Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

My brother and I are both worried about our mother: she's a lot weaker than she was a few months ago, and apparently hasn't been eating much. So far, the doctors she's seen haven't found anything specific, and/but she has a follow-up appointment on Monday, by which time the doctor will have more blood test results to help him figure things out.

I'm not jumping on a plane tonight, but I will likely be going to London soon, with Cattitude and Adrian. Even if she's feeling a lot better by Tuesday, I haven't seen her in a while, and want to. Mark is probably flying to London in a few days, in any case, even though she visited him for Mardi Gras.

I've done some planning and preparation: we all three have valid passports, and I now a UK Electronic Travel Authorization, which they started requiring a few weeks ago. It took me about 20 minutes to apply, much of that spent repeatedly trying to get their iPhone app to read the RFID chip in my passport, and about two minutes for them to approve it. So I can visit the UK anytime in the next two years, as frequently as I like.

I emailed our catsitter yesterday, and said that I might need them soon but I didn't know how soon, and she assured me someone would be available. (The person I talked to has a small team of cat-sitters.)

Fortunately, the very simple instructions the GI specialist gave me on Monday seem to have resolved my problem (I've been fine since Monday afternoon). Thank goodness for that last-minute appointment.

Cattitude, Adrian, and I went to supergee, Bernadette, and womzilla's wedding/anniversary celebration at the Bronx Zoo yesterday. We had fun, but the trip itself was tiring: Lyft to South Station, Amtrak to New Rochelle, then a cab to a hotel in Yonkers and a Lyft to the Bronx. We stayed overnight, and took a late-morning train home.

I had a good time, and saw several people in person for the first time in years, and I think a few I wasn't even in email or social media touch with. Supergee had to participate over Zoom, because he is in a hospital, but fortunately not sick enough that they needed to cancel/reschedule the wedding.

The plan had been to have most of the event outdoors: the ceremony itself, and some of the socializing+food part of the evening. It turned out that between the weather (rainy and low 50s F) and the move to Zoom for the ceremony, the entire event was indoors. Based on what Bernadette had said a week or so ahead of time about ventilation, air filters, and UV, we decided to take the hopefully slight risk of unmasking indoors for a couple of hours of food and conversation, rather than eating something quickly and then remasking. This feels a little odd because if the event hadn't originally been planned to be outdoors, I probably wouldn't have gone; I have turned down a lot of indoor events in the last few years.

Even so, I spent a lot of time masked yesterday and today, enough that the skin right behind my ears was feeling a little tender earlier. (I'm using N-95s, which fasten behind my head rather than having earloops, but the behind-the-head straps tend to slip down and run into the ear-pieces of my glasses.)

This afternoon, I went to Logan Airport to take a covid test that is acceptable for travel to Canada. I had to get (and pay for) a quick-response one, because the test must have been taken no more than 72 hours before my flight leaves. I have again tested negative, which surprised me not at all: this wasn't a medical test because I had symptoms, or any reason to believe I'd been exposed to covid.

Having run into serious bus problems on my way to visit adrian_turtle a couple of days ago, I made plans today that had room for T problems, and I needed them. I got to Harvard, walked through the subway turnstiles, and almost immediately heard "this train is returning to Alewife" followed by something about shuttle buses to Park Street. It took a few minutes to find out where the buses would be -- an MBTA employee had to call headquarters, and spend a few minutes on hold.

At that point, old reflexes kicked in--I hurried up the escalators and along the sidewalk, took the shuttle bus, and then hurried down thed stairs first at Park Street and then at Government Center, rather than waiting for the elevator. I just missed a blue line train, but the following train, plus airport shuttle bus, got me to Logan Terminal C with a few minutes to spare.

More comments I've left on other people's posts: ( migration, genealogy, pandemic restrictions, physical therapy, subways )

I'm back from three days in New York, visiting with my mother (who was herself visiting from London). cattitude, adrian, and I spent a lot of enjoyable time with my mother and my aunt Lea, and a bit with my cousin Janet. We also walked too much -- my hips were not doing well by Tuesday evening -- and I am going to try to take things easy for a few days.

In some sense we didn't do much. There was a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we looked at an exhibit called "Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe." They have a fine collection of expensive attractive objects, many of them related to science and math: things like a set of fancy compasses for a nobleman who studied geometry. (That's through March 1, if you're going to be in New York and it sounds interesting.)

Other than that, we went down to Greenwich Village in order to buy chocolate at Varsano's, and spent a lot of time just talking, some in our hotel room, some in restaurants, and a lot at my aunt's house.

I am feeling very worn, at least partly because of unrelated pain in my left wrist; I will be getting that looked at tomorrow morning.

I'm most of the way through a long weekend visiting rysmiel: quiet reading and conversation and some nice meals, including a duck restaurant last night: they have a variety of interesting duck preparations (and a few non-duck choices, which we ignored). The smoked duck was rather different from the tea-smoked duck I've had at Chinese restaurants; I didn't realize until I bit into it that I was expecting that taste. We'e also had a lot of smoked salmon, at home, and some berries: wild blueberries because they were at a better price than the cultivated ones, and some red raspberries.

Home tomorrow, meaning another long day on a Greyhound (I am not counting the cars), and then back to shuffling moving-related and other tasks. The trip up was longer than I'd hoped, though not otherwise unpleasant, and I got the not-really-wanted opportunity to use my knowledge of the layout of the terminal at Burlington (VT) Airport in order to get a cup of tea. (I have never flown to or from Vermont, but this is the second time we had a layover there long enough to get tea.)

Question for other people who are going to Scintillation: how long are you planning to be in Montreal?

I'm thinking of arriving Thursday afternoon or evening, just so I don't fret about missing things on Friday (even though the many of the things are trips to places I've already seen), and staying over until either Monday morning or Tuesday morning.

Being there longer has the advantage of more social time, if other people also arrive early and/or stay late. The disadvantages are that it will probably cost more (although Airfares Are Weird) and might wear me out.

(I have addressed this to people who will be there, in terms of possibly coordinating schedules, but other relevant thoughts are also welcome.)

ETA: This having been asked in the comments, Scintillation will be a small science fiction convention in Montreal, in October. (For reasons to do with hotel space, Kickstarter, and the person who is organizing, there are no more memberships available.) I sometimes lose track of who has what context.

More comments reposted from elsewhere: ( 'ideal company,' choices of issues for activism, who to trust about health questions, representation in fiction, airplane windows )

I am just back from a trip to New York to see my mother; I got far too little sleep, and therefore came home a day earlier than I'd been thinking of, but am glad I got to see people.

cattitude, adrian_turtle and I took a train to New York Tuesday morning. My mother lives in London, and is currently in the US to see us, her sisters, and my brother. I'd hoped Mom would come up here for a few days, but she asked if we could come visit her instead, because she is finding travel more wearing than she used to. (My aunts live in New York; Cattitude, Adrian, and I are here in Arlington; and my brother and his girlfriend just moved to New Orleans.) My aunt Lea didn't want to put four people up for three days, so Mom got a hotel room reasonably close to my aunt's house.

We spent Tuesday afternoon and evening with my aunt and her husband: tea, conversation, and dinner (we had Chinese food delivered, because we wanted to make things as easy as possible for Lea and Dave). My cousin Janet came over near the end of our visit, after saying she didn't think she'd be able to make it because she had a class. (Conveniently, the one dish the rest of us hadn't especially liked was very much to her taste, so everyone was well fed.)

I was pretty worn out by the time we left Lea's (and was thinking that I should have insisted on leaving slightly sooner), but we talked a bit more before bed.

And then everyone else went to sleep, and I just lay there: every time I got close to drifting off, I was interrupted by a siren. (I think most of them were ambulances headed to Bellevue.) By the time that ebbed, the cold front was coming through, and the wind was far too loud for me to sleep. (This isn't usually a problem, but I'm not usually on the 29th floor.)

As far as I can tell, I didn't sleep at all Tuesday night. I got through Wednesday, mostly, on stimulants, protein, and sheer willpower. Since the hotel is near the Second Avenue Deli [which is no longer on Second Avenue], I had matzoh ball soup for lunch; everyone else had sandwiches to go with theirs. From there, we went to the American Museum of Natural History, because I hadn't been there in ages, and it was too cold a day for me to want to walk around the Bronx Zoo.

That was fun: we went to the special exhibit on Cuba (which I think I liked more than Mom, Andy, or Adrian—I spent quite a while looking at various kinds of anoles] and to the Hall of Rocks and Minerals (an old favorite of mine and Catittude's, to the point that when I needed to sit down, I pointed across the hall and told him "I'm going to go sit by the big amethyst" and he knew exactly what I meant. Before that, I helped someone who was using a walker and, when we asked if he needed help, said that he'd been told there were gems and couldn't find them. So I said "I'll show you," led him up the relevant ramp (the hall is broken into lots of different levels, connected by stairs and ramps, not all of them obvious) to the Star of India, a well-known and very fine large star sapphire.

Dinner that night was at a sushi place that had odd ideas of what "chirashi" and "don" meant: in both cases, instead of raw fish on a bowl of rice, they served a platter of fish and rice, and put spicy mayonnaise on the rice. I tasted it, realized the problem, and asked for some plain sushi rice instead, which they brought, but while the fish was reasonably good, I doubt I'd go back there even if I lived in the neighborhood. I think I got between five and six hours of sleep that night: I tried going to bed early, but found it difficult not to listen to the conversation in the next room. (Again, this was nobody's fault, and when I asked them to lower the volume, they did, and came to bed soon after.)

Adrian took a bus home Thursday morning (so she could be back in time to teach), and Cattitude and I had lunch with my mother and then caught an afternoon train. Home in time for dinner and to reassure the cats that we still love them. 42itous very kindly came in to feed them and keep them company, but they seemed a bit agitated when we got home. However, Molly spent most of the night curled between my feet, and both cats were much calmer by morning. I was glad to be back in my own bed, and got about nine and a half hours' sleep, which has helped a lot.

(I realized yesterday that I had cheerfully done one of my balance exercises—standing on a moving subway without holding onto anything—on no sleep the day before, on our way to the museum. Successfully, and on the way back I realized I was more tired and sat down. However, the fact that this worked doesn't mean it was a good idea, and I had known my judgment was not at its best for lack of sleep.)

ETA: Looking at the news this morning, I saw that Amtrak had a "minor derailment" [sic] at Penn Station this morning, which was still affecting train travel to and through the city a few hours later, which made me suddenly and perhaps irrationally more pleased that I came home yesterday.

This was an odd-shaped trip: I flew east on four days' notice, with the goals of (a) looking at one specific apartment and deciding whether we wanted it; (b) getting ice cream at Tosci's; and (c) spending some time with adrian_turtle [1]. cattitude said he would be happy for me to make a decision about the apartment for both of us, and I was willing to do that, so he stayed home with the cats.

Adrian had not only found and told us about the apartment listing, she offered to take a look at the place on our behalf. When she found it good, I made an appointment with the landlady to look at the apartment myself, and then hurriedly booked plane tickets. (The eastbound trip was a long travel day, getting up very early, connecting through Houston, and arriving close to bedtime; for the trip back, I was able to trade air miles for a nonstop ticket.)

The afternoon after I got to Boston, I looked at the apartment, and asked the owners (who have lived there for several years, and are moving because they now have three children and want more space) questions about things like the thermostats [2]. I called Cattitude a couple of times, describing things and asking his opinions about some of them, and then I told the owners that we would like the apartment. She asked for the contact information for my current and previous landlords; I had the current building office number in my cell phone, and for the place we lived in New York I gave her the street address and "it's Samson Management, Rego Park, N.Y." and she said she'd be in touch after she talked to them.

Then on Friday Cattitude talked to our building office, which wouldn't send our rent/payment history to the potential landlady, but was willing to walk him through how to get it off their website, and I emailed Samson, because they wouldn't release the information without our okay [3]. By then it was almost 4:00 Friday, and the Samson office isn't open on weekends, so I got to wait and worry. (An email Sunday evening saying that they were doing "due diligence" on "the strongest candidates" had felt like a lead-in to letting me down gently, but Adrian said it also sounded like someone who had had a difficult time getting three small children to sleep.) A little after nine on Monday morning, my cell phone rang; it was someone from Samson, who was having trouble finding the record; with Cattitude's name, and the address and apartment number, they found it, and about twenty minutes later I was making an appointment to sign a lease and a couple of checks.

The apartment isn't perfect, but we think it will do for a year and a half. Not only is it a walk-up (which is a risk, but my knees are a lot better than they were a few years ago), but there's less closet space, and less wall space where we can put bookshelves. We do get a large attic, which means we'll need to decide which books we need easy access to and which can spend a couple of years in boxes, and will probably also need boxes for different-season clothing. Advantages include a small sun room, and use of the back yard (meaning we can garden), and that we will be near Mass Ave, the Minuteman Bikeway, and Spy Pond, and a short bus ride from Adrian's apartment.

Adrian was teaching Friday, so I decided that would be a good time for me to go to Central Square for that hot fudge sundae. I usually have sweet cream ice cream in sundaes, but it's always worth looking at the current list of flavors, and last week one of the choices was orange clove. I got a taste, and then ordered it, and it goes very nicely with hot fudge and whipped cream.

Since I made this trip on such short notice, instead of telling my freelance clients I would be unavailable, I took my laptop with me in case they sent me work. I'd meant to bring the mouse (I don't like trackpads), forgot it, and discovered Thursday that the trackpad had broken since I last used the machine. Fortunately, wireless mice are cheap and readily available, so that was only a nuisance. I wound up doing the editing in shorter bits than usual, with longer breaks—I missed my big monitor, and Adrian's desk is optimized for her hardware, height, etc., not mine.

[1] I deliberately kept that list short, and something that I was sure I could accomplish. Look at this one apartment, and get ice cream. (Adrian presented me with a small container of Tosci's sweet cream when I got to her place on Wednesday, because she is thoughtful and loves me, but I still wanted, and got, the sundae.)

[2] an example of a question most people wouldn't think to ask, but the place we live now has weird thermostats which not only aren't programmable, they have no temperature numbers on the controls.

[3] I realize this isn't exactly high security, but anything that had been would have taken longer and/or been less convenient.