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I Was Just Going To Relax on the Porch...
Feb. 5th, 2017 12:55 amSo, today was a got stuff done day. Manicure, and then across the parking lot the brownies had 4 boxes of thin mints left, which I traded for a 20. Interesting, it was a brownie troop, not girl scouts. They are soooooo tiny! Then a quick walk through the Grocery Outlet, where I impulse bought some bacon, and picked up objects d'superbowl: chips, dip, chicken wings.
Plugged in the new MP3 player, and once again the car did not recognize the SD card. It did play the internal memory music just fine, sounded pretty good, actually.
Home, parked, popped open the hatchback from inside, then remembered I had some forms to deliver to the park office, so I drove there. Dropped them off with the new manager, then back to the car and was puzzled because the rear view camera was showing the sky. I had forgotten to close the hatchback.
Home again, it was warm and partly sunny, no wind, so I decided to sit in the rocker on the porch with a glass of iced cola. Had to wipe off the dirt - the wind whips mist from the rain onto the chair, and that snags dirt from the air. This corner of Sunnyvale has a huge amount of dirt in the air. I didn't sit for long, because the view from the porch showed me the garden was overrun by weeds. I waded in and pulled out most of them, sinking into the soil and coating the bottom of my Birks. All that composting this summer has paid off.
In the mail was, finally, the W2 from my last real job. They went for the cheap service, no control number so Turbo Tax couldn't download the info, I had to copy it all in by hand. :-(
Once in, it was added to my current contract W2, one month of Social Security and 6 months of non-deducted unemployment insurance. As it stands now, the feds will owe me $3k and the state about $500. But that will change next month when I get my capital gains info and my 401k-->IRA rollover confirmation. I am much relieved because I had saved $5k from my severance against taxes which I would probably have owed if I had found a real job in the 4 months I expected to be out of work, instead of the crap job after 8 months.
Cooked up the bacon for a late lunch, Smithfield regular old fashioned. I love bacon, but this is only about the 3rd time in my life I have actually cooked any. It took longer than I expected, and I had to cut the strips in half to fit into my cast iron skillet. Pretty yummy, though. If any of you baconistas have a favorite brand/cut let me know.
Delivered was the USB drives, the 128GB will stay in the drawer for now, I started loading all my tunes onto the 64GB and let that run while I drove to MV to meet Janice for coffee. This is the same route I would prefer to take to work, 4 pm on a Saturday it only took 7 minutes. 9 am on a weekday it's 45, so I take the exit after the next one, which is only 30 minutes. Timing is everything.
Janice filled me in on her annual Puerto Vallarta trip, and her latest man troubles. I filled her in on Seattle and work. And we argued politics for a bit, because she is one of the paranoids who thinks Trump has his heart set on WW3. I do not get this at all. Every idiot president since Truman had the nuclear option available, and even Truman didn't use it on Germany after he lit up Japan. One nuke on Berlin would have saved a lot of D-day lives. And it makes no sense at all to on the one hand cry about Trump's good relations with Putin and on the other hand fear he will nuke Russia.
And as an aside, how many of you remember that Condoleezza Rice, who went from National Security Advisor to Secretary of State under W, was fluent in Russian and a specialist on the Soviet Union? She actually took Russian language courses in Moscow en route to her doctorate.
Home, the USB drive was all copied, so I struck it into the car and after taking about 10 minutes to index the files, it worked like a champ. Tomorrow I'll see if the voice commands work (I should be able to say "play <album name>" and have it find and play the album. Or a song, or an artist.)
Dinner was a trio of steamed pork buns, longans for dessert. And thin mints.
Watched some more episodes of Shannarah. Not nearly enough nudity, way too much torture. And the 2nd son who doesn't want to be king has a drunk scene where he is such a bad actor that the only way we know he is drunk is his mentor shouts "you're drunk!" at him. At least we're done with John Rhys-Davies' phoning it in.
Meanwhile, I'm on the next book after Ghost In The Machine, called Whispers From Exile. C.E. Kilgore continues to write like a woman (she is one), makes some very stupid grammatical errors, confusing nouns with verbs and once in a while being a victim of "that word doesn't mean what you think it means". But her characters are compelling, the universe she creates is fairly consistent, and when she adds super powers to her characters, she brings them out in context so it doesn't feel like she is pulling them out of her butt just to get the character out of a tight corner.
And the sequel picks up right from where the previous book ended, without a lot of needless repetition.
Superbowl prediction: I have none. I would like to see the Patriots win, to give Roger Goodell the finger for his stupid suspension of Brady in the face of no evidence and something which is not covered in the rules. I would like to see Atlanta win, because I believe they are the better team, and maybe if they win, the 49ers will get screwed out of being able to lure away Shanananananahan Jr. Jr. to be head coach. He has never actually played pro football,
and all his coaching has been because his dad hired him.
Plans for tomorrow:
Maybe go downtown and have an ACLU coffee at Philz, and play some Ingress. Depends on the weather.
Make snacks for football watching
If the game is good, I may go watch the final quarter someplace where there are people.
Plugged in the new MP3 player, and once again the car did not recognize the SD card. It did play the internal memory music just fine, sounded pretty good, actually.
Home, parked, popped open the hatchback from inside, then remembered I had some forms to deliver to the park office, so I drove there. Dropped them off with the new manager, then back to the car and was puzzled because the rear view camera was showing the sky. I had forgotten to close the hatchback.
Home again, it was warm and partly sunny, no wind, so I decided to sit in the rocker on the porch with a glass of iced cola. Had to wipe off the dirt - the wind whips mist from the rain onto the chair, and that snags dirt from the air. This corner of Sunnyvale has a huge amount of dirt in the air. I didn't sit for long, because the view from the porch showed me the garden was overrun by weeds. I waded in and pulled out most of them, sinking into the soil and coating the bottom of my Birks. All that composting this summer has paid off.
In the mail was, finally, the W2 from my last real job. They went for the cheap service, no control number so Turbo Tax couldn't download the info, I had to copy it all in by hand. :-(
Once in, it was added to my current contract W2, one month of Social Security and 6 months of non-deducted unemployment insurance. As it stands now, the feds will owe me $3k and the state about $500. But that will change next month when I get my capital gains info and my 401k-->IRA rollover confirmation. I am much relieved because I had saved $5k from my severance against taxes which I would probably have owed if I had found a real job in the 4 months I expected to be out of work, instead of the crap job after 8 months.
Cooked up the bacon for a late lunch, Smithfield regular old fashioned. I love bacon, but this is only about the 3rd time in my life I have actually cooked any. It took longer than I expected, and I had to cut the strips in half to fit into my cast iron skillet. Pretty yummy, though. If any of you baconistas have a favorite brand/cut let me know.
Delivered was the USB drives, the 128GB will stay in the drawer for now, I started loading all my tunes onto the 64GB and let that run while I drove to MV to meet Janice for coffee. This is the same route I would prefer to take to work, 4 pm on a Saturday it only took 7 minutes. 9 am on a weekday it's 45, so I take the exit after the next one, which is only 30 minutes. Timing is everything.
Janice filled me in on her annual Puerto Vallarta trip, and her latest man troubles. I filled her in on Seattle and work. And we argued politics for a bit, because she is one of the paranoids who thinks Trump has his heart set on WW3. I do not get this at all. Every idiot president since Truman had the nuclear option available, and even Truman didn't use it on Germany after he lit up Japan. One nuke on Berlin would have saved a lot of D-day lives. And it makes no sense at all to on the one hand cry about Trump's good relations with Putin and on the other hand fear he will nuke Russia.
And as an aside, how many of you remember that Condoleezza Rice, who went from National Security Advisor to Secretary of State under W, was fluent in Russian and a specialist on the Soviet Union? She actually took Russian language courses in Moscow en route to her doctorate.
Home, the USB drive was all copied, so I struck it into the car and after taking about 10 minutes to index the files, it worked like a champ. Tomorrow I'll see if the voice commands work (I should be able to say "play <album name>" and have it find and play the album. Or a song, or an artist.)
Dinner was a trio of steamed pork buns, longans for dessert. And thin mints.
Watched some more episodes of Shannarah. Not nearly enough nudity, way too much torture. And the 2nd son who doesn't want to be king has a drunk scene where he is such a bad actor that the only way we know he is drunk is his mentor shouts "you're drunk!" at him. At least we're done with John Rhys-Davies' phoning it in.
Meanwhile, I'm on the next book after Ghost In The Machine, called Whispers From Exile. C.E. Kilgore continues to write like a woman (she is one), makes some very stupid grammatical errors, confusing nouns with verbs and once in a while being a victim of "that word doesn't mean what you think it means". But her characters are compelling, the universe she creates is fairly consistent, and when she adds super powers to her characters, she brings them out in context so it doesn't feel like she is pulling them out of her butt just to get the character out of a tight corner.
And the sequel picks up right from where the previous book ended, without a lot of needless repetition.
Superbowl prediction: I have none. I would like to see the Patriots win, to give Roger Goodell the finger for his stupid suspension of Brady in the face of no evidence and something which is not covered in the rules. I would like to see Atlanta win, because I believe they are the better team, and maybe if they win, the 49ers will get screwed out of being able to lure away Shanananananahan Jr. Jr. to be head coach. He has never actually played pro football,
and all his coaching has been because his dad hired him.
Plans for tomorrow:
Maybe go downtown and have an ACLU coffee at Philz, and play some Ingress. Depends on the weather.
Make snacks for football watching
If the game is good, I may go watch the final quarter someplace where there are people.
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