Writing Wrongs

The piano tech arrived a couple of minutes early, I was on the PC, VPNed into work and actually working.

Tall Hungarian fellow, the first thing he did was claim that tuning it the right way would cost more than buying a new piano. He makes the mistake that I actually play the piano, though he does understand the concept of emotional attachment. No, that's not the phrase. I'll think of the right one and poke it in later. Sentimental value. That's the phrase.

He had sent me his prices, and I knew we were looking at about $300. He way underestimated how well built this relic is, and was sure we would be busting strings right and left at $80 a string. The piano was flat by about 2%. He was afraid that tightening the strings, which are almost all the originals, would break them if he did it all in one fell swoop like all the other piano techs have done for the past 46 years. So I let him do two passes at $45 and an hour each. He also wanted to adjust the action, which is something it needed, but he gave up before he had finished the 5 & 6 octaves. I use 5 a lot, 6 not so much.

I've probably told the sentimental value story before, ( here it is again )

So that was my day, plinking sounds in the background as I read documents & email for work.

During a break I updated my theater resume, it needed the new address, and was set to print it, but could not find any card stock. Tried photo paper, but it's a 2-sided resume, and the back of Kodak paper doesn't take ink.

I quit working at 5, and headed for Fry's to get some card stock. But they have castrated their stationary department, and had none. So I slogged in rush hour traffic up to Office Depot, and paid way too much for a ream. Used to be able to buy card stock in smaller doses.

Since I was now right across the street from Safeway I went there to stock up on produce and frozen food. Oh my, the eye candy was out in force. The woman in charge of the self check-out is DDG, looked like she ought to be on a ski slope posing for a breath mint commercial. Or chapstick. So beautiful! And many customers were in the "mommy, I want one!" category. Enjoyable trip.

Home, big envelope in the mailbox, turned out to be the docs for the replacement insurance. Fully approved, they included flood insurance for no extra $$, and it's for full replacement cost of the home, not the cheap-o $150k which Allstate had lined up. I dashed off email to Escrow Lady with the details, because insurance for the first 2 years is suppose to be paid out of escrow, and asked who else I need to contact. In theory the old insurance gets canceled as of today because I didn;t fork over the bogus $200 they claimed I owed because the community doesn't have a staff member living here full time.

Printed the theater resume on card stock, printed the audition forms and filled them out.

Dinner was the rest of the Marie C lasagna and some garlic sourdough bread.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
1-on-1 with the boss, maybe. He moved it to Thursday the last 2 times.
I expect to hear from the director about coming in to audition.  
Maybe set up the telescope on the tripod. It's a VERY solid tripod. Too bad it's a new moon. I should check to see in SJ Astronomy club is getting together for a dark sky night.

No humping was observed today. Pity.

Took out garbage to start my day. Work was slow, came to a total halt when two people whose accents were difficult to understand and who spoke way too quickly have us a 90-minute unstructured demo of an extremely complicated product which we have a piece of in our lab. As usual, someone turned off the lights and th glare from the projection blinded me. That combination puts me to sleep. My folks insisted on always having the lights on when we watched TV, and I still can't stand looking at a monitor or screen in the dark, except for movies. Go figure.

Lunchtime was taken up with a trip to U-Haul to get some dish and glass pack kits, and a couple of picture boxes. My only packing today was assembling a picture box and loading all my framed temple runnings, two lazy susans and a couple of framed posters. It still needs a lot of filler, probably will raid the t-shirt or cutoffs rack in the bedroom. I had bought 3 sets of picture corners, but they don't work for multiple pictures.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Automation guy is going to drive us to Redwood City so we can have lunch with his wife and she can do my nails. We have met a few times before.
Football
Packing

And when I do need to, I'm usually not?

Woke up at 6:55, waited for the alarm at 7. First thing on the agenda was not till 10, interview at the mobile home park which is about 5 minutes from the apartment. Maybe less.

Showered, medicated & ready to go at 8. Was so bored I made a PNB&J sandwich & ate it all. Even warmed it in the microwave first. Watched just enough of the news on TV to know BART's greedy union bosses called a strike. Channel surfed and hit Comedy Central just in time to see the Malala interview. Her English is astoundingly good. They only showed the first part, 9 am it went that Colbert dumbness. Many people say he's a wit, I say they are half right.

Finally willed the clock to swing around to 9:30, found something to do for another 10 minutes and finally went to the mobile home park. I was 15 minutes early, waited in the parking lot for 5 minutes, found the office manager and she brought me to the crafts room, which has very comfortable upholstered semi-circular chairs. The park manager came in soon, with his folder of paper stuff, about as thick as mine.

Very nice man, great sense of humor, somewhere around my age, knew the process quite well. He read me the parts of the agreements which needed to be read, skipped over the stuff which didn't apply (like the 10 pages about homes which were being moved into or out of the park), emphasized the more important things, and after all of the lease-related stuff was done he went down the list I'd been given of what I needed to give him. The list turned out to be more things than he actually wanted. For instance, he did not want my Social Security card, just seeing the copy I'd made was enough, and he didn't need as many months' of bank or pay statements as the list called for. One thing the mfg rep was supposed to have gotten him she hadn't - my credit report, but I had one at home, and he was okay with me emailing it to him.

As a special added bonus he gave me a copy of this month's residents' club magazine. They do have bingo - once a month.

When he read through the tenant rules, he said Comcast was their cable provider, so the dish that the current owner has can be removed either by her or by my calling the dish company.

I asked about solar, he said the roofs could not structurally support the panels, and also the park owns all the electric, gas and water meters, so it would be a royal PITA to separate individual feeds. He added that some people have installed electric car charging units, and he is looking into a long term plan to build those in.

Wrapping things up (it took 90 minutes to get to that point) he said the decision is made by Corporate, they have 15 days to decide, but if they need some more information from me, the clock resets to when I get that to them. I get the impression it usually takes a lot less than 15 days. He said he didn't see any reason they would turn me down.

Home, fired up the PC and sent the credit report. While I was doing that bot cats were on the window ledge being bookends, only a few inches apart. That's a first.

packed my cooler with diet Cokes and snacks, went to Togos for lunch and eye candy, and was at work by 1 pm. Not much to do, just some follow-up stuff and writing my weekly report.

Home again, decided there was no place I needed to go tonight, I'll do the little shopping & package pickup things tomorrow. Called Petco to find out what time they did pet vaccinations, Kaan needs a rabies shot. But they only do them Sunday afternoons, which will also work. Janice sent email, we'll do coffee early Sunday afternoon. She is on vacation to India next week. I don't envy her the long, multiple plane rides.

Caught up a little on Tivo, two episodes of South Park and one of The Mentalist. The latter ended in a way which is going to make me delete the two remaining recordings and take it off my list. They have sunk to the depths of your standard teen horror flick, plus soap opera.

Oddly enough, Elementary, which is basically a Mentalist rip-off with a side of Lie To Me, has elevated itself out of the impending soap opera, and is letting Lucy Liu show off some of her well-honed martial arts choreography skills.

Kaan kept head-butting me while I was watching, finally curled up in the crook of my arm. I had to get up a couple of times, once to do something in the kitchen and once to go outside and see the full moon. I missed the harvest moon part, though. He was insulted by that last move and jumped off the recliner and onto the far end of the back of the sofa, and just stared at me.

Meanwhile, Domino let me pet her a bit more than usual, and I am very pleased that the bathing/grooming has given her back the extremely soft fur she had always had. After Pumpkin died, she stopped doing her usual meticulous grooming. That was about a year ago. While I was petting her, I noticed that what I thought was a scab on the back of her neck was gone. Must have just been a knot of fur.

On FB one of my BASFA friends posted about a con in Burlingame I had been planning to attend, it's the first weekend in November. Went to the web site, and pre-reg is already closed. WTF? With 3 weekends to go? And there is not a word on the site about programming. Nothing. Not even a tab saying TBA. The only thing close is two events which cost extra to attend. The whole point of this con was to provide a more together con than Baycon, which has been plagued with communication gaps and lack of staff. Looks to me like Convolution is not fulfilling that promise, so I probably won't go. If they post a program by next weekend and it has enough things I'm interested in, I'll go.
 

Plans for tomorrow:
Sporting goods place, buy a 1# and 2# weight
Petco, confirm the hours on Sunday for vaccinations
OSH, buy a rubber mat to help dampen the hum of the cats' water fountain in the kitchen

At about 10:30 I was sitting in the recliner, very comfortable, almost dozing off, having silly half-dreams which were absurd but I can't remember them. And debating in my mind whether to go down the block to the strip joint, or to Denny's for bacon.

Decided on Denny's. Walked outside, it was a mild warm night, so I walked the two blocks to the other side of the complex to get the mail. Usually I only check on Tues-Thurs-Sat, but there were things I was expecting. In the mailbox was a cardboard box exactly as wide as the mailbox, marked fragile, but the USPS had crunched it significantly. Since they have the bank of doors open when they put the mail inside, the geniuses who deliver the mail never consider whether the customer can remove it with the door frame in the way. I had to damage the box a little to get it out.

Under the box was a thick envelope from the DMV, which I have been waiting for since July 8. Actually, I was waiting for a phone call to pick up my replacement plates, but at this point anything from the DMV was good.

It was my form and my check returned to me because I had forgotten to sign the form. And a note that if I signed and returned the form, I would be issued mundane plates. They won't issue the same plate if both your plates go missing. Also attached was a different form, the one which is for ordering personalized plates, with the bits highlighted which I needed to fill out. This form is the one for ordering personalized plates, with spaces for your first 3 choices of a different set of characters. I punted and asked for HOW3IRD. I hope I get that because the next two replace the O with a Q and I think I read somewhere they won't do that, or replace a letter "eye" with a number one. I would have to get a kids' plate to replace the O with a heart, but I'm not really a fan of the recipients of those dollars. And I want the whale fluke design, which goes towards coastal cleanup.

The inspiration for the 3 predates texting, it is from a Tom Lehrer bit - the introduction to We Will All Go Together When We Go:
I am reminded at this point of a fellow I used to know who's name was Henry, only to give you an idea of what an individualist he was he spelled it Hen3ry. The 3 was silent, you see. Hen3ry was financially independent, having inherited his father's tar-and-feather business and was therefore able to devote his full time to such intellectual pursuits as writing. I particularly remember a heart-warming novel of his about a young necrophiliac who finally achieved his boyhood ambition by becoming coroner.

It is also my Flickr and Yahoo handle. And maybe Skype too. Which reminds me I need to get a camera for this PC and install Skype again. I had a lovely Logitech Orbitz but it was obsoleted before Windows 7.

Inside the FRAGILE box was something not at all fragile, a holder for my Kindle Paperwhite which does not have magnets, so the reader will stay off after it is turned off. The idjits at Amazon Labs somehow thought it was a good idea to build a magnetic sensor into the Paperwhite which put the unit in standby mode forever when the magnet was near, and fired up the unit when the magnet was removed. This meant that a unit which was somewhere vibratory, like a moving car, would switch on to standby if the cover was closed, thus eating battery needlessly. Battery life went from weeks down to hours after I installed a cover with this feature.

Those two mysteries solved, I went to Denny's and fed my bacon craving, along with my sausage link, over-easy eggs and buttermilk pancake craving. There was some eye candy there, but only visible when they got up to pay their bills.

Home, logged onto the DMV site, filled out the form, printed it out, signed it, cut a check for $98, printed an envelope. Then printed an envelope to the printer which had the envelope loaded, then printed an envelope with the flap in the right direction and a lot less ink streaking. Put the check and the form and a copy of the police report number into the envelope, sealed it and stamped it with a Disney The Cars stamp

and put it on the table next to my sister's August birthday card (third one in the series until she turns 60).

It is now 2:25 am, which totally messes up my insulin schedule. And any plans to drive to Gilroy in the morning. Turns out there are no trains, and the bus will get stuck in the same traffic as the car would.

I will sleep in, read, maybe see a movie or two. Hope to catch dprisoner's birthday wind-up at Denny's. Just need to monitor FB to find out which one.