Various and Sundry

No karate tomorrow, as the Jazzercise people are taping for TV - something they do every couple of months. The weather is pretty, so I'm going to try to break out the weaponry and do some kata practice in the front yard. Also, a morning run would be good. Actually keeping busy in general would be good as I need to go back in the afternoon and have them redo the mammogram on one side with the radiologist present, and I'd rather not think about it until after I have something more concrete to worry about (or not) than I currently do.

Rob made it home safely, if with somewhat more excitement than necessary. He opines (and I thoroughly agree) that he could have lived very happily without finding out what a jumbo jet sounds like when being flown without engines. Fortunately after having an engine overheat and die, the pilots attempt to shut everything down and restart worked as intended and the plane landed safely back in Edinburgh under power. He got home about 18 hours later than intended, but all in one piece, which is how I like him. He brought birthday presents with him - a tartan shawl with brooch, a pair of gorgeous dragon-wing earrings, a butterfly pin from the Royal Botanical Gardens, a Hunting Ross tartan sash, and an assortment of lovely cheeses. The boys got Nessy stuff, which they're all excited about. Two books have also arrived from Bill (Thank you, Bill!), a book on designing knitwear, and a biography of Madeleine L'Engle. I'm already making inroads on both.

The other things I'm reading are a pair of books I found while down with my parents. They're quite similar in concept - study books on karate from an older well-regarded Japanese instructor. One is based in Shotokan, and one in Gojo-ryu, so neither is completely applicable to Isshinryu, but I'm finding a lot of useful exercises and technique tips. After all, just because we punch differently doesn't mean that I can't learn more about a roundhouse kick from a Shotokan instructor. Part of the difficulty of being in such a small and isolated dojo is that comparative to Isshinryu students in areas with several dojos, we end up with a much less broad range of experience. Sensei TJ tries to travel to outside seminars and broaden his experience as much as possible, but most of the time I can't do that, so I'm aiming for the written word. (Shocking, I know)

Boys and dogs are all doing well, as is Aoi (the lizard), but I managed to kill off most of the population of Rob's smaller salt-water tank, by not figuring out that there was a short in the filter on the tank next door that kept throwing the breaker. There are half-a dozen survivors, but one of the puffers and the beautiful giant batfish both died, along with a bunch of other fish. Fortunately I did manage to keep the freshwater tank oxygenated enough for all the fish to survive until the electrics got sorted out, even if they weren't exactly happy.

Lights Out!

Whee! Back again.

We had an interesting week. Monday evening it snowed. Tuesday it started in with a variety of stuff - sleet, freezing rain, ice pellets (noticing a theme here?). Wednesday was more of the same - only more so. Wednesday afternoon about 1, our lights went out. And stayed out. And stayed out some more. We lit a fire in the fireplace and huddled up as the house temp started sinking. Poor Rob hit the deck several times hauling firewood up to the back porch from our backyard stack.

No power also meant that the aerators in the fish tanks weren't working, so the fish were suffocating. So about every four hours, we would siphon out a bunch of water, and dump in new water so the fish could breathe, at least a little. Between the cold and the lack of oxygen, they were not happy fish.

Rob went in to work on Wed. - it turned out that outside of our immediate neighborhood, the streets were in decent shape, so we were able to go get battery-powered aerators for the tanks, and pick up some take-out food, but the power company was saying that we wouldn't get power back until 11pm Saturday, so we packed up and headed for Nashville, only to have Rob call us just as we hit the halfway point, and say the power was back on. So back we came.

Central heat feels unbelievably luxurious right now. And the effort with the fish tanks paid off - we only lost one fish (one of Aaron's pack of three silver dollars). Even the worst off of the rest (my iridescent shark, who was solidly upside-down and twitching), recovered rapidly once the tank systems came back on-line.

One good side effect, since it's a good low-light activity, I pulled out my spinning wheel and got it ready to roll again. I even got about half a spindle-full of soda bottle fiber spun (sock weight).

Right now we're waiting to see if the boys' school (which was being used as an emergency shelter), will be open on Monday, or if they get to stay home a little more. I hope they can go, they're getting a bit tired of each other right now.

The State of the Holiday

We had Aaron's school play today. He was very eager to get there, and afterwards was very enthusiastic, which seems odd, because during the show he looked like it was torture to be there. I suspect that while he likes singing and performing for us, the actual moments of being in a choir of enthusiastic 2nd graders is a little hard for a hearing-sensitive kid with good (likely perfect relative) pitch.

We have a new(er) car! Rob has been going to our county auto auction for the last several weeks, ever since we sold our minivan, looking for something younger and smaller to replace it with. Wed. night he found a good one at a good price and bid for it, won, and then had to negotiate with the seller because the reserve hadn't been met. He talked them into a price higher than his bid, but lower than their reserve, and Thursday we went to collect. So now we have a Nissan 200SX SE-R in gloss black sitting in the driveway. It's a pretty little thing. It needs a new muffler, and there's a small piece of rear bumper missing (which is odd, because the rest of the bumper is not just intact, but glossy-new), and the engine computer reports a knock (which we can't hear). Otherwise it seems to be in excellent condition. It's certainly got zip, as it was pulling away from the Saturn at every acceleration opportunity on the way home. Rob is over the moon about it - he's been grinning all day. He's got a temporary muffler solution he'll be putting in tomorrow to last until the title shows up (in the next three weeks).

In somewhat grimmer news (making the happy car thing very timely) Rob's new 90-gallon tank has developed an in-tank infection, which is devastating the fish. We've lost more than a dozen so far, including two large severums, one of which was more than two years old. The last four days have had multiple fish deaths per day. We're treating for everything we can think of and crossing our fingers. We still have a Red Devil, a Raphael, and a couple of Firemouths in there that we'd hate to lose. The Red Devil particularly has a lot of personality, and has been with us for quite a while now. The 75-gallon tank is going along great, but even if we could guarantee that she wouldn't bring the infection with her, we couldn't move her back, because she would tear into the Bala and Iridescent sharks that are in there now (never mind that they're more than twice her size - she's not the type to care).

Dad W. is up for the holidays now. He and the temporary neighbor are going out hunting a Barnes & Noble tomorrow. He'll be here through the New Year, and then he vacates the same day A comes in. A has torn her rotator cuff in her left shoulder, so unless something changes drastically between now and the New Year, she's going to need a lot more help than usual while she's here. With the torn muscles, she can't transfer (from her chair to a couch, or a toilet, or a car seat), and needs to be assisted heavily with things she normally manages herself. Nor can she use her crutches at all. She's likely to need surgery on the shoulder and I'm crossing my fingers that if she does, it can wait until March, because right now all her local support has gone south for the winter.