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Visit with Don Fitch

(crossposted from FB -- sorry for any duplication)

We visited Don Fitch Sunday. He is doing great! He is lively and hale, and doesn’t look at all like someone who was expected to be dead six months ago. (Though he says that he naps a LOT.)

For communication, we ended up simply using dictation in the Notes app on our phones. The bold title text seemed easily readable for him. (One caveat — be sure to check the text before handing it over. A couple of times my text was rather scrambled!)

There’s a sign on his door about oxygen being in use, but maybe that’s only at night? He wasn’t using it while we were there and didn’t seem to be needing it.

He does use a walking stick for balance. He says he has a neuropathy that makes it feel like he has planks on his feet, thus making balance a bit tricky. And although he seemed quite energetic, he says he can’t walk for very long. We asked if he’d like to go out to the LA Arboretum, for instance, but he said you have to walk too far to reach anything interesting, so he hadn’t enjoyed visiting the last time he went. (But I wonder if they have golf carts or something available for visitors who need them. Maybe someone else can look into that.)

He has ready access to stores and such, both in walking distance and via weekly bus trips from the facility. He has a computer but it isn’t set up (he declined assistance with it, saying the keyboard is in a box but he doesn’t know which — Geri, maybe this one is for your visit). He claims he has plenty of money coming in, so he’s not in danger of dying in destitution.

We conveyed greetings from everyone, and he was quite touched.

(Does DW not have a way to upload photos? They seem to want an existing URL.)

DW app?

Is there a DW app? I didn't find one when I searched the App Store.

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Beet harvest

The beets were getting ideas about bolting, so I harvested the lot of them yesterday. I grow Cylindra, a variety that is cylindrical rather than round. They can also get quite large without getting woody. I didn't weigh any of these, but that's a standard chef's knife laying next to them!

I've already cooked all of the greens and frozen them. Yay me! The beets themselves I will slowly use over the next couple of months. Happily, they do store well.

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Peer Gynt at SF Symphony

I loved it! It was a semi-staged version of Ibsen's play with the orchestra playing Grieg's famous music plus selections from Alfred Schnittke and Robin Holloway. It was fascinating to hear the music in context with the play. The tattered scrim on the right was used to project shadowy figures and atmospheric images, especially during Holloway's extended tone poem about Peer's round the world adventures before he winds up back with the inexplicably faithful Solveig at the end. Solveig and the chorus sang in Norwegian instead of the usual German, a nice touch.

Peer is not a likeable person, quite the charmer but entirely lacking any moral compass. There's an interesting thread running through Isben's play that he has wasted the raw material of his life and is destined to be recycled. Uplifting if you view it in the karmic sense, though Solveig wasting her life waiting for him (and welcoming him back at the end!) is depressing.

Still, the performance was excellent. It was a last minute decision to go, and I'm so glad I did. Two more performances, tonight and tomorrow.

P.S. Just for an alternate point of view: calimac hated it.

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Thunderbird autocomplete

Thunderbird used to be very smart about autocompleting email addresses for me, suggesting ones that I had emailed most recently or most frequently. But a month or two ago, the behavior changed. Now it just suggests the first one that comes up in strict alphabetic order, which is almost never the one I want. I assume there must have been an update that changed the behavior, but I can't find an option to toggle. I want my smart autofill back! Any suggestions?

A minor clever idea

The method I have of washing floors results in a bucket of clean soapy water, which I'm loathe to simply dump, but I don't always have some other use for it. Today I took the bucket out to wash off a particularly large and egregious splot of bird poop on the car, and I realized that I might as well give the whole car a quick wash down. Better than just dumping the water, eh? Now the car looks great (well, as great as it can manage, given that the paint is coming off in big patches), and I feel virtuous.

Make a free Kiva loan

Kiva, an organization that facilitates microloans to people in need, is offering a free $25 credit at Kiva to first time Kiva lenders to make a loan. Of course, what they'd really like is for people to then make more loans with their own money. As Kiva loans get paid back, the funds revert to your Kiva account so you can lend the money out over and over again. (Assuming the recipient doesn't default, but very few of them do.) Note that the payback from the free $25 loan goes back to Kiva's account, so you'd have to pony up your own $25 to be able to reloan. I've got several loans revolving through the system. It's fun!

toys and bikes

We watched Toy Story 3 tonight and loved it. Now David & Kate's essay in the last Bento makes even more sense!

I took my bike over to the local bike shop to get the derailleur adjusted. He quoted me $15 over the phone, then $10 when he saw it ("It's clean," he said -- I guess because I haven't ridden it enough!). He said it would be done Thursday, then I got a call an hour later to pick it up today. When I did, the fellow who had worked on it asked if I like the handlebars the way they were. "They're kind of sad," he commented. He then spent 15 minutes adjusting them, including banging on a stuck part to free it, which I would never have had the guts to do. They're wonderful now!

They still only wanted to charge me $10, but I insisted they take $20. "Well, okay, for our pizza fund," they finally acquiesced. I don't think I'll ever buy anything at the shop since it's almost entirely geared to high-end racing bikes. But I'll gladly take my lowly Costco bike in for repairs again.

Music server

We've finally delved into the music server question, and we're going to go with Mac/iTunes. I've ripped nearly all of our holiday CDs into the system, and it's wonderful! With a couple button clicks, I can listen to my entire Christmas playlist in shuffle mode. It's heaven to not have to pick out and/or change CDs.

Reading them in wasn't too bad. I do enough work/play at the computer that I could change them in and out easily while doing other work. But there's only 100-125 of the Christmas etc. CDs. Doing the big section of main CDs will be more of an effort, not to mention needing a dedicated disk drive, but we have a plan.

Now what will we do with our lovely revolving CD shelves? No, no, not more bookshelves!

Happy Halloween

It's been a while since we've given out candy on Halloween for various reasons (traveling, parties at other people's houses, safety concerns about our sidewalk). But this year we're home, not going out, and the dangerous step has been fixed. So I decorated up the porch a few days ago, and we laid in a modest supply of candy. It seemed slow, but in the end we had about 100 trick or treaters. Only a few were teenagers, and all of them had at least made an effort to dress up, so I didn't begrudge them. Many of the adults had dressed up to accompany their kids, many of whom were still young enough to be entirely bemused by the whole ritual. It was delightful.

Most of them had driven into the neighborhood, but I don't mind that either. The first ones came about 5:20, and we turned lights out at 8:45. There were still kids on the nearby streets, but our neighbors had turned their lights out, so we weren't getting anymore visitors. That's okay, it gave us time to walk around and admire some displays before it was too late.

Organic gods

"Most of the truly organic gods are agnostic, and thus do not believe in themselves -- and they are omnipotent, so they should know."
Bil Lepp

(I know, it should be omniscient rather than omnipotent. But it still made me giggle.)

Productive morning

I finally found a pickle recipe that I like (which is to say, tastes like Vlasic Dill Stackers), so I'm making up a big batch today to can for the winter. Yum yum. I harvested yesterday and put out a box of cukes, squash, beans, and rutabagas with a free sign. Last I checked, just 2 cukes, 1 squash, and 1 rutabaga remained.

I've washed and hung out the towels and rags used when cleaning up from the party and now have a load of whites in the wash. When that's done, I'll run the dishwasher. I've nearly got packages ready to go to my niece and step-niece (book readers both -- how wonderful to buy for!). Mike has just returned from successfully selling some old electronics equipment at the California Radio Society flea market.

And it's just past 11:00! What might the rest of the day bring?

Helping Amber's classroom

ambertatge , whom some of you know, teaches grade school in a very poor school district in San Jose. She is trying to raise funds to buy two notebook computers for her classroom via DonorsChoose.org, a program for helping public school teachers. Her project is called "Help 21st Century Students Cross the Digital Divide". Check it out! And if you can, make a small donation to her cause.

Party prep

Our annual summer BBQ is tomorrow. If you're around, c'mon by! Starts at 4:00, runs until late.

We've been spending a lot of time doing prep for it, more time than in recent years. We realized that it's largely because we haven't been doing much entertaining this year due to a variety of circumstances (traveling, conventions, other people's parties, recovery from all of the above, and uncongenial weather). As a result, we haven't been forcing ourselves to tidy the house & outdoor areas regularly, leaving us with rather a lot to do this time. There have been areas of the house from which I've been averting my eyes, always a bad sign. And only somewhat effective, because the messes are still low-level irritants making me feel dissatisfied and unhappy. So I'm not just cleaning for the party -- I'm cleaning to make myself feel better. Many areas indoors and out have now been tidied (though not my office, so far -- maybe tomorrow).

I finally planted the succulents I had accumulated. Some went in pots, some in the front garden. I don't know why, but I'd been resisting making a decision on where to put these plants. Sometimes I come home with plants, and *bam* into the ground they go. I'm trying to train myself to do that more of the time. But other times I dither, for weeks, months, or even years, while the poor things languish in their pots (I'm not great at taking care of plants in pots). I've had "Plant succulents" on my to do list since I acquired them all in April! I had even done a tentative distribution of them, then there they sat for over three months. Well, for better or worse, they got planted today! I have also renewed the mulch on the succulent bed in front and have resolved to keep the convolvulus and sweet peas from overrunning it next winter.

I've got a turkey ready to go on the smoker. We have chips, cheese, veggies, and a variety of beverages. Outdoor tables and chairs have been washed down. The house is mostly cleaned up. I think it's time to sit down with a good book. Thanks,

athenais , for the Madeleine Robins recommendation; I'm enjoying it immensely.

Hope to see a bunch of you tomorrow!

Harvest

The danger of going away for 5 days:

And I had harvested well just before leaving, honest! I made plum butter with the plums and took most of the rest of the produce to a local homeless shelter.

The Good Lovelies

We're going to be seeing this group in person soon. I can hardly wait. Those harmonies, OMG!

Ethiopian yellow lentils

I grew 2 1/2 lbs of these babies, on a 4-foot wide trellis! Feeling very pleased.

These are different from other lentils. Tthey're, uh, not lenticular, for starters. More wedge-like, but irregular. When cooked up, they look like cute, little, miniature hominy. Tasty too. I heard about these first in a book by William Woys Weaver. I wish I could find out more about them (like, are they really Ethiopian?), but all I can find are links for Indian yellow lentils/dal or circle back to the people I got these seeds from in the first place.

Maybe next year I'll grow a few regular lentils, just for comparison.