Getting It vs. Being It

Don't know why, but lately I have been thinking a lot about all the things friends and family get a kick out of which I have no interest in whatsoever. Babies. Role-playing games (video, LARP, etc.). Reading the same book (or book series) so often one knows it better than the author. Ditto movies. Building costumes. Riding motorcycles or fast cars. Disneyland. Baseball stats. Basketball. Hockey. Soccer.

I do get it. I understand how people's passions are a good thing. I can be happy for you enjoying what you love, and am interested in hearing about it. I'll probably even understand what you are talking about. But most of the time I won't be volunteering to participate.

I'm not passionate about anything anymore. Time has taught me that change is slow, and persistence is more valuable than passion.

Not as Lonely as Expected

Five other co-workers showed up, two actually stayed a whole work day. I found a new pair of features in one of my favorite test tools and played with that all day. It lit up two more TV screens in the lab, so we looked busy. :-)

Lunchtime I went to Petco and paid too much for off the shelf litterbox refills. $23 each. I may ask for a refund from the online Petco folks, who were supposed to have delivered 4 of those yesterday, for <$60. They botched my subscription. I could have gone to Pet Club at $16 each, but they share a parking lot with Costco, and I did not have my clown suit or my zoo pass.

Had been snacking all morning, so instead of lunch I stopped in at HoneyBerry and had their version of a banana split. Generous on banana & ice cream, but totally lacking in toppings. Very pretty presentation, though.


Left work a little after 5, went straight home. The calendars were there, so after I got settled in I took a look, and long story short, 15 of the 25 were defective. Something wrong with their equipment - it put a white line down the center of several of the photos. It was on the cover of the first one out of the box. So, RMA time. Boo hiss.

The ones which are good are better than the Costco ones - VistaPrint's full screen layout is truly full screen, and using the same canvas size as I did for Costco, there was no clipping.

Had to deal with another form letter from the IRS today, same one they keep sending me which says "we'll get back to you in 60 days". They were responding to a fax which included, among other things, an address correction. They sent this letter to the old address. They continued to botch the recipients' names. I called the number on the letter this morning, it took 10 minutes of punching "0" to get a person on the line, and she was useless. So I am mailing a nastygram.

Kindle touch arrived. It is significantly slower than the G/keyboard one. And smaller. Will try reading from it tonight.

Dinner was leftover soul food BBQ chicken and pot see hiew. The chicken was supposed to be all dark meat but they snuck in a clump of very dry white meat. The rest was great.

Was invited to T-day at Brian Wilson's house in Pacifica, I think the link is the right place. No thanks, no driving for me tomorrow. And my inviter said there would be no watching of football, so no thanks again.

Planz for tomorrow:

I'll be making a cauldron of chicken soup (mine takes hours, it's basically crock pot soup) because I have the time. Lunch will be turkey dogs on hot dog buns with dijon and sauerkraut, with clam chowder for starters and creamed corn on the side. I'll also be puréing last week's leftover lobster. That's going to be messy, and I wish I'd picked up some celery when I was shopping yesterday. I actually stared at the celery from across the aisle, and decided I had no use for it.

Not sure what's for dinner, but there is plenty of stuff in the fridge and freezer. Including leftover pizza fruit. On the kitchen counter there are naval oranges (after a long drought when all we had in the stores were Coast Guard oranges). Maybe I'll cook up some orange something. More likely will fry up some roti and make some Penang curry dip.

All this while watching a lot of football, and probably chatting with my Baltimore sister before the Ravens-9ers game.