Hotness

Could not get to sleep last night, it was too hot. In the bedroom it was 83° and 1 degree less in the livingroom. Finally got myself some iced lime soda, turned on the fan in the livingroom and lowered my temperature a bit while hydrating. It helped, but back to bed wasn't till 3 am.

The 7:20 alarm woke me, but I didn't really want out of bed. So from bed I phoned my broker to get a check to cover the air conditioner & shower doors. They don't open till 8. Used to be their hours were Wall Street hours.

As I was dialing, a call came in. The air conditioner guy had talked to the park office, they needed me personally to draw them a picture of where the unit was going. He said it was a 30x30 box. I can't draw, so after I was dressed I went outside with my tape measure, cleared out the area in question, and took two pictures, one with the tape horizontal and one vertical. Photoshopped them to make a square, and also got rid of the bright area where the sun was making glare. During his call we scheduled the work for Wednesday morning.

Printed that out, but now it was 9:30 and I needed to get shot up & snacks packed and on the road for the 10 am meeting. This is now officially a meeting of everyone from the three groups involved in the project. The room isn't big enough, we got away with it this time because three people didn;t get the memo, and two were on vacation. I don't like it. I want our team meeting back.

What we need is a meeting on meetings.

Got squat done because the lab is still down. Lab manager said it would be back up tomorrow, but he's Israeli and there is a Shakespeare-like saying there, from a song:
"All of this will come tomorrow, if not today
And not tomorrow
And not tomorrow
And not yet tomorrow
Till the day after tomorrow"

Lunchtime I went home, put the garbage cans away, and took the picture to the office. She said we were good now.

Went to Specialties down the block, made the mistake of ordering the large salad, chinese chicken. It was HUGE. And it was chopped. I don't know where the idea of chopped salad came from, but there's no way to get it onto a fork. I speared the little chicken cubes, and got some of the fried noddles, but threw away most of the rest. Good thing they make delicious sticky buns too.

Back to work, on time for a change.

Boss assigned me a bug to check out which requires the lab to be up. But it also required a board swap for my machine which I did. And it didn't work. I had to pull the board and swap firmware chips too.

So I'm ready to test...tomorrow.

Home, stopped off at Fresh&Easy for ice cream and fruit. Their house brand ice cream is reasonably priced and they have some yummy flavors. I got butter pecan light and chocolate chunk cherry. At the fruit aisle, a worker who was trying to look like he was working while merely blocking the aisle had to be shooed away for a bit so I could restock strawberries and blueberries.

And on to their WTF self check-out, which required a manager for the whole time because the automated unit which was available expected a 2-person operation, scan the item, put it on a conveyor belt, belt fires up and pushes the item to the end of the line. However, the genius who designed it put the card reader at the scanner instead of at the end of the line. It kept yelling at me to put stuff on the belt, when I was happily putting it in my bag at the scanner. Manager had to override each item to tell it not to use the belt.

Signs all over the place declare they are now open 24/7. Good move, the location needs that. But I go there as little as possible because I'm not their employee, so being my own checkout person is not my idea of the right way to run a store. I will only self-check when there is no alternative, or the lnes are impossibly long and I only have 1 or 2 items and they have scan codes.

The house was pretty warm. Domino is not happy, and is getting more matted up. I managed to clip some off with my beard trimmer but I need to haul out the heavy duty hair clipper. I don't want to bring her to be groomed because they sedate her.

Made delicious dinner. Took one of Janice's rock cod fillets and pan fried it in some of the blood orange flavored oil little sister gave me last visit. Sauteed some crushed garlic in it first, added thyme, paprika and basil. Added the fish, cooked it on medium flame in the cast iron skillet. Flipped it every now and then. About 2/3 of the way through, it separated into 2 fillets. Turns out this was just right for dinner. It came out amazingly delicious, falling off the bone tender. Side of cole slaw and dessert was cheery chocolate chunk ice cream.

Domino liked the fish bits without any spices on it.

During the day I did get through to the broker, he will send a check tomorrow. Meanwhile the check promised from UPS did not arrive, I logged in and the credit was still there. I must phone them tomorrow. 8-8 EST.

Pre-ordered a copy of the OBC recording to Aladdin because the Genie is someone who made his mark in community theater (I saw him in Ragtime) and he won a Tony last night.

Also ordered a bag of dry cat food because Domino only has about 2 months' worth left.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Tattoos

I don't like them.

I especially don't like the whole sleeve look, or the whole leg look.

The little ones in cleverly hidden places I think are stupid. As Jimmy Buffet says, "a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling"

You can call it art, if you like, I call it obscuring the art. I have never met a tattoo job which was more appealing to me than the bare skin.