I have had a lovely summer so far. Judi had asked me the other day how it was going and I just texted her a bunch of photos. So I decided to do something similar with this. Oh, BTW, the little kitty got a name. He’s Pippin, my little pipsqueak. Maybe I’ll post a couple of videos of him later. But now, on to the show!
I know, I know, summer’s more than halfway over and I’ve not posted a thing since February 29. Trina from the future’s gonna be ticked off at Trina from the past for neglecting her LJ. Well, Trina from the future, deal with it! 😉
Further to my last post, I did wind up getting the Samsung Galaxy S7 phone (gold colored). I had intended to buy it from AT&T despite the fact that they were selling it for more than all of the other phone companies. But they wouldn’t sell it to someone without a contract. I use a Pay-As-You-Go card and stuff $100 on it once a year. I don’t have any contracts. So I wound up buying it from Amazon. Got an international version (better innards, apparently) in the process. Love it. 🙂
In order to continue having fun during this 3-week workshop, I visited several of the Metro Parks in the Columbus area. One was just north of the hotel where I was staying. The other 3 were between the school where the training was and my hotel. So each afternoon after class, I’d go wander for over an hour in the woods (or gardens in the case of Inniswood). It was lovely. I also tried out different restaurants in the area. But I packed my breakfast for each day, and the lunches at the modeling workshop were usually fairly nutritious. So I managed to keep my weight pretty stable during the training.
The first hitch was how CyberPowerPC ships their PCs. They used UPS, but wouldn’t allow the recipient to make any delivery changes, not even with MyUPS. It was scheduled to arrive on a Tuesday when I was in Columbus. And I couldn’t get them to change the date till Friday. Thankfully I was able to get UPS to hold the PC at their shipment location in Piqua (thanks to Justin S. from CyberPower!) and thus picked it up on my way home from Columbus. Yay, I had a new PC!
I had also bought a second SSD hard drive from Amazon (sorry, newegg, they had it cheaper) in order to install Ubuntu on it. Only I discovered that I had no SATA cables. Of course nobody local sells SATA cables. Thankfully, a former student of mine works at the local Staples and he gave me a spare that he had (one of many) in the back. Ubuntu and I fought for quite a bit, but I finally got it to play nicely in my new machine. Files were transferred, a new backup drive was fitted and LuckyBackup software was run. Things were perfect! (Well, OK, turns out I managed to pick the ONE sound card that doesn’t and will never have Linux drivers. Gee thanks Creative! Thank goodness for (a) motherboard sound cards and (b) y-cables which allow me to have 2 sound cards connected to the same speakers.)
And then the second hitch hit… Before having the machine a week, I started seeing some weird flickering on the screen. At first it was just a little and only in Windows. Then World of Warcraft became completely unusable. Then I started seeing the glitches in Ubuntu. I did as much troubleshooting as I could (even tried to install the new card into my Old PC only to discover it didn’t have enough power cables to connect it) and then e-mailed CyberPower. They had me try something else, but when it failed, they sent me an RMA and had me mail the dud card back. The replacement arrived on Tuesday and I’ve not yet seen any glitching!
Only apparently Southwest wasn’t all that up on my plan to go. I was scheduled to fly out on Wednesday at 8:20pm, but Southwest’s servers were all wacky. I had no idea it was happening – the day before I’d checked in with no issues. The folks and I went out for dinner before we headed to the airport. I got to the counter and they told me the flight was cancelled and here’s an 800 number to call. By the time I got a hold of someone, my folks had picked me back up and were taking me home. I got another night with my kitties and resolved to call first thing in the morning.
Well, after 4+ hours on hold the next day (over 3 phone calls), I finally was able to schedule a new departure for that evening. The flight was delayed, of course, but we had some live music at the gate to entertain us. (Sadly, when the saxophonist was done entertaining us, we could once again hear the RNC on the telly.) Mum kept me company via text messaging, and eventually we got to take off. (Thursday’s issue wasn’t the servers anymore, but a really big ass storm over Chicago. Part of which Elsa had to drive through on her way to pick me up. Eep!)
Despite everything, I got to Judi’s new place. I helped her where I could (mostly in unpacking her remaining boxes and helping her to organize stuff). I explored the neighborhood during my morning walks with Patty. We tried out a restaurant that serves Dim Sum (which was very good) and her local sushi joint (also good). Elsa and I checked out the farmer’s market. And Judi got to keep her head down and sleep on her belly to help her retina reattach. Joy joy.
So August will start on Monday, whether we’re ready for it or not. I get one more trip before school starts whereupon I shall invade my sister for a long weekend. Here’s hoping there’s no emergency surgeries or downed servers or big ass storms. I’d like to get there & back again with little fuss. I intend to start working on getting my lessons ready starting this Monday (since I have decided to take July completely off, heh.) With our current bouts out hellishly hot days, I have all this time during the day when I don’t want to be outside (I do my walks in the morning), so working on lesson plans etc will be a good use of my time.
My final thing for this post will be to post the video that I made earlier today. I wanted to see how well my new PC can handle video editing. (Even *that* wasn’t straightforward! The video playback was so choppy. It took some research, but I found out that it was an AUDIO problem… Once I had the right settings in Premiere Pro, it worked a charm.) The video clips are from my various walks at the Metro Parks plus from Memorial Day weekend (with Elsa & Judi at the Lake) and some Lucy & Linus, of course.
The kitties are finally used to my house, I believe. They’re eating like birds (ie 10 times their own weight in food), they’re doing their business in the litter boxes, and they’re exploring every nook & cranny they can get their claws on. Yesterday was “spend as much time in the reading room as possible” day. The day before was Lucy’s “hide in the pink chair” day. Today seems to be Linus’s “play with the feather/ball toy for 20 minutes at a time” day. It’s been quite entertaining.
Of course, I’ve got a couple more pictures to display. In the course of my home improvements, I intend to put floor to ceiling bookshelves in my reading room, so I’m going to need more bookends. Well, I was certainly surprised when I looked in the reading room yesterday and
Linus & Lucy (or is it Lucy & Linus?) as bookends.
While exploring the reading room, Linus discovered another wonderful place to sleep. On the bottom shelf of one of my bookshelves are my collection of Elmos (except for the life-sized Elmo in the living room).
Linus & the Elmos.
While the kitties were playing in the kitchen yesterday, I used my camera to video them. My camera doesn’t do sound like some of the later models, but they really weren’t making any sounds anyway. So I thought, “Let’s try that YouTube thingy” and created an account.
Tonight, the parental units will get to meet their new grandcats. I think they’ll be delighted by them. They are, after all, delightful! 🙂
Phyllis A. Lowry was born October 12, 1920. Her parents, Harold & Lova ended up having 9 children (2 boys, the rest girls) who grew to adulthood. Phyllis was there in the middle of the pack. In 1938, she graduated from Newton High School, along with her soon-to-be husband, William M. Short. You can see the class photos on the third floor of Newton Local School. Phyllis is the one who looks like me, only with curly hair and no glasses.
When Amy and I were little, we were lucky to live in the same town as all of our grandparents. And to distinguish between them, we started calling Grandma Short, Grandma Kitty-Cat. After all, she had a cat (Marshmallow) and Grandma Anderson didn’t. Yes, even as children, my sister and I were very sensible. Grandma Kitty-Cat also had a dog, a vicious little Pekingese called Happy. I think because Happy + kids = Happy Bites, we tended to fixate on the cat more than the dog when thinking of Grandma.
Grandma Kitty-Cat worked at the local library for most of my childhood. Many times she’d get to take the old children’s books home that the library was replacing. I have several of those beloved books in my collection now. To me, it was only natural to go to the library and read or borrow books. And when Grandma went to the library for her own reading, she’d take two big bags of books in and come out with two big bags of books. I know, I’ve had to carry them before.
Grandpa Short died in 1982, much to the surprise of everyone. Grandma carried on, however. And it wasn’t long before her youngest granddaughter arrived into our lives. Soon Deanna and Aunt Becky moved in with Grandma. It was Deanna and her friends who started calling Grandma Kitty-Cat (now owning more than just one cat) “Granny.” With Aunt Becky herself becoming a grandma, “Granny” worked out great for distinguishing between the generations.
Granny and her sisters (there were 7 Lowry girls total, don’t forget) were avid card players. Granny has even been known to get a little upset (heh – understatement) during a really riveting game of cards. Dad was most likely scarred from these early card playing days, but Becky inherited her mother’s love of card games. And so did all of her granddaughters. Just ask judiang sometime about playing cards with the Shorts. 🙂
When dad retired from teaching, Granny discovered she had breast cancer. Dad now had more free time on his hands, so he was able to take her to chemo and various doctor’s appointments. Granny decided she could have two reactions to the cancer – laugh or cry. She decided to laugh. And she beat the cancer.
Granny was feisty that way. She did things her way. She wasn’t afraid to argue with you. But she loved absolutely. Despite her conservative upbringing, she accepted Amy as a lesbian and loved Rachel as another granddaughter. They were just her “girls.” She accepted judiang as a friend, even though her own father would probably have turned over in his grave to know she’d befriended a black woman. Granny was evidence that old dogs could learn new tricks.
Granny was a staunch Republican, but she loved her liberal minded family just the same. Oh, she’d still argue and complain, but she knew we didn’t always agree with her politically. And she would joke along with us about her conservatism. During the 2000 elections, she said to me “I don’t care who you vote for, as long as you don’t vote for Gore.” So, of course, my advice to her in 2004 was “I don’t care who you vote for, as long as you don’t vote for Bush.”
Granny wasn’t big on expressing herself. Whenever I’d say “I love you, Grandma” she’d reply “I know.” Amy and I realized that this was just how she said “I love you, too” back.
Just before Christmas of this year, Granny wound up in the hospital for one condition, only for them to realize her blood chemistry was all screwed up and she was close to death. She got over that issue, but was too weak to return home. So we got her into Covington Care Center, a local nursing home. The folks there were very good to her and she complimented them often. Her goal was to get strong enough to return home to see her cats and “the damn dog.” But other health issues kept coming between her and her goal.
Her last stint in the hospital was when they finally started to figure out what was wrong with her. It turns out the cancer from her breast had made its way to her bones. It’s quite possible that many of her recent health issues were due to the high levels of calcium in her blood brought about by the cancer. And we were warned that this was going to be painful.
Yesterday morning, Granny was at the Home and in pain – her back mostly. They called my father to see if they should issue her morphine and dad said yes. We wanted Granny to be as comfortable as possible. The nurse gave her one of those under-the-tongue morphine pills and rubbed her back. Granny thanked her and said she thought she’d take a nap. At 10:10am, she passed away. She was in no pain.
We’re having the viewing and funeral on Sunday. Amy’s coming in tonight (yay!) and Rachel’s coming in tomorrow (yay!), so we’ll have the whole family together for this event. On Monday, we’re having a private family interment at the cemetery. I think I’d like to say something that day, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to without crying.
If you get a chance, next time you read a book or pet a cat or play a nice game of cards, think about the feisty ladies like Phyllis/Mom/Grandma/Granny and the wonderful impact they’ve had on the lives of others. I know I certainly will.
I’m gonna miss my Granny. She was the last of my grandparents. She was a lover of books and of cats and of card playing, and probably the main reason I, too, am a lover of books and of cats and of card playing. I love you, Grandma! (“I know.”)
