Sidewalk closed

    As I have mentioned, there is a lot a lot a lot of construction going on around here. In practically every case, such construction means that the sidewalk is closed. Even though I don't do as much city walking as I used to, particularly in July, this strikes me as-- I guess "unfortunate" is as good a word as any. I was all set up to get up in arms: "New York has construction going on all the time and they manage to keep sidewalks open!" But then New York, or anyway Manhattan, has a lot more pedestrian traffic, is a lot less sunny and a good deal less hot, and is built for mixed use so people can actually go a block from their homes to get groceries or run other errands. Columbia isn't set up like that, so generally the people on sidewalks either want to be or have no choice.
    Still, there's one spot that makes me crazy. They're putting up-- what else?-- student housing on the other side of the river on Knox Abbott Drive. The sidewalk is closed. There are signs on this side of the bridge saying that the sidewalk is closed ahead, a mile or more away. Blossom Street (Knox Abbott on this side of the river) is crazy dangerous to cross. I think they could have either made a NY-style pedestrian tunnel for the sidewalk or made the developer make do with a six-foot setback. People do actually use that sidewalk (hey, it's cool to walk or jog over a bridge) and it would be nice if authorities once in a while seemed to care more about their actual people than their developers.

Maximumer!

    3M Filtrete HVAC filters used to go up to Maximum, or a rating of 1900. (1900 what? Well that's another question.) Now they go up to 2400, or Elite. This tickles me boundlessly. Mind you, if they had had Elite ones in my size (14 X 25, remember it for Christmas and birthdays) I would have bought one. Alas, I don't rate in Lowe's worldview. I already had that impression.
    I found some cassettes I made decades ago, most probably, mostly from my LPs. My turntable hasn't worked in ages, so it's just absolutely beyond mega-awesome to be able to hear these old songs again without having to wait on them to turn up on Casey Kasem rebroadcasts. Yay!
    PS: That $2.54 Goodwill scanner works way better at scanning documents and sending them to the printer than it does with photos. Double yay!

Yeah, remind me not to do that again

    I went out walking under the hot sun (phone said it was completely overcast) with shades instead of hat, no water and no tunes, because all would in some way or another interfere with dronage, and of course carrying drone and remote controller. And I found that my skills have improved markedly in spite of flying less and less, such that I could take off and land in pretty tight spaces without crashing into a tree or vermin laden underbrush. And I got some OK pictures, but nothing great. Flying up a few hundred feet from I-77 just to take pictures of traffic was probably not worth the risk (or the pictures) but I'm reasonably sure nobody would have been distracted by a pretty tiny drone for a very short time. But no, I won't be doing it again. Dumb in about a hundred different dimensions, but fun in a few, too.

My response is required by law!

    I was going to talk about the humidity, which is beyond belief and should be impossible, but then I got the notification that my address had been selected by the Census Bureau for the American Community Survey. I am advised that it will take 40 minutes. I cannot begin to say how not thrilled I am by this information. Nor that my response is required by law (boldface, all-caps). Fortunately, they didn't say anything about it being required to be accurate.

Revisionist history

    Recently, as I may have mentioned, I picked up a scanner for $2.54 at Goodwill. It isn't the best, but it works. Perhaps I'll move up-market someday soon. Back in, as we say, the day, I traveled with no camera except a 110 pocket camera for fear of looking like a tourist. My favorite thing was snapping a bunch of shots as I turned slowly to survey a wide panoramic view and then later matching up the prints to make a patchwork panorama.
    Now these came out looking both cheap and amateurish, but still somewhat cool. Fast forward a few decades. Now I can scan the same prints (even though the HP tends to leave a blue edge on each picture that wasn't there previously) and stitch them together using software. The resulting picture was much too bright, but I could adjust that using the software, too. So now, 25 years later, I finally have an actual panorama of the Grand Canyon. Probably a little better than my patchwork job.

Crash!

    Or rather, crash crash! Last night was a very lovely sunset. Nailing down my status as Captain Common Sense, I was rushing home somewhat past the speed limit just so I could get my drone in the air and try to get pictures. (Suspense dispeller: the pix didn't come out.) I did get it in the air, but on the way down it intersected with a neighbor's tree. I was never gladder to have a folding chair and 6 foot pole! (I was also fairly glad the neighbors weren't home.) I got it down no problem and undamaged, although I almost stepped on it getting down from the folding chair. So yay!
    Today I went to the diversion dam at Columbia Canal, the far end of what I usually call Canal Park. This is a legal but dumb place to drone, but the pictures might have been pretty. I tried flying from the end of the actual dam, surrounding on three sides by water. I managed to land over land, but... on rocks. A hill of rocks. The drone bounced at least four times. One rotor guard broke, but otherwise it was unhurt. When I got it home, I found the SD card wasn't in it. Paul was a good sport and we went back and searched the rocks, but no go. About this time, I started to suspect that I had forgotten to put the card back in the camera last night after reviewing the photos before the previous crash. And that was the case. Glad I thought to check this before going to Best Buy to buy a new one; glad we didn't waste much time searching. Hey, it was pretty fun. In my heart of hearts, I will still believe that they were GREAT pictures.

Hubris

    I don't know if I'll ever even open the 3D Eiffel Tower puzzle again. Boy did I bite off more than I could chew! After an hour, I had put together maybe 3 pieces. That is, I put together 3 pieces, and maybe they were actually supposed to fit together. Assuming I had no cats and also had a large table that the puzzle could rest on for a month or months, I have not much doubt that I could eventually put it together. Given that I do and I don't, respectively, I seriously don't see this happening. On the other hand, I already had a sore back (maybe the wrong time to say "on the other hand," if there's ever a right one) so perhaps I'll be more charged about this some time when I haven't been sorting CDs all day. Don't hold your breath, though.
    I noticed a lot of neat stuff while putting my 300-400 CDs into new world order, but the only thing that sticks with me is that Duke Ellington recorded Money Jungle with Charles Mingus and Max Roach one week before recording with John Coltrane. Wonder who he played with the week before and the week after? (Coleman Hawkins before, says Wikipedia.)

Alphabetical

    Boy is this ever going to be brief! I put my CDs in alphabetical order after many, many years, and have one or two somewhat intelligent things to say about it, but won't be doing so today. In a moment of madness, I bought a 700-piece 3D Eiffel Tower puzzle. (For $3; I'm not all THAT crazy!) Parts are scattered all over and I live with the Cat of Mass Destruction. So I'm going to get back to guarding the pieces and perhaps putting some of them together. It could happen!

The world has lost interest (Yay!)

    Not that the world ever had any interest, but it always creeps me out slightly when so many of my putative readers are in Russia or China. I continue to think that these are just spybots, but neither are spybots exactly my favorite. So I'm actually somewhat reassured when I have fewer visitors but they're nearly all from the US, Canada or Western Europe. Or any country where I have actual friends. The last couple of days, my visitors have been almost all American. USA! USA! (No offense, Vladimir.) Of course, if I want the world to regain interest, all I have to do is post a link on Facebook. Hmmm.
    I'm a little goofy because I woke in the night and my old-time radio shows were too good to let myself go back to sleep. If you ever have the chance to hear "The Moon's Our Home" from Lux Theater with Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard, you should do that. I'm sure the movie version with Margaret Sullavan and Henry Fonda is fine, too. Hey, Dorothy Parker wrote it! Has to be good!

Worst. Spy. Ever.

    As I have mentioned, there's a quarry or two in my neighborhood. Somehow, it's taken me two months almost to send the drone up and shoot pictures down. I thought they were ultracool pictures, but my Facebook friends barely noticed them. (I'm much more popular with fellow commenters on stories by The Onion than with my actual Facebook friends.) Thing is, I have a very good guess that the quarry companies would prefer me not to take such pictures. Other thing is, they're so shaky and blurry that there's no way that they could be used for any kind of industrial espionage, assuming there are any cutting edge technologies in rock quarrying that anyone would want to engage in industrial espionage about. But I will try to resist temptation to take any more pictures (except maybe one crack at a sunset shot) because I'm such a darn nice guy. Oh, and because if a big wind blows up, my drone will be at the bottom of a quarry in a few seconds. But I still say it's ultraneat.
    DMV went very smoothly yesterday, and William is all reregistered and retagged and everything. The new title is coming in the mail; I couldn't think of any argument for paying $20 extra to get it immediately. But kudos DMV!

Carts, horses

    I probably mentioned already that my brother's car was in my dad's name, so paying his vehicle tax was a little tricky. I went to the DMV early this month and an efficient lady told me (and better, wrote down for me) what I needed to do to change the registration. Problem was that she didn't put them in any order. And one item was to pay the county its vehicle tax. This to me seemed tricky since the car was still in my dad's name; I figured you change the title first, then pay the tax. But today I went to the county and it was all quite straightforward, fortunately. Now back to DMV. Sure to be fun!
    Time Warner can't do anything right even when they do something right. A robocall came in asking me to answer a seven-question survey (too many right off the bat) about my experience. Then they wanted me to rate everything from 1 to 10, punching in a 1 and 0 for the latter. So I tried to. And got the "We're sorry..." and hung up. Time Warner? How about 0 through 9 if you can't handle the 1 and 0 you just asked me for? Seriously, what idiots.

Customer service?! From Time Warner?!

    Because of Dad's death, I had to change his account with Time Warner out of his name. I had the cable box which had been at Margaret's house, but could not turn it in without making the account change. (Granted, people might steal cable boxes and turn them in, but it's not like TWC is going to give them any money. Seems crazy. Still, I guess you don't want to give anybody even an apparent incentive to steal cable boxes.)
    The lady at Time Warner was really great. She dealt with the paperwork quickly and efficiently and was friendly throughout and I was out the door. In spite of my love for minutiae of my life, though, (even) I wouldn't be posting this if that were the end of the story. An hour later, maybe, she called, saying that we have old equipment in the house and the new account might not work with it. I explained that I don't live in that house and couldn't say whether the cable was working or not. She said she'd check with a supervisor and call back in a half hour. She did and said that they had sent out a signal that would work with the old equipment and everything should work fine. I get that this isn't earth-shattering, not even that I finally did something marginally productive, but Time Warner gets such awful publicity. This is to say that Donna of the Five Points office did a great job for us today. Salute!
    (During the transaction, a friend of hers passed by and they had a short exchange. I stood out of the way so that they could chat easily and put on what I hope is my friendly, encouraging face. Whether this encouraged her subsequent helpfulness I don't know. I suspect that she's just good at her job and dedicated.)

Zoot suit

    Had a nice haul at the thrifts today. Picked up a scanner for $2.54. It was flaming death getting the drivers from HP, but on the second try I got them. It looks to be a winner, especially at that price. I have a gazillion photos from my travelling days. It's nice that I might be able to share them without carrying photo albums around anymore. I also picked up an Andrew Vachss novel, which was less of a thrill than I thought since as it turned out I have it already. But at least this is the hardback, so an upgrade of sorts. And I got a zoot suit jacket. I was going to pass on it, but Sam Elliott told me that it looked good on me. OK, he just sort of sounded like Sam Elliott. He looked like and might have been a musician of my acquaintance. Whoever, he said that double-breasted jackets always feel tight across the abdomen. Who am I to argue with Sam Elliott? Or fifty cents (half a dollar, not the bankrupt rapper, who is totally changing his name to Five Cents On The Dollar. Sssss.)

Cheesed

    Good gracious! So there's a brand of fake cheese called Go Veggie! vegan mozzarella shreds. There's another called Daiya. The two are comparable but the former is a dollar cheaper. So I started using it. My last bag got green pretty fast, but I had used most of it. This one, however, bought yesterday, was green today. I picked out the green at the top, used some, but that was green, too. So I set off to Publix to get my refund.
    This was not as easy as it might have been, no fault of Publix. Living EXACTLY where I live, where every direction leads to active railroad tracks, is usually a pain in the butt, but to a reasonable degree. Some days, though, a train stops just next to the road, far enough to be out of the way but close enough to trigger the gates and flashing lights. This was one of those days. It took maybe ten minutes for enough cars to give up and turn around to let me around the curve so that I could see that it was the case. The gates don't interlock so it's possible to go around them, but I do not. So I circled around the long way. This took me into pre-Klan traffic, or maybe they were unaffiliated morons. Anyway it was a bear, too.
    Publix, by contrast was a breeze. What I wanted was to get the Daiya for the same price as the Go Veggie! but I decided not to press it. This was a good thing. Once I had my refund, and the checker had rung up my Daiya, it was half price, cheaper than Go Veggie! anyway. Now there was no sign to this effect or I would have just bought Daiya in the first place. I wonder if the clerk, who is a vet, overheard the story and just gave me a markdown. I'll know the next time I go to Publix and check the price on Daiya!

I want a cookie

    What it is is that one of the myriad ways in which I'm spoiled (not that I'm blaming my parents; I think I spoiled myself) is that I never got the memo that life isn't fair. When something goes wrong in any way, I want a cookie. So if my car breaks, rather than shrugging it off and getting up and running again, I want a reward for putting up with this terrible setback. This is another example of where I'm falling down on the job of being childlike rather than childish. And is also to say that I put off adult responsibilities through another working day and working week.
    Another obvious problem is that doing some of these jobs is stressful in itself/themselves. Going to DMV isn't childbirth, but it isn't relaxing, and you have to take a number and wait just to get a simple question answered. In a world with an Internet, most of this should be unnecessary. Obviously, if the gig is stressful, one puts it off, but the putting it off makes it more stressful. Monday! Monday I will come through! Really!
    Meanwhile, the dying drone- ah, I didn't mention the dying drone. This morning, the motors on the drone seemed to be reaching the end of their life, just after i had found on the Internet that they have a very limited life. This afternoon, however, it and they came back to life nicely. So we'll call it the manic-depressive drone, which is pretty much how it acted when it died the first time. Maybe I'll figure out an intelligent way to send a note to the people at the warehouse where my only-twice-flown drone is resting in a tree above their roof.

I keep putting it off...

    and yet it doesn't go away. I still don't have a clue why I'm so intent on hiding from real life. Or rather I have a vivid idea of why I'm hiding from responsibilities that I didn't ask for, didn't want and aren't actually mine. However, nobody else is going to do these things, they're neither difficult nor onerous, so why am I being a big baby about them? (A: I'm a big baby.)
    Dreams have been ultra wild and wacky lately but readers get a big break because I don't remember most of them. More beautiful women in them than I'm used to, though. And I liked the one where I was lying on the floor, snaking my way down an incline with cats (possibly my real ones). I was fairly puzzled about this even in my sleep.
    It's very nice to have the car back. It's still a piece of junk, but it's way better than walking. Also I can drone again, although it turns out that these cheap drones have an expected life of-- well, mine has already exceeded it. The one stuck in the tree seems a lot less tragic now is all I'm saying.
    While I was typing, AVG restarted Firefox with their own search engine made the default and only choice, in spite of me telling them not to. So goodbye AVG. Forever. OK, it was AVG Web Tuneup. Even after I murdered it and completely removed it, my default search engine was still changed to Yahoo. Ah Internet security that hijacks my browser. I think it's time to return to Avast.

Hosed

    Not really, but if the one-word gag is there, I have to go for it. The car needs four hoses and one heater valve. Parts and labor will be $325. As it happens, I didn't need much in the way of groceries, so it hasn't been a major imposition not having the car for a couple of days. I got a ride to Drinking Liberally which was major fun. Why didn't I think of having it at a Puerto Rican restaurant years ago? This time with telenovelas!
    Oddly, the only thing that made me crazy was not being able to go to the ballpark to fly the drone. Eventually, I was bouncing off the walls and just took it out in the street. Ohio and Whitney streets are normally deserted, but of course when you want to play in the street it becomes rush hour. But I got to bring another couple over to the new religion, the toy flew well and amused Harry the cat, and crashes left no apparent damage. I'm getting a little better at hovering and avoided all trees. Yay!

Car boiled over

    Not much to say really. I was running errands yesterday and the car boiled over. I pulled off at a gas station. Even though I could and should have bought water, I did not. I just let it cool down for an hour, figuring I was close enough to home to make it. This was not the case.
    The second time the car boiled over, I let it cool again, but this time it wouldn't start afterwards. By now it was after ten and I was tired and overheated, and thunder was lighting up the sky in the distance. I just got my brother William to come get me. Once home, I thought again and called USAA to find out if I had roadside assistance. I did, but having left the car, there wasn't much help I could get from them. I figured I would deal with it in the morning.
    Continuing the serendipity theme, but not in a wholly good way, at 6 Amelia yakked up a hairball on my bed. This would not be a source of joy under any circumstances, but it was an extremely effective alarm clock. So I cleaned it up, filled and packed all the water bottles I could find and headed off on the hour walk to my car. With water in the radiator, it ran like a top. I took it to the place where roadside assistance would have taken it and there we stand. As of an hour ago (four hours there), they hadn't looked at it. If they still haven't by 4, I'll go rent a car. I kind of like doing so anyway, especially as this old rust bucket seems to be nearing its end. It's nice to try out possible successors.
    More anon department: I was saying yesterday that I might be able to film my own drone and never completed the thought. The thought was that now that I can send it hurtling into the skies, maybe I could get a few shots on the way down. Or possibly my hovering skills might improve now that I know about the H-L button. None of that materialized with yesterday's flying, which didn't go that well. Hope I haven't fritzed the thing again.

Serendipity

    So the other day, I'm playing with the drone in the park with my friend Steve. And we have big fun and he got video of the drone in flight with his phone. This is extra neat because one problem about having a remote controller in your hands at all times is that it's hard to get photos or video. (More, as we say, anon.) It was also crazy hot and sunny, so for once the limited battery life was not a big disappointment. But this became moot when the drone crashed, one propeller came off and the screw that had been holding it on (or not) went away into infinity.
    I've mentioned that I have two screws that are supposed to be holding propellers on but aren't big enough, and mentioned it to Steve. Also that I went to a hardware store and they didn't sell screws that little. And Steve said, "Try an optician's shop." Now this probably would have never occurred to me. But the serendipity part (besides the propeller flying off to bring the topic up at all) is that I had a pair of sunglasses in the car that Alice or somebody abandoned years ago. I just kept them in the off chance they might become useful in an emergency. And boy howdy did they!
    The old sunglasses had Phillips head screws (like the drone) which filled in perfectly (so far) for the propeller screws. Just a crazy string of luck and coincidence and now damn thing is better than before and practically better than ever.
    Also, there's a button on the left of the controller which the manual does not identify or explain. Looking at the controller when I push it, I find that it switches from H to L or vice-versa. Looking it up, it's a high/low speed switch. Yesterday (Steve and I having fooled with this button the day before) I flew the drone insanely high, literally out of sight. We must have left it on H accidentally. (I only found out it switched H and L today.) I would let it drop, run the motors a little so I could at least hear it, let it drop again, run them again, until finally I could see it again and I could fly it knowing where I was going. Was ultra cool. Not surprisingly, running at high speed is a drag on the battery. This wouldn't worry me except for the other new thing. When the battery is about to run out, the motors slow down in what should be a controlled crash. If you're a thousand feet up, though, it isn't so well controlled. This is likely how Drony Moroney will pass away unless I get a better sense of how much battery I have. Ah well, they'll make more.

A better class

"I just don't know about those new people who moved into the Weavers' old place."
    "What's wrong with them?"
"I think they might be Episcopalian."
    "What? No!"
"I think they are."
    "Who would believe it? In this day and age!"
"They've got that little Episcopalian sticker on their car."
    "Well my word! Them and their bishops and their archbishops."
"Not like us. Not like us at all!"
    "I should say not!"
"And their young one. I don't even like to say it!"
    "Say what?"
"I think he may be..."
    "May be what?"
"May be a mandolinist."
    "No!"
"I think he is."
    "A mandolinist! In this neighborhood! It doesn't bear thinking about."
"What is the world coming to?"
    "What indeed? Where will it all end?"
"They just aren't like us."
    "Not like us at all!"
"And I think... I think I saw Osmond Brothers records."
    "Osmond Brothers records?"
"Who still has Osmond Brothers records?"
    "I still have 'One Bad Apple.'"
"Well of course. EVERYBODY still has 'One Bad Apple.' But it's weird to have any other Osmond Brothers records."
    "They might be valuable."
"They might be. But it isn't like us."
    "Oh no. Not like us at all."
"And there's another sticker on the car that says they're in the country club."
    "Oh good heavens. Not that!"
"Oh how I hate those country club people. Always looking down on everybody and finding fault. Not like us."
    "No, not like us at all."

Tomorrow: Serendipity

Ding Dong the flag is dead

    Well that was quick. In the end, getting the flag down from the State House grounds went pretty quickly indeed. Just discussing what to call it might take longer than the actual process did. It is not in fact the Confederate flag, as that was three other ones. It isn't the battle flag, strictly speaking, as it's just the Army of Northern Virginia flag. (It isn't the flag of your ancestors then unless they were in the Army of Northern Virginia; apparently 1/8 of that army was from South Carolina, so it's possible. But not what you'd call likely.) I'll just call it the thing in the museum. (Flag supporters probably should have renamed the Confederate Relic Room while they were at it.)
    Sure I feel good about it. It's nice that the thing is finally down. However, I don't think I'm going to join in on breaking my arm patting my fellow white South Carolinians on the back for finally fixing a problem we created ourselves that we should have never done in the first place. The fact that nine people including a sitting state senator had to die before the governor and general assembly noticed that "Hey! We might have a public relations problem!" kind of undercuts their heroism. Yes Nikki Haley and Jenny Horne did well. Yes, after members of both houses took advantage of worldwide coverage to show their asses thoroughly, the general assembly did the right thing. But I would feel better and prouder if they could have done it with Senator Clementa Pinckney still alive to lead the fight and vote by their side.
    Still and all, it was a great moment. It was fun being there the moment it came down, hearing and joining in on the cheer. Now maybe they can do something substantive, like, I dunno, expand Medicaid.
    Tomorrow: Fiction. (Did he say "fiction"? I think he said "fiction." Yes, fiction!)

Drone reborn

    So my friend Bruce came around some weeks ago with a soldering iron and changed out all the motors for the old original drone. Alas, when all that was done, it still wouldn't fly. the new motors spun like crazy, but fly it would not do.
    Yesterday, I noticed something that I should have noticed before. Moreover, I should have figured it out before. What I should have figured out was that if two of the motors go clockwise and two counter-clockwise (they do), the propellers ought to be different. What I should have noticed before was that they ARE different. Each propeller has a warning label affixed to it. ("Do not grab these, Enrique Iglesias.") On some they're on the left; on some they're on the right. When I put them with the labels where they are on the picture on the box, miracle of miracles: a flying drone again! Yes, I really am that dumb.
    Also, when we were doing all the taking apart, I thought that the screws (all tiny) were interchangeable. This turned out not to be the case. Some have bigger heads in order to, you know, hold the propellers on. But I took the thing apart again and put it back together and didn't find any more big head screws. Nor did we lose any screws. (If anything, we gained one.) So I just can't figure it. Having had one propeller fly off by itself due to the littler screw not holding it on, I tried the (hopefully) clever trick of inventing a tiny washer through use of a tiny piece of aluminum foil. Can't hurt, anyway.
    Point is, the old original drone is back, better than ever, and looking for a tree to crash into. Huzzah!
    Tomorrow: Look Ma! No Flag!

My lord and master pernil

    I've been trying for ages to find an ideal venue for Drinking Liberally. This is not surprising. Bars are not made for discussion groups. Though we are not primarily a discussion group, it's nice to hear what everybody is saying. Or at least to be able to hear what everybody is saying if you want to. This is normally impossible in a bar. It's especially impossible in the kind of dive that national DL would prefer that we meet in to keep costs low for potential new members. So it's been frustrating.
    Membership too started slipping when Obama took office, as people no longer had the "OMG! What has this idiot Bush done NOW?!" motivation for getting together. And of course I'm a jerk. So there aren't many of us. The steadiest attendees live in or near the northeast part of town. So there was a suggestion that we try to find a venue in that direction. So I tried Los Bellos Portales, primarily a Puerto Rican place.
    Oh my freakin' gosh! The first time I went, I ordered mofongo, fried plantains, with steak and onions. I liked the steak and onions a lot but was not as overwhelmed as I was hoping to be by the mofongo. (It's crazy fun to say "mofongo," though.) However, for the first actual meeting there, I ordered pernil. Roast pork butt, what's exotic about that, right? It was devastatingly heavenly kookoo awesome! As a plus, I didn't get sick in any way either time in spite of not having mentioned gluten at all. Now, I don't know if people in general are going to make the trip to the edge of town for Puerto Rican food and political discussion. The probability is that I'll be moving back to town pretty soon. But for a short minuts, what a great venue I've found!
    Tomorrow: the drone RETURNS!

Deef

    I think I've mentioned already that should I want to sleep on my side, it has to be the left one because if I sleep on the right my right ear gets stopped up. This morning, it was stopped up anyway. So I broke out the peroxide and addressed matters. Since my left was fine, I wasn't even going to bother with it, but did so out of some kind of dedication to parallelism. Now my right ear is totally clear. And my left is totally stopped up. It's OK; all I need is an airplane ride or a quick trip to the mountains. (Seriously, I'm sure it will clear up shortly. Pretty annoying in the meantime, though.)
    Tomorrow: my lord and master Pernil!

Maybe I should put off my procrastinating

    I haven't been covering myself in glory all year, pretty much putting off every important thing I should be doing... indefinitely. However, one thing i ought to be able to manage is vacuuming. In a house with kitties (and a carpet and an allergy), not vacuuming is not an option. And yet, I even manage to put that off. This morning, I got around to it after a week and a half. Eyes might start getting less red and itchy up in here.
    One thing I notice is that my anxiety seems to be quieted by my constant trips to Goodwill. Some talk of retail therapy. Since I hardly ever buy anything, this is more like Turning Up My Nose At Stuff therapy. However, I found "Prehistory of The Far Side" yesterday. The checker asked if it was a kid's book; it made a difference of 50 cents in the price. I wasn't worried about it one way or another but didn't want to presume, so I just said, "If you say it is." Pretty cool buy for 50 cents or a dollar.

Mr. Arm, Mr. Hammer: get to work!

    It took me a ridiculously long time to notice that indicator toothbrushes don't indicate anything if you use baking powder instead of toothpaste. The colored bristles must react to fluoride or something. Anyway, they don't react to baking soda. My brush can be frayed as anything and the blue bristles are just as blue and pretty as when I bought it.
    This is an opportunity! Arm & Hammer need to get on the stick! Indicator toothbrushes for those who prefer baking soda! Granted, there are only about seven of us, but c'mon! We're suckers; we'll pay top dollar. You'll make a fortune!:)

And she argued with me!

    Went to lunch buffet with Paul to our favored Indian restaurant. It was very, very good. Also almost free. My bill came to almost $10. I went to the register and held out a ten. The young lady gave me back a ten and change. For a second I thought about keeping quiet and walking on, but she's very nice and I'm not so rotten either. I told her that I had given her a ten and she argued with me, not obstreperously or anything, but she said I had given her a twenty. I said that I didn't think I had a twenty. (Having just checked before walking up, I knew perfectly well that I hadn't.) She checked and found that I had indeed given her a ten and I gave her the other ten back, and thanked me for telling her. Did you hear that God? That ought to wipe out at least a couple of the rotten things I've done.

Mulled pancakes

    Aldi has been really great this past year or so about selling more and more gluten-free products. This being Aldi, of course, they do have a tendency to bring them out as special items, then they go away, and then they come back. The good part is that thus far they have come back. One thing that comes and goes is pancake mix. Sometimes it's marketed as such; currently it's sold as gluten-free flour, but the only recipe on the box is for pancakes. (Note to Aldi: That makes it pancake mix.) Thing is, though, whatever they call it, it's terrible. Everything else they sell (as far as I know; a lot of it has dairy or soy so I can't sample) as gluten-free is great except this.
    I know it seems like another stupid thing to complain about, but you've got to realize that in Gluten-Free World, everything costs more. A LOT more. And while it might feel reasonable to pay a premium for something exotic like say gluten-free lutefisk (if there's any gluten in actual lutefisk, just don't tell me), it's super extra annoying to pay extra for something as simple and dumb as pancake mix. The great thing about Aldi's GF offerings is that they are generally priced to move, although still not cheap.
    Mind you, if I used regular milk instead of unsweetened almond milk, the pancakes might be better. But I don't know. There's a consistently nasty aftertaste that more sweetness probably wouldn't help. Regardless, the other day I had a baking apple surplus to requirements so I cored it, threw it in the blender and added it to the pancake mix recipe. I also added some honey, some Ceylon cinnamon and some cloves. It made for runny pancakes, but they were much improved. Today, I did the same only without the apple. I'd like to say they were the best darn pancakes I've ever eaten, but that would be a stretch. However, they were perfectly acceptable pancakes with no nasty aftertaste and I'll take that all day every day. See how easy it is to make me happy?
    (I could write out the recipe, but I winged it. I followed package directions, halved, adding about a tablespoon of honey and perhaps a teaspoon each of cloves and Ceylon cinnamon. And I mention it because if you ever run up against a pancake mix that doesn't taste so good, or if you're working with unsweetened almond milk, this will likely help, gluten-free or not.)

Since

    I've probably mentioned it before, but it still makes me crazy. There ought to be a way to fix this! Businesses advertize "Locally owned since 1966," and would-be standup comics like me always say something like, "Well what was it before?" Again again again again, I realize that this isn't the most important question facing the world at this moment, but there ought to be a fix. I think it's something to do with all the verb tenses and moods that English has dropped over the centuries; I bet they don't have this problem in French! Or maybe people just need bigger signs. "Locally owned since our founding in 1966" seems to do it, or the equivalent, "Founded in 1966, locally owned ever since." Of course, my preference would be "Locally owned since 1966, before that run by The Mob." That's certainly what MY business sign will say!
    Seriously(ish), the missing words are implied, but not well. The solution would be to put them on the sign, but tiny:
Locally
owned
since
(You'll have to imagine this line is tiny since I can't choose font size) our founding in
1966
And now I'm happy.

Temporary reinstatement of emergency procedures

    First question is why am I sitting at a laptop plugged into the wall during a thunderstorm. A: Because I'm dumb. Any further questions?
    We had a severe thunderstorm warning this afternoon, and the clouds to match, so I pulled out an old trick. My neighborhood has a lot of trees, but unfortunately relatively few shade the streets where one does most of one's walking. Thus, I normally do my daily walk in other places, driving to get there I'm ashamed to say. However, when Dad or Margaret were in poor health or likely to need me, I would walk around the neighborhood instead, making it a point to go no farther than a block or two from home at my farthest or is that furthest point.
    Did that today and even though I beat the rain completely, I felt pretty smart when it came later and in torrents. And it occurred to me that even in this current life, with no hope, romance, point, purpose or prospects, it's still neat that I no longer have to be tied to one or two blocks from home most of the time. The prospect of getting my old breezy happy-go-lucky self back some day soon seems more plausible than previously. Especially if I get my hands off this keyboard while the thunder is still shaking the house!

Clapping at the DMV

    Don't start with me. I'm finally getting around to changing the cars out of my Dad's name. This is not nearly so straightforward as I was hoping. I went to the actual DMV headquarters (which is a freaking palace; if you're in central SC, you should go just to goggle) instead of the office up the road from me which is much much more busy. I got the forms I need and much needed direction and a certain begrudging courtesy. The lady who waited on me was very curt but that's ok; so am I. She said, "Driver's license!" then realized that since I was handling an estate I might be rich and added, "please."
    The rest of the staff, when they had helped somebody, would break out into applause. It was sort of like state government's answer to Moe's or Outback Steaks. Slightly surreal. My lady wasn't so much into the applause, but that was ok, too. I appreciated the help anyway.