STICK AROUND WHILE THE CLOWN WHO IS SICK DOES THE TRICK OF DISASTER: January was a pretty slow month for work, once the assignment with Ogilvy ended; I got a few days of work at home for Huge, but they were spread out across three weeks. The extra time at home did come in handy, since Donna was suffering from bronchitis and needed to take nebulizer inhalations a few times a day. That has delayed the completion of her latest root canal, since the idea of her having a coughing fit in the midst of being worked on by a dental surgeon did not appeal to either of us. (Donna told our optometrist, during a visit this month, that she'd been "trying to have pneumonia," which baffled him until I clarified, "her body is trying to have pneumonia, but she's arguing with it"—which caused him to ponder for a bit, visibly rummage through his memory vaults, and then say, "Is that like the Neil Young line about the fight between your head and your face?"*)

* If this leaves you clueless, see (or hear) the song "Mr. Soul," originally recorded by Buffalo Springfield in 1967.

     I also got to follow up with Dr. B, who was happy with all my blood test results, and who gave me a referral to a physical therapy office to see what could be done about the tendinitis I seem to have developed in my elbows over the last several months. I've had a few sessions of arm exercise, electrical stimulation, massage, and hot and cold packs, but haven't noticed any improvement in what was only intermittent and dull, non-intense pain to begin with.

     I checked the water meter on the new boiler and discovered that we still had a leak somewhere: the system was taking in close to two gallons a day, whereas the manual states that any more than five gallons a month is excessive (and, it is implied, risks an early death for the boiler by reason of rust). A visit from an oil company person revealed one leaky radiator valve they'd missed the last time, and we had it replaced a couple of days later, but the meter continued to report excessive water consumption. Investigation continues; it turns out I'm a bit handicapped in this, because the first indicator used to search for steam leaks is the telltale hiss they produce—which happens to be at a frequency where I've lost a lot of my hearing.

     Did I mention that January marked the 25th anniversary of our moving into the Cadre? I'd buy the house a present, but after the boiler and the radiator valves, I'm a little short on funds...

Comments on APA-NYU, Volume 10, #1 (e-APA-NYU #93)

D'AL THYANN AJRFEN RO (Ariel Cinii):

I keep wanting to play mah-jongg with those Yal Dawo alphabet tiles. /*/ The characters you identify as "Sthoura" and "Gke'i" (and as deriving from combinations of other earlier characters) both appear to be the character for "na" (which I see as a mirror-image question mark) plus a smaller mark like a diacritical mark or accent. So do "Khao," "hhyé," "KSAyah," and "wahd," at least to my untrained Terran eyes. It seems odd that none of the pronunciations of the combination letters bear any connection to that of the element.

ICONOCLAST (Joel Nelson):

(¢Cinii) "Hallelujah Chorus must be on the top 40 list, at least in December." Yes, and also the Nutcracker Suite. I can't think of any other classical pieces that develop such seasonal appeal. I wonder if it's because parents decide they should take their kids to concerts and expose them to some culture as long as they're on Christmas recess. /*/ (¢Blackman) "Unfortunately, I've heard of laptop users who always have their laptop plugged into the AC adapter when they use it, and refuse to listen to this advice [to let the battery drain weekly]." Guilty as charged. Or as not discharged. I should put that on my calendar for Sunday nights. (I unplugged the laptop as I typed that—it was a Sunday night. It took about three hours to get down to 10%.) /*/ (¢me) "I am tempted to replace my house's thermostat with a simple switch (house feel cold, turn on heat; house feel warm, turn off heat), but I would have to make some minor adjustments such as having enough and sufficiently varied people live here so that at all times on all days there would be someone awake and alert enough to throw the switch when called for." Two other problems with that: different people will tolerate different temperatures before they feel cold enough to flip the switch, and different parts of the house will have different temperatures at the same time. Otherwise, it is a tempting idea. /*/ Odd that LaHaye's book about John's gospel is the first of the series—isn't John the last of the four to have been written? (That's separate, of course, from the issue of whether any of the canonical gospels were actually written by the disciples whose names they bear.) /*/ I note that the NTSB report which you cite specifies "portable" in recommending its ban on non-emergency use of electronic devices while driving; that means the radio/music player built into the dashboard is exempted, but it also means that if we go back to built-in car phones like those of 20 years ago, they'll be exempted too. I predict a resurgence of built-in and retrofitted car phones if that ban gets implemented.

JAMISON, TAKE e-LETTER (Mark L. Blackman):

I hope the new old computer which we picked up on the way to FIStFA the other week is resolving some of your connectivity problems. /*/ (¢Cinii) "My milk crate bookcases, stacked open-side-out were a casualty first of the super, then the recent barbarian invasion." Milk crates show up on Freecycle periodically; you might check there if you want to start rebuilding the temple. /*/ (¢me) Embargoes and sanctions that lead to hostility do not demonstrate the divisiveness of trade, but the divisiveness of attempts to suppress trade. /*/ "As the person who has to explain Shikars to NIRAs, I question the logic of linking downpours & tiger hunts." Oh, right: "Tigers don't go out on rainy nights/They've no need to whet their appetites." /*/ "'The Mailman software builds the ToC from the subject lines', which is why the ToCs put multiple spaces after the comma in my zine title; apparently the space after the comma gets treated as a tab." But it never did that to the space after the comma in my subject lines, or Joel's. /*/ (¢Nelson) "Volupdy" (a portmanteau word for "voluptuous lady") was an early creation of the Slimedoc Neologism Factory, which was headquartered in Hunt 1, Room 31, Troy, New York, in 1972.

>Portions of the preceding have considered organizing a superPAC if they can't get honest work.<

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