carbonel

Happy birthday to gwyn_r -- hope it's a good one!

So. My company scheduled an all-hands meeting outside of London for a week at the end of July. In early August, my nephew was getting married in Istanbul (her family is from Iran, but lives in Istanbul). It made no sense to go home in between.

So on July 23, I flew to London. I met up with other people from the company at Heathrow, and we got an Uber to the site, which is out in the country and has lots of outside space. This turned out to be very useful. The meetings went well until the third day, at which point two of the major contributors both tested positive for COVID-19. After that, we carried on (minus them) outside. There was one more case, but that was it.

After the conference, I headed to London on Friday. I met helenraven at Waterloo Station, where she lent me her spare Oyster card and Kew membership card, and pointed me to the correct bus to get to my hotel. I had a hotel reservation at the Crescent Hotel through Booking.com. The location was great and the price was right. Sadly but not unexpectedly, there was no air conditioning, though there was a fan in the room. The one difficult bit was that the shared bathroom and toilet -- which I knew about -- was a floor and a half away, so I really tried to not need to go there in the middle of the night. I had a very pleasant time walking around Bloomsbury and going to museums.

On Saturday, I spent the day at Kew Gardens.

On Sunday, I met helenraven for lunch, and then we went to the Globe to see The Tempest. It was a bonkers production, with Prospero as an entirely unsympathetic beach bum sort of wizard, but quite good. We were groundlings, which made for a great view but sore feet by the end.

On Monday, I went to the British Museum.

On Tuesday, I met a friend from Ravelry one day and we went to the V&A in the morning and the Science Museum in the afternoon -- and then spent a couple of hours in a pub drinking cider (me) and ale (her) and chatting.

Wednesday was a day of indulgence. I went to Harrod's for afternoon tea, and in the evening I went to the Shaftesbury theatre to see &Juliet, in which Anne Hathaway decides to do some revision on R&J. Very silly, but also some very good messaging.

On Thursday, I went to the Natural History Museum in the morning and the Wellcome Museum in the afternoon, where I saw Napoleon's toothbrush and Darwin's walking sticks, among other items. That evening, I had dinner at helenraven's (tomato galette) and dropped off some of my luggage that I didn't want to shlep to Turkey with me.

On Friday, I flew to Istanbul. I allowed four hours -- one hour to get to the airport and three hours at the airport. I needed it all. I lost about twenty minutes to security because the agents wanted a prescription for the bottled water for my CPAP. I ended up tossing that. I'd run out of actual distilled water by then, but it was purified water. The flight was uneventful, thankfully. Uber is hooked into the local Yellow Taxi system, and I was able to get a taxi from the airport to my hotel. For slightly complicated reasons, I made a hotel booking for my first night at close to the last minute, and just picked something from Booking.com that was cheap and in the right area. I lucked out. It was clean, modern, and had working air conditioning.

On Saturday, I left that hotel and went to a Marriott-affiliated one that I stayed at the rest of the time. It was also quite nice, but at about twice the price. I signed up for an all-day tour on Sunday, but there wasn't anything available that appealed for Saturday. I decided to go to the Grand Bazaar. Getting there via Uber/Yellow Taxi was no problem. I spent a couple of hours walking around. I bought a glass of orange juice that I saw squeezed in front of me -- delicious. I bought a few other things, but mostly just rambled and looked. Unfortunately, getting back wasn't so easy. The Yellow Taxi drivers kept canceling with Uber, and I eventually paid a comparatively exorbitant amount to an off-meter driver. After some recovery time, I finally managed to get an Uber driver to take me to the bride's apartment, where there was a gathering. I'd met some in person and some through Zoom, but a lot were new to me.

On Sunday, I took a group tour. In the morning, we went to the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, and the Hagia Sophia. Lunch was included as part of the all-day tour. In the afternoon, I had a guide to myself because I was the only one who'd signed up for the tour of the Topkapi Palace. It's an amazing place and full of artifacts, though my major interest was its connection to Pawn in Frankincense, the fourth of the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. My step counter said I walked around 16K steps, and I was a bit sunburned.

Monday I mostly spent recovering from Sunday. I spent some time at local cafes, but didn't do any official touristing.

Tuesday evening was a night-before-the-wedding river cruise. It was four hours of loud music and dancing and hors d'ouevres and drinking. Once the sun set, it cooled down a bit and was quite pleasant. It was a couple of hours too long for me, but I'm not much of a party girl.

Wednesday was the wedding. My nephew had arranged a shuttle for a bunch of us, including the bride's parents. This turned out to be convenient, because the half-hour trip took almost four times that. Partly it was the horrendous traffic, but partly it was that the driver went to the wrong place. It was a wrong place with the same name, so understandable, I guess. The wedding was lovely. It was secular, but incorporated some of the traditions of the two different cultures.

On Thursday, I flew back to London. I got to the airport way too early because I misread the departure time. I was feeling a bit off, but I assume it was due to being underslept and overheated. The flight was uneventful, and once we landed I made my way to heleraven's place where I was staying the night. I also collected the luggage I'd left there and recombined everything. I probably should have used my last COVID-19 test at this point, but I didn't think about it. If the US were still requiring a negative test before flying there, things would have been different.

On Friday, I flew back to the US. Tedious but uneventful. After I got home and rested for a while in the air conditioning, and rehydrated, I realized that it probably wasn't just heat and travel stress and potential dehydration that was making me feel off, and I used one of my home COVID-19 tests.

The pink line lit up very quickly, and I discovered I had a slight fever (100.2). After a couple of ibuprofen and some rest, I felt much better. I didn't sleep very well that first night, but that was probably jet lag.

Friday, I felt almost well (and spent the day working, in fact). And now, Saturday, I feel almost recovered, though I'm still testing positive. I'm somewhat congested and my throat is somewhat scratchy, but my temp is normal. I feel as if I'm in the recovery phase of a cold. So I decided to skip Paxlovid, because of the trade-off of side effects. I hope I don't regret that.

(I keep sniffing a bit of chocolate just to make sure my sense of smell is still working. That's one of the nonlethal symptoms that scares me the most.)

And that's how I spent my summer vacation.

UPDATE: Membership acquired!

I delayed buying my membership, and at this point it's awfully expensive. Anyone have an attending membership they're not going to be able to use? Or know someone who's looking to sell one? I don't need voting rights, though I'll take them if they're on offer.

Thanks for any help!

(In case it's not blazingly clear, I'm talking about this year's Worldcon, in Chicago.)

I'm having trouble with Discord, both in the browser version and the desktop app version. At first it was just that stuff I posted showed up in red (which means it didn't go through), but now I'm not seeing new messages from other people.

Is it just me, or are other people having the same thing?

ETA: It's not just me. I found a "down detector" online that says there are general problems. Good, I guess, since it means I don't have to try to fix it at my end.

My mother had been in poor health and in and out of hospitals since mid-September (see previous post), and I'd been spending most of my time in the Chicago area to support her. She had been dreading but hoping for a good result from a couple of scheduled surgeries in early December, but it was not to be; her body just gave out on her.

She died quietly on November 26, the day after Thanksgiving and a week after her 86th birthday, both family events that she enjoyed.

I will miss her so much.

I just went down to the basement, and my feet encountered damp carpet at the bottom of the stairs. (Why I thought carpeting for the basement was a good idea entirely escapes me now.) And there's still a large pool of water around the drain that normally deals with the air conditioner condensation, so presumably the drain is blocked somehow unless there's something outside that's preventing it from draining.

Unlike the previous times this has happened, it doesn't appear to be a sewer problem. The water appears to be clean and I can't smell anything but general basement smell. Also, there hasn't been any sewage backup into the shower, which happened the two other times. And finally, I'm not overdue in having Ron the Sewer Rat do the annual reaming out.

So -- any idea what else it could be? I've never had any other sort of flooding in my basement.

I went to the Apple Store at the Mall of America yesterday to confirm that my iPad problems were because my current one was too old rather than something actually wrong with it. Diagnostics confirmed that it was fine, other than being seven years old.

I also looked at the new models. To my surprise, the current iPad Air is heavier and thicker than the standard iPad. Also about $300 more, albeit with 256 Gb instead of 128 Gb max memory.

This morning, I ordered the standard model. It's from 2020, and will probably be leapfrogged by a newer, snazzier model soon, but I think I'm okay with the trailing edge technology in this case. If this one also lasts me seven years, I'll be happy.

1. I have an appointment for my first COVID-19 vaccination! I'd been trying for over a week, ever since Minnesota opened things up to group 1b, tier 3, where I fell (over 45 with at least one qualifying condition). Lots of places were still only giving appointments to tier 2, and the ones open to tier 3 didn't have availability. I'm thankful to mizzlaurajean, who suggested signing up with Fairview. When I did, they were only giving appointments to tier 2, but that changed yesterday, and I now have an appointment for next Thursday, at a clinic a few miles away.

2. I made an appointment for my second and very overdue colonoscopy. The first one was mostly notable for being timed in such a way that I got no sleep the night before. This time, I hope, will go better in that regard.

3. Yesterday, I had the prep work done on a new dental crown. I spent the time listening to the audiobook of an Elizabeth Moon novel, and that was much more distracting than my usual attempt to follow an episode of a cooking or home improvement TV show. A+, will do again.

4. Still trying (obviously, not hard enough) to sell my 2001 Honda Accord.

5. A month or so ago, I went to IKEA for something entirely different, and came home with a set of Kallax shelves and cloth baskets, intending to use them to organize my spinning supplies. I even figured out a place for the unit in my living room. Unfortunately, I couldn't lift it myself -- I was barely able to drag it out of the car -- so I guess it's going to live in my garage until After Times.

6. All of my pandemic-related good intentions about destashing my house contents and organizing things have have mostly come to naught. If I had to pass an adulting test, there are sections where I would not get a passing grade. I am frustrated and depressed about this, none of which is actually inspiring me to action.

Happy birthday to pameladean -- hope it's a good one! (Or at least as good as possible, under the circumstances.)

I didn't think there would be baseball at all this year, but about midway through what would have been the regular season, it was announced that a sixty-game season would commence in July. There were a number of rule changes, some of which will probably become permanent (like universal designated hitter (alas) and three-batter minimum for pitchers) and other that probably won't (like seven-inning games for double-headers). I think the double-header rule was a late change, after a number of teams had to play make-up double-headers to account for games missed due to COVID.

When the season started, I thought it was likely the whole thing would be shut down in a few weeks, especially after a bunch of Marlins broke the isolation rules and ended up COVID-positive and infected players from another team. But either personnel became more compliant or more lucky, and the regular season finished yesterday with every team having played enough games to get a meaningful result.

The Cubs started out great, then skidded, then recovered, then lost a bunch of games in a row. But in the end, they won their division with a 34-26 record. They'll be playing the Marlins in the first round of playoffs. I have no confidence in their going very far -- 538.com gives them a 5% chance of winning the World Series -- but it would be nice if they could at least get past the first round.

And I'll be watching the games (albeit on MLB.tv, which means not until at least 90 minutes after the game finishes). It's not over until it's over, after all.