I learned a new phrase in Farsi today: zag shusheet! It means "dog piss." And I learned it from the man who will clean and repair the two early-20th-century rugs that my mother left me.
I also learned the Farsi for "chewed edge," but I didn't write that one down.
And how much will it cost to restore the two rugs that my darling Cassie has in so many ways defiled? $2,400.
Fortunately the work will take a couple of months (Eli has a backlog), so I've got some time to dock her allowance. And our new house has multiple floors, so I can isolate her from the two rugs whenever I leave the house.
(Note: the rugs in question are legit antique Persians worth restoring. The rug Cassie destroyed last spring was not.)
This punim is the only thing that saved my zag today:
Just finishing up a sprint at work, lost track of time, have to go in 10 minutes, no time even to list the stories I queued up for later reading.
So: happy Monday!
As far as I know, I'm moving in 2½ weeks, though the exact timing of both real-estate closings remain unknown. Last time I moved it took me about 38 hours to pack and 15 to unpack. This time I expect it to go faster, in part because I'm not spending as much time going "oh, I love this book!"
I'm taking a quick break and catching up on some reading:
Finally, a new survey says Chicagoans swear a lot less than most Americans, with people from Columbus, Ohio, swearing the most. Fuck that shit.
One of Inner Drive Technology's old laptops—actually, the most recently purchased—can be yours along with a few accessories for only $300:
That's a Dell E6440 laptop with 12 GB of RAM and an Intel Core i7 2.4 GHz processor. It has a 97 W/h battery, and I'm including a docking station, 130 W power supply, and a DVI cable to connect the docking station with a monitor. It does not have a hard drive or software. (I originally had a 512 GB SSD. It'll take a standard 3½-inch laptop drive.)
But hey, $300? I've seen just the laptop advertised online for $200-250, so with all this extra stuff, why not?
As an added incentive, here's a photo of Cassie fast asleep on my lap Tuesday night:
I've had a busy day. I finally solved the token-authentication problem I've been working on all week for my day job (only to discover another flavor of it after deploying to Azure), while dealing with a plumber ($1600 repair!), an HVAC inspector ($170 inspection!) and my buyer's mortgage appraiser (not my problem!). That left some reading to do tonight:
Finally, despite the crashing temperatures outside my window right now (down 5.5°C in the past 2 hours), Illinois had a pretty dry and mild start to autumn.
The temperature outside has hit 19°C, so I've just opened 26 of the 30 windows in my house (the other four are behind furniture and hard to reach). Because I'm moving in about three weeks, and because the forecast says a cold front will come through mid-day tomorrow, I expect that when I close most of the windows tonight they'll stay closed as long as I live here.
Still, with all that sun and warm air on the other side of those open windows, it's time to take Cassie out.
As previously mentioned. Just check out those hand-inlays and working ca. 1800 hardware!
No, not the Covid booster. I'm getting the flu shot. You should too:
"It's time to get your flu shot right now," advises Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious disease at Vanderbilt University.
"People should get them now," agrees Shaun Truelove, an assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who's helping lead a new effort to project this year's flu season for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The usual flu season starts in November in the U.S. and peaks in January or February. "In normal years, it makes sense to hold off on the flu shot until late fall, as protection really doesn't last more than a few months and late fall/winter is when the flu wave usually hits here," says Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. "So in a normal year, I would probably try to wait until mid-October and get the flu shot then," he says. But this year, he says, "flu cases are already starting to go up, so it makes sense to get it sooner — i.e., now."
The reason experts are particularly concerned about the flu this year is that many people, especially very young children, may have little or no immunity against the respiratory infection because the masking, social distancing and other behaviors aimed at protecting against COVID have blunted flu's spread, too. Also, the CDC notes, young children would do well to get a flu shot soon because they require two shots one month apart, and it takes time to build up immunity.
So if you live in the northern hemisphere, get your flu jab this week!
Wow, yesterday went on a bit. From getting on the bus to Peoria to getting off the bus back in Chicago, I spent 18 hours and 20 minutes doing something connected with the Peoria Symphony's performance of Beethoven's 9th yesterday. I think it went quite well, and I expect they'll ask us back the next time they do a huge symphonic choral work.
Right now, Cassie has plotzed completely after two nights in boarding, and I need to figure out what I'm eating this week. So I'll post something more interesting later today.
In the meantime, enjoy this Saturday Night Live bit that will challenge even the most attentive English speakers throughout the former colonies:
We're performing with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra tonight, which means we need to get our butts to Peoria this morning. Which means I woke up way too early.
Normal posting resumes tomorrow, assuming I recover by then.