Surprise gifts in an unmarked brown cardboard box

First project this morning was to put the garbage bins out to the curb. Despite having a ton of huge boxes I skipped putting stuff out for bulk garbage collection last night because of high winds. Winds are still up there and expected to get worse.

I tried entering GPS coordinates from the 2019 car's files into the 2021 nav system but they were not formatted correctly. Too many digits. And I haven't figured out how to program the sirius Xm presets.

Sometime before noon UPS dropped off a small brown cardboard box, no return address, but I knew what it was. The US Mint likes to hide their packages. Three $1 coins. One for me, one for each of my US sisters. I put two of them in small flat rate priority mail boxes, went to usps.com, made address labels and paid postage. Waited till after 1, drove to the big PO and handed them to a clerk to be scanned into the system, and get a receipt. There was only one couple ahead of me, looked like a showgirl and her man.

Stopped at my mailbox, it was empty. Expected two Humana packages.

Home, watched the florida keys fishing stream. Poked around some other streams but none of the storm chasers were chasing. Three of them were pointing their cameras out their house windows, but not much storm going on. One kayak fishing stream was on. One trucker as well but he was at a truck stop.

Delivered later was some fish food and the adjustable tank heater. And a very easy to read tank thermometer which lets me set min and max temps. Got the temp up from 76 to 83, turned down the heater, it looks like at the lowest setting is 84.4F which is a little too hot, but better than too cold.

The male betta gave up on his bubble nest, probably none of the females are ready. The gouramis also are bubble nest builders but so far nothing - though one of the males was annoying the male betta while he was bubbling. Hmmm.

On the drive I was bothered by the rear view mirror looking polarized. I'd rather have a bright clear view. Pulled up the manual online and there's no way to fix that. But. It showed me how to pair my community's gate clicker with a button on the mirror frame. I did that, but the clicker I've been using all year didn't pair - I had to use the spare, which had more battery life. Took the used one inside and replaced the battery. I should order more. Kind of an oddball battery. 12v 23a. Smaller than an AA. Shorter than a AAA. Done.

Watched 90 Day Fiancé. Two relationships melted down completely and both idiot men asked for the engagement ring back. Nope, those are freely given gifts, they belong to the person to whom you gave them. Besides which, in both cases it was the man who canceled the wedding. One couple got back on track big time, after she came out to her parents as bi. Two couples are sort of in limbo. In one case the parental units are rushing the wedding because of Covid, and the bride is upset that she has no dress, no shoes, no cake. Her groom doesn't care, he just wants the document so she doesn't get deported. In the other case she's pregnant, and he's more interested in drinking with his buds than paying attention to her. The good news is she read him the riot act and it looks like he's going to spend the night doing romantic things with her. We'll see. I don't even want to talk about the fake redhead marrying her 2nd muslim, her 4th wedding. He's making her rush, using Ramadan as the excuse but all they need to do is find him a hotel to live in for the month. Or male friend's house.

BASFA zoom meeting was fun.

Below Deck Sailing Ship is a hot mess. All the crew are trying to hook up. The producers have booked a charter with 9 people - half of them children - which is way too many. And they all order different meals, which the chef doesn't have the space or equipment to handle. 

Plans for tomorrow:
Probably stay home because of the winds.
Boulder City if the winds die down

Ho Hum. Radio programming.

It was an early start this morning, Hgl was at a good level.

It looked like it might rain but there were all these gorgeous cumulus clouds so I printed out the Sirius XM channel guide and drove the the Wetlands Park parking lot and spent about an hour programing the presets in the radios. There's AM, FM and Sirius. AM only takes 6 stations, many of them are Christian and/or Spanish so there was a lot of scanning back and forth. FM took 12, Sirius 18. It took a while to Get It™ that I had to hold down the channel button for 5+ seconds for it to change the preset to the currently playing station, but once I figured that out the only problem was there are more Sirius stations of interest to me than there are presets. But I'll deal.

Home, the rear view mirror button opened the community gate from much further away than the clicker, so I don't need to carry the clicker in the car anymore. Yay! Stopped at the mailbox on the way, two Humana pharmacy bags - one for a high dosage of a drug my cardiologist took me off of before I could cancel the delivery, and the replacement from my urologist in consultation with my cardiologist. It's a little blue pill. But not the little blue pill. This one was developed initially as a competitor to Rogaine®, but it has collateral effects which should help me. 

Watched a lot of the S. FL fisherman stream, he had two professional shark fishermen on board, and they were hauling in all kinds of big fish. They do catch and release for sharks, but they kept the good eating/sushi fish when they were big enough. They caught 50+bonitos, kept a few for bait but released most of them. It was fun seeing three guys hauling in fish hand over fist.

Took a nap around 4, Spook jumped on the bed as I was making it, but she jumped off and curled up on the floor in a corner while I slept. I hate when she does that.

While I was sleeping Amazon delivered a small box, once again stupidly putting it on a table which has some cactus plants, instead of the table 2 feet away that has nothing on it. In the box was toothpaste and waterproof non-Band-Aid bandages. And a UPS guy literally threw a bag of stuff against the wall by the door. It turned out to be a 4G network dongle to replace the no longer supported 3G one attached to my pacemaker monitor. It was easy to install, I almost didn't need the instructions.

I'm calling  the new cat Mom now. Original spelling was Maam, Miki says there wasn't supposed to be an apostrophe, the shelter made a mistake. Mom loves to climb up my office chair while I'm on it and perch on the head rest.


She will also try to sit on the desk but there really isn't room and I don't want a keyboard cat. Spook only comes into the office to poke around below the windows. I took out the platforms she can lay on because they block me from opening the windows. Mom has Spook radar, she raises an alarm when she senses the bigger cat nearby or just looking at her.

Lunch was snacks. Gouda bites, Girl Scout S'mores cookies and watermelon. Dinner was the usual salad, a frozen meat loaf meal and chocolate fudge ripple ice cream with caramel syrup.

Watched a rerun-ish episode of Below Deck Sailing Yacht. They do this thing they call "never before scene" where they add maybe 2 minutes from the cutting room floor. I don't usually watch those but the first charter of the season was a major party episode, lots of skin.

Some of LV got rain, but not my neighborhood.

In aquarium news, I lost 2 gouramis which were sucked up against the filter intake. Research shows the kit was missing two filter parts which would have prevented that. Found them online, shipping from AZ. And the allegedly adjustable heater refused to turn off, plus they sent me a 150W not the 100 I ordered. So a replacement replacement is en route too.

Plans for tomorrow:
Long drive to a famous tropical fish store in Chinatown.  Gouramis are on the list, but also a small number of other community fish and some moss. And maybe a large ornamental piece for fish to hide in.
I expect to watch more fishing streams too.
And spend some time on the exercise bike