Writing Wrongs

My body was not built for 7,000 feet above sea level. I knew this from Denvention, which is only a mile high, but since then I have not gotten any younger. Shortness of breath after only walking a few feet, worse on an uphill grade. If I sit down I am not eager to stand back up, and will daydream in between. Dehydrated (yes, I carry water) which is not good because the CHF calls for less water than the average citizen. Even though I have been speed eating peanut M&Ms and had regular meals, and not injecting much insulin, my Hgl has been low. Did not bring my BP meter.

And then there's the weather. Tuesday was overcast, so photos of the parts of the rim we saw on the bus tour were not the best. But it was warm, spring-summer temps. The wind gusts were sometimes violent and always cold, but I was not surprised, being at the top of that vast canyon.

So of course for my free day yesterday I woke to half an inch of snow on the ground, and temps cold enough to keep it there.

The park buses are free, run every 15-20 minutes, and there are three routes out of 5 which hit different viewpoints.

The bus from the hotel to the general store was first, I bought immodium liquid and tablets, Afrin, diet Coke in bottles, two bananas, two HB eggs and chocolate dipped mini donuts.

Crossed the street - it was longer than it sounds - to catch the bus back to the hotel, medicate myself and drop off the food.

Back on the bus, this time to the bus station by the visitor's center. First bus Orange #1, up to a trailhead and then to Piper Point, where I got off and took photos. Minor breaks in the clouds, but we had snow flurries which got worse until the bus came.

I'd had enough for the morning, caught the Blue bus back to the hotel, had lunch in the main building.

The immodium was working, so blue bus to the visitor's center, looked around, then Orange #2 to Mather Point and I got off at the next stop, which has a geological museum with huge windows overlooking the canyon. Very cold and windy outside, but clouds were moving so I was outside taking pix till the bus came. Got some far-away photos of an idiot jumping for the camera, too near the edge, as the wind gusted.

Blue bus back to the hotel, Amtrak Vacations was able to upgrade my Flagstaff-LA to roomette, for basically full price minus senior discount. Worth it.

In the main building, dinner was the driest smoked pork loin ever, but the mashed and cole slaw were great. Apple pie was still partly frozen. I looked into the pizza pub, but they only sold 16" whole pizzas, 12"gluten free (no thanks) and slices.

The hotel room was very noisy. People upstairs and next door sounded like they were using treadmills. Or roller blades. I watched some TV, there was no guide, and the channels were all mixed around. Found local news/weather.

Restless night. Woke up at 11:30 pm for water and Afrin. Kept having the same dream, something about Facebook friends from high school, which reminded me of what should have been my First Time, Lois took us out to the back of a field, and pretended sleep expecting me to take the hint. I had no idea. Knew nothing about sex. Lucid dreaming, I navigated to the time we made up for that.

But up almost every hour, same dreams.

Plans for Thursday:
Pack up
Check out by 11
Write this
Bus to train depot by 3
3:30 train to Wilson
7:30 shuttle to Flagstaff
Amtrak to LA

Up on time, out on time, tried to stream my ride to work but it locked up a minute or two in. Samsung phone did that several times since I started using it to stream, which is rude because I got it because it is supposedly built for streaming. The Pixel 2 never did that, although it did overheat once and shut itself off when my stream settings were way too high.

So, the S9 is going back to Amazon. Gonna use USPS because the closest of the 6,457 available lockers is downtown San Jose. Major WTF. Someone is not doing their job of collecting from the lockers. Or the database is hosed.

Blame susandennis for pointing out the generous Pixel 2 buyback program, which brings the Pixel3 price down to about the same as the S9. Strange but true, I can get mine Saturday with the free delivery/setup help. Nov 5 at the earliest on free standard shipping, self setup. In order to do that setup thing, I needed to put my Pixel back - I'd wiped it. The Google phone swap app is not as thorough as the Samsung one, but it is good enough. Anyway, thanks, Susan.

One thing which surprised me is the barometer app worked on the Pixel, using the phone's sensor. Did not know it had one.

So tomorrow I'll stream my ride to work on the Pixel 2, and we'll see.

Work today was a pain. The test servers were intermittent again, and just when they got solid, the internet connection in the lab went down. The big lab in the back of the building also went down, but they are on a different circuit, which it took tech support a while to figure out. Once they did, mine was fixed in 10 minutes. And another 20 for the server connection to see my router. Big lab was still offline when I went home.

Lunch was a Safeway Asian Chicken salad. Quite a construction project. Almond bits, tiny mandarin orange slices, the obligatory dried noodles, chicken cubes, special sauce. Strawberries after. And baklava.

Testing was interrupted when bozomanager wanted three tests re-run which NP had allegedly marked as failed in the prior release. Except she hadn't. And they still failed. For good reasons. Tall manager was confused, he asked how they passed when NP ran them, but they didn't.

Boss showed me an OLED TV from LG which looks stunning, and she wants me to have it in the lab for show. Apparently someone ordered one and got two, so she grabbed it.

While I was out there she went over her roadmap with me & NP and she suddenly realized I won't be around in mid-December. :-(

Home at 5:30, stream froze before I got 3 blocks, so I pulled into the cinema parking lot to reboot the phone and start again, but the two people who had been watching never returned. The rest of the ride was recorded.

Home, delivered was a case for the S9. It's pretty, I may sell it on eBay.

Transferred all the stuff from the S9 to the 2XL, made a chopped liver & onions sandwich for dinner, dark chocolate covered tangerine slices for dessert. Watched PTI and Below Deck. The chief stewardess and her #1 steward, whom I think are both gay, are an item. The crazy #3 stewardess has a crush on the incompetent boson, who is thinking with his dick. I expect him to be fired in a charter or two. Meanwhile we are waiting for the huge hunk #3 crew stud and the #2 crew gal who is of amazonian proportions (except she still has both breasts) to find each other.

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I can't believe Gruden traded away Amari Cooper.

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Re-programmed the food tower to do 3 feedings, total of 5 cups a day I think. Spook still gets a small pile of treats because she asks for them. Comes right out and sits facing me and meows. Rubs her head against the container when I take the lid off. Spot comes running, but he's just being a brat. If I put some down for him he walks away.

Need to get a plumber to fix the master toilet. It keeps stopping up, and probably needs both a long snake and a new flushing mechanism which stores more water in the tank.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe plug the car in at Pear Ave and go to their cafeteria for the eye candy. Then Hedda Gabler at The Pear theater. I doubt that Ibsen will fill the house on a Thursday.
Home

Weird night. Woke up three times before 1 am, then was surprised by the 7:30 alarm. Spook was on the bed to help. I have no idea where Theo was.

Out at about the right time, traffic was very stop and go even in the commuter lane.

Still I was in the break room before they stocked it. Google emailed us all that with the new snacks would come more frequent stocking, but they lied. And my garbage hasn't been collected in 2 weeks, the woman who had been doing that for the past year is nowhere to be seen. Maybe they changed vendors.

Worked on the box from yesterday, FAIL right off the bat - instead of the screen saver the unit had shut itself off, even though it was set to never sleep.

Lunch was beef teriyaki steamer & brownie bits. And a lot of noise from that pair of women who sometimes appear, one has a baby on a chest sling and the other is just a loud converser. Made it hard to concentrate on my book.

Back in the hole, finished up the smoke test & waited for boss, but she didn't show. Odd since she had been sending me assignments all day.

I'm out of things to test until China manager #1 gets me on the list for the next Android version on the James Bond machine. We are on O, this will be P. No code name yet, but it will be food. O is Oreo.

Watched a lot of YouTube, it's clear they have been filtering videos from vloggers about the shooting. I only found 2.

Home, traffic was okay. But the car had set itself on petrol mode so it still had 90% battery left. Did not take long to top up. with gas at $3.30/gal, I'm not thrilled. The rose bush with the variegated red & white flowers is blooming all over, and very aromatic. Catmints are thriving too.

The woman in charge of the Contact-conference art show is in the hospital again, she had a CT scan this morning. So probably not going to bring photos for the art show because there may not be one. I may go tomorrow evening to see. I was planning on staying home.

The 8TB drive was done formatting, I started to xcopy files from the RAID array, but forgot the /S flag the first time so it only copied the top directory. Now it's doing the whole thing. AVI files are taking a long time. But I knew they would. I tried to clone the drive, but the software I have won't clone an array. It also would not let me restore from the backup, but that's okay because the last backup was Sunday.

I put the cover back on the PC, but since Theo likes to climb on things I opened the window a crack and closed the doors again.

Webcam from work showed Spook in the bedroom doggie bed, she usually camps out in the one in the office. She had been avoiding the bedroom one for months, I don't know why. Good to see her back. Theo was mostly in the piano room tree house.

Watched episode 2 of Strange Rock, and 80% of it was in episode 1. Watched episode 3, which was mostly new. More on Monday night.

Theo was tearing around the house, being hissed at by Spook for much of the evening. All is quiet now.

Dinner was a lamb steak and green peas, brownie crumbs on frozen strawberries for dessert.

In the mail was a bottle of furosimide, which I ran out of 2 days ago.

BP and pulse have been erratic. At work bp was high and pulse was 50. At home the opposite, pulse 90. I've been feeling heavy & uncoordinated all day.

Plans for tomorrow:
work - hope the new build is accessible
home
maybe go to the con, it's in a Sunnyvale hotel.

Slept well. Up at about 10. Missed the window to get to the photo studio at the end of the photoshop workshop, left the house in time to get there just before the model shoot. Gave the owner a calendar, he liked Miss October, who was shot in his studio.

Nearest BB&B was at the Great Mall. Did the sodastream exchange and got everything on my list, then took it to the car. ( TMI )

Usually Zoe would have visited the bathroom during this event, but she was nowhere to be seen. It was her turn in the house, Spook's turn in the guest room.

Looking all over, I saw this:

The vent had been in place when I left. I looked around where it might let out, but saw and heard nothing.

It was time to check on Spook, and saw this in the guestroom:


And then I saw this:


Off to the left, floor level, Spook was staring at Zoe.

The vents are a straight line, about 25 feet apart.

I invited Spook out, and closed the door. Zoe is back in her safe place again.

I am eager to hear what my Humane Society counselor has to say. Won't hear till Tuesday at the earliest.

The round table for the train set arrived, it's now set up and after some work with pliers to close gaps in the track, it runs fine.

Took some lactaid and extra immodium. Relaxed till 6:30, then drove to Campbell for karaoke. I had a fever, and got real cold toward the end, but sang 5 times.

Home around 10:30, not hungry. Hgl measured, overnight insulin injected. No update on Kaiser tests, don't expect any until Tuesday.

Plans for tomorrow:
Catch up on sleep
Catch up on football
Relax.
Two Sundays this week, MLK Day Monday,no plans. Janice is in PV.

So today was almost normal. The cough is still there, but isn't going into spasms like yesterday.

Very frustrated with the cell phone problem, so I drove to the Sprint store, and after wasting about 45 minutes with the rep setting up an account, he declared that my Samsung Galaxy S8 wouldn't work on their network, and offered to sell me one of theirs.

On to Verizon, where it took about the same amount of time amidst a LOUD under construction storefront. Got the number transferred, but the phone is acting like it is locked to AT&T. :-(

Home, checked the AT&T site, it said the phone isn't registered on their network. Did a factory reset, no change.

I put the SIM in my Huawei, and it showed the Verizon network but no cell connection. Old Verizon Galaxy S6 looked like it came up okay, but I didn't get past the Verizon logo - not sure it connected.

I'm keeping it in the Huawei for now, the factory reset effed up all my settings, email, etc. on the Samsung.

Watched the recording of Sunday Night Football, Patriots vs Denver. Broncos played much better than the score indicated. It was not a bad game. Watched in small bits, between other things.

Healthy Choice lemon pepper fish for lunch before going outside. Part 2 of Nancie's Home & Garden appearance was "on the couch" with the whole cast. She was asked about what pies could be frozen.

An episode of Shark Tank. Nothing I would buy.

Tried to continue reading  Eejit (The Final Fall of Man Book 1) by Andrew Hindle, but the author got caught in loops trying to have characters explain their circular reasonings instead of just telling the story.  And he doesn't seem to know what the story is, exactly.

Next up is The Girl In Between by Laekan Zea Kemp, one page read, so far so good. Very catchy hook.

Delivered was #1 of 2 flower essence infusions allegedly good for calming the cats. I rubbed some on my hands and from there to Zoe. It said to also put some in their water, which I did way later.

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Did not lose any weight today. Been sipping more, snacking more, peeing less.

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Plans for tomorrow:
Work
lunchtime - Verizon store near work, try to get the phone thing fixed.
Free drink @ Starbucks - make it a small one
I'll be 67. How did that happen?

Up with the alarm and out early. Phoned AG, but lost the signal as I got to the work parking lot, which has been happening more lately.

Grabbed breakfast, there was a gaggle of young persons in the foyer, 3 male 3 female, some seemed to know each other.

Life in the hole was quiet, I needed to run a test on Netflix audio, so following up on a question I posted on Facebook, watched ST:TNG season 5 episode 2, Darmok. The answer to the question was "Shakah, when the walls fell". Nutshell synopsis, Picard is sent to make nice with an alien race which had sent a signal (the usual math progression thingie). But the alien ship captain and crew talk in name-value pairs, of sorts.

Paul Winfield, playing the alien captain, is superb. He does everything he can to encourage Picard to understand, but Picard thinks the guy wants to fight. All the Enterprise officers over-act and over-react, and that screws the pooch. Richard Allen, who plays the aliens' #1 also does a fine job. The race is called the Tamarians, and is never seen again, as far as I can tell. But in the course of the show we learn the meanings of several of those phrases. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra is the main puzzle, which the Tamarian captain decides is the way to make friends. But Picard doesn't get it till it's too late. Long story short, Darmok and Jalad are warriors who separately sail to an island, are attacked by a beast and overcome it together, sailing away together.

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Boss canceled once again, didn't send the message till our sync would have been half over. Rescheduled for tomorrow, but I'm not changing my lunch time again.

Lunch was 10 minutes early, much noise and my favorite table was occupied until 1 pm, when Mr Last-Minute bolted to go to wherever he was supposed to have been 5 minutes ago. Lean Cuisine Korean spiced beef. Halvah for dessert. Something's wrong with the current case of Diet Coke, after opening it turns foamy a little. Like it had been canned under too little pressure. Or left out in the hot sun.

Updated a couple of bugs, filed a new one which was seen earlier on a different build of a different box from the same chip maker.

Got caught up testing live feeds and 5:30 kind of snuck up on me.

Straight home because eBay said my Samsung Galaxy S8 was delivered, hoping that solves the bad signal problem. It also adds back barometer, hygrometer and temperature sensors.

Also delivered were 5 wall calendars, I miscalculated and bought all but one 2018. Or maybe 2017 wasn't available anymore. The 2017 one is on the wall, Miss September looks fine.

Online, processed a return for the dust devil, which turned out to be corded (I had bought the top recommendation amazon showed for cordless). Will tape it up tomorrow and drop it off at UPS.

It took more than an hour to copy my apps from the Huawei phone to the Samsung, but Samsung's xfer app is excellent. Popped out the SIM and SD cards, put them in the Samsung and had to override the Verizon default to get AT&T working, but the seller's web site had easy instructions. So easy that I hadn't realized it worked until I saw cell signal bars.  Took another hour to copy my screen look & feel, still have more to go.

Did a lot of that while watching Sunday's ATL-GB football game. Another cliffhanger, but this time it got the ending and then some. I've switched all my Tivo football recordings to keep going +3 hours after scheduled end.

May watch the Raiders game tomorrow. Maybe. Tonight's game looked dull, and it wasn't set to record. Teams I'm not interested in.

Still getting chuckles at lunchtime reading Life On The Mississippi. He's now back in his hometown 25 years after he left. The general consensus seems to be that the Clemens boy was an idiot, but somehow did well for himself, but would have done better had he moved to St. Louis, where if they don't know you're an idiot they treat you like you're not one.

Dinner was steamed sourdough English muffins with salmon cream cheese, a side of cole slaw, artichoke hearts and olives.  Lime soda. Famous Amos for dessert. Didn't use the microwave because it would have messed up the wi-fi transfer of files phone-to-phone. After the phones were done, I nuked some salami.

Also "delivered" was a refund for the SAS shoes.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
UPS - return corded vacuum

as we say in the darkroom.

Starting this later than usual because CD, which is OCD without the Obsessive part. I spent most of the day entering those letters from Thailand, with occasional breaks for food, chores and just to take a break. At about 3 I took a nap, and Spook joined me.

While the sun was still behind the house I camped out on the front porch with a soda and popcorn. Lunch was the well-marinated beef slices wokked with that oily biryani rice aka Kao Mok. I used some tricks to de-oil it somewhat, but was only partially successful. The beef was superb, though. A week in white wine, oregano, garlic and meat tenderizer will do that.

While it was too hot I put all the bee's friend remnants from the #1 compost bin into the green recycle bin, decided that was enough stupid, and set the bin in front of the shed to receive other donations later.

Before sunset, I cut back the huge salvia plant, and put those bits into the bin, and rolled it out the the curb. I had a chat with across-the-street neighbor Marge, who said one of our neighbors accused her of spreading something in the street which caused his side of the street to all have ant and flea infestations. She says he thinks he wakes up with his face covered in ants. I've read somewhere that this last one is a common paranoia. But her dragging anything across the street it ridiculous - she's 86, tiny, and has been under a nurse's care most of last month.

Back to my side of the street, I dumped the non-rooting salvia and rose cuttings into the bin, and pulled out from the front garden a few hanks of dead poppy plants, and binned them.

And watered all around.

Compost bin #1 had a few inches of actual compost at the bottom, which I spread out on the retaining wall, and watered down. I should add some bricks at the front to keep it in place, and use it as a container garden. Or not.

Took out the recyles, and the garbage, and cut up the many cardboard boxes from the week's deliveries, taped them into a bundle, and set them beside the recycle bin.

Back to the letters, and suddenly, after mostly handwritten or typed on a worn machine with a threadbare ribbon, there is a letter done on a clear electric typewriter with solid impressions and a new ribbon. My 1975 tax refund paid for a nice SCM electric. My memory is flawed, I thought I had bought that soon after arriving in Bangkok. Turns out to be about the last thing I bought before leaving Bangkok for my second assignment in the south.

And instead of having to dictate the letters, these scan in well with my OCR software, and just need some formatting and corrections where the folds in the paper obscure the words. I still need to read the whole letter, but only once. Much faster and painless.

I'm now at the end of May 1976, and my move from Bangkok to Haad Yai. Many letters covered the politics which ripped my Bangkok assignment out from under me. There was also a lot of talk of trying to transfer to another country. One letter hinted at the huge anger I had that Peace Corps made no attempt to keep me in Bangkok, where I had a vibrant theater life, onstage and as a techie. But I don't say it outright.

Dinner was Boston Market beef & pasta & ice cream.

Egg cream chaser.

Plans for tomorrow:
Take my camera to MV, park the car at one of the charging stations near Shorebird Rd., and walk my camera down the block where the egrets are nesting. According to the Google pages on it, there ought to be great whites and egret fledglings finding their wings about now. Hatching is most likely a month in the past. 
Maybe hang out at Shoreline Park for a bit.

Home, more letters. I will probably stop with Thailand, since the ones from Israel are not as memorable. And off-topic.

Up and out early, while I was grabbing my usual breakfast from the break room, the annual Google Scholars Retreat (GSR) was taking theirs from a separate buffet table across the hall. These are kids who were awarded scholarships in tech, and if I was the GSR head I'd be ashamed to have put them in an off-campus lecture hall. If I was one of the scholarship recipients I'd be insulted.

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In the hole, no aircon, so I got out the vice grips (I forgot the WD-40 - and my eye drops - on the laundry room counter) and released the locking pin on window #3. #2 I'd done weeks ago, and #1 I discovered was already done. So three windows facing Charleston Rd were open, and so was my door. And I relocated the fan to hit me in the face. Oddly, while it only got up to 82° on the outside sensor, it was > 85 inside.

The Google Home test lead came over to ask about it, we added her name to the facilities request. Dead silence from those guys.

One of my Facebook friends from theater recommended a movie on Netflix, so I used that for today's testing. Queen of Katwe. It is about a young girl from the slums of Uganda who becomes a chess prodigy. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Everything about it is superb, right down to the closing credits. Gorgeous cinematography & lighting. Spot on directing, extraordinary acting all the way down the line. Costumes are from real life, the extras probably wore their own.  Very well written, the whole range of emotions, and a message of hope against all odds, even when you don't win them all. Especially then. Based on a true story, at the end of the movie, the real life person joins the actor/actress playing that role. It's clear they all built a special relationship.

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Boss canceled our sync again. I'd actually forgotten about it.

Lunch was fried chicken legs and cookies. The scholars were fed in the lecture hall. Long folding tables, it looked really cheap. There wasn't a lot of diversity, most of the women were Asian, which isn't an endangered species in tech, or white.

Finished Ninefox Gambit, which I really liked a lot, and started in on the last Hugo nominated novel, Too Like the Lightning. It starts by saying it is set in the 25th Century, and there is a page and a half of notices from censorship boards (the European one is kind if clever), and its ratings on the multi-level rating system which might be a logical extension of what we have now. But I'm having trouble with the actual writing style, and from the first chapter I'm not sure if we're talking sci-fi or magic. As I posted earlier, at the moment it's #3 on my list, but the jury is still out.

Break time there were little sandwiches set up on the counter for the scholars, but they were elsewhere. I stuck around for 20 minutes, but they didn't show up.

Back to the hole, done with Netflix, switched to the pre-release app, which failed early and often in the same way I'd seen before, so no sense recording logs or filing bugs.

5:25, started closing windows, and was on the road by 5:31.

Did not go to the movies, because the only one I was marginally interested in was Pirates of the Caribbean 27. They jumped the shark 3 sequels ago.

Traffic was not so bad, except for 101, so I stayed on the frontage road which was pretty light. Only had to wait a minute or so at the IFH. No call today from AG. Probably will hear from him tomorrow.

Delivered was the smaller garbage bin, and the green garden waste bin. Sometime around next Sunday I'll shovel the contents of the second compost bin into it. I don't think it will hold the contents of both. The bins will need to find another home when they are empty. They fold down to the size of a garbage can lid. They don't work for me, the back retaining wall is too raked. It's about 2 feet higher at the back than the front, and those bins need to be level. I may shift some bricks from the other side of the house and make a higher wall, maybe. But not in this heat. And not for compost bins.

In the park tube was a flyer from the Sunnyvale Mobile Home Action organization, which I'd expected to see a week ago. I sent email with some comments, and said it's okay to put me on their email list.

Watered all the gardens. Lee was trying to chat with me about something, but I sometimes don't understand what she is saying. A guy about my age on a bicycle stopped to ask me if my house was having bug infestations. I told him about carnivorous plants, but he meant ants, so I showed him what I've been using. Borax, basically. But he said that didn't work for him.

Dinner was Banquet spaghetti & meatballs. It's a lunch sized portion in a dinner sized package. Their containers warp in the microwave. Halvah for dessert, watched the 6 pm news, and a little of the bachelorette. She's very pretty. And over-accessorized.

I've had enough of ABC's local news, they really suck - they feel compelled to tell us how they feel about each story, instead of just telling us the news. I'll try channel 2. That's not as solid a signal, and even though it's a Fox station, it is broadcast from Oakland, has an ethnic cast with no Fox News overtones.

Ordered soda can lids, since I keep drinking about half a can at lunch, and often want to bring half a can home in the cooler, but it always spills.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Not work

Slept well, for no apparent reason. After the usual 1 am NASCAR, I didn't wake up till 6:30. Tried to get back to sleep but only managed 15 minutes at a time. Stayed in bed till 10 because I could. I think there was some online shopping involved. Getting tired of the way-too-inadequate performance from my way-too-expensive Bose radio/CD player, which has an antenna and reception similar to a $25 Emerson special. Superior speakers are useless in a GIGO situation.

The bluetooth adapter would cost $300, which would let me stream from the Google Home and maybe the Amazon Fire, but BT speakers will do the same for 1/10th the price. So I ordered two.

Also bought was another set of garden path lamps. I have six installed, but they are intermittent.

Completely forgot to medicate until noon. Also forgot to eat. This often happens on Sundays.

There are tons of fun things to do this weekend, including a WWII airplane show at Moffett, and AnimeCon, but I've become allergic to crowds.

I had a fleeting temptation to defrost all those drumsticks and make traditional fried chicken, not that crap with Panco or flakes. But opening the freezer to get the chicken showed me a higher priority: frozen lunches and dinners.

So - off to Safeway, where I bought a 2-week supply. Or more. Also picked up some warm weather food. Does a PNB&J sandwich freeze well? They had four flavors of Lactaid ice cream, I picked up two I had not tried before. Already have chocolate x 2. Dark chocolate was high on my list, and Ghirardelli bars were on sale.

And my "don't go grocery shopping while hungry" guilty pleasure was a package of 18 shrimp spring rolls.

On my way I thought about going to downtown first and Ingressing.

Home, put everything away. Beef pot pie for lunch, caramel chip ice cream was pretty good, even if the ice cream was vanilla.

The car decided it wanted to run on gas, so did not need to be charged. I hate when it does that. Especially at $3.25/gal.

And then mysteriously it turned into a 2-shower, 3-Immodium day. :-(

Vegged a bit, Spook kept an eye on me from across the room, wrapped around one of her scratching post toys.

Fired up the PC and plugged in the tablet, and organized the Hugo nominees so I will read each group together. Made lists of each grouping I was interested in, and put the lists into Google Keep.

Then to Specialty's down the road, bought a pastry and a soft drink, plugged the tablet into the laptop, and started arranging files in the Kindle directrory.

Short Stories was first, and I discovered I only had one left to read. It only took a minute because it was non-science fiction. Removed them from the Kindle display, but not from the device, and added the Novelettes. I have read one already, Nina Allan's The Art of Space Travel which I enjoyed a lot except she never really ends it. I think she thinks she did, but no.

Read the last story, with a little distraction because there was some eye candy. Sitting directly in my line of sight was a woman who looked like a dancer, and various gals in yoga or track pants visited the soda machine also in my view.

Home, watched last night's 6 o'clock news on Tivo, vegged a little in the recliner.

Needing to get out of the house, I drove down the block to the big park, taking my tablet and cell phone, and hacked away at the loop of portals. Most of them were neutral, so I greened them. And there were a clump in the middle of blue but not well provisioned. I had a lot of 7's and 6's to fire at them, and greened them too. Sat on a bench near the sea lion statue and read some sci-fi. At about 7, went back and hacked the closest half of the portals and linked a few. Got one field set up, I expected more. Good stats (for me): 10 links active, 15 portals owned, 2 control fields active, 27 MUs.

Home, dinner was half of the spring rolls - they are tiny, lumpia sized. The photo on the package is a lie. Also heated up a bowl of frozen mixed veggies. As soon as the spring rolls were done I slapped a quartet of Pepperidge Farms apple turnovers in. They were done in time to be dessert. First one a la mode, second one a la cart. Watched another episode of Dark Matters, where we are introduced to yet another totally unintimidating villain. And one very threatening Igor. That actor looked a bit like Karloff.

Logged onto the Hugo voting site, entered my Short Story ballot:
1. Vaughn, Carrie - That Game We Played During the War
2. Wright, John C - An Unimaginable Light
3. Wong, Alyssa - A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers
4. Jemisin, N K - The City Born Great
5. No award
6. Bolander, Brooke - Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies
7. El-Mohtar, Amal - Seasons of Glass and Iron

As I understand it, anything after "no award" is ignored in the tallies. If I'm wrong there's plenty of time to fix that. 6 & 7 are non-science. 2 & 3 were almost a tie, because from the first page of #2 I knew how it would end, but it was better written, IMHO. YMMV. #1 made me cry. A textbook example of how to write a short story.

As for Novelette, already tossed overboard are non-science works:
Vernon, Ursula - The Tomato Thief
Wilde, Fran - The Jewel and her Lapidary

Signed up for a photo shoot next Saturday morning, Karaoke meetup is that evening.

Plans for tomorrow:
Read some more
Take the camera somewhere. Maybe somewhere along the southern light rail route I haven't been.
Janice at 5, Starbucks but not Shoreline because there will be traffic