Toasty!

The temperature at 5:12am on Wednesday morning in Geneva, NY is a balmy 37°F. It is going to be above freezing most of the day! Huzzuh! I was just outside in a t-shirt and boots playing choochoo train in my walkways. Mom and I get to go to her dentist appointment this afternoon. Yippee! An outing! Always a reason to celebrate. This is going to be mom's first time downstairs in a few weeks. I am tempted to take her to Friendly's for dinner, but am concerned about all the issues involved in a meal out. We shall see. (They called to reschedule - seems like this is the second time that has happened...) For now, I think I will try to get a few more hours of sleep. That would be nifty...

The puzzle movie is on hold - not because I don't want to do it, but because creatively I am a little stymied just now where it is concerned. Fear not, it will get done. Eventually. I hear that patience is a virtue. Hahaha.

I took the plunge and am going to go further spelunking into the depths of software upgrades. This morning before I went back to sleep, I started the download and upgrade process for my phone - the download took 6 hours - well, it ended up actually only taking four (!) - which unfortunately was exactly when I was supposed to be getting a call from an Elder Care Lawyer. Oops. We ended up speaking on the house's landline instead. Choices and options. Huzzuh!

Tonight I think I am going to update the software on my laptop. I don't really want to, because nothing is broken on here - but life moves forward and I don't want to get too far behind the technological curve, do I?

It is so warm outside! Things are melting, slowly. I went out to clear a little of the driveway and discovered a few things: slush is heavy, my shovel is broken, and my car lost a piece of plastic that is making things tough for my right front tire. Yippee.

Shopping at Walmart is always a joy. I went to buy mom some more underpants. They had a price thing that was wrong. Hate that. It said what I was buying was $75 per hundred - when it was actually   closer to $40 per hundred. I bought myself some socks, too. One of the newest socks I had mysteriously sprouted a hole in the toe. Grrr. I liked that sock too. I had named it and everything. (Sockie, in case you were curious - or Harriet - it answered to neither.)

Patient Puzzlers

Editing can be a long process. So it might be decades before you see a finished puzzle video. Or I could do it down and dirty. Hmm. We shall see. Time...

It is another quiet day today - nothing pressing (or weighing me down) about the Smith today. Yay. I take that back, I do get to create the weekly email blast. I don't know how long it takes to do in one fell swoop - I like to do it piecemeal - a little here, a little there - seems less onerous somehow. I just hope to have it ready and out by 4:00 pm today. Doable, for sure.

Other than that, not a lot of plans for the day. Maybe some work on the puzzle video - I had a few ideas - Adding titles might be the first bit I try. I will wait to try adding voiceovers until later. I would like to read some. Maybe take a trip to the composter. Maybe shovel my driveway a teeny bit. I think dinner will see the end of the Chinese Food.

Well, I have the video under four minutes. I think I will be able to get the whole thing under three. Yippee! Just need some judicious editing. Huzzuh!

Got some reading done - the first book is Live From New York about Saturday Night Live. Interesting stuff - not earth shaking, just interesting. I remember watching the show that first year - and missing the Muppets when they left.

Made lunch for mom, ate a little something myself and had to take a nap. It is hot and stuffy up here - and the food contributed to my feeling of exhaustion. Almost done with my Smith stuff for the day. I do need to go to the grocery store, but I might not do it, just to be a rebel!

Yup, looks like I will be staying inside all day! Huzzuh! I needed a day off, day off. True, I did do some work for the Smith, but not too much. Tomorrow, though, I will have to go in. Tonight? Who knows?! I need to make dinner in a little while, then after that...

Time to make a movie-let

After finishing my little 500 piece puzzle and the capturing the raw video, now I get to try and put together a little movie showing the puzzle process. Hopefully I didn't scratch myself inappropriately too often. Hmm. I will, of course, watch it before I post anything. I hope to have the next couple of days off from doing too much Smith work - so I might be able to knock something out then. Oh, and laundry. I really could do with a trip to the laundromat.

So, the first look at the puzzle movie looks like it is 2 hours long. Um, no. I am thinking the whole thing needs to be about five minutes total. We shall see if I can make that happen. Got it down to 10 minutes so far. I will see if that will do. I want to add some times, maybe some simple transitions, some narration etc. Fun fun fun!

It has been a weird day today. I am not sure why. Mom forgot that she had eaten lunch. And dropped all of her pills - she self recovered a few of them. Yay. I did shower and trim my beard, so there's that. And I did some catch-up in my email.

I went into the Smith to get things ready for the Oscars viewing event. The first problem was that no ABC channels had a strong signal strength. Grrrr. I went to put the antenna outside, but the lid was snowed shut - meaning that we had to climb out to the roof and do some shoveling. Then there was the problem of getting the images right on the screen. Took a little playing around, but we got there. And then, it was time to get mom some dinner. Then back to the Smith - I got the video down in the basement/cabaret working - Terren got the sound working. And there really wasn't anything for me to do anymore, so I came home.

Mom and I watched some Oscars, though I did pop down and watch a little of the baking show. Then we watched Downton Abbey together - lots of drama of course - then back to the Oscars for mom and Grantchester (and the Oscars) for me.

Puzzle me this

Got some good puzzle work done. But my eyes were starting to cross.

My hate of windows machines continues. Just saying. The second computer I bought is terrible. It seems really slow and has lots of pop-ups and ads and things. I am trying to disable them all, but it is slow and seems really frustrating to get it to do the simplest of things - like download an app. Sigh.

I was in Wendy's this afternoon to get lunch for me and mom. Yes was playing on the music system. When did Yes become main stream enough to be played in a fast food restaurant?

Went into the Smith this morning, after getting a wake up call from the tech support people who took "I'll call you at 10 am" literally. Ooops. Anyway, I went in and built a little test playlist and lo and behold it played correctly. So I tried the playlist that we had been trying last night and it didn't work. Answer to the question: corrupted playlist. Further answer, Augustus corrupted it. Boo. Anyway, all fixed, all better. Started working on getting the TV looking right again. And it doesn't look nearly correct - so I will work on that tomorrow. We shall see if I can get it decent in an hour or so. Should be able to.

Watched Fury the other night. I liked it a lot. Not quite like Inglorious Basterds. Very interesting, about tanks. I thought Brad Pitt and Shia LeBeouf both did a good job. Glad I got it from Netflix!

I am kicking puzzle butt! I figure another day or two at the most. Then it will be time to look at the video I took to see if it can be made into anything interesting. Well, interesting to anyone other than me. I find everything I produce interesting. Sigh.

Tomorrow is another day. And hopefully the last day of a very long, long, long period of non-stop events at the Smith. Maybe next week I will actually be able to do some laundry. That would be nifty.

What the Pluck?!

So many problems at the Smith - the lamps I bought for the projector don't seem to be working - that sucks. Then the lights in the cartouches and the sunrises stopped working. And the smallest thing - the monitor for the DVD player seems to have stopped working. And I had my A-Team on duty - so there was no panic which is good. I hope I can get some of this resolved by time for the movie tonight. We have movie, movie and then four hours or more of TV rebroadcasting - all on a weekend - though I do have all day today to resolve the issues. Ha.

Well, they were pretty easily resolved. The lamp I just kept shoving in until it worked. I was tempted to find a rubber mallet but I didn't need to in the end. Yay! I ordered another new bulb just in case. I like to have two on hand whenever possible.

The lights in the cartouches was, luckily, bonehead user error. Yesterday, while setting up the wifi extenders, I unplugged what I thought was the refrigerator. Turns out that the power packs for the lights are plugged into the wall. Who knew? I certainly didn't. Anyway, all plugged in and happy now!

Lastly, the HDMI splitter thing. Not sure what is going on there, but ordered a new one, just in case. And the tech support people got back to me, but I haven't gotten up the energy to get back with them.

Oh, I did actually start the puzzle and the movie. Though for a bit today the camera was not functioning (I apparently don't know how to make it record...).

More Smith problems. The proprietary application that Emerging Pictures makes us use stopped working - we could get sound and image from a dvd and from the laptop. Ok, sound from the laptop, I didn't try image. I will try that tomorrow, when I go in bright and early and see if I can get the whole thing resolved. That would be nifty. I don't want to have to stress too much.

What I really need is a massage and a few good hugs. The former is more likely.

Time to chill.

Started!

Yesterday I ventured into the back entryway and looked for an extension cord. I found lots of them, and some powerstrips/surge protectors. Go me! So, I hooked up my video camera and did a little test of 5 sec interval photography. Way too few exposures. I am going to set it at 1. And I think I will start on the puzzle either tonight or tomorrow depending on how I feel. So excited!! I love projects. Especially ones where I will get to play with technology - the video camera and later with iMovie. Yippee and huzzuh!

Today was another day that seemed non-stop. I got my two additional wifi cameras for the house. I forgot to check to see if I can have more than one on a network. I hope so! So far, I haven't had any luck in getting them hooked up. I might work on it more tonight or maybe tomorrow. My mind is feeling a bit fried just now.

Also got two packages for the Smith. One is another new to us laptop that I am going to set up tonight. The other is two wifi extenders so that we can get internet down to the dressing rooms and have a stronger internet presence in the projection booth. Woo hoo. More work for me to do. Sigh. 

It is late in the day, about time to start getting ready for dinner. I would like a break, please. Seriously.

Those Four little words we all long to hear.

It has been a while since I tried to make a quiche. So I attempted one today. I think it turned out pretty well, all things considered. Mom used to eat them at least. Anyway, tonight I head those four little words everyone who cooks a meal for someone else longs to hear, "It tastes like cardboard." Music to my ears for sure.

My mom thinks that I am super valuable to the Smith. She asks me if they appreciate me. I think they do, most of the time. I am making a list of things that have happened during my tenure at the Smith, big and small. It is actually a pretty impressive list. Ok, I think it is impressive. I might ask Kelly to weigh in at some point. And maybe Jessica. I guess this is partly because I want to be known partially for what I have done and not just for what I have done lately.

It is weird. I haven't really done much today, yet I feel like I have accomplished a good bit. I am slowly getting closer to being ready to video tape a puzzle put together. A friend asked me why I wanted to create the video - and I realized the answer: I love time lapse photography. In college, a couple friends and I put together a little stop action film. I wish I could find it. I found a lot of my other film work - ok, not a lot - I have found a few pieces. All crap - except for the Alice in Wonderland bit I did in High School - it had Abigail Saltonstall and Karen Bowlby in it - go me! And Doug Orr, Hunt Stehli and James Marquand. I wonder if I ought to digitize it and put it up on the internet. Yes, I think that will be another project sometime soon. I have it on videotape somewhere so I can get that digitally transferred somehow - actually I think Karl (my brother)(who doesn't read this blog - or much of anything since he is so busy!) might actually have that technology. Hmm. Anyway, I remember seeing time lapse photography of all sorts of things - flowers growing, buildings being built, I just thought a puzzle being put together would be cool. And it might help me to see my process. And document my obsession if I time stamp. Can I time stamp a time lapse film? Hmm. I don't know. We shall see, I guess.

One game down, many still to go. I finished Assassin's Creed Liberation today. I do enjoy the Assassin's Creed games - great historic places they recreate - and all the climbing around and exploring is fun. And there are some elements of Role Playing involved - not a lot, but a little.

And that is about all, really. And working on that Smith accomplishment list. And trying to get through a teeny headache - I don't often get headaches, so I am confused whence this one came. Maybe not enough water?

Despite starring Emma Stone, Amazing Spider-Man 2 was pretty bad. Fun, but bad. Glad I rented it from Netflix instead of watching it in the theatre!

I had a thought

I finished the puzzle. I don't know how long it actually took and I don't really care. I do care that I was a little obsessed, as I normally am, with the puzzle. All the pieces were there. Yippee! I am not going to start a new puzzle right away. But I am going to start one. I have two more new ones lying around. Neither of them really appeals, though. One is a piece of a tapestry and the other says it's impossible. So maybe I will do one of those or maybe not. We shall see. Anyway, I think I am going to video tape the whole thing. My video camera has a setting where it will take a picture at a given interval. My thought is to turn it on whenever I work on the puzzle. iMovie is a decent editor - so we shall see if I can make anything interesting. Doubtful, but one never knows. I like projects.

Ta-da!

I decided to take a trip out to my composter last night. It was not the best idea I have ever had. I was prepared, with a head/flashlight, forgetting that there is a bright light on the back porch. Anyway, the snow was deep, the icicles scary and there was a creature waiting for me where the composter had been. Luckily, the Doctor appeared and whisked it away.

Ex-term-in-ate!

The Pebbles make such great stereophonic sound, it/they is/are awesome!! (Did you like that sentence?)

Mom tried to go downstairs again this morning. Not that I am opposed to her going downstairs. She was trying to be independent. Yay. Though going downstairs while I am sleeping is not a good thing. I haven't done a good job of "mommy proofing" the kitchen. I don't have all the sharp utensils put away, I don't have a way to turn off the oven so that she can't try and cook something. I haven't put away all the things that she shouldn't eat, etc. I told her it was great to be independent, but only when I was awake to help her out in case she got into a situation she couldn't handle. Which at this point seems like most any situation. Sigh. Anyway, she woke me up at 7 in the morning - not too terribly early in the greater scheme of things. And she has been awake most of the day so far! Yay!

I like Pebbles

The other day, Newegg.com sent me an email as they do on a weekly basis. Usually they go right into the trash. This time, something caught my eye. A pair of JBL Pebbles speakers. For $29 dollars. The speakers are for laptops and they rock! (Oh, I made a funny. Or JBL did...)

Up and at 'em! I need to work on fixing up the slide show for the Smith. It is a little weird working on the slide show remotely. Some strange behaviors that I am still trying to figure out. I do need to go into the Smith to do a few things - test a couple of movies, set up the speakers for tonight, bleed the furnace...then this afternoon, a doctor's appointment with mom. That'll be fun, for sure. It looks like I will get to all the calling and such that I am supposed to be doing on her behalf tomorrow. And maybe laundry tomorrow too. Gee, isn't it great fun, reading about my day and my plans?

The doctor wasn't all that much help. He suggested upping mom's dosage of her sertraline (sp?) as that might help with mom's anxiety. I just don't want her to be a drooler. Didn't do anything about her knee - because, well, we didn't really want to get into the whole thing at this point since it is functional still.

My right wrist is twanging for some reason. Maybe I am typing too much? Or working on the puzzle too much? I am at that point now (way past where today's picture shows) where I think that there aren't enough pieces left and that I am missing four or five. I did find two of three edge pieces that had eluded me for a long time. Huzzuh!

Is it sad that I look forward to taking mom to the doctor's because I get to interact with people who don't have dementia and at the same time don't need to worry that mom is ok?

Sunday Night and Tuesday

I forgot to write about Sunday night. It was our tv night together. Starting with the news. Then 60 minutes. I like 60 minutes generally - though who knows how balanced their reporting actually is. Then we put it on PBS for the rest of the night. Starting with the British Baking show. Sadly, my favorite participant got booted. I saw it coming, though. Next we watched the most recent episode of Season 5 of Downton Abbey. Not too much exciting happened except for the middle sister taking control of her child and moving out. Yay! Poor Edith. Somewhere in there, they showed an ad for Grantchester - which is not a great show - but it is enjoyable. I think the lead looks a little like the guy on The Mentalist. It is at least somewhat entertaining. And that was it. Four hours of TV with mom. I think she slept for 3 of it all together. Sigh.

Great progress on the puzzle today! I finally found a piece that connected to the edge. Woohoo! Sadly, I was vindicated in my thought that I had the whole frame backwards. That was joyous, flipping it around. One of the problems with my rolling up mat is that it isn't slippy slidy - which is probably good in most cases - but is causing me a few problems with sliding big chunks of completed puzzle bits around.

Feeling sleepy today and there is a long row to hoe. First ho to roe is more sno-blow (ing). I don't think we got that much snow since yesterday, but the snowplows have done an excellent job of blocking the end of my driveway again. Joy and rapture.

After that, a whole bunch of Smith work - we have three movies playing 7 times this week and a mail blast that needs to go out today. For the movies I need to a) create movie playlists, b) create spotify playlists, c) make sure the heat is timed to go on and off, and d) make sure the pre-film slideshow is current. The email blast, always a bit of a pain, needs to be mildly creative and a little witty and needs to be out by 4 this afternoon.

Then, of course, there is all the stuff that I am supposed to be doing at home - making calls about mom's future, paperwork, bill paying, napping...oh, wait, I don't know that there will be a lot of napping going on today...

I am mildly irked because the Daily Challenge videos have stopped working - I have tried a couple of browsers to no avail. I am not irked enough about it to do anything. And Allison was getting pretty boring...

Snowblowing accomplished! Now for some Smith work. Ok, my brain is fried. We have a lot of movies coming up in the next couple of weeks. Still grinding away...

Finally! Gosh that is effortful - creating the Mail chimp email mailing. I also built six or so playlists for upcoming films. All I have left to do are the spottily playlists and making sure the heat will be on when it needs to be on for the upcoming events. Yippee!

Puzzle progress has been made - despite all my other stuff today - more will be made tonight, I am sure.

Yay progress

I might have started the puzzle on the wrong side. Who knew that there was a right side and a wrong side? Now I do!

My mom and her trees

My mom has been focussing on a couple of trees that she can see from her bedroom. For the past few years she has worried about them - the one in the back that it is coming to get her and that it may fall and crush the house. The other is also coming to get her - but she likes that one for some reason. Turns out that "they" put a curb in the way so that the second tree couldn't get to her. Today she asked me to take a picture of it because she felt it was being badly treated - that snowing on it added a level of indignity that the tree just didn't deserve. Okey dokey then.

Mom's tree

Today has been a null day - I have done nulling all day. Well, that isn't strictly true - I did get up and snow blow a good four to six inches of snow out of the driveway. Sadly, my snowblower is in need of minor repairs. I am not sure how to go about that since it is all snowy and I don't want to bring it inside where it will melt all over things. I might put some towels down in the kitchen and see what I can see - the handle that changes the position of the discharge chute doesn't seem to be functioning. And the knobs came off of it. In the snow. But I found them.

Pre blowing

Drive way mostly de-snowed

Post blowing

Then, my next nothing was to make mom lunch and help her with the pills. I am now doing that every day as well. Up until a few days ago, I was pretty confident that mom was doing a good job taking her pills. And she told me that she was a good pill taker. Recently, not so much. It isn't an onerous task - there aren't that many pills. Yet.

I called the doctor's office, after hearing from the aide service that no one was coming to help mom today, to change the doctor's appointment to later in the week - to give the snow a chance to stop and hopefully make it a little easier for me to get mom there. We have a whole list of things to ask him. Won't he be thrilled?!

Then I worked on the puzzle. Too much. You'll see tomorrow - I still think that the border is the wrong way round - nothing clearly links its orientation to the interior of the puzzle. What's up with that? Poop even.

Progress before I started working on it today

I just took a shower. I am just writing this blog. Soon it will be dinner (leftovers) time. Huzzuh! Mom is napping, I am catching up on some work - working on a couple of grants for the Smith - letter writing - blogging - that sort of thing. Yippee! But I didn't do most of the things that I told my family that I would do today - I didn't call and elder lawyers, I didn't collect the tax stuff for my brother - I didn't ask the doctor about mom and nursing homes. Oh, I did look at the paper work and one whole page is devoted to mom's financials. What the heck is that about? I hate the medical care in America is all about the money. Why oh why can't we get our priorities right? Hmm?

A shirt I ought to like

There is one shirt in my closet that I really, really ought to like. But I don't. Each time I get it out, I think "Wow, this is a cool shirt!" I put it on and think "Eww, I just don't like the way this shirt fits." Do I get rid of the cool rooster shirt? I mean, I wear it despite the "eww" factor. And it is a cool shirt. Dilemmas. Some people say life is too short and to send the shirt on its way. Others say that there are enough reasons to keep the shirt. Decisions, decisions...

And now I am wearing a shirt I probably haven't worn in two or three years. In the past I always thought "This shirt's material is so skimpy." But today it feels substantial enough. Weird.

I am desperately seeking a landline (named Susan?) so that I can plug in mom's "call only Augustus" phone. If anyone reading this has a landline, I can (if they are too far away) mail the phone to them, teach them how to program it and then pay for it to be shipped back. Yes, that is how desperate I am.

Oh, the painting that our handyman did was good - but the rust bled right through again. I am afeared that we will best needs to replace all of the tiles that are rust/water stained at all...

I woke up this morning, did some work on Smith stuff and then took a nap. Yay.

My patience is running out much more quickly recently and I don't know why. What set me off just now was mom whining that her eyes didn't work. Of course they didn't - they were closed. Sigh.

Killing the easy bits of the new puzzle. I will get a picture up today. My biggest problem is that the border doesn't have an orientation (well, top and bottom) that is easy to determine. I am sure I will figure it out eventually.

Fuzzy Puzzy Pic - Just wait till tomorrows!

Laughing and crying. You know it's the same release

We had a family conference call last night to talk about the future and mom. Some tears were shed on my part at least. Yippee! Yay tears! Cheers for tears! Anyway, we also got some thoughts on how to proceed. It is sad there isn't a one stop shop for this - but there isn't apparently - elder lawyer for some information, social worker for other things, nursing home or wherever for other things, etc. And it is all about the benjamins. Sigh.

After the phone call, I watched a couple episodes of Fringe last night. I love Walter! And very happy that JJ Abrams is doing the new Star Wars movie.

Not sure where this thought came from - I typed it at some point last night: I remember when I got a raise - I always thought - "They love me even if they are scared of me! Woohoo!!!"

Who knows how each of our top ten movies gets chosen? I know mostly that The Princess Bride is my number one, most favorite movie. Followed closely by Galaxy Quest and Serenity (despite the ********spoilers*************************************************************** deaths of a couple key characters). Robin and the Seven Hoods is definitely in the top twenty-five.

Got some Chinese food tonight for dinner - not a lot because we still had leftovers from last time - got some Egg Drop soup - in fact the plan was just to get that - but I ended up getting some shrimp toast - yum - and some steamed dumplings - still not my favorite dumplings in Geneva, but they'll do in a pinch!

So, I have started the next puzzle. I have done a little work here and there on it - but the first sort of substantial progress can now be revealed!

Almost got the edge completed, sort of...

Finally February

Gosh, that makes it sound like I was just sitting around, counting the days until February rolled around. That wasn't the case. It just sort of snuck up on me. I knew, deep down, that yesterday was the 31st, but not consciously. Oh well. Life is that way sometimes.

Yay, here we are in February. The most wintery month! Woo hoo!

We have a lot of events at The Smith this month - many, many movies - a lot of them with extra components: pre-movie talks, post movie "debates", bands even! And some non-movie events. All in all, it will be a busy month. Who the heck looks forward to being busy? I like being productive, but busy just sounds, I don't know, less appealing than "not busy."

Here are some puzzle pics. More to follow!

Puzzle in box

The stow and go puzzle thing - the elastic straps were still in the box

Ready to start

Art Photo - the pieces in this puzzle are weird, which might make it easier? But small, so...

Snapchat anyone?

Seems like an odd application to me - but so do many of these "newfangled doohickeys!" I just watched a video on youtube about snapchat - and I did learn a little - but not a lot. I will have to do more research at some point.

I started the next puzzle! Huzzuh! I was going to write Huzzle! but that isn't a palindrome. In going through looking for edge pieces, I have found a lot of puzzle pieces that had not been successfully disconnected. What would you do? Rip the pieces apart and spread them out? Or leave them together? I am leaving them together - well, I rip them apart - cause most of them are stuck together - then put them back together again. Sue me.

You know, my life would probably be easier if I slept in my sweats or something. But I don't. Which means whenever mom wakes me up for some reason, I need to basically get dressed - not that I am too weirded out about my mom seeing me naked, but because wearing clothes makes me feel a smidge more dignified, powerful and awake.

Sayings for all occasions

I love language. Well, most of you probably already knew that. In this post we are going to look at a couple of sayings and see which trumps which.

The first is "Hope Springs Eternal!"

The second is "Flogging a dead horse."

So which is it? Does one keep hoping that by flogging a dead horse our desired (or hoped for) outcome will actually occur? Or do we stop hoping for what we were flogging a dead horse for and start hoping for something else? I would have to guess the latter. Hope isn't about one thing, it is more of a general thing - along the lines of "X is like buses (which is probably no longer true in most places since most places don't have a robust public transportation system) - wait a minute and another one will come along" or "There are plenty of fish in the sea" unless the human race continues to destroy them...Gee, these are depressing. Better get back to hoping...

A couple weeks ago I was optimistic that I had found someone who was going to be a major part of my life. I thought that they were going to be helpful and supportive of me while I would be helpful and supportive of them. Unfortunately this is turning out not to be the case. So I think I will stop with the flogging already and change the focus of my eternally springing hope. Life is that way sometimes.

Does anyone know anyone who I might ask to help me with cleaning up and organizing the house? Someone did offer to watch mom sometime if I wanted to go out. Actually two people have offered - though neither of them has really followed through. But the offers are nice.

I think I will start another puzzle today since I have my exciting new puzzle mat thing.

Closing in Quickly on the End of the Month!

January is weird - it seems to go on forever - at least here in the sort of North. It is too bad that it isn't one of the month with 30 (or fewer) days. Darn knuckle months. Anyway, it is the 28th and I swear that there is still a month left to go of January. But what is weird is February happens really quickly after January is gone. And this February is so short!

Technology is amazing. Last night I was taking a shower and thought about just how cool it is that many people can take a hot shower in the middle of the night in the middle of winter without thinking about it. Just recently - on a cosmological scale - this would have been something unbelievable! I was also thinking about luxury - what makes a shower luxurious - above and beyond the plainly luxuriant feeling of water sluicing grime (etc) down the (now freely flowing) drain. Speaking of which, it was nice to once again be taking showers without my feet being in a few inches of water.

I actually had an adult evening last night. Not as in a romantic adult evening, but an evening out talking with other adults. Real conversation! How weird is that?! I left mom at home watching My Fair Lady. Misjudged the time just a little so the movie had ended before I got back, so mom got a little anxious. But otherwise, it was a great evening!

Ooh, got a package from Amazon today! How exciting is that? Pretty darn exciting. Season 5 of Downton Abby - which I will still watch on Sundays with mom if I we can. But we will be able to rematch any of the episodes or all of the episodes whenever we want! Yay! But there real excitement was the other item in the box - which to my surprise, came in a square box. I thought it would be in a tube.

I never noticed the inflatable tube

And there's the trick! Right there! Cool!

That's right, I am ready to puzzle! I have a couple in my closet which I think I will tackle next. I also think we have a few puzzles in the attic (and I think I have a few in my boxes of crap, er belongings). We shall see.

Tried and Blue

After posting that gratitude blog bit yesterday, an attack of the blues came upon me. Luckily not a huge one, but a little one. Sigh. This too shall pass. And then for whatever reasons, I didn't sleep well and got up really early. And stayed up. I did, at least, have a nap - well, I sort of meditated  - after I got back from an early morning at The Smith. And I am feeling a bit happier today - though exhausted and sore around the eyes. So, a quiet night at home is called for. Hmm, I do that most nights....

Last night, I wanted to finish the puzzle, so I put on a movie that mom and I could watch together. She was awake for most of it and liked it overall. It was Robin and the 7 Hoods - one of my favorite movies from my childhood (it came out in 1964). Stars Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bing Crosby!

Yes, the puzzle is done. And I won't be starting a new one until I get my puzzle transporter thingie. Which won't happen until February.

Just enough pieces!

At some point last night, the geek me had a thought - how many times did I touch each piece on average? Who cares? I do. I know that I touched each piece at least once. 1000 touches. I probably touched each piece 3 times. Some pieces I probably touched as many as 20 times. (Maybe? I will have to give that some thought). Anyway, lots of touches.

I really do have it good, all things considered

This is an obligatory post. A post of gratitude.

Life is, in general, great. I have a roof over my head, food in my belly. I am not particularly sick. I do not lack for acquaintances and friends. Yippee.

As far as mom goes, I am grateful that she is not displaying a lot of the behaviors that I read about here and there - she is still, overall, quite a nice person. She sleeps a good bit. She eats on her own. She still has an appetite. Ok, maybe too much of an appetite, but that is still a good thing. She can manage better on her own than she lets on when I am around, but that is ok as well. I feel ok leaving her for a few hours at a time. All in all, I am lucky that mom isn't more worser.

That being said, I am feeling really, really, really frustrated with my mom just now. Sigh.

Second topic: I realize that I am hug deprived. I love my mom, and hugs with her are ok. But they are just sort of dim versions of comforting hugs. Or even dimmer versions of hugs with a romantic partner. Or so I seem to recall. Yes, I am that hug deprived. I am thinking of buying one of those hugging robots - does anybody want to buy one of my (slightly used) kidneys? - or something like that.

Puzzledom - I am almost done. I am now at a point where I think they sent me too many puzzle pieces and they aren't all going to fit!

Nubbins

When working on a puzzle, there are, of course, many different ways to do so. Color, or patterns on the pieces - sometimes looking for the "right" shaped piece with the right number of "nubbins." I don't think everyone calls them nubbins, but I do. A puzzle piece in most puzzles can have anywhere from no (or none) nubbins (the protruding round bits) to four nubbins. Recently I sorted my puzzle parts into the number of nubbins - and in the case of two nubbins, into three distinct piles - nubbins on opposite sides, two nubbins next to each other pointing one way, two nubbins next to each other pointing the opposite way. Am I crazy or what? There are probably twenty or thirty pieces that I ought to be able to find this way - which still will leave me with a tenth of the puzzle that will be better served by color or pattern matches (until nubbin matches again make sense). Baby freakin' steps. Mom has started to ask me what I am going to do after I am finished with this puzzle. My glib response - start another one. Right now it is a bit of a slog - but if I do a few pieces each time I sit down...

No picture of the puzzle today - it would be hard to really tell what has been changed since last time.

And that's it for today's post. We'll see if more inspiration occurs tomorrow...