Well, I Made It Another Year!

I figured it was probably about time I checked in here again and let you all know I'm doing okay. So: I'm doing okay!

I have also just turned 49, or, if you want to get super-technical about it, am turning 49 in about fifteen minutes or so. I am currently celebrating by eating tiramisu and watching a documentary about Mr. Spock, which I think we can all agree is just about the most "me" way to spend a birthday possible. Cornonavirus don't cramp my style any! Heh.

Hi, again.

Hello. I keep meaning to check in here and state that I am still not dead, but I keep forgetting, or not bothering, or whatever. But, well... Hi! Still not dead!

Honestly, it's almost eerie how little any of this situation has affected me personally. I continue to go into work regularly. I have to wear a mask into the office, and there are fewer people there, but most of the folks I regularly work with when I'm on day shifts are still in at least some of the time, and it's pretty much still business as usual for me. We might have more people around starting the beginning of the month. I'm not entirely sure what the plan is at the moment, because they held the zoom meeting discussing it on my day off, and I was asleep. It did get recorded, though, so I'll watch it at work this weekend. Whatever changes they're making, it's still probably not going to make much difference to me, other than that presumably at some point they're going to stop paying me overtime for working on the skeleton crew.

Otherwise, the main impact on me is that I'm only going out to the grocery store when my milk starts threatening to go off, and that I'm nearly three months overdue for a haircut, which is not pretty.

Honestly, we've been very lucky here. Parts of New Mexico have been hit pretty hard by the virus, but I think there have been a grand total of two cases in my zip code. And even in the rest of NM, there is no doubt that it could have been a lot worse. Our governor did a really good job with locking things down very early on, and an amazing job of making sure people in the state could get tested.

I am, however, worried about what might happen in towns like mine, where we've had almost no infection so far, as restrictions are eased (which they are beginning to be in NM). This thing is still spreading, and I feel like it's just gonna be lurking out there, waiting to attack the infection-free pockets of the population as soon as our guard is down. Maybe that's why you get the secondary waves that historically always seem to happen with pandemics.

Anyway, that's about all there is to say from my perspective. Other than that I'm still finding it bitterly ironic that genuinely all I want to do is to stay home, but I'm not allowed to do so, while everyone else seems desperate to leave the house. And also that, wow, does reading/hearing other people's reactions to their own enforced isolation bring home to me how psychologically different I seem to be from most of you social weirdos out there. But I do feel for you folks who are craving face-to-face human interaction, anyway, whether I understand you or not. And I hope everyone who might be reading this is doing physically well, and psychologically as well as you possibly can, given the odd circumstances of our lives right now.

Hi.

So, yeah. Hi. I'm not dead of coronovirus. I figured I should probably mention that.

You may have noticed -- or very well may not have, which is fine, because I hardly expect to the front-of-mind for the entire universe -- that at the start of the year I finally did follow through on what I've been saying I might do for ages, and stopped updating this blog regularly. I figured I'd probably still check in every few months or so with a little update on what's going on with me, or some random thoughts or something.

I figured that whenever I finally got around to doing that, the worst thing I'd have to talk about was the fact that we lost my grandmother recently. Which was incredibly sad -- she was beloved by a lot of people -- but hardly unexpected, given her age.

A global pandemic, however, was very much unexpected. Not that it should have been, maybe. God knows I've read enough books talking about how inevitable something like this happening probably was. Still. The whole thing feels surreal. Fictional. That's a feeling I've been having off and on for the last couple of decades, to be honest, but it almost seems to be a permanent state now, and I have no idea what to do with that. I used to feel excited about the idea of living in the future. Now I am clearly doing so, and I have no idea how to get to grips with it.

For the moment at least, as far as I know, I and my nearest and dearest are doing OK. Well, not sick, anyway. And I'm still working. First my organization sent as many people home to work remotely as possible and cut the staff in the building down to a skeleton crew. And I kept going to work, because I'm one of the bones in the skeleton. Then our governor issued a stay-at-home order and directed non-essential businesses to close. But my bosses declared us essential. Based on... I don't know what. I don't think I'm essential. But I'm still going in to work. I don't feel good about it. I feel like I may be subverting a public health order aimed at saving lives for no truly justifiable reason, something that seems to me distressingly emblematic of all the ways in which our society is fucked up right now. But I don't make these decisions, I guess, so I continue to do what I'm told, and I try to keep my moral qualms and my existential crises to myself. Mostly.

They're paying me time and a half, though. I'm gonna donate some of the extra to food banks, because there are surely a lot of people earning zero right now and wondering how the hell they're going to eat.

I do find the whole situation richly ironic, I have to admit. I know so many people who are going stir-crazy, desperate to be allowed to leave their houses, to be social again. Me, I long for my home every second I'm away from it. It's the only place I feel safe and comfortable right now, if I'm entirely honest. And my personality is such that I genuinely could just stay here and never see another human being for a year or so and be perfectly fine, psychologically. Or at least as fine as I am normally. Ha, ha.

Anyway. That's the state of things for me right now. This is me, checking in, reaching out. Whatever.

Try to stay safe out there. Try to stay sane. Good luck to all of us.

So, Here We Are In 2020

It's a very science-fictional sounding year, but haven't they all been, for the last couple of decades? At least for us relics of the 20th century, anyway.

So. I'm still here, obviously. At least right now. I'm dropping the "currently" format, though, I think. It's served me well over the years as a prod to keep me posting at least something, and to open up a topic or two for discussion. But it's all feeling very old and creaky now. I may just check in here once in a while with whatever I have to say about how life's been going. Or I may not.

As for how life's been going right now, well, 2019, a year of considerable ups and downs, ended on a sad note for me. I lost my cat, Vir, right before New Year's. He was 14, and, honestly, I'm not sure I ever expected him to live this long. He's had health problems all his life. His diabetes, at least, was nicely under control, but then he started showing signs of kidney problems, and went downhill very rapidly. A couple of months ago, it was "Hmm, the blood test results are slightly worrying." A few weeks ago, his appetite started to diminish and he seemed slightly under the weather, and the blood test results were worse, so they gave me some medicine for him and told me to come back an have him rechecked in a month. A week later, he'd stopped eating almost entirely and looked very tired. They took him in and treated him with fluids -- a three-day process to relieve the symptoms of kidney disease, including the nausea that must have been keeping him from eating -- and reported after day two that he seemed to be doing a lot better and had cleaned his food dish, and I should be able to take him home the next day. Except the next day, they came in, and he was gone.

To be honest, while it came as a shock how quickly it all happened, it was also a very real relief. I was bracing myself to deal with a long, slow decline that would have been kind of awful for both of us, and for having to make a horrible decision for him at some point, and I'm glad we were spared that. And, I won't lie, on a practical level my life just got a lot easier. Keeping him on the feeding and medication schedule he needed was extremely hard on me, what with my shifting work hours. Not to mention all those vet visits.

But it's very strange, not having him around. This is the first time in over twenty years that I haven't had a cat in the house, and it's astonishing how much emptier the place feels. And it's going to take a while before I'm able to come home from work and not, for a moment, expect there to be an animal greeting me on the other side of the door.

So, yeah. It's sad. Not least because I knew him literally from the day he was born. I saw his entire life span play out in front of me, and thinking about that sort of thing can really make one feel the concept of mortality in one's bones.

One request, after all of this: Please, please, please do not attempt to engage me in a conversation about whether or not I should get another cat and whether I'm in the right mental place to make decisions about it. I have had this conversation enough in the last week that it's starting to make me angry, especially what seems like the constant parade of genuinely well-meaning people who seem determined to believe that I don't know my own mind on the subject. Thanks.

Ahem. Right, well, other than that unhappy news? I don't have much. So I'll just leave you with my traditional link to the list of books I read in 2019. Which is fewer than I would have liked, honestly, but I'm looking forward to more in 2020.

May you all have a bright, warm New Year, one that you will look back on when it's over and smile. I think we all deserve that at this point.

August Currentlies (And Other Stuff)

Well, it's been quite an eventful month. First, I turned 48, which is a number that seems largely meaningless except for the fact that it's inching disturbingly towards the big five-oh, and that just feels deeply, viscerally wrong. I am not this old. I cannot possibly be this old. What the hell even is time?

Second, I just got back from a week's vacation in Alaska with my mother and sister, talking scenic train rides through part of the state and visiting Denali National Park. We didn't get to see much of the mountain itself, which apparently is not uncommon, as Alaska has lots of cloud cover. But we saw a lot of wildlife, including a startling number of grizzly bears (fortunately at a distance and from the safety of a bus). My sis and I even took a rafting trip down a (very cold) river.

Basically, it was all completely beautiful. And, I gotta tell ya, I could get used to almost perpetual sunlight. All day, every day, it basically felt like the equivalent of a pleasant spring morning (or possibly afternoon). I never had any sense of what time of day it was, but in a way that was the exact and utter opposite of the feeling I get when I get so far out of sync with the sun due to the shift work that my circadian clock just breaks. That feels deeply strange, even surreal. This felt completely natural, as if time was something I just didn't even need. Very odd, but very cool.

So that was all great, although it was marred a little bit by the fact that I managed to catch an unpleasant chest cold at the very end, which certainly made the plane flight home even more annoying than long plane flights usually are. I'm still coughing. I just hope it doesn't settle in and turn into bronchitis the way such things seem to do for me about half the time.

Also not great: I boarded the cat at the vet's while I was gone, and after I picked him up, I noticed one of his eyes was weeping mucus a little. I was worried he'd picked up something while he was in there, so I took him back to have it checked out. Turns out, he's got a bad tooth abscess. Which he's apparently had for quite some time, the poor thing. It may be the stress of being stuck at the vet's worsened it to the point where it finally became obvious. Aaaand, now he needs antibiotics and dental surgery, on top of all the other things he needs. Poor kitty. Also, AAAAARGH.

Anyway. On to the usual state-of-things meme thingy.

Current clothes: Blue sweatpants. My white "tea rex" t-shirt, featuring a monocled T-Rex drinking tea. White socks.

Current mood: Very out of it, in that way that I often get when I've just come back from vacation, except exacerbated no doubt by not feeling super well.

Current music: Nothing much.

Current annoyance: So many, many, many things, but most prominently this stupid cough.

Current thing: Trying to recover from traveling and catch up on the million and one things that seem to need doing upon my return.

Current desktop picture: It's still the main characters from Good Omens. Because they are the best.

Current book: The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

Current song in head: "What about Love?" by Heart, because I heard it the other day in some public place or other. I've been struck lately by how often 80s music seems to be cropping up in such places now. It seems very strange to me, but then I think, back in the 80s, was there lots of 50s music being played like that? And, you know, I think there was. (Which just makes me feel even older, because surely in the 80s the 50s were ancient freaking history. Right?)

Current refreshment: Moroccan Mint tea. (Aka green tea with mint. Very tasty.)

Currently watching: I haven't had the chance to watch anything yet since I got back. There's going to be a lot of stuff on the DVR to catch up with. Also, I still haven't finished Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Well, honestly, it's not the kind of thing you can binge-watch, at all.

Current happy thing: Alaska really was beautiful. Well, is beautiful still, I'm sure. I just can't see it at the moment, because I'm in New Mexico.

Current thought: I have also added to my lifetime list of animal species consumed, thanks to a caribou sausage breakfast burrito I ate in the dining car of the train. I'm not sure why that feels like some kind of accomplishment.

Happy New Year!

I may not be posting here much, but I could hardly neglect to check in on the last day of the year, could I? I hope everyone out there has been having a warm and lovely holiday season, and I'd like to wish you the very best in 2019.

As far as my personal life goes, I don't know that 2018 seemed like an exceptionally eventful year. To be honest, I think it mostly passed in kind of a blur. Far and away the most significant thing is that I got my new fake tooth properly installed, and eventually even got to the point where I could confidently chew on it without thinking about the fact that it was fake and worrying about something going wrong with it. And very glad I am to have that whole dental saga behind me.

I did accomplish a few things, too. Like finally getting my aging sewer pipe replaced. And the skylights, once they started leaking. And I made it out to California to visit my mother, for the first time in a decade or so. (Not that I hadn't seen my mom plenty of times during that decade. But, well... Let's just say that I very much owed her a return visit.)

Yes, well, I never claimed to have the world's most exciting life.

One thing I do claim to do, though, is to read a lot of books, which brings us to the traditional end-of-the-year book roundup. You can see a list of all the books I read here. There were actually fewer of them this time than in other recent years. But, despite that, the one-in/two-out method of trying to tame my out-of-control TBR has been working quite well: I now have 34 fewer unread books on my shelves than I did at the start of 2018. Admittedly, at this rate it'd still take me about 27 years to get it down to zero, but I'm counting it as progress.

As is also traditional, here's a list of the best books I read in 2018, or at least which ones I gave at least 4.5 stars out of 5 on LibraryThing:

FICTION

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip bu George Saunders
Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

NON-FICTION AND HUMOR

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith
Big Mushy Happy Lump and Herding Cats by Sarah Andersen
The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman
M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work by M.C. Escher
The Habit of Turning the World Upside Down by Howard Mansfield
But What If We're Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman

Which I swear is an even more motley assortment of books than my usual.

Anyway. That's it for 2018, for me. I'll be back sometime in the next few days with the usual monthly thingamajig. I'm figuring on continuing to do that for the foreseeable future, if only because I'm far too lazy to think of anything else to do with this blog.

Until then, and once again: Happy New Year to you!

I Am Now Partly Titanium

So, I now have a screw implanted in my jaw, which, hopefully, will eventually serve to anchor a new fake tooth.

For the moment, though, it just hurts. A lot more than the extraction did, but that might just be because I got lucky and the extraction barely hurt at all.

But, man. Replacing body parts with technological substitutes is a lot less fun than science fiction usually makes it look.

Here We Go, Ready Or Not.

Well, here we are, rapidly nearing the end of 2017. Very rapidly, in fact. I swear, this year has gone by like an eyeblink. I thought I'd accepted the fact that everything seems to go by faster as you age, but it's the rate of acceleration that's getting to me. I figured by the time things seemed to be flying by this fast, I'd be in my 70s, at least.

But however much it might seem to me that we can't possibly be at the end of the year yet, we are, and I guess that means it's time for a look back. I'm not going to talk about the year in the world at large, though. To be honest, at some point in 2017, I kind of got tired of hearing from the world at large and told it to go away and not bother me for a while. I should probably try to be a better, more up-on-current events world citizen in 2018, but we'll see whether or not I'm up to it. For now, all I can say is that, in broad outlines, 2017 seemed like about what I expected after 2016, and that that's not a compliment to either year.

In my own personal life, 2017 was the year I lost a cat and lost a tooth, so maybe there's not a whole lot to recommend it there, either. But it was also the year of my grandmother's 90th birthday celebration, which I'm very glad I was able to make. And I am coming out the other side of the year alive and whole and doing all right, which is all I really ask.

Anyway. I hope all of you have a good and safe New Year's Eve, however you are or aren't celebrating. (Me, I'm not celebrating, as I'm stuck at work. Which on one level I don't mind, as I've never been a New Year's Eve partier, and it's not like I have anything that much better to do. But it does seem like a bad start to the year, somehow. Alas.) And I wish everyone, especially anyone who's been having a tough time in 2017, the best and happiest possible 2018.

See you guys on the flip side of the calendar.

Looks Like It's That Time Of Year Again

Merry Christmas!

I don't have any big plans for the holiday this year. I'm working today (although I get to do an 8-hour shift instead of a 12-hour one, so I guess that's something), and I'm working on Tuesday, so I'm mainly intending to spend Christmas itself relaxing and, y'know, not working. I figure I'll follow the tradition I've established in the last few years of staying up until midnight tonight and opening my presents then, then sleeping in on Christmas morning, that being the sort of luxury that not having children or houseguests affords. (Even if I can't sleep in too late, since I do have to be into work early the next day.) I also have a nice meal to cook, and pie, and a selection of festive beverages. And, of course, there will be Doctor Who, which, let's face it, is the important part of the holiday.

Anyway. Here's wishing a lovely, warm, happy Christmas to everyone who celebrates, in whatever capacity, and a lovely, warm, happy end-of-the-year season to everyone in general.

And don't call me while I'm watching Doctor Who. ;)

Circadian Woes

You know what's really fun? When you've just traveled a couple of time zones westward after a trip on which everybody went to bed stupidly early, you now have to switch yourself over to night shifts, and Daylight Saving Time is ending.

My life really is a ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, and it's making me very, very sleepy.

[ETA: Apparently I initially typo'd "night shifts" as "night shits." I was almost tempted to leave it.]

And I Am Back!

Actually, I was back Thursday night, but I've been busy catching up on things since then. That's the problem with vacations. Your whole life seems to pile up while you're gone, and everything wants your attention when you get home. Especially the cat.

Anyway. The surprise party for my grandmother went really well. My aunt put out a heck of a spread, a truly impressive number of people showed up, and Grandmom was genuinely surprised and apparently quite moved. And, no, she did not keel over from a heart attack at the surprise, the way everybody I told that we were having a surprise party for a 90-year-old woman worried she might.

As well as catching up with family, we went some interesting places while I was there, including the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, where my scientific curiosity fought a pitched battle with my natural squeamishness, with variable results. I do recommend it, though, for those whose squeamishness doesn't always win out.

We also took a tour of the Herr's potato chip factory, which was oddly delightful. Man, I miss Herr's chips. At least I got to have some of those on this trip, as well as other Delaware Valley delicacies, including Tastykakes, soft pretzels, a Philly cheesesteak (emphatically not to be confused with anything you might have seen labeled as a "Philly beef sandwich" or some other ridiculous, inaccurate thing), and a Wawa hoagie. Mmm-mmm.

And because this blog never really does have enough pictures for modern sensibilities, some photos of me:

Here's an embarrassing one of me trying on my aunt's Halloween costume.



And here I am having a staring contest with a monitor lizard at the Delaware Natural History Museum. Which was tiny, but pleasant, and looked like a great place to bring kids. The museum, that is, not the lizard. The lizard looked like it might want to eat your kids.




(Hopefully people can see these pictures. I still haven't quite figured out how Google Photos handles permissions.)

Where I Am

In case anybody is wondering where I am, I am in Delaware.  I flew out here on Friday, because Saturday was my grandmother's 90th birthday. My family threw her a surprise party, and my being here was part of the surprise. Hence why I didn't post about it ahead of time, even though, honestly, the odds of my grandmother seeing anything whatsoever on the internet are exactly zero.

Anyway, more when I get back. But at least you know I'm alive and well!

Well, It Looks Like The Dragon Spit The Sun Back Out, At Least.

So, how was the eclipse? I, uh... I slept through the entire thing, by virtue of getting off work at 8 AM and collapsing from exhaustion for five hours and change. Well, it was nowhere near totality here, and I have seen a partial eclipse before. Still. This probably comes under the heading of "you know you're getting old when..."

And Now, For Something That Has Nothing To Do With Teeth (Aside From A Reference To The Fourth Doctor's Teeth And Curls)

I am going to see this tonight! Should be awesome. And excellent for taking my mind off the state of my mouth and/or the world at large.

One Week Later. (Well, Eight Days, Because I Had To Work Yesterday.)

Had my follow-up appointment on my tooth today. The doctor and I did not sit down and have a long talk about best practices in dental medicine. But he did assure me that the tooth socket is healing up well, the gum tissue looks healthy, and the bone graft looks good. So that's reassuring, at least. I think it would have been just my luck at this point to have things go horribly wrong with the healing process.

I've still got to be careful with it for another ten days or so, though, until the wound is completely closed up and there's no chance of the artificial bone stuff inside washing out and making a bid for freedom.

Sigh. I miss being able to do things like chew and brush my teeth without having to think about them. That was nice. I did not properly appreciate those days when they where here. Isn't it always the way?

Anyway. After this, it's going to be another three months before they can start the process of giving me a fake tooth, thus taking me the first step of the way on my journey towards becoming a cyborg. (Hey, I have to look on the bright side and make this sound cool somehow, right?)

So. That Happened.

I went for my dental procedure today, and... it did not go as anticipated. Mainly because the endodontist apparently, like, 99% of the time ends up pulling teeth with these kinds of infections, so when he came into the room to do the operation that might save my tooth, he forgot that's what he was supposed to be doing and fucking pulled it instead.

Yeah. I kid you not. And, man... It seemed to me what he was doing was weird and not what I was expecting him to do, but I figured he knew what he was doing and there was a reason for it... and the next thing I know, there are pieces of my tooth all over my mouth and I'm trying to process what the hell just happened.

Needless to say, it was pretty freaking upsetting. I mean, there was a really good chance it was going to end up getting pulled anyway, but I was not prepared for it to happen today. I think I started to freak out a little, but then I sort of had to calm down, because I realized the dentist was trying not to freak out, too, and I found myself thinking, "Oh, man, I need to be calm so he can be calm, because he still needs to finish this up." Which was actually pretty useful, because I had to drive for an hour and twenty minutes to get home after that, and I needed to be functional.

Anyway, I guess the bad news is that I now have fewer teeth than I had this morning, which is NOT WHAT I WANTED OR AGREED TO.

The good news is, I saved the $130 he refunded me for the procedure, and I get a free dental implant if I want one. Because he was all, "It's OK! I will fix this! I will give you a new tooth! It will be better than your old one! I WILL MAKE IT RIGHT! Please don't sue me." Well, he didn't say that last part, but I think it was pretty much implied.

And, hey, I guess it could have been worse. At least he pulled the right tooth.

Still. This was not exactly the best day of my life. Send ice cream. Since I think that's one of the things I'm actually able to eat right now.

I Can See!

I have my new glasses! Again. The opticians were kind enough to mail them to me this time, since I live so far out of the city, and since the frames had already been adjusted for me. And the prescription is now correct. Hallelujah! It's amazing how much difference that makes. I don't know how I ever thought for a second that the previous ones could have been right.

They are going to take a little adjusting to. This is pretty close to my last prescription, but just enough different that I have to fine-tune my head-tilting impulses all over again. It does seem to be a change for the better, though, as I'm already noticing that it's easier to read fine print. The fact that I kept finding myself taking my glasses off to do that is what made me realize it was time for new ones in the first place. More annoyingly, I am getting a bit of queasiness, especially when I turn my head too fast. I think I had some of that with my first pair of progressives, too, though. Hopefully it should go away pretty quickly.

Otherwise... Well, I am second-guessing my choice of frames already, but too late! They are a part of me now, and this is my face for at least the next couple of years.

Anyway. I'm glad to finally have that taken care of, finally. Now on to all the other stupid things...

Adventures In Modern Dentistry

I just got back from my endodontist appointment. They took these really cool 3D x-rays that let the doctor zip around and zoom in on and rotate my teeth on his computer. Very 21st-century!

Anyway, even though the infection is pretty big, he says it is confined to the area around one root, which makes me "a good candidate" for the apicoectomy procedure. Which still gives me maybe a 50-50 chance of saving the tooth, but I'll take it. Also, it costs less than I was expecting; with the insurance it looks like I'll maybe be paying less than $100. And they were able to schedule me for it on a day when I actually shouldn't have to work, despite my current stupider than usual work schedule. Plus, he confirmed that with a local anesthetic, I can drive myself home. Admittedly, I generally prefer to be unconscious any time someone is doing something invasively medical to my body, but it seems like it shouldn't be too bad, and he says it might only take maybe ten minutes to do. I figure even I can suck up my weeniness that long.

So, all in all, pretty good news! My only complaint is that my appointment is at three in the afternoon, and I don't particularly want to go from having oral surgery to driving through the city at the onset of rush hour, especially as the office is practically in Rio Rancho. So hopefully I really will get out of there pretty quickly.

Various Things

A few random things, numbered even though there is no actual order to them:

1. I am now 46. It doesn't feel any different from 45. In fact, I had to stare at the date for a while re-checking how old I actually am, because apparently I'd already been thinking of myself as 46 for a while in anticipation.

2. I was doing really well with my one-book-in/two-books-out method of TBR control, but my birthday trip to Barnes & Noble set me back a bit. And today there is a library sale here in town. I am trying to be strong, but I fear I might succumb. Does "it's my birthday" still work as an excuse a day later?

3. Today's excitement: a wildlife encounter in the middle of my dining room! Well, OK, don't get too excited. It was just a frog. (We get spontaneously generated frogs here every time it rains hard enough in the summer to leave puddles. Or at least, they sure seem spontaneously generated. Apparently they dig down into the mud and go dormant underground between rains.) It was perfectly still, didn't even move when I gently poked at it with a rolled up bit of napkin, so I figured it was dead. I tried to scoop it up on a piece of cardboard, because I didn't want to touch it, at which point it suddenly hopped at me. I am embarrassed to report that I emitted a high-pitched yelp at this point. Zombie frogs are startling! Anyway, it has now been relocated outside, but I'm trying to figure out how the heck it got in. I know I have cracks in my house big enough to admit bugs (hence my regular employment of an exterminator), but frogs? Did it maybe just hop in the door with me when I came home, and I somehow didn't notice? I mean, WTF, frog?

OK, I'm Done Wallowing.

After all the whining I've been doing lately, I figured I should pop in to say I'm feeling much better now. Not that lots of things aren't still irritating, because they are. But I'm approaching them with more equanimity. The Doctor Who season finale really did cheer me up immensely, because it was amazing. Also, this may be 100% the power of suggestion, but I think it's possible that tooth infection just had me feeling a very subtle, low-level kind of crappy for a long time, a kind of not-feeling-top-notch feeling I tend to just blame on my sleep schedule. But whether it's pure placebo effect or something else, after a week's worth of antibiotics, I actually feel a much greater sense of well-being. Even if I am still tired.

And hopefully someone will be here to fix my swamp cooler soon. Not living in a sweltering house will surely also help improve my mood.

Oh, and I also just saw what I think is the little cat that was locked in my shed! I'm not entirely positive it was the same animal, but I think it was. So it's probably still alive. Yay!