The high lords of timing

    Paul and I had another wonderful visit to Bull's Island in Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. (I think that's right; you could look it up.) Or rather we had two visits, as he primarily swam and sat and watched the ocean and I primarily walked and took pictures of dead trees at renowned Boneyard Beach. On the way back, I was just overwhelmed with complete sand dollars, finding vastly more than I could actually carry back. I put them in various compartments of my pack and brought home nearly two dozen, almost all complete. Which is just flat ridiculous. Another half dozen or more crumbled by the wayside, sadly, but c'est la guerre.
    What impressed us though was that the weather looked threatening the whole way down, rain clouds seemed to be heading our way throughout the visit, but we had beautiful weather all the way. We actually packed up the ferry and returned early, by which time the ugly weather was much, much closer. We got back just ahead of us and the rain started literally before we were a mile up the road. We are the timing gods! Or rather the crew from Coastal Expeditions are. Kudos!
    We also dug great tacos at Taco Spot in West Ashley for dunch. (Linner? Lupper? Sunch?) And great music to go with it. And they took their gluten-free dairy-free very seriously, for which I was very grateful. And we left roses at my mom's grave. Twelve years in only a few days. Sigh.

But I can't remember them!

    I'm having extra weird dreams lately, but they flee by morning. I have the impression of the usual stuff: my dad's house, only gigantic and full of cool rooms and cool furniture and, I think, a train station. (There's ALWAYS a train station.) There was also an episode last night where I was driving somebody down a sidewalk in something that was sort of a bicycle and sort of a jeep. I was very annoyed by all the dips for non-existent driveways. Seemed to be the usual thing of my brain annoying me to let me know I needed to get up and go to the bathroom. I still don't see why my subconscious can't just announce it.
    The most amusing dream lately had me about to be sent onstage to dance as a woman in a gogo joint. I was still trying to figure out how this was going to work, and looking around for a heavy duty electric razor when somebody handed me something that was supposed to be a camera. I was now supposed to spy on one of the customers. This probably had something to do with the radio show playing at the time, which was about a mobster spying on a hardware store owner because the former was about to be charged in an open and shut murder case and the latter looked exactly like him. The mobster trained himself in all of the hardware store guy's mannerisms, took him for a ride, took his place, and of course was immediately arrested because the guy whose place he had taken had just killed his wife. Best twist ending ever, and it saved me from a life as a gogo dancer.

Still they lead me back

    Paul McCartney came to town last night. Macca puts on quite a show, quite a show. He gave us 3 hours, or pretty nearly, which considering his age is dang astonishing. He also dedicated "The Long and Winding Road" to the people killed in Charleston last week, which struck me as brave, considering that it isn't entirely an optimistic song. Or maybe it seemed not to be way back when because it was the last Beatles single.
    He also performed "Blackbird" solo, saying that he had written in hopes of giving black people in the States in the '60s hope, which I had never heard and would have never guessed. I guess I wasn't of an age for penetrating metaphor yet. He played it beautifully on a forward stage that I don't think they used otherwise. (Claire, who was nice enough to give me the ticket, said that they did two or three songs up there, so I'll go ahead and believe her.)
    There were a lot of gaps, good and bad, in the playlist. I was surprised that he didn't play Get Back, Junior's Farm or any of the really awful stuff from the '70s. Considering where we are, a nice Hold My Hand/I Want To Hold Your Hand medley would have been in order, but no! As an exercise, you might want to make a Paul McCartney playlist. Great googly moogly he has a lot of songs! He missed many of my favorites, but I didn't feel in any way cheated.
    Otherwise, I just couldn't hold out on a bathroom break when Back in the USSR rolled around, so made my run. Since I was seated apart from the other three in the party and since it was very late and surely, I thought, he wouldn't be playing much longer, I decided to stand for the rest of the show. Trying to get back to our section, I went down rather than up. In the expensive seats, boy, they're quick to clear you off the stair areas. Up in the cheap seats, nobody ever bothered us, and people were on the stairs for the remainder of the show. I was really grateful to be there when Live And Let Die turned into a pyrotechnic spectacular. I held on to that railing hard!
    The other slightly weird thing was that there was free wi-fi that worked on the concourse but not in the seats. However, it did work right up to the steps and even a few feet into the arena. I don't know what that means. Since my phone worked fine, as far as I can tell, it isn't a Faraday cage. Go figure. I'll just plan not to download anything major at my next basketball game.

On the bright side, I can't crash it

    My friend Bruce came around with a soldering iron and changed out all four motors on the old original drone. I also changed out the propellers. It goes like crazy now, except for up. I also noticed that the remote was behaving strangely. Since I have two now, I got an extra set of batteries (for no sane reason except that the battery life indicator on the first one might have been wrong) and tried it out, and the controls worked (or failed to work) exactly the same way. I can only assume that one of the crashes led to something burning out on the motherboard. I'm probably just crazy enough to buy a third bottom of the line drone. Maybe I'll hang something heavy on it so it can't fly away this time. Or station people with the second and third remotes some distance away in case it flies out of my range. The possibilities!

Come and get me, coppuhs!

    The IRS sent my late dad his tax refund check yesterday. The envelope has a checkbox: "If recipient deceased, check here and drop in mailbox. Forgery of endorsements on Treasury checks is a Federal crime. Maximum penalty is a $10,000 fine and ten years imprisonment." Now I filed Dad's taxes informing them that he was deceased, the check was made out to dad's name, deceased, followed by my name, personal representative, all correct. I know they didn't mean me. But it still was a little alarming. Oh well; what's ten years?

I shot an arrow

    My wonderful sister sent along a replacement drone. This one was a crazy flyer. (Note past tense.) First flight it went beyond the controller's range and vanished. Eventually, I found it crashed on the shoulder of the road. Some pieces had fallen off which needed to be screwed back on, so I had to take it home. (The people at Pacific Park were very helpful and supportive, although in the end I found it myself.)
    The second flight didn't go that well. It again flew beyond range and crashed on the giant warehouse across the street. Well, strictly speaking, the second flight went all right; it was the third one that was the problem. I was able to get it to take off from the roof, but it flew directly into a tree, still above the warehouse, some 50-60 feet off the ground. There's an address for the warehouse, but no company name or mailbox or contact information. There's a car parked there, but no indication how long it's been there. There's a gate at streetside with a heavy padlock on it. Only good signs are that the car and padlock are relatively new. My conclusion, though, is that it's goodbye quad copter.

Old year resolution

    Or new fiscal year resolution. I have a strange tendency to window shop, or rather browse, at thrift stores. I spend a lot more time there than I spend money. Every now and then I find something neat, but not quite neat enough to buy right this moment. Today, I paid (or failed to pay) the price. Two items that I was sure were so crappy that nobody would buy them were both gone.
    One was cool in theory. It was a padded rocking chair. Googling indicated that originally it cost $400. What it was was a metal frame with a (padding filled) cloth cover. Googling also suggested that replacing the cover would be $330. Goodwill wanted $7. It was very badly stained and significantly frayed. I've got a picture, but neither the staining nor the fraying show particularly. If you're curious, search the PuffChair rocker from Chicago Textile Company. I figured nobody would want a beat up, if once valuable, rocker, especially in one day. I figured wrong.
    The other was cool in practice. I didn't decide not to buy it; I just forgot. It was a pair of glasses exactly like mine but smaller and tortoiseshell-free. Only $3. Some damned hipster must have beat me to them. At the rate I'm making my way over to the opthalmologist to get a new prescription, it's hardly a tragedy, but they were very cool, darn it.
    So the new resolution is a simple one. I don't go back. I mean, if I'm in the neighborhood of a Goodwill where I saw something cool before, I'll certainly look in, but I can't make special trips back to check on items that I've already passed up once. My fellow shoppers are just too smart. Today's item I passed up: the book "The Princess Bride." I hear it might be a kissing book.