Beowabbit

Hi. Apologies for not having all the details, but my ex sionnagh is looking for a home for her sweet nine-year-old service dog Hamlet. His vet bills haven’t been at all unreasonable over the years, but she’s on a fixed income and she can’t afford them any more. Most recently, he’s got a tumor of some sort on his ear which might just be a cyst [or something, that wasn’t the exact word she used] but might be something else, and she can’t afford the surgery or biopsy to find out, so she doesn’t know if he just needs antibiotics or if he needs to have it removed.

She lives in Hawai‘i, but she says she could fly him out to the Northeast. She’s looked for a new home for him there as well, so far without success, but if anybody has a lead on good doggie-parents there, or for that matter suggestions for resources for very low cost veterinary care, that would be very welcome too. (I realize that’s a long shot.)

He’s a dear, sweet, loving dog who gets along with pretty much everybody. He’s a lab mix. He’s good with other dogs, and with cats unless they run or fight, but she says he’s good with cats that are comfortable with dogs. He likes to play outside but he’s mostly an indoor dog.

There are photos of him — although he was only about two or three when I took these — at http://www.aq.org/~js/gallery/2005.02-hamlet/.

I don't know why they have fireworks on the fourth of July. It's the eighth of July that's sionnagh's birthday. Happy birthday! I hope it's wonderful!

Too tired to do more than bullet points, but here they are:

Great rehearsal last night. I'm excited about the show.

Then went sushi with plumtreeblossom, surrealestate (who is in the one-act plumtreeblossom is directing; I’m just a rehearsal assistant), and a friend of surrealestate’s visiting from California.

Lovely time with my sweetie. I love our balcony conversations.

Got to work insanely early for me. I was there before 9. Did you know that the sun is actually up already by 9? Who knew?

Slightly abbreviated gym trip after work.

Then met cathijosephine for a late dinner at the place in Quincy that has our favourite pastrami sandwiches. Unfortunately she was feeling very ill and couldn't actually eat any pastrami. But she did have some French fries and some Vitaminwater, and that made her feel a lot better. Then stopped by her place briefly for a beer. Had a good time catching up with her.

Got home. Found a mysterious package on the porch. Puzzled. Opened it. It has mugs with a picture of Hamlet, the Best Dog in the World, on them — a gift from sionnagh. Wow, that really made me happy!

Also got email from allterrainbrain; delightful to hear from her.

Tomorrow I have a davis_square gathering to go to after work, and I get to see my lovely plumtreeblossom at that.

Right now, though, I am can’t-keep-eyes-open tired. ’Wabbit sleep now.

sionnagh is renting a four-bedroom house on O‘ahu. If you live there and you are a really nice person, you should totally rent one from her! If you don’t live there, but you would like a place to stay for a visit, you should still rent one for her. (At $175.00/week, it’d be a lot cheaper than a hotel, and you’d have access to a kitchen and the company of a very nifty person.) From her post here:

Aloha,

Jay suggested that I post that I still (and again) have a couple of rooms for rent here on Oahu. I'm asking $600 a month, or $175/week. It's very close to the bus line, which will take you around the entire island. If you're interested, I can send pics or more info. I'll probably keep at least one of the rooms for this sort of thing through May.

Hugs,
Tigris

[EDIT: As of December 30, the rooms are still available.]

Well, plumtreeblossom and I made it home, despite two delays and a quite serious sprint with our carry-on bags to a different terminal in Philadelphia to discover that our connecting flight had left and we had to go back to the original terminal to get on the next flight.

Our checked luggage has not made it home, and had not made it to Logan several hours after we landed. (plumtreeblossom needed to go to an event at theatreatfirst, so she grabbed a cab while I tried to find our luggage.) It may yet show up, but I am *ahem* displeased.

Suffice it to say that I will endeavour to avoid US Airways in future if possible.

In the past, I’ve mostly flown American, and they’ve had good coördination between ground and air about connections, and they’ve handled the case where a plane with a large number of people making a specific connection was delayed very well. Also, in the one case where I couldn’t find my luggage (which wasn’t their fault — another passenger with similar baggage had walked off with it), they gave me a meal voucher so I could get some food while I was waiting for them to try to track it down.

There are some good things I can say about how US Airways handled our troubles on the way home: A flight attendant whom we asked for connection information reseated us in aisle seats near the front of the aircraft so we could get off very quickly (which didn’t actually let us make our original connecting flight, but was probably instrumental in our managing to get on the flight we did make, so we were an hour and a half late rather than two or three hours late), and the person in baggage services we filed our tracking request with was very sympathetic and polite. Oh, and another person working in the baggage area gave us useful advice.

Anyway, our time in Vegas was great! It was excellent to see sionnagh and for her to meet plumtreeblossom, we had a couple really excellent and shockingly inexpensive meals among many very good and quite reasonably priced meals (reminder to self: eat at the Caravan Café at Sahara again next time), we had lots and lots of fun, and subtracting the money we spent on the casino floor from the money we won on the casino floor, plumtreeblossom and I both came out a bit ahead, which means the casino paid us $15 or so to sit and entertain ourselves for a couple hours and drink free strawberry daiquiris. (We spent most of that couple hours at video poker machines that advertised a better than 100% return; I think they’re loss-leader machines. But they brought us free drinks there all the same.)

We also got to see the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton and a really impressive aerial silks performer at Circus Circus as well as nifty aerial work as part of the Bite show at the Stratosphere. And we rode the monorail to the other end of the Strip and saw the impressive exterior of the MGM Grand and sat and had a very pleasant time on the patio of a bar in New York, New York and, um, I’m sure there’s lots of other stuff I’m forgetting. Like the toothbrush story; I’m definitely forgetting that.

Oh, and I won singing stuffed chickens for plumtreeblossom and sionnagh and myself at Skee-ball at Circus Circus. (That’s another reason I hope our luggage is found.) sionnagh’s is named Tandoori, plumtreeblossom’s is named Pot Pie, and mine is named Cordon Bleu.

Pictures may follow in a few days. (Fortunately, I pulled the memory card from the camera on the theory I might look at pictures on the plane. Unfortunately, the camera itself is in my checked luggage.)

All in all, it was a fabulous trip and we had a wonderful time!

[EDIT: We saw the smoke from this forest fire in New Jersey from the air. It was impressive.]

So plumtreeblossom and I had a lovely morning, with inter alia brunch at a little hole-in-the-wall diner near my house. It was pleasant and sunny when we went in. When we came out it was grey and windy and cold and we thought a storm might be coming in. But by the time I dropped her off in Davis, it was sunny and nice again.

Sadly I didn’t get to see any of Somerville Open Studios, but darxus (aided and abetted by cathijosephine met me at Marathon Sports to buy shoes. See, I have this problem that I buy cheap shoes, and more than half the time they’re crummy and hurt and fall apart right away, so I’m not willing to spend good money on shoes, since it’s not a good investment because they probably won’t work out. The more clever among you may detect a certain amount of circularity to this logic. Anyway, inspired by darxus’ experience getting fitted for shoes there, I met them and got myself a pair of significantly less cheap shoes.

They gave me 9½ wide shoes, which is crazy, because I take 9½ regular. These new shoes feel weird. For example, my little toes don’t hurt. How can you tell you have your shoes on properly if your toes don’t hurt? But I’ll give them another couple days...

Then we went to Cambridge Common for lunch. Since I had had brunch fairly recently, I just had an appetizer — yummy, yummy sweet-potato fries! I have to go back there.

Then cathijosephine and I wandered around in quest of a fax machine, getting distracted by a bookstore along the way, and finally succeeding at a Staples. Then we went back to darxus’ place for a little bit. While I was there, I got a call from docorion, returning my call earlier when we were trying to figure out where we could send a fax from. So I asked him if he had dinner plans, and since he didn’t, I met him in Davis and we went to Redbones for barbecue and had a great time hanging out and chatting.

The one downside to the day is my back. I hurt it recently, probably yesterday morning when I was moving some boxes of papers into the crawlspace above the garage. (This involved carrying heavy bulky boxes up a ladder, so I was holding them in odd ways to keep my center of balance over the ladder.) It was distinctly noticeable yesterday, but wasn’t too bad. (It was still an excellent excuse to get a massage from plumtreeblossom, though!) Today it’s gotten worse over the course of the day. In particular, it really doesn’t like getting into and out of the car, which I’ve been doing a lot of. I look forward to a good night’s sleep and hopefully it will be better tomorrow morning.

In other news, in less than a week, plumtreeblossom and I will be in Las Vegas, meeting sionnagh and her father for a couple of days! That will be delightful; I’m looking forward to them meeting each other.

Now it’s time to take my painkiller and go to sleep. G’night, all!

Had a great last few days in Hawai‘i, including a trip to the water park with sionnagh, our friend K, and her daughter D., and a games night at which I got to meet a bunch of sionnagh’s friends and play Web of Power and Frank’s Zoo.

Oh, and the Crockpot Fairy has visited sionnagh. :-)

I have a very tight connection in LAX, which I made it in time for despite my flight from HNL being delayed. Only now my flight from LAX to ORD is delayed, so my connection in Chicago is now iffy. Wish me luck.

Yours very sleepily,
beowabbit

I forgot to mention last night that I have fallen in lust with sionnagh’s car. It’s a 2000 Honda Insight hybrid (a two-seater), it’s comfy (for me, but probably not for zzbottom or docorion), it drives great, and it seems to get around 53mpg. I want one. Evidently 2006 was the last model year they made them, but I couldn’t afford a new one anyway. Not that I can afford a used one, either, but the next time I can spend that kind of money on a used car, which will be, I dunno, maybe 2049, when I will be 82, I’m definitely getting one.

Then of course I’ll need to get a pickup truck to help people move and for camping trips and big grocery runs. The Insight is wee. (And sexy, like certain other wee things of my acquaintance.)

So it’s a long story, but I ended up really hungry and not near any food except for a Super 88 market (for non-locals, a chain of large Asian grocery stores). It’s dangerous walking down the Japanese candy aisle when you’re hungry. But guess what they had? Roasted chestnuts! In a little foil bag, as if they were candy! Yum. I had them as I was waiting for the train, and they kept body and soul together a while longer.

When I got home, I had a new CPAP mask waiting for me. I don’t think it’s going to make my CPAP treatment any more effective (current level of effectiveness is approximately “not enough”, as I just told my doctor in email), but it will definitely be more comfortable and hopefully fix the big red marks and occasional scarring on the bridge of my nose. Yay! Oh, and I also got a chinstrap, so that I can pretend to be a chinstrap penguin hopefully start using the nose-only mask again from time to time, too.

On my way home I stopped in to say hi to Chickenfinger (cathijosephine’s cat), and while I was there I got a message from sionnagh, so I called her back and we did some planning for my Hawai‘i trip this month. Yay, it’s going to be fun! I get to meet a good friend of hers I’ve never met, and we’re going to have a games night.

OK, sleepy-time now.

I'm in an internet café, because the only consistent net I have at home is on my phone, and the web browsers on my phone have Limitations. So, quick summary:

Sunday: I'm sure it was fun, but I don't remember what we did. :-) Oh! I know I had spam musubi at one point, though, so that was good.

Monday: Lunch with our friends K. and T. from Pali Paths. Then a fun games night at sionnagh's friend Ceecee's place. There were yummy barbecued ribs and meatballs, and a couple neat board games whose names I can't remember, and very good company.

Tuesday: Ko 'Olina beach, where I took lots of pictures and did some swimming. Then dinner at Moshi Moshi Tei, which has been one of our standbys since sionnagh (and docorion) originally moved to O'ahu. Then a Happy Pagan Movie Night at the house of some friends of sionnagh's. We watched Red Dragon, the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, which I hadn't seen and very much enjoyed, although I wouldn't call it a Happy Pagan Movie. :-) Had a great time.

I've had lots of time with the dogs — Hamlet of course, but also his sweet housemates Lakima (an elderly white pit bull) and Star (a young lab). And of course I've been enjoying the weather. Wonderful trip so far.