howeird: (Don't Vote)
Or not.
My whole day was all about seeing an all-female production of 1776, which was originally written for all men except for two women (Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson). Took light rail, met Janice at the theater, The Theatre on San Pedro Square is cleverly hidden behind Peggy Sue's, it's a very comfortable 300-seat venue with great sight lines.

I got what I expected - a very talented group of women acting and singing their hearts out but utterly failing to convince me that they were the Founding Fathers. A large part of it was they were not in costume. Another chunk was there was no set. The furniture was decidedly not period.  

The cast was miked, but the sound system was not surround or even true stereo so there was no audio clue where the person was on stage. Music was electronic, and the sound booth did a horrible job of balancing it, so I often couldn't hear the words. They had this obnoxious church bell effect which was rung at what appeared to be random times, and also tolled as each delegate came up to sign the Declaration. It drowned out the roll call.

Well worth going to for the level of talent and the novelty.
Janice gave me a ride home. It's been raining and blustery on and off all weekend.

I took down the flag pole with the US and Thai flags, because it is rude to fly national flags in this weather. Makes it harder to find my house, though. Maybe I'll get another pole and put up my old obsolete Coast and Geodetic Survey flag. That was designed to fly on ships in all weather. CG&S was absorbed by NOAA in the late 60s. I got the flag because I worked in a NOAA warehouse as a summer job when they decided to toss the old flags. I can't find an image of this one online, it has a yellow sinusoidal projection of the globe in the center, the ones I'm seeing online have simply a triangle, or the NOAA bird inside a blue circle inside the triangle.

But imagine this, in yellow in the center:



Domino has been a nudge all evening. Well, during dinner, which was two courses. Corn chowder then I finally dug the last two sourdough English muffins out of the freezer and nuked them with margarine and swiss cheese. Dessert was sliced banana under chocolate ice cream with sprinkles. And a heart-shaped shortbread cookie half dipped in chocolate.

Tivo supplied the entertainment, I watched two episodes of TMZ and the latest Shark Tank. The latter lived up to its name, the final presenter had The Next Great Smartphone Thing™, and all the sharks were jumping each other to make a better offer. Better for them, not for the presenter. He finally took the highest $$ bid which also meant giving up the most equity.

Also spent some Quality Time programming the Tivo to record the gold medal rounds of the sports I really want to watch. Luge, skeleton, speed skating short distances. Unfortunately that will mean a lot of FF-ing through biathlon (yawn) and figure skating (WTF, judges?).

Put out the garbage/recycling. One of the many things one gives up owning a home is the luxury of taking stuff out to the dumpster whenever one wishes, and not paying attention to what day it is. Except now that I think about it, the dumpsters were full most of the time.

Did look at prices for Nissan Leaf. $30k. I probably can't afford that, unless I can get $15k for the Corolla.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe BASFA
howeird: (localhost)
Woke up before 7, was in the bathroom when the two alarms went off, which is one perk of living in a house, no wall-share neighbors to hear your alarm going off. Got to the DMV at 8:30, found parking and made my way past the long line of people without appointments to the line for people with. 3 people ahead of me. 8:45 had the form filled out and was assigned a number, and told that contrary to what the web site says, yes, I can get a new license with my current address for a mere $26, and yes, I can also get a free senior citizen ID card. 5 minutes later I was being helped by a trainee and two veterans on either side of her. She was way too bright to be working at the DMV - she understood stuff the first time, is a native speaker of American English, and did not blame the slow computer for anything. After collecting my $26 she gave me a receipt, a temporary license and another receipt for the ID card and sent me to the line behind me. This was apparently the line for people with appointments because after the three people ahead of me were shot, they pulled me in ahead of abut a dozen others for my photo & signature. So not only do I get a new license with the right address, I get a photo which was not taken in 2000.

I was out of there by 9:10. Meanwhile the no-appointment line had reached around the building, in the 45° chill.

Which meant I was at work on time, because the DMV is only 1.5 miles away.

Not much to do at work, so I socialized. It was a good chance to chat with team mates who also had little actual work to do.

One cute thing, the media program we use for playing video over the lab network, VLC (videolan - it's free and you should get it) has a taskbar logo which is now sporting a Santa hat. My back wall neighbor has been receiving tons of toys from amazon, I figured she would get a kick out of it - she did.

My weakly report was pretty sparse this week.

Home, gave Domino her chew treats, relaxed until it was time to go to uke class. I'd put a load of bedding in the dryer this morning, took that out and started the load of shirts.

Uke class was not very productive, even though only 2 of us showed up and he gave us each a lot of personal attention. Problem is he goes at his pace, not ours, so while he's playing the entire song in the book, I'm still trying to figure out how to play a G. He showed a finger pick routine which could work, with practice, but he didn't allow time to practice. One thing I did learn is my fingers are too wide for many chords. Or rather, to play them the way they are shown in the book. With practice I think I can play tunes which have C, A, A minor and F. Are there any?

Stopped off at Safeway on the way home, mostly for TV dinners and ice cream. Also got a long thing sourdough baguette which I'll slice up to eat with the goat brie I bought the other day.

Dinner was a Healthy Choice Asian steam bowl. Not going to stay on my list, that series.

Spent some time on Amtrak.com looking for a trip to take during NY's holiday. We get eve & 1st off, and I'll take Monday too for a 5-day weekend. Denver looked do-able. Grand Canyon did not - fares are sky-high on the Texas Eagle. And there's a bus bridge, which defeats the purpose of taking the train. Santa Barbara and even San Diego are possibles, if I don't mind arriving at SAN at 1 am. Also looked at Reno, but it is too !@#$%^&* cold. Did not look north, been there, done that too many times. Vancouver BC might be nice but that's a 2-day ride.

Got email from PG&E that they were billing me twice, once for December and once through January 8. I emailed the old apartment asking if this meant my apartment had been rented. They took their time replying, but said yes, I don't owe any more rent. So I went online with PG&E and had the gas & electric shut off, and updated my address. And emailed Allstate to cancel the insurance. Got an out of office reply, will shoot some email to the assistant.

Anyhow, typical that the apartment people didn't tell me on their own.

And it saves me about $3k. Which was part of the point of this whole exercise. So now I have officially lowered my rent by $1k/mo. Yay!

Plans for tomorrow:
Visit the mobile home park office, say hi,  and request a larger garbage bin
Unpack the 3rd BR.
Fill the car with cardboard and take it to the recycle center
Replace the kitchen light fixture
Call Fuzzy about fixing the second set of lights in the bathroom and the nearby dead outlet in the bedroom. They may be related. And ask about replacing the sink. And whether it is feasible to remove the second sink and install a walk-in shower. It may not be possible structurally. And a ramp to the side door.
Watch a bowl game, if there is one.
howeird: (Default)
Morning, threw all the crap off of the left-hand bathroom sink counter into one of the cabinets. Transferred all my morning routine stuff from the right sink to the left sink. Backstory - the lights above the right sink don't work. Shifted the space heater to the right side, nearer the shower.

Took down the unsprung livingroom shades and replaced them with new ones. Now I have shades which can be pulled all the way down or all the way up. 

Printed out the RMA labels for the defective webcam and put those and the cam into the trunk of the car. Moved the car way up so the rear door was easily accessed.

Bullet biting time: Sorted all the boxes into piles on the kitchen floor (they had been against the wall, across the floor, etc.). One wardrobe, piles of dishpack, medium, glasspack, small. Carried the file boxes from the floor in the office to the laundry room.

Took about an hour and part of my left knee to load all the kitchen boxes largest-first onto the rear seat. Tossed the file boxes into the trunk. All of this closing the house door behind me with each armload, because Domino wanted out.

Took a short break to watch a wee bit of the Army-Navy game.

Drove to the recycle center, spent 20 minutes unloading the boxes into a couple of big recycle dumpsters.

Next stop, Petco, got a case of Fancy Feast. Took a peek into the (closed) Humane Society branch, no sign of Kaan, I'm sure he was adopted quickly. In the same center is my CU, deposited a refund check from the movers. Stopped in at Great Clips, then Safeway for a can of Rot Guard.

Looked for drawers at Pep Boys, but they didn't have what I was looking for.

Off to Target, found the drawers I was looking for, and changed check-out lines 4 times before finding one with only 2 people ahead of me with only moderate amounts of purchases. Still took 15 minutes. I messaged Janice I would be late for our 3:30.

I was about 7 minutes late, thanks to Target being on a 45mph road a straight shot to the freeway. We caught up as usual, the last time this year because she has Commitments™. Her alarm clock was an Asian woman who joined us for just enough time to say hi, as they went off to a party. Very special, because Janice makes it a point to not introduce me to her single female friends if she can help it.

Home, noticed the white board was crooked, fixed that. Moved my calendar to the kitchen. Took down the ugly brown kitchen curtains and replaced them with white ones with blue trim. Much nicer.

Watched some high school championship football while having calamari rings, fish sticks and mixed veggies for dinner.

Repositioned the lime tree so it didn't block the webcam.

Spent way too much time troubleshooting the 4 internet radios. I think Logitech's server was down this morning, but I also wasn't seeing local wi-fi connections. Things came up when I rebooted the router.

Popped about 200 air-filled shipping filler cells from both my sister and Amazon, and flattened those boxes.

Installed a curtain rod and hung a curtain in the guest bedroom, also moved the toilet maintenance gear from the livingroom there. Master bedroom already has its set.

Domino still yowls if she loses track of where I am. Very annoying.

On the bright side, she has found several places to curl up.

 And she sits on my lap, the arm of the recliner, the top of the recliner more than ever.

My final project for the day was hanging the Star Trek transporter. Found a good place for it by the front door.


Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep in (again)
Fold and put away T-shirts
Set up the electronic keyboard on its stand in the office
Play it by ear. Maybe see a movie. Maybe watch football

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howard stateman

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