I was playing an online game with my friend Paul (in Albany, NY), when his in-game avatar suddenly paused, then told me that he thought part of his chimney had fallen. Again. He left the computer to go check it out, so I waited for him. Then his computer abruptly disconnected from the server, as opposed to gracefully logging out. That's not a good sign. He're hoping Paul's century-old McMansion is still standing!

This happened at about 11 PM, which was around when I intended to quit myself. Dad's going to physical therapy tomorrow morning at eight, and I didn't feel like shoveling the driveway at seven. The weather forcast was for up to four inches of snow overnight, so I figured I'd take off whatever there was at the moment, and Dad's Subaru Forester should be able to plow overtop of what was left by morning.

I write this having just returned from shovelling off the seven inches of wet snow. And I'm not just guessing seven inches, I took a ruler with me and measured at five different places. Even more annoying is, it's still snowing at a brisk rate. I expect that I'll have to get up and do it again in the morning anyway.

UPDATE: I did indeed shovel another two inches of snow at 7:30 AM.

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Yesterday Katy went to the vet to get three immunization boosters. When she got home, she was not happy at all. I think "pouting" would be an appropriate description- she'd refuse to look at humans, turned her back at every opportunity, and generally was upset that the same people that provide food had subjected her to this indignity.

While Mom was taking the cat to the vet, I was replacing some outlets downstairs. Naturally the first one was easy, but the next one required me to run a replacement wire into a junction box in the basement. Easy sauce, just a dozen feet of wire, no fishing required, it'll take ten minutes.

Except that the box had rusted during the flood, to the screws that tightened the wire collars were pillars of iron oxide. First a spent a half hour fighting the screws, then I cut off the wires, pried the box out of the wall (an adventure in of itself, as it was well secured), and put in a new box. Most annoying. There's still more work to be done, though, as the light switch to the dining room is by the back door, which would be helpful if you're the sort of person who only enters the dining room from the back door. Also, there's a plug nearby that's connected into a highly-code-violating circuit that I want to replace. (The has a thirty-foot run of wire that uses three-conductor wire, with the two hot wires being for two different circuits, splitting at a junction box. So I'm going to replace that three-conductor wire with two normal two-conductor wires, and two new juction boxes.) [When I count conductors in wire, I'm ignoring the ground. Not that there's plenty of stuff not grounded, too.]

The new outlets I did finish mean Mom can plug her computer into a nearby outlet, instead of running power strips across the floor.

Once I get that last outlet and switch, we can get the dining room wallboards up. Finally having a finished room on the ground floor will be a good thing.

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This afternoon, Mom and I went to the Tioga County Historical Society Museum, just a few blocks away from her house. The current display was called "O, Tannenbaum", and featured scores of small Christmas trees and a couple of dozen wreaths, all decorated by local clubs and businesses. It was a museum fundraiser, as all the trees had bid sheets attached, with the high bidders receiving the trees on December. So some of them were decorated to be artsy and beautiful, and some were decorated by attaching gifts and gift cards and whatnot. I confess I was interested in the one from the local tool shop, but the bidding was already rather high on that one.

When we arrived, there was a violin recital going on, featuring players that looked to be from about nine to twelve. They were... enthusiastic. Not that I was a virtuoso either, and they did seem to be having fun.

The museum was not bad, with some interesting stuff. There was a nicely-preserved surrey from the city's old carriage and wagon works, which was founded in the mid-eighteenth century. The owners retired and sold the works to some new young investors in 1901. That wasn't exactly a good time to be investing in the carriage-manufacturing business, and they apparently went under not long after. Ah well.

There also were a fair number of old portraits from town residents. Interestingly, the best-executed paining they had was the portrait of a local farm-wife, painted by the farmer. It was a much better painting than those done of the local fat cats. But then, farmers had some free time in winter, and painting was a reasonable hobby. Plus he didn't have to finish quickly and take on a new commission to make money.

There also was some memorabilia of old fire halls in one room, including an elaborately carved and gilded chandelier from company number five, which no longer exists. (The town is still served by hose company #1 and ladder company #4). The chandelier couldn't have been cheap, and Mom wondered pointedly whether whoever was paying for the firemen's upkeep approved of such ostentation in the fire hall. Maybe it was a private gift from a grateful rich guy.

Sadly, I have no pictures of any of it, as I left my camera at home. Flash photography was forbidden, so I'd have also needed a tripod anyway. Or maybe a monopod, since some museums don't like people blocking traffic with tripods either.

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I baked up some snicker-doodles today. I've made them many a time throughout the years, including at least four times in the last two months. So I just looked at the recipe for the ingredients, and ignored the procedural instructions.

Annoyingly, the recipe writers didn't include the salt in the list of ingredients. Instead, in the narrative, it says "Sift together flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, and ½ teaspoon salt." That's the only mention of salt.

As it wasn't in the ingredients list, I overlooked it. I mixed the dough, warmed the oven, got out a cookie sheet, and tasted the dough. "Hmmm," thought I. "Tastes funny." I took another sample. Still not right. I pondered it over for a few moments, until I realized that I'd not added any salt at all.

The total volume of the other ingredients was about eight cups, so a half teaspoon of salt comprises 1/768 of the ingredients by volume. But that missing 1/768 was clearly noticeable.

I didn't think I could just add salt and remix the batch, it wouldn't get distributed evenly. I could have doubled the recipe and added twice the salt to the second batch, then mixed the batches as thoroughly as possible, but that was a heck of a lot of work, and I'd have to go rooting around the basement to see if Dad had a big-enough mixing bowl somewhere for it to work. I decided to bake them up salt-less and see how it worked.

The answer is, not well. They are cookies, and they do taste sweet, but they just aren't delicious. I will probably eat them instead of throwing them away, but I'm not munching them down with the enthusiasm I normally show for fresh cookies.

A few minutes after the last of them was out of the oven, the phone rang. Dad's manager and his coworker with the neighboring office had decided to pay him a surprise visit after work. Unfortunately, they went to Dad's previous house; the new owner was apparently surprised indeed. They had to give up the surprise and called, asking for directions.

They soon arrived, and we all had a nice talk, commiserating over prior operations. The office neighbor had prostate cancer a few years ago and a hernia fixed just two months ago, so he had plenty of tales to relate. The manager had also had his share of medical issues, although nothing quite so dramatic. Dad mentioned that I had just baked cookies, so I brought out a plateful, somewhat reluctantly. They each took a cookie, ate it, pronounced it delicious, then avoided the other cookies like they were dipped in poison.

Then we talked games, after they noted the rather large collected thereof on Dad's shelves. (The large book collection was not as noteworthy, as I presume his has a similar hoard in his office.) I pulled out Set and Chrononauts, and our two guests took notes about them, as they both have game-fanatic children. Their kids are big on Settlers of Catan, which is enough to tell me that they have good taste.

While the socialization was fun, they were officially visiting to find out Dad's health status, apparently because some rumors were flying around the office. Word had been that Dad was at death's door, and they were pleased to see him on the mend.

It was a lovely visit, and they were clearly work friends of Dad. Still, I noted with some amusement that they were clearly under orders not to talk about actual work, but couldn't resist asking how to test a particular group of samples that had arrived at the lab. Dad said something on the order of "Well, if I was there, I'd use ring-on-ring with a strain gage," and they both nodded and visibly took a mental note.

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Dad's first session of cardiac rehab was today, with a 9:00 AM appointment. The clinic is quite close to Sullivan Park (where he works), so the plan is to go to the tri-weekly 8:00 AM session then proceed to work, once he starts working again. Rehab may last three months, so he intends to be working well before he's done.

Dad did the driving there, but he asked me to come along. While I'm always pleased to help out my Dad, the first session was kind of long. As in, we didn't get home until 2:15 PM. I was getting a mite bit peckish by the time we got home and pulled out some leftovers for lunch.

His regular sessions shouldn't last nearly so long; the time today was taken up with a long interview with the head nurse, discussion of his at-home excercise and diet, and showing him how to hook himself up to the portable EKG he'll be wearing as he works out. Then it was some basic excercises to get a baseline idea of where he's at, both from watching him and from looking at the heart monitor's output.

Tomorrow I leave rather early to drive up to Buffalo to talk to the advisors. I could go tonight and try to scrounge some floorspace overnight from one of my buddies, but I think I'll be more comfortable staying here overnight. I wonder if my suit still fits? Wouldn't hurt to dress up a little bit.

UPDATE: Talked on the phone to the head advisor, and we changed plans to a phone conference instead. Apparently this first meeting was mostly going to involve handing me a giant stack of paperwork to fill out. So instead I'll print the paperwork myself, and we'll meet in-person when I have it completed.

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Dad and I got our hair cut. This is a rather trivial detail, but it's his first haircut since his heart attack, so I consider it a welcome sign of normalcy. Also, he's now planning to return to work on December 18th. I guess he'll work for two days, then the whole place shuts down for Xmas. He picked that date because he's got an appointment with his GP on the 17th, and he'll need a note from the doctor to get back to work. That's apparently an insurance company requirement, as they want to make sure (a) he hasn't just been vacationing in the Caribbean, and (b) he's not going to keel over at his desk.

I got in touch with one of my favorite professors at UB (Professor Tutzauer), and am flattered that he remembered me. He's been bumped up to head of the Comm Department now. Anyway, he forwarded my emails to the senior departmental advisor, who sent me an Application for Reentry that I must fill out. The form "recommends" a meeting with the advisors, so I'm going to go up to Buffalo on Friday for a sit-down, assuming that they aren't all booked-up that day. The reentry form suggested that it be submitted by December 1st, but at least it wasn't a hard deadline. And if it's too late, then I just have to see if Penney's will hire me until the fall semester. (Or Schweizer Aircraft, for that matter.)

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Dad's been cleared to drive, and his diaphragm is very slowly recovering. So all looks well on that front.

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Mom arrived on schedule at the Binghamton airport. Apparently all four flights she was on for this trip arrived on-time. That's got to be a record!

We're back at her place now, and her cat is being much more sociable than normal. Cats are independant, but still get lonely when Mom's away for a week.

Katie still chases her hind leg, too. Dogs chase tails, but Katie chases her leg. *shrug*

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My big sister has hosted the family Thanksgiving dinner at her place for the last nine years, at three different locations. This year we broke with tradition, and hosted at my father's place. With him still recovering, we decided to spare him travel. Plus, Sis lives in the middle of nowhere.

Attending were Dad and I, Sis and BIL and their daughter, and her in-laws. A turkey was deep-fried out in the back yard, we had three pies, rolls, casserole, mashed potatoes, and a few other items I'm undoubtedly forgetting. Annoyingly, there was a prominently missing item: ice cream. The night before, I'd mixed up some, and had lots of ice stored up. But my ice cream maker is no where to be found. I wonder if I might have given it away in a previous move. While Dad does have a maker, it's hand-cranked, and the only grandchild present is only 3.5, not yet up to the task. And I wasn't about  to crank it myself for an hour. Perhaps I'll obtain a new ice-cream maker at the holiday sales, although I suspect it's not one of the home appliances traditionally given at Christmas.

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Got a letter today from the SUNY Albany undergraduate admissions committee. After reviewing my application, they have declined to offer me admission to their University, but feel confident I will find success elsewhere blah blah blah.

So I guess on Friday I'll be calling up UB. I wonder if Ms. Ford, the Comm Dept secretary, still remembers me? I never formally withdrew from UB, so I am hopeful I may be able to just sign up for classes again without reapplying.

I'm feeling a bit down right now. I give it a week until my ego returns to its typical titanic size.

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