Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Let's get the self-pity part out of the way, then I'll move on to less self-centered stuff ...

A less expensive fumble today: about half a jalapeño went flying and I couldn't find where it landed. I hate it when I start dropping food. Another spectaclar fumble destroyed a quantity of paper towels that almost certainly cost more than that pepper, but that didn't bother me anywhere near as much, because it wasn't food.

The other thing that bugs me when I start getting fumblefingered is that it's yet another way that fibromyalgia messes with my self-image, parts of my identity. C'mon, what little money I earn, I earn with my hands on a guitar, and for years I've been a very fast typist, which implies a certain amount of control over one's digits. And I routinely handle knives which could damage me, and cameras which can be damaged, and occasionally try to do fine detail work with power tools. I see myself as someone who is sure-fingered. Having things suddenly fly or fall out of my hands really doesn't go with that self-image.

I'm pretty sure it's from the fibromyalgia -- while it could merely be age, I think I'm still too young to be a trembling senior (and looking at the hands of friends older than myself supports that), and like so many of the fibro symptoms, it comes and goes (making it a surprise each time it happens).

Less self-pitying but still kinda whiny, another DTV complaint: With analog, I'd set the timer on the VCR, and when it was recording a scheduled event it was difficult to interrupt and impossible to do so accidentally short of knocking the plug out of the wall. But recording through the DTV converter, the converter doesn't know "watching" from "recording", and doesn't behave any differently during a scheduled event. And one of the converters has a really sensitive sensor and/or a really bright remote, which Perrine stepped on about fifteen minutes into The Late Late Show last night, changing the channel. *grumble* Not the first time I've suddenly seen the channel change in the middle of watching something I'd taped.

In the not-whiny-just-mundane department, last week I got my first SMS phishing attempt. (I tweeted it at the time but never got around to posting here.) While I was coming out of the pharmacy I got a text message alerting me to unusual activity on my credit union account and directing me to call a certain phone number. This, of course, did not smell right, so I asked Google-SMS for the main number of my credit union, called that, and said, "I just got an alert on my cell phone that sounds like a phishing scam, but I thought I should check just in case," and got an immediate response of, "It's bogus, and we're aware of it. We don't know where the scammers got the phone numbers from." When I got home I searched the web for the phone number in the text message and found a bunch of news stories about the scam.

As I recall, pure water isn't an especially good conductor of electricity. How much stuff does there have to be dissolved in Baltimore city water, for me to get a static electric shock when I put my hands under the tap on especially crackly days? (The knobs are acrylic, so I don't get zapped turning the water on; not until my finger hits the stream of water.) I should try it in the dark to see whether I can get a visible spark (probably not).

And yes, I'm aware that tap water isn't supposed to be pure. At the very least there'll be chloride and fluoride ions in there. But I have evaporative crystal formation evidence that Baltimore water has a significant mineral content. I don't notice a strong taste, but the rime (I can still call it 'rime' when it's mineral deposits instead of ice, right?) on the pan sitting atop an electric radiator (the space heater in the bathroom) tells me what my taste buds don't. (I'm seeing much less mineral buildup this year than in past years, by the way.) I just hope that whatever minerals are in there are good for me (which seems not-unlikely).

And at this point I'd better start doing other things I need to do, instead of trying to remember what else I'd been planning to write about that escaped my foggy brain.