javacat

There's a lot going on with my mother these days. ( Read more... )

School started last week. ( Read more... )

Oh, and Don gave me a copy of Environmental Geology. It's the only book I rented, and I loved the book. That was really nice of him. It's an older edition but hey: free book, nice gesture.

This is a good XKCD: http://xkcd.com/931/ ; (f*ck cancer, yes yes)
A local friend has spindle cell sarcoma; not good. Her arm has been surgically stripped to bone and tendon with bits of skin. If it was me, I think I'd have it amputated.

My second housesitter asked if I was going away again and I took the opportunity to schedule another trip. I leave this coming Friday for: Big Basin Redwoods, Big Basin, Pigeon Point Lighthouse Hostel, Asilomar, Asilomar, Manresa State Beach, Manresa, New Brighton State Beach, Home.

I didn't check the College of Marin schedule before I paid for all my reservations, duh. I will miss the first week of class. Oh well. I'm taking classes from people who know me by now, and they will be okay with it.

Since I got back, I'm not depressed exactly, but I don't want to do anything. I've been spending an astonishing amount of time in my pjs, reading, and catching up on a some key shows. I remind myself of the lady Harriet the Spy spied on, although I am not ill or pretending to be ill, I'm very well and just stuck. I suspect it's a post-retirement malaise. The thing to do, is to not do it, and I shan't be once I get back and start lap swimming classes and a couple of science classes. Yay for school.

Rumor has it that one of the younger generation in the family is having a baby. THANK GOD. We have really healthy genes and hardly anyone has procreated. Damn shame. I'm glad there will be at least one packet of DNA shot into the future, as Jonquil once wrote.

Temple Grandin's book Animals Make Us Human is fascinating. If you have any interest in how animals, domesticated, wild, and human, work, you should read this book. Especially if you have bought into any of this hocum about dominance over your dog -- Ian Dunbar and now Temple Grandin are debunking all the Cesar Milan stuff. Read it!

I hardly drink any alcohol any more, but I need a beer.
Beer had. I might need another one.
Good day in that I signed all the paperwork on my mortgage refi and it's OFFICIAL, yeah baby.

Friday, Mom and I are meeting with an attorney to talk about updating the power of attorney (one of her accounts wants it) and maybe updating her will. It made us both very very cranky today.

I need that other beer.

I am BANANAS for this show called Criminal Minds. My bike riding partner told me about it. Ion TV runs marathons that are so great. I wish I could find it all the time. Ima go look for it now. I love the main characters, and the readings that they end each ep with.

Ugh, I have a test on Thursday and some homework to do. Tomorrow.

School started. I have to settle on classes. For sure I'm taking a nutrition class, if I get an add code. The main contenders are meteorology vs. physical geography + lab or both or all and a geology field trip over spring break. I hear there's a good non-mathy chem class + lab. I've looked at astronomy, geology, and human sexuality classes also.

I didn't get into this at all in Dec. and Jan., kind of a mistake, yet I am having fun in my own round-about way.

It's the same prof for meteorology and geography. He's kind of nutty. Only in Marin? Only in California? Maybe. He's 78, has 3 BSs, 2 MSs, and says he's the only ex-convict teaching in the State of Calif. Sounded like a Vietnam-era thing. He lives off the grid somewhere around Mendocino, has no Internet at his house, hearing loss in both ears from motorcycles and rock concerts, and, thanks to someone in class being the ex-wife of a former colleague of his, we also know he hasn't had a drink for 15 years, and is married for the second time to a woman with a Greek name.

His teaching style is non-linear at best. Thank god I already knew everything he was talking about, either from high school science AP classes, or last semester's bio/geo class. I don't think I could have sorted out what he was talking about otherwise. There were three people in class who had never heard the equation E=MC2 before last night (can you believe that? wow! how is that even possible?) -- they were probably very lost.

I'll go to meteorology tomorrow to see if he's more organized than in geography. Both textbooks look good (yeah, I bought yet another textbook that I might return). The geography lab that I overlooked looks good too. Prof suggested that I take geo, geo lab, meteorology, AND the spring geo field trip (aka camping for credit), and I'm seriously considering it. But I'm not sure I want to work that hard! Conflict! I was pretty humbled by all the young people working 20-40 hours a week AND taking, like, 12-16 units, though.

I got an A on the first mid-term. Yay! We have a second mid-term next week.

I have had a porcelain sliver in my right index finger for months and it's so annoying, I want it out! In the last two weeks, I've seen two hand surgeons; been scheduled for hand surgery, which surgeon #2 canceled without anyone calling my home phone to tell me or leave a message (there was a message on my cell, which was hinky for days -- I got the message 4 hours *after* going to two surgery centers and the hospital looking for the dang hand surgeon!); been back to see hand surgeon #1 after canceling-surgeon-#2 didn't return my phone call. Latest advice: don't do anything. It will eventually work its way out. The universe seems against surgery on this finger. I hope surgeon #1 is right.

Oh the drama over whether or not my brother is coming to the Bay Area from Penna. for his 62nd birthday and our mother's 95th birthday. Skipping a six para analysis of his comm. style here, I think his deep involvement with AA and its offshoots plays a large role in how poorly he listens, and why he tends to take any subject and shortly make it about him. AA culture is about listening and supporting, but what he could use IMHO is being challenged on falsehoods, assumptions, and non-sequitors.

I've discovered that an East Bay and SF bakery, Arizmendi, has opened a storefront downtown San Rafael. I almost wish I hadn't. The bread is soooooo gooood. Their sourdough starter, I have heard, originally came from their sister coop, the Cheese Board Collective in North Berkeley, which is one of the progenitors of the original Gourmet Ghetto, the other two being Chez Panisse and Pig By Tail. That's my original Bay Area neighborhood, and wow did I miss the Cheese Board (and Berkeley Bowl) when I moved to Marin.

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