I have finished most of my new-computer tasks; all were easy. I plugged in my hub (which adds several USB ports for plugging other things into) and my new keyboard, did my first backup (so simple!), and formatted my external hard drive for the Mac. Everything that had become painfully laborious on my PC is now fast and easy.
I gave away my old mouse and keyboard, and now just have cables, the PC itself and the monitor to get rid of. I’d love it if someone came and took the monitor, in particular, so I don’t have to schlep it downtown. I think I can get the PC to the recycling place on my bicycle, strapped to the rack, but the monitor would require a cab.
Hammett had another urinalysis today. I’ll get the results on Monday. As I suspected, he has lost a bit of weight, five ounces in the past month or so. He has been, in effect, on a diet, because there is so much water mixed with his food and because I can’t leave food out all the time because he has to be hungry at pill-taking time, so that he’ll eat some food with it.
However, he seems happy and full of energy. In fact, he’s up to new forms of mischief lately, so maybe this is actually a better weight for him, though he looks awfully little to me.
If his urine concentration is OK, I’ll ask Dr. Press if I can stop giving him the glucosamine, so I can leave food out all the time, or if I can stop putting so much water in his food.
I’ve passed another milestone on the long road to maturity: I’ve acquired a waste receptacle for my bathroom. Why, in no time, I’ll have to decide what I’d like to be when I grow up and what college to go to!
Formerly I had been using a small paper bag, which I balanced on a towel bar so Hammett wouldn’t get into it, but I was finding that my ancient toilet was balking a bit at the clumps of cat litter and pee and realized I would need to put them in the trash instead, and as long as I was doing that, I should put cat poop there, too, since it really shouldn’t go into the water supply. Litter box contents apparently should not go into the compost bin.
A paper bag was not going to suffice for all of that, so I got a beautiful chrome flip-top trash can for about $20 at the hardware store. Rainbow has biodegradable liners that fit nicely inside.
In the kitchen, I’m still using a plastic bag which sits in a wad under the sink when not in receiving mode, but I may get a similar (larger) trash can for the kitchen plus biodegradable liners.
I took my scissors from home, my scissors from work, my old cable knife from when I worked in construction at PG&E, and my beloved Wusthof to Jivano today. It was a beautiful morning, and so nice to see the sun.
The main room of his shop is about 14 by 20 feet, painted a dark yellow. He has several large plants, many of his own artworks on the wall, and hundreds and hundreds of old knives, scissors, church keys, and other handy, mostly pointy, metal things crammed into various containers, including several vintage items.
Jivano said he couldn’t do much with the Wusthof, as he stresses function over form and doesn’t have a buffer, but said he could sharpen everything for $18 if I gave him 10 or 15 minutes. I took a stroll and returned to find all items presumably improved in function, and a couple noticeably altered in form.
Both pairs of scissors had changed shape, one rather dramatically. That’s OK, even if I have had one of those pairs of scissors since I was about five years old. They were part of my first sewing kit, a gift from my mother, the master seamster. I still have the pincushion, too, and—I just checked—some of the spools of thread. They say “S. S. Kresge” on them.
Use of a grinder had wrought new contours entirely, so if you visit Jivano for sharpening and you don’t want that to happen, say so before you leave for your stroll.
The cable knife had an absolutely beautiful edge on it, and so did the Wusthof. A bit of material had been ground off the shoulder, maybe you call it, of the Wusthof, but so be it. As my father pointed out, though he is pleased I like it so much, it’s just a tool and can be replaced.
(I do know there’s an umlaut in Wusthof; I can’t figure out yet how to get the Mac to do this, especially since I’m not using a Mac keyboard.)
I said to Jivano, “It looks like you did more than eighteen dollars’ worth of work. How about twenty-five?”
“Far out,” he replied.
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