days_unfolding

It's looking like Florida largely dodged a bullet, though for those who did lose relatives, it still is a tragedy.

The app that the State of Illinois wants me to use wants me to log my weight. Well, my scale is broken so no dice. I ordered a new one from Amazon using my Flexible Spending Account (an account that uses pre-tax dollars for medical expenses) funds. I didn't want one from the FSA store because 1) it's expensive, and 2) that's the one that broke.

It's kind of been a zoo of a day at work. Lots of meetings.

Ran out to drop off my paperwork to join the University gym.

Got some recycling out. (I didn't get it picked up yesterday because I was asleep.)

Did some work that I meant to do last night.

Ow, my neck hurts. I'm feeling the effects of no yoga. I need to do chair yoga.

I canceled my renter's insurance from the old place. I'm going through my automatic payments and canceling a lot of them.

I want to lie down and stretch out my neck. Plus, I'm yawning (although I don't know why because I got a ton of sleep last night).

I had my Italian lesson today. It went well; she taught me some new verb tenses. The listening exercise is still hard. I need to spend time on other listening sites. News in Slow Italian is good. She still loves Mimi and spoke to her in Italian!

Zara is a funny little girl. She led me over to the bedroom to snuggle. I was petting her, but she has rules about petting that changes from day to day. This time it was "don't touch the tail". I told her that I'd snuggle during lunch, but now I have to work. She didn't think that was a good reason.

The university is having their charitable drive. I wanted to give to EarthShare, only to find that I'm already giving to EarthShare and a Bipolar and Depression fund. I'll let that ride.

From a security briefing at work: "In July, an executive at Italian car company Ferrari was contacted by someone claiming to be the company CEO. During a phone call, the voice on the other end sounded just like the CEO, even his accent and intonation. However, the executive became suspicious because the CEO was calling from a different number and asking for an unusual type of transaction. The executive then asked a question that only the real CEO could answer: what book had the CEO recently recommended? The call ended abruptly. This appears to be an incident of voice cloning, an AI-generated deepfake of a real person’s voice." This is getting scary.

I told my dad that I wanted to cruise the Greek islands to see Santorini, but they're unhappy with the number of tourists, especially cruise ships, so maybe I should stay there. There are a LOT of Airbnbs, which drive local people out. I did find a family-run hotel that looks good. But I'm going to go back to Italy first. And Paris.

Zara was happy that she got her snuggles during lunch. Now she's asleep.

I'm wondering in what box the dress that I bought for the Maui trip that I never went on because of the fire is in. The cruise will probably have a dress up night, but I don't really want to buy a dress just for this trip when I have one. I did find a lace dress on Nordstorm Rack that I liked. It might make sense to order it and return it if I find the other one.

Weeded the side yard. I found that one weeder that I bought didn’t work well, but another helped me rip out the weeds in short order. There were some thistles that were dug in, and I had to cut them down. I’ll try to dig them up in the spring. I planted some more daylilies and watered them.

I remembered that I had thawed some (rather good) burgers, and I made them with Brussels sprouts. That was very good. The problem with eating prepackaged food is that it gets boring, so maybe I should consult with a dietitian at the hospital and cook. But my insurance wants me to take an online class first. Sigh. I found some diet recipe books that I want to try.

Got the garbage out.

Spent too much time on Facebook. I’m worried about the hurricane in Florida and might stay up watching CNN tomorrow night, although there won’t be a lot of news before sunrise. I remember watching the news about Hurricane Katrina. Which means that I should go to sleep soon.

I kept my old Windows XP computer for travel. However, I tried using it in Chicago a couple of years ago, and it couldn't access the Web. So I took my 17-inch laptop to California with me last year, which led to me screwing up my knee. (That thing is HEAVY!) I tried the XP machine the other day, and still no Web access. A Web site or the browser (I don't remember which) suggested that there was a firewall problem. I checked, and no firewall was turned on. I poked around in the Internet connection settings, and lo and behold, the http and https and FTP services were turned off for wireless access. I turned them on, and presto! Web access! I'm posting from that machine.

I'm still running into the problem that some sites aren't supporting browsers that run on XP. Eventually I might upgrade this machine to Windows 7. I wonder if I can get it cheaply.

I tried my netbook too. It's working fine (and it is nice and light for travel, plus it's nice to use in bed), but it has an annoying ad virus. I'm going to try a good malware program and see if I can get it off, but I might need an expert to get rid of it.

I'm also following the news about Hurricane Matthew closely. It's giving me a weird case of déjà vu to Katrina. I hope that it won't be as catastrophic, but an awful lot of areas will be affected by it. I want to go to Charleston and Savannah with my mom too, but it won't happen anytime soon.

I'm now off for five days! I'm going to kick it off tomorrow by getting my straggly mop of hair trimmed. I might also take some books to the coffeeshop and read.