we stayed home while our car went to Detroit

[calimac]

That's just an old MAD Magazine line about automotive recalls. Our car went to the Toyota dealer down the road to have something or other done with the gas pedal. This was the day B. wanted to go to the big knitting convention, so I took the car in early, took the dealer's shuttle bus home, and when the car was ready about the time she was planning to leave, we drove my car (the Toyota is hers) to her nearby bank where she wanted to stop, and she headed off for an early arrival while I walked through half a mile of dismal bleak suburban wasteland, in a bit of rain, to the dealer and dealt with the paperwork before taking the car home.

The receipt has an annotation that seems to indicate that the car's brake liners need replacing. At 16,000 miles? Something is weird here, and I'll have to call them on Monday. I'll also ask them about the mysterious flashing red light that now comes on whenever the key is out of the ignition. It may have been doing this all along, but if so we never noticed.

On Monday I have some other errands too, including one possibly of some future import. If all goes well, you'll hear about that later.

I have been using my new stereo to listen to, as it happens, symphonies by composers who wrote but one. Paul Dukas, E.J. Moeran, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. I should dig out Jan Voříšek next.

And I went to hear the Eroica Trio conduct a masterclass. (The man who introduced them kept calling them the Eroica Trico.) The students playing the Mendelssohn Op. 66 were very good. Afterwards the Eroica broke their own rule against performing during such classes and played a couple of encores, one of them their cellist's arrangement of Saint-Saëns' "The Swan" for piano trio. This involves finding something for the violin to do. A bit of everything, it turns out: a bit of main theme, a bit of descant, a bit of unison, a bit of harmonization, a bit of ostinato background, a bit of harmonics.

What you don't want to hear about is cleaning up after Miss Barfessa, as we've taken to calling Pandora, cat #1.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

We went through that for years with Rakshi. Early on she was diagnosed (after an expensive biopsy) as having cancer of the digestive system; but she lived for more than three years after that without getting significantly worse, and it was kidney failure that finally ended her life. Our vets recommended a prescription low residue cat food for her that was some help, along with prednisolone and Cisapride to manage the symptoms—but she still had trouble keeping food down. We used to talk about "the barfing cat mystery."

I assume that you have already discussed this with your vets, but on the off chance that you haven't, I encourage you to, just in case it's a sign of something serious.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes, we have. She has intestinal inflammation, something that could only be solved with major surgery, rather out of the question for a very small and rather old cat. She's on special food and meds, and would probably be better off if she wouldn't eat Pippin's food as well, but it's not practically possible to stop her.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

The flashing red light is a false alarm. It is meant to scare off would-be burglars. "Don't go in there, there's a flashing red light!"

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think on my car it actually says something like "Anti-theft device" or some such. I have no idea what device it might be, other than the flashing warning that says "This belongs to someone who has the keys."

Heh. Actually, I can't say I ever really thought about what it was other than that. Maybe I should go read the manual. :D