howeird | Entries tagged with #4

Up at 6:30, this standard time thing is not kicking in quite yet. Got caught up on amazon and on FB so was half an hour late to work. I streamed my ride, and several people watched, but I am done with that because cell service is so intermittent that huge chunks of my ride are skipped, and the audio goes in and out. But I am stuck with the unlimited plan till next week. Verizon only lets you change plans once a month. Fair enuf.

No tests to run, but I had to explain to Tall Manager that the tests he was asking me to run I had run and documented Monday, and he might consider actually reading the bug he was linking to. It took way too long for him to get it.

NP and NNP came in dressed in very beautiful & ornate saris, headgear and all, they looked stunning, and were handing out Diwali sweets. Yum.

Lunch was a ham salad from the fridge, and mango upside down cake. I had brought a Safeway chef salad, but the ham salad is equivalent and free.

No call from the body shop.

Texted Eddie, the second Adecco rep, who now works elsewhere, but got no answer. Typical Eddie. Candace answered my email. She had noticed me back on FB.

Put the headphones on to listen to some Twitch streamers, but ran the video on an HDR TV for Blade Runner and the latest Mad Max. Both had outstanding cinematography.

Plugged in the car at 4:45, left at 6, Spot was in the front window when I pulled in but was in the carport window by the time I parked. He is fast. I think he is part tachyons.

I had left the guest room door open, Spook is in the under the futon. I'll shut the door when she comes out. I'm having the junk guys haul away the futon & TV & tv stand on Saturday.

Watched PTI and Below Deck. The crew is a hot mess. I am hoping that Cap fires the boson and promotes #2 to that slot. #3 and #4 will be fine with boson gone. And I think chief stew will send #3 home and hire someone who doesn't cry and panic all the time.

Dinner was wheat thins and goat milk cheeses followed by turkey summer sausage which went into the disposal after two pieces, and then turkey baloney which is an old staple, and a pickle. Mango upside down cake for desert.

Streaming from the PC as I write this, no issues with signal at home, using the internet connection not Verizon cell data.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work-free work
Body shop???
Look for a new job (cont)
Home

Up on time, out a little late but not too. Decided to try to take Middlefield to Rengsdorff and avoid all the 101 foo. Back road to Mathilda, straight through IFH instead of along Moffett Field. Right turn at Ross.

And that was a mistake because (a) Ross was under construction, and (b) it dead ends after a half mile. No outlet on any branch roads. So back to Mathilda, right turn, overpass over 101, then right on Ahwahnee. Which is also under construction and meanders around before the light at Maude, which never turns green. So a lot of waiting. And I should have turned left in the "237 only" lane because it gets to Middlefield before it gets to 237. Going straight waste a lot of time.

The rest of the commute was as planned, but traffic by then made it a PIA to get to the right lane for my turn towards The Hole.

And at the door three people were waiting. I thought it was Mitchell, who did not have a key, and the two visiting engineers, but it turned out to be Jeremy, who is supposed to have a key. He loaned his to Mitchell, who had been arriving early but later M told me he had made a Costco run before work and got caught in traffic. Jeez.

So I opened the door for them, let them know after tomorrow I won't be there to let them in, then went to the break room to grab breakfast.

Logged in, email from the James Bond manager to not test the machine yet, there was a new build coming. I emailed back that with the move tomorrow, there won't be time to test till next week.

So, nothing to do all day. The only other item on my list was packed away at Hole 2, and won't have software till 2 weeks from now.

Watched some storm chasers, but none of them had storms to chase.

Watched some YouTube of 49ers.

Packed up all the wires which were lying around unused, and the two DVD players (one does composite the other does component & HDMI). And the Netflix test box with its associated cables. And a couple of power strips.

Lunch was beef portobello, and cut melons. The phone started updating to Android P as I ate. Yesterday Boss was surprised I didn't know they named it Pie. It was only announced on the internal news site yesterday. I'm not seeing any difference, which is great because the beta broke many of my apps.

Emailed cardiologist with my non-salt answer.

Got the new numbers for the refinance, but couldn't read the pdf on my machine.

4:30 sync with Boss, NP and vacation boss. Boss thought it woud take longer, but there were only 4 projects, I had already claimed one, NP had started one and had the hardware for another so I took #4.

I need to dig out my dogfood Seattle magazine cover. Vacation boss will be in charge of a dogfood project on the TVs we just tested.

Done.

This was the cover of the first Seattle magazine as I recall. Must have been the 70s. They went out of business, a new Seattle started up in 2011.

Thought about returning to The Hole with the extra boxes and stickers I'd collected, but the radio reminded me that there was a 7 pm 49ers home game tonight so I had better not wait. There was a mess where 101 dumped onto 237 east, which is where I trade places and become off-ramp traffic to the IFH. Only 4 cars ahead of me at the light, and it turned green in less than 5 minutes. The rest of the trip home was usual.

Nothing in the mailbox. As I was checking the front garden, an Amazon/unmarked van drove up, the driver completely ignored me and dropped a package in front of the front door. And then another unmarked white van drove up and blocked traffic while the two nitwits chatted.

The package was a pair of Teva sandals. Tried them on, they seem to be the improvement over the old ones I wanted.

Plugged in the car, grabbed the cooler from the trunk and let myself in the side door. Spot was waiting and yelling.

Turned on the TV, the first NFL game was on, I watched a little, but got bored with Not My Team™, and played the latest Below Deck. Much more soap opera than needed. How can these people try to have relationships with co-workers? Especially the airhead with the perfect body who is competing with the almost intelligent pretty-enough slightly older co-stewardess for the hunk's attention.

Speaking of soap, the Bachelorette made her choice, and she went with the muscle head. He's tall and wide and as not-handsome as one woud expect a farm boy named Garrett to be. It may work, because in all the important ways he is the exact opposite of the Bachelor who dumped her after they were engaged. No wedding plans yet, just moving in together.

Spook did some strange things tonight. I was snacking on French fried onions, and she came out from under the coffee table and stared at me. I tossed her a couple of pieces, and she gobbled them up. And kept doing that for about half a dozen tosses. We're talking broken bits pinched between two fingers. When she had enough she crawled back under the table.

After about half an hour she slunk down the hall to the bedroom. I followed in case she was planning on peeing in the doggie bed again, but instead she curled up on the fleece blanket under the bedding rack, which used to be a go-to place for her.

Meanwhile, Spot has alternated between being very vocal and lying quietly on his back playing dead.

In Tivo news, it was set to record the 49ers game, and since it's a wish list item it ought to record both the local broadcast (in this case CBS) and the NFL Network's, but it was only recording NFL network, which switched to a different game at 7, not the 49ers as scheduled. So I flipped to CBS and tried to start it recording, but Tivo thought it was already being recorded. I had to kill the NFL network recording and start the CBS. Lost most of the first half.

Watched till the 3rd quarter when real time matched recording time. Will watch the rest later. I see the 49ers came from behind to beat Dallas. First exhibition game, I didn't see much talent worth noting on either team, except the 49er backup QB has improved a bit.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Pack everything that can be packed, put stickers on the rest.
Lunch
Wait for the facilities folks to haul it all away. Power off and unplug the linux box when they get there.
For once, don't lock up. Mfg reps will be taking their TV sets next week.
Home

Breakfast was chopped liver on rye sandwich. Lunch was the same, but with a sliced HB egg and onion slices added. The chopped liver tastes just like I remember Mom's & grandma's. I am thinking what may have triggered this foray into my culinary past is Mom's birthday was May 29. Same as JFK's.

In cat news, spent some quality time with Spot, who seems to get fatter daily. He has been parking himself on the window ledge lately, which is good. I swapped out his too-light food tower for one he can't easily tip over. Refilled his water fountain too. Spook has been around some, hanging out by the door when I'm in the guest room, curled up in the livingroom amongst the toys. Grooming herself, which she had not been doing much of.

9 am, phone call, went to VM. Checked it later, its was the woman in #4 asking for help moving her son's Chevy Bolt so she can get the garbage bins to the curb - after 5 pm. I replied okay. Son is at a tech conference back east.

Read some more of Moira's book. I thought I was near the end, but Kindle app says no. It's an uncomfortable book to read, on many levels. She had a horrendous childhood full of parental abuse from her two very famous parents. They were both vehemently opposed to Christianity, in favor of paganism (Mom) and atheism (Dad). Both were MENSA + geniuses. So is Moira. Odd but true, what makes me most uncomfortable about the book is her choosing a fairly prudish edition of Christianity as the antidote. OTOH, it obviously works for her (I have seen her in concert both in front of large audiences and at intimate house concerts. The woman I see shows none of the damage she describes in the book).

Did the reading out on the porch, where it was 80° or so, nice breeze, only saw one hummingbird.

2:55, off to MV for 3 pm coffee with Janice. That will be the last one for a while, she's off to Fiji on the 9th. She reminded me to install What'sApp on my phone in case she wants to call.

Home, pulled out a set of food containers with snap-on lids, and filled 4 of them with chopped liver. Three in the freezer, one in the fridge. Also pulled out a small tub of tuna salad to thaw for lunch tomorrow.

5 pm, went over to #4 and was surprised that the neighbor with the Mexican surname is Jewish and speaks as much Hebrew as I do, if not more. Petite, her eyes are the same color as my maternal great-grandfather's. A kind of blue-grey which my Boston cousin also has. It was a bit of a challenge to get the Bolt in gear, instead of the intuitive button on the top front of the shifter enabling that, it was a flush-mounted button on the left side. Had to RTFM to find that. No problem after that except I had to park close to the stairs on the left and crawl out over the passenger side. He had his seat adjusted as if he's 4 feet tall.

Back home, watched Graham Norton and the news, then caught enough of the NBA post-game to know the Warriors did it again.

The last of the curried chicken wings + some rice for dinner, ice cream with cherries & walnuts for dessert.

Started dough for sourdough bread, will know tomorrow if I need to cheat and buy yeast or not. So far, 1 cup of stater, 3 cups of white flour, and some water is all, covered and in the fridge. Next step is 2 more cups, rye flour this time, and maybe sugar & salt. I will burn that recipe when I come to it.

I had been putting off the 23&me kit, because I don't spit. I've always been disgusted by spitting, and just don't do it. But a reminder to send in a swab test for a pre-Alzheimer study got me killing that other bird. Took an hour to "fill to this line". And it wasn't easy.

But both kits will be mailed out tomorrow. Also in the mail will be the 2018 US Mint America the Beautiful quarters for youngest sister.

Plans for tomorrow:
Phone Middle (Baltimore) sister and sing Happy Birthday off key to her as is our tradition
Work
Home
Sourdough bread phase 3
Fry up some onions in schmaltz. My memory says they should be carbonized, beyond caramelized.

Up at 5:30 am, could not get back to sleep. Good Hgl numbers. quick shower, breakfast then found the Western Union affiliate, which wasn't easy because the address on the web site does not exist and they have no WU signage. Had to fill out a form to get my $, not just show my passport as advertised.

Used the mobile app to buy a tram ticket. Found the #4, which took me to within 3 blocks of the ferry terminal. Just follow the people with the rolling suitcases.

Way early, but lots of people already waiting. By the time 11:10 boarding time rolled around the place was packed. Mostly locals, some people from Asia & Africa. Finns are very patient waiting but once the doors open they turn feral. It's a very long walk from the waiting area to the ship.

Not really a ferry, but a 10-deck Viking Cruise ship with a car deck, on a 2-hour shuttle run. Lots of places to sit, most with people already sitting in them.

Way too many smokers, lighting up all over the place.

Some interesting shots of the little islands, then mostly open sea.

At Tallinn, bought a ticket for the hop on/hop off bus, assuming they would run until ferry boarding time.

It was a gyp. The bus drove way fast over bumpy roads. There was a place to plug in the provided earphones for the narration, but earbuds were cheap and kept falling out. And the language dial gave Spanish on the English mark, and English on the Russian mark.

Got off at the Old Town stop, which is the area where the old city wall is. My main reason for going. Took my time exploring, dodging tour groups and taking detail photos. Got back to the bus stop at 16:30. The sign said I had missed the last bus. Nobody else was waiting which was A Sign.

After 15 minutes or so, a tour group in English came down the road, and I asked the guide for advice on how to get back to the ship. She offered me a ride on their tour bus, they were heading there anyway and had open seats.

Got to the cruise line terminal, which is a long walk from the ferry terminal, and she got the driver to bring us back to within a block from the ferry terminal, after all the passengers had left. She was going that way anyway.

I gave her my card, hope to hear from her so I can say nice things about her to her organization. And to her. Tall, slender, blonde, speaks English, heart of gold.

Back on the ship, this time boarding was early, no feral crowds. Lots of people partaking of the expensive buffet.

Instead of hanging around outside, this time I explored the ship. Found a bar with a dance band, another with karaoke, five or six places to eat, a deli shop, mini casino (electronic games only).

After we landed I saw the #5 tram right in front of the terminal (Google maps is no good at this), took it to the stop nearest the hotel, and walked a few blocks.

In my room, realized that the dozen or so postcards I'd written & stamped on board needed to be mailed, and I needed some food, so reluctantly went out again, bought a sandwich & Coke Zero and mailed the cards.

Had a chocolate bar for dessert.

Plans for tomorrow:
Pack
Breakfast
Check out
Take the tram to the bottom of the hill & find the Finnair shuttle bus. My ticket can be used at any time, so I'll try for noon.
4 pm flight to SFO, arrives about the same time it left.
GOES card was stolen, but since I have not reported it I should be able to use the ID number at SFO
We'll see.

But first, the morning was good, Hgl was 118, I woke up only a little before the alarm, and this time found the hotel's free breakfast buffet, which is HUGE. My only regret was mistaking egg salad for scrambled eggs.** Juice was a techie adventure. There is what appears to be a plain water spout, with no physical on/off dial. To its left is a tablet displaying images of 4 flutes with colors and labels. Touch the orange flute and orange juice comes out of the spout. Watched some geek-FAIL as an image was pushed but no glass had been placed beneath the spout.

**I take that back. I should have left the bacon on the greasy serving tray. It came back to get me later.

Getting to the con is a straight shot on the #9 tram across the street from the hotel, but there is no ticket machine there,so I walked a block downhill to a ticket machine and 3 blocks back up. #9 schedule says every 11 minutes, but it is more like every 6, and sometimes several arrive in a row. After about 10 stops, the driver announced something in Finnish and Swedish, and people get off the tram and hang round outside. Then a passenger translates into English - something wrong with the tram or its schedule, get off and take the next one. And the next one was right there, empty, waiting for ours to get out of its way.

The rest of the trip was uneventful.

The people stationed at the front entry to registration had no idea there was a special line for participants, but there were only 3 people ahead of me and 6 registration volunteers, so the regular line was fine. But the volunteer had no idea where I should get my participant gear, so I stood in line at the participants registration which was the next line to the left, for 15 minutes. One volunteer, 8 people ahead of me. Only to be told to go to that table on the other side of the entrance hall, where they found my "howeird" name sign and panel schedule filed a couple of clicks after Kevin Standlee's. They explained that no matter the badge name, the paperwork was printed in legal surname order.

So I got a ribbon, a name card and a list of my two panels.

Did a lot of walking, finding the location of the of the Green Room was a challenge, Thursday's panel location was easy, the signs pointed right to it via stairs, the elevator was hidden down the hall and around a corner. Friday's workshop locale I did not find, following the signs got me downstairs to food row, so I bought a soda and sat down and checked my email. Message from the moderator of Friday's panel to call her on WhatsApp, which I did, and she invited me to the coffee shop upstairs where I met her brother and her husband. She is delightful, and we chatted for about half an hour. I don't think she saw that when I got up I was very unstable - major hit of low BP, which happens as a side effect of diabetes. It passed in a few seconds, but not as few as normal.

Tried to attend the first panel on my hit list, but 15 minutes before start time the room was full (sign on the door, reinforced by security person at the door). Next panel was in the now-empty room next door in an hour, I could have grabbed a seat and waited, but it seemed insane so I walked around a bit, but again when I got back half an hour before start time the hallway was packed with people lined/mobbed up to get in.

No traffic control at all, hallways were thoroughly blocked.

Half an hour before the opening ceremonies I found a seat, and the room filled rapidly. One of the minions announced that if you were expecting the opening ceremonies, you were in the wrong room, people laughed, I thought she was joking, but no, this was a panel by two physicist sci-fi authors on scientifically ridiculous ideas in books, tv and movies. It should have been a fun panel, but it was meh. And there was no escape, because they laid out the room with the panelists right by the door. Con FAIL is there were only doors on one side of the room, in a double-wide room. And Convention Center FAIL for putting room 103 across the building from 101 but making the signs look like they are together.

So I missed the one event I had on my calendar. :-(

It took a while to find the art show, and longer to find the digital display. My name was listed on the guide but not the photos. And the display was powered up but there was no USB drive plugged in.

By now it is time to look up the tram connections to the Ghost walk tour. It was not hard, take 7B one stop, switch to 7A the opposite direction, then transfer to #4. 7B became 7A after 1 stop, but we had to get off and back on and re-tag. It was a long trip - about an hour. The meetup page said we were looking for a Best Western, but the signage was all local, the hotel is owned by BW, but not branded as them.

It's a former prison, and the hotel has kept it mostly intact. Room doors are solid cell doors with keycard locks. Downstairs past the restaurant is a kept as-is isolation cell.

The tour started out okay, but quickly turned to partial FAIL as the tour guide left me and one other person behind, and we had to hunt to find the other stairs we had missed. There were some interesting stories, but the guide walked too fast, did not stop much to keep us together, and was totally blind to the photographic nature of a tour like this. I took a lot of photos, but would have taken 4x as many if I wasn't stumbling to keep from being completely left behind. An older man on the tour bailed about halfway and grabbed a tram home. I was tempted to join him, but it was the wrong tram for me. We did go by a lot of places which deserve a closer look later.

At the end of the tour we had walked so far that I was only 3 blocks from my hotel!

Instead of going back to my room, I went to the plaza behind the hotel, had dinner at a place called Memphis. Salmon and crawfish with sweet potato fries, Berry iced tea,"mud cake" for dessert. The crawfish was just the claw meat, previously frozen and still cold. The salmon was among the best I ever had. Braised and delicately spiced. Not a fan of sweet potato anything, but these were okay, especially with the cocktail sauce which had been meant for the crawfish. The tea was interesting, the mud cake was not a mud pie, it was a very small square of very chocolate brownie with a very small scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and a sprig of mint. Good, but not as good as a mud pie.

Back to the hotel via the stairs in back instead going around to the front and climbing the hill. Turned out to be longer because the stairs placed me around the corner from the front door. But first, purchased two bottles of Mountain Dew (Coke here tastes off) and a chocolate bar - last night I remembered I have no emergency sugar in the room.

Plans for tomorrow:
Drop off laundry before 9
Breakfast around 9
Take my time getting to the con. Not expecting to get to any panels except the one I'm in
Check to see if the digital art is up in the art show
Meet my co-panelists in the green room around 15:30
Panel 16:00-17:00
Maybe stick around for the parties
Bring laptop & USB cable, copy some photos, Photoshop them and upload to Flickr (free wifi at the con) (?)

Could not get to sleep. Brain was abuzz with all the things to do for the trip. Tried the recliner, and it helped calm me a bit, but needed the bed for sleep. Too late/early to try wine/cider. Probably should be drinking some now. Hang on, I'll put my lime soda away and pour some wicked ale.

Angry Orchard, actually.

This morning was not a low Hgl one, on purpose I shot up half the amount which had been causing issues, and I also stayed in bed reading and watching videos till about 11. Hgl at almost noon with no meds or meals was 245. That's about as high as I'll go if I don't eat & don't take my Metformin or shoot up. Injected my base 150 units of regular, had too many things on the schedule to eat yet.

Loaded the dishwasher and put a load of whites in the washing machine.

First stop was Lowe's for a foldable hat. The one I've been using for photography is falling apart and filthy. I would rather wear a baseball cap, but when I switch from landscape to portrait the camera knocks my hat off if it has a hard bill. Found something a little bit different, it flattens pancake style, and it has a bill all around which pops out of the way when pressed. It'll do, I think.

On to Ford, where they had a replacement wiper blade in stock for the rear window, and it cost less than the front wipers did at an auto parts store. I'll install it tomorrow or when I get back from Finland. Also when I get back I'll take the charger in for service. They said it's under warranty.

Macy's for socks. I almost never go there, especially the Sunnyvale store which has announced at least 12 times it is closing soon, but hasn't. They have all kinds of socks, except the ones I came for. But after a lot of walking back and forth (whoever is supposed to put things back in place on the racks has taken the month off), I found six pair at 3pr/$18. I chose one very colorful pattern and one plain Navy. I wanted white, but no can haz. And the more I think about it, white is not really a good idea.

Home, started charging my extra Nikon batteries. I'll have the GPS unit attached, and it sucks battery something awful. Looked through my stash of memory cards, and it turns out the one in the camera is the only 32GB I have, all the others are 16. So off to Fry's, they are very low on SD cards - whoever restocks those is having an affair with the sox person from Macy's, apparently. I bought two 32GB class 10 SDHC cards.

Somewhere around 3 I made a couple of PNB&J sandwiches.

Home, my stash included four 16GB Compact Flash cards, rated 633x, UHD 6. Looked that up online, and it said that old as they are, they beat the SD card write times by about double. So I formatted 3 of those (#4 was non-branded) and put one in the camera with the SD. I think I'll switch over to CF until I run out of space. I didn't see any at Fry's, otherwise I would go tomorrow and pick up a 32GB one. They have gone all-samsung, all-micro claiming that the micro-SD cards for phones are great for cameras, but they are not. Nothing which needs an adapter is as reliable as a direct fit. Hmmm. Best Buy has them.

Put the suitcase on the bed and added the socks & hat & other stuff. Spook helped. She tried to eat a handkerchief.

Took out the dino pack, but it is too limited to be the carry-on this time. Pulled out the Interop one, which I'd been using at work. It has a handy slot in the front for headphones & tablet. And a zipped pouch for meds & meters. & inside there's a padded laptop & paperwork section. All my camera gear is in there now, camera body lying flat with its lens cover. Lenses in their pouches.

Printed another set of bizcards, and made three into bag tags (3M makes a kit). Put a week's worth of meds into their usual pill boxes, into a big ziplock bag for carry-on and two bags to go into checked baggage, the whole bottle, one for prescriptions one for OTC. Insulin, a day's worth of pen tips and a bag of syringes will go in at the last minute.

Set up the second water fountain, unplugged it after it got primed because it would run out of water before I get back if the pump is running. The newer one lasts longer. Filled the food tower last night.

Dinner was Boston Market beef & noodles. I added some sliced string cheese, which I will not be buying anymore. They changed the formula, it no longer melts. Apparently they are now making it out of plastic.

Got my passport and Euros out of the lock box. Forgot the coins - they are in a different box. I was distracted by accidentally pulling the sliding closet door off its track.

Plans for tonight:
Finish packing the checked bag
Get the Euro coins out and into carry-on

Plans for tomorrow:
Best Buy for CF cards
REI for a foldable hat(?)
Final carry-on packing
water the gardens
Maybe flip the flagstones to keep the birds from messing up the garden (Lee's suggestion)
Put a new cartridge in the litterbox
Top up the new water tower
4 pm Janice will come pick me up and haul me to SFO
7 pm flight
We'll see if my TSA clearance works on Finnair.

It's almost Saturday.

There were no bananas or snack bars when I got to the break room at 9. I went back at 10:30 to claim a banana and some French cow cheeses.

Today was marginally better than yesterday. I brought wi-fi and Bluetooth USB adapters from home to try to rise a signal on the prototype board, but those didn't work - they need drivers. They worked fine when I plugged them into my linux machine. It took a lot of 'splainin' to get Tall Engineer to understand this. And also to understand why changing one setting on the board magically made the phone remote control app work with it.

After much procrastinating, I finally buckled down to building that spreadsheet for boss' boss. The routine he suggested almost worked. Close enough. It works best if there's a separate sheet for each model of device. I should have it done Monday.

Lunch was invaded by a screaming kindergarten class disguised as full time employees. WTF is the attraction/excitement over access to a professional espresso machine? I guess most programmers had summer jobs as baristas. I had to use my THEATER VOICE to get the crowd to move away from the microwave when my lunch was ready.

And in 10 minutes they were gone, dead silence as they returned to their classroom down the hall.

There was some eye candy, but the shoe size IQs negated any attraction.

Break was late, the place was empty. Hot chocolate machine is back to 100%. I have two bags of marshmallows at home, I should bring some next week. I remember buying a bag of large and a bag of mini, but not why. Probably on sale at Grocery Outlet.

After work was an OSH run. While I was wandering around not finding plants to buy, a very helpful man named Justin not only made some good suggestions,he knew both the common and Latin names for the ones he suggested. And he found a couple out front after the gate had closed.

Bought 6 plants, which is 2 more than I planned on, but the big ticket items were the bucket of earthworms and a ceramic miniature Indian style elephant. The tag says "BOHEMIAN ELEPHANT BLACK NURSERY" and it's made in Vietnam. I will place it at the foot of the spirit house.

After OSH, across the street to BestBuy. Out of the 237 different wireless speakers on display, only four did wi-fi, and they were all > $150 each. The others were bluetooth, which is nice for a pool party, but turn on the microwave and the signal goes bye-bye.

Home, took surface streets till Ellis, 101 traffic from there was very light and almost at the speed limit.

Pulled out the two Paw Paw saplings. One had white root and both were dead. Replaced them with plants from OSH. Pulled out a dying aloe, and put in one of the OSH plants. The other three went into the front garden. It totally wore me out, I should have taken a break after #4.

Dinner was beef pot pie & ice cream with ground pistachios. Watched another episode of Dark Matter in which several sharks were jumped.

Outside, watered the plants.

Was planning on attending the morning coffee klatch with my state assemblyman, but then I looked up the location, and it's in deepest darkest Woodside. Half an hour drive at best, way out of the way for me. Instead I may go to the monthly new resident "tea".

Plans for tomorrow:
10 am tea
place the elephant
Take the spirit house inside, clean it and apply another coat of lacquer. Plant it back in the garden after making a deeper pilot hole.
5 pm coffee with Janice. Location TBA because there's a huge rock-n-metal festival at the amphitheater. 30 bands, 11 am doors open.
Maybe call the nail place for an appointment for Sunday?