the rix mix

Landlord came last Thursday with Louie, his all-purpose assistant, to check on my new electric switch box & assure me the wall will be plastered, which I could care less about. The visit gave me a chance remind that the drain pipe in the wall behind the kitchen sink has to be rootered, I have someone else's sink wastewater backing up into my sink. This has happened before. Also I need a new deadbolt lock. That did bother the landlord. He knows the kinds of people he sometimes rents to here. I complimented Louie in front of his boss for shoveling snow at 8 pm.

 Friday the wall around the breaker box was spackled, my deadbolt lock repaired, & the pipe unclogged. Lesson: Take it to the top. I got hit with a large, unexpected  rent increase due to a cutback in subsidies for rental assistance. Percentage of monthly income has always been capped at around 30%. This increase takes 38% of my income. Of course, the landlord gets the full amount. He had a small rent increase. The problem with rental assistance is the recipients tend to treat their apartments based of what they pay rather than what the landlord receives. Yes, I've been guilty of this. But some in this building, I'm certain, pay nearly nothing for their apartment. Well, the rent pinches me now, & I'm expecting better, faster attention to problems.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, home furnishings

[uncompleted free association appreciation of the guayabera. If I post it I'll finish it]

I've always worn tropical shirts of the tie dye rather than the loudly  colorful print type. I've had several for twenty years; they're well-made  & I started hang drying them when I saw what dryers were doing to some of my other favorite shirts. Think about what happens  in the
dryer.  I suppose I've always seen guayabera shirts, probably associated them with old guys & Haband - a lot of truth to that. When I taight piano in the 80's, the music studio had a lot of Filipino kids for students. In warm weather some of the Filipino dads wore light-colored guayaberas with emroidery.  I liked these middle-class  Filipino families, very comfortable with them. They were a bit on the conservative side circa America 1950's, mostly Catholics, good sense of humor. Many of the women, to be honest were very attractive. The men were generally short, my height, but stockier. They looked good in guayaberas. Some of Filipinos were fluent in Tagalog. When the women in the waiting room chatted they switched to Tagalog for the good parts.  So I associated guayaberas with Filipinos & decided someday I'd try wearing them.

Labels: home furnishings

Some rough weeks here. Thank heavens my Ambien prescription is renewed tomorrow.

On the positive side, I have begun what I have wanted to do for years, probably decades. Many bags of clothing out the door.  Using mainly  Ziplock bags, sorting out books I really want to keep. A small  number of  100 year old volumes of poems I bought cheap at book sales, beautiful books, probably  not worth much, some have damage .  My favorite has always been a Selected  Poems of Christina Rossetti.  Consolidating all the literary magazines & anthologies that have published my poems; there are "lost" poems in many of those.   Bagged up a box of the small notebooks, the "everything" books I used to carry around, they have WFMU setlists (often so poorly scrawled I can't read them), shopping lists, poems, lines, ideas. I could probably throw those out & not miss them, but they fill one small box.

A lot of junk that has to go. Old PC books & CDs.  Two old computers.
***
Bagged up the loose greeting cards  & postcards, the antique Smith Corona portable WP I've used to read their old Data Disks - it's small,  the Collected Shakespeare, box of beads & jewelry,  two boxes of unsorted photos, small box of stuff I used to keep in my desk drawer - it's like a little treasure chest - when I got bored or hit a writer's block I'd open the drawer & play with the stuff.  Cleaned & threw out contents of two kitchen drawers. Just getting started.

Labels: home furnishings

This works pretty good. Dirt Devil, only $50. free shipping, & the replacement parts (filter, motor belt) are inexpensive. Substantial collection  container. Received dozens of positive user reviews at Amazon. My old "vac" was just a hand held one with brush & handle attachments & a minuscule collector bag, almost useless. I had a very good old vac, so old that replacement bags were  impossible to find. I was buying the wrong type & shaping them to fit with scissors.

I got rid of just about everything under the futon. Some good shoes I've had for years  & never worn. Some books. I'll want to order  a new 6" coil or full foam futon mattress when I've checked out more in my price range, which definitely is not high end    I've been sleeping on top of a down comforter for long time to have a bit of give & softness.   Meanwhile this hard mattress gets sealed up in a hypoallergenic, dust proof bug proof cover, as does a pillow.   Wrestling a  60 pound new mattress up here & on to  the frame is something I'll have to deal with when the time comes.

I have an eager taker for some books. He wants poetry, but a few rarities may entice him into taking some others to sell at flea markets. But I have to get this room in shape first before I concentrate on the other.

Labels: home furnishings

Slept on Gina's couch Fri & Sat nights. Friday good sleep, Saturday not so good. I needed to step away from the problem & see what happened with the initial effort.  She has new resident cat, Max, mellow fellow when his curiosity overcame his caution & he introduced himself.

The futon was fairly inactive, although of course I wasn't there.

I'm getting rid of so much clothing  I'll have to offer Richie, one of the slacker tenants here,  five bucks to haul it out to the curb. He does the trash.

Ordered high quality mattress & pillow  encasement covers.

Rather than shelve & reorganize books, records & junk, I decided to start getting rid of it.  Many wonderful books,  but the fact is they've been pretty much in boxes for twenty years. Many  of the rarer items I've wanted to give to a fellow Jersey poet for years, also a pack rat, but a generous & open-minded 'zine publisher who treasures beat & hippie era  books. If he has duplicates, he can keep the better copy & sell the other. The best I ever considered doing with  them was exhibiting them for a month at Rahway library, where friend closely connected with library would have enthusiastically promoted the idea & probably  tried to talk me into giving a lecture presentation that would attract him & maybe ten others, including library staff.   I would keep a nice, small,  quality personal  library. I know the books I keep going back to.

I know I can winnow the records down farther to some real rarities & a few I must digitalize if I ever learn how to do it. I think there's enough good stuff that WFMU would pick them up, separate  them into library-worthy LPs, the remainder going to the record fair. I always wish I could contribute much more money to WFMU than I can budget.  WFMU staffers dig into their pockets for fund-raisers & make their donations to other shows.

& oh the junk.  & two old computers. In fact, if that other room gets emptied, & is vermin free, I'm likely to begin using it an office. My computer is situated so that I can watch TV while I'm online. But I rarely watch TV anymore. I've become a radio guy again. The digital change over didn't go well here, I'm on the side of the building away from the transmitter towers, lost stations;  cars driving by screw up the signals. I don't get Channel 7 at all, which has the Academy Awards, exactly the kind of program I half watch.

Most positively, if I reduce my possessions to a certain level, moving becomes a realistic option.  Because if I move only two pieces of furniture would go with me. & one is my old-fashioned kitchen table.

Labels: home furnishings

Three forty gallon bags of rags. These were just old worn out  clothes I had stuffed in boxes  in case I needed a rag, or thought I  should  sort through for the Goodwill box, ,until I got around to putting them in  bags & out into the trash. Sheesh. That's what happens when you have a room you don't live in but  has space, in addition to stuff you want, to put stuff in until you throw it out & never throw it out because it's not in your way.

Pretend I'm moving to a smaller but better apartment. 

Labels: home furnishings

I pulled down a long rambling crazy  post from yesterday about a very serious problem I have in this apartment. It was something I wanted to share with the few regular readers of this blog, not with anyone who happened to be searching the topic & came across it.

I stayed at Gina's last night, which I rarely do & then only if I'm watching some movie that ends at two a.m., just pull up the afghan & nod off. But I had to step away from the situation here, which is multi--faceted, away from the internet have a calm night with the company of cats & Star Trek Next Generation reruns. I had a decent six hours of sleep on her couch  without Ambien. Got up, make a cup of coffee,  watched the news, made a list things I can do here on a cold rainy day that aren't especially taxing, come home & see if the few steps I did take on Friday to improve the situation had any good effect. Indeed they did.

I've been very depressed. When something happens to snap me out of it too fast,   I  can be pushed into manic phase.(other depressives have also reported this phenomena). I really want to avoid that. I need calm plus energy.

For the first time in weeks, thanks to  to the new  locked door  laundry room  system here, I have  bags of clean clothes & other stuff, & I can keep them clean & wash them as often as I need & add to them & secure them.

Because of a tub drain problem, my bathroom has fallen into an unclean condition, & that will be taken care of Monday.

I have a new vacuum cleaner on the way that ought to just right for this apt.

Gina resides a few blocks away on a suburban street, next door to a friendly couple, a Rabbi & his wife. I walk in my  front door about 11: 30 with a cup of 7-11 coffee,  Sitting on the radiator in the vestibule (there was smoldering fire behind it a few weeks ago from tossed lit cigarette),  smoking a ciggie beneath a new "No Smoking" sign was the fearsome, never-smiling, probably sociopathic, female tenant of this building. One look at the woman you know this butch queen has  done time at least in the county lockup for something, most likely assault & battery.  Don't fuck with her. Don't  say hello. Don't even give a nod of the head. Just brief eye contact to acknowledge  I'm aware she's there. She's  tougher than any guy in this building & she knows it. I'm so far down her food chain I'm not even a snack. Just swim on by. She's actually  out of her territory in this place, this generally quiet, working class, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, & she's not the first tenant like that to land here.

So that's a given.  I have my own problems.

Labels: home furnishings, mental health

I was missing Virginia, my counselor at Bridgeway House, who died suddenly a few years ago around Christmas. How when I was stressed out by practical stuff I 'd walk over there - once Bridgeway you're always Bridgeway, wait my turn, plop down in the chair in her small office, decorated with photos of her poodles, & she'd smile & ask, "What the problem, bubbala? You should stop by more often, we miss you." I'd leave with some reassurance & do-able advice, or she'd look someone up in her massive Roledex & make a call for me. While I was thinking of her, handyman Louie came by with the monthly exterminator. I learned the laundry room is still available but I needed the key from the woman in the apt next to it. Someone had indeed hammered the coin boxes. Then I reminded Louie the bathtub drain had to be snaked. Louie asked if I could wait until Monday. I said, fair enough. Louie's word is usually good. So I walked up to the bank for couple rolls of quarters & suspected Virginia was still being my angel.  But she was just preparing me for an larger problem in my apartment.


 Plus, my new, inexpensive vacuum cleaner that received very good user reviews on Amazon shipped.

Labels: home furnishings, Mahalo, mental health

My DSL modem is down & I don't know what exactly the problem is. Nor is my service provider likely to identify it, what with phone service reps of unknown nationality, sounding like they're at home taking care of the kids at the same time, reading exactly the same troubleshooting tips as on my  DSL disk, none of which suggest the modem itself might fail after several years & offering a way to test that possibility. I'm at Gina's. One benefit of being offline is last night I dropped by to check e mail & actually had a drink & socialized with Gina for a few hours. We watched some horse racing & wrestling.
***

"Would someone here tell me who God would want to be broke?"

Rev. Marvin Winans on "Prosperity Gospel" at Whitney Houston funeral.

You needed to think on this one a bit more, Pastor Winans,  Nobody comes to mind? Not an international arms dealer or Mexican drug cartel boss or heartless Wall Street business buster? How about the pimps?
Well yeah. a lot of  rich people would be broke if God were the kind of God who reached into bank accounts & investment portfolios & miraculously transferred the contents to the Elizabeth Coalition for the Homeless, leaving a message:  I hoped you'd give some of this away, & you didn't, so I took it all.

They don't preach a "prosperity" gospel at New Hope Baptist in Newark like Creedo Dollar on television.  There is a free class on managing finances.  In Newark there's lots of ways to become prosperous, most of them illegal & evil & very tempting for poor people.

Much complaining about NJ Gov. Christie lowering flags to half staff  for Whitney Houston. Complaints generally include one of both of these rationales: She was an out-of-control dope addict. The flag doesn't get lowered for "real" heroes, cops, firefighters, military who die in the line of duty.

There's no adequate response to this. Flags do get lowered locally for military & first-responders. If you think they should be lowered at all government facilities, take it up with Christie. I think they should have been lowered on 9/12/01 & left there, as two presidents tried to distract us from the daily  carnage of two wars. Go shopping.

What was it Whitney did to hurt you personally? I didn't catch that part. She gave you a lot of music. You didn't have to pay attention to her personal problems. Really. I rarely did.  Whitney is from musical royalty in this state; her mother Cissy,  her aunts  Dionne & the late Dee Dee Warwick.  At the least those flags are lowered to show respect for Cissy Houston & New Hope for nurturing Whitney's talent.

Labels: home furnishings, music, obituary, religion

My apt building, which I admit is a bit seedy, goes through up & down periods. It's a down period now.There's some really disreputable acting tenants here, & I strongly suspect a couple of recent arrivals  are total pigs. There's a  tenant now who walks around with a prison stare permanently stamped on his face,  meant to communicate that everyone is merely an object to him. It looks authentic.  He''ll need it again  if he's doing what I think he's doing with  his cellphone,  which would be illegal, & if he's as intelligent as he looks, which is not very.  I mind my own business.

The problem is that the recession has made it a tenant's market & my landlord,  who'd rather be  mildly discerning, has to keep the building filled. But even the high rise Cherry Hill building up the street is looking kind of shabby out front,  the shrubbery overgrown & always a "For Rent" sign stuck in the lawn.  My old apt in Rahway went  through similar phases; the landlord there would resort to  no-lease rentals, usually accompanied - I don't know why -  by  an increase in loud domestic disputes, some requiring police intervention.

I'm an aging bohemian, & bohemianism is essentially a bourgeois condition no matter where you are. It's an adaptation of a middle class lifestyle. If necessary, you get rid of almost everything except your books, music, art, & curious objects. Your home is arranged for either solitude or a salon - a place for other bohemians to hang out. I am separate from the other tenants here, a mystery. I tell them nothing.  I know at least one of them  believes I'm a recovering dope addict or alcoholic. I look like one. But people prefer conjecture to fact, & some of the tenants here are really bored.

In an ideal world I'd be residing in "artist" housing, something a lot of towns wish they had but nobody has really figured out how to do, which is why it's so rare. I'm aware of only one such building in the entire state of NJ. When a town says it wants "artists," it doesn't really mean painters, poets, dancers & musicians. It wants gallery-owners, architects, high end craftspeople,  National Geographic photographers,   & professional actors with regular gigs doing commercial voiceovers, all residing in the same neighborhood & paying market rate rent.

(If you put this building in the same kind of neighborhood in Jersey City or Brooklyn, at the same rents,  it would be filled with hipsters. )

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, home furnishings

My sister unfriended me on Facebook. Discovered it by accident. Not a very sisterly sister act.  I appreciate the symbolic gesture as  an honest expression. Beats hearing an aria that begins "Sono stato pugnalato nel cuore."* Someone's going to hear her sing it. Still, seems an extreme way to evade answering a couple of simple questions. Four aging siblings, I'm not the only ACOA.

* "I was stabbed through the heart." In an opera, this kind of song ends with bravos, tossed bouquets, & many curtain calls.

Labels: home furnishings

Labels: home furnishings

Ordered  an inexpensive external USB floppy disk reader.  I want to look at my floppy disks. I'm pretty sure I got all the writing off them.  But the floppy drive on my old PC broke long ago & I'd like to view & retrieve  the  low resolution photo files Kodak used to include with print orders.
M

My CD-DVD drive stopped working. I knew it was the weak part of the EMachine.  I went with it because I liked the tower & I'm not a heavy CD/DVD user. It's been acting up. It's also time to make updated boot disks & clear out mp3s. I e mailed customer service & they came back with the old reinstall drivers thing, I knew that wasn't the problem, it didn't  fix.  Now they say I never registered - although I am signed up with emachine website, guess I skipped the official registration - & want a proof of purchase scanned & sent, which I suppose is the J&R invoice. I hate the idea of sending it back.  Maybe they have a local authorized repair.  I have no backup PC.  My old one won't handle this DSL I'd have to go on dialup. I have been looking at cheaper netbooks, since I think one will be very useful to me.  You can plug a mouse, VGA monitor, & ethernet line into a netbook.

Since it'll be awhile before  the warranty/repair thing is   straightened out,  I ordered a plug in external DVD/CD burner. They're inexpensive & if  do get a netbook it'll come in handy anyway.

Labels: home furnishings

My entire modest CD collection, except a small box of rejects stored away, a few stacked near the PC & a few more by the boombox next to the futon.  About 90%  of the plastic cases are classical.  The wallets are mostly rock, jazz, & international, I have other sources for those. There's my Sears AM radio, & a shelf of mainly art reference books.  I  began buying CDs only about ten years ago. They were too expensive . But my sources  for plentiful free music didn't include much classical , & having stepped away from a weekly radio show I had time to listen to  classical music again.  The first  classical  CDs I got were an inexpensive box of Beethoven's symphonies, & boxes  of his middle & late string quartets. I still go for bargains.

With classical music, I prefer having only one or two new albums at a time.   I can't audition & blow through them like pop & rock. I investigate & choose.

The black case in the middle is Russian & Eastern European.  Below in a crate is  British, on the bottom some miscellaneous.  On the right are Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Haydn, Handel, baroque, early music, & the bottom row is vocal music, some opera, art song, choral, & the books.   On the left there's some jazz, American - much Charles Ives,  compilations, a few soundtracks, German & Viennese from Brahms on, French, a couple of Japanese composers, & a small selection of pop & rock.

Older avant garde & experimental records  are  easy to find for free ripped to  mp3 (or FLAC)  if you're not looking for anything in particular. Most of it  was released on now-defunct labels, & there's music blogs devoted to it. More difficult if you want something specific in classical, & to obtain it legally, although I don't see much difference between buying an in-print CD used & cheap,   or downloading an file for free. A friend noted you're not helping the American auto worker by buying a used Ford; you might be doing your local repair shop a big favor. So when I wanted a top quality recording of Janacek's two  masterpiece string quartets, I put several on my Amazon wish list & waited, & within a week one showed up for $1.99. I also fancied exploring some unfamiliar woodwind quintet music & found a highly praised CD of Scandinavian works for one cent, the bookstore made about  buck profit on $2.98 shipping.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, home furnishings, music, photograph

Typical Family Dollar store variety of purchases today. Bag of Rudolph's onion rings; can of strawberries in light syrup (I blend them in smoothies); candles; CD-RW 5 pack; cheap, portable AM-FM radio with speaker. Want radio for ballgames, iffy, WOR 50,000 watt signal usually overwhelms the Mets WFAN & the whole lower end of the dial on cheap radios here. I barely grab it on my old Sears. But the $5 is no great investment.

Labels: home furnishings

Weather has been bad for my week. Really wiped out.

Building fire alarm went off at 7 a.m., I was half-sleep with clock radio on news - fell asleep last night listening to weather report. I hate when I do that. Decided I would not run outside. This was foolish, I know, but the alarm has gone off here a number of times & has never involved an actual situation. Usually been tenants bumping into the red hallway box while moving furniture. The one real situation we had didn't set off the alarm & we called in it ourselves - a strong electric fire smell emanating from the first floor apt of a drunken guy who wouldn't open his door. He had fallen into beer sodden sleep while using his toaster oven. The fire dept had to kick in his door & then air out the building with a fan while we waited around out front. The landlord had been called, & he got an earful from us when he arrived. That tenant had been a problem in other ways, loud music & arguments, his undersized cat wandering the halls at night meowing. Not supposed to have cats, but nobody would care if they went unnoticed. Landlord promised to get the guy out of the building., Took a few months. A nice woman in the apt now who decorates her door for holidays & hosts birthday parties for her grandchildren. Quite an improvement.

I listened for other tenants, heard some doors open, no yelling. I got up, opened the door, smelled nothing. So I put on socks & flannel shirt & waited for the fire engines. Automatic two truck response to building alarms. If it was serious, firefighters would come through the building banging on doors & I'd be ready to go out the front, or out the window.

One of the fire trucks stopped in the intersection, & I could see out the window they weren't rushing to unpack equipment. I stuck my cellphone in my pocket, located my sneakers, but didn't put on jeans over my sweatpants or shut down the computer. I checked the current weather online. Frozen precip, ugh. The alarm stopped clanging. It had been clanging at least 15 minutes.

Then I wandered downstairs in my socks to find out who was to blame. Some of the resident women were in the hallway at bottom of the steps. "There he is," one of them said, "we were wondering about you. "

"I wasn't going outside until a third fire engine showed up."

At that moment, two firemen in their heavy coats & helmets came up from the basement, said goodbye as they passed. My neighbor walked in, unaware of anything, had just dropped his kids off at school, a 7:30 start.

I still don't know who or what set off the alarm, but it had something to do with a guy in a basement apt, & the landlord had already been called. I went back to bed for awhile.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, home furnishings, weather

"This is a one-bedroom. Is this the bedroom?" The city inspector looked into the room on the left of the entryway. It 's filled with boxes, some empty, most loaded with books, journals, cassette tapes, & collected junk. It has a table comprised of a plank laid across filing cabinets. "Where do you sleep?"

It's a question I hear every year, either from this inspector - the short, efficient black woman, or the affable, middle-age, rumpled white man. He was here last year. "That room is my workspace & attic. I sleep in the other room on a futon."

The white guy, I've learned, is the more nosy inspector. He actually looks at the window locks by the fire escape, twiddles the radiator valves, turns the faucets on & off, pokes into corners. I think he's trying to see what's in the boxes, the crates of CDs. There's also an xylophone leaning against the wall, & diner booth jukebox on the floor, & some paintings propped on the boxes. The woman can see the open path to the shadeless window, the two latches on the sash, & the fire escape railing beyond; feels the heat in the apt ("Better too much than too little, " she said in the hot hallway downstairs when I escorted her in). The room has no water stains in the ceiling, no extension cords criss-crossing the floor. There's a smoke detector with a glowing red light. She doesn't even enter the room.

She doesn't like the bathroom. Neither do I. Had a leak upstairs two weeks ago. Leak fixed, ceiling tiles not replaced. Empty hole showing the floor above. I tell her the truth. "I pester the handyman, he probably figures he'll have to fix stuff anyway when he gets your report. It's annoying."

"The owner" - she looks at her clipboard - "Mark, he ever come around?"

"Once in awhile. I have his number. He returns his calls. I'm a good tenant. But he'll kick the guy's butt. He always does this time of year. No reason for me to call him ... yet."

She checks out the little kitchen area. "You have gas?"

"Nope, I had turned it off. It was a waste. I hate gas. Never used the oven, here or in my old place."

"How long you lived here?"

"Since 2004." That probably settled any question of lifestyle. I'm entrenched. She inspects better places & she inspects worse. In this building. I'm a slob in the manner of a divorced college teacher. But you've have had to have visited one to know.

"I see you have a microwave."

"I have everything I need. Just don't keep them out on the table. "

She's finished in a few minutes. I sign the report. "Thanks for coming on time," I say.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, home furnishings

From Hank Kalet's blog:

Annie decided she wanted a real Coach bag for her birthday, which was last month. At 47, after owning a couple of knock-offs, she decided it was time to splurge. Personally, I just don't get it, but it was her birthday and so here we are at the outlet in Jackson where the line to get in the store reminded me of the line for a general admission concert.

The experience is strange, at a time when job losses have mounted, for so many people to be swept up by the desire for what essentially is just conspicuous consumption run amok.

Annie has demonstrated unusual, & unnecessary, self-restraint. Coach isn't some in today - out tomorrow brand or look. I lived with a woman for 17 years who was never without one Coach bag. We were always poor, & when her bag wore out she saved up for another, sometimes soliciting donations from her family in lieu of a birthday gift (then she usually received them in addition to a gift). It isn't conspicuous to want one quality, conservative, well-made, all-purpose accessory that won't go out of fashion overnight (assuming they're still well-made). Who can blame Annie for getting tired of knock-offs? The Kalets are doing alright & she's looking for a deal at the outlet store.

I've carried a small, black Eagle Creek backpack for ages. Eagle Creek is a mid-priced line of packs & travel bags, heavy canvas, reliable zippers, has a tag sewn outside, & when I bought it (at a discount) was a preferred, understated brand for artists, writers, & students who didn't want to invest in a trendy-looking book bag every semester. Wasn't quite the Coach of book bags, but you couldn't find Eagle Creek in Walmart; you had go to a luggage, sporting goods, or art supply store. I'm not embarrassed to plop it down on the check out desk in the library.

(Hank backs off a bit. What annoyed me wasn't his point about conspicious consumption, but that he wrote & messaged it while his wife was shopping. So I popped off about it right away because I had the means, which made me no different than Hank).

Labels: culture, home furnishings, shopping

Had to reschedule a medical test today. While it's not something I look forward to, it's in-office & routine enough for the doctor, & they say you're in & out in an hour. I had arranged a ride there & back & weather was decent. But I have a cold sore, running a slight temp, even Ambien couldn't put me to sleep last night. It's like a cold bug you have partial immunity to but it's there all the same. I didn't feel right this morning. I'm not allowed to take aspirin for a week before the test so I couldn't use it to knock the fever back. I thought if I just went to the appt., they might not want to touch me. I called the office, knowing they don't appreciate same day cancellations, told my symptoms, & the office assistant said, yes, I should postpone, wasn't grumpy about it, told me who to talk to later to make a new appt & get another prescription for the preventive antibiotics most doctors & dentists throw at patients before even minor "invasive" procedures. The postponement was obviously routine, too, probably very much so in cold & flu season. Then I called my ride, I was very apologetic, she was in the middle of doing something to her hair & I think the greater inconvenience was making her drip on the phone. I dreamed during a nap this afternoon that I got a new calendar. Then woke up, called the office at the designated time, got right through to the intended person, a friendly aide I remembered, & set everything up.

Labels: home furnishings

Two grammar school boys in the next apt, & they woke up real early, but haven't been as noisy as past Christmases. Maybe they received games with headphones. & dad hasn't cranked up the Afro-pop. The bass players in the music he likes are not Bakithi Kumalo, the ever-inventive guy Paul Simon used for twenty years. The bass is 90% of what I hear on this side of the wall.
***
To my other favs list of earlier in the month I have to add the Sansa Clip player. I bought a refurb for $15 from buy.com, free shipping, & it's a very small, simple, intuitive device that does what it claims. My only real gripe so far is that I can't remove the brief break between tracks, an annoyance for classical music where movements are broken into tracks but play without break. I think that function was added to to the new Clip+. Sound quality, as with all players, is ultimately dependent on the headphones. I don't like earbuds. I'm not the kind of person who walks around all the time listening to music, nor do I want to watch videos on a tiny screen. But there are times when I'm on public transportation, in a ridiculous supermarket checkout line, or reading a magazine in the library when I want to listen, & there are nights when I'd rather hear an audiobook than read (it's like radio). There are sources of copyright free audio books.

Labels: holidays, home furnishings