Oh... the finger

    I was turning right onto Knox Abbott Drive in Cayce; a guy facing me was turning left. We had two lanes to work with. He could and should have gone into the left lane, now problem and I would go into the right. I definitely had right of way. Left turner in the middle of the intersection has right of way only if the light is red, which it wasn't.
    For some reason, this person really wanted to be in the right lane, even though he wasn't making a right turn any time soon and thus didn't need the right lane. He drove along side me for a half mile or so until I finally looked over, and he flipped me off very emphatically. At one time this might have upset me. I only regret that I wasn't carrying a Driver's Manual to hold up in reply. I've GOT to start preparing for every situation!
    Seriously, how do you deal with people who get mad at you because they're wrong? I laughed and laughed at him, which probably came across. He vanished rapidly. Florida tags, not surprisingly.

Who's afraid of the vacuum NOW?

    I actually went more than a week without vacuuming. Although I went 50 years or so without vacuuming before that, this is pretty much unprecedented during the vacuuming era. I still think that the vacuum bag is full, but the Check Bag light never comes on. It occurs to me that the Check Bag light might only come on when there is in fact no bag. But for a machine that has a dirt sensor that tells me when the carpet is extra dirty, it seems like it wouldn't be heavy lifting to tell me when the bag is full.
    Whether it's full or it isn't, I'm taking the bag out when I finish vacuuming Monday. Then I'll also try turning the vacuum on without putting in a new bag and hope that then at least the Check Bag light will come on. That at least will tell me something!
    The reason that I'm afraid of the vacuum is not that I have finally become a cat but because the canister (which, like "vacuum," I cannot spell) gets hot, which I don't think it did the first few times. But maybe I never touched it before while vacuuming. I did at least find that tai chi vacuuming (going slowly due to the aforementioned dirt sensor giving the red light frequently) is easier with the handle extended to the appropriate height. And hopefully everyone's breathing gets better. Yay!

It's hard to say what it's hard to say

    That sounds like this is going to be heavy emotional stuff, but nothing could be further. No, I just don't know what I'm talking about as far as technical difficulties are concerned, and in fact don't know how to word them. Facebook has issues. Facebook's smart phone apps especially seem to have issues. They are pretty odd issues.
    Facebook for Windows Phone apparently caused me to ditch that phone prematurely and unnecessarily. The issue that I was seeing is that the phone was full up. There was no more room on the Sim card (if that's the wrong term, remember, you were warned). And what the phone was reporting was that all this was the Windows Phone system. I kept ditching apps to keep the phone running, but eventually I ran out of apps so... I got a new phone.
    The thing is, there's a game I like that's only available for Windows Phone. The guy at T-Mobile said that I could keep up with it running the old phone off the new phone's hot spot, so that's what I did. But I no longer wanted Facebook sending me notifications on the old phone, so I ditched Facebook for Windows Phone. And suddenly I had vast amounts of space on the phone.
    So: issue one: Either just taking the phone off the network suddenly cleared up a lot of space on the phone, or Facebook for Windows Phone bloats horribly and also lies, saying that it's actually the system doing the bloating. I don't know, I really don't, but I'm betting on the latter.
    On the new phone is just strangeness with Facebook for Android. Let's see, sometimes I can tag people on checkins after the fact; sometimes I can't. (If you don't use Facebook a lot, this comes out in Martian. Don't worry about it. Trust me; it makes sense. Sort of.)
    Stranger: on Facebook for Windows, you can choose whether you look at the most recent status updates or what Facebook software considers the most important ones. On FB for droid, you can't choose. It's always a jumble; how anybody could consider this stuff "most important" is beyond me. Bu-ut, it used to be that you have to check in on FB for Windows at least once every 12 hours or it would reset you to Most Important every. effing. day. Now it's not doing that, almost as if FB actually thinks that its Droid version is in fact showing Most Recent stories, even though it isn't. Sorry I can't make this clearer; again, you were warned. Your takeaway: Facebook has been getting more annoying all the time for years. Signal is approaching the vanishing point while noise is nearing a complete takeover. I for one am trying to keep the cat pictures torch burning. But it's getting harder.

THAT'S entertainment!

    The other day, I had a kitchen disaster. The pasta bag blew out at the bottom instead of opening at the top. I got up all the noodles though. Except one. That one was found by Harry, who for a little while had more fun than anything batting it around the kitchen floor like a four-legged hockey star. Curiosity might not kill the cat, but it did kill the game. Eventually, he had to try to eat it, which didn't work too well. He didn't get sick or anything, but he broke his noodle. (The pasta one.) So I had to throw it out. Sic transit... I'll just have to get more noodles and throw them on the kitchen floor at random moments.
    This morning, we may have had a great step forward. Harry was as usual bugging me at 5:30 or 6 in the morning either for more food or to be let out (I still can't make that parallel, or anyway not without sounding insane) and this time I declined. Amelia chased him off both times. I'd like to pretend that she was being sweet or defending me, but there's little doubt that she was being territorial. Still, it worked out well for me. She can be territorial all she want; the end result was still sweetness!

Still like boring best

    Dad had to go to the dentist today to have some bridgework replaced. Not having had such work myself, I didn't know what this entailed nor how long it would take. Dad had done it before of course (as"replaced" would suggest) and he wasn't nervous, so I wasn't either.
    It was really quick. Apparently painless as well. Our only wait time was due to having arrived early. We made the whole trip in maybe an hour and a half. I am, as ever, a huge fan of boring. Hopefully Dad's choppers will chop better now.
    That's the whole blog entry really; now I'll blither at random. Blither A: the new cat's favorite thing is trying to grab my arm. It's like he wants to do pull-ups on my forearm, but pulls back at the last minute. I am grateful for this, as he has some very big claws and could do a lot of damage treating me like a tree. I like to think he knows this, too, and is being nice. He really is a pretty sweet fellow on the whole.
    Blither B is that Civilization IV Beyond the Sword continues to be a strange experience. I had mastered the medieval diplomatic victory using the Apostolic Palace and was putting up monster scores in record times. Then today, I went with my favorite civilization (Ethiopia, for game-advantage reasons) and just couldn't get anywhere. I won of course (I'm still playing at Mickey Mouse level) but it took eons. The game has a fun new trick, which is that if you found enough cities on a new continent, you can set them free. I did this, but after I had built that culture up to be so strong that they would have whipped me if they had wanted to go to war. So a long, fun but dullish learning experience. Ethiopia will rule! I promise!

Further bus mystery

    As I mentioned in connection with another matter, the local bus operation has changed its name, somewhat ironically, to COMET. Apparently that isn't all that they're changing. They're are little signs stuck in the ground, rather like the new wave in political yard signs (cardboard and wire), saying that this is a COMET transit stop. The previous regime, which I rather thought was the same regime as this only with a different name, had put up metal signs with a stop number and a phone number. I've never tried it, but I liked the idea that if I called the number and gave the number (if you follow), somebody could maybe tell me when my bus was coming.
    I don't know what the deal is with the new signs. I noticed them first near the USC campus and thought they were a helpful guide for students, but now I'm seeing them in many places. The metal signs are still around, too, some just across the street from the new ones. Perhaps a sign ordinance has struck. Perhaps radical changes are ahead for the bus routes. I just don't know. Maybe I'd better call the number on one of the old signs sooner rather than later and ask when my box of light is coming. I'm sure they're avid readers of my blog.

Pre-dawn call/ happy ending

    I got a call at 5:24 this morning. Margaret said that Dad had fallen in the bathroom and he couldn't get up. I said I would be right over and I was. I'm glad to say that it was easy to get him up and I'm gladder to say that he was unhurt. I was back in bed within a half hour of getting the call. So yay.
    Funny thing is, I'm not sure that this phone rings loudly enough to wake me up. Harry had been bugging me, either for more food or to be let out or both since before 5, the weasel. Of course, it's possible he was going full Lassie on me and knew psychically that Dad had fallen. It's quite possible; whether he would give a damn is another question. He gobbled the additional food and then took advantage of me going out to reclaim his freedom, so I think we can safely conclude where his priorities lay. Of course I'm glad retroactively that he woke me up. Maybe I'll let the phone spend the night closer to me.