The Boston Diaries

Saturday, June 06, 2026

When convenience is not worth the price

What a week!

One week ago, Bunny was transfered to the rehabilitation center. The hospital had arranged for her to go to (what I'm calling) The Good Rehab™, but Bunny wanted another one that was much closer to Chez Boca. As in walking distance of Chez Boca (that is, if you ignore multiple fences along the way and the lack of a cross walk across a six lanes of traffic on a major road). So that's where she was transported to.

But upon entering that place, it was clear it was a mistake. What happened next is a blur of the next 72 hours:

The smell! It wasn't nauseating or unbearable, but … unfamiliar and thus disturbing. It purmeated the place. You could not get away from it.
The initial room that Bunny was assigned lacked a bed. Fortunately (I guess) there was another room nearby where she was reassigned.
Speaking of rooms, while sizable, all it contained was a wall-mounted TV, a wall-mounted clock, a wall-mounted light fixture, the said bed (which wasn't much bigger than the gurney Bunny arrived on), a bed-side stand, and a chair. That's it. No other decorations other than the faded pastel paint on the walls. The closet was more of a built-in cabinet with a piece of plywood for a door, sans latch.
The bathroom in Bunny's room (which I didn't even realize existed until late Sunday which says something about the place) was a bathroom in a technical sense—it had a toilet and a sink with a soap and paper towel dispensers on other side. No tub nor shower unit. And the sink had standing water in it.
The window shade was broken. It could neither move up nor down. It was stuck where it was.
The food at the rehab center was, to put it bluntly, the “grocery store you hate to shop at branded TV dinner” quality. Technically edible, but far from palatable (on the other hand, the food at the hospital was quite good).
The rehab center was severely understaffed. And they routinely failed to listen to Bunny (“Don't move my arms! I can't be rolled on my side!”).
It took over a day for the rehab center to get Bunny's pain medications. I had failed to pick up her prescription before her pharmacy closed on Saturday.
The two times Bunny let me go home to get some sleep (since I felt really guilty about leaving her there alone) I got a call only a few hours later to come back and help her as she felt she was being ignored.
I purchased a cheap air matress and pump in order to get some sleep. Sleeping on the chair was not comfortable, and the rehab facility had nothing to offer, citing fire codes (and I really didn't want to leave her there alone for any length of time).
I overheard two RNs talking about the horrible working conditions there. One was worried about losing her license.
Our only two options for leaving were bleak: 1) we could leave immediately “against medical advice” but were were responsible for our own transportation, or 2) wait until Monday to initiate a transfer as it couldn't be done over the weekend. We opted to wait until Monday.
The transfer request was made on Monday; it didn't happen until Tuesday afternoon.
A third RN, just prior to Bunny being transferred, wished us well as the place we were going. She worked there, and felt this place was better.

About that last bit with the RN: on the day we arrived, I did visit The Good Rehab™ to see what it would take to get transferred there. Not only was it cleaner, brighter, better smelling, and spacious, but within ten minutes of arriving, I was being given a tour from the concierge (they have a concierge!). It was definitely clear that we should have come here first.

But alas, mistakes on our part were made.

Anyway, since Tuesday:

I followed the transport van to The Good Rehab™. The pulled up to the entrance. By the time I parked and entered the new rehab center, Bunny was already in her room, in bed, and being looked over by a few nurses.
The RN helped me fill out the paper work, and gave me the week's menu so Bunny and I could work out what she wanted to eat, with options like chicken fettuccine alfredo or crab cakes.
The food is incredible here! It's much better than the hospital (and that was good). A few times Bunny has asked for seconds, and gotten seconds.
There was a dietician that came around to talk about the menu with Bunny.
The room is sizable, and while she's sharing a room, it's “tastefully bland” (like the hospital room was—that was a very nice room too). And the bathroom is a full bathroom with a bathtub, and a sink that doesn't have standing water.
The door to the bathroom is insane! It looks like a normal door with a door handle and it latches close, but you can push it open from either side! Or pull it open from either side.
It's well staffed, and they do respond with ten to fifteen minutes, depending upon how busy they are. They are also friendly (but to be fair, they were also friendly at the other rehab center, even as they were understaffed).
There's a grand piano in the main hall. The other night there was a woman playing classical music on it.
I don't feel bad at all about leaving her here overnight. It's a real nice place.

And for some amusement, this rolled into the room the other day:

[A picture of a telepresence robot] "It's no FX-7 but then again, Bunny isn't in a bacta tank"

Overall, Bunny is doing quite well at The Good Rehab™. It's clear she's making progress as she doesn't scream as much when physical therapy comes by to visit. From what we've been hearing, it'll be a few more weeks before she can return home.

But in the mean time, she's in good hands.

Thursday, June 11, 2026

Directionally dislexic

Up front, Bunny is still doing well at rehabilitation for her broken shoulder.

As I was getting ready to visit her, my car complained about one of the tires being underinflated. Seriously underinflated. And looking at the in-car display showing the tire pressure, yes, that was at a level that I would not feel safe driving. But no problem, we have an air compressor and the adaptor to inflate tires for it. Okay, slight problem in that I have to dig it out from behind some stuff and set it up, and remember to close the air release valve (ahem) but within 10 minutes I'm inflating the tire.

Only to realize that after I inflated it, it was the tire on the wrong side of the car. I blame my directional dislexia on that.

You see, I'm one of the 10% of the population that is left handed, and I think this has contributed to my problems in identifying left from right. If I'm giving directions, it's all too common for me to say, “Turn right! No! The other right!” as I gesture furtively with my left hand pointing left. Because I write with the right hand, that is to say, the “correct” hand for me to write with, my left hand. It just feels right. You know?

Anyway, I let out the air on a now overinflated tire and once it got down to a safe pressure, I sent to inflate the right tire, which just happened to be on the right side of the car, to which I immedately felt a rush of air across my hand. It took me a few minutes to realize that the hose on the tire inflation adaptor had spontaneously formed an inch long split.

Sigh. All I want is to get enough pressure into the tire to drive to visit Bunny.

I find some duct tape (seeing how we have an air compressor, along with a number of large wood-working equipment in the garage, finding duct tape wasn't hard). I wrap the hose, and when I tried inflating the tire, the hose formed another split! More duct tape, yet a third split.

I ended up taping the entire hose in duct tape and even then, I barely got some air into the tire. The duct tape was helping a bit, but enough air was leaking out that it was clear I was going to have to get a new adaptor.

[Image of the tire-inflator adaptor with a hose seemingly made out of duct tape] I suppose that had I wrapped it tighter with the duct tape, it might have actually made a decent hose.

Had I been thinking a bit more clear, I would have realized I could have taken Bunny's car to the hardware store around the corner, but no, I risked driving my car with a low tire.

New adaptor in hand and back at Chez Boca, I was able to inflate the tire, arriving an hour later than I wanted. When I got home, the pressure had dropped in that tire (but not enough for the car to complain about), showing there was a definite leak.

Sigh.

Study Solves the Mystery of Why Humans Are Mostly Right Handed

Speaking of left-handed people, here's a video of why so many people are right-handed. An executive summary might be, beacuse of our brains and how parts of it specialize for certain tasks. It's worth a watch.

Friday, June 12, 2026

How many English words to you actually know?

From the video “How Many Words Do You ACTUALLY Know?” comes this quiz VocabOwl: The Scientific Word Count, which claims to measure how large of a vocabulary you know.

I took the quiz, which asks for the definitions of 100 words (twenty each from a basic list, intermediate list, advanced, export and grandmaster) and from that, estimates how many you know. I missed 6 out of the 100 words (two from the advanced category, and four from the grandmaster) and so, according to this quiz, my vocabulary consists of some 76,000 English words, for what it's worth.

Extreme Kobolds, Boca Raton edition

As my tires were being addressed at a local tire shop, I meandered across the street to have lunch and browse at some stores to kill some time. At a gaming store, I came across this little fellow defending this terroritory:

[A life sized and colored statue of a D&D kobold in a defensive stance] He spoke softly and carried a very big and pointy stick to make his point.

He seemed very keen on keeping this corner of the store to himself. I let him be.

Thursday, June 18, 2026

Extreme aviary, Boca Raton edition

Bunny is doing as well as can be expected, given that she really can't use her arms to get out of bed or a chair. But she does like looking at the finches they have in the main hall:

[Two finches in a sizable aviary for finches in a nursing/rehabilitation center] Cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep …

Friday, June 19, 2026

It's no surprise that the LLMs confabulate what I've worked on

While I am known to some of the LLMs (link via Flutterby), my own score (or “strength” as the site calls it) is in the upper two digit range. It picked up that I'm a blogger, but it also confabulated that I worked on the Apache module mod_python. Heh … close, but no cigar!

Sunday, June 21, 2026

Extreme abstract staircase, Boca Raton edition

While Bunny was otherwise occupied with a nurse I took the opportinity to look around outside. While there, I found this odd staircase off the side of a path:

I'm not sure what the purpose of such a structure could be, perhaps a place to sit down? But there were benches along the path. Perhaps stairs to Narnia?

Perhaps?

Monday, June 22, 2026

The sounds of silence

I'm at the rehabilitation center where Bunny is rehabilitating her broken shoulders and all the TVs in the place shut down, and it's suddenly quiet. Maybe not as silent as Rachel, Nevada, or maybe when a Las Vagas casino lost power (talk about dead silence—it was weird!), but still, it's eerie.