eBay Prep and a musical

Another night of good sleep. Spook did her usual 3 am disappearing act, to return at 9-ish as I was trying to watch videos in bed.

Finally got around to organizing all the things I want to sell on eBay, photographing them, and Photoshopping them into presentability. Took enough time to microwave some gluten-free wings for lunch, and postponed creating the eBay auctions till tomorrow so I would have time to relax on the porch, admire the poppies, & pare down the bee's friend bushes to only the upright ones.

Grabbed a jacket & hat and drove to Redwood City. Got there just before 5:30 while there was still plenty of parking in the pay lot near Broadway. It cost 40 cents for the part of the hour before 6, when it's free. Walked around a bit, thought about the Spaghetti Factory but was looking for something less tomato and cream laden, so I went to my favorite place in that city, Cafe La Tartine. Had fish & chips, which turned out to be three large battered fish fillets so I mostly left the fries on the plate, and their very chocolate chocolate cake. It is also jam packed with delicious staff in tight jeans. And often delicious customers. Made the cake last as long as I could, but still needed to kill some time on Broadway's park-like benches people-watching before it was time to go to the theater.

House was supposed to open at 7:30, but didn't. The cast was still on stage belting out two numbers. My seat, on paper, looked like the best of the cheap seats, first balcony row toward the center, but there was 3" less room between the wall and the seat than my feet wanted. Very uncomfortable. Luckily my whole row was short/skinny Asians, so I didn't crowd anyone.

Miss Saigon for the second time. First time was in Palo Alto a couple of years ago (or was it last year?) with a very young and astoundingly talented Kim, and a very talented Engineer. This time Kim was played by a friend from Little Shop, and while I love her dearly, her voice was not quite up to it, and she is too old for the part. This Engineer played it like a clown, which worked for much of the audience but not for me, and ironically the fellow who Engineered in PA was playing the stuck up macho man whom Kim was pledged to by her father, whom she was running away from. He was great.

The orchestra was excellent, but the conductor led them as if they were the center of the show, drowning out 3/4 of it.

They spent a lot of time and $$ on projection equipment and scrims, using projected images instead of backdrops or flats. The technology was fantastic, but the art work was just plain awful. Low resolution, and the projections rarely matched the scenes. And when they did, it was over the top.

As usual, audio mostly sucked. No feedback, but lots of distortion.

After the show it was great to see & hug my two friends in the cast, and say nice things to the Actor.

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Delivered in the mail:
The Unemployment VISA debit card, which I authorized by phone and the robot said it had the first week's dole on it
The 401K rollover check, which must wait till Monday because the brokerage with my IRA doesn't do weekends.
The letter from Kaiser, dated March 17, officially saying I had no coverage as of March 1.
A note from my brokerage inviting me to the AT&T annual stockholders meeting, in Missoula Montana.

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Plans for tomorrow:
Thai chat meetup if enough people sign up
Coffee with Janice (find out how her snow-covered Yosemite trip went)
eBay postings

To Do --> To Done

Very restless night. Ear worm from Miss Saigon, and feeling bad that Kim thought I did not enjoy her performance, misreading my Facebook posting which ripped the tech side and orchestra. Hopefully corrected that impression this morning with a text.

I thought it would be easy to make an 11 am meetup in Mountain View, but the sleep thing bit me, and I was 10 minutes late. I was the only one there besides the organizer, but that was fine, we had a chance to chat in mixed Thai and English with Hebrew, Arabic and French snippets. Sometimes the phrase you are looking for is in a language other than the one you are currently speaking. Her pronunciation needs a lo of work - she has the tones better than I do, because she learned to read first. But her speaking comes from the very lame transliterations in Thai dictionaries, which do things like not pointing out that "ng" is  single sound. For example, the Thai word for snake is ngu which she pronounces n'gu. And she cannot hear the difference when I pronounce it correctly. But that's why we meet, to share & improve.

Home after, even though I had a 4:30 appointment in MV. Needed something resembling lunch, and a load of laundry to do, and on the way home I picked up two 7-packs of seed starter cups in handy plastic containers.

So instead of turning on the computer, I filled the cups with potting soil, and water, and each one of the first set got a longon seed, and each cup of the second set got 2 local green pea seeds. Put both of those on the table by the bay windows. Maybe something will sprout.

Traces of rain started when the meetup ended, so I gave organizer a ride home. Not far if it isn't raining. It leaked on my car all the way home, and throughout the day.

4:30 at Janice's, he backup drive was not showing up on her PC. It took a while, but the cause was a mess of wires, mostly power cords, which needs to be cleaned up. After we got everything plugged in again, it was working.

Then to Starbucks, where she filled me in on her Yosemite trip, and her problem child (she helps a single mom with twins). And the Fiji village which she has a 30-year history with that was destroyed in the cyclone last month. I had a tough time explaining to her that the difference between a savings and a checking account which we grew up with has been obsolete for a decade or more. Used to be you st aside savings in an account which bore about 5% interest, but your checking account cost a few dollars a month unless you maintained a balance in savings. Now the savings interest rate is a laughable 0.01%, so you may as well keep it all in checking, unless you get free checking by transferring to savings each month. I suggested she look into funding a debit card for the shop owner at that village, instead of sending cash. Unemployment gave me that idea. My uneployment debt card has a photo of Yosemite on it, I think that helped my cause.

Home again, this time I really did start selling stuff on eBay. Took a break for dinner - DiGiorno Pizza - and then finished the job. Two cable modems, one with wi-fi router and one without; two NAS 2-bay enclosures, two SSD drives, a tiny 500GB and a larger 1TB, and a wi-fi router. More to get stuff off the table than to make money. I also have a Motorola Droid phone up there, but it is on its 2nd re-listing without a bite.

Watched some of the lady Yukon veterinarian on Tivo, and a Shark Tank episode.

Plans for tomorrow:
Toilet installation sometime between 8:30 and 11
Scottrade, deposit the IRA rollover check
Check Kaiser for status again
Log in to Medicare and set up my payment for part B (usually they take it out of Social Security but I'm not claiming any yet)
More job huting
Get a massage