Otter's Natterings

My back is still improving, didn’t feel a need to ask my doctor for extensions to any of the prescriptions I got from the Immediate Care Center doctor (which were for 10 days worth of anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxant).

My re-ingrown toenail has been re-dealt-with. I should have come in once it had started to grow out, but before it caused any problems, but somehow I didn’t properly grok the message. Now I know. Once I get to that point again, the podiatrist will perform what will, hopefully, be a permanent fix.  My toe was not exactly painful overnight, but I’m blaming it Not Feeling Right for not sleeping soundly. Zzz.

Ron seems to be getting over the Upper Respiratory Thing, although he’s still tired and snuffly.

Not sure if Robin is/was suffering from the Upper Respiratory Thing over the weekend, or just from being a teenager and getting insufficient sleep.

At work we have three birthdays in a week or 10 days, with mine as the third, so we tend to spread the bringing-of-goodies for them out a little. Today was for my birthday, a fruit tart, the kind with fruit on top of custard. Yummy.  I’ll bring goodies for the next person with a birthday.

My back is slowly getting better. I’ve only been taking the prescription-strength Naproxen during the day, saving the Vicoden for at night.

Yesterday morning we saw a poster for a production of “Avenue Q” at Cutting Hall, the theatre that the Palatine Park District owns and rents out. While looking at the Cutting Hall website (cuttinghall.org) for information on “Avenue Q” I saw they have a “Complete Works of William Shakespeare – Abridged” running currently. We went last night, and it was hysterical!

I don’t know why it’s taken us so many years to actually go to something at Cutting Hall – we’ve seen posters for this and that thing before. We’ll probably be going more often.

Cutting Hall was built in the 1920s. It’s either been maintained or restored to an appropriate appearance for the time. Very spiffy. It’s not a big theatre, but that’s not a bad thing.

We’re so cultured – going to live theatre two weekends in a row – and we got tickets for “Avenue Q” for next month.

Since Ron and Robin spoiled me last weekend when I was miserable with the upper respiratory thing (which Ron has now, unfortunately), I made dinner tonight – roast beast. Nothing fancy, I just put it on potato wedges and onions (because part of the roast rack was hiding), and sprinkled everything with pseudo-Montreal Steak Seasoning.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a very sore lower back. As far as I can figure out the only thing I did was sleep wrong. I made it through most of the day on a dose of Naproxen, then after dinner went upstairs and laid down for a while.

When I tried to get up I discovered that I’d stiffened up, badly (and the morning dose of Naproxen had probably worn off). Ron and Robin finally got me something like upright, down the stairs, and out to the truck. The doctor at the immediate care clinic gave me prescriptions for higher doses of Naproxen, plus Flexeril (muscle relaxant), and Vicodin.  Ron says that’s the usual combination.

Taking all three I slept like a log. Ron told me not to take any of the Vicodin this morning until I got to work, but I’ve decided that I’m tired enough, I don’t need to spend the rest of the day asleep under my desk.

I have an appointment Monday early afternoon to see my regular doctor.

Later in the afternoon Monday I have a podiatrist appointment to deal with my re-ingrown toenail.

And I’ve still got the last vestiges of my cold. At least coughing isn’t too painful.

Blech.

The iThingies that Ron and I upgraded, as discussed in my earlier post, were iPads, not iPods…

The middle of last week I came down with an Upper Respiratory Thing, aka A Cold. Blech.  Although I made it to work Thursday and Friday, I wasn’t exactly in top form. Saturday I slept in, took a nap, then we went out for dinner with Xap and the Xaplings, then to “The Pirates of Penzance” at Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre. It was much fun. Many thanks again to Xap for getting the tickets! Bits of the Modern Major General song and the Constable’s song (can’t remember the proper title) were updated, amusingly. The production was in the round, and worked really well. It was fun evening all around.

The purpose to celebrate impending graduation for Robin and X1, but Robin’s name is/was mud, grade-wise. We shall speak no more about it at this time.

Friday night I declared I wasn’t cooking (actually, I haven’t had anything to do with meal preparation since Thursday), we didn’t want pizza or thai (best delivery options), but pancackes sounded good, so we went to Walker Thingies. After that we went to the Apple Store for my birthday present and Ron’s.

Yes, this is a little early for Ron’s birthday, but it makes sense – we got iPod upgrades. We got a new 64GB iPod for Ron, so he can play with photography stuff, and I got his almost-new 16GB iPod. My not-so-new 1st generation iPod was passed on to Robin. Yes, I understand that you may be experiencing some cognitive dissonance with the grade issues (ok, we’re speaking about them again I guess), but he realizes that he’s only getting my old one as a hand-me-down, not as a “Robin gets an iPod”.

Anyway, still suffering from this cold, on Sunday I slept in, took a nap, went to bed early, and still didn’t have trouble sleeping. Yesterday I got up at the normal time, stayed home and almost but not-quite napped, and generally was a lump until Ron took me to the grocery store. Then I came home and was a lump some more.

Such excitement.

Less dopey today. In part I switched from Mucinex DM to straight Mucinex, which doesn’t have the makes-you-sleep cough suppressant, but still not fully awake.  I suspect by the time I get home tonight I’ll be back to the “lump” status.

Saturday consisted of lots of running around. It started off with an Otter Necessities errand, groceries, another errand, home for a little while, taking Robin to karate, picking Robin up, getting lunch, home for a little while, MuseCon meeting, then finally back home. I’d been thinking of going to the monthly drum circle at the local U.U. church, but by that point I was done with running around.

Sunday morning, after breakfast, we did another Otter shopping trip, and a stop at the grocery store for milk and burgundy wine that turned into an alcohol-shopping trip (keeping in mind that the household average is <1 drink/week, sometimes <1/month).

After liberally puncturing  a beef brisket with the multi-tined spring-loaded meat-mangler, I drowned the meat, onions, mixed peppercorns (which includes allspice berries), and bay leaves in some of the burgundy – a fine boxed vintage. I suppose I could have looked up a recipe for beef burgundy, but I figured treating it something like non-vinegar sauerbraten (but we’ll be skipping the gingersnap gravy) or coq a van with beef instead of rooster would work.

I didn’t spend all day in the kitchen, but more than has been usual lately:

Lunch was middle-eastern-ish taco-like things: ground beef and onion sauteed with tagine seasoning, then some petite diced tomatoes added, served on flatbread with yogurt or labneh and tomatoes. Purple tomatoes, as it happens. They taste fine, but just look wrong, like they’ve gone bad. I might buy them again for a Halloween/scary food party, but I don’t think I’d bother with them again otherwise.

Dinner was a pork roast, seasoned with the a Montreal Steak Seasoning knockoff, garlic, and honey. It seems the probe for our meat thermometer has a break or is otherwise dead, when I plugged it in a couple minutes after putting the roast in the oven the readout announced in hysterics that the meat was at 338 degrees.  Fortunately, I didn’t over-cook the roast too badly without it.

I think I’ve started having hot flashes in the past month of few, and the (hopefully only occasional) not-sleeping menopause symptoms – last night I woke up about midnight, and stayed awake for a couple hours. I’m simply overjoyed. The hot flashes during the day aren’t too bad, more my face feels sunburned.  At night they seem to manifest as one too many layers of covers. Could be worse, though, from what I understand.

Bertolli Complete Skillet Meal for Two, Chicken Marsala and Red Skin Potato flavor is extremely nasty.

I didn’t expect haute cuisine from a frozen pre-made dinner, but eeewwww. This was as bad as your worst memories of cafeteria food, and IIRC the cafeteria at Wadsworth Hall at Tech was usually better than this drek. (Except the screggs. Wads screggs and this dreadful concoction are definitely in a race to the bottom).

Minestrone soup, or at least an extrapolation from minestrone, for dinner last night.

I started out with a bag of soup mix (add to 8 cups boiling water), IIRC Bear Creek brand, and decided to add ground beef.

While I was cooking the beef, I decided it needed a can of petite diced tomatoes.

And a can of Veg-all, since we need more vegemals.

And then a can of (rinsed) white beans.

And some Italian Herb mix.

By the time I added the soup mix, I decided it also needed some more pasta, and there was a bag of orzo next to the stove.

I thought I had over-multiplied the ingredients, but there wasn’t a lot left over. It was yummy. I probably could have skipped, or at least cut down on the orzo, I forgot how much it grows. I have no regrets about the rest of the additions, particularly the tomatoes, veg-all, or legumes.

OTOH, I’m re-thinking making meatball tagine this weekend, as it’s also, at heart, a tomato-vegetable-beef soup.

Last night, if you’d been watching our front yard at the right time, you would have seen Ron and I come rushing out the front door, and stripping my skirt and bee jacket off in a hurry…

Yeah, fun stuff.

When I got home we started to put the package of bees in the top-bar hive. We started with no protective clothing on, but either Ron hadn’t sufficiently soaked them with sugar water, or they were feeling cranky; when he started to shake them into the hive it was . . . dramatic. No stings incurred, but we finished up wearing jackets/veils.

Then we went and messed with the swarm. There was still a large mass on the ground under the shrubbery, so we searched the frames we’d tried to shake them into for the queen. No luck, but they slim down dramatically when getting ready to swarm, so she could have been there and we missed her.

Back to our yard to put the second supers on the two overwintered hives. We really need to put a gate in the other side of the house, especially since swarms seem to like the neighbors on the non-gate side of the yard.

After dinner we suited up again, closed up the box, pulled the wagon home, and re-assembled the hive we put the swarm in (put box with bees on base, put second box on top, add covers). I felt a sting on my thigh, but not too bad – I was proud of myself for not screaming and running about like a goon.

Checked each other over for loose bees, went inside, took off my gloves, pulled up my skirt, and oh my! Lots of bees! I hadn’t noticed because I was wearing cotton tights/leggings under my skirt. Cue the rushing out and partial stripping.

While I was losing my skirt, I realized a bee had gone up my sleeve, and either her little feet were feeling prickly, or she was giving me warning not-quite-stings. Ron helped me lose the jacket quickly (pullover style with integrated veil, and a little snug), then shook things out.

Since checking under my skirt had loosed a few bees in the living room, Robin had retreated upstairs. I only saw 2-3 when I went to bed, none this morning. And bees in the house typically buzz around windows or lights being confused, not cranky, so not a big deal. Much preferable to flies, IMO.

The sting on my leg is minor, not sure if I didn’t get a full shot through my tights, or if Benadryl kept it from getting too bad.

Hopefully the swarm queen is in the hive, and the girls under the bushes were just being stubborn/loyal to lingering pheremones, and still close enough to her, and clear out now that she’s out of the vicinity. We had something similar happen with a package last year – a bunch of workers decided the empty queen cage needed to be hung out on the way it would if the queen was still in it, even though she was in the hive.  We’ll see…

Did find somebody local-ish for the extra package, they were picked up yesterday.

AAARGH! The troll under the ethernet bridge just ate a long post!

Ok, at this point you get the tl;dr version.

Friday through Sunday was long busy days at CodCon (gaming convention at College of DuPage).

Yesterday I drove to Elgin to get leather, to Vernon Hills to pick up Ron, to Watertown WI to pick up bees for our two empty hives, back to Vernon Hills to get the truck, then back home. IIRC I left home about 7:30 am and got back home about 5 pm.

Then we cleaned wax moth damage out of one of the two empty beehives that didn’t make it through the winter.

After that, our neighbor came over to tell us about a big swarm of bees that had been in his yard since Wednesday.

So then we had to go deal with the swarm, which got shaken into one of the boxes for the empty hive, which means we now have an extra package of bees, which I’ve offered on the state beekeepers’ list.  The swarm was more docile than we’d have expected if they’d been there since Wednesday, and we were home Thursday night, so I’m wondering if the neighbor is mis-remembering what day the swarm landed. Not sure if the swarm came from one of our colonies, which we did quick checks on after dealing with the swarm, and both look strong. The swarm could also have come from a wild colony.

After Robin mows the lawn this morning (off for standardized testing for the Junior class), we’ll install the one package of bees we’re keeping in the top-bar hive, and put another set of honey supers on the two hives that over-wintered, in case they need more space.

Can I have a nap now?