Another late one

Slept in as planned. Spook spent a lot of time getting face rubs on the bed. She likes how my knuckles feel in the sides of her face, under her ears. She is starting to get over her aversion to being petted on the back, but it's on again off again.

Ready & dressed by 11, found a bit of the USB music project which was left undone. Turns out I had a 4th folder with all the tunes ripped to wav files, and most of them had another folder of them in mp3.

Formatted the drive again and re-copied the music folder, now (I think) arranged to my liking.

The car sorts all the music files alphabetically, regardless of how many folders deep it is. If I tell it to play all the files, it starts with Al Jolson's A Quarter To Nine, and continues with Ella Fitzgerald's version. And from there through the A's in order. I can have it voice search & play any song by name, it will find it unless it's in a foreign alphabet. Most Thai songs I need to find manually.

12:30 I broke away from the project and went to The Everest Cafe in Mountain View, which had rave reviews, among them best new restaurant. I give it a B+. The buffet had a lot of items, but the fare is Indian, I didn't see anything Nepalese. No momas at brunch, the man said, and that's sad because that's what I'd come for. The kheer rice pudding was water in which rice had been made, with not actual pieces of rice, and it was not a pudding, just watery. But the spices in it were unique. Cardamom flavor was very strong. All the dishes I tried were good. Lamb vindaloo, butter chicken, basmati biryani rice, tandoori chicken. There was salad which I made the mistake of putting mint spicy liquid on instead of salad dressing. The naan was not fluffy - may not have been fresh.

All the tables seat 4 people, so not a place to take a date.

Back home, had some real dessert, and watched Fresno State drop all the passes and not do nearly as well against Alabama than Bama's play would have allowed. All the bulldog receivers wore gloves, and it was clear they could not feel the ball well enough to grab it when it hit their hands. On the 30% of the time their QB was on target. The defense did better, keeping them in the game till about halftime.

Then on to the movies, for the 5:45 showing of Spiderman Homecoming which when I arrived was listed as 5:25. It was already underway, dark theater, with Tine Daly on screen in a totally throw-away role. The place was pretty full, I finally found a seat toward the back far corner. The big WTF was the crying children. PG13 doesn't mean bring your 5-year-old, asshole.

I didn't like the movie much. The first 15 minutes after Tine was a totally worthless MTV style (as in no style at all) Peter Parker video diary of a trip to Berlin which didn't connect with anything else in the movie. Except he was in a taxi with Tony Stark.

Other gripes:
The girl he has the hots for is not a redhead. In fact, there are no redheads among the front row high school students. The actress who plays her, and supposedly likes him, is completely unconvincing. The final easter egg was not worth waiting for. On purpose. Paltrow gets maybe 45 seconds of screen time.

I liked most of the special effects, but they were used too repetitively. Peter's best friend is way more annoying than he ought to be and not be murdered. The actress who plays the resident JD is stellar. She goes by only her first name, Zendaya. It was freaky that Batman plays the villain.

Home, dinner was a turkey meal, cake a la mode.

Watched the UW-Montana game recording, but since the previous game ran long, the recording stopped 3 minutes before the end of the game. Three real minutes, not game time minutes. I see the score didn't change 63-7. Montana payed better than the score indicated, and worse. The 7 points was for an interception touchdown which should have been called back for pass interference. Two legit touchdowns were called back on penalties, and Montana converted several 4th downs, which tells me they may not have a decent field goal kicker.

Put away two loads of laundry. Watered all the plants. Put away a dishwasher load. Poured out all the water in Spook's fountain, because the filter had leaked charcoal all over the bowl. Threw out the filter & refilled the fountain.

Delivered was one cheerleader calendar. There were supposed to be 2 in that box. and another shipped separately. And it's just a 2018 calendar, not the usual 2017-2018 football season months. Thanks, Broncos. Used to be all the teams had 18-month cheerleader calendars, but now only a few do. Dallas has changed to a "sidelines moments" calendar, Seahawks has a swimsuit calendar but it's $25. They cost $4 to print.  

Plans for tomorrow:
I really need to put on socks and try on those shoes
Maybe catch another movie
Or just watch football
Take out the garbage.

Early for a change.

Slept in as planned, Spook came up on the bed to be petted at about 10, and stuck around for quite a while, parking herself at my feet on the quilt. Most of the rest of the morning she spent in the doggie bed in the bedroom. I gave her treats when I got to the kitchen.

I tried on the SAS shoes, and unfortunately there were three showstoppers. First, they were too narrow. The velcro closures didn't reach across far enough for the fuzzy hooks to reach the grabber part. Second, they slipped at the heel - not enough height at the back. And third, while the uppers are fine grain leather, the sole is not so fine hard plastic.

So Plan A became returning the shoes via UPS. I have to say SAS shipping is a class act, the box contains a pre-paid return label, an RMA form, and even a wet-and-stick industrial strength piece of paper tape to re-seal the box.

The rest of Plan A became:
CVS (same shopping center as the UPS store) for Vitamin D, a mop with plastic bristles and vinyl tile cleaner for the kitchen floor project, and small storage containers for my lunch box. I've been using KFC's excellent ones, but only have three of the smallest size, and don't feel like buying more to-go meals to get more.

I got completely turned around - instead of taking the most direct route, my car GPS took the allegedly shortest along the 85 freeway, and I took the wrong exit, and when I got to El Camino I was completely turned around and heading into Mountain View. My brain had convinced me it was the right direction. This has happened to me a couple of times recently, and I blame not-so-early-onset something or other for kicking in my internal GPS from the many years I lived in MV as soon as I saw familiar landmarks.

At Grant, I took a left instead of a U-turn because there was a 99 Ranch Asian supermarket up that way, and sure enough they had a big selection of Mama noodle flavors. I bought one of each that I didn't already have, and two of a couple I figured would taste great. On the down side, there were none of my favorite Asian fruits in season, and there were no frozen egg rolls in sight. I nipped over to the cafe and bought some hot egg rolls, one huge ha gow, and three fat bombs. The only other thing I got from the main store was flying fish eggs. One great thing about 99 Ranch in the summer is lots of pretty Asian gals in short shorts or miniskirts.

On to Sunnyvale. 

Finally got there, and UPS was closed. Grrr. They were open Sundays recently, not any more.  Drove to the other end of the parking lot and went to CVS. They had no nylon bristle mops, no vinyl cleaner, no small storage containers. They had Vitamin D, 2 for 1, $10 for 220 1000-unit capsules. With all the sunshine we've been getting, I chose not to buy the higher dosages.

Next stop, Home Depot, which had all the things. I got the last dusty half-gallon jug of heavy duty vinyl cleaner, and a jug of after-cleaner shiner, and they had just the right mop - sponge on one side, stiff nylon brush on the other. And cleverly hidden in a nook with the seasonal Halloween things were several container sets, I got a carrying case with 30 of various sizes, about 10 were small enough for lunch cooler needs.

Home, it's about 90°. Turned the aircon down to 74, turned on the livingroom fan and Tivo, and watched the Raiders game recording. Game was still in progress, but the recording lets me see it in almost real time and FF past the commercials and the 30 seconds of commentator BS between plays. Tivo's skip30 is excellent for that. Fixed myself a plate of cold stuff, starting with Safeway's house brand of salmon dip, and Ritz crackers. Something didn't taste right. Turned out it was two somethings. Somehow instead of buying regular Ritz crackers, I'd bought the ones with "everything". A horrid combination of onions, pepper, garlic and puke. Tasted the dip by itself and it too had lots of needless, taste-mangling spices in it. So did the crab dip.

But the artichoke hearts and cole slaw were fine.

At about half-time I paused the game and applied about half the vinyl cleaner to the dirtiest part of the kitchen floor - in front of the fridge, and the tiles between the kitchen and the laundry room/carport door. As soon as I splashed the stuff on, dirt came up. Between the sponge mop and the nylon brush that section now looks almost like new. It was a lot of work. Back to the game, and after the Raiders won, I started up the 49ers game recording, paused it and did the section of floor by the sink and dishwasher.

Back to the game, which was a horrible display of a great game plan but no execution. Aged Swiss cheese defense, dropped balls, missed passing routes, no QB protection, and lots of stupid penalties. Horrible officiating also hurt - lots of not-called holding, facemasking and pass interference.

Made dinner at halftime, the floor was not as dry as I thought it would be, but I was wearing socks so no harm done. Marie C chicken dinner, chocolate cake a la mode.

Took out the garbage & recycles, broke down the boxes & bundled them.

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Movies.
I have zero interest in seeing The Wrath of Khan again. It is no pleasure for me to see Ricardo Montalbán's face after it had been turned into of Fine Corinthian Leather™. Or Shatner screaming. I'm a Trek fan, but not a fanatic. I'd be up for seeing Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home remastered, with modern audio, on a big screen.

As for the resurrected Close Encounters,  Richard Dreyfuss was particularly nasally annoying in that one, and Teri Garr is made as homely as possible. I was blown away by the final 15 minutes on the big screen. Not sure I need to sit through the whole thing again just for that. IMDB says it was released in December 1977. I was out of the Peace Corps and may actually have seen it in Israel. Wait, no, by December I was visiting family in London, and a friend in Germany. New York relatives and friends in January 1978, and back to Seattle in late January, working at the Raymond (WA) Herald by Feb.

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filkferengi commented on it, so ( here are some photos )

Plans for tomorrow:
Work - maybe go up to the big building to sync with boss
UPS
Maybe watch more football.