I had an aggravating day on Tuesday. My iPad died, which is not the end of the world but annoying as all heck. It's currently at the local Rapid iPhone Repair shop and hopefully they can bring it back to life. I'm hoping it's something simple like a battery that needs to be replaced. I am missing playing Wordscapes with my team - they are all mostly a family group based in Michigan and it's just a sweet, wholesome time playing with them.

After the iPad died, I spent a long time Googling trying to find out how I might be able to resurrect it. At some point I realized I needed to eat (getting hangry) but I didn't want to eat real food so I thought I'd make a protein shake. The little mixer I had been using decided to die in solidarity with the iPad. It worked the day before, this day - nothing.

But that was OK! When Best Son gifted me a fancy new Cuisinart food processor, I bought a fancy blender attachment to use with it so I could cut down on the number of kitchen appliances on my counter. After transferring my protein drink to the blender, I pushed the buttons and ... nothing. It wasn't dead - the buttons on the base lit up but the blender wouldn't blend. I tried reseating it several times, pulled out the manuals for both and tried to troubleshoot but I couldn't get it to work.

Thank goodness I'm a slacker and hadn't brought the old blender to the thrift store yet. I finally had my protein shake, which I didn't even want at that point and was getting settled into a fine old grump when a storm rolled in.

Arizona has a summer monsoon season and, in the 80s, when I first moved here, the summer storms would come regularly. They would blow in, rain hard for a bit, then dissipate. The summer storms are a lot less reliable these days due to climate change and urban heat domes but this was a proper summer monsoon. Just listening to the drumming rain and smelling the desert rain smell (petrichor) brought a peacefulness. Just what I needed after all the aggravation.

In the midst of Googling iPad repairs and figuring out blender issues, I found myself looking up gemlogs and also remembering the cool screensaver CDs that I had back in the day. That's usually how my mind works - issue needing attention = brain throwing up all kinds of distractions. Best Son says this is classic ADHD. I've never been diagnosed but sometimes I feel like I'm a walking case of "tell me you have ADHD without saying you have it."

Gemlogs were on my mind because fairly recently someone on the 32-Bit Cafe discourse mentioned their gemlog. I had heard of this before and even have GemiNaut on my main laptop. I hadn't looked at it in a while though so, hey, this is a perfect time to not only look at this person's but dive into what it's all about and how to make one and I've been thinking for a while of making an all-text version of my site and maybe this is the way I should go .... (Are you tired from reading all that? I live with my brain 24/7, I'm always busy thinking (like a hamster spinning in his wheel on turbo mode) and I'm tired, too!)

And then the reminiscing of old screen savers led to me trawling through ebay and I'm now the proud owner of these!

I've got Koi Pond installed and running on the main laptop and it's so cool! Pretty music, floaty fish, water sounds. Couldn't get the other 2 to run as is - my compatibility options only go back to Win 7, 8 or XP service pack 3. I'll work on that later. For now I'm happy with the Koi Fish.

Listening

Only listened to one podcast this week but it was a really interesting one. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this series.

The Cat Drug Black Market - This is the first in a 3 part series. It's all about FIP (feline infectious peritonitis), research drugs and getting your cats' meds via Facebook and Chinese suppliers. Also, the connection between this off-label FIP drug and remdesivir, an antiviral used to treat COVID-19.

In a recent blog post, I wrote about finding Hot Sauce by Babymonster, the kind of K-pop I like. This week Best Son shared Owner of a Hot Sauce - Babymonster vs Yes Mashup with me. I'm not always a fan of mashups but this one works!

Reading

I read 2 novellas this week. The first one was Lois McMaster Bujold's The Adventure of the Demonic Ox. I just love the Penric and Desdemona books and this one did not disappoint, except in its length. I always want more!

The second one was recommended to me by Best Son, A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck. This is a psychological horror novella and, while it was short, it did pack quite a punch. It starts off with the main character dying and finding himself in the Hell of a religion he hardly knew, much less followed.

Fairy tales and retellings are my absolute jam and I'm currently reading Gregory McGuire's, Mirror, Mirror a version of Snow White set in 16th century Italy. Our Snow White is a young girl named Bianca and the Evil Queen is ... Lucrezia Borgia? I'm almost halfway through this book and enjoying the heck out of it.

Watching

Sharks are everywhere but I did not know they were around Seattle! I watched this cool documentary The Mysterious Sixgill Sharks of Seattle this past week.

My Babylon 5 viewing continues! I last watched season 2, episode 9, The Coming of Shadows. While I love the show, I can't help but think of how cursed it also was. So many of the actors died at a fairly young age. Richard Biggs (44, aortic dissection), Andreas Katsulas (59, lung cancer), Michael O'Hare (60, heart attack), Jerry Doyle (60, complications from chronic alcoholism), Mira Furlan (65, West Nile virus), Stephen Furst (63, complications of diabetes), Jeff Conaway (60, pneumonia with sepsis). Before someone says, hey, a lot of these people were in their 60s, that's not young! It's all in your perspective. I'm 56!

That's about it for this week. There are going to be more posts next month - I'm doing Blaugust! I already blog regularly but there are always some little things that never make it into the weekly wrap ups. So, this is my chance to get them all out! I don't have a set goal of how many posts I intend on writing - currently I have 15 thoughts jotted down in my notebook. We'll see!