The All-New Bunrab

One of the reasons I had been working so hard to unpack the condo was that I was expecting guests May 31, which I had. They were here Thursday-Sunday that week, took off for a few days to other spots on the east coast, then back for a few days starting the 7th - just after I had my v-tach episode. So L was able to drive me to one of my follow-up doctor's appointments, very helpful. We had planned this visit of theirs before I even started fixing up the house - in fact, the first bits of this visit of theirs from Austin were before I even thought of selling the house. But much of our planning was during the winter. My thoughts at that point had been, well, I'd be lucky to have the house ready to put on the market by May 1, and of course it wouldn't sell for 3-4 months to get a decent offer, so no problem, they'd be staying in the house with me, and it would actually be cleaner and neater than usual because I'd have stuff in storage while it was being shown for sale, right? Who knew that the house would be fixed and sold and I'd be all moved a month before their visit? So it was important to get at least the guest room cleared up enough to open the bed and for people to be able to open suitcases up in it.

( More about visits )

Now I can take my time moving the computer and printer over to it, and unpacking several of the boxes marked "office" which may contain genuinely useful office supplies, or may contain ancient torn-out-of-magazines knitting patterns, or may contain some of Steve's vast collection of pens, pencils, pencil holders, and spiral-bound notebooks from college, which I managed to get rid of some of before I moved, but some of it got packed because the house sold so fast that I had to finish packing in a hurry, throwing everything into boxes without making any decisions. With luck, at least half of what's in those "office" boxes will be destined for Goodwill or other similar efforts, and only half, or less, to stay here. The quest to unload STUPH continues.

( Stuff about the pets )
I am still not completely used to the higher dose of carvedilol, but I have had it pointed out by my cardiologist that I am some 9 years older than the last time I titrated up on this stuff, and hey, guess what, adjustments DO take longer when one is fifty-mumble than when one is forty-mumble. So I am being patient, and I'll grant that it's a little better now than it was 2 weeks ago. Some of the heat we had for a few days last week did NOT help, but today is a lot cooler, and I think I'll take advantage of that by doing something exciting like, oh, maybe taking out the garbage!

A certain amount of time being spent here waiting for the electrician to show up (yes, Waiting For the Electrician or Someone Like Him), waiting for the people giving an estimate on landscaping to show up, etc.

The Zookeeper's Menagerie by Joanne Duncalf. Ew, Christian allegory even less subtle than Narnia, which is to say, hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-brick unsubtle. That said, the little family of hedgehogs is cute (even if they were intended to demonstrate the superiority of the nuclear family with lots of children over gay couples adopting a child).

Ten Tortured Words by Stephen Mansfield. Ugh, another religious conservative - I have got to start applying a better filter to the "New Books" shelves at the library than "hmmm, interesting title." In this case, Mansfield claims to know what the founding fathers were thinking much better than what Thomas Jefferson *said* he was thinking. Everson v. Board of Ed evil! Lyndon Johnson evil! PFAW and FFRF evil! Thomas Jefferson's opinions on the first amendment are derided because his famous letter was written fourteen years after the first amendment was written, yet the opinions (about what the first amendment means) of one Joseph Story (Supreme Court 1811-1845) in his book published in 1851 are perfectly valid because he was appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison. Also, the index is sloppy - invalid page numbers for some references, absence of citations of things that do appear in the book, ridiculous assorted spellings of "Mohammedanism." Yes indeedy, gotta refine that new book filter.

Planet Cat by Sandra Choron, Harry Choron and Arden Moore. Lots of cat trivia. Every cat joke that has appeared in email for years. Lots of illustrations, from old woodcuts to 20th-century ads using cats. Some of my favorite things: detail of a 1647 woodcut showing two seated witches as they name their familiars - which include not only a cat named Pyewacket, but a rabbit named Sacke & Spice. "The Cat's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer's Cat, which features a fairly nice pun. Cat cartoons (Executive at desk: "I'm leaving early today to have my cat neutered. While I'm gone, select 9 people to be Employee of The Month and award each of them with a kitten.")

Peeping Tom's Cabin - comic verse by X.J.Kennedy. I took this one out in April, for National Poetry Month. Nothing in it was particularly worth quoting. Some of the verse is amusing, some of it just pointless, and some crude. Poor imitator of Ogden Nash.

Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde. Very funny; as convoluted as the previous books in the series. If Pride and Prejudice appears on TV as a reality show called "The Bennets" and various daughters get voted out of the family, it's time to panic.

Damsels in Distress by Joan Hess. Latest in her Claire Molloy series of cozy mysteries. Makes fun of the SCA through a fictional clone called ARSE.

Head Cases: Stories of brain injury and its aftermath by Michael Paul Mason. A few hopeful notes, but mostly depressing, both about the overall state of our knowledge of how to treat patients with Traumatic Brain Injury and the state of our health care system as totally inadequate to deal with the number of patients. Don't expect miracles.

There, that's enough for now.