Nine, and other things

I note with interest that I’m coming up on the ninth anniversary of my first post here. That’s a sixth of my life out here on the web, such as it is. Anybody else out there ever notice that 1/6 equals 16.6 percent? A non-sequitur to be sure, but I still love number play like that.

Take numbers divisible by three. Add up all the numbers in the number, and if they are divisible by three, then the original number is as well. For example, 27912: 2+7+9+1+2 = 21. 21 is divisible by 2, so 27,912 Is divisible by three. If the number resulting from adding all the numbers up is too big to tell at a glance whether it is divisible by three or not, add all the numbers up again. 17962936413085714719846308364 adds up to 135 adds up to 9. Nine is divisible by three, so 17962936413085714719846308364 is divisible by three.

But, as usual, I digress. It’s hard to update when each day is much the same as the other. I continue to be unemployed. My health remains status quo except for what I believe to be a blocked submandibular salivary gland on my left side that is giving my neck an intermittent lop-sided appearance as the gland swells and ebbs with the flow (or lack thereof). I intend to ignore this until next week, when I have a regularly scheduled dental appointment. As I explained to The Prof, I’ve got enough doctors at the moment, and have no yen to go out looking for more conditions and more specialists. So long as I remain afebrile, I’m happy to put up with the discomfort for another week.

I’ve continued with the glass bead making course, and am starting to be really pleased with the beads I’m turning out. I’d hardly say I’m ready for prime time, but I have begun to master some of the basic techniques, and have been playing around with more advanced beadwork with mixed results. I purchased my own torch, and have spent many happy hours in the basement now melting and reshaping glass. I’ve ordered mandrels the right diameter to make beads that will fit on Chamilla bracelets, and hope to use the hobby to make low-cost gifts. When I obtain more get-up-and-go I’ll post some of my bigger successes here.

This weekend the cat shelter is holding a big event at the local Barnes and Noble. We’ll be having story hours, we’ll have kittens on site, and we’ll be talking up adoption. If people who buy books this weekend mention our name to the cashiers, we’ll get a percentage of the purchase for our shelter. I’ll be giving a vet talk each day on Adopting Your Kitten or Cat. It’s got me nervous, because when I’ve done these things in the past people tend to want me to diagnose their dog or cat’s problems during the Q&A period. I’m hoping I can keep conversation steered toward topics such as “what inoculations Kitty should be getting” and “how to introduce Kit Kat to other cats in the household”. If we can manage to hold to the half-hour talk format, it should be manageable, but if my people let this run over I could find myself doing the squiggle-out-of-an-answer dance more than I’d like.

Back at home, we called in a basement “water proofer” to assess our basement after we took some water on this spring. It wasn’t a bad leak, but it did manage to find its way into the carpet of the finished room we have on the basement level. I discovered the problem when I realized that the bits of noodle-like trash I kept picking up in the foster cats’ room were actually mushrooms! While the carpet never really got wet, it was apparently damp enough that I began to feel like a character from the episode of Bradbury Theater called “Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!” We’d already had the condo association out to look at the situation, since the association is liable to fix the damage if the leak is in the wall, but they determined that the leak was at the foundation. Of course, the water proofer we called in found a crack in the wall that had been poorly fixed, so now I have to go back to the association with his estimate and see if I can get them to accept that. My bet is that they will now call in their own professional. We’ve had the quote for a week now, and I keep putting off contacting the condo association. Conflict avoidance, I guess.

In an effort to save some money, we’ve shopped around for cell phone coverage and ended up changing carriers. Of course, the change didn’t go as smoothly as it could have, and I’ve been having a few initial problems with my cell phone working with the new system. The company representative has bent over backwards to get things resolved, though, so I’m not about to complain at this point. We also got a quote from Verizon to move our computer and television connections moved over from Comcast, and then used the quote to get a lower rate from Comcast that now includes high def television. It depresses me that companies will give you these lower rates without contest if you threaten to leave. It seems deceptive, somehow. I’ve never been comfortable with bartering though, and I guess the price I pay for this is the overprice I pay.