asked a more experienced person to set up the IV. When my right right forearm didn't work either, I told her to use the left arm, which did. She suggested trying my right hand, but there are just too many nerves there.

Since I've had these infusions several times before without problems, she ran the IV drip faster than usual. I was done with the infusion at about noon, meaning I got to leave at 1:00. I brought lunch, leftover vegetable frittata, which I ate while sitting around for them to low-key monitor me (meaning there was nobody in the room with me, but plenty of staff nearby where they would have head me if I'd called for help.

When I was done at the hospital, I took the bus a few stops, then bought a cup of tea from Flour, and drank it sitting on an Adirondack chair in Harvard Square. The chair has a plaque saying it was paid for jointly by the city of Cambridge and a group of Harvard Square businesses.

Once caffeinated, I took a bus to Penzey's in Arlington and restocked our spices. I'm a little low on whole green cardamom pods, but those are expensive enough that I'm going to wait and see if Bill Penzey decides to offer a discount on those specifically. The cashier doesn't think they've had a sale on cardamon specifically, but they have had sales on things like everything Mexican, because Trump was slandering Mexicans; a Russian seasoning blend to make the point that the problem is the Russian government, not ordinary Russians; and everything starting with F or N (because of right-wing hate speech using specific nasty slurs; so maybe Bill Penzey will decide to discount everything starting with C. More likely, I'll put cardamom on the list when I'm down to a couple of weeks' supply -- I don't use it that fast, but it was worth looking at the current price as long as I was there.

I successfully shopped for boots today! There's a shoe store in Brookline with a sign in the window saying "wide shoes," so I walked in and told a salesman that I was looking for winter boots for wide feet. He brought me a pair of boots to try on; they were too big, so I asked for a half size down, and those fit, with little foam cushions at the heels.

I couldn't quite zip the left boot over the jeans I was wearing this afternoon (I had to bunch that pants leg up a little), but the right boot did fit over my right pants leg. I already knew my left foot is larger than the right, and TIL that my calves aren't the same size either. I asked the salesman about the return policy, then bought the boots, so I could see whether I have pants that fit either in or over these boots.

The first two pairs of pants I tried this evening worked, with the pants leg over the boots rather than inside them, but they worked. That's enough for tonight, and tomorrow is soon enough to try the boots with my lined jeans.

This was the only pair of boots in the store that the salesman thought would be worth my trying on. I am very glad I asked for help immediately, rather than wasting time looking at all the boots that they didn't have in my size.

It's been years since I had a pair of boots that come partway up my calves, rather than snow sneakers.

The boots I ordered from Zappo's that were advertised as having wide calves do in fact fit around my legs. However, they are too narrow in the feet, a problem I am all too used to.

I will be sending these back, and hoping that if these boots have suitably wide calves, there are other boots out there which will fit around my calves, including some that are wide enough for my feet.

I am not surprised that these don't fit, because they came up on a search for size "8 wide," but are also described as a C width.

I've been plugging away at Duolingo French, and just passed another "castle" section-end test, which means I have access to more new lessons/topics. I'm trying not to let the way the gamification currently works keep me from making real progress: I can get 3-4 times as many points for practicing easy sections (the "legendary" level) as for new, more advanced material.

I am annoyed at (as well as puzzled by) the MBTA. Once again, it's given me the free transfer from an inbound 73 to an outbound 71, and then charged me two fares for the return trip. I'm also unhappy that when I tried adding money to my card yesterday, the bus driver made an error, so the box took my $10 bill but didn't put that money on my card. *sigh* That leaves me with a whopping 65 cents on my card, which means I will either try again to add value at the farebox, or get out the spare, take the bus to Harvard, and use the machines to add value to both cards.

The trip to Watertown was in order to shop for pine nuts, to use in the stuffing for our Thanksgiving turkey. I was looking there because we specifically want Mediterranean pine nuts, not the east Asian onces that are most of what's in stores. Neither Arax nor Sevan Bakery had pine nuts, and neither did the supermarket; I bought some raw sunflower seeds to use as a substitute. I did get sour cherry jam (for adrian_turtle), blueberries, chocolate baklava (not bad, but less interesting than it sounded), apple cider, and cookies (the last two from the supermarket), so that's all right.

OK, this is just weird: I ordered two pairs of jeans from LL Bean, both the same size and style, but in different shades of blue. One pair fits, and the other has a defective buttonhole, so I'll be returning it. They sewed the buttonhole too tight: I can fasten it with only a little trouble, but unfastening it was difficult.

These are to replace a pair of jeans that wore out, and one that I expect to wear out in the next few months, so I was expecting them to fit, unless the manufacturer decided to change the size numbering. The pair with a properly-made buttonhole does fit, so I have removed the tags and thrown them into the laundry basket.

I went to DSW this afternoon in search of sneakers, and found a pair that I think fits. "I think" because it's hard to tell much in a few minutes in the store, but the return policy is "within sixty days, as long as you haven't worn them outside."

What I found are New Balance men's size 8; part of why I went to DSW is that I wanted someplace where I wouldn't have to argue with the staff about the gender of my shoes. Before finding these, I tried two other pairs of New Balance sneakers in the same size.

If these fit well, I will look for another pair in a color I like better. These are part white, and part a sort of light gray-green, which isn't what I would have chosen, but it was the only pair they had out in that model and size.

I stopped on the way home at Lizzy's, and got a chocolate orgy cone, and two pints (strawberry and chocolate) for the freezer.

cattitude and I took the bus to Harvard Square, where we got pizza for lunch at &pizza because it's convenient and has outdoor tables. The set-up there is that you can put as few or as many toppings on your pizza at a fixed price (rather than paying per topping). I saw that I could have a fig and balsamic vinegar drizzle added after cooking, so I tried from memory to recreate something I used to get at Mod Pizza when we lived in Bellevue. It wasn't bad, but I should have asked for more basil than the person put on at first, and maybe omitted the cooked onions instead of asking for extras of those. I think what I was getting at Mod was tomato, mozzarella, basil, and mushroom, and then the balsamic drizzle, but this really isn't a good summer for tomatoes.

From there, we went to Central Square, for the farmers market and H-Mart. I also wanted to go to Target and look at socks, but there was nothing there I really liked (it's a small Target, but I keep not getting to the one at Porter Square).

We bought some produce, along with conversation like "oh, I still have some plums from last week" and whether to buy a tiny orange or purple cauliflower: cattitude sensibly pointed out that we shouldn't get both that and the cabbage, and he has plans for the cabbage. Tasty plans. What we did get was a few yellow plums, a half-pint of raspberries, a cucumber, a cabbage, and two Puritan apples to see if we liked them. I couldn't get Evernote to show me my "apple list" note the note with my apple; now that I'm home, I see that we had tried it before and been unimpressed, but I am usually unimpressed by early-season apples. But we have them, and I will eat one, because maybe this year's crop is better.

We got another loaf of the Luce bread from Hi-Rise, and seeing their display reminded me that I hadn't finished the lemon curd cake I got last week. So I had that with my afternoon tea when I got home; in a zip-lock, it was still good after a week, though a little drier than when fresh. At H-mart, we bought cherries, pork-and-leek dumplings, and a quart of milk.

Thence, Cattitude went to Davis Square to pick up a prescription at the CVS there, and I went to Harvard Square to buy ice cream, and then home via the CVS nearest our house, to pick up my prescription. The timing worked out that Cattitude and I got to 73 the bus stop at the same time, so he came with me to the drugstore.

That was a lot of walking, possibly too much, even though I took a naproxen before we set out. But I don't have to go anywhere tomorrow, or Wednesday, hHaving postponed my dental appointment.

This afternoon, I went to Pemberton Farms and bought planting containers, then came home and transplanted little cucumber and salad green seedlings.

I will need to go back and buy more planters: there wasn't room in these planters for all the salad mix and cucumber seedlings I have now, and I'll need containers for the cucumbers and tomatoes I mail-ordered last fall, when I didn't want to count on being able to get to the garden center this spring. (I needed three planters, bought two, and now need two or three.)

I bought two six-packs of seedlings from Pemberton Farms last week, and transplanted the lettuce into the containers I already had from last year. They're all flourishing, which makes me happy.

This afternoon, I went to Davis Square and bought a chicken and some frozen ground lamb, then walked a few blocks to Mass Ave. and bought some lettuce plants for my garden. That's two stores I hadn't been to in over a year, MscKinnon's and Pemberton Farms, which were both basically as I remembered, and I will be able to roast a chicken for cattitude and adrian_turtle while they're recovering from their second vaccine doses.

I wanted to do my own shopping for the chicken, rather than chance an Instacart shopper picking something that needed to be used right away. The original plan had been to go to Star Market, which is closer, but some of their delivery drivers are on strike, and shoppimg there right now would feel wrong even without a physical picket line. So, bus and subway to Davis, rather than just a shorter bus trip. The advantage of this is that uncrowded subway trains let me do a bit of balance practice, which isn't formally PT but which the physical trainer I was working with for a while agreed was useful as a balance exercise. (When I was 15, standing on a moving train without holding on was just for fun.)

Mostly this trip felt refreshingly normal, though passing through the Harvard Square subway station and seeing almost nobody in the normally crowded area between the escalators and the turnstiles, fare vending machines, and busway was weird.

I placed a spice order with Penzey's yesterday morning. I got an email acknowledgement, which said that it would probably ship in 3-5 days, and click here if you want to change or cancel the order.

Later that day, I remembered that we wanted to order mustard (powdered), so I emailed and asked if I could do that. The response was that my order had already been packed for shipping, and they can create another order and waive the shipping, if I liked.

I said yes, and gave the gift card number and PIN again. I bought a $50 gift card for $35 a couple of months ago, and this order cost more than $35, so I'm into the effectively free spices. The company was encouraging people to buy gift cards for themselves. Yes, it's a short-term loan to them, but since I was confident I'd use it, it's effectively a very good interest rate, unlike the money I have on transit fare cards (including an ORCA, from when we lived in Seattle, which I will probably never use) and a Starbucks card.