Busy day. Broke the industrial strength car charger. Bought orchids

[howeird]

Once again Spook started out on the bed but ended up under the keyboard in the guest room.

Stayed in bed reading till 8:30, did the usual morning stuff. Spook begged for treats as usual.

She has not used the tall cat tree in the kitchen since Spot left, as it was her fortress from which she defended against him. So I moved it back into the guest room, where it had been Spot's tree while he was parked there after I first got him. Moved the kitchen table back to where it had been. Also need to re-hang the top kitchen curtain and scoot the hanging plants across.

10-ish, punched the address of the orchid show into the nav system and drove out there. POI names rarely work in the Leaf, but addresses spoken to it work just fine, and once an address has been entered it can be saved in the address book and pulled up again in the future.

There are two community centers on the same street in Redwood City, the orchid show was at the second one. Girl's soccer was at the first one.

The show took up 5 rooms: Sales by society members, plant hotel where you could leave plants you bought while you wandered the building, the show (displays and ribbons but no sales), sales by commercial orchid companies and the classroom.

I bought a white cataleya with a big flower in the members' room, put it in the car and came back to look at the show, which was huge. Made a couple of passes through the commercial room, but traffic lanes were horrible and the only catalaya seller I saw wasn't selling any of the samples he had of blooming plants.

Back to the show to take pictures


Then to the classroom to watch a demo of re-potting cymbidium orchids, which are growable outdoors, and not a kind I would ever want at home. But you learn a lot of applicable techniques at any class.

Back to the commercial room, and in the far corner the guy not selling blooming catalayas was selling budding ones, so I bought one which should produce deep purple flowers. I put that in the car and came back for one more pass through the members' room, and then in the commercial room all the way at the other end from the budding grower was a botanist who was selling hundreds of tiny catalayas, more than a dozen varieties. No blooms, but I bought 3 for $25 which may produce flowers eventually.

Back to Sunnyvale, parked the car at a charger and went into Specialty's for a snack while it charged. Phone beeped at me, the charger quit after 6 minutes. I tried 2 more times, it errored out in a minute or two. Called the number on the machine, got a support person who rebooted the unit, it took about 5 minutes, they are on an old Windows enterprise OS on top of another old Windows OS. I saw putty on the desktop, which is kind of bizarre for a stand-alone machine.

Once it came up, he comped me to an almost full charge (96%, 40 minutes) so I shopped in Grocery Outlet. There was some fine eye candy and they had chocolate mochi as well.

Home, plugged in to complete the charge, put away all the orchids and groceries.

In the mail was the W2 from Social Security and the Leaf's generic plates. Entered the SS numbers in TurboTax, and found a form online for transferring the plates. They don't make appointments for that, so I'll take the form and all my plates to the DMV Monday and take my chances. I expect a $15 fee.

Delivered was the handle for the squeegee but not the squeegee because it is an add-on item and the handle was less than the $35 add-on requirement. Also delivered was the cat hidey box, which I set up and Spook was immediately attracted to the hanging fuzzy ball but not the box itself. Figures.

Baked up some tater tots from GO, then drove out to Campbell for karaoke. It started slow but gained momentum. Lots of new folks. The math  genius from last time did not show up. Bummer. I sang a lot. My voice cracked some - sinus thing happening.

Home, fixed up two chopped liver on rye with burned onion, schmaltz and HB egg. Chip mint ice cream dessert. Watched a vet family clinic show.

Plans for tomorrow:

Finish the kitchen curtains/plants project
Watch the pro bowl on time delay
ATM, deposit that check from the car dealer
Take out the garbage 

Comments

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

I was with some friends yesterday and we were talking about electric cars, and wondering how long they took to charge, and whether one had to pay to charge them. This answered both questions.

Those are some beautiful orchids!