#136 Ouch!

I highly recommend to one and all the Dimitri Pokrovsky Ensemble's CD "Faces of Russia" (a.k.a "Gesichter Russlands").  It's a collection of old Russian folk songs and liturgicals, sung "in the old fashion".  I first heard this group a few weeks ago on NPR, on the car radio, and I ordered the CD from Amazon as soon as I got home.  I just listened to it for the first time.  The only thing disappointing about it is that there are only 16 selections, and fewer than half are more than two minutes long.  I want more!

The voices weave in and out and around each other.  Sometimes it's like chanting.  I don't know what polyphony means (but you know I'll go look it up as soon as I finish this), but the word seems appropriate to describe it.

Warning (the reason for the "Ouch!"):  Do not run a wire from your amplifier in the living room to the PC in the den, and listen to #14 Vargan (central Russian Wedding music to ward off evil spirits ... mouth harp, flute, and scythe - the only instrumental on the CD) on the PC speakers.   It will blow out the speakers, if it doesn't crack your teeth first.

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Post Script:  Whoop!  I am so good sometimes I scare me!  Polyphony (well, actually polyphonic) is exactly the right word!  Now you go look it up.

#135 Foul (Fowl?) Weather Friends

The weather has been warm (mid-50s) and sunny for the past few days, and today there are bare patches in the snow in the woods.  I am missing a few dozen turkeys.

Tsk.  No corn for you!

#134 The Pope

I've been sending good thoughts toward Rome the past few days.  I don't believe in the infallibility of the pope.  In fact at the higher level, I think the Roman Catholic Church is run by power-hungry money-grubbing snake oil peddlers, whose main goal is to keep men ignorant and women pregnant, expand their tax base, and hoard the world's treasures at the expense of their mostly poor parishioners - and that's when I'm feeling charitable toward them.  (Barbara Walters was asked what one question she would like to ask the Pope, and she said "What do you think Jesus would think of the way you dress?")   I agree with very little of what Pope John Paul II has said (in his official capacity) over the past 30+ years. 

But, on a personal level, I really do like the man himself.  I think he is honest and true. 

Back in the '70s, when the old long-term pope died and they had the election for a new one, you know, the black smoke/white smoke thing, I was disgusted by the whole process.  It was such a political thing.  All these guys campaigning and conniving and building alliances.  I complained to Ex#2 (who was not only a Jesuit-trained Catholic, but whom I suspect his mother had hoped would be a priest) that "God didn't get to vote!  If this guy is supposed to be God's emissary on Earth, what they ought to do is turn a dove loose, and the first person who got pooped on should be the new pope." 

Well, some guy finally won.

Within something like two weeks of his election, he suddenly dropped dead.

I turned to Ex#2 and said "How 'bout that!  God voted!!!"

(Well, has veto power....)  (Ex#2 was not amused.)

So I figure besides being a nice and courageous guy, Pope John Paul II is approved.

(I still don't believe he's infallible, though.  Just less dangerous than some others.)

#133 (P) Look What I learned

Look what I can do!  This is a first attempt.  I'll get better at it (maybe...). 

<---So tired, I guess, that my face looks mosaic....   Too much compression or too much whatchamacallit, I guess.  Don't complain - it loaded fast, didn't it?

This was the tail end of the phase where some people said I reminded them of Gloria Steinem.  I had a quarter-sized white patch on the top of my head that gave the effect of her pale strips, but in this photo, I had temporary coloring on it.

BTW - Jay was 44 then, and I was 52.  (I didn't at all look it.)  Sigh.  I want it back....  I want it all back.

#132 Glorious Turkeys Galore

There's been a flock of 24 wild turkeys in my front yard almost all day every day for several weeks.  They're getting used to me now, and when I go outside they just saunter toward the woods and lurk near the first trees waiting for me to leave (lurky turkeys).  They scratch the snow away, especially on the sides of the driveway, looking for munchies.  I'm debating buying some cracked corn for them.

They're HUGE!  Some of their footprints are eight inches long.  They're not gracefully shaped, but when the sun shines on them, their black feathers are iridescent.  I keep watching for dropped feathers, but I guess it's not molting time.  Also, none of the males have spread their tails, either (I love when they do that) - not "impress the hens" time either. 

Black feathers.  Hmmm.  When we were in school and made Thanksgiving decorations, we always made the turkeys medium brown.  These are definitely black.

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There's an SCA event in Kingston today, where there will be music, dancing, and food.  I really want to go, if it were tomorrow I would definitely go, but I've got all kinds of problems today.  It's from 10 to 10 or something like that, so I still might make it.

 
 I bought a necklace from a guy in China.  He doesn't take PayPal (online payment), so I've been trying to pay him through BidPay.com - buy an international money order with a credit card, and they deliver it to the recipient.  For some reason, BidPay has rejected three attempts, with no reason given, although I can figure out from the status page that my credit cards go through ok.  The only explanation I can come up with is that his invoice is in British Pounds Sterling, and BidPay operates only in US Dollars.  I converted pounds to dollars to enter the amounts, but that makes my numbers not match his.  I can send a paper international money order on Monday, but our little village PO doesn't always have them, so it may require a trip to Kingston.  Blech.

To top it all off, AOL keeps bouncing, and between bounces Windows stops responding to the mouse or keyboard (which I suspect is the fault of AOL), and when all that manages to stay up, my connection drops.  I've been restarting something about every 40 minutes.

I've noticed that whenever AOL has a new release available, the old one starts breaking.  Like they don't ensure that the new release on their end is downwardly compatible with those of us still on the old release.   Guess what - I'm on 9.0, and there is now a 9.2 available.  I hate to upgrade when I don't have to, because just after Jay left, I upgraded and lost all the stored mail - which chronicled his illness and treatments, and my address book.  All gone.  Bad experience.  Upgrades forevermore approached with caution and crossed fingers.

#131 Booster Seat

Just about to turn the computer and TV off and go to bed, when the "don't treat your child like a crash test dummy" public service commercial came on.  The one where they say that anyone under 4' 9" should be in a booster seat in the car. 

My grandmother was well under 4' 9".  My mother may have made it to 4' 9" right after washing her hair.  I didn't get past 4' 9" until after college.   I find that ad very annoying.

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This reminds me of the time I was filling out the forms for a driver's license, and where it asked for height, I put 58", as in fifty-eight inches, as in four foot ten inches.  When the license arrived, it said 5' 8".  They laughed at me at the DMV when I pointed out that if a cop or bartender ever looked at it, they wouldn't believe it was me (no pictures on them in those days).

#130 Busy! Garbage! Transmission!

I don't know what happened, but I suddenly got all kinds of energy on Tuesday.

There were so many dirty dishes (and cat food cans) in the kitchen sink that I didn't have room to wash them, so I carted them all into the bathroom and washed them in the bathtub.   (Don't act shocked - I told you I'd lost control!)   A few days before, I had washed a maroon silk shawl in the bathtub, and it had turned the tub pink, and it was so hard to get it clean (hard to reach to scrub it).  Soaking the dishes in the tub also removed all the pink.  Two jobs at one swat!  Wow! 

Then I attacked the three-month heap of newspapers and junk mail that had filled the front passenger side floor and seat in the van.  (NK - the heap had grown since you saw it in December - it packed the floor solid so that I had to turn off the heat to that side, and had grown up to spill over the armrests on the seat.)   Now no more paper avalanche when you open that door.  What makes it so difficult is that it all has to be sorted into three piles for recycling, and I'd just never gotten around to opening everything and sorting.

Then I dug the garbage can out of the snowdrift, filled a couple of bags and collected the 3-weeks worth of garbage stored in the laundry room, and dragged it all down to the end of the driveway.   

Garbage collection is so expensive here.  For me (I pay monthly "senior" rates because I produce so little) it works out to about $8 per Hefty bag.  My can holds three bags, and I fill one "kitchen-sized" bag in about ten days, so I take the can down to the end of the drive about once every three or four weeks.  For this I pay over $24 a month.  (The high collection fees are directly responsible for all the garbage you find dumped on the side of the roads.)  If I lived in the village, collection would be free.  The village even takes brush cuttings and grass clippings.  Unfair!  

Between collections, I can't put the garbage outside because it attracts dogs, raccoons, and bears.  I could put it in the garage, but that's a pain.  So I just keep it in the laundry room.  There's almost no food scraps beyond dried-up cat food scrapings, cheese wrappers, and yogurt containers, so it doesn't smell bad.

I can't blame the collectors for the cost - they raised their rates last spring, but I got a nice letter saying to ignore the notice, they wouldn't raise my rates because I put out so little.  The cost comes from the dump tipping fees.  And that comes from the NIMBY factor. 

I drive past neighbors who put out three to five cans a week!  Every week!  I don't understand how.  Unless they don't recycle.  I produce about three times more recyclable trash than garbage.   I can easily get buried in recyclables - witness the van ....

Speaking of the van, (the service appointment was Wednesday, yesterday) the leak was transmission fluid, but it wasn't serious.   There's a hose arrangement that carries the transmission fluid from the transmission to cycle it through the cooling system and back, and one of the clamps had come loose.  Mr. T. said that it was down only maybe 5% capacity, so it's unlikely I had done any damage.   He didn't charge me anything yet - said to bring it in for a recheck in "a few weeks", and then we'll see.  I might still see some dripping, but not to worry, "it had splashed all over up in there, and will probably continue to drip off every time it warms up for a while".  So, that's nice.  I'm glad it was a minor hitch in her gitalong.

While Mr. T. was working on the van, I walked to the diner next door and had breakfast, and paid the month's bills.  When I got the van back, I went to town hall and paid the property taxes, then to the bank and deposited some checks, then to the PO and mailed the bill payments, then ... three or four other errands.  I was home by 1 PM.  The temperature was 30, but the sun was shining and it actually felt warm.  It was nice.  I haven't been so productive in months. 

Didn't do much today.  My hips and thighs ache.  Don't know why.