Caturday 36: JJ Says Goodbye to Emmie

As I have said before, Lacey likes JJ, and JJ is good with cats.

His own cat, Emmie, came to the end of her days this week, and it was time to help her cross the rainbow bridge. Shauna found a vet who would come to the house, and JJ made the decision to stay home from school to be with Emmie and Mom at the end. How brave for a thirteen-year-old boy! Both Sha and JJ had a good cry, but they were there for her in her passing.

Unobtrusively, the vet left this little candle burning, and they didn't notice until later. It then caused a few more tears to flow, but what a sweet gesture it was.

Emmie was a snuggler, and here are some of the snuggles that Sha posted in memory.

Goodbye, dear girl. When you were in need, they took you in and gave you a good life. And you gave back to them.

i DONT know why

Very recently, I wrote that one benefit of blogging and commenting with my iPad is the handy dandy autocorrect function, which is a great benefit to a spastic keyboarder such as I.

While I will stand by that, there are two non-autocorrects that I don't get. I can’t figure why they are not in the arsenal of corrections.

Here i am typing along, and i don't capitalize the i because, well, autocorrect will catch it. It catches many words that involve a capital and fixes them. When I type ipad, for example, it graciously changes it to iPad. That is very cool. And new york is automatically switched to New York. So why leave the standalone i ...um... standing alone in the middle of a sentence? I mean, is there any reason in the world for an i not to be capitalized there (except the odd and unusual case as here when I am using it quite deliberately)?

Then there is the word, dont which autocorrect refuses to change to don't. As far as I know, dont is not a word, but autocorrect chooses to pretend that it is just hunky dory. I get a red squiggly on the computer spellcheck, and when I right click, it suggests changing it to don't, so I do that little thing. But autocorrect dont.

I recognize that this is most definitely a first world issue, and it is not particularly irksome to me. But i (I mean I) can’t quite figure why this is the way that it is. 

And here’s a quick addendum after publishing. I just typed covid in a comment expecting it to be autocorrected to COVID, but it’s only been two years. Eh?

Writing Good

I was going to post about the Genesis lectures that I told you about previously. I wrote a summary of lesson 1 and then of lesson 2, and then I thought, "Naw. I'm not going to post this because no one cares about this ancient, dry stuff." Or perhaps it is the dryness of my summaries rather than the subject matter that has given me cause for pause.

What I will say is that I am reading Genesis, like I said I would. It's a bit of a struggle because it is all old hat to me. I feel like I have known these stories since I was five years old. While that may not be precisely true, it is closer to the mark than you might think. The course is fine, but the re-reading of the book is a bit of a slog.

So, that is all I that I am going to post about my Genesis course right now, but there's always something to help fill the space. In this case, that something is this handy dandy list of tips that will be sure to aid you in your blogging.

I Smell Gasoline

For the past month or two, I have been smelling gasoline. At least I identify it as gasoline. Sometimes it is strong; at other times it disappears: usually the latter, thank goodness.

It was very strong on Sunday morning, so I decided to search Google. 

I got as far as. "Why do I smell . . ." when it suggested gasoline as one of several possible completions. So I am not the only one.

Mayoclinic had an answer (see article at the end). Apparently, I have a condition called phantosmia. I am experiencing a phantom smell: an hallucination of something that isn't really there.

It had been so strong in Shauna's car on Saturday that I had asked her about it. When she said that she had just filled the tank, I was mollified — for the time being. But when I asked Sue, she of the keenest sniffer outside of the bloodhound breed, she said that she hadn't smelled it at all. 

It was the next. day when it also became quite strong in my den that did my search.

Tidbits from NBC News (emphasis mine)

... a phantom smell could mean something serious,” says the psychiatrist and nationally recognized smell and taste expert. “It absolutely needs to be evaluated. It could be a tumor – that’s on the top of your list of things to rule out — but it could also be a cyst or some infectious agent housed in the area of the brain where the smell is processed.”

Brief episodes of phantom smells or phantosmia — smelling something that’s not there — can be triggered by temporal lobe seizures, epilepsy, or head trauma. Phantosmia is also associated with Alzheimer’s and occasionally with the onset of a migraine.

Yikes! It could be serious. However, I am guessing that in my case, it might be a side-effect of taking gabapentin, a neuropathy medication. I have been taking it for about the same period that I have been experiencing phantosmia, although I don't see that documented as a possible side-effect.  

What causes olfactory hallucinations (phantosmia)?Answer From Jerry W. Swanson, M.D.

An olfactory hallucination (phantosmia) makes you detect smells that aren't really present in your environment.

The odors detected in phantosmia vary from person to person and may be foul or pleasant. They can occur in one or both nostrils. The phantom smell may seem to always be present or it may come and go.

Phantosmia may be caused by a head injury or upper respiratory infection. It can also be caused by temporal lobe seizures, inflamed sinuses, brain tumors and Parkinson's disease.

Consult your doctor if you experience the symptoms of phantosmia, so that your doctor can rule out any serious underlying disorders that may be causing the detected smell.

Parosmia is another smell disorder that's similar to phantosmia. But, in parosmia a smell that's present in your environment is distorted. Parosmia can occur with damage to the olfactory system, such as after a severe respiratory infection.

from Mayo Clinic 

It's in the Air

It sounded like it was raining, but it wasn't; it was the sound of melting, particularly snow disappearing off the roofs. That was on Sunday when the temperature climbed well above freezing, but I could still hear it on Monday when it was barely above freezing.

That is when I took this picture off the snow in our yard.

I know that it seems like a lot, and, by golly, it is. But it must have dropped a foot or two from its maximum height of not so very long ago. We even chipped the ice of the driveway. It's little glimmers of hope like this that I latch onto at this time of year like a drowning person clinging to anything that floats.

This ↓ is looking across the street. You may recall a photo in which the yellow marker was only partly visible above the snow. It melts faster on the other side of the street because they get the afternoon sun.

It will go quickly now. I don't mean in another day or two but as the month progresses. It is inevitable and inexorable, even if we get another storm, which we often do in March and sometimes even in April.

We could begin to feel the change over the past week, even before we had the last two very mild days. The sun was higher and brighter and lasted longer. The hint of things to come was already in the air.

Addendum: Of course, we came under a weather advisory last night and conditions are a bit poor this morning, but it didn't rise to the level of school bus cancellations. 

The Ultimate Game

Without going too deeply into dictionary definitions, we generally use the word, ultimate, in one of two ways.  One usage uses it in the sense of final or last. However, most of us probably use it to mean something like best, grand, or very special.

In the title, I am thinking of ultimate in both senses, for the hockey game of which I am posting today is the final one (for me) for this season (at least I think so). However, it was also the ultimate game in the second sense: best, grand, very special.

The week before last, the boys played a powerful team that defeated them easily by an 8-0. Last Wednesday evening, when I entered the arena, my spirts fell when I saw that they had to endure the same team one more time, for it is not pleasant to see the kids defeated so badly 

The boys had other ideas. I have never seen them play so hard. They kept the more talented team off the scoreboard by dint of hard work and fierce competitiveness. 

As the clock wound down, I was so hoping that they would keep the score at 0-0 and earn a moral victory, but more importantly, a valuable lesson about effort and teamwork.

It was inspiring to watch them skate as hard as they could and battle for every square inch of ice for every minute of the contest. It was their ultimate game in the sense of best and grand.

This ↑ was JJ getting up after a knockdown. While the league doesn't allow bodychecking, their opponents played as close to the edge as they possibly could. They were certainly aggressive in fighting for the puck, and there were knockdowns. As I have said. JJ ended up on the ice a few times and managed to hit his noggin (not seriously), but he hung in and battled hard. They all did. Physically, they gave as good as they got as the game progressed.

I have a few more photos of Jonathan to share.

I have to zoom in and out a lot during a game as the play comes nearer and then goes farther away. If the play gets too close to the glass where I am standing the players are usually both to close and too quickly gone for me to focus and get a shot.

So I was happy to get this one ↓ of my splendid grandson in such good focus with some blurry players in the background to give depth.

He's also in the next two photos: #9 in white and to the right in both .

Of course, I have many more photos, but I think that's enough for this ultimate game of the season — in both senses of the word.

The Penultimate Game

We attended two hockey games last week. As far as the schedule goes now, unless they add more games, these are the last of the season for me. They have two Away games in the next week to be followed by an Away tournament. I don't plan to attend either. So, I think that's it for my hockey photos, which I am sure nobody me will miss. 

On Monday night, they played a very close match that should have ended in a 1-1 tie, but the other guys scored a winning goal with only l6 second remaining in the game. That’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow.

This ↓ photo shows our goal. In a rapid-fire sequence, I caught the whole thing from the shot to the goal. I do have one with the puck in the net, but our player had turned away by then, so I went with the earlier photo with him still facing the camera and with the puck about to enter the net.

I have two photos with Jonathan. In the first one, he and an opponent are jostling for position just a bit. In the second he and another player are contesting a puck.

Now for three photos featuring other players. When photographing sports (not that I actually know what I am doing, but I have been told lol), one looks for peak moments of action or intensity or just interesting expressions or moments.

With only one more game to post, that is a wrap for another year. For a few years, hockey has given me something to photograph in winter when there isn't much else to draw me out with my camera, particularly in a winter like we’ve just had. January was frigid and whatever snow we had didn’t hang prettily on trees for long. while standing in a cold arena with an aching back isn't always fun, it still usually beats outdoor conditions. So, I keep coming back to it because it is my grandson and because it is challenging to get those action moments.

Having just added the title, The Penultimate Game to this post I am reminded of the time when I thought penultimate meant beyond ultimate. I was so dumb. It means second last: the one before the last.