Fire's Burning

I am doing a double post today because of an untoward happening last night.  At about 12.30 last night, just as I was turning out the light to settle down to sleep the fire alarm went off in the apartment.  When the alarms are tested, something which happens on a regular basis, the alarm runs for a short time and then stops but last night it just kept on keeping on, was very loud and was beamed into ever room so I figured that this was not a test.

That meant that I had to evacuate fast so I threw on a dressing gown and, hauling out the kitty carriage started to search for the cats as there is no way that I would leave them to their fate and getting a kitty carriage with big bicycle wheels means that I can take it down the fire escape stairs if needs be although I quail at the thought of having to do that.

Anyway, Parsifal came out as soon as he saw the kitty carriage and I found Poppy hiding under a table in my utilities room and dragged her out by the scruff.  I didn't bother to harness them but just tossed them both into their transport, grabbed my keys and handbag which I keep by the door, noticed that the fire doors were shut in the corridor and took a punt that it would be safe to use the lift although it is actually not allowed if there is a fire.

The thing which surprised me is that so few people were downstairs.  There are families with babies and small children and I know that it is difficult with small children and babies but rather stupid if there really was a fire.  It was a false alarm according to the fire brigade and we have no information as to what triggered the alarm but it got me thinking.

Mrs 705 never leaves her apartment although she is capable of doing so.  I have a key to her apartment but it is not readily accessible in an emergence and her apartment is through the fire doors.  I need to put it by my door so that I can grab it if I need to get into her place in an emergency and I need to keep the phone number of Senor 702 accessible to phone his Apartment caretaker as he has a key to Apt 702.  

On  lighter note, our owners' Committee representative remarked that we now know what we all wear to bed.

An extra limerick to go with the extra post:-

A lady removing her scanties
Heard them crackle electrical chanties;
Said her husband, "My dear,
I very much fear
You suffer from amps in your panties."

To Boldly Split Infinitives

Last night I felt that I was a bit overloaded with the doings of Captain Kirk and company and decided to have a break from Star Trek for one night at least.  However the series has made me cogitate on the legality of using split infinitives, once a total grammatical no-no.  There was quite a lively debate when Star Trek was firsts released because of the introduction to each episode:

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Since no-one could do anything to alter that shocking use of that split infinitive the consensus was that it was perfectly acceptable in the circumstances as it gave emphasis; ‘to go boldly’ was all a bit ho-hum after all.  I don’t think that later generations even know what a split infinitive is and certainly they feel at liberty to boldly use them.

I pulled out my copy of ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ by Lynne Truss but like me she is a member of the comma police and doesn’t do grammar so I went to Google where I found this:-

Split infinitive. ... A well-known example occurs in the opening sequence of the Star Trek television series: "to boldly go where no man has gone before"; the adverb boldly is said to split the infinitive to go.

As I mentioned above, there was quite a controversy when Star Trek was first released and that phrase will be remembered by posterity.

The Limerick:-

A dentist named Archibald Moss

Fell in love with the dainty Miss Ross,

But he held in abhorrence

Her given name, Florence,

So he renamed her his Dental Floss.

The formatting has gone a bit awry due to the copy/paste and I can't fix it without typing in the whole thing again.  Sorry about that . . .

Star Trek 2

I have been immersing myself in Star Trek for the last few days having finally found a medium which works for me.  Firstly I tried running it through my TV but had problems hearing the dialogue with no subtitles to help so I switched to my computer using an app which MS10 thought that I should use; it wasn't very good.

So I enlisted the help of google, asking what was the best way of watching DVDs on MS10 and there was one program which appeared far and away the best so I downloaded it and Google was quite right, it works well.

I have discovered that there are four episodes per DVD and there are 21 discs so at the rate of one per day it will take me about three months to watch every episode  -  and then there are the films.  The whole crew has not yet assembled-  Dr McCoy has not yet appeared and Scotty has, so far, made only a brief appearance but there are 80 episodes yet to be watched so I am quite happy to wait.

I have finally got around to making an appointment to see a podiatrist because I need some new orthotics.  I have a referral dated 29-6-2015 from a surgical podiatrist who was no help to me at all but pinned to it is a radiologists report on my sore toe. I am not holding my breath that this one will be able to cure the toe  -  I suspect that it is going to take an orthopaedic surgeon to fix it.

D3 came over here this morning and we went out to lunch and then to the yoga shop for her to buy a couple of blocks.  I acquired a new mat since the one which I have been using for the last few years is starting to crack in places.  The new one is purple to co-ordinate with my bolster, blocks and strap.  D3 has had a seriously bad back for years and she is finding a careful yoga program is helping enormously.  The stretch which she showed me and which she called Downward Facing Dog is actually a sort of flattened forward Childs Pose and is the stretch which is being touted on Facebook under the heading "doctors are amazed . . ." and maybe they are since it obviously works.

The Limerick:-

Despite her impressive physique
Fatima was really quite meek;
If a mouse showed its head
She would jump into bed
With a terrible blood-curdling sheik.

Farewell Apollo

In the olden days when I cycled regularly I  owned two bicycles.  One was a hybrid mountain bike which I rode to work on and the other was an Apollo Randonneur which I used for social riding and that included two 14-day cycle tours with the Bicycle Touring Association.  This bike fitted me by every method and measurement devised to calculate bike to rider fitness, including the length of seat-post/head circumference of rider ratio.  This was the bike which I brought with me when I moved into my apartment but sadly I found that with my balance problems it was scary, if not downright dangerous, for me to ride a bicycle even on the bike path along the railway line.

I toyed with the idea of trading her in for a recumbent trike but the problem of wheel span on bike paths was a difficulty as, at the time, narrow wheel based trikes were not easy to come by.  And then I realised that with nine different bus routes and a train station all within a two-minute walk the idea of commuting by bike became less attractive and the only real need would have been to transport the cats to the Cottesloe Veterinary Hospital  -  so I changed to the Claremont Veterinary Clinic which is about five minutes walk away.

An emailed newsletter asking for old bikes to be refurbished and donated to people in need finally stirred me to pass my bike on to the Nedlands Lions Club and it was collected yesterday after sitting in my storeroom for over seven years. I was sad to see it go  -  I loved that bike  -  but at least it will be useful even if it is simply cannibalised for its gortex cables and gel seat.

Christmas is over for another year and even before Twelfth Night there were Hot Crossed Buns in Coles Supermarket.  It is a bit rude and pushy but it is the only time that I ever see fruit buns on the shelves (not that I have ever looked for them) so I will probably stock up on some anyway, even though they are somewhat out of season.  At least the Claremont Town decorations were removed in a timely manner.

Poppy is back on inti-inflammatory medication and is a happy little cat.  She is currently sleeping on a pile of pillows on my bed, something which she has not done for a while and it is lovely to see her pain-free and confident again.  She is no longer attacking Parsifal so we are all happier.  Long may it last.

The Limerick:-
Political correctness alarm.

A gay man who lived in Kartoum
Took a lesbian up to his room,
Where they argued a lot
About who would do what
And how and with which and to whom.

StarTrek Revisited

One of the Christmas presents which I bought myself this year was a DVD set of the whole of the first series of Star Trek with Mr Spock and "Beam me up Scotty".  I used to watch it when it first ran many, many years ago and never bothered with the second series.  Just to make sure that they worked I watched the first episode today while I still had the box and Return Form.  I thoroughly enjoyed the absurdity of it all but was a bit handicapped by its lack of subtitles.  I had to sit closer and turn up the sound.  I might do better to watch it on my computer.

My other Christmas presents were a couple of sets of ear-bling from my favourite jeweller who has her shop just across the road from my apartment and next to the shop which sells everything 'cat' so I check out what is being displayed in the window every so often.

Also over the Christmas break I ordered a replacement for a recipe book which D1 lent to one of her friends almost 50 years ago and which I never got back.  Luckily I had added my favourite recipes to my web pages but the replacement book arrived today  -  a second-hand paperback since the book has been long out of print  -  and now I have the whole set again.

On Christmas Eve some silicon food covers arrived by mail in a very timely manner just in time to cover the potato salad and trifle.  I have ordered some more since I am trying not to use plastic food wrapping so Gladwrap is on my 'do not use' list and as of two days ago shops can be fined if they give away non-reusable plastic bags.  I still have a whole drawer full of plastic food stuff of various kinds and am not sure what I am going to do with it all.

My vertigo has almost disappeared, thank goodness, and at the moment I am sleeping better than I can ever remember so I am back to yoga after a break of almost a month but starting with some easy ones to get myself back into the routine.  I haven't yet returned to my walks around Lake Claremont  -  watch this space.

The limerick:-
This one is distinctly off-colour so read it at your peril.

There was a young harlot from Kew
Who filled her vagina with glue.
She said with a grin,
"If they pay to get in,
They'll pay to get out of it, too."