Off the Cliff

Nothing day. Rained. I drank wine, finished Tiassa, and went on with All Systems Red that I bought on kobo last night. Did some of my balance exercises. More rain tomorrow. Maybe I will stay in bed.

Succeeded in bagging up the vines I cut on the weekend as well as leaf mat from last fall. Am telling myself that not having to sit down and stretch my poor poor back every 30 seconds while doing this = poor poor back is getting stronger. Well, maybe. Was happy to sit down afterwards, for sure. Now must vacuum downstairs and swifter kitchen against tomorrow's garbage put-out, but will do that tomorrow while it rains.

NND was sitting out smoking, unnoticed by me until he asked did I want any help. Thanks, no, I told him, this is my exercise. They mowed the lawn on the weekend and also part of mine, but he explained that the cord doesn't reach completely into my half. This is fine by me: I have very little grass for a reason, and suspect my cherry's 'submerged but not quite' roots would damage a lawn mower badly.

Took a bunch of books back to the library, had lunch at tony Korean restaurant-- which now has a very good fried chicken sandwich at half the price of their bento-- got money from BoM, and wine from the LCBO down Bathurst. LCBO also has Absolut Black Russians in a bottle, which I didn't need to know but of course had to try. Luckily they turn out to be not very good so shall stick in freezer and forget, but may be why my back didn't hurt while pulling vines.

Rained and thundered and blew in grey autumn weather, after which things dried enough that I got out to the super without gunk on my wheels but a little trepidation because 5 on a Saturday is asking for crowds and huge lineups everywhere. Only not, because first long holiday weekend in cottage weather-- until the grey blew in-- evidently has everyone out at their cottage. Place was empty, so yay. Got half a rotissorie chicken and some 'living lettuce' and that's me set for a few days. Of course what I wanted was their prepared lasagna or rotini or something, but those were gone, supposing they'd been there in the first place. One can tell how busy Fiesta has been by how much bakery bread is left ie not the sliced-in-plastic loaves,  and let's say there was a lot of bread still. But as I'm low carb I didn't get bread either.

I seem to be on a Taltos reread. Finished Dzur and Hawk and Lyorn and Taltos and Dragon, currently on Vallista and Yendi. I want all of these in ebook so I can look things up easily, because the back and forth time switching leaves me uncertain just what happened where. Daymar, for instance, first appears in Dragon, but I thought it was in Taltos. Series *really* needs a wiki.

Otherwise weather goes muggy, as ever once temps here get above 10 or 12. Have opened windows and turned on fans, and removed flannel sheet from bed. If it actually goes back to lows of 6 or so on the weekend, I will close the windows, but will not hold breath, since some weather pages are calling for highs of 25 on either Friday or Saturday. Mind, they're also saying rain on those days, and maybe it will. Weather stats seems to think it didn't rain between the 3rd and the 13th, and I'm sure it did. Or else the seedlings are just very sticky, and are sticking to my wheels for no good reason.

Physio gives me balance exercises to do, and I can't do them. Or at least, not in stocking feet. 

So got up and got my aching self down to the lab which was virtually empty at 10:30, so in and out in under ten minutes, though four people arrived as I was leaving. Elevator opens on one person heading to the second floor, so I assume it came down to me first. I press button for ground floor, doors close, nothing happens. Sign still says Basement. She presses G again. Nothing. Presses two again. Nothing. Presses Open doors. Nothing. At this point I'd be freaking if alone because I absolutely hate this elevator and its very antsy-making slowness. She jabs Open doors violently, doors open on basement. 'This is the worst elevator in Toronto,' she says, and I agree wholeheartedly. She jabs G, doors close, elevator makes moving noises, which I didn't realize it actually did. Usually I stand and wonder if we're moving at all. Am eventually allowed to exit at G. Too much excitement for before breakfast and meds.

Rollator still wobbles and sticks. Finally figure it's the right front wheel that's out of true. No idea how to get it straight but tighten what I can. Call the repair place who charge $150 for a house call, with any repairs being extra, I assume. Might cost less than that to taxi up to Dufferin and Steeles, but am warned that I might have to leave it there. Which no, can't do. Shall eventually go up to Starkman's to see if their 'tall' models are any taller than mine. Thought about doing it today after massage but by then it was 3:30 and Bathurst is a parking lot any time after 2, and I certainly wasn't up for the walk.

However I did win $20 on my freebie ticket from last week, which helps.

Yes, called doctor's secretary and no she hadn't faxed the req because it wouldn't fax. C. has problems with faxes,  I now recall, and I can't blame her because I can't fax either. Besides, faxes are so last century, why are we still using them at 25 years in? But she sent me a-- well, not a pdf. but a link to a webpage that had the pdf. Which I then sent to both my email accounts, and one of them consented to accept it. Then trotted off to the library where I succeeded in getting into my email (library computers are slooow), telling computer to print my req, waiting for it to print, consulting librarian as to why it wasn't printing etc etc. Because you have to tell the printer your card number before it will print for you, and pay the system money before it will print for you, and then it prints. Yay hooray but boy do I feel like a techno-illiterate Old now. 

However, I have four reqs now which will take me to April '26.

Then went to Sushi on Bloor and had bento with half a litre of wine to soothe my amour propre.

Also someone did remove the Liberal election signs around the neighbourhood, so go Freeland's team, I guess.

Continue with Dzur but yanno, that dinner at Valabar's kind of puzzles me. Either the portions are nouvelle cuisine tiny or geared to American eating habits because by me that's just Too. Much. Food. for any one person. I'd have stopped after the soup and cheese, myself.

Went by the library to return The Baron of Magister Valley because finished and Wilson's Odyssey because didn't start-- too much on plate currently since I seem to be in the middle of a Taltos reread ie Vallista had come in and Tiassa is in transit and I'm still reading Lyorn. Then to tony Korean restaurant because they miss me if I don't show up regularly, and the dollar store for two cheap reading glasses that cost half of Loblaws' totally unsatisfactory pair. As I was about to leave a woman passed by holding the exact twin of my much-loved and never found twice striped cotton shirt. I asked where she'd got it and she said, 'You have to squeeze down that aisle there.' The dollar store doesn't have aisles as such, just very narrow spaces between the racks of clothes. 'Oh,' I said, 'I don't squeeze,' and started for the door again. Only, well, hell, parked the walker where it wouldn't be too much in the way, and squeezed. The shirts aren't as long as the one I own and felt stiffer. But they have, or had, 3Xes which, Pakistani sizes or not, ought to fit me. So I might go back and check them out. Lightweight long-sleeved cotton shirts are exactly what I want in the hot weather.

Then home. Thursday is garden waste pickup and tomorrow is supposed to what else rain. So got gloves and dust pan and removed a bag's worth of last year's leaves from the front planter and walk, also many many twigs and small branches blown off the linden or maybe the other tree, whatever it is. I may be crippled tomorrow: am at the age and in the shape when bending down is not as easy as it was, even for hyper-flexible me. There was much stopping and stretching the lower back which is still as problematic as it ever was. And I had better start doing all those 'how to prevent falls' exercises on tiktok, because I nearly did.  I remain convinced it's at least partly my shoes, great clumping boats that they are. And then got a large heavy duty garbage  bag (which is perfumed, of all things) and a utility knife (forget the proper name for those: the ones where the blade can be snapped off when it gets too dull) and attacked the curtain I had made a quarter of a century ago to block the sun in the study and never used because I didn't have the hardware to mount it. And when I did, the cherry had grown tall enough to block the blinding east sun. So I tried it on the porch, but it blocked too much sun, and has been sitting there for who knows how long, harboring spiders mostly by the look of it. And now it's cut up and ready to go out on Wednesday.

A week after the sakura came out they began to fall, a few petals drifting down here and there this morning. Rain and high winds, both of which we had last night, will do it. Rough winds shaking the darling buds of May as ever.

But at least my tax statement arrived safely so I was able to renew my dental plan. After faffing around with the 'renew through your bank account' thingy, which wanted info my bank card doesn't have, I found the 'renew here' button. Then it occurred to me to check out renewing my health card online, because now it expires on my birthday and not five years after the last renewal ie in October '26. Done out of nine months of coverage. Well yes, I can, but the photo needs to be less than five years old. It is, obviously, because it was taken in October '21. But it's also distressingly ugly, so maybe I should do it in person with a new photo? But December is an antsy time to go anywhere, especially down to Bay and College. However look! A new centre just north of Bloor and Yonge. I could transit that one. Check how their bookings work: and dear God, the first opening is a month away in June. Remind me in October to book a spot in November so I avoid the Christmas dead days and the winter weather.

Classic May topos, cream-coloured cherry blossoms against a creamy grey sky. It's really too cold for open windows but I left the study one open a bit and smelled, first time this year, Outside inside my house. Woodsmoke, unless it's barbecue, and petrichor. 

There's a clump of daffodils in the median between me and NNDs. They must have planted them last year because for sure I didn't, and somehow the squirrels have left them alone, as I think they have not my tulips. Or maybe it's just been too cold for tulips.

If it will stop raining and my elbows were up for it, I might attack some of the vines overgrowing the back fence.  They're looking encouragingly dry and dead except at the very back by the garage. Would be nice if they were, because they grow worse than weeds.

Rain all day amid the flowering everything. Whether it was Tuesday's weather shenanigans or just age, I had an awful night Tuesday with odd aches and panicky dreams and the by now chronic charley horse on waking. My physio suggested I try magnesium just as my s-i-l said she'd taken magnesium for her aches to excellent effect. So I took some last night. Result, no cramps and an oddly unachy day in spite of the precipitation.

Recycle pickup came at its usual by now mid-morning and as it was raining, I got dressed earlier than I wanted and went out to rescue my bin, which already had an inch of water in it. The green bin was closed but also, when I went to check it, still locked. The garbage guys hadn't taken it-- but equally, all the other green bins on the street were closed and locked. At least they weren't forgetting me personally this time, but I didn't know if they'd be back. Decided to leave it for the moment and the trucks came back around 5. No idea if this is the new order of things. We will see next week.

My tax refund appears to swell my utility bank account, so I am flush for now.

Well, could have been worse, says Eeyore, anent both the election and the severe thunderstorm warning this afternoon. It monsooned briefly and still steams out there but a cold front is due this evening to return us to regular spring.

As for the election, I still maintain that an economist is exactly who you want navigating the country through an economic crisis, and not a career politician with a record of voting against ohh free school meals and benefits to tide people over COVID in the early days of lockdown. I see people in Conservative districts wailing about the end times woe woe what will become of us now? No idea why they think this is a disaster unless they actually wanted to become the 51st state. Which I begin to think maybe they did: cf Poilievre's campaign manager in her MAGA hat. 

I have no expectations of Carney otherwise. Hope has been deferred too often in the aftermath of other countries' elections,  like the UK and France. But get us intact through the next four years, Mark, and I shan't complain.

Very first white tips open on the cherry tree. Tuesday's heat should bring everything out, though the neighbourhood view is already filling up nicely with forsythia and magnolia and green mist about the branches. But think I will bump the thermostat up tonight because it still gets cold enough in the evenings that I don't want to shower so I go to bed, not grubby because sponge offs, but not really clean.

What I never quite realized in my however many years of season watching (can't tell you when it began but very likely post-Japan) is that March to June is when the days go longer, because I never really notice it until May, and then I think the days stay long until the end of July. Which isn't true but feels like it is. Anyway, it's now light after 8 in the evening, so will note that for now.

Election tomorrow. Fingers crossed tightly. In my little bubble of course it's all Liberals or death, but there are Conservative bubbles who think Liberals are the devil and Poilievre is our only hope.

Couch potatoing, plus pizza yearnings, plus grape wine drinkard-ing, and there is no health within us. I could at least have walked over to the pizza place but the weather page was saying rain and thundershowers, neither of which happened, so I ordered in and waited and called to the delivery guy as he was heading across the street because of course they had the address wrong. Some day I shall exercise, and maybe even garden, but that day is not today.

Returned a book to the library then went to check the holds shelf-- because I missed a hold on a book I wanted when a system glitch didn't tell me the hold was in, so now I no longer trust the system. Then as I was returning, saw out the corner of my eye a book entitled Ghostland, about the author and 'ghosts' in the English countryside as encountered in reading and (more than I'd have thought) on TV. Which is pretty much up my alley especially as he plunges right in with M.R. James's Lost Hearts.  Didn't know that was set in the fenland but will believe it. Especially because of an unpleasant encounter with a John Gordon novel set in what I assume was the same area (yes: The House on the Brink set in East Anglia, with bonus possible! bog people and someone experiencing a sensation 'like graves opening', which phrase has haunted me for decades.) Of course he then segues into the more congenial Green Knowe books. Even though the original Green Knowe is also haunted.

This is fun even though I have to skip over all the bird and flora detail that goes right past a Canuck city child's knowledge. Brent geese? Grasshopper warblers? I can't recognize even our own urban birds by their calls though I think the pew-pew-pew birds are supposed to be cardinals? Anyway, in short order we're back to the master of the unheimlich, Robert Aickman,  evidently also a fenman. Really, one wants again to quote Auden's stricture on flat places: Oh God, please, please don't ever make me live there.

Not helped that my other reading is The Haunting of Hill House because I've never read it and should. But. But. Jackson's stories are often enough allegories like Kafka, and as C.S. Lewis correctly said, rot him, if you know the plot of an allegory you don't need to actually read it. So I'm tempted just to wikipedia it. Or return to Paarfi, now that I've refreshed my memory of what Adron's disaster was. Or maybe finish Broken Homes: but I still can't envisage Skygarden and anyway-- well, yeah.

When the weather page says 90% chance of rain at 4 p.m. one should not look at the placid grey sky and the dry sidewalk, think Guess they're wrong, and trundle over to Fiesta for crackers. Because the heavens opened as I came out and everything got soaked. That was yesterday. Today was sun and bulgogi at my tony Korean restaurant, which was twice as much rice as I wanted. I did finally ask for a fork, so if I go back I needn't worry too much because now they know. But I still spill stuff. Age sucks.

Won't talk about the piggery I indulged in over Easter which means I won't be weighing myself any time soon. But the Pour Boy restaurant sent me some elegant and manageable chopsticks with that pad thai on Sunday and I may keep them for use elsewhere.

And my tax return was delivered to the accountants in good order so I may assume it was filed in good order, though the Easter disruptions mean they haven't even cashed my cheque yet. They will, Oscar, they will.

An interlude of Fool's Spring saw temps soar to near 20/68 yesterday and stick to 15/ 60 sorta, overnight. My house holds cold as it holds heat when either gets in so I went to bed bundled in wool and feathers, and then sweated in the wee hours as, I presume, the heat got in. But today, though grey, was also blowy so I wore a jacket out when I went up to get more wine. At least it wasn't as spring-stinky as yesterday, so I limped down to the Essex school advance poll. This involves passing Fiesta Farms whence the local playwright had just been braving the Only Day This Weekend To Shop!!!! crowds. 'It's like a cocktail party in there,' she groaned. It was like a cocktail party outside as well, people shmoozing all over the sidewalk while parked on their rollators smack dab in the middle. 

However, once past those sidewalk blocks, the polling station was pretty empty and colour-coded as to substations, which is an excellent idea. Pollster thanked me for having my ID ready and this time I remembered to lower my mask so they could check same. Anyway, that's done. 

Temps will drop to 4C/ 39F tonight. Should do a wash and hang in the furnace room because I will need the heat on tonight. Or perhaps not: the warmth has got into the house and won't leave unless the right wind blows from the right direction.

Purolator succeeds in delivering me my tax return in a timely fashion and I succeed, I hope, in Fedexing it to Scarberia-- on a blowy chilly Novemberish afternoon--  so accountant can submit online and I can get my hefty refund in a timeliesh fashion as well. (Should you be wondering, the French for Misdirected is Malacheminé.) Not a patch on the people who file in February(!) but they, I assume, have only their work income to declare. And then I can reapply for the dental program which I profoundly hope will be still around after the election. Someone on a local forum was complaining that the advance polls were all happening on the Easter weekend. Diddums. It's not like Easter is one of the High Holidays that requires 24 hour attendance-- and even if it were, there's like four whole days and what's so special about Saturday or Monday, I ask me. Granted, Monday is a school holiday in lieu of Sunday, is how the advance poll can operate out of a school, but so, bring your kids with you.

SND put her garbage out early so I assumed she was off visiting family out west, but I just heard Oliver barking in the back yard.  So maybe she is and he's with a sitter. But I saw him doing zoomies about his yard late last night; crap, what's that thing darting about in J's yard?? (Is raccoon and coyote mating season, so yanno, worry.) But was just Ollie getting his energy out.

I've put out a full recycle bin because two weeks ago snowed, as well as what I've been intending to do for a while: half a bag of indifferent BL manga. Many more bags to go. Downsizing is not fun.

Reading this week was Murderbot 2&3 which apparently I bought in kindle. Probably the perennial Inspector Littlejohn, and the seemingly perennial High Vaultage which nears its end, fortunately. Then can start on the last Paarfi of which I have no expectations at all.

Accountant's minion emails me Saturday that my return is ready and I can pick it up in outer Scarberia at my convenience. I email her back that I'm near as dammit housebound-- only a slight exaggeration-- and can she courier it down to me, and she says Sure.  So now is to wait its arrival. I have a Fedex sticker on the door which I believe obviates the need for a signature, but I'd still be happier if I was in when it arrived. Porch pirates have been sighted in the neighbouring side streets. Is supposed to rain tomorrow, so I can stay in, but I have physio on Tuesday.

Found that I bought Artificial Condition from kindle at some point so I reread that, because High Vaultage is slooow. Must get myself the Kobo app so I can buy stuff from them. But not soon because in addition to those tops, I bought the latest Points in dead tree from Indigo. This after buying it in e-form from the press, which said they wouldn't ship books to Canada. But it reads all wrong in ebook, so I suppose I'm glad to have it in a congenial format. However that and my cell phone exhausts the discretionary spending limit on my card. If I'm getting a refund on my taxes then I shall buy Murderbot 3 and all the Ferrars that Kobo has and Kindle doesn't; but if not, then it's belt-tightening time. Trump's flip-flops make it a bad idea to take money from my portfolio any time soon.

Yesterday rained and then snowed, flurries and snow showers that fortunately didn't stick. Today just rained, and probably blew as well in its April fashion, so I stayed in and read. Knees hurt, especially the operated one, which may be tendons not liking the weather or fallout still from banging it however many weeks ago. Cooked up the chicken carcasses yesterday and made chicken and rice soup with them today. Even with rice, soup doesn't fill me up, but too bad. 

Really want wine and really shouldn't have it, since sinuses are doing their April allergy thing. 

I had a long entry written about the chicken I was cooking last night- an Ina Garten recipe, the one with lemon and thyme in the chicken cavity on a bed of veggies, which does make the house smell marvellous. But then my tablet turned itself off and on again and of course DW's auto-save doesn't. So I went and compiled that 100 Influential Books meme, cudgelling brains for things from childhood and adolescence and forgetting obvious ones like Tolkien and The Three Musketeers. And then my tablet ran out of battery so I didn't post it anywhere.

As for the chook recipe,  note that no, do not cut the veg large because the carrots and potatoes and even some of the parsnips will not be done, not if you have a scant four pound bird that cooks for only an hour. Maybe a larger bird would work, but Happy Hen chickens cost so I got the smallest size. (Happy Hen aka Rowe Farms also does rotisserie, somehow larger bird for less money, but home-cooked is better.) And whatever my meat thermometer said about done-ness at the thigh, the breast today looked raw, so I gave it another half hour. Also no, there is no gravy to be had either: juices all go into the veg, which I don't mind but won't work if I ever cook this for someone else.

Today did not rain, for a change, so I took a library book back just for the walk, and as well I did, because my branch will be closed Wednesday and Thursday so they can finally fix the sliding doors that stopped sliding yonks ago. Bits of greenery start to spring up in the neighbourhood yards and someone down Barton has a whole yard of snowdrops, hidden by their evergreen fence. Had vague thoughts of raking some of last year's leaves out of the median strip between me and NND so our own shy buds have room to come up, but I believe you're supposed to leave the ground cover in place for the insects-is-it? to do their thing. And anyway, they're saying snow again this week.

Usual first of the month grow-up ie weigh one kilo more than a week ago and no idea why, unless it's not drinking enough water and drinking too much wine.

George Bellairs is all fine and good and easy to read on the phone, and the library has a lot of him, but either the man was a flat-out misanthrope or else it's that odd English middle-class thing of sneering at what the middle-class defines as The Vulgar, which somehow is never found in the true upper classes, I-wonder-why. We won't even start on physiognomy is destiny and ugly features as inevitable indication of ugly- or vulgar- natures. And what the hell is a fine brow or a good chin anyway? aside from indicating that their owner is not one of The (vulgar) Masses.

More rain tomorrow plus high winds so have cancelled physio. OTOH Fedex did deliver my tax stuff in good time so I can cross off that particular worry.

Peak couch potatodom achieved. Rain all day but downtown microclimate seems to have preserved us from the freezing rain. My weather app is set to Midtown and said ice, but I belatedly remembered that Midtown is probably a good deal north of me ie up the hill where the weather changes so that when I have rain, my sister at Davisville snows. Did put on boots and hooded winter jacket to check if the shiny pavement was slippery or just wet, and objective test said wet, so now I am back on the sofa with Amongst Our Weapons (and the slow-moving Mexican Gothic and the antsy for no good reason The Art of Vanishing, neither of which I much want to read.) Rain has made joints ache so I have accomplished nothing all day bar cooking up the thawed chicken breasts for salad tomorrow. And the tarragon I got from Loblaws was off, so even that was a bit of a failure.

(How can tarragon be off? No idea, but it smells moldy. Loblaws is not to be trusted but Fiesta didn't have any.)

Returning from my jaunt down to the library and then to Sushi on Bloor-- which now has drinkable wine and a very nice waitstaff who helped me out of the restaurant's double doors-- I watched a garbage truck roll up the street and stop. Oddly, because pick-up was at 9:30 this morning. But this was mattress pick-up: guy lets down the back, takes what I would call a marlinspike or possibly a billhook, not that I've ever seen either, hooks it into mattress and hooks mattress up into the back of the truck.  Repeat two or three times (while the fourth car waiting behind him honks in that witless and arrogant Torontonian driver fashion: if you don't know when garbage days are, buddy, stay off the streets) then off we go. Enlightening, but I wonder at the specialisation. When do they pick up other furniture?

The quondem New Generation storefront is now a vegan sushi place that was on the other side of the street. I have absolutely no idea what a vegan sushi place can possibly serve, let alone how it stays in business, let alone how it moves into a spot that closed because the rent was too high. Can only think it's a money laundering outfit.

Otherwise have stocked up on wine to wait out the rainy next four days. Have also stocked up on masses of root veg because the ginger stew I made with same before turned out to be most tasty when it had time to age.

Another crise de conscience. My preferred organic breakfast cereal is made in Canada but with American products. Do I support the Canadian company but also the American farmers? Because there doesn't seem to be any wholly Canadian cereals available (odd) except for oats. So maybe it's back to the overnight oats for me. (There are cereals from England available but they seem to be sugar-heavy. Mostly granola.)

However I got myself over to Bathurst in spite of the winds of spring that made climbing the broken curbing at Dupont a dicey proposition, and John's Shoe Repair can indeed resole New Balances, even if John himself can't be arsed to help a customer wrestling with his door, a walker, and the winds of spring. So will get shoes resoled but not any time soon. Especially since we've been snowing and sleeting yesterday and today and have a freezing rain warning for the weekend.

Laundromat was achieved so now I have underwear, or will when they finish drying. Hanging on the drying frame which is hanging from the living room chandelier, because I still don't trust me on the basement stairs. Also have face cloths and hand towels because I snagged a dryer before the guy with a good six bags of laundry could grab them all. No, I'm being unkind. He only used four dryers and there was no one else there.

Recurring nightmare last night, only this time the person I cut open and dumped into a non-existent pond was my father. Woke from that, was having nothing to do with the 6 a.m. aftertaste so went back to sleep and dreamed something pleasanter which I have now forgotten. Was still logey when I got up and had infinite trouble with the day's Squaredle. Could be allergies starting, I suppose. 

Being in a funk because of All That, I bought a litre and a half of white wine yesterday, and have gone back to 40 minute sessions with the bike machine. I think the exercise is probably more efficacious than the wine, and if allergies really are starting, I should keep the wine for cooking with.

The Shadow Book of Ji Yun is proving to be great fun. These are trufax! stories of things Ji Yun himself witnessed, or his relatives and friends. Already we've had an experience of Immortals confronting human beings in what the translators point out is very like an alien abduction, and a pair of stranded merchants in Tibet being rescued by what sounds like a group of yeti. There's also the father of Ji Yu's tutor, an inventor who constructed something similar to Pratchett's Gonne. The Chinese had firearms by this time but they were all single shot muskets. This man devised a repeating revolver that could shoot 28 times in a row. He was about to send it off to the military authorities but dreamed that night of an Immortal who chided him for creating such an instrument of death, so he swore never to make another and to keep this one hidden. A pity, I think.

Ji's childhood friend remembered his past life but forgot it bit by bit after the age of five: "...up to the age of four years he had very clear memories of his previous life-- including specific events,  friends,  and family members. But around the age of five these memories began to slip away-- tree by lover by co-worker-- until, in a few years, he only recalled that his former life's hometown was close to Chang-shan village..."

Ji himself, when a child, was able to see in the dark as if it were daylight "in a windowless and lampless house in the dead of night" but also started losing the ability about the age of seven. From time to time the 'light at night' ability would return but only for a split second.

One night he dreamed that his dead servant, who had been 'criminal and treacherous' in life, came to him and said, "I humbly offer my services to my master who has been conscripted into the army three thousand miles away." Next day one of his students gave him a black puppy, who went with Ji when he was exiled shortly thereafter, became very attached to his master during his time at the borders, and was indefatigible in guarding the baggage on their return. I don't know if Ji Yun suspected he was for the chop when he had that dream of being conscripted, but he was certainly convinced that the dog was his rascally servant come back to make amends.

Tuesday night's insomnia would have come in handy last night for the lunar eclipse, but I was yawning by midnight and in bed shortly thereafter. So I missed a red moon, but the pictures don't look all that spectacular. Thus I don't repine. Pollution has the same effects.

But my doctor came through with the heavy-duty (for certain values of same) muscle relaxants (ativan it ain't) I asked for yesterday, which stops the muscle twinges for a bit. Then my copy of The Shadow Book of Ji Yun appears five days early, and one of my lens orders is in the mail so I will have lenses for six weeks, by which time I hope the 90 day order will have come in from the other (cheaper therefore, of course, popular hence often back-ordered) B.C. company. So I call myself content.