a wolf angel is not a good angel

I just spent an hour or an hour and a half setting up my grandparents’ new dvd player. This included approximately 5 minutes to put the dvd player in the right place (the jacks on the tv were hard to find, and we needed to find a spare cable), 1 hour to set up the freaking remote controls, and half an hour to teach them how to use them. (Mostly because I had each of them try it out.)

My grandparents are smart people. They’re not scared of technology. They can figure out a lot of stuff. But they have absolutely no ability to set up remotes and other tv related items. Not a problem, I’m always happy to help them out. I just don’t get how people who aren’t tech-happy and don’t have the right friends or relatives figure it out.

The PVR remote control can’t change the input for the tv (but can do everything else for the tv), and neither can the dvd remote, so to change between dvd and cable, you need to use the tv remote control. All the remote controls can run the dvd player. None of them can change the PVR stuff at all except the PVR remote itself. Plus you need to remember which things need which remote — it’s not always obvious. I got it down to using the PVR remote except to switch sources from the tv, but of course the single button they ever need to use on the tv remote is not marked out as special in any way, and the writing on the remote is very small. Plus of course all the machines are very picky about line of sight.

Don’t forget that you have to figure out the right code for the dvd player. Sure, 021 can use play and pause and on and off for the dvd player, but it cannot move around between menu items, you actually need code 042. And so on.

No wonder the geek squad does so well.

Someone stole my wallet tonight. Someone else returned it, but it is missing the credit card (cancelled, no unusual charges on it), cash (of course), maybe some bus tickets, and the pickup slip for my Harry Potter preorder, which was hiding behind some business cards (conveniently left in the same slot). Who carefully looks for a preorder of a book and steals that? It just seems so stupid and petty.

But I have now read Harry Potter spoilers that discuss whether Harry lives or dies — unexpectedly popped up in my feed readers — and that’s ok, because I’ve read equal numbers of each spoiler. My current assumption is that one was leaked, and JKR/publishers leaked the other deliberately to foil the first leaker (I assume they’d've done this whether the correct or incorrect spoiler was leaked), though “people make shit up and claim they have inside knowledge” is also a likely answer.

I was watching The Princess Bride with my father today, the duel scene between Westley and Inigo Montoya. (Does Mandy Patinkin ever get asked to repeat that line anymore? Is he sick of it?) I marvelled at the background with the totally non-moving clouds. Then my father — who has seen this movie before, and more than once — asks me if I notice anything odd about the scene.

Well, the clouds aren’t moving.

No, he says, they’re both fighting left-handed. Isn’t that odd? Do you know what percentage of people are left-handed?

His face when Inigo and then Westley both admitted to not really being left-handed was priceless.

Again, I’m struggling to find things to say. I am not entirely sure what there is, even, that I am not saying.

I also feel that anything I do say would be some kind of a lie. Implying things, or leaving off implications, or lacking the right context, or about what I wish were true or wish weren’t. Or that anything I say would not be a lie; I think I am scared more of that sometimes.

Mostly I am disappointed.

Why is downtown Montreal full of cops? (Mostly cadets.) So far their main use seems to be making me paranoid when I cross the street. It’s nerve-wracking when I cannot jaywalk.

My grandfather today asked me if I had good friends, ones I could ask about anything. (Maybe not relations with your husband, if you had one, he added.) Yes, I said, I do have those friends. (The fact that I *won’t* bring up anything doesn’t mean I couldn’t; it’s my insanity, not my friends’ lack of trustworthiness.) I don’t have many friends, but the ones I have are good ones. (I tend not to have casual acquaintances, though I wouldn’t mind some. I am not good at meeting people, though, or even really suggesting stuff with people I know but not well.)

I am not sure why he asked me. He sounded sad that he didn’t have many friends now. Mostly he outlived them, and he said — jokingly? I don’t know — that when they spent money before it was on boats and not golf clubs, where he might have always been meeting more people. He sounded pleased, or perhaps relieved, that I have friends like that. Friends at all? Sometimes I wonder what my family thinks of me. Sometimes I am not sure I want to know.

Mr. Cat has been returned to me until his eye infection clears up. He was lying down, all sad, in the litter box. He purred when I picked him up. Crap.

One of the cats is in adoption, but adoption is full full full, piles of cages everywhere. A small, scared black cat? She’s going to get lost. Especially, I think, as she’s not with her brother, whose eye infection returned the second he got back to the shelter. They’re looking for another foster family for him, though I’ve agreed to take him back if necessary. I cannot think much about this or I feel too terrible. They might have driven me round the bend, but I did love them, and I hate to think of them alone and scared in cages.

Today I went to my great-uncle’s unveiling, to my grandparents’ house for a lunch, and then to a three hour nap. I am still totally exhausted, and dizzy, perhaps with the exhaustion, perhaps not, but dizzy nonetheless. (And if you’ve seen the stairs to and in my place, you know dizziness is risky.)

I don’t remember my great uncle well. I remember liking him, finding him fun. (I hear that as a parent he was not. But he was not my parent.) I remember he ate very slowly, I remember that he asked about me, shortly after he moved into a home after his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s. I didn’t go, and then it was quickly too late, and I feel sorry about it still.

Keep on dancing, uncle-give-me-a-kiss-Mort.

Y’he sh’lama rabba min sh’mayya v’chayyim tovim.