Steven Harper's Blog, page 40

The Death of DC Universe

So DC Universe announced that it's undergoing a transformation.  This is what corporations say when they cut back, and boy, are they cutting back.

Some backstory.  DC Universe didn't turn into the powerhouse streaming service they were hoping for.  (Well, yeah--they barely had anything on there, and new content was spread way, way thin.)  Yeah, they supplemented it with e-comics, but they didn't have =everything= in DC's library available, and it wasn't really enough to bring in the subscribers.

Meanwhile, HBO-Max, another streaming service, has also been struggling.  Even after teaming up with Hulu, they're barely staying aloft.  This is why Warner has decided to stream movies to HBO-Max on the same day they arrive in theaters--they're desperate for subscribers.

Warner, the parent company for both HBO-Max and DCU, decided to fold them together.  All the video content from DC Universe will migrate over to HBO-Max.  DC Universe will be renamed DC Infinity, and turn into a comic book subscription and reading platform.

Why do I bring this up?  Because I signed up for an annual subscription to DC Universe last year.  I got it because the videos are great to watch while I'm on the treadmill, and I like super-hero shows.  It auto-renewed for me in late October: $80.  Now, not even two months into my subscription year, the videos have vanished.  I got no notification, no email, no contact.  Instead, I got a blank screen when I tried to call it up on my Roku.

I went to the web site, and the trumpets sounded and the overly-cheery announcements about the "transformation."  There was nothing about how to cancel a subscription or get a refund.  Which tells me they aren't as enthusiastic as they appear--companies that figure you'll love the new service don't hide this information.

After considerable hunting, I found a place to contact customer service and demand a refund.  A few minutes later, I got an email that said, since I had paid for the subscription through iTunes, I had to take it up with them.  More hunting ensued.  I finally found a link at Apple to manage and cancel a subscription, but there was no option to demand a refund--you could cancel and "Your stuff will be available until December 2021."

Now I was getting pissed off.  Some more hunting finally found a deeply-buried page to demand a refund, but you have to explain, in careful detail, why you deserve one from the almighty.  I put in a polite, hint-of-legal-menace request.  This was followed with an automated "we'll review your claim within 48 hours" promise from Apple.

We'll see what happens.

I doubt DC Infinity will survive. Without video streaming, they'll seriously tank, unless they sharply reduce their subscription rates.  I don't feel much sympathy for them. With Warner Communication standing behind them, they should be an entertainment powerhouse. But they blew it.  Let 'em fry.

comments

Abbreviated Holidays

The pandemic is pulling on the holidays this year.  Everyone in my family has agreed that it's not safe to get together for Yule or Christmas, so we aren't.  It's going to an Abbreviated Holiday.

Today I did some baking.  No-bake chocolate/peanut butter cookies. Rum balls. Haystacks. Fudge.  Chocolate chip cookies (some of which I deliberately burned to a crisp because Darwin likes them that way).  It was a nice way to spend a winter afternoon.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go down to see Aran and Sasha at their place.  We'll stay masked and distant, with a window open to keep air well-circulated.  We'll have dinner (I'm taking picnic food along) and visit a little, and I'll give them their presents. They won't open them, though.  They can keep them out as a Yule decoration and be something to look forward to. They'll also get some cookies.  Just a few.  :)

Kala is having some medical stuff going, and will need some help at her place for a few days.  She's already formed a COVID "pod" with Aran, so he can visit her.  He'll also take some presents and cookies to her.

On Christmas Day, we'll hold a Zoom meeting so we can all open our presents together.  It'll be abbreviated, but no less festive!

comments

Dinah Update

After her surprisingly low-key visit to the vet and her regiment of antibiotics kicked in, Dinah perked up measurably.  She started refusing the soft food (to Dora's eternal joy) and went back to hard food.  She's more alert and active.  I hadn't noticed how much she'd slowed down--the process was gradual--and felt bad that I hadn't taken her to the vet earlier.

We have the difficulty of giving her the antibiotic with the dropper, of course.  I'll sometimes steal up on her while she's sleeping, abruptly pry her mouth open, and squirt it down her throat.  She hates that, of course. I follow it with treats, but still.  Then I mentioned to Darwin a time when I had a sick cat who wouldn't eat.  I ended up smearing wet food on his fur.  He glared at me and licked himself clean.  I kept smearing, he kept licking, and this finally jump-started his appetite.

Darwin tried an experiment.  He squirted Dinah's daily dose of antibiotic on her fur.  She immediately licked every bit of it off.  Brilliant!

So now Dinah gets her antibiotic, she hates us less, and everybody wins.

comments

Dinah and the Vet

It seemed to me that Dinah has been thinner lately, and possibly off her food.  It wasn't possible to tell for sure--she and Dora share feeding space, and Dora pigs right down--but she felt . . . off to me.  I did know that at her last checkup, the vet was concerned about tarter buildup on her teeth and I thought maybe her mouth was bothering her, so she wasn't eating as much.  I started buying her canned food.  This she readily tucked into, though again, it might've been because canned food is a treat rather than out of hunger.  (Dora isn't allowed to have canned food, to her eternal despair.  She watches from an enforced distance while Dinah eats her daily allotment. When Dinah is done, Dora is allowed to lick up the remaining crumbs.  Poor meatloaf kitty can't figure out why she's so neglected.)

In the meantime, I made Dinah an appointment with the vet.  It was a few weeks out, though--the pandemic lowered the number of patients the vet could see in a day.  Nothing for it but to wait--and buy more canned food.

Also in the meantime, I got out the zip-up cat carrier, opened it, and set it next to the cat tree.  Both cats have bad memories of the cat carriers.  The last time we moved them, the news came suddenly, and we didn't have time to acclimate them to the carriers, meaning they were stuffed inside with no preparation--major kitty freakout!  As a result, they both kept their distance this time.  I started dropping Dinah's bedtime kitty treats in and around the carrier every night.  I also took to giving her random treats during the day, but only in the carrier.  That broke Dinah's fear, and within a couple days, she readily hopped inside whenever I shook the treats box.

Today was Dinah's appointment.  I was teaching, so Darwin took her.  He sprinkled some treats inside the carrier, and when Dinah hopped in, he zipped it shut.  Betrayal!  But Dinah took it well.  He later reported that the only problem was that she meowed nonstop in the car.  At the vet's, he unzipped the top of the carrier, and Dinah stepped out, dainty and ladylike, and explored the tabletop with mild interest.

The vet examined her and announced that some of Dinah's gums were swollen and tender and possibly infected.  Her teeth were also badly covered in plaque, and her mouth was almost certainly causing her pain.  Just as I thought.  The vet gave her a shot of antibiotic and an eyedropper bottle with more.  The swelling, he said, would go down and the pain would subside within a day.  However, she needed to come back to get her teeth cleaned under sedation.  (Cha-ching!)  That'll be in January.

At home, Darwin announced that =I= was in charge of giving her the antibiotic twice daily.  Great.  When the time for her first dose came up, I found her sitting on the couch in a half doze.  I filled the eyedropper, put it behind my back, and gently approached.  I petted her and said soothing things like, "Nice, kitty.  Such a good kitty."  And then in a lightning move born from years of practice with cats, I grabbed her head, pried her mouth open, and squirted the antibiotic down her throat. 

Poor kitty!  Betrayed AGAIN!  She fled, upset and outraged.  But then I shook the treats box.  She came right back.  All was forgiven.

Tomorrow . . . more antibiotics . . . more treats . . . more betrayal.  Stay tuned!

comments

The Plague Diaries: Frigid Closing

We finally sold the house in Albion, and today was the much-delayed closing date.  Naturally, after weeks of dry, warm weather, we got snow on the day we actually had a significant drive. 

The roads were sloppy on the trip out.  No biggie.  We arrived at the title company and sat in the car until it was our turn to come inside to sign.  That done, we had to stand outside in the frigid winter breeze to talk to the new owners about the house and things they should know about it.  We got colder and colder, but we couldn't go inside to talk because COVID.  Finally, the title company rep came out with our copies of the paperwork and we were able to leave.

The drive home turned immediately treacherous.  The sun set, the temperature dropped into the low thirties, and the roads were wet from the earlier snow.  We learned the hard way that bridges and overpasses were icing up.  Darwin was driving when we went over a small bridge and the car jerked to one side for a moment before catching its grip again on the other side.  This happened twice, so we cut speed to 45.

Then the train of accidents began.

An accident on this side of the road.  An accident on that side.  An accident over there.  We passed a steady stream of rescue vehicles and their whirling lights.  We passed one accident that must have happened mere moments before we arrived.  One of the cars was upside-down, resting tilted on its windshield next to the median barrier.  Lights and sirens were coming up behind us.

Darwin slowed down again and drove 40 for the rest of the trip.  We made it home all right, but a bunch of people didn't.

comments

Mmmm . . . Sandwich

In addition to the humongous turkey, I bought a spiral ham for Darwin.  A while ago, I bought some ham steaks for cooking, and Darwin ended up munching them down--it's a no-carb food, you see, and he likes it.  He ate the ham steaks right quick, in fact.  An entire ham is way cheaper than a few slices, so I bought one, carved it into chunks, and put the extra in the freezer so he can have as much as he likes.

Anyway, this evening I mentioned to Max and Darwin, "Don't forget that there's a lot of ham in the freezer.  When you finish off a section of it from the fridge, get a new bag to thaw."

"Fried ham," said Max, who hadn't had supper.  "And Miracle Whip. And cucumbers.  That would be a great sandwich right now."

It did sound good.  So what the hell, right?  I sliced up a some ham and set it in puddles of melted butter on a griddle.  While it was frying up, I sliced my home-made brioche and a cucumber.  Thick, sizzling slices of ham in tangy sandwich spread with crisp cucumbers.  It was dee-licious!

comments

The Plague Diaries: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in my family is the usual American deal--the hosting rotates among different households, though since I'm the reigning chef, I host more and more often in recent years.  Discussion of who hosts what are usually conducted by group text.  One person brings it up, touching off a storm of back-and-forth until the issue settled.  This year was shaping up to be no different.

Then the pandemic struck.

In early October, it became clear that COVID-19 wasn't going anywhere.  Infection and mortality rates plateaued, then started to climb again.  I became more and more uneasy about the idea of eating and socializing with upwards of 20 people.  Darwin and I are both over 50 and diabetic, which puts us in the high-risk category.  Other people in my family are high-risk as well.

Finally, I talked to my mother and told her I didn't really want to risk Thanksgiving.  She readily agreed and said she'd been thinking the same thing.  Turned out the rest of my family felt the same way.  And so Thanksgiving was canceled.

A side note: I want shake the people who moan, "Woe is me! We can't POSSIBLY cancel Thanksgiving this year! We HAVE to see our family!  How DARE the government say we can't meet?"  These immature, selfish snowflakes say they can't survive a year without seeing Aunt Betty?  Right.  Meanwhile, most of my family is in medicine.  Every single holiday while I was growing up involved the questions, "Who has to work this year?  Who won't be here?"   Every. Single. One.  We NEVER had a holiday with everyone present.  You can live for ONE YEAR without seeing Aunt Betty.

Thanksgiving wasn't ENTIRELY canceled.  We decided it would be relatively safe to have Aran and Sasha over, since both of them aren't working and mostly stay in their respective apartments all day.  But that was it.

I made an abbreviated menu and ordered the groceries, including a ten-pound turkey.  But store didn't have any ten pounders left, so they gave me a 20-pounder for the price of a ten-pounder.  My attempts at downsizing were sabotaged from the outset.

Then some weird fallout began.  Sasha said he wasn't up to coming.  Then came a twisty accident.  Wednesday evening, Kala locked herself out of her apartment, and she called Aran, who had a spare key.  He drove out to let her in and decided just to spend the night and drive up to our place the next day.  (Kala works from home and is also good about social distancing, so Aran visits her often.)  But on Thanksgiving morning, Kala woke up feeling ill with COVID symptoms.  And Aran had spent several hours at her place.  Sadly, we decided that Aran wouldn't be able to come over, either.

So we ended up with a giant Thanksgiving dinner, the first one in our new home, and only three of us to gather for it.  The food was wonderful, and we counted our blessings aloud.  The cleanup went faster than usual!  (You take your advantages where you can find them these days.)

Meanwhile, we remembered Max had visited Kala about a week earlier, well within the incubation period.  If Kala did have COVID, Max could have been exposed as well, which meant Darwin and I could be.  (See how easily and quickly this stupid thing gets around?)  We had to get tested.

Uneasily, I searched around and discovered the pharmacy just up the street does COVID-19 testing. You make the appointment online.  I made one for me and for Darwin on Saturday.  Max refused to be tested.  I think he was freaking out about the idea of having it.  I didn't push--our tests would suffice, since it would be all but impossible for one of us to get it and not the rest of us.

Saturday morning, Darwin and I drove to the pharmacy drive-up window. I thought someone would come out to administer the test in the parking lot, like it worked at the hospital Darwin and I went to the last time we got tested.  But, nope!  She passed us a set of self-administering tests. We swabbed our own noses, sealed the swabs in little containers, and dropped them in a special box.  Now we're waiting for the results.

Kala and Aran also went for testing.  Yesterday, Kala got her results back--negative.  A major relief.  It's still possible the rest of us could have it, but the odds just dropped significantly.  We're still waiting for our results, though.

And that was Thanksgiving during the pandemic.

comments

Big-Ass Free Turkey

My family agreed--we're only doing in-house Thanksgivings this year because of the pandemic.  So I'm making turkey and fixin's for five instead of twenty. 

Also this week, the Michigan governor announced we're going into semi-lockdown, starting on Thursday.

I realized I needed to do the Thanksgiving shopping.  I also realized the store would be mobbed with pandemic panic shoppers.  Darwin said I should just continue my usual practice--make out an online list and have the store get the order ready for me to pick up.  I don't usually like doing this for holiday dinner shopping because when I'm at the store, I usually remember something I didn't put on the list.  But I did the online thing anyway in this case.

On the list was a turkey.  I asked for one weighing 10-14 pounds.  A couple hours before the order was ready, the store texted me to say they had no 10-14 pound turkeys.  I read an article a while ago that said turkey farmers started this year's batch of turkeys back in the early days of the pandemic, when no one was predicting we'd do reduced Thanksgivings. They hatched lots of big turkeys and few small turkeys, the exact opposite of the eventual demand.  Oops.  I suspect this is why the store didn't have any littler ones.

"Will you accept a 15-20 pound turkey for the price of a 10-14 pound turkey?" they asked.

I replied that I would.  I wasn't as thrilled as you might expect with the idea of getting twice the turkey for the same price, but I wasn't quite.  What are five people going to do with all that turkey??  First-world problems, I suppose.

Darwin went to pick up the groceries this evening while I was in my writers group Zoom meeting.  He got back just as we were finishing up.  Once everything was hauled upstairs, I glanced at the bags.

"Where's the turkey?" I asked.

"It's not in there?" he said.

"How you could you not notice carrying up a 20-pound turkey?" I countered.

The turkey definitely wasn't there.  We checked the receipt.  The turkey was mentioned in the space for substitutions, but instead of listing the price difference, it only said REVIEW.  What the heck did that mean?  That the clerk was supposed to review the order with Darwin?  That the order was supposed to be confirmed?

Additionally, I'd ordered butter.  It was missing, too.

So I called the store.  "We seem to be missing part of our order," I said.  "A box of butter.  And a turkey."

The clerk rummaged around and came back to the phone.  "I think we have it here.  Do you want to come back and get it tonight?"

Why not?  So Darwin and I drove back to the store, where a bemused clerk brought out the turkey.

"How did I miss an entire turkey?" she asked.

"We wondered the same thing," I agreed.  We were actually more eye-roll-y than snarky.  There's a pandemic on, you know.

We got the thing back home and hauled it upstairs, where I checked the weight.

Twenty freaking pounds.  Forty dollars.

Then I had a thought.  The store no longer gives you an itemized receipt with your order, something that annoys both Darwin and me, since this practice makes it harder to verify what you ordered vs. what you got.  But I could check the TOTAL they charged us with the bank.  The total was more than $20 under the store's original estimate.

So we apparently got a big-ass free turkey.

comments

The Pandemic Clamps Down

Here in Michigan, the pandemic is clamping down hard. Hospitals are filling up and predicting they'll be unable to take more patients in just a few days.  Governor Whitmer announced yesterday that we're going back to the restrictions we had last spring. Everyone who can work from home, MUST work from home.  Secondary school buildings are closed.  Elementary school buildings are open if the individual district decides to keep it open.  Restaurants are closed to on-site dining--takeout and curb-side only.  Movie theaters and other gathering places are closed. No public gatherings of more than 10 people.  Private gatherings should be limited to members of two households.  This includes Thanksgiving.

The Wherever School District had already taken its secondary schools to virtual learning only. Elementary schools were closed until last week, when they had in-person instruction for the first time.  But they said if a certain percentage of students or staff tested positive for COVID-19, the individual school would go back to virtual learning.  Three days into in-person learning, TWO elementary schools had to close.  A day later, a third had to close. That's three schools closing in three days.  The board moved up its bi-monthly meeting to tomorrow in order to discuss closing the rest of the elementary schools.  I have the feeling they're going to do it.

I feel I should point out that several school districts around Wherever have been doing in-person learning or hybrid learning (half the students come to school on a given day and spend the other days with distance learning).  A passel of parents bitched and moaned that Wherever had elected virtual learning for all its schools when they opened this fall, and these parents enrolled their children in West Bloomfield and Huron Valley and Novi.  Now it turns out those schools will have to go virtual as well, which means that the parents now have to deal with virtual learning AND the fact that their kids are enrolled in a distant district.  Huh. Who knew?

Already online I'm seeing people who claim that the governor is a despot, that they're going to have Thanksgiving no matter what, that they'll do everything in their power to ignore this.  My normal thought is, "Well, let them get the disease, then," but of course, these people will also spread it to everyone around them, including people who are following the rules.

Weeks ago, my family discussed Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We decided to cancel both.  We can live without them for one year so that we can attend them in the future.  We don't want to say next year, "And we miss our dead loved ones so much" during the Thanksgiving prayer.

The pandemic is getting worse because people aren't taking basic precautions.  It WILL affect you and your family eventually if we don't all act.  Please follow the precautions.

comments

Foot, Locks, and Drama

When Darwin and I closed down the house in Albion, we had to rent storage space for a bunch of stuff.  Our condo here doesn't have a garage or a basement, you see. In late October, we got snow, and I decided it was time to put my bike away for the winter.  Up here, there's no good place to ride a bike, so I keep a bike rack on my car's trailer hitch.  When I want to ride, I pop my bike on the rack and drive down to a trail.  It's not the best arrangement, but it'll do.  For me, a sign that winter has arrived is me taking the bike rack off the car and--now--putting it and the bike into storage.

The day after I took care of this chore, I tripped and fell down the condo stairs, about the last half of them.  I was too stunned to get up for quite some time, and when I finally managed it, I realized my left ankle was badly sprained.  I dosed myself with ibuprofen and even a little codeine and kept it well iced.  I couldn't put any weight on it, so Darwin went out and bought a crutch.  This let me get around, though there was no way I could keep up my usual running schedule.

And then the weather turned.

It went from freezing and cloudy to warm and sunny.  Early summer warm and sunny.  And I was stuck inside.  I felt restless and unhappy.  Nice days in a Michigan November are rare in the extreme, and winters are even worse.  When the weather is good, you want to go out and enjoy it, store it up for the awful months that will arrive any moment.  I regretted putting my bike away.

In a couple days, my ankle healed enough that I figured I could ride, which would be a decent substitute for running.  So I went down to the storage place to drag out the bike and rack.  When I put the key into the padlock and twisted, though, the key snapped like a stick of butter.

Oh, I was unhappy.  Pissed, really.  I called the storage place to complain--I had bought the padlock from them--and the very apologetic lady who answered the phone said she'd call maintenance worker on Monday to remove the lock, and she'd let me know when he'd be out to do so.

Monday morning passed, and I got no phone call.  I finally called on my lunch break to ask for an update and discovered the Very Apologetic Lady had forgotten to call maintenance, and she promised to do so right away.  I was upset and let her know this.

A few minutes later, the VPL called back to say maintenance could get there on Tuesday afternoon.  Again--pissed.  He was supposed to come out MONDAY, and the nice weather clock was ticking.

Today (Tuesday), Darwin and I met the maintenance man at the storage area, and he cut the lock off with a nifty machine that looked like a belt sander had mated with a table saw.  I had bought a new lock, a combination lock, thank you.  But it didn't fit the weirdly-shaped latch. Seriously ticked, Darwin and I drove to a nearby hardware store and bought another combination lock.  In the parking lot we tested it, and discovered the combination that came with the lock didn't work.  We went back into the store to get another one, but they had no other ones in the model we needed.  We finally, grudgingly, settled on a key lock that we hoped would work.

Back at the storage area, we got the rack and bike out and then installed the new lock.  It went on, though with some fiddling.  I put the key in my car so it would always be there when I needed it.

And then, at last, I was able to go on an autumn bike ride.  It was seventy-five degrees and breezy and a fine ride that gave me the exercise I've needed.

comments