On my way home from work Friday, one of the overhead information displays on the bypass read: “VEHICLE FIRE. EXPECT DELAYS. PAST 69 HWY” Having abandoned the highway for surface streets in the past when there was some delay I know that the frustration of traffic lights is worse (for me) than staying on the highway and creeping along with everyone else.
The slow down this time was a good two miles from the actual incident. Worse, the fire had occurred on the far side of the highway - everyone around me was slowing down to gape in wide-eyed wonder and the smoldering ruin of a mini-van. Not two car lengths beyond the flashing lights and fire trucks we resumed driving at the posted speed limit.
I understand the curiosity in humans to stop and look at what happened to someone else, but still. Maybe the emergency crews should erect large opaque Mylar sheets around an accident so that the rest of the traffic would keep moving.
Yesterday Nekko had her first follow-up visit with the vet since she was diagnosed with diabetes. The past four weeks have seen her return to her normal self, but I have not been successful in administering her insulin every twelve hours as prescribed. Nekko is not a cuddly cat, and getting near her at times is difficult. Rather than chase her I’ve opted, thus far, to sit in her favorite overstuffed chair and wait for her to jump up on the back, before injecting her.
The doctor was fairly adamant that she start getting two shots per day regularly. Because she hasn’t so far he felt there was no reason to run an expensive blood test during the visit yesterday. The problem isn’t just the twelve hour period, although that is a challenge. The problem is getting access to her with out keeping her locked in a small room all the time.
Her hiding place of choice is under my bed. It’s a king-sized bed so there is a lot of room under there - she can easily be out of reach. Inspiration struck on my way back to work: I have an inflatable mattress, why not slide it under the bed and inflate it thus blocking half of the space. With the mattress in place I am able to reach Nekko and inject her while she is under the bed. Her PM shot yesterday, and AM shot today, were both given while she was safely hidden away under the bed.
Henceforth I’ll be able to give her a shot when I get up, around 5:30 or 6:00 AM, and then another in the evening. The doctor allowed that I can overlap the shots by as much as three hours without endangering Nekko. So if an evening shot doesn’t occur until 9:00 PM the morning shot could be administered at 6:00 AM. I may not get all fourteen shots a week in, but I think I can dramatically increase from the five or six shots a week I’ve been averaging.
I’m thinking about moving….
I stopped in the apartment office yesterday after work thinking about alarms and left thinking about moving to an upstairs apartment.
There is an alarm option. $30 one time installation fee and then $25 per month for the monitoring service. It is an intrusion alarm that will trigger a call to the police if either the front or patio doors are opened and the code isn’t entered. So, $300 per year for an alarm.
I asked about upstairs apartments for the same rent. It turns out there are two 2-bedroom models upstairs that are roughly the same rent as I am paying now. Their floor plans are different than my current apartment, but both are about 200 square feet bigger than this one. Without making any calls about renting a U-Haul or van I would guess that it would cost about $300 to move from one building to another.
One of the upstairs models is in the center of the building so it has windows on both sides - cross ventilation. They both have private balconies, 2-bathrooms and 2-bedrooms. Without visiting the empties (I saw the models yesterday) I am not 100% sure, but I am confident they would both get sunshine year round.
It is very tempting to move, however I need to sleep on it for a day or three before deciding. I don’t want to make a hasty decision that I’ll have to live with for a year. There would be no penalty - my lease would transfer, but the term of the lease would start over again on the day I moved. I could set the term to 6, 9, 12 or 13 months.
My skin still crawls a bit when I think about the pond-scum that were in my place a couple of days ago, so moving to a fresh apartment might be the silver lining in this particular cloud.
It would appear to be National Blog Posting Month, so I’ll be attempting to post at least once a day for the entire month of November.
{{ $image := .ResourceGetMatch “seal_yoda.jpg” }}
Upon arriving at home yesterday at around quarter of five I discovered that I had been robbed.
Yes, robbed.
When I opened the connecting door between the garage and the kitchen the lights were on, and as I came further into the room I saw that my desk drawers were pulled out. I couldn’t quite grasp what I was seeing so I called out, “Hello?” and got no answer. Reaching the open end of the kitchen I could see into the main room of the apartment. Some of my luggage was on the floor packed with stuff, the bathroom and bedroom lights were on, a lamp was knocked over.
Someone or someones had been in my home.
I called the apartment management wanting to know if anyone had been in my apartment that day for any reason. I guess I still wasn’t processing the obvious at that point. I was assured that no maintenance worker had been in my place that day. Hanging up I called 9-11. Within ten minutes I had a member of the Overland Park PD in my living room. The officer took pictures and fingerprinted three items that he felt had good prints. (Later I learned from him that there had been another burglary in the same area; he didn’t know yet if it was similar to my break-in.)
It appears that they searched my closets and found the luggage (a suitcase, a small backpack, and an old gym bag) and packed then full of DVDs. The three bags were all left behind. The desktop computer speakers and some other computer cords were in one bag. It looks like they had just started on the computer when they were scared away.
There is a patio door that was forced open. It turns out that the dead-bolt lock wasn’t working properly. The mortise in the jamb wasn’t deep enough to allow the bolt to be completely extended. When it isn’t fully extended the bolt can be pushed back into its receiver with almost no pressure. The complex maintenance supervisor came out last evening and drilled out the mortise so now the bolt fully extends and locks into place requiring that the level be used to release it.
By the end of the evening I had managed to straighten up most of the mess that was left behind. Items from some jewelry boxes were scattered all over the bed, and the floor was covered with things they had tossed aside. I happen to have a list of all my DVD movies (I know, “nerd”) and so I was able to determine that only three titles are missing. Also missing is my digital camera, its bag with the charger and spare batteries, and USB cord. A spindle of 3 inch CD disks that the camera uses is gone, including the 15 or so disks with every picture I’ve taken in the past four years, is gone. I have copies of all the pictures but I hate that someone else now has my memories. Some $1 gold coins and silver dollars are missing as well.
What the bastards didn’t find was the good jewelry, nor did they recognize the value of the paintings on my walls. Nothing was damaged or harmed. It could have been a lot worse. But I still want to wash everything I own.
Today I’ll call the insurance company and start that process.
Some how I had missed this Meg Ryan / Andy Garcia movie about addiction. When A Man Loves A Woman is an excellent look at the impacts addiction has on a family. What I especially liked was that it showed not only the behaviors of the addict, but the behaviors of the enabler as well.
Rating: Sobering
Just over two weeks ago I had new tires put on the Lexus. The previous set had nearly reached the wear indicators, and were worn enough that the car no longer tracked properly. There was a surprisingly strong pull to the left at highway speeds, and the couple of times I drive in heavy rain I discovered the unique joy that is hydroplaning.
The new tires made an immense and immediate improvement. The pull to the left is history, and rain water on the road surface is no longer an exercise in sphincter control. However, there is a slight wobble in the steering wheel at around 50 ~ 60 mph. I decided that it was due to improperly balanced wheels and took the car back last Friday for an adjustment. The driver’s side front tire was slowly losing air and I wanted that looked at as well.
The air leak is caused by some corrosion on the inside of the rim. Some of the paint or at least outer layer of the rim is flaking off and these flakes were preventing a good seal. They were able to sand the effected areas and hopefully that will eliminate the slow leak.
Having the tire balanced doesn’t seem to have helped the wobble. In fact I think the speed range that causes the tremor in the steering is larger now than it was before. I’ll have to call and make another appointment to have the front end looked at. Maybe it needs an alignment too.
Michael Connelly has long been one of my favorite authors, his Harry Bosch series is excellent. His latest installment, Echo Park, is no exception.
Rating: Don’t start the night before you need to be up early
Stubling around the Internet often leads one to places and discoveries you’d never have otherwise. Recently on kottke.org there was a posting about a musical duo called “Rodrigo y Gabriela.
They play “thrash metal-influenced Latin percussive acoustic guitar.” Which sounds incredible. The posting mentioned above has links to YouTube video of them playing, or you can click the iTunes store link below and grab your own copy.
At my final follow-up examination today the doctor pronounced me a success and said that long-term all I needed to do was have an annual eye exam to make sure my vision was continuing to be stable.
A brief vision test was conducted and I am happy to report that combined my vision remains 20/20. My left eye also remains at 20/20, and the right (near) eye has improved to 20/25. The only ongoing concern is dryness, which the doctor said will taper off over time. This time of year, with dryer indoor air and dry winds outside are particularly tough, he explained. So I shouldn’t be alarmed at an increase in the amount of artificial tears I need. Over time however I should see my need for them diminish if not altogether cease.
On a daily basis I am quite pleased with the new vision I bought for myself. The only times I have any trouble reading or seeing is first thing in the morning (dry eyes), or when I forget to hold things at the proper distance. After years of holding things closer to see them, the muscle memory is hard to break. Once I move things out away from my eyes I can see perfectly.
I would recommend this procedure to anyone who is determined to not need glasses. In my case the determination was necessary to provide patience while my eyes healed, and while a correction to one eye was made. It is elective (perhaps cosmetic?) surgery, but it eliminated increasingly unsatisfactory glasses from my life.