When I got up, it was already after noon, and I wanted mac&cheese&tuna--well, the milk had gone bad, so I took a shower, did my grocery shopping, and then made it...and ate the entire batch. I felt like pig doing it, but I was hungry.
Did some WoW, did a couple of other things, and then fell asleep for a couple of hours.
Got up, talked to Lemonzen, did a little more WoW, and then started thinking about dinner.
Dinner, I decided, would be a simple beef stir fry, so I got a chunk of round steak out and set the microwave to defrost it.
...I didn't end up having dinner until after 1 AM, which was perhaps ten hours after having the mac&cheese&tuna. So I guess it all worked out that I ate the whole batch of that stuff, because damn. Except that now I am suffering gut malf.
The stir-fry came out very well. There was a lot of juice in the wok, so on impulse I grabbed the corn starch and thickened it into sauce--and it's tasty. I could have eaten more last night but I wanted there to be leftovers.... Today, then, I boiled a bag of rice and served some leftover stir-fry over that, and it's quite a nice meal.
The gut is still blooty, though, and I'd wager that's why I had so little energy yesterday. And because the blootiness continues, the lethagy and malaise does as well. I'm going to have to get on the stick, though.
Example of how out-of-sorts I am: I went into Mom's room to clean the cat box, so I could take out the trash before bed. After the box was clean I got to looking at Mom's computer desk and started neatening things, thinking about how much I miss her. I came across the notebooks in which she kept track of her solitaire scores.
She liked this version of solitaire that I got in 1990 as a freebie from work--Hoyle's Book of Games was the title of the program, and it was written for DOS computers with 80286 processors. When you win a game, the joker jumps off the card and does a little dance while a tune plays on the system speaker--but on anything faster than a mid-range 80386 he looks as if he's being electrocuted. (And the song? "Bltzgk" is how I would characterize it.)
Anyway, she tracked her scores in simple spiral-bound notebooks, and as I paged through the entries I began noticing that she left little notes here and there. This day she was too busy to play; that day she heard the robins for the first time of the year, etc.
The first notebook started some time in 2008 and the second (and last) one ran right up to December 9, 2010--four days before she died. After paging through it, I put it on the shelf with the other one, sighing.
I also neatened up the computer desk just a little bit. I'm going to have to gut it up and clean that room out sooner or later, though. I have to keep reminding myself that Mom doesn't need the little "grandma" knickknacks given to her by her grandchildren, and neither does anyone else in the family; all I need to do is to box that stuff up for the garage sale in May.
Still, it ain't easy. It doesn't get easier as time goes on, either, but that's life.
* * *
The Bible says you aren't supposed to worship graven images. As long as you don't worship your driver's license, it's fine.
But anyone who changes her name to "Sunrise Eliza Kayah Celeste Emanuel" is probably a few clowns short of a circus.
Further, their argument is perilously close to the whole islamic "our driver's license photos shouldn't require us to remove our hijabs" argument. Driving's not a right; there's no religious exception for exercising a privilege and if you don't want your picture taken you can walk.
* * *
This is news? We knew Hillary was talking to Eleanor Roosevelt back in 1993, for crying out loud. (Nancy Reagan was insane for talking to an astrologer, but Hillary Clinton was admirable for something even more ridiculous. No media bias there!)
* * *
Plenty of health care workers refuse influenza vaccinations. Why? Because the risks outweigh the benefits. But it's okay, because now the law will make them take those vaccinations, like it or lump it.
All I know is, when I get vaccinated against the flu, I get sicker than a dog immediately. If I don't get vaccinated, I don't. Screw that.
* * *
Karl Denninger says we're headed for renewed recession. The numbers back him up. What more can be said?
* * *
Sunday night I finally got around to taking a gander at the toilet in the master bath. It hasn't flushed right for eons and last week I bought a hardware kit so I could take the tank off. My theory was that an in-tank sanitizer cake had gotten sucked down into the base.
Well, that didn't happen. As near as I can tell the damned thing has just clogged up with rust and lime and gunk after 47 years of exposure to hard water, and needs to be replaced.
The hardware kit cost $7 and I hauled the compressor and cutoff tool inside to get the tank off. The cutoff tool made very quick work of the extremely rusted bolts; someone used their brains when they specified stamped wing nuts for those things; all I had to do was cut off one side of the wing nut flush with the bolt, and then grab the other side with pluers. Came right off, no problem.
The tank bolts were, of course, held to the tank with nuts that were also rusted on. I cut the bolt off flush, then cut the nuts in half; after that, a few more moments' work with pliers got the nut halves off the bolts and I tapped them out, neat as you please. Only way it could have been easier would have been if I had an electrical tool to do that job rather than air-powered.
As a bonus, the kit was exactly right for the toilet. It was a "universal" kit and I guessed on the washer size, but seeing as the toilet was made in 1965 I didn't think I needed to find a specific set of hardware ("Kohler" or "Standard" or who-the-hell-ever) and that turned out to be a good guess.
...so of course that didn't fix my problem.
If there were a way for me to get the pedestal up, I could probably plug the drain hole, fill the thing with a solution of hydrochloric acid, let it dissolve the rust and scale, and restore it to full function. But I don't know how I'd get a good enough solution of HCl in there to do the job, and further I don't know if I can get the thing out without destroying it. (And how do I dispose of the solution when done? Neutralize with baking soda and let it run down the driveway, I suppose.)
Pity, because it's not a "low-flush" toilet, and any replacement I can buy will be.
What I do know is that it is not a problem with the drain. If it were, the thing would overflow, and that's not happening; the tank simply drains very slowly into the bowl such that the siphon-flush action doesn't occur. And it's not because a Ty-D-Bowl tablet got sucked into the pipe, either; I found the remains of the tablet next to the flapper. (Said tablet having been in there since 2006...yeesh.)
Something like this is all I need. It's under $80 and even includes everything needed for installation.
You can apparently spend thousands of dollars on a crapper if that's your bag.
So at some point I'll take care of that. Not today, though.
* * *
...particularly as my gut is still blooty and I don't even have the energy to post another home-brewed Garfield Without Garfield.
Or go on WoW to check my auctions.
Or do anything that requires sentient thought.
*sigh*