The three of us went to a play tonight: As You Like It, on Boston Common, presented by the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. My beloveds bought seats in "tall" (normal-height) chairs for me and Cattitude, and a shorter chair for Adrian; the company sells a few of these in advance, an rents out additional short chairs while supplies last, for people who don't want to sit on the ground, which is free.

The weather was excellent for this, except that I was underdressed because it cooled off sooner than I'd expected. At intermission, I went over to the merchandise booth and bought a blanket. The blankets are intended mostly for sitting on, but I wrapped it around myself, over my hoodie, and draped it over my legs for warmth.

It's a good production, in a straightforward way. I liked the use of music, and the clowning and the choreographed fight scenes were good.

I got Cattitude to disconnect my old Windows PC from the peripherals, move it out of the way, and put the MacBook in its place instead.

Moving over is being more annoying than I expected. Some of that is that I don't remember offhand where I left some files. But I also spent a bunch of time wrestling with the Mail app, which decided for no apparent reason that the server was offline. Restarting the machine didn't help, and then the problem went away on its own.

Also, the displays for just about everything have too little contrast, and the text is too small. I thought I'd found a way to change that for everything, but apparently not, so I've only done a few.

I'm probably done for tonight. I have an appointment to get my teeth cleaned early tomorrow afternoon, and I may not work on this further until I get home afterwards.

I just got off the phone with a (genuinely) helpful person at Amalgamated Bank.

I've been talking to them in order to close a joint account in my and my mother's names, and the bank told me in June that the easiest way to do this would be to withdraw all the money and then have them close the account. In order to do that, I had to set up online banking, but only after adding my phone number to the account, which I did in June. Apparently the reason I couldn't log in to the online account after setting it up was that I'd written the password down wrong.

The person at the bank reset my password for me, and then told me how to link this account to an account at another bank. I'm waiting for the test deposits to hit my account, which may take a few days. After than, I can transfer the rest of the money.

Also, I got up in time to go for a walk this morning, to the grocery store and back, before it got too hot. It's a hot day in July, so the six things I bought included ice cream, Italian ices, and fresh blueberries.

I read fewer books than I'd expected to while I was in London. Recently finished:

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent-Teacher Association, by Caitlin Rozakis, is a fantasy novel about a magical school, from the viewpoint of a student's parent.

The Eights, by Joanna Miller, is about four women students who enroll at Oxford University the year the university starts offering degrees to female students. It's set in 1920-21, with flashbacks to earlier in the four women's lives. (The "eights" in the title means the residents of corridor 8.)

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code-maker's War, by Leo Marks, describes working at one of the British government agencies that sent coded messages to underground agents in occupied Europe during the second world war. The author's job included deciphering messages that were mangled either in transit, or by the agent who encoded them, and coming up with new and hopefully better codes.

Evvie Blake Starts Over, by Linda Holmes, is about a woman who was in the process of leaving her husband when he died in a car accident, and her recovery from both the bad marriage and from all the people who expect her to be grieving him. A romance, more or less.

I enjoyed all of these, and don't remember who recommended any most of them to me (adrian_turtle just reminded me that she recommended The Grimoire Grammar School PTA). There's a range of moods here, less because of planning than because of what came up on my library hold lists.

None of these books are useful for my Boston Public Library summer reading bingo cards: I'd already filled the squares for "book with a name in the title" and "published in 2025." I have a book with a green cover on my desk, and got email while I was in London telling me that it had been automatically renewed for another three weeks.

In no particular order:

Mom wanted my cousin Janet to have two rings, and two specific books, and we couldn't find any of them, despite searching repeatedly. This doesn't make sense: if only the jewelry was missing, it might conceivably have been stolen, even though other appealing jewelry was in her bedroom closet, including the few items that are mentioned in the will. If it was just those two used books, maybe they were put away somewhere safe. But there's no reason the rings and books would have been in the same place, where we couldn't find them while going through things that thoroughly.

Mark was already planning to take all of Mom's unclaimed jewelry back to New Orleans, photograph it, and offer it to our cousins. Because the rings Mom promised Janet are missing, he's going to give Janet first pick. (He, Linza, and the three of us have already looked at it, and taken a few things.)

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The whole process was very amicable. We weren't arguing over who could take something that wasn't specifically left to either me or my brother, but agreeing that Mom's crystal might be pretty, but wasn't worth trying to take home on the plane. Instead, Mark took a glass bowl that a friend of his made, and Andy took a small piece of cranberry glass. There were two envelopes of paper money; we split the pounds, and I told Mark to take all the euros, because he's probably going to visit the EU fairly soon.

There were more than enough good photos of Mom, her parents, and other relatives for me and Mark to take home, in some cases duplicate prints of the same picture. I labeled a few photos of people I wasn't sure I'd recognize if not, including a couple of pictures of my paternal grandparents, and one of Dad's older sister. I decided I wanted my mother's first US passport, from a trip to Europe in 1953, and her resident alien card (from before they were green).

Mark took some photos and documents home because he thought Janet would want them, and he was willing to schlep things for her. I'm not sure if that's because he's one of the executors of the will, or simple generosity.

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As we were packing yesterday, we decided to take Mom's salt and pepper grinders: they have no sentimental value, but we've been unhappy with both our current pepper grinders and one of our salt shakers.

otter's comment reminded me that there also is, or may be, a gold charm bracelet that belonged to our grandmother. Janet asked to buy it from me and Mark, but we didn't find it either, only a different gold charm bracelet that belonged to Simon's first wife. The one we found is in the will as going to his daughter Liz, and after Mark took a picture, Liz confirmed that the bracelet we found was her mother's, and Janet didn't recognize it. We left that in the flat, because Liz will be in London in a few months. It's possible, though not likely, that my aunt Lea had the bracelet Janet wants, and that it's still in her and Dave's apartment. We asked Lea's daughter Anne, who doesn't have it but is going to ask Dave.

If Dave finds it, or if the bracelet turns up a few months from now at Mom's flat, we'll give it to Janet, not sell it, but we're waiting until the bracelet turns up before telling her that.

[I am adding to this as I think of other things that seem to belong here.]