Nothing Unusual
May. 14th, 2011 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdThe plan was to be at the manicure place at 10:30, but I missed it by half an hour, and it was jumping, so they asked me to come back at noon. So I went to the donut shop across the way, and asked for a filled "chocolate bar", this is a maple bar donut with chocolate instead of maple on top. As I watched, the very new employee slit the bar open with a knife, lengthwise, and spread the custard filling in like it was a sandwich. Okay, it tasted the same. but was a bit messy.
Read through a new local daily paper which is a free edition of what used to be a chain of weekly papers, each of which covered a small community in Santa Clara County. So, news about all the local high school doings, local governments, and a touch of national news filler. The most amusing article was about an acting mayor who had been in office for two days when he was cited for DUI. The original mayor had died of a heart attack. The whole story wreaked of police with nothing better to do at 1 am. The police report said the Acting Mayor had pulled off the freeway and parked in the emergency lane of the off ramp so he could take a phone call. A local officer came up to check if he needed help, smelled alcohol on his breath, and called the CHP, which is in charge of anything on the freeway. The CHP gave a field sobriety test, which the guy passed, but the breathalyser test showed exactly the amount of blood alcohol over which he would have been legally drunk. They towed his car and had him call a relative to pick him up, and booked him for DUI. As I see it, all he was guilty of was parking in an emergency lane, and at 1 am that should have been overlooked. He's going to challenge the citation.
Had my nails done, she worked around the finger which I'd slammed the car trunk on a week and a half ago. It got a gel top but no acrylic fill.
Saw that the PG&E blockade had been removed from the end of the parking lot, which means access to the dumpster, theoretically, so I spent half an hour breaking down three months' worth of cardboard boxes from online purchases, put the lot on a cart and wheeled it out there. But I had to leave the pile next to the other recycle bins because PG&E had a huge tanker of some kind blocking the way just past line of sight. Boo, hiss.
My apartment's parking lot is L-shaped, with equal bits on each leg of the L. The L goes to the right as you come in the driveway. A couple of yards past the turn, at the back of the lot, is a PG&E high pressure gas substation. It's pretty small, maybe 20' wide and 15' long. All that's visible above the pavement is a bunch of not particularly impressive pipes and valves. About a week ago, they sent us a notice that on Monday they would be blocking all the parking spaces on that side of the L to do some pipe testing. What they didn't tell us is they would be completely rebuilding the substation, and replacing the humongous pipe which runs from the substation out to the street via the middle of our parking lot. A few feet past the substation, on the opposite side of the lot, is where the dumpsters are kept, and the last dumpster in the row is the cardboard recycle.
Took the car to the car wash. They were predicting rain for tomorrow, but the outside of the car doesn't matter much to me, the windows were getting hard to see through.
From there to CVS to pick up a bunch of meds. Then Starbucks, but I waited outside reading the Kindle for about 15 minutes waiting for the line to dissipate. It was half-priced frapp time, and this particular branch goes into volume mode, and gets bursts of customers.
Home, the new new microwave was waiting on the patio rack. This time it was the right size. It's based on the old model, but Panasonic has chosen to add many features which are pretty neat if they work, but make the control panel less intuitive. It also has a push bar to open the door, where the old one had a hand hold and opened by brute force. I don't like that they have put extra shielding on the window, making it hard to see what's cooking. And the door only opens to 90° instead of 120.
Tested the microwave, cuddled with the cats, then off for a massage. Her name is Maria, but she turned out to be Thai/Lao. She said she is from Bangkok but her family is from NE Thailand and Laos, but she did not know what provinces. She has an interesting accent which she thinks is NE but I think it's modern Bangkok lazy. I'll have to check with someone who knows. The main symptom is what I pronounce as "en" she pronounces as "aan" (rhymes with "can" but the "a" is stretched out over two syllables worth of time. Thai has several short and long vowels, the short ones take half the time to say as the long ones, but they have the same sound.
Plans for tomorrow:
Thai cooking class in Fremont with a meetup.com group
Litterboxes
Pet club, buy more litterbox refills. The ones they sell at PetSmart are bogus. Probably should buy an extra bucket of crystals too.
Read through a new local daily paper which is a free edition of what used to be a chain of weekly papers, each of which covered a small community in Santa Clara County. So, news about all the local high school doings, local governments, and a touch of national news filler. The most amusing article was about an acting mayor who had been in office for two days when he was cited for DUI. The original mayor had died of a heart attack. The whole story wreaked of police with nothing better to do at 1 am. The police report said the Acting Mayor had pulled off the freeway and parked in the emergency lane of the off ramp so he could take a phone call. A local officer came up to check if he needed help, smelled alcohol on his breath, and called the CHP, which is in charge of anything on the freeway. The CHP gave a field sobriety test, which the guy passed, but the breathalyser test showed exactly the amount of blood alcohol over which he would have been legally drunk. They towed his car and had him call a relative to pick him up, and booked him for DUI. As I see it, all he was guilty of was parking in an emergency lane, and at 1 am that should have been overlooked. He's going to challenge the citation.
Had my nails done, she worked around the finger which I'd slammed the car trunk on a week and a half ago. It got a gel top but no acrylic fill.
Saw that the PG&E blockade had been removed from the end of the parking lot, which means access to the dumpster, theoretically, so I spent half an hour breaking down three months' worth of cardboard boxes from online purchases, put the lot on a cart and wheeled it out there. But I had to leave the pile next to the other recycle bins because PG&E had a huge tanker of some kind blocking the way just past line of sight. Boo, hiss.
My apartment's parking lot is L-shaped, with equal bits on each leg of the L. The L goes to the right as you come in the driveway. A couple of yards past the turn, at the back of the lot, is a PG&E high pressure gas substation. It's pretty small, maybe 20' wide and 15' long. All that's visible above the pavement is a bunch of not particularly impressive pipes and valves. About a week ago, they sent us a notice that on Monday they would be blocking all the parking spaces on that side of the L to do some pipe testing. What they didn't tell us is they would be completely rebuilding the substation, and replacing the humongous pipe which runs from the substation out to the street via the middle of our parking lot. A few feet past the substation, on the opposite side of the lot, is where the dumpsters are kept, and the last dumpster in the row is the cardboard recycle.
Took the car to the car wash. They were predicting rain for tomorrow, but the outside of the car doesn't matter much to me, the windows were getting hard to see through.
From there to CVS to pick up a bunch of meds. Then Starbucks, but I waited outside reading the Kindle for about 15 minutes waiting for the line to dissipate. It was half-priced frapp time, and this particular branch goes into volume mode, and gets bursts of customers.
Home, the new new microwave was waiting on the patio rack. This time it was the right size. It's based on the old model, but Panasonic has chosen to add many features which are pretty neat if they work, but make the control panel less intuitive. It also has a push bar to open the door, where the old one had a hand hold and opened by brute force. I don't like that they have put extra shielding on the window, making it hard to see what's cooking. And the door only opens to 90° instead of 120.
Tested the microwave, cuddled with the cats, then off for a massage. Her name is Maria, but she turned out to be Thai/Lao. She said she is from Bangkok but her family is from NE Thailand and Laos, but she did not know what provinces. She has an interesting accent which she thinks is NE but I think it's modern Bangkok lazy. I'll have to check with someone who knows. The main symptom is what I pronounce as "en" she pronounces as "aan" (rhymes with "can" but the "a" is stretched out over two syllables worth of time. Thai has several short and long vowels, the short ones take half the time to say as the long ones, but they have the same sound.
Plans for tomorrow:
Thai cooking class in Fremont with a meetup.com group
Litterboxes
Pet club, buy more litterbox refills. The ones they sell at PetSmart are bogus. Probably should buy an extra bucket of crystals too.
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