I got my CPAP, I dunno… a decade ago? Long-time readers know that we’ve had cats the entire time that I’ve had it and, seriously, until TUESDAY they haven’t even noticed the CPAP machine at all. It was merely something that, occasionally, they’d step on wrong and turn on and freak out about. Other than that, it was the most boring thing in the room, other than me and Maribou.
Well, on Tuesday, they found out that my CPAP reservoir, when knocked to the floor, has an O-ring that jiggles and wiggles and you just wanna pick it up and get in a tug of war with it and run around the house with it and hide 50% of it somewhere.
I didn’t have a backup. I *DID*, however, have a half-box full of nitrile gloves from the height of covid and I thought: “I can just quickly fashion a makeshift O-ring out of one of those!” and I plugged up the space between my reservoir and my reservoir’s lid, pleased as punch. I woke up at 2AM. I woke up feeling chewy. I woke up with my mouth tasting like I’d just spent the last 3 hours chewing on a nitrile glove.
Okay. We’ll call the CPAP parts place and get a replacement. Well… they have phone trees from hell and agents using scripts and other agents incapable of taking the word of the human on the phone over the word of the computer. “It says here that you voluntarily surrendered your CPAP back to us two years ago.” “Yes. When we upgraded it for the new CPAP you gave us.” “We have no record of you having a CPAP because the computer says that you voluntarily surrendered your CPAP back to us two years ago.”
So I figured that I’d figure something out using shoelaces. Some wet shoelaces could fill the area, use scissors to make sure that they were the perfect length, and Bob’s your uncle.
As it turns out, this was a recipe for waking up at 1AM with a dry-as-a-bone shoelace and all of your damp air from the reservoir going anywhere else but up your nose.
So we tried to call *AGAIN* and begged them to believe us that we have the model of CPAP that we have and could they *PLEASE* sell us a new reservoir to replace the old one. “You’ll have to pay cash.” “Okay. We will.” “It’ll be $12.”
So they said that they’d ship it and, I guess, it’s en route. That doesn’t help me for tonight, however. So we picked up some silicon weather stripping for the windows and McGyvered up a makeshift O-ring and, lemme tell ya, it’s awesome. Might even be preferable to the original in that the cats find it boring. And I’m looking forward to a good night of sleep for the first time in a few days.
If I get enough sleep and this solution isn’t somehow borked too, then this weekend will be spent setting up for Maribou to visit friends out on the West Coast. They’re still Covid-cautious and so we’re doing the light isolation thing and she’s trying to not breath my air for a few days before getting on a flight which means that our Friday Night Date will be spent on two separate floors. We’re going to watch Wicked at the same time.
Saturday is game night and *EVERYBODY* has cancelled except for me and Dman, and so we’re going to see that new Jason Statham movie:
Looks awesome, right? Just guys being dudes.
And we’ll crowbar some Costco and groceries and some food prep for the coming week in there as well. Gonna be a good one.
If I can get some sleep.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “His Royal Highness”. He apparently did that in an attempt to get Maribou to open the curtains for him (which she, of course, did).)
It’s just like Apollo 13, if Apollo 13 were somehow caused by cats!Report
“Can you do it without waking up without a taste of adhesive?”
“We have a problem.”Report
Your cat is adorbs…Report
Don’t let his looks fool you. He is evil.Report
What cat isn’t?Report
I get to thinking “I need to get a cat” (because I am Exceptionally Alone and some evenings, the Horrors come for me) but then I think about them getting into all the stuff I have (I have a lot of stuff) and that either I have to get rid of like 3/4 of my stuff, or else they’d wreck so many thngs/get themselves trapped somewhere behind a storage box in a closet and I might have to try to rescue them.
and then a colleague brings in the absolutely adorable little orangeboy emotional support cat she has and I get to hang out with him. And he makes me feel better emotionally but I pay for it in allergies. So maybe no cat for me 🙁
but the little cat really is adorable, and for an orange and white boy he is surprisingly well behaved.
My plans this weekend are to get out of town, it’s been an exceptionally long week, culminating with the Zoom meeting from (heck) about some new software coming in – scheduled for 1pm on a Friday
Normally in a week I can go home 2 days (Th/F) for lunch because I don’t have an afternoon lab, this week, because of Meetings, I have had to eat a Sad Desk Lunch every day, so I feel like I deserve a treat.
Also, hopefully, Michaael’s Framing has the painting (which I did myself) that I took in over a month ago done. They never called to say it was. They told me it would be done in 2 weeks. So I’m just going to go there; calling them never gets me a call back (big box stores, death of customer service). I am also going to the yarn shop despite not really needing anything (but fearing that tariffs will cut off the supply or render unaffordable any yarn from Europe, which is most of the nice yarn these days). And to Albertson’s. I hadn’t shopped at the Albertson’s in that town for a literal decade because it had been kind of a dump, but about a month ago I happened in there and they had renovated. and it’s REALLY nice now, nicer than any other grocery store I have access to (so: about as nice as a bottom-of-the-mid-range grocery for people in a more populous area) and I want to think about what I will need in the near future as “quick foods” and I also want to stock up on nonperishables – again, because inflation and such
yes that includes tpReport
If you get a kitten, you will find yourself amazed at their destructive capabilities.
An older cat? (Like, defined as 5 or older?), those tend to have calmed down quite a bit (and doubly so for the female ones). A warm lap, a warm blanket, a houseape who is just doing some crochet work might get a swat or two but, hey, it’s warm and let’s go back to purring.
Good luck on the painting!
And it feels nice being able to run out of tp again.Report
Date Nite With Maribou was “Wicked”. I’d never seen it, never seen the musical, never heard the soundtrack.
It was really good. I told Maribou that we could see Part II in the theater when it came out.
Seriously, if you like musicals/Oz at all, you should check this one out. It’s on Peacock.Report
What I want is the Broadway version delivered to my home. Fixed camera view of the entire stage delivered to the big screen TV, theater-quality audio. Because I like stage musicals, and because I am unlikely to spend the money to go to NYC, or even to a national touring company closer to me.Report
You’d think that there’d be money in that sort of thing.
One (or three) fixed cameras, just showing the stage as if you were in the audience. I was sure that I remembered PBS doing Les Mis multiple times but I was remembering the Dream Cast Concert (which was 80% as good, really).
Hrm. BroadwayHD exists but it seems to only have a handful of plays at all (and there definitely are some Hollywood movies in there)…
I’m guessing that there is a very vocal contingent of purists doing what they can to keep the transient stage pure, I guess. Huh. They have HMS Pinafore.Report
Apparently there are some practical (i.e. money-related) reasons: https://playbill.com/article/why-you-cant-stream-broadway-showsReport
Imagine your library job is to sit there while someone watches a taped play. It’s a theater kid’s dream job.Report
It would be if it was like a movie theater, but it’s more like a computer room (24 monitors, people use headphones) and the job is more like monitoring SAT test takers for cheating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_on_Film_and_Tape_Archive#/media/File:Theatre_on_Film_and_Tape.jpgReport
OK, that sounds a lot less interesting. Perhaps even less so than actual musical theater.Report
If there were money in it, they’d be doing it.Report
A few years ago, we went to the movie theater to see a Metropolitan Opera simulcast of Porgy and Bess. I don’t remember how many cameras were used, but the sound was great. And I got to eat some popcorn.Report
Thinking about this some more.
Back in the late 80s, Mom took us to see an off-Broadway Big River. It was amazing. They blew the roof off of the joint. We bought the Original Broadway Soundtrack and were stunned to discover that the soundtrack, while technically perfect, didn’t have anywhere near the oomph that we had just seen. It was like the soundtrack was done at the dress rehearsal instead of in front of a live audience. It was skilled but there was no energy.
And so I wondered “is Big River somewhere?” and there’s a youtube of a show in San Jose back in 1999.
This looks like it cost a buck and a half to do. They just set up a camera and zoomed in or panned out as appropriate.
In the current year, you wouldn’t even have to zoom in. Just have a fixed 6K camera set up balcony level and zoom in on the footage as appropriate when you’re editing it (*MINIMALLY* editing it). Just make sure the sound is synched and you’ve got yourself a record.
I mean, Big River isn’t currently touring anywhere, as far as I can tell (it had a revival in 2004). I’m glad that we’ve got a copy of San Jose’s 1999 Production… they should do that for a lot more stuff. Hooking up the camera, recording the sound, making sure it’s synched, and minimal editing time… that can’t cost *THAT* much.Report
Brief review of A Working Man:
It’s Stallone saying “Yeah, John Wick was pretty good… here’s how *I* would have done it.”Report
Watching water fall out of the sky. It has been a dry last four months.Report
It hailed about 5 minutes before we left the theater last night. We walked outside and saw a half inch of white on the ground and were astounded. Then we got the lightning and, less than two seconds later, the thunder and realized that it was ice, not snow.
But still, it was *CRAZY*.Report