Writing Wrongs

In more ways than one.

Slept till 10, Domino kept trying to wake me up by yelling at me. She doesn't meow, she wails in a scratchy voice. Highly annoying. She knows how to meow, but rarely does it.

Wasted time till 12:30, drove to the theater - it only took 10 minutes with Sunday traffic. At 1:00 cast call time the place was still locked up. It was a bright sunny day and this happened:


I walked around to the front of the theater and saw this:

I think the church group which had something going on in the Senior Center (they had blue flags and signs all over the place) is responsible. I had gone to the Sr. Ctr to join up, but they are closed on weekends. WTF? That means there probably is no reason to join, except maybe to get in on their weekend trips. If there are any.

Stage manager finally showed up 10 minutes late. He's supposed to be half an hour early to let in the crew. Not that it matters, the cast call is insanely early anyway.

It was our largest audience, by a lot. 2/3 full. And they LOVED it. Huge laughs, major applause. The show is where it should have been opening night. Janice was there with a date. Also there was a fellow I was in Pirates of Penzance with 10 years ago. The director also showed up, but thank goodness he will be in Tahoe next weekend. I like it better when directors show up for opening and closing and leave us be the rest of the run.

Home by way of Lowe's. My older sister in Israel responded to my posts on FB about planting roses asking me to plant a yellow rose. I'm pretty sure she meant in memory of her recently departed husband. So I bought a yellow rose bush, and also a small hedge trimmer, but I need to call the manager of the park to find out if I am supposed to be taking care of the overgrown bushes which line the street.

Planted the rose bush, watered all of them and the blue flowers on the other side of the front walkway. Finally went to the carport strip and planted the mint.

Roses


Strawberries & mint

Took a shower, got dressed again in fresh things, played online, microwaved some Safeway lasagna for dinner. Ran Windows update on the Windows 8 laptop - 83 updates, it took hours. Windows 8.1 update is finally running, it took 4 tries. The Windows 8 version of Microsoft Update sucks lemons through a garden hose. The progress bar is unreadable, and it takes two or three rounds of "configuring" after the reboot, with wildly inaccurate % estimates. "100% complete" can stay on the screen for 15 minutes. 16% can jump to 96% in a minutes.

This 8.1 experiment is the main reason I got the machine. Someone in Thailand asked an old friend in Spokane who has a computer troubleshooting service why the 8.1 upgrade wiped out Microsoft Office. It shouldn't have, unless she had a preview version. I bought the same make, almost the same model as her, and will see in the morning.

Garbage & recycle is at the curb, along with most of the cardboard boxes, flattened and bundled, from the last 2 weeks. Saving two. One for the WD external drive and one for the Kenwood in-dash unit, both eBay bound.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
(demo for automation at the weekly meeting)
Maybe BASFA
Take the telescope out at about 11:30 pm and see if I can photograph the eclipse, which should be total about midnight.

Fitful night, Kaan was hogging the bed a bit - when I was on my left side he was curled up against my back right about the middle of the bed, and on my right side or back he fit into the curve of my arm. Had to push him farther to the other side a few times so there was room for me. Domino gave up on the bed early, and curled up in the tiny space in the corner of the bedroom between two legs of the standing fan. I don't understand her choice of parking spots at all.

Woke up for real at 6:25, early enough to hear the PC auto-start, which reminded me to disable that feature for my trip. Did my morning stuff, finished packing, thought at least 3 times I needed to grab some biz cards and my Orca card, and forgot those. It's always something.

Out before 8, there was no traffic at all on 101 to the Doubletree, and the valet thing only took a minute. I was the only one on the airport shuttle. Got my boarding pass at the kiosk, then upstairs to the very long TSA line. SJC's Security Theater is horribly designed - not nearly enough table before the scanner, and not enough runway after the scanner. They sent me through the old school archway, not the body scanner, so taking off my belt was wasted effort.

I was way early, and of course my flight was delayed.

All through the airport stuff i am sweating because I'm wearing a Seattle-weight jacket (no room for it in my carry-on). My gate is at the far left end of the terminal and all the food places are half a mile the other way. I buy water and a muffin for breakfast and cool off. There is a steady flow of eye candy.

Made the obligatory restroom visit, and in this brand new terminal it looks like they transferred the restroom from the old terminal. Disgustifying. :-(

Back to my gate, we are told it is a full flight, and late, and to speed things up those of us in the back of the plane who want to can take 2 flights of stairs to the ground, walk the length of the plane and up the ramp to the back door. This makes me angry because I stopped flying Alaska out of Seattle because they were in the old terminal, and you had to walk (usually in the rain) on the runway to the plane and climb the stairs to board. Now that they are in the new terminal they ought to drop that crap. I took the skyway, and was there ahead of most of my row.

Another WTF is after interminable calls for pre-boarding, people with small children, first class, million milers, gold members, passengers with pet iguanas and iguanas with pet fruit flies, they did not call us up by row, but all at once, and this is when I discovered that, contrary to instructions to "please to stay seated until your row is called" , everyone else was already in line. I was lucky, though, there was room to fit my day pack and my laptop (one atop the other) in the overhead bin. And the two others in the row were skinny. 6 people across in a space designed for 5. Or 4.

By now the Dramamine is kicking in, and I slept past the alleged snack packet, but was awake in time to just miss getting a good picture as we flew directly over Mt. Shasta, which has lost way too much of its snow pack.

I nodded off a couple of times, but mostly was just too sleepy to read, and stayed in my head. It was cloudy all across Oregon, just a glimpse of Crater Lake, Mt. Hood was poking up over the clouds, and so was the St. Helens crater, but Rainier was hiding.

And that's when the WTF began. I forgot that Alaska's usual approach to SeaTac is to go way north along Puget Sound and then do a U-turn just past  Scenic Harbor Island, and fly over downtown Seattle, landing to the south. This adds a good 15 minutes to the flight and maybe 100 miles. This time I was scared during that bit, we were way lower over downtown than usual, I could see people on the rooftop restaurants, and probably could have seen susandennis on her balcony. And we got lower as we went south, I was afraid we were going to land at Boeing Field. It was scary. We landed at the far north end of a runway and I didn't recognize anything SeaTac-ish for about 5 minutes of taxi time.

Deplaning was a little slow at first, but picked up as it got closer to the back of the plane.

Next WTF was the rental car. Used to be the rental cars were in the garage a skybridge away, except for some which were a short shuttle across the street off-campus. Now they are all in this massive complex a mile away and one series of buses serves all of them. I was using Thrifty this time, and while the line was short the wait was long. Way too many things to initial. And then down to the 1st floor to get the car. I paid for a compact, they gave me a Kia Rio, which I'd call a subcompact. Not a problem until later.

Very hungry, I drove a couple of blocks to Dave's diner, had a good (but small) chicken fried steak. Then to I-5 to "drive around" the bottom of Puget Sound, across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, past Bremerton to Poulsbo. At Dave's I had programmed the Poulsbo Inn into the GPS, but it wanted me to take the ferry, so I shut it off until I was approaching Tacoma. It behaved itself from then on. This time of year it takes longer to wait for the ferry than to drive the "long" way.

Soon after getting on I-5 is when I realized there was no cruise control. The control I thought was cruise control was to change the trip mileage/odometer display. Very nasty, that. I will complain when I turn in the car.

They must have changed the law (or stopped enforcing it) which required 18-wheelers (and bigger) to stay in the two right lanes. I was in the 3rd lane, doing the speed limit, bigrigs kept tailgating me. I wasn't going fast enough for the 4th lane, and it was solid bigrigs in the two right lanes. Okay, there were some Urban Assault Vehicles too.

That fixed itself as soon as i was on hwy 16 heading for the bridge.

Started getting drowsy about 20 miles from Poulsbo, blame the Dramamine and early wake-up. Pulled over in Silverdale, but just navigating the roundabout there was enough to wake me up, so I got right back on Hwy 3 and then 305 and the GPS took me right to the motel.

Check-in was quick, faux rustic place with keycard entry. Very much a no-tell motel. It was sunny and warm, and they have a pool, but it was filled with a child and a mom, and I had not anticipated swimming here in the frozen North.

Texted my little sister that I was here, and she texted (after Verizon didn't put her phone call through) that she & hubby were heading out for pizza, and offered to pick me up. So that happened. we're having breakfast in the morning, but the more time with them the better.

Good pizza downtown in the scenic Scandinavian Village that is Poulsbo. After, we walked to the other side of the parking lot to the waterfront park and watched for wharf rats and chatted. Then they dropped me off at the motel, to return at 8:30 am.

Plans for tomorrow:
Breakfast with youngest sister & bro-in-law (it's her birthday!)
Visit with them at their new house on the hill with the bear in the forest that is their back yard
Be joined by oldest sister and bro-in-law visiting from Israel (her birthday is this weekend)
Do stuff, take photos
Back to the motel

I slept well last night, I think. But I was up before the alarm, and somewhen before I went to work I was online looking up Corolla inventory at Toyota of Sunnyvale's site. I had decided I did not like/want the Yaris. The ride was like it had no shocks at all, and the reason I didn't notice that on the test drive is I test drove the LE, which has a less "sporty" suspension that the SE I actually bought. And the hatchback space was almost non-existent, way too small for the music stand and the baritone to co-exist. And it almost felt like it would roll over when I came across some speed bumps.

One thing they emphasized when I bought the car is they have a no-questions-asked 3-day return policy, and a 7-day exchange policy. I doubted they get much action on that, but I was ready to test it.

And then when I found the Corolla inventory, there was a pop-up which said there was a $4500 discount on the Corollas. The prices on the web site were now about the same as for the Yaris.

So when I got to work, and it was reasonable to send a text, I sent one to Celine, my sales rep, telling her I wanted to do the swap, and could she please have Lee (her manager) and Ali (Finance Guy) let me know the pricing.

She replied that Lee was not in till noon. Fine.

At 3 she texted that the swap was all ready, and asked if I could come in right away. Yup, I could do that, nothing pressing at work. I had to stop off at home and drop off the music stand and get the second set of keys from the kitchen drawer. Also good I went home because the exercycle was in a box in front of the apartment.

Got there a little after 3:30 on account of long red lights and missing the entrance because people were parked in the red zones either side. It's a long pair of U-turns to recover.

So, Celine asked if I would like to pick one out, I showed her the two VIN numbers on the site which were in the color I wanted. She found the second one, and we drove to the gas station where she filled it up, then to the detailing center, where she dropped it off. Then back to the showroom, where she punched in the new info. Ali came by to tell me it would be a bit of a wait, but then Rebecca found me and went over the prices to get the nav system and backup camera I wanted, and the remote trunk release. Another lovely friendly person. The prices were about the same as doing it elsewhere, but the fact that they had that nav system in stock told me they would probably do a better job.

Finally Celine got the call to take me upstairs to Ali's office. I still had not been told how much I was going to owe on the exchange.

As Ali handed me form after form to sign, it became clear that not only didn't I owe them anything, they owed me. The Corolla comes with ding coverage which is not available on the Yaris, so that's a $500 value right there. All said and done, they will be sending me a check for $100.

Celine got tied up with a customer, so it was a 15-minute wait to get the car to the main parking area, and she needed to get the Yaris' keys because I had left the iPod and my water bottle in there (on purpose - didn't want to carry them around in the office).  And then she needed to get the Corolla book package. That gave me time to plug in the iPod and discover there was a covered slot for it. The stock radio shows the playlists and albums and such, it just doesn't show the album art. Nice unit for a standard feature. Also paired the phone to its bluetooth.

Finally got out of there at about 5:40, and back to work at 6:05. Just as Boss was leaving, so at least he saw I got back.

I don't love the Corolla's ride, but it is far better than the Yaris, and I do love the trunk space and the much more comfortable seats. The Yaris seats are black with navy trim, and it was 93° when I drove there, the aircon was not keeping up. Corolla has a beige interior, much brighter/cooler.  There are a couple of WTFs in the 2013 - they made the storage console between the front seats smaller, and 1-ply instead of 2-, and took away the power outlet which was in there. And the rear passenger head rests are too tall, I will be removing them. I also need to get blind spot mirrors,  but they never had those.

Enough already. Bottom line is Toyota of Sunnyvale not only lived up to their no-questions-asked return/exchange policy, they did it in a friendly, professional way with total "please the customer" attitude. I have scattered glowing reviews across the Interwebs, and will be sending Lee and Celine a Lovely Parting Gift™. 

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Went to BASFA after writing the review, and retold the short version of my story there. I was unaware that johnnyeponymous was unaware I played baritone horn.  mentioned on FB and will repeat here that it was great to see johno and his lovely and talented Chris there - they have had some nasty medical surprises in the last few weeks, which have all apparently been resolved in a good way.

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Boss approved my PTO for June to join up with my oldest and youngest sisters in Poulsbo. Oldest is coming from Israel. Booked flights this morning from work, spent some time after BASFA to book the rental car and lodgings. Younger sister's birthday is the 19th, older's is the 22nd, and I would have stayed for that, but it's Saturday and she's extremely Orthodox, so she'll be spending that at Temple and with people who share her superstitions.

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Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Yesterday's Gone by the Beatles always sounded like "Yesterday's Gun" to me and big sister. We made up lots of alternative lyrics, none of which can I remember mumble mumble years later.

So, work was productive once I finally got there. Next stop: Aaron's art & framing, chatted with the guy who does photo mounting and what I want to have done for Worldcon is amazingly affordable, and can be done in less than a week. The plan is 20 12x18 prints, which ought to fit on two 4'x6' panels in the art show. I have enough prints to do that right now, but really want to wait till I get back from Thailand, since I usually get good fantasy-friendly photos there (temple dragons & demons, etc.).  One less thing to worry about. Now I have to send in my application and $$.

Next door is Trader Joe's, and on the lactose-free shopping list was sardines. The Kaiser hint list said that without dairy products, calcium is an issue, which can be solved with the intelligent application of sardines (or any fish which have edible bones). Makes sense, and I love sardines, and so does Domino. TJ's layout is such that one person with a hand basket can block an aisle, so it took a long time to even find the nook where sardines were hidden. Before I found it I found corn, sourdough whole wheat bread, onion bagels, "this is not a tub of cream cheese" non-dairy spread (which I did not buy but was amused by), frozen ready-to-eat falafel and frozen egg rolls. In he sardine aisle was also canned kippers, so I got some of those too. Then it was my turn to block traffic, looking for milk-free chocolate which is in the kiosks next to the cash registers. It took a lot of reading at four kiosks before I found something which didn't look like it would taste like chalk.

On the way home the clock was seriously ticking because I wanted to get to Santa Clara to see The Nerd but needed to put away the frozen food first. Got to the theater with 15 minutes to spare, and it being Thursday and not a murder mystery, there were plenty of seats. My review is locked, so for the rest of you, it needs a lot of work. And it is not about a nerd, it is about an annoying person. There is nothing nerdy about the show. I'd say wait till closing weekend to see it, and don't be ashamed to go home at intermission. The final 3 minutes wrap things up well, but are also a big WTF. I did not stick around after to thank the cast.

Home, starving. Put on a pot of water, shucked two corn cobs, got out the cleaver and cut them in half, plopped them into the water and set the timer. Did some stuff on the PC, then dinner was the 4 pieces of corn with margarine, a can of sardines, and a huge spoonful of chunky peanut butter for dessert.