C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 29

Dental woes.

Oh, woe!

First a bridge came unglued. Then I got an appointment with my old dentist in another town, who now has moved, and couldn’t be found once I got there.

So I got ‘worked in’ by a local dentist I found on the internet…and they (quite reasonably) took xrays and discovered an abscess. Oh, joy. Extract, root canal with a new bridge (4000.00), or implant? If an implant, five of them, because of the bridge. And they’re costlier than the bridge.

Well, I decided to spring for option B. And faced a root canal with a completely unknown dentist who sort of specializes in root canals. It truly was an abscess: I asked to see the xray.

Today I went in for the procedure, and I’ve had worse discomfort from fillings. Wonderful job, very fine doc, very meticulous, and the best news—he was able to temp-glue the old bridge back in, and it looks as if that 36-year-old bridge is going to work fine. The doc said that bridge was a real work of art, to have lasted this long, in that shape.

So I’ve got a sore jaw and am reduced to soup, but that’s from the strain of a long procedure, no pain from the tooth.

IF I’m not going to have to spend for a new bridge, I may have another one looked at. I had a bad accident back in the 80’s, pitched headfirst over the handlebars on a downhill—the city had installed one storm grate the wrong way, and I dropped a tire into it after a car veered over at me (stupid joke—and when I fell, they ran like rabbits). The result for me was a lot of dental work and jaw troubles. But the good news is—my original dental team were aces. And the fact that this one didn’t hurt at all, except the pesky little xray tabs, says I’ve found another good one.

Jane’s got new pix from our travels…Miscon came after…

but it’s easier to do the pix for, so here they are. http://www.janefancher.com/HarmoniesOfTheNet/

Raining—happy us.

We’ve had an uncommon burst of high 90’s weather in early June—shouldn’t arrive until July. But now it’s set in for cool and rain for the next week, back into the 70’s. Much nicer! Understand that Washington rain is what other regions call ‘intermittent drizzle’, for a week, not the pounding tropical downpours of the south. Even hail here is more like styrofoam chips, not lethal missiles from heaven. First time it had hailed and Jane proposed walking to the store, I thought she was crazy—but indeed, it was not a life-risking proposal. For Washington rain, you just walk a little faster to the car and from car to store, and you don’t need an umbrella. Oh, now and again Spokane gets the tropical-style rain, but it’s rare, as in, every couple of years, once.

Wind, now, we do have that: when the wind come sweeping over the fenceless hills of the Palouse, we get serious 40-50 mph gusts, but once or twice a season. The unprecedented one that left us without power for 8 days was hurricane-force for about 20 minutes. The city still has roof crews repairing damage from that one, last November.

Right now, just a tranquil drizzle and cool air.

Editing and writing, editing and writing…

gardening, editing and writing. That’s about all we’re doing.

Win 10 updated itself without permission….on the machine I bought for 7.

I bought this laptop early to avoid Win 10.

Today when I opened it, it started the upgrade process with no way to back out. I was furious.

I have since learned a) there is a way back and b) there is a lawsuit possible over the way this has been handled. Apparently MS made an alteration in the splash screen for the ‘free upgrade’ that gives you a choice of ‘now’ or ‘later’ and if you check EITHER instead of just x-ing out of the screen, it will load, either then, or at next use.

Lovely. I’m not the only one this has happened to.

There is a recovery, so long as you ‘revert’ it

within a month

and probably easier if you don’t make a whole load of new files beforehand.

The procedure: be SURE you know any Win 7 password if you have one—and then go to:

The windows icon that subs for the start menu. Punch that.

Punch ‘Settings’.

Punch ‘Update & Recovery’.

From there, you get the option to roll the system back to Win 7, and oh, frabjous joy! the assurance that if at any time in the future you develop a longing for 10, you can roll it over to that with no fuss. In other words, congrats, your machine now has 2 versions of Windows on it, but at least it is running.

If you have Logitech Gaming as part of your system under 10, you will come away missing the dll file lcore.dll or something like, but that’s not a problem, or if it is you can easily get the missing dll from Logitech or a dozen other places on the interwebz.

Just sayin’. This was not how I planned to spend an entire evening, but if this happens to you, now you know how to get Win 7 back.

We’re baaaack….

Dear me, photos are urging enough to get to walking and drop a few pounds.

We are safe and well. We went from Spokane to Buffalo WY (where new pet policies at our hotel (15.00 a head) make it certain we will use another routing)—then on to Sioux Falls SD, where we stayed the night, on to Lisle IL, and dropped off the kittehs with Jane’s sister…with two pens, and a cat tree for their amusement, plus ample food and water—‘Don’t open that door whatever you hear from in there!’

Went on to the Nebulas at the Palmer House, and meeting people. Wiishu channeled Bren…I’m sure Jane will have pix. Betsy had a lovely gift for me, a short kimono, which I wore on awards night, with black kit, and we had a very nice evening; had lunch at the Billy Goat Tavern, a little distance away, which was fun; and otherwise snacked off the con suite: two hamburgers at that hotel Palmer House are 65.00, counting a glass of beverage each. Good burgers, but not that good.

Sunday we all went our ways, and I began to cough. By Sunday evening, back in the far more comfy Red Roof Inn, which had ac that worked and mattresses that were comfy—(the fancy hotel, not so much)— I then came down with a royal case of whatever was floating about, respiratory crud. I don’t remember much, except we bought some groceries, and I survived while Jane helped out her sis with a couple of construction problems. We did collect the cats, who emerged fat, happy, and oh, so glad to see us. So I cat-sat, semi-conscious, too contagious to go near Jane’s sis, so I stayed and slept, oh, from Monday until Friday morning, at which point we gathered up the cats and baggage and took out. Jane drove the city traffic, which is insane, and when we got to the Dells, I took over and drove a bit.

First night we aimed for Al’s Oasis, a huge travel stop on I-90 at Oacama SD, and the comfiest hotel mattresses in the universe—Serta Pillowtop Commercial Grade—we asked. We tore ourselves away from the mattresses, and unwillingly aimed ourselves at Buffalo WY, but somewhere around Spearfish, or Gillette, our GPS advised us to hang a right and go up toward Broadus MT…through what proved to be the back side of the Crow Reservation, and a good route, if you don’t need gas, which there isn’t, except at Broadus—which is a western movie set doing business as a modern little town. Absolutely lovely but basic little bar, which fed us lunch, and on we went, across territory that at some points didn’t even have phone lines, and into a windstorm at the Custer Battlefield Conoco…nearly blew me off my feet as I was trying to cross a massive puddle. We had 60+mph headwind from there to Rocker MT, where, thank goodness, we had an old familiar hotel and a room.

From there, home is easy, except for driving rain and poor visibility: we were still back noonish, had lunch at the Swinging Doors, and collapsed. The aforementioned windstorm had also hit here, so we have flowers down, and weeds exploding from the warm moisture, but we’re glad to be back.

Waves limply.

Jane is sleeping in this morning—past 9:30 and she’s still out. But she needs it. She worked beyond reasonable limits getting us in order, packed, on the road, and back again—she’s exhausted, and I’m glad she’s sleeping. I only hope she doesn’t take what I’m just getting over.

Did we believe the GPS that did a rotational dance in central Chicago? We were dubious, being told to take off into a long run of empty territory. But that diagonal route between Spearfish and 90 at the Custer Battlefield is a big time-saver. It would be much easier if we had stayed at Bozeman or nearby, but prices there (it being gateway to Yellowstone) are higher, and we happen to like the Rocker motel.

Back’s been killing me. I got a new chair…

with lumbar support. And I’ve got a real find, a ‘laptop cart’ from Office Depot, rolls right up to the chair at the right height, and better yet, the top can lift off and become a lapdesk. Best little laptop support going. laptop cart

Did I mention bashing myself in the eye?

Bent over to get something from my purse, hanging on the coat tree…bam! right into one of the metal arms. That hurt. A lot. I don’t quite have a shiner, but I do have a very red eye.

The hard drive crashed. Bigtime. No warning.

The good news is—Carbonite.

I’ve pulled the critical file down off the cloud and have put it on laptop #2. We are running. They promise me a new drive by Tuesday. Dell diagnosed over chat, on another computer, while I read off instructions and Jane pushed buttons, and yes, it is most sincerely dead. The good news is, again, Carbonite. I don’t have e-mail at the moment, but I do have The File.

Jane and I will have no trouble installing the new drive, which will come in with Win 7, with Win 7 disks, in case of screw-up, and we will just have to sit through endless downloads of updates and patches while THAT gets organized, but hey, it sure beats the lightning strike on a prior book, in which Lynn and Jane were down at Kinko’s scanning in pages and I was reconstituting text from a very bad (couldn’t tell double ll from H or m or whatever).

If you have critical stuff on your computer, Carbonite is a real good idea.

We are FINALLY seeing light at the end of the tunnel…

and it’s not the 5:10 train.

We have just about finished the window trim and are beginning to move furniture from where it has been piled (in any large empty space in the house—scratch that: any place void of furniture. We have, since November blackout, had furniture out of place, rooms nearly emptied, furniture piled in the kitchen, with paths to get to the pantry, to the back door, to the kitchen, wherever. You walk past, brush some broom leaning against some box and three boxes fall, spilling contents. We are so frayed and tired—at one point there was only one place each to sit in the living room, and the rest literally piled with furniture. We pass the tv control to whoever is sitting with a clear shot at the good spot to communicate with the set.

Now—we clean up, dust, rearrange, tidy up, and our house begins to look like other than a warehouse for lost boxes.