Bliss!

I got a haircut today, and when I came out and got into my car at 1.22 pm and turned on the radio ....

Ahhhhhhhh.

There it was. The wonderful oldies station had come back, as promised, at 1.01 pm. The afternoon deejay is one of the familiar old-timers, and I knew all the songs. All of their promos are very cute, too, referring to the station being missed and now it's back. I listened to it at home later, too, while I was *ahem* cleaning. When K got home from class, she said that she had listened to it, too, on the way to and from school. The funny thing is that she said the oldies may be the music of my childhood, but it's the music of her childhood, too, since it's the radio station I listened to as she was growing up.

Other news ... hmm. I haven't packed a thing, but I did start making a list. So that's something. I guess I'll start tomorrow. But the big plans for tomorrow involve going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Really looking forward to it, and to the book next week. (Okay, really looking forward to the book next week.)

The vet called last night with the results of Boo's bloodwork, which are either good or bad, depending, I guess, on your point of view. Or depending on where things go from here. His kidneys are stable. He shows a slight infection. But he is extremely anemic. If the anemia is being caused by his gastrointestinal ailment, well, he's on new food and a strong antibiotic, so that should help. If it's caused by something else, then it will probably continue to decline. The vet said that most cats would not live with the level of anemia he has, but it's clearly come on him gradually, so he's adjusted to it. Much lower, though, and it would not "be compatible with life." Let me just say how fond I am of this particular vet. He is also very personal and compassionate. A lovely man.

So my only concern now, really, is that the cat could take a sudden turn while the Hubs and I are away. I think this is unlikely, given the fact that Boo has had the "expect-the-end-soon" diagnosis more than once over the last five years, but it's a possibility, and one that I am not sharing with K before we go. I may share a bit with R, though, so she knows to be on call for her sister if something happens. And we'll only be a few hours away, and in our own car, so getting home in an emergency is not a problem. But I don't really think it's coming that soon. Possibly by the end of the summer, but I don't think before that. And then again, you never know.

My sister is away now, for about 10 days I think, which leaves me without my main source of outside conversation. It's always weird when she goes away. I'll hear from her a few times while she's gone -- she's in California visiting her firstborn -- but those are just "Hey, I'm still alive" phone calls, not real conversations. But her middle son is away too, out of the country, in fact, which must be leaving Wonderful Niece feeling pretty deserted by everyone (except her husband, of course.) I just wrote myself a note to call her tomorrow; it'll be good for both of us.

So that's it, then.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1522

He's Freaking Me Out, Man.

Possible long entry ahead. A few things to get out here.

The "he" of today's title is, of course, my husband. About an hour before K and were going to leave to pick up R at the airport, he says that maybe he'll come with us. Uh ... okay. Unless I don't want him to. No, of course, come with us, if you want. So we're batting it around back and forth until it becomes clear that he's coming. Why? When you find out, let me know.

At which point, K, who was going along so I wouldn't have to drive there alone, says something about it doesn't seem necessary for her to go, and she could have had plans. I did not reply "Sheeyah, right," since her friends are all away and she rarely gets to have plans, so I shrugged it off. And the three of us superfluously went to the airport to pick up someone who wasn't exactly flying in from a year in Europe. The Hubs drove, and K was quiet. After we got home, and R took off for her own home in her car that she had left here, K said again, "I could have had plans, you know," and I remembered that one of her distant friends is now home for the summer. Well, she could have gone somewhere with him. I'm still trying to figure out where the aliens hid the pod when they took over the Hubs.

This morning, K tells me -- and I'm telling no one in the 3D world, only you guys -- that she had a possible date but had to tell the guy that she couldn't go because she had to pick up her sister at the airport. A date! With a living human male! Hopefully they will reschedule, because listen, she is cute as a button and funny and a great catch, just shy when it comes to going places and meeting people in groups (like going to a bar and hanging out just to meet guys. Not her style.)

And then, to finish today's K saga, while she's in class this afternoon, I took a phone message from one of the college's professors who wants to meet her and possibly ask her to be her graduate assistant. So that's good, too.

And now, me, Me, ME! I went to the cardiologist today. I liked him very much. He looked at my family history, my own history, I told him how I can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded, etc. and he seemed a little iffy on whether or not I even need a stress test, and then he looked at my EKG from January. He said "Oh, you have to have a stress test. You have an abnormal wave here." "Yeah, the T wave," I said, "it's been abnormal all my life." "Well," he said, "it's time to find out why."

So I'm not worried, since I've lived through brain surgery and any number of other things with this abnormal T wave (whatever that is), and he says I can definitely make it through a normal stress test. The idea is that when I have to stop, well then they've got the information they need. So I'm doing that on July 31 -- no emergency.

And furthermore ...

I wrote sometime back (just copied into blogger from the original dland, scroll down to the end) about how the oldies station I'd been listening to on the radio for nearly 30 years just suddenly changed its format one day without warning. And now, it seems, they are changing back. It's all over the news around here, how the station -- WCBS FM -- lost ratings and revenue by making the change to what they called the "Jack" format, and on Thursday at 1.01 pm -- the station is at 101.1 FM -- they're going back to Oldies. YAY! Not all the old deejays are coming back, but some are. And I don't expect to hear much from the fifties this time around. But I do expect the Beatles to be there. Time will tell.

WATCHING OPRAH :: ENTRY #1520

Radio Sweetheart

[copied from dland]

Ever since my beloved oldies station changed format one Friday afternoon at 4:00 without warning and became a "Jack" station -- all I know is that it's not oldies -- I have been forlorn. All of the radio station buttons in my car are programmed for light music, or classic rock, or something, but nothing is right.

Now of course, it is just such a situation for which I have an iPod. But the iPod is not quite right for me in the car most of the time either. For one, most of my trips are very short; I only work four minutes away from home. It's not worth it to plug in the iPod when I get in the car and unplug it and take it with me when I get out. Also, since my car's cassette player broke, I play the iPod through the radio using an FM transmitter, and some of the places I go, there's interference from another station, so then it doesn't work.

I was lamenting this situation earlier today when the girls and I went to -- where else -- Target, and they suggested that I make a playlist on the iPod and burn it to a CD. Hmmm.

For one strange reason or another, mostly because I didn't have the sense to buy my car with a CD player built into the radio, I have a 6-disc CD changer under the passenger seat and wired into the radio (because that's all I could get when I decided I wanted a CD player after I had the car a couple of years.) So I could burn six discs, and leave them in there all the time, like my own private radio station.

Coool.

So I made a new playlist when I got home, combining three or four of my favorite playlists and deleting the duplicates and the really long songs and other things that I didn't want there, and so on. And this playlist has 553 songs, and will play, according to iTunes, for one day, eight hours, 27 minutes, and 38 seconds.

Hmm. I don't know if I've actually got that much time. Y'know?

So far, I've burned 11 discs. #12 is burning, and #13 is on deck. I had to go out to CVS to pick up some blank CDs, which to tell you the truth, were on sale for a stupid low price. I needed to pick up hearing aid batteries anyway.

I mean, I had to burn the whole thing, right? It would have taken me longer to figure out what to get rid of than to just do it. I'll have six discs in the changer, and when I've gone through all of them, I'll put in the next six. This ought to hold me for a really long time, I think. (Actually, for 32 hours, 27 minutes, and 38 seconds. Figure an 8 minute commute every day, and that's .... oh, I don't know; I'll be retiring in three years or so. Probably till then.)

It is an excellent playlist, btw, the ultimate happy boomer playlist. Lots of Simon and Garfunkel, Creedence, the Moody Blues, America, the Eagles, Springsteen, Chicago, Fleetwood Mac. And clearly, a cast of thousands.

I'm psyched.

The weather is not so nice today, mostly cloudy and much colder, very windy. Winter is returning this week, despite yesterday's temperature in the high 50s. My headache persists, four days now, but my eyes are still good. It's a trade-off, or, as my beloved Odd Couple would say, it's the razor's edge. (You do know that the Odd Couple is the best comedy that was ever on TV, right? Just so we're clear.)

Okay, I'm going out to put the first six discs in the car because my case won't hold all of them unless I do. And ... ew. Boo poo, right next to my desk chair here. Which requires my immediate attention, I think.

WATCHING THE HISTORY CHANNEL :: ENTRY #1391

And Today Was ...

[copied from dland]

Not as hot as yesterday, actually, which was a bitch. But we worked a couple more windows open today, and it rained here and there, which made it better for awhile, although the last one just made it more humid. I am so uninterested in doing anything at all at work when it's that hot. Yesterday I wore shorts. Today I wore a tank top. You know it's hot when I wear a tank top in public.

What I did do was fix a couple more things on the no books site (button below, google-paranoia prevents linking) and actually post two entries to it. The second one was inspired by the empress, who wrote her own library entry today, which you should read. My google problem, btw, is that I've taken off those Latin SL words on the old purple chai pages, but google has them cached, dammit, so searching the SL still links back to this page. I wonder how long that'll go on. Or if I'm just paranoid. I'm not saying anything about people at work, just general observations about being a librarian and how I'm all misunderstood, boo-frickety-hoo.

I just had ice cream for dinner. I've got seven more days of work, I've got seven more days to eat whatever I damn well please. I promise that I'll wake up on June 22 and become a whole new me.

Okay, I promise to think about it. On June 22.

My big decision for today, speaking of waking up in the morning, is to reset my alarm for 6:00 for the next week and a half, instead of 5:30. A big step, I know. Gotta get up at 6:00 tomorrow too; we're driving K back to Our Nation's Capital.

(Oooh, I had to look that one up. Capital? Capitol? I used to know this shit, I swear.)

Anyway, come 6/22, there's no alarm. Of course, I will still wake up at six something. It'll take until August 30 for me to sleep until 7:00 am without anesthesia.

I just opened my vitamin bottle to take one out for tomorrow morning and they are all orange! (I take Flintstones vitamins.) How can that be? Wouldn't that be against all kinds of odds? (There are maybe 190 left in the bottle out of the 200 it came with.) I'm just saying.

Our biggest challenge for tomorrow is deciding what to listen to in the car. The last time we went, we listened to George Carlin's book on audio. For nine hours. I don't need to listen to or watch George Carlin again for a long time, maybe ever, I'm not sure yet. For the moment, I have 500 Miles by Peter, Paul and Mary stuck in my head, because it's what came on this morning when I was showing the SCM my iPod.

(I confess that I do not remember the wonderful sniglet that golfwidow and spritopias have just invented for having a song stuck in your head. Help me out here? It was so good.)

My favorite Rich Hall sniglet was "mega-nega-bar." (The hyphens are mine.) This is the word that means that long wavy line you write on a check after you write the amount so that someone doesn't come along and add in "and a million dollars." The sniglet that I remember personally creating back in the 80s when this was all the rage was "chiblings." Your chiblings are your nieces and nephews, that is, collectively,the children of your siblings.

I'm all about the italics tonight. Tee hee.

As long as I'm rambling, here's my media tragedy from last weekend which I never go to write about because of the wedding and all. I turned on the radio last Saturday morning to listen to "Beatles for Breakfast" and the oldies station was ... gone! Seems that the radio station I've been listening to for thirty years decided to change its format Friday afternoon at 4:00 and by 5:00 it was done, bye-bye to DJs I've been listening to since my sister got her first transistor radio in 1959. I am nothing if not a creature of habit, and I do not like this very very much. I hear that Cousin Brucie just signed on with Sirius radio, and isn't that special. The last gadget I need is satellite radio. (Feel free to remind me next year that I wrote that.) And I do a lot of local driving, five minutes here, five minutes there, which is what radio is perfect for. Seems I'm not the "right demographic" for those radio programmers. I don't know, I'm pretty sure that there are still way more Boomers than there are of any other particular age group. Okay, maybe not more of us than let's say 20 - 45 all put together. But still. Lots of us.

Okay, my head is empty now. Thank you.

WATCHING KEITH OLBERMAN :: ENTRY #782