Ramblings of a rural(ish) geek

Gorgeous weather for a concert. 80F at concert start, clear skies, not humid, breezy enough to keep the bugs down but not enough to blow music away. I fumble-fingered a few places, and have no idea why -- licks I've played before, cleanly, just weren't there on Tuesday. Hope I find some of that before camp next week.

Which will be interesting -- they are requiring vaccination or a medical waiver with negative COVID test to attend; masks required for non-vaxxed, highly recommended (as of today's email) for everyone. I was planning on going up Monday and doing some touristing Monday PM/Tuesday AM, but I don't know how that's gonna work out. I would like to go to Sleeping Bear Dunes, as I've never been (we went to Warren Dunes a lot when I was a kid, which is very similar but smaller), but I'll only have a few hours on Monday afternoon, and I don't know if that's enough time. The other option I'd been pondering is doing one of the smaller winery trails in search of a decent, inexpensive, semi-dry everyday wine. (There's a really interesting distillery halfway up the Leelanau Peninsula that I'd love to visit, but they're not open on Monday. :( )

But before I go, I need to clear cruft off the kitchen table - the problem is that much of it goes on the shelves in the laundry room which I cannot get to because J hasn't done the garbage or recycling for nearly a month. I really hope he does it this weekend, but it sounds like they're kayaking on Saturday, and then there's SEMGS.

In weather news, it's been dry. I watered the strawberry beds so that I could weed them. I may need to do so again today, although they say we may get rain tomorrow. The cat has really been enjoying the nice weather, and has been spending much time outdoors. Usually on days when J has gone into the office, so I'm stuck upstairs waiting for him to come to the door. We really need to get a camera on the back door so I can tell when he's there....

In shopping news, there are empty shelves at the stores again. Canned tomatoes, chocolate chips, and birdseed are the ones that affect me, although I noticed that more than a few cereals were stocked only two or three boxes deep at the front of the shelf. Juice boxes and bottled juice and water were also looking picked over.

Steroid shot in shoulder now done. Now to wait the 10-14 days for full effect. Meanwhile, keep up the exercises. Add the pushups and planks and shoulder high rotations back in when they don't hurt. Her fellow (full doc learning the sports med specialty) said "are you sure there's not a tear?", and I said "oh yes, there's two! The ultrasound I had in June showed that." /clicks through to ultrasound results/ "erm. so it did." She strongly recommended that I get a flu shot this year, even though I've not gotten one in a decade and haven't had the flu in a dozen years. Didn't want to get it at the same time as the steroid shot, so I'll go to CVS later this week.

I got an email that my computer glasses had come in before I left for the doc, so I stopped and picked them up (the optometrist is half a mile from the doc). Of course, the glasses came in *after* I'd finished the editing of the quarterly newsletter.

Stopped by REI for winter walking shoes, as their website showed that the store had gotten some new shoes and they had more waterproof walking/light hiking shoes in stock. They did not have the exact shoe I wanted in stock in my size (only had it in the non-waterproof version), so I ordered the waterproof version and had it shipped free to my house. (I'd stopped at Mast Shoes last week to see what they had, and they had nuffin' that my feet and my knees liked.)

The shelves at the Meijer in A2 were as empty as I've seen them since last April or so. Part of it is the no-Monday-trucks-because-of-the-holiday, I'm sure, but it was still a bit disconcerting. I hope it's not because of people stocking up in case of civil unrest due to the orange one's denialism/rejection of reality.

Temps have been hovering right around freezing for the last week or so, and we've been getting fine wet snow. whee. So the roads are wet-slippery, but not snow/ice-slippery. I'm OK with that.

(OK, so that was more than three things.)

I did the errands yesterday - with Christmas approaching, I thought that my best course of action was to go out early in the week. I think it was a good choice. Everywhere I went was more crowded than it's been since just before the first lockdown in March. I saw a disturbing number of people wearing masks incorrectly. OTOH, at least they were wearing them. Got everything on my list, a couple of things that weren't but should have been, and completely spaced on a couple others. 'sallight, I'll make another stab at cornbread for Christmas Day, and with a dentist appointment next week, I can get crescent rolls for later.

Other than that, not much to report. Mum is hoping that their internal lockdown will be eased enough that she can have friends over for brunch sometime this week (a positive test on the campus, but not in the main building). Her Christmas present arrived in record time - I don't usually get packages from this shop as quickly as this one appeared. Still, I don't think I'll send it until after Christmas, when the backlog will have eased a bit (hopefully!).

For all that it's over 50F today, the weather people are telling us that we'll have a White Christmas. Whee?

I have determined that I can do a 4 mile walk twice a week - when I try to do it more often, my back complains, and I wind up needing to skip a day or two. After Christmas, I'll try a 3 mile walk 3 days a week - that seemed to be fine, but when I ramped up to 4 miles, things got creaky and painful.

I have started the Christmas letter, but in the two days since I did so, J's stuff has overflowed on the kitchen table again. He cleared it off for Thanksgiving, and then Mum's holiday fruit basket arrived and now all bets are off.

Did the errands yesterday - with Thanksgiving being last week, I did errands early in the week, so we were getting low on the perishables that I buy every week. Different holes in the distribution system -- it's kind of like whack-a-mole in that there's always something not available. This week it was regular chocolate chips, house brand tortilla chips, frozen breakfasts, and sliced cheese.

The Christmas tree is set up in the corner of the living room. Who knows when we'll actually get the ornaments on it. J put it up with the cord nestled in the back, which makes it hard to turn the lights on and off. :( I have turned it a little ways, but I really should turn it farther the other direction so I can reach the switch more easily. then the tree will be a light source rather than a light sink. :)

The pond was frozen over for a couple of days early in the week - not frozen solid, but even the moving water didn't melt through the ice on Tuesday. Most of the ice is melted now, and J figures he'll probably take the pump out today while the edge is still unfrozen - overnight temperatures are supposed to drop, and ice will form on the edges. We got a few inches of snow on Monday, but it pretty much all melted by Thursday, except in the areas that get little sun, or where it drifted a bit deeper.

Another couple of hours on the phone with Apple Support - the thing that is supposed to work isn't, so there are engineers looking at the problem. We did screen shots and data logging and all that jazz. (There is a workaround. It's even fairly simple, if timeconsuming. But they tell me that I should be able to sync data from one ipad to another, and I can't.... So that's what they're working on.)

So much not much going on. It rained today, which is nice because it's been a couple of weeks since the last appreciable rain. The weeds will be easier to pull tomorrow than they have been. Of course, they'll also start growing again. It is currently not raining, but it looks as though we'll got more rain later.

PT this morning. It was Evaluation Day, in which they poke at things and ask for movement to the end of Range of Motion, so my shoulder is a bit cranky this afternoon. I suspect the rainy weather isn't helping much with that. They tell me that the shoulder is getting better, but there's still a long way to go.

Other that that? The weekly grocery run, a stop for T-shirts for DB who is getting to the mid-stages of wearing out the shirts that he wore in HS (every time he does laundry a few more get thrown away), and a run through Costco because it's been five weeks since the last one. I stopped at Menard's as well, but they didn't have what I was looking for. To be fair, I'm looking for something fairly specific, and it's something that they'd probably have already sold out of if they did have any -- we're looking for a couple of small solar-powered water features that we can put in the side gardens for the butterflies/moths so they don't have to go to the bird-surrounded rill to drink.

I took the beater again. I can't tell whether it's the rear wheel bearing or the front brake that's making the noise. Neither one would be surprising. :)

Frog count is at least 12. Although I haven't seen that many at any one time, the 2 I see in the morning are not part of the 10 I see in the evening -- they're much larger.

I did not break any bones last week when I dropped that rock on my foot. It's a lovely black and blue, but doesn't hurt unless I poke at the bruise....

Mum says that she did not notice the earthquake (in NC!), but she was in the shower at the time....

Two weeks ago, there was ice on the pond in the morning. Today, when I left for PT at 8:30 it was already 70F. It's over 85F (30C) early afternoon. Don't know how the lilacs and crab apples will like that quick change.

A quick set of errands after PT - the list was very short, and they didn't have two of the items on it. But they did have light handweights, vitamins were buy one get one free, and there was a pallet of birdseed in the spot where the pallets of random pet/animal stuff go. Still not a lot of rice or flour. The sugar shelves are about half full, no brown sugar, chocolate chips have been restocked a little, pasta shelves still empty, PB still creamy only.

PT has been extended, again. This time, three more weeks. They have hopes that we're now into the final stretches of rebalancing the muscles. Lots of small movements/many reps and light weights/many reps. Mostly just boring, and eventually tiring.

Saturday, J and I took the rill down. Well, mostly. There's still a layer of block and the fill inside it, but most of the structure of the old rill has been moved. The fill all went into the low spot out in the easement. We found two chipmunk nests (chopped leaves), multiple larders (a couple of pockets of acorns, three or four of sunflower seed, a couple more of mixed small birdseed), and four ant nurseries. And lots of earthworms and centipedes. Sunday, we ripped out the 25 year old treated wood front porch and replaced it with composite decking. Monday, he mowed the neighbor's yard - their lawnmower is in the shop, and the grass was getting *really* long -- they have a double lot, so that took most of the afternoon.

Then I mentioned that the AC compressor wasn't running. My assumption was that the breaker hadn't been turned back on, but there's such a pile of stuff in front of the electrical panel that I wasn't going to dig back to it. And then I discovered that the new breaker is in an outside box right next to the compressor. It's amazing how much better the AC works when the compressor is running.... not 80F in the house any more.

No actual snow accumulation, but we did have flakes falling on Sunday, in between rain showers. Friday night the birdbath froze nearly solid -- there was just enough water in the bottom that I was able to break it up with a hammer and some hot water. (A frozen solid birdbath is hard to get the ice out of.) I dumped the water out on Monday evening so that it wouldn't freeze -- it's easy to get a jug of tap water to refill it in the AM. They tell us that it will probably freeze again tonight. Then, finally, it will warm up and stay there, getting to 'normal' range by the end of the week. I did not plant the california poppy seeds last weekend -- packet says 'after last freeze', which should be this weekend. Despite the cold, things are leafing out and flower buds (apple, lilac) are starting to crack open and show color.

Today was a major shopping trip - I went to Costco! We'll be out of a couple of things from there by Friday, so off I went. It was not very crowded, and seemed fairly well stocked, at least in the places where I looked (I don't usually buy groceries there, so I didn't look). I also went to two different Meijer stores - the big one had some odd holes in the stock, and I was able to get those things at the smaller store. None of the stores I went to had crunchy peanut butter in anything smaller than the large jar, which I don't like buying because it's just too big. We have plenty of Velvet, but J doesn't like it. He may have to choose between Jif/Skippy and crunchy.... Frozen chicken is getting scarce again (processing plants closing?), still sparse stocks of rice, dried beans, flour, pasta, ramen, & chocolate chips. House brand bleach is back in stock, and name brand liquid soaps are reappearing as stock makes it through the distribution network. Freezer cases are understocked in just about everything. I tried to spend money at the local hardware store, but they didn't have any of things I was looking for (Meijer had one, Menard's had the other two).

One of the things I've been doing is actually labelling my yarn boxes, and last week I had a collapse in the system. The batteries in the PTouch died, and we had one AAA battery left (of course, the labeller uses more than that). OK, I'll use the Dymo, which uses AA batteries of which we still have plenty. It ran out of tape, and I didn't have another cartridge. Today I was able to resupply both batteries and labeller tape.

PT today worked on the front of the shoulder -- he says that the knot-loosening on Friday helped, and it's much more mobile. Still not anywhere near 'done', though -- there's still a lot of work left to balance the muscles. And a lot of it is repetitive and boring stuff that needs to be done twice a day so that my brain can remember how it's supposed to work when it doesn't hurt.

Highs in the mid 60F range, rain last night, and again tonight into, um, well, Friday. Better than snow, I guess. Dry and sunny and near 70F today (20C). Small hyacinths in the doorside garden are going gangbusters, the large daffs in the NW bed are still blooming - all the freezing & snow doesn't seem to have affected them too badly. Two patches of the peonies that I moved in the fall are coming up just fine, and one is not. I have no idea why. The irises I moved are coming up as well, even the ones that I moved into the front garden. The late season bi-colored daffs in the front garden are just starting to show buds. The early "wild" tulips are blooming, too. I think the big red tulip plant in the deckside garden needs to be removed entirely --it hasn't actually had a flower on it in a few years, and this year it looks like it's got more than just frost damaged leaves. I'll wait until the bed dries out a bit (so next week sometime) before digging it out and throwing it away. Right now, that flower bed is too wet to work in.

i just heard a frog 'gronk'.

Groceries again today. Local grocer had non-dairy milk, jasmine rice, vegetable soup base, and sausage. No cereal (well, plenty of cereal, just not what I wanted). Meijer had almost everything else on the list, and what was missing wasn't groceries - I don't consider soda 'groceries'. We'll survive until the variety we want comes back in. (Or suck it up and pay more at the local grocer.)

This is my life, now. Both bands cancelled, Livingston probably off until fall, FCB still trying to figure out if we can play anywhere this summer (ans. is probably not, unless the gov. says they can open school buildings this summer....); library filing done as long as school is. I have told the librarian that if she wants help this summer, once they open the buildings to staff, that she can call me.

PT this morning has gotten really specific about which muscles they want to work on -- lots of very small, very specific, movements, at least some of which are not replicable at home. Others are doable, but I need to move J's crap from where he's been letting it pile up. OTOH, they've pretty much determined that there's nothing structurally wrong with my shoulder, it's just that the muscle groups are not balanced properly. Which is theoretically fixable. With time. So I may get an extension of the PT. whee?

Then I went to the grocers. Meijer had a couple of things I've been looking for - corned beef, and small bottles of hand sanitizer (the "new" bottle that J had in his desk drawer had a expiry date of 1/18 on it, so it was probably better than nothing, but who knows how much....) Still no rice or dried beans, pasta still low, no flour, low on sugar and canned veg. Non-dairy milk stock low or non-existent, both shelf stable and fridged. Frozen food cases still low on stock, but things are starting to come in - there was one package of the chimis in the freezer when I went by. Plenty of fresh veg, and the fresh meat cases were reasonably full. Enough of the things on my list weren't there that it was worth a stop at the local grocer, where I was able to get all of those items (I'd have made it my first stop, but I know they don't have some of the things on the list. Meijer usually has them all.) They had no rice or dried beans, but some pasta; freezer case was pretty well stocked except frozen chicken and pizzas. Didn't go down the baking aisle.

Gas is ridiculously cheap. I filled up at the corner station - I'd much rather have a gas station on that corner than a closed/abandoned gas station - for less than $20. They were fairly busy -- there's still a lot of people out and about. On the nice days last week, I saw a Corvette driving club go by, and a flock of Harleys, and heard a bunch of other people out in their hot rods.

We did get the strawberry bed weeded last week, and got a lot of branches picked up. Then we had high winds yesterday, and a lot more came down. The smaller, later, daffodils are blooming, as are the grape hyacinths and the other blue-purple flowers in the doorside garden (there are four or five varieties in there, and I don't remember them all). I wasn't able to get the E garden weeded before it got cold and wet again, and they're telling us that it will be cold (for April values, so mid40s during the day, below freezing overnight) until next week. sigh. I'll get to it eventually - it's next on the list.

More same ol' same ol'

Staying home for the most part - PT twice a week, grocery store once a week. A bonus trip to town for a blood drive on Wednesday.

I have a lovely bruise from the Red Cross today -- usually I don't bruise, but she had to reposition the needle about halfway through (stuck it in too far), and there was some leakage when she did that. She said at the time that there was a lovely hematoma, and she wasn't wrong. Yellow with black spots now, and it will fade over the next week or so.

The giant crocuses in the various gardens are blooming (they bloom after the regular crocuses), as are the windflowers. The early bulbs I put in next to the rill have popped up, and the reticulated irises back there are blooming - a week behind the other patches, but that's probably because it's a new planting. The daffodil buds are showing yellow, although they haven't started to droop yet. I pulled grass out of the front flowerbeds, and picked up branches from last weekend's wind. The chipmunks have been digging in the rill, so J is trying to figure out the best way to prevent or at least limit it. At this point, he's thinking that we build the rill base in sand & gravel and then put a layer of concrete on it, tying the retaining block walls to the concrete so there's no place for varmints to get in. Yesterday we pulled the rocks out, and I guess he's planning on playing around out there this weekend.

PT on Tuesday was more of the same as I'd been getting, but today's was very different -- today they worked on the knots in the back of the arm & in the armpit, rather than the shoulder. He found lots of (very painful) knots to work out, and gave me some very specific exercises. And taped it up, in the hope of getting (and keeping!)the shoulder joint in the correct position.

Grocer still out of things - rice, canned meat, pasta, frozen chicken is what I noticed. Lots of scant shelves of things I wasn't looking for, as well. I was able to get most of my grocery list, though. Next week I need to buy birdseed. I bought cat food early in March, so we're good on that for a while. Which is good, because the feed store where we usually buy it isn't open right now. I think Menard's carries it, so I should be able to get more if we run out before things reopen.