February 18

It’s snowing again. When I look out, the blowing snow resembles nothing so much as a swarm of malevolent Tinkerbells. Originally, the forecast called for mixed rain and snow and little to no accumulation. When I checked it online a few minutes ago, they were calling for about an inch of snow.

Well, an inch is about an inch too much for me.

For what it’s worth, it’s also fiendishly difficult to get a good photo of snow falling at night. This is the best of a pretty mediocre series of shots; I popped the flash at the beginning of the two-second exposure to try to catch the blowing snow in suspension.

The snow should end tomorrow – if the forecast holds. It won’t be a moment too soon, either.

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February 17

I don't send a lot of snail mail these days. All of my bills are paid online, and aside from the occasional personal letter (which I write too seldom), I only send cards for special occasions.

Coincidentally, a special occasion is coming up on Saturday -- Ruth Halpin's birthday.

To call Ruth a friend doesn't even begin to describe the complex and convoluted relationship we share. To call her my ex sounds too pejorative. She occupies a special little niche of her own in my life, having known me for more than half of that life. She's closer to me than many members of my biological family, and to me, she's one of the few constants in my life. So her birthday is certainly a special occasion, and definitely merits a snail mail salute.

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February 16

My coworkers Ennio, Helder, and I got together to play a joke on my colleague Robin today.

On holidays and when the boss isn't around, Robin takes off her uniform tie. In her defense, it's not a very attractive thing; it's a floppy little clip-on thing that falls off at the slightest provocation and won't stay in place without the help of a strategically-placed safety pin. In her place, I'd skip wearing it, too. However, since Robin is such a stickler for uniform rules, we thought it would be funny if we all doffed our ties -- in solidarity, of course.

Such an occasion demands a photograph, and the best of the ones we took sans cravates was our blowing kisses at the camera.

(Note the pretty new cufflinks on my sleeve, my Valentine's Day gift from my boyfriend.)

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February 15

Caring for a diabetic dog is a very complex undertaking (as I've talked about here, here, here, and here). Between giving shots, managing diet, and carefully watching your dog's behavior for signs of blood sugar that's too high or too low, you make the transition from pet care to health care.

I love Pogo, and I'm glad to do everything I can to keep him healthy and improve his quality of life for the time that we have remaining with him. It can be a little overwhelming, though, keeping track of everything you have to do for him. Shots twice a day are bad enough, but we cook for Pogo now, having discovered his appetite is much better than when he was getting kibble twice a day. Additionally, since taking him off processed dry dog food, the insulin dose he's required has gone down from 26 units a day to 18 units a day -- a substantial reduction.

So, in my usual manner of coping, I've been making notes about Pogo's health care needs. The list above is the latest printout; it is clipped on my refrigerator door, where Boyfriend and I can both reference it while caring for Pogo. It keeps us on the same page and helps ensure we're consistent in caring for our puppy dog.

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February 14

Happy Valentine's Day!

Boyfriend and I both feel somewhat under the weather, so we decided not to do anything for this utterly commercial holiday. Why bother? We've been together for seven Valentine's Days now, so it's obvious that we don't need to spend money on each other to prove our love.

That having been said, on my way home from running errands today, I happened to pass the romantically-named "Halls of Tara" florist in West Roxbury -- it appealed to my Irish heritage, I suppose. So I turned around, parked, and picked up some flowers (tulips) for the boyfriend in a pretty purple vase.

Boyfriend, on the other hand, had already picked up a little something for me while returning from his trip. He got me a beautiful pair of Duchamp cufflinks from Harrods in London.

Obviously, neither of us follow directions very well. And really, it's kind of sweet, isn't it?

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February 13

Sometimes, it's all about who you know. Last September, I purchased a vintage Parker Duofold fountain pen. A local shopkeeper knew I collected them, and was kind enough to put it aside for me when he came across it in a bin full of old office supplies. The black hard rubber pen has a date stamp of 1921, boasts the original feed and nib, and although dulled and obviously aged, is still quite beautiful to me.

The pen, as purchased, had been out of use for a long time; a calendar with the lot of office supplies was from 1967. So the ink sac needed to be replaced. The tines of the nib were also misaligned, resulting in scratchy writing, so I had that adjusted. Black hard rubber just won't polish up well, and getting the metal polished likely would have just taken off more of the gold plate, so I left that as-is for the moment. My goal is to have a functional vintage pen, not one that I've prettied up for resale.

Meanwhile, I picked up a bottle of Waterman Encre Havane, a pretty brown ink with an almost-coppery color to it when used on white paper. I have a soft spot for Waterman inks; Encre Verte (Green) is a rich color, while my daily user Pelikan at work is filled with Encre Bleu Effaçable (Florida Blue). Plus, I thought it would look right coming out of a pen that is somewhat older than my grandmother -- a nice vintage touch.

I can't wait to get it home and write some notes with it this weekend. I'm not a great one for writing letters, and if it weren't for fountain pens and the fact that I love to write with them, I'd probably have gone all electronic for my written communications years ago.

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February 12

This is the morning view toward work. In the center of the image is the Prudential Tower, while the shorter building with the round top is 111 Huntington; these buildings, five miles distant, are across the street from my workplace. And this is what it looks like at 8 am from near Forest Hills Station.

I usually work the afternoon shift, 3 - 11:30 pm, but had to go in this morning because a coworker had jury duty. I ended up splitting the shift with another coworker because nobody else could cover, which meant that I worked 12½ hours without getting much sleep. I'm back to my normal schedule tomorrow; let's hope it brings back an unusual level of creativity.

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February 11

In Boston, at almost any employer, a commuter running late has a built-in excuse if he uses public transportation. The commuter rail lines share rails with freight railroads, and some lines (like the Worcester line) have monumental delays because of unscheduled track work. The subway lines usually run well enough, except when they don't, and their cleanliness is at best unexceptional, at worst abyssmal. We have many new buses, but their schedules are at the mercy of Boston's notoriously bad traffic.

New Yorkers have their comprehensive, wide-ranging, 24-hour-a-day subway system that, while not perfect, was built with capacity and expansion in mind. Residents of other large cities in the world have similarly-efficient, if not necessarily pretty, systems. Boston has the T.

When I saw this clock tower at Forest Hills Station on the Orange Line while driving to work, I realized that it's not all the MBTA's fault. How can they be expected to keep the trains on time when they don't even know what the correct time is?

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February 10

The weather is improving in Boston, my cold is improving, and I'm beginning to see beauty in even the ugliest things. I noticed these pretty icicles dripping in the warming weather, hanging off a mound of ugly black and gray snow-ice shoveled out of my parking space at some time over the past four or five storms. We have a few warmer days in the forecast, so the piles of ice should shrink more over the next few days.

Maybe it's that I'm feeling better physically as my cold wanes, and I'm less stressed now that my partner is back from his trip overseas, but seeing the ice melt like this is a wonderful thing. By my count, spring is 38 days away (March 20th), which puts us slightly more than halfway through winter. I can make it through 38 more days. That's not so long at all.

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February 09

I guess you could call this photo "getting a jump on the day." As I didn't take a lot of photos today, this is about as interesting as today's selection gets.

Frigid cold temperatures will often bring out weaknesses in marginal car batteries, and my car was no exception. Although the battery shouldn't have died, it did. I had it jumped a couple of weeks ago -- thank you AAA -- but the battery wouldn't hold a charge and was in need of replacement. With everything else on my plate, I just didn't have the time to go sit in a dealership waiting for maintenance, and since I had ready access to another car I didn't rush down to the parts store to buy a replacement (you have to dispose of the old battery at the same time, which is environmentally touchy).

However, with Boyfriend home from his trip, I had both the time to take care of this and the need, since he wanted his car back. These battery chargers (cost about $50) are pretty nifty, by the way. You can charge them overnight in your house, hook 'em right up to your battery and jumpstart yourself without help.

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February 08

Boyfriend arrived home from his six-week overseas trip this afternoon -- earlier than expected.

Most of the time, I plan to be at the airport when the plane lands. Then I end up sitting -- well, standing, actually, staring at the doors the arriving passengers exit when departing customs -- waiting for about an hour while boyfriend collects his luggage and clears customs. So today, since I slept late and didn't feel good anyway, I decided not to rush to get to the airport. Of course, today is the day that the United States Customs Service was at its most efficient and the luggage belt was running perfectly.

Poor boyfriend was left waiting about 10 minutes for me to arrive. On the plus side, we weren't parked long enough to have to pay, so I saved $4 there.

And it's nice to have boyfriend home; life just got a lot more pleasant.

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February 07

I got my hair done today.

I'm still sick, but going to the salon and getting my hair cut and styled left me feeling very good. And, not for nothing, but I'm very happy with the results. I haven't had a haircut since July, so I had collected a lot of split ends, and my hair was tangling easily (especially in the back). I went in with no particular hairstyle in mind, only asking the stylist to lose the split ends, to take off as little length as possible, and to shape it a bit so it would look nicer.

Offhand, I'd say that Denise more than met the brief. At the risk of living a cliché, I have to admit it: I feel pretty. :-)

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February 06

There comes a scene in almost any movie with a wrongly-convicted person where they're led to their prison cell, protesting their innocence all the way, even as the door shuts with a mighty final clang.

Pretty Boy must have felt something like that when he got put in the box today to go for his annual physical exam at the vet. He certainly turned on the vocals, yowling on the way to the box, yowling as he was put into the box, yowling from inside the box all the way to the vet, at the vet, and all the way back home. After we got home and he was released, he gave me some dirty looks and a few yowls and mews for effect. Pretty Boy does not like the box; he was one pissed pussycat.

Good news from the vet, too. Pretty Boy is fit, has no obvious ailments, and even has excellent teeth. He's a perfectly healthy 13-year old kitty cat, and (according to Dr. Segal) a charming one at that.

P.S. I was going to title this shot "Pussy Behind Bars," but thought better of it.

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February 05

I bought some stationery a couple of weeks ago, and got a new fountain pen on January 24th. The combination of the two inevitably leads to my writing letters to people. I find a certain ineffable satisfaction in putting pen to paper and composing a personal letter. The result may not be as polished as something I've composed, typed, and copyedited -- my letters are replete with crossed-out words, misspellings, and the occasional illegible parts -- but they take on a certain elegance that a word-processed block of text lacks.

For this letter, I picked run-of-the-mill Crane & Co. stationery and a Pelikan M200 fountain pen with a medium nib. It's a good combination.

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February 04

I've got a cold.

As a person who has the sniffles year-round and feels chilly from September to May, I'm used to being a little snuffly. This, however, is a full-blown, hacking, coughing, sneezing cold. As I've had the flu already this year, I'm grateful that it's only a cold, though I sincerely wish it would just go away.

Theraflu Warming Relief is wonderful stuff when you've got a stubborn cold. I'm sure it's essentially the same stuff as Dayquil/Nyquil, with minor variations in color and taste, but it's been the most effective cold medicine for me for a couple of years now. To me, Nyquil resembles nothing so much as the fluid you see in airplane toilets, so taking a capful has never been a particularly appealing experience. The Theraflu syrup, on the other hand, looks and tastes more akin to the poison that Snow White's stepmother used on the apple -- not great, but infinitely more palatable.

The important thing is that the Theraflu is effective, and manages to beat down the symptoms of the cold well enough for me to function. It doesn't taste great, but it works beautifully.

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February 03

"Nuisance snow." It's the only phrase to describe what Boston is getting today. The snow is wet and sticky, clings to everything, and is treacherously slippery on roads and underfoot, which means it requires action to clear it and keep it roads and sidewalks passable. However, it's not accumulating enough to shovel or use a snowblower on, but it's too sticky for a broom to move effectively. You can lay down salt and sand, but the falling snow covers it without it doing much good. Clearing the snow involves a lot of pushing and shoving for not too great an apparent return. It's a real inconvenience.

No, scratch that. It's not an inconvenience, it's just a pain in the ass.

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February 02

It was an almost-springlike day here today. The temperature got up to 47°F today, the sun was out, and everything was squishy because of the snow melting away. It's the kind of day and the kind of weather that makes you want to go outside and just spend some time in the sunshine.

Meanwhile, according to Groundhog.org, the official website of Punxsutawney Phil, we have six more weeks of winter coming. Drat! I've been complaining about the cold weather and the snow since before it really hit, and I'll complain some more tonight when another weather system brings more snow in (1 - 3 inches, per the forecast).

But today was just too pretty to complain. It was the kind of day that keeps your spirits up enough to tolerate the rest of a long, cold, dreary winter.

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February 01

Here I am, surrounded by beauty and brains. Belynda is in purple, Anna in orange, Marion in blue and me in front. Belynda and Marion are taking over the municipal liaison duties for Script Frenzy (SF) in the Boston region. Neither Anna nor I have done well with SF, and while I actually enjoy setting up events for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the scriptwriting competition just wasn't as interesting for me.

We all met to chat and catch up, since Belynda and Marion are NaNoWriMo alumni and both a lot of fun to hang out with. Of course, Anna and I were also there to offer advice and support for our replacements, and also to coordinate sharing of certain materials useful to both NaNoWriMo and SF (since duplicating our purchases would be wasteful).

The photo itself isn't really POTD material. It was taken without tripod by crowding around a table and setting the camera right on the Cold Stone Creamery countertop. It does capture some of the fun of the afternoon, and that's the important thing, isn't it?

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January 31

As of this afternoon, I'm now fortunate enough to have a double-hung window in my bathroom. Here's one of the landladies working on the installation this afternoon.

Our landladies remodeled our bathroom while we were on vacation last year. Unfortunately, certain aspects of the remodel did not go according to plan. They took out the window to reglaze it, but were not able to rehang it immediately. Fortunately, the storm window kept us from having a gaping hole in the wall over our bathtub, but it did lack that feeling of completeness that is so important in the room where one spends so much time naked.

The window was done months ago, but the windowsill had gotten damp and swollen, so the window didn't fit anymore. Finally, today, with some effort, the landladies were able to wedge the windows back into place. I thought it was noteworthy enough to photograph -- easily the most interesting thing that happened to me today.

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January 30

I've never met a person who hasn't wanted to peek into a purse or bag occasionally. I lump the impulse in with the urge to look in medicine cabinets and dresser drawers that all children seem to be born with and adults struggle to control.

So here you go: My bag, which pretty much accompanies me everywhere.

From the upper left, clockwise:

My laptop bag, a brown leather courier bag from Benetton. It was a gift from my boyfriend last Christmas. On it are my checkbook, for paying bills and making deposits to the joint checking account, a piece of mail I should have dealt with last week, and a DVD of "The Queen," which I got on sale for $5.99 at a 7-Eleven.

Next to it is my laptop, replete with National Novel Writing Month stickers.

Below that is the legal pad and clipboard that I try to keep with me at all times -- you never know when you're going to need to take notes. On the notebook is a small, flexible-neck flashlight (handy for blackouts), a fountain pen (my preferred writing implement), a ballpoint pen (for when I have to make carbons, etc.), and a Staedtler Proportional Scale, known in graphic design parlance as a "whizzy wheel," used to calculate dimensions for cropped photos and images.

To the left is my cords bag for my laptop and other electronics. It contains a mouse, network cable, power cord and A/C adapter, mousepad, and other assorted cords in a self-contained bundle that zips closed. When you're ready to go, your cords go in and the bag goes into the briefcase/attache/camera bag.

All in all, this is my self-contained office on the go. Some contents change, i.e., mail comes and goes, but for the most part this is it.

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January 29

I've used a couple of my recent posts to complain about the surfeit of snowfall Boston's received over the past month. There's likely to be more complaints -- many more complaints -- in the weeks ahead.

Not everybody in my household shares the same aversion to snow, however. While I'm pretty sure my cat, Pretty Boy, is on my side, Pogo (my dog, a Border Collie - Husky mix) just loves playing in the snow. I let him out into the backyard this morning and grabbed my camera to snap some photos. He didn't disappoint; as soon as he was done with more pressing matters, he headed right for the soft snow and proceeded to roll merrily in the stuff.

Pogo is 13 years old now. He's diabetic, going deaf, has a ventricular arrhythmia (heart murmur), and in the past year had a small tumor removed from his belly. He spends a lot of time napping. So when I get to see him frolicking in the snow, having pure, unadulterated fun, it brings me a lot of joy.

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January 28

Up until last night, Boston has had 44.5 inches of snow this winter. This morning, more fell -- four more inches, by my measurement.

This storm, however, didn't just bring snow. First it was snow, then sleet and freezing rain, then plain rain. The snow fell heavily enough that the plows and sanders didn't actually finish their jobs before the sleet and rain arrived. Sand and salt added to snow being wet by rain makes for a cold, viscous, slushy mud that's really quite gross. Depending on the weather, being behind one of these trucks can be a blessing or a curse. Blessing in icy weather, because you get better traction, and curse in this kind of weather, where the mud on the roads gets just about everywhere.

It's not too cold right now, and the rain will end soon. The best word to describe the current weather is "gross." And statistically, February is Boston's snowiest month. I'm trying very hard not to dwell on that bit of awesome, cheery news.

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January 27

Two slightly-scuffed cordovan shoes. Unremarkable, until you find out that they're on my feet, and that I'm wearing two shoes instead of one shoe and an orthopedic boot for my foot injury. My healing process has been slower than I had hoped it would be. I can sum up all the technical information in one sentence: My right foot still hurts!

That having been said, it doesn't hurt nearly as much as it hurt a month ago.

I'm getting back into the swing of everyday activities that had been closed to me while my mobility was limited -- exciting stuff, like long trips to the grocery store and filling up a cart with stuff, or shoveling snow, or just taking Pogo for walks that go past the backyard gate and actually involve getting all the way around the block.

It just occurred to be that one of the reasons I've been feeling so stressed out of late is, that with one bum foot, I really have been as busy as a one-legged ass kicker.

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January 26

It's been a snowy and chilly winter in Boston. Tomorrow's forecast, into Wednesday, is calling for snow and winds and other assorted nastiness. With the current temperature at 12 degrees Fahrenheit, it's long past time to quit wishing for warmer weather and get down to the business of staying warm. This means wearing coats, long johns, gloves, scarves, and a hat.

So here I am, modeling my new winter hat. It cost the princely sum of $12 at a booth in Back Bay Station. Considering its modest price, fake fur and polyester construction, it's surprisingly warm -- warm enough that I'm willing to go around looking like Nanook of the North wearing the thing.

I think I'm going to continue to wish for warmer weather, though. Spring arrives on March 21st, so it's only 53 days away. Only 53 ever-lengthening days.

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January 25

True confession time: I cook for my dog.

Since we found out that Pogo is diabetic, we've had to make a lot of adjustments to our life. Giving him a two insulin injections a day, for instance. Cooking is another change. Pogo got a stomach bug, so we put him on a bland diet of brown rice and oatmeal. Well, he loved his new food, so we decided to keep him on the diet, figuring that it was worth it to keep him healthy and happy. The vet instructed us to add protein to this new diet, and gave us some other recommendations to make this a better-balanced diet.

Pictured above is an assortment some of Pogo's favorite foods. I base each meal on oatmeal (in the canister) or brown rice (in the small glass). To that I add protein, usually cooked hamburger or chicken, usually with some carrots or apples cut into very small pieces. To all this, I add a couple tablespoons of wheat germ (which I forgot to squeeze into the group above). Rounding it all out is a children's chewable vitamin, to give Pogo the vitamins and minerals he needs to remain healthy.

Since changing his diet, the amount of insulin Pogo needs to regulate his blood sugar has gone down substantially. While doing all this cooking is a lot of work -- especially on the weekends, when I do a lot of prep work for the rest of the week -- it's worth it to keep my puppy dog healthy.

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