DKIF

Don't Know It's Friday

Actually this week I did.

Set the alarm for the first time in a couple of weeks, just to help get my butt out of bed at a more work-like hour. Bad habits die hard.  Slept well, up twice to pee, less than normal.

BBC.com had a page with not just the results, but an interactive map where you could click and it would show the results of the exit EU vote by neighborhood. Gibraltar was on it. I had no idea that was still a voting part of the UK. They of course wanted to stay. So did all of Scotland, most of Northern Ireland, and the various small islands. My relatives over there are all massively in favor of staying, though the one whose job takes him around Europe (He was in Marseilles at vote time) was the least rabid of them. His neighborhood went for exit by about 5 points. Another cousin's neighborhood was about 68% for staying, and so was she - she has been very successful campaigning in Brussels for better treatment for people with "invisible" diseases, since she has one. In her case it's not so invisible, she needs a scooter to get around because her legs don't work. The invisible part is some days she is unable to get out of bed or do anything productive, and it's random. The UK has a crappy record with the disabled, and EU was helping set that right.

I wrote a python program to take the initials of all the EU countries and add "exit":
ABBCCCDEFFGGHIILLLMNPPRSSSexit
Some folks with more time on their hands made up individual exits for each country, like Polend, Czechout and Portugone.

IMHO the only thing we need to fear is the fearmongering media itself. I don't think this is any more of an issue than Puerto Rico voting to not become the 51st state, and there are a lot of parallels. Island, language, culture.

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Took a tour of my gardens, need to take a leaf bag and go down the hedge row pulling out excess poppy plants and also bag the small pile of dead bee's friend vines. I was hoping to cover them with soil and wait for compost to happen, but sooner or later I want to have landscapers come in and remove the hedge and make that whole strip into a garden.

Lunch was reheated frozen rice and duck.

Did some laundry, including the leopard print sofa cover which had a layer of Spook. It came out fur-free, and as soon as I started to fit it back onto the sofa, Spook jumped up on it and made rude noises and tried to sink in her claws. Which I had trimmed in the past 24 hours.

Went out to Baylands, which was packed with company picnics. It's Friday. Put my camp chair in the shade and watched a cricket match. Is there only supposed to be one set of wickets?

I had the score for El Capitan on my tablet, and read through Act I. Expletive. Horrible. Long, super repetitive and a lot of the bass line is well above my range. Too late to back out now. :-(

Lunch wanted to escape out the back, luckily I was not too far from the restroom. I figured it was safe to leave my chair in place, but took along the tablet. On the way back I stopped at the car and SPF 50ed myself. The chair was still there, with the the wind chill factor I moved it out into the sun.

Also watched a very well behaved small quad copter, the 25mph gusts did not seem to affect it at all. Meanwhile, someone else was trying to fly a similar large one to mine, and it kept crashing. Like mine. Hmmmm.

Home about 4:30, did some more quad copter research and found the reviews for the one I have were "it flies like a boat" and "needs a flat platform and complete calm" and also found a smaller model by the same company which got the opposite kind of reviews. And it was much less expensive. So I ordered one.

Phone alarm reminded me at 5 to go online and check the jury duty call page. They are calling one group at 10 another at 11, and all the rest they want to check the page again between 11 and noon. Boo, hiss. I'm in the last group, you would think with how far in advance jury trials are scheduled they would be able to tell me right now if my group will be needed next week.

Well, at least I have the weekend.

The lens sold for much less than the buy it now price, but $28 more than the starting price. That's an artifact of eBay changing their rules and requiring the buy it now price to be 30% more than the starting price. I boxed it up and will bring it to the PO tomorrow.

Dinner was portabella beef & broccoli from Lean Cuisine. I caught up on PTI and NASA's Unexplained Files and was still hungry after a popsicle dessert, so made some popcorn. Had another popsicle. And some beef jerky. And finished the grapes. Also broke out a jar of all-natural PNB and stirred it until it was
edible. Put it in the fridge for later. It's been too long since I've had any, and there are still apples in the hanging basket.

In honor of the unplanned restroom break, I made some ginger ale, complete with fresh slices of ginger.

Plans for tomorrow:
PO
Goodwill
Whatever
Homework
More opera perusal

Stuff Got Done.

Slept soundly, so did Spook in her bedroom cat bed between the hampers and the laundry basket. In fact, when my alarm went off at 7:30 and I turned it off and went back to sleep, so did she.

Yesterday after I put the sofa cover back in place, I left her a new toy, a small red stuffed lobster about the size of a toy mouse. It was gone by the time I went to bed, and I was surprised to find her playing with it on the bedroom window sill. She loves carrying those things around in her mouth.

Got to the PO at about 10 to drop off the eBay item. I was the only customer in the place. The PO is on the same street, about 1/4 mile down the road from the SMART station. I left the quadcopter and its controller in the misc. electronics recycle bin, and the batteries for it along with some drained Duracells and a bunch of light bulbs were taken care of by the attendant. Then I backed the car up to the compost pile and filled a big black plastic bag, and pulled up to the mulch pile and filled a Fry's shopping bag. The mulch is mostly wood chips from lumber (as opposed to tree branches, which would have been better).

Home, pulled out some dead plants from the carport garden, pulled out the four Thai basil plants which were too far above ground. Dumped the mulch in that patch, and then the compost on top of it. Watered it, set the basil plants in the shade. Tomorrow I will decide whether to re-plant the basil or plant something else there. Only one of the 4 had roots growing through the bottom of the peat planter cup. I keep a couple of domestic basil plants on the kitchen table, they come in handy.

Checked the tomatoes, many many tiny fruits but none of them ripening. :-(

Spent some time online, had lox, pita and hummus for lunch. Popsicle chaser.

I think it was about 2 pm, and 86° when I took a pair of big black trash bags outside. First, though, I emptied the dead plants from three formerly hanging baskets into it. Then all the dead plants I'd pulled from the carport garden. And some dead rosemary branches. Tied that off and put it in the trash bin. Next for the tough project, cruised the front of the house, snipping the dead branches from all the poppy plants and pulling out any plants which were not flowering. And a couple which were, because it's hard to tell what's attached to what. Like trying to decide which of the 30 legs is attached to the living spider. Also tossed into the bag a pile of dead bee's friends, and some of the hedge cuttings I missed a few months ago. The row in front of the hedge is now pretty thinly populated. I need to sweep the culvert. Was going to do that this evening, but then it got dark.

The only mail in the mailbox was addressed to someone who has never lived here.

In the park mail slot was the rent bill. Huge increase in electricity, a combination of the air conditioner and the car.

Finally remembered to turn off the furnace pilot light. Funny, when I told the guy who installed my thermostat that I turn off the pilot light in the summer, he was incredulous. As if the house needs the extra heat or higher gas bill.

Found a PBS special on the Amazon Fire called The Greeks. Beautiful 4K images. It needed subtitles, which PBS apparently doesn't provide for its streaming media. :-(

Dinner was Lean Cuisine orange chicken. There was sauce left over so I heated up some frozen rice, and added half a cup. Pineapple popsicle chaser. I need to renew my Costco membership if I want to stock up on the Mexican popsicles. Maybe. Walmart may have them, I should check. Because one side effect of Costco treating their employees right is their prices are no longer competitive, and the only reason for me to shop there is for the items no one else carries. And frankly, it's not worth putting up with the chaos for that.

Spent a couple of hours trying to write a python program, and got about 80% of the way there, but for some reason it is skipping every other line of input. It's something which will prove to be glaringly obvious once I figure it out. And there is still one more step to make it work as a class assignment for last week's lesson.

This afternoon's hanging plant exercise left me with one planter full of potting soil, so I watered it, poked some holes in the soil and used a longnose pliers to put one of the teeny tiny bee's friend seeds in each hole. About 10 or 12. Just to see. The bag of seeds I harvested has about 1,000 seeds in it, maybe more.

Plans for tomorrow:
Stay cool
Finish the python program and maybe do some of the official class assignments
Listen to the El Capitan music files
Maybe plant something
Maybe see a movie.
Maybe get a haircut. Maybe get them all cut.