stoutfellow

I was in California for just over three weeks; with the exception of the flu minidemic - a week or so - events went pretty much as planned. I was able to spend time with each of my sisters and their families at least twice; I was staying with my brother D, so I saw plenty enough of him; and, again except for that one week, I saw Dad pretty much every day.

He's... faded. His hearing is mostly gone, and he has trouble with communicating, in both directions. This frustrates him, and so many of the automatic reactions to his stumbling speech are exactly wrong.... He's more emotionally open than he used to be, especially if he doesn't get his afternoon nap. But when he's lucid, which is most of the time AFAICT, I can still see the man I used to know in there. There are still things he enjoys: watching football and golf on TV (with amplifying headphones overcoming his near-deafness), candy (which we give him plenty of; what's it going to do, rot his tooth?), and just being around his family. The staff at the home seems capable (and they've got good cooks, among other things), and the other residents are friendly.

We did get him out of the home once, taking him up to C's place for dinner on the second. C and her husband fixed a meal suited to his unidental condition: flaky salmon, sweet potatoes, and some well-cooked vegetables, all of which were delicious. C also supplied a carrot cake in honor of my birthday (two days in the future, but wotthehell); this she had to cut carefully for Dad, because there were nuts in it. He loved the meal; I don't recall seeing him eat that much at one sitting in a long time.

He's ninety-three, and there's no knowing how much time he has left. I can't get out there very often, but I'm glad I had this opportunity to see him, and I'm looking forward to the next planned get-together in June - a combined celebration of his birthday and Father's Day.

The first two days of my California trip were pleasant: the family get-together and gift exchange on Saturday, followed by a long and quiet visit with Dad on Sunday. The days since... have not been so pleasant. The family has been hit by a mini-epidemic of flu; more than a quarter of us have fallen victim. (Fortunately, Dad is not among them; letting this bug loose in an old-folks' home would be, frankly, criminal.)

I was among the first afflicted, awaking at 1AM Monday with severe dual-action GI distress. I'll spare you the messy details, but here are some of Monday's highlights:
- Passing out in the bathroom, and coming to on my back like a beetle, with my legs curled and cramping furiously. (The noise of my fall awakened D, who came running; things got considerably less bad at that point.)
- The sensual pleasure of sitting on a stool in the shower, letting that motherwarm spray cascade over me. (God, that felt good; and it suppressed the GI war as well, at least for a while. This is one of D's nostrums.)
- Slurping down a bowl of chicken broth, hoping to restore calories and electrolytes, only to puke it all back up half an hour later.

Tuesday was... better. My appetite for solids was nil, and I had a sore throat (presumably from Monday's violence), but vomiting had ceased and I was able to keep down a couple of slices of dry bread and eat most of a bowl of cream of mushroom soup (a longstanding comfort food). Most of my sustenance came in liquid form - milk and OJ mostly. Today has been better still, though I still am well short of being healthy. Unfortunately, now D has succumbed....

This wasn't exactly what I had planned.

I got the Algebraic Structures finals graded and the grades posted yesterday. I'm about a third of the way through the Engineering Math finals; it'll probably take me two or three more hours at work today to finish them. Unfortunately, I'm also on the Search Committee for one of the two positions we have open, and that committee will be meeting to begin weeding through the applications today. The committee chair reserved two hours in the conference room for us; hopefully it won't take anywhere near that long.

Then I come home and start scrambling. Do the laundry, find my brother's cell phone, stock up on dog food and treats, pay off a last few bills, pick out some books to read en route, and pack. It's going to be a longish trip - I won't be back for three weeks - and man, I need the break. (There are also a couple of matters concerning students that aren't likely to resolve before I leave, and I'll probably be working on them via e-mail, but that won't be too onerous. I hope.) The family gift exchange is Saturday, and there will be other get-togethers as well; as soon as I get to San Diego, I'll have to wrap the gift I bought. I'll probably go see Dad on Saturday, before the gift exchange, and as often as possible for the rest of the trip.

One Day More....

I'm continuing to wrestle with the revamp of my financial software. I've scrapped everything and gone back to the beginning twice now, as my attempts to implement my ideas failed in multiple remarkable ways. I've finally managed to get a handle on some simple aspects of VBA coding, which... prompts me to restart yet again, but with serious hopes of avoiding the pitfalls I've been hitting. (No doubt I will find new ones....)

I've also ordered a programmer's guide to Access VBA 2010. I really dislike the online help that Microsoft Office supplies; I need something solid I can flip through. (An e-book would be acceptable if I had an e-reader, but being confined to the links and whatnot dictated by MS just drives me bats.)

I'm still optimistic, if guardedly so, that I can get a barebones version of the software up and running before I leave for the holidays.

:looks troubled for a moment before remembering:

Oh, yeah! Happy Thanksgiving to my USAn friends!

Yesterday - the day, that is; the night was a different matter - was a sluggish one for me; I achieved very little, though I did hold the ritual viewing of 1776. The night... I anticipated the far-away fireworks of the early evening. I did not anticipate the much closer and (therefore) much louder and brighter fireworks show put on by one of my nearby neighbors, which began around 10 PM. This was so situated that every flash was visible through the blinds of my bedroom window. Needless to say, Gracie was very much upset by all of this, and given her propensities, when Gracie's upset, the whole household is upset. They finally shut down around 11 or 11:30. I was still awake at 1 AM.

Despite this, and despite the continuing heat (EHW in place until Saturday at 10 PM), I planned to go onto campus today to meet with a student. However, he was having computer difficulties, and his e-mail cancelling reached me about half an hour before I would have had to leave. I gratefully decided to stay home.

Today was even less productive than yesterday. Tomorrow, I will probably have to pay a visit to Kohl's, to replenish my diminished stock of pants. I hope I'll get a decent night's sleep....

I'm back. I got in last night, actually; I'd planned to go onto campus today, to take care of various bits of paperwork, but found myself short of vim. Instead, I did as much of the work as I could from home. Other than that, I walked the dogs - delighted at their first excursion in three weeks - and did some grocery shopping.

The homestead was mostly as I'd left it, except that the dogs had pulled the pillow and sheets off my bed and also indulged in eating the couch some more. (I have to get some new furniture one of these days.) The weather is unseasonably warm; I went shopping in a long-sleeved shirt, sans jacket or even windbreaker.

One other item of possible interest: on my way to California, I noticed that my Illinois ID card was due to expire on my birthday, January 4, 2012. Given that my flight back was on the 5th, this was a matter of concern.... While in California, I checked the TSA website, and gathered as much alternative ID - none of it with my picture - as I could: Social Security card, credit cards, birth certificate (unfortunately in German), and a State Department certification of the birth of a citizen overseas. I put all of these (well, except the credit cards) into my shoulder bag for the trip back, and ran through various scenarios in my head. My (slightly paranoid) brother lent me his cell phone, just in case. In the event, the TSAgent looked at the date, wished me happy birthday, told me I needed to get a new card, and sent me on my way without incident. (This, despite my current resemblance - according to Sister C - to Ted Kaczynski. If you're reading this, sis: ;-PP.)

More to say later, perhaps, but my vim-free state appears to be persistent.

As usual around here, the trick-or-treaters came last night. It was kind of chilly, so I figured on a low turnout, but I had more than thirty kids come to the door. (Some of them barely qualified as "kids", from one side or the other....) Most of the three bags of candy I'd bought went, so there's been less temptation than usual today.

I just finished another game of Civ IV, and a rather satisfying one at that. My score wasn't that high - only about 8K - but I was playing as Qin Shi Huang, who is, for some reason, difficult for me. He's not the toughest - that's Victoria - but the Financial trait is not one I'm comfortable with. Also, this was one of the few games in which I've used my navy effectively and proactively. I was cruising towards a Cultural Victory; the only danger was from Montezuma, over on the other continent. He had the second highest score, and Demographics suggested that his military was about twice the size of mine. Anyway, I had a caravel doing an exploratory sweep, and noticed a huge buildup of troops - mostly cavalry and catapults - in one of his port cities. Oho, says I, and I planted the caravel in position to keep an eye on things. Sure enough, a while later an invasion fleet set out - two frigates and two fully-loaded galleons; I set the caravel trailing them until I knew where they were headed. I crammed all the coastlands near their goal with military to make sure they couldn't make an unopposed landing, and when they crossed the border and Monty declared war, I swarmed them with my ironclads. Only a few units from that fleet made it to land (and none from the second wave, right behind them), and before they could even move I wiped them out as well. By the time he recovered from that disaster, I was starting to produce destroyers. He tried another invasion, which I destroyed mid-ocean, and his destroyers - when he got around to making them - didn't survive for long either.

Walking the dogs this morning, I encountered the elderly fellow who lives kitty-corner from me. He's rather frail, but he loves my pups. He was giving an airing to one of his daughter's dogs, a large but diffident fellow named Dusty. Buster and Gracie eagerly bounded over to say hello.... Let's just say we're lucky nobody - especially Gracie and my neighbor - got hurt. We cut the usual conversation short after that.

The MassMutual account has kicked in; the appropriate deduction was made from today's paycheck. Looks good, so far.

Heigh-ho. Time to start battening down for the coming cold weather.

"Lazy"'s the word, all right. Christmas Eve, Dad, D and I went over to E's for our annual feast and gift exchange. I gave D his gift before we went over; the rest of the gifts were opened there. For D: a DVD with 53 years of MAD Magazine in .pdf format. (I found out this existed via a mention on the American Dialect Society mailing list....) Dad's a little hard to buy for, at his age; I got him a Roger Miller album. (Music, food, and clothes are about the only things he has much use for any more.) For E, a copy of McKinley's Sunshine. (E's the one who introduced me to "Buffy" in the first place, so she should enjoy the book.) Good food, good conversation, only one political argument....

Other than that, it's mostly been hanging around the house. D bought a few DVDs at Barnes & Noble, and we've watched "Despicable Me" and "Toy Story 2". (TS3 is waiting its turn.) I've been working through a reread of Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun. (I was going to finally read volume 3 of The Book of the Short Sun; I started reading it, decided to backtrack to the beginning of TBotSS, began reading that, and decided I really needed the full story from TBotLS.... There's a reason why, though I think Wolfe is a great writer, I don't read him very often.)

Still poking at the fringes of the same mathematical problem I was working on during the flight out. Some interesting results, I think, but I really need my software to make sure.

Lazy days.

As usual, the major trick-or-treating around here took place yesterday, on the 30th. It was a chilly evening, but the turnout was pretty good. I didn't keep an exact count, but I must have had thirty-five or forty visitors. I ran out of candy (three bags!) at about 7:30 and turned out the light. I don't think I'll turn it on tonight.

All Quiet Along the Potomac To-Night

"All quiet along the Potomac," they say,
"Except here and there a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing - a private or two now and then
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost, only one of the men
Moaning out all alone the death rattle."

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming,
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
And the light of their watch-fires are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night wind
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping,
While the stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard, for the army is sleeping.

There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two on the low trundle bed,
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack - his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,
And their mother - "may Heaven defend her."

Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling;
And gathers his gun closer up to his breast,
As if to keep down the heart's swelling.
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree,
And his footstep is lagging and weary,
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.

Hark! was it the night wind that rustles the leaves?
Was it the moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle! "Ha! Mary, good-bye!"
And his lifeblood is ebbing and splashing.
"All quiet along the Potomac tonight,"
No sound save the rush of the river;
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,
The picket's off duty forever.

(Ethel Lynn Beers, 1861)