adrian_turtle

I am in search of new medical care. I am not dangerously ill, but I'm not healthy either, which is probably a good time to be going about it. I found a doctor 3 months after moving to Massachusetts, ( Read more... )

I'm looking for a primary care doctor and a neurologist in the same hospital network, all 3 covered by my insurance. If I need an EEG or something else they do in a hospital, I want it all to be covered. I didn't expect it to be so hard. ( Read more... )

I have 2 searchable indices. I have a map. I have an insurance company that actually answers questions over the phone. Why the hell is this so hard? It can't be good for my blood pressure.

As many of you know, I used to live in southeast Michigan. I have fond and blurry memories of ConFusion, my first con. (Not just blurred by the passage of decades. I was bewildered while I was there, but I liked it anyhow.) In thinking about whether to go to Arisia this weekend, I wondered if ConFusion was this weekend as well. It's not, it's next week, FWIW.

But while I was there, I poked around a bit to see what they were doing this year. They have a section for "Public Transit," on the page of hotel information. I was delighted! The Detroit area has very little public transit, but even having a few buses can help a lot.

Public Transit

From Detroit Metropolitan Airport
Take the service drive to I-94 West. Proceed on I-94 West to I-275 North. Continue on I-275 North to Exit 167 (8 Mile Road). Turn left (West) on 8 Mile Road to Haggerty Road. Turn right (North) on Haggerty Road and continue 0.25 miles to the hotel. The hotel is on the left.

They go on to give driving directions from Detroit, Ann Arbor, Southfield, and Brighton. (Not the Brighton you've heard of. The one with the finest downhill skiing between Toledo and Lansing.) The helpful information page was put together by some well-intentioned person who thinks it's obvious that "public transit" means transportation that the public can use. Like, highways. What other way is there to go any significant distance?

My local convention offers directions by Car, Truck, Airplane, Train/Bus, Bicycle, Foot. (Trucks cannot follow the same route as cars in that neighborhood.) The person who put together the helpful information page points to the website of the local transit system in case some readers want to know more. But they generally assume that con-goers know what public transit is, how to take a subway train, etc. It's a different world.

I met Redbird at a New Year's party and fell in love with her. What with one thing and another, 20 years passed. (Some of those years have been pretty rough, but at least we had each other.) One nice thing about getting married is that it gives people a focus of celebration. I guess New Year's Eve is a time when the world celebrates, though I tend to run away and hide from fireworks. Tonight I got to hide from the fireworks in our safe cosy little nest, with Redbird and Cattitude. What with one thing and another, I like it here.

I am considering using a peg loom, as I have not done since 1977. The person lending it to me speaks of ergonomic hooks, and said I should remind her to give me some thick wool, because the wool in the donation box is too thin for a beginner. It didn't occur to me for quite some time that she could possibly have meant wool from a sheep. Obviously you give a beginner some kind of synthetic. Especially when the idea is to make hats to give away to people who might be allergic to wool.

I sort of expect that in casual usage, yarn for knitting is called wool, thread for sewing is called cotton, and the special thread for embroidering is called silk. Is this standard? Regional? Generational? I thought people who actually did fiber crafts would be more specific, but this is somebody who is quite deliberately inviting people who can't knit to join the knitting group, so who knows.

It's a classic story, practically a fairy tale.

The protagonist is a prince. [Ours is the son of a wealthy and powerful family. We don't call them princes.]

Kings and queens and magical beings both good and evil attended his christening. [High government officials and captains of industry attended his christening.]

When he was a child, his uncle became king. The family seemed beloved by the whole country. Our young prince began his education with other children of privilege, in the expectation that he would grow up to someday take power. Then his uncle was murdered, and the family struggled to hold everything together.

When our protagonist was on the cusp of adolescence, his father tried to seize the throne. He attracted a considerable following before being murdered. Our young prince was traumatized by his father's death. He drank heavily. He was weak-willed and easily influenced, and he fell in with schoolmates who were petty criminals. He became a drug dealer and a thief. His name and wealth bought him a position in government, but only for a few months. It quickly became clear that he was unqualified, as he had spent his time in school drinking rather than preparing for exams.

If the story had ended there, in 1983, it would be a sad little cautionary tale about how a child of privilege could turn into a drug-addicted criminal, without proper guidance.

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Stories never really end, but if the story ended here, it would be a pathetic parable about how a environmental activist who helped a lot of people turned into an anti-vax conspiracy theorist who threatened the world's health.

As I was leaving the grocery store, a young person hurried up to me. They politely apologized for running after me that way, but they'd seen the ribbon on my hat and...you know. Yeah. I know. (Though this is a very queer neighborhood. It's not like the rainbow ribbon on my hat is the only hint of allyship for miles, like it used to be in some places.) Anyway, was that a phoenix on my bag? I looked down at my bag, and one of my canvas bags did indeed have a stylized drawing of a phoenix! He asked if I was a member of The Phoenix, and I looked at him blankly.

Me: Sorry, I don't know about The Phoenix. The bag is for a science fiction convention in Montreal.
Stranger: Science fiction? You mean like HP Lovecraft?
Me: Yeah, kind of like that. But including more. (I didn't think to add "and not so racist." until I was on my way home.)

They explained that The Phoenix was having a sober dance party Saturday for Pride! They'd love to see me even though I was new. My first thought was "Sober as in Sam the Eagle?" and I'm rather proud I figured it out in time not to say it.
The next stage of my thinking was "Sober? You mean like AA?"
So they got to say: Yeah, kind of like that. But including more. [I presume they thought "and not so Christian"]
I said I had never drunk, and they kindly said all allies and supporters were welcome, the only requirement was being sober for at least 48 hours. They had lots of activities! And an app!

If I was going to a dance party at all, the only dance party I'd be interested in would be a queer dance party without alcohol. Me being fat, conservatively dressed, and twice their age, hardly screams "queer sober dance party," except maybe the "sober" part. But this kid guessed, based on the tote bag from a Canadian relaxacon.


[*] I looked the group up later. It looks like they mostly do crossfit or go running, and encourage one another to stay off drugs. More power to them, but I won't be joining them.

Do moths eat cotton or synthetic fibers? Or only animal fibers like wool and silk?

Last year, I bought something called a "soup sock," that isn't as silly as it sounds. It's a cheesecloth bag, big enough to hold an entire chicken. If you want to make chicken soup and strain it through cheesecloth for a clear broth, you don't need to pour the pot of soup through a strainer. You can just put the chicken in the cheesecloth bag before cooking it.

They include a recipe in the package, because of course they do. I've kept the recipe card because it IS silly, especially for something called "Mama's Old Fashioned Chicken Soup." It contains a whole chicken, 2 onions, and 2 tablespoons of fresh cracked pepper. So far, so good. It also contains 3 cups of diced celery, and 2 packets of sugar substitute.

It shouldn't feel so very peculiar that "Mama's Old-Fashioned" could refer to a Boomer or Gen-X woman who relies on artificial sweeteners (because she doesn't have a teaspoon of sugar in the house? Because she can't imagine using a half a cup less of celery?) But on the other paw, I know my grandmothers used saccharine tablets everywhere it was appropriate and some places it wasn't, and my mother preferred aspartame. I have cousins-in-law who are already mothers of college students, and they cooked with sucralose for decades, though generally the kind that can replace sugar cup-for-cup.

Do any of you have experience with running a Little Free Library? There are lots of them around here, some of which seem to have regular circulation and others go empty or feral. I know a certain amount of curation is necessary to prevent them from getting packed solid with religious tracts or textbooks about Fortran. (ETA: I am peripherally involved with one now, and worry that we are taking too many books out of the box to keep in the house.)

It's not at all clear how much time and space the curation needs to maintain circulation. If the shelves are too empty, neighbors won't take any books, so the steward needs to have some books on hand to restock. And if the shelves are packed too full, neighbors won't donate, so the steward needs to remove a few books and either discard them or add them to the restocking pile. Obviously, people who don't like to throw books away tend to start LFLs. (Yes, it's a TOEFL prep book from 1970 when "he" was the generic 3rd person pronoun and nobody seems to want it, so maybe I should bring it into the house and put it out later. Maybe someone will want it someday!) Things could pile up.

It looks like it's not feasible to run a LFL without some stockpile to allow for overflow and refilling, but I worry that the stockpile will take over the building if we don't put some prior limits on it Unfortunately, I have no idea what limits are reasonable: the volume of the LFL itself? five times the volume? Any advice would be appreciated.

This is not the future I expected, back in the 20th century. Yes, I thought I might have an alternative lifestyle that my mother would disapprove of. But I didn't expect she'd disapprove of my getting vaccinated against contagious diseases. Or getting part of my electricity from wind and solar.

She doesn't understand about being bisexual and polyamorous, but she is ok with "these wonderful people are very important to me, and I am living with them now." I don't expect her to object to my rainbow-striped airgami because of the rainbow stripes. She just thinks it's dangerous to wear any mask and I should stop.