My Life in Bags

Lots and lots of bags

I have a lot of bags around my house. All shapes and sizes and materials. A lot of them are filled. Most recently, I emptied out my car and put the stuff in bags. ANd then I sorted those and put some of the stuff in smaller bags. Sigh. Oh, and before you ask, yes, I do have bags filled with bags…I don’t think I have a bag filled with bags that are filled with bags though…

I was lying (not laying) in bed and was thinking, goodness, I don’t have a lot on my plate today, when I recalled that I actually do have a few things that need to be done. I guess I better get motivated. I was planning on just heading to JC and EC’s around 2:15 so that I can help them with a video chat. But, instead, I will be heading out around 1 to do my errands. And then head south.

A new errand that just popped up is buying a new cartridge for my printer. I think that the cartridges that ships with new printers tend to be under filled. Since selling printers is really about selling ink. I’ll check staples’ price and then see what the cost would be online. I don’t think the printer is going to stop printing today.

Taxes must be paid! Death and taxes. Though if we lived in a non-capitalistic world, taxes wouldn’t be a thing.

Being me, I volunteered to bring JC and EC some groceries if they needed anything. They did. Which means the grocery store is now on my list of errands. Yippee!

I called and left a second message for “Kay” at state farm. She didn’t return my message from yesterday. So my hopes aren’t high that she will call me today. I need to start car shopping this afternoon, after I get finished with JC and EC. Maybe tomorrow I will take a trip out to the EV place in Farmington and see what they have on the lot. And I want to ask them if their prices are negotiable.

The Alice movie’s first draft is complete. I just watched it. Overall, I am pleasantly pleased with how it looks. Next time I watch it, I will have a pad or something to write down what I think needs to be done. There is one glaring editing error that I will probably fix. And there are a lot of pops and scary edit frames that I can probably cut out. We shall see about that one. There are also a few places that could use timing editing – speed up the slow bits and slow down some other bits. But it is in pretty good shape, all things considered. Maybe I will do some work on it tonight.

Errands accomlished. I printed out the items that SM wanted printed. And delivered them to her. My first foray into the wilds of Wegmans netted me the groceries that JC and EC wanted. Then two banks to deposit money and pay the first round of taxes. All of that, for once, took less time than I had thought it would. So I got to JC and EC’s house early!

There was a bit of trepidation to tackle East Lake road again, site of the accident. But I made it to their place without incident. While there, I made them sit through a viewing of my film, such as it is. It definitely needs some tweaking, but overall was decently reviewed! The video chat that I was there to help them with went very smoothly. And then I toddled off. To Wegmans again to do my own shopping. Three bags of chips, and a bag of popcorn. Sigh. And a couple of cans of beans. A successful expedition.

Now I am home and getting mentally prepared for dinner and the third section of the day.

Oh, I finished all of Veronica Mars. It is too bad that they didn’t have another season or two. I am now watching through a not so great show called Rizzoli and Isles. It is a crime procedural combined with women being friends. It has its good moments, but overall, not so great. Fodder. Sad about Catherin O’Hara. Honestly, though, I was not enamored.

One more thing. I had a chat with someone at State Farm and they said that the payout might be higher than I was imagining. That would be great! Oh, that was frustrating by the way. For some reason, I couldn’t swipe up from the phone app to get to the sign in screen to get into the phone. The caller wanted my mileage and I couldn’t get to the Tesla app to get it to him. I have it written down now. In case they call back…someday. I guess I need to take another trip to Baldwinsville, too.

Augustus for President: I am not looking at either March 15 or the end of March for leaving for my trip. Or, I could just wait to make the first day of my trip my 65 birthday (In the beginning of April). Thoughts?

Totaled

WordPress confuses me. Then again, I probably confuse it as well. I use both the online version and the app version. And sometimes there is confusion about what is a draft, what is published, and what is trash. I just deleted what looked like an empty post from the app only to discover that I had deleted a fully fledged posted post. Which, luckily, I could easily restore. But despite showing up when clicking on a link from one of my socials, it showed up as a draft on the online version. So I published it again. So weird. Moving on.

I got up this morning and checked my credit cards to see which one was best for rental cars. Turns out it was the business one. Which is ok, since most everything I do right now is related to the campaign in some way shape or form. Next, I called the insurance agent here in Geneva and was told that my insurance didn’t cover anything to do with rental cars – except if the other person in the accident needed one. Sigh. The person I spoke with said to call the claims department and see if there was anything of which he was not aware. They said the same thing. No coverage. So, business card it was.

Enterprise didn’t make it easy to get to the local store. So I set up a rental through the phone. They said that the local location needed two hours in order to be able to do a pick-up. I called at 9:20 and the sales person suggested 11:30 am. I said that was ok. 11:30 rolls around, I put on my boots (and spurs), jacket and scarf and start looking out the front door window at around 11:25. Eventually I look at my phone and see there is a voicemail from Enterprise. I called them back and was told that they just got the information and that they wouldn’t be able to pick me up until 12:30 pm. I will admit to being not my politest self, but I agreed.

At least that gave me time to eat a little lunch. Woo.

At 12:25 the car and driver appeared in the driveway. We drove up to the Enterprise office, I signed a couple of papers and off I went in a Nissan Sentra.

Every car is different. And changing back to a gas car from the Tesla is quite an adjustment. I am sure I will keep adjusting over the next couple of days. The collision place is about an hour from my house. And lucky for motorists, there was intermittent snow along the route. Fun. I got there in a timely fashion, said hello to the worker and dropped off my key. Then I went to get the stuff out of my car. Three bags full. I didn’t take the floor mats and I couldn’t get into the Frunk to get the pucks that car places can use when lifting the car on a rack. Everything else, though, is in my possession.

At some point, State Farm called me and left a message. They said – the car has been totaled but I don’t see a title anywhere. Call me back. So I called back when I got home and left a message. I also called Northside and the estimator said that the damage was probably going to cost upwards of $20k to repair, before he got into the whole thing and made a complete estimate. Well, poo.

Owie

Now I am just waiting to see how much they are going to say the car is worth. I bought it for $22k I think. And owe $12k. I looked recently online and the estimated value of the car was $16k. I hope it is more than that, but that is the number that my little brain is working with. And I will have to subtract $500 for my deductible from whatever the amount is. So, I need to find a car and I might only have about $4k as a down payment and loan reducer. That isn’t optimal. I would, of course, like another Tesla. But if I am going to get another one, I want it to be FSD capable. I saw a great possible car, but it already had a purchase pending. Isn’t this fun? Back to my spreadsheet…

I am home now. And getting ready to do some Duolingo and eat some dinner. Nothing I can do about any of this until I hear back from the insurance company how much they are going to give me for the car. Another less than great night’s sleep to look forward to.

Augustus for President: I didn’t do a lot today. But I did hear from the travel agent who might help me with my hotel and flights for the 50+1 Capitals Tour. Which, since I will be buying a new (to me?) car fairly quickly, can start sooner than I had thought. Definitely not on the February 9th, though. Maybe at the beginning of March. We shall see.

Who Paid His Bills?

That’s right, one of the exciting tasks I accomplished this morning was to pay most of my bills. I like to pay them in as close to one fell swoop so I don’t have to think about them constantly. And I have a decent number of bills. Lots of moving parts. Most of the bills are paid electronically by the bank. A few the bank mails. I don’t understand how that can be the case in 2026, but who am I to say? I almost forgot to pay the water bill. It comes quarterly and is always a bit of a surprise. I hope that it goes down a smidgen when my boarder leaves. Not that it is particularly exorbitant. Still, any lessened bill is better than no lessened bill. I hate having to count shekels.

The morning didn’t start with bill paying, though, it started with car stuff. I called the car place and left a message. No response. I later called and finally spoke with someone who said they couldn’t do anything to the car until they had a car key. Sigh. According to the web, they certainly can access and do things with the car without a key card. I think they are just ill informed. But that is neither here nor there. I will get up there tomorrow and deal with them in person. More on this in a second. And I still don’t understand why I am not in their system. That is so weird.

I also spent a good twenty minutes with Mosi for assistance with a collision report form that I have to file with NY DMV. He was, overall, helpful. And with his aid and with my own self-aid, I think I managed to fill in what I could of the report. It is now in an envelope and ready to mail. It does not go to my local DMV. One unclear thing is that the instructions say that I have to submit the report within 10 days of the accident or maybe my license will be suspended. Grrr. They didn’t say whether that was ten business days (which is the norm in business communications I think) or just ten calendar days. Doesn’t really matter at this point, but it would be good if they fixed that terrible form. I mean, really, it is horrible. And there is no way to submit it electronically, which would make a lot of sense. And save money and time for everyone involved. Whatever.

In there somewhere, I ate some lunch. I am working through the bag of apples. And I had olives and chips as the rest of my lunch.

More Alice captions were made and applied. I don’t see the end, yet, but I also don’t find the work particularly tedious.

Tonight, dinner with SM. She wants to go to Bella’s even though we have found the food there to be underwhelming. But if that’s where she has her mind set, then that is where we will go. While there, I am going to ask her if she can give me a drive to the car place on Thursday. If she can’t, I will rent a car and go up there. If she can drive, and Northside doesn’t give me a loaner vehicle, there is an Enterprise place not very far from the collision repair place that Susanne might be able to drop me at. If I have to get a rental car, I will ask them how much more it would be to drop the car at the Liverpool Enterprise location instead of returning it to Geneva. And what sort of penalty there is for dropping the car off early, if I rent it for a week and only need it for fewer days. See, there’s a plan. A man, a plan, a canal, panama.

Chicken French

Bella’s was closed when we got there. And was for sale! That was a surprise to both of us. We ended up going to the Deluxe Grill instead. SM had fried shrimp, I had chicken french. A lot thicker sauce than I was expecting. And they didn’t offer artichokes french as an appetizer. I think of frenching more like french toast than this saucy thing. It was decent though. I also got a side of angel hair pasta with vodka sauce. No veggies because I got pasta which makes no sense. It used to be if you ordered an entree at most Italian American restaurants, you got salad and veggies and choice of potatoes or pasta. No salad. And I wasn’t given veggies because I didn’t get a potato side. No big deal. We all survived. Well, the chicken and the shrimp didn’t…SM gave me her fries to take home and heat up using my deep fryer. She had asked for them to be double dipped, but they weren’t. Or if they were, they were basically raw after the first fry. Which could well be the case.

Home now. I’m going to do a little Duolingo and then start the third part of the day/evening.

Augustus for President: I paid my first bill on my campaign credit card. How thrilling is that? Now I just need to get some donations so that I can pay more campaign bills as they come in.

Car Progress!!

Car progress! That’s a good thing. The car at least made it to the collision place. Woo hoo! Only 4 days late. Yay for weekends?

Northside collision called me and told me that the car was there and that I needed to sign a few authorizations. And they asked for a key card. Which I ought to have left in the car, but didn’t think of it. Well, I thought about it briefly but didn’t follow through. Nor did I, as they requested just now, remove stuff from the car. I just wasn’t thinking about any of that. I suggested they call Tesla and ask them what to do. Tesla ought to be able to help without a key card. Imho of course. As for the stuff, I can’t think of anything in there that is nor replaceable. Not that I want anything stolen, but they say they leave the cars unlocked when they are not in the shop. Which seems weird to me, but I can’t do anything about that.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of my boarder heading off to her day job. I looked outside to see how she was going to get out of the driveway. Apparently she had called someone to come and snow blow the driveway. There was a huge industrial snow blower idling on the sidewalk. Behind her car, the driveway was cleared to the street. After she left, the snowblower went to work again and cleared out the rest of the driveway and even more besides! Go her and whoever she hired. I hope she isn’t going to ask me to help pay for this – not because I don’t have the money, but because she didn’t ask me first. And because she really owes me another $1200 which I will only ask her for if she asks me for help paying for the driveway. I do wonder how much that cost, though…

Wow!

After I saw the driveway, I did my morning Duolingo and called State Farm. I had a very nice person help me. She seemed to know her stuff as the car was actually moved! Woo hoo!! I did, though, forget to ask her what the other insurance company wanted so I had to call back and spoke with someone a bit less personable. Oh well. Apparently Progressive can’t just take State Farms’ word about who was at fault in the accident. With lots of mitigating circumstances.

Then, I went back to sleep. Sleep is one of the best medicines in my opinion.

I eventually got up, had some lunch and started my afternoon putter.

More Alice captioning got accomplished. I also found a bad edit that I removed. I think I might be about halfway through. It’s a long 9:35 (minutes and seconds) long. It is so much better with music. And with captions that are easier to decipher.

The sink is mostly empty once again. That is always a good thing. I did, of course, wash everything, not just my stuff. Unlike some people…

My next excitement will be written about in the Augustus for President portion of this post.

While I was doing that exciting stuff, I got a call from Northside asking me to sign some authorizations that they needed. They also, as I have mentioned, asked for a key card. I pointed out that I had no car to get them the key card. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Last night I thawed an empanada but didn’t eat it. I will have that, and a salad, for dinner tonight.

Augustus for President: Boy howdy do I need a lot of practice with my gadgets and capital steps speech. If anyone wants a draft of the speech so far please let me know. Shared as long as you guarantee feedback. Positive and Negative feedback both welcome.

I decided that I wanted to set up and try the whole gadget setup for the videos I will be doing on the 50+1 Capitals Trip. I put the tracking device on the tripod. Put the phone in the phone holder after setting it to video. Got out one of the microphones and attached it to my shirt. Turned on the remote clicker and away we went!

Well, not so fast. First it seemed that the phone had gotten switched back to photo. And when I did do the video, the sound was only from the phone, not the microphone. And my speech was not good as it stood. Lastly, I look really bad on camera in my sweatpants and thermal shirt. I mean really bad. No, this test will not be going up on YouTube. Ever.

The second attempt was a bit better. Reading the instructions for the microphone helped. I had forgotten that I needed to put an antenna into the phone. Oops. That helped with the sound. The tracking thing – well, for some reason it freaked out a couple of times and waggled all over the place even though I didn’t move. And I was way too small in the field of view. So, my next test will be different. And much needed. Maybe I will do that tomorrow. I might think about doing landscape even…though that doesn’t playback well on social media…

I have made a few changes to the text of the speech so far. And I will, undoubtedly make more. I think I am improving it. And I am rethinking the need and use of the heads up speech reading gadgets.

Look Mom, I Shoveled!

Well, that’s, er, interesting. I wasn’t able to sleep, despite the late hour and the hard living, so I decided to put on some music. I don’t listen to music nearly as much as I did when I was younger. Back in the day, when I got to a new space, I had to set up my music first. At first, that meant a stereo with records. Then I added cassettes. And even reel-to-reel. Eventually it became CDs. And now, everything seems to be streaming. Anyway, I played one of my go to favorite albums, Wish You Were Here, by Pink Floyd. I have listened to it frequently. And this time, I realized that there were actually two copies of the album in my library somehow. That’s frustrating. There doesn’t seem to be an easy fix for this. Grrr.

One thing keeping me awake is of course the car accident. Reliving the accident of course is never pleasant. And then all the other stuff that is added on top of that this time. Two tickets aren’t making me happy. Not only the cost, but just the whole pain in the butt of either pleading guilty through the mail or going in person to the court house. Neither option seems optimal. And I have to report something to the DMV. And then there is the uncertainty of what I will be doing about a vehicle for the very near future. Yay, lots of thoughts to skitter around in my noggin.

In any case, when I get up tomorrow it will be another day. And it looks like the worst of the big bad winter storm is over for my part of the state. We got what looks like about 6-8 inches. Though my phone seems to think we got 19 inches. I wonder if my boarder will shovel. Hahahahaha. Anyway, since it will be a business day, I can start dealing with the next phase of the whole car accident crap.

And now I am up. I had a long call with the insurance company. We kept talking over each other. Maybe there was some sort of recording delay. I also gave a detailed description of the accident. At least such as I recall. They do not pay for rental cars, as that coverage was not part of my insurance package apparently. The person I spoke with said that he would take care of getting the car to Northside and to sending Northside the “ok to estimate” documentation. We shall see what happens. As I told the guy, I don’t really need to be anywhere until Friday at this point. And it is only Monday. I could use a nap.

I checked the status of the claim and…no new tow order has been put into the system. Grrr.

One of the nice things about the weather being so cold is that the snow has stayed fluffy. We got about 6-8″ from what I can tell. I went out to shovel and the shovel was missing. Could someone have stolen it? I went outside to look to see what I was dealing with in terms of snow, and there was the snow shovel, leaning up against the back of my boarder’s car. She is not so good at putting things away. I wonder why that is. Not that I am the best at it, but I am better than she is. I shoveled a path from the sidewalk to my front door steps. And I broke the ridge that might have stopped her from backing her car out this morning. I shouldn’t be shoveling though at my ripe old age…and my snowblower is broken…

A shovel’s width is all I am willing to do.

In adding legible captions to the Alice film, I have come upon a debatable issue. Do I edit out mistakes and egregious burns? Or do I leave it as is as a historical document as to what I actually turned in to my senior study advisor? I am leaning towards the former. The latter exists on numerous DVDs around the country as I gave them out as Christmas presents years ago.

And I did it. I edited out a few frames. So far…

More on the accident. Isn’t this exciting? So, the Tesla app tells me where my car is. And it is still in Seneca Falls. I downloaded the State Farm app and checked the status and I didn’t see a new tow request on there. I called Caleb and didn’t get him. I got someone else. She discovered that a tow had been dispatched at 12:13 and was supposed to get to the car place in Seneca Falls at 2:13. I called at 3:45 and the tow truck had still not picked up the car. This is frustrating. Life is that way sometimes. Gives me time to work on other stuff. I will check the apps (State Farm and Tesla) in the morning and see what is what. Oh, and the reason that the app didn’t show an update is because some system is down at State Farm so they requested the tow in some other way. Sigh. Yay technology?

Ok, time to dine. I am having one of my homemade frozen empanada like things. I’m debating whether or not I am going to make rice to go with it. Probably won’t…

Augustus for President: I am putting myself out there again by telling my high school class notes author that I am running for President. And I gave him my website. I wonder if that is going to make the notes page. Doubtful. But that’s ok. If you couldn’t tell, my political work is basically on hold until I figure out what is happening with the car. Sigh.

Snowy Sunday

It is a lovely snowy Sunday here in Geneva NY. I had another slow start to the day. Yippee?

I did not get to sleep in a timely fashion last night. Lots of thoughts about the accident. I figure it will take me at least a week to stop having these accident flashbacks.

For some reason, my cell phone being in the house isn’t enough to make my Nest thermostat know that I am here. So it keeps on putting the house in “Eco” mode – which means letting the temp inside fall to 60. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Except I want to be up and about and downstairs. At least briefly. And I would like to do some yoga – and it just feels better doing that when it is warm.

No exciting plans for the day. More work on the Alice movie captions. Maybe I will try and test out the gadgets I have for recording video for when I am on my 50+1 Capitals Tour. Which, as I have mentioned, is going to be postponed. How long is still unclear and probably won’t be clear until the end of this month (which is only 6 days away) or early February. When I have more information on my car.

Somehow I didn’t post last night’s blog post to Threads! How will my followers read it if I didn’t post it there. Hahahaha. No one from there reads this blog. But, hope springs eternal.

Still foot, er, life

I don’t know that the way I am creating transparent text is the easist way. It takes some tweaking since some letters have enclosed spaces which I need to eliminate indivisdually, adding to the time. I could use one of the graphic apps maybe. But this way – keynote to preview. Edit in preview and save again. That seems to work. And that’s what I will keep doing tonight. I am only through around 1.5 minutes of a 9 minute movie. Long way to go. Long row to hoe!

I did laundry today. That always makes me feel like I was productive and acted like a responsible adult. Go me! Ok, the laundry isn’t strictly done as I type this, but it will be. I also changed the sheets on my bed. I am thinking that maybe after my boarder leaves, I will sleep in another bedroom for a bit and see if that helps my back. I think the bed/mattresses I have in the main bedroom are causing me pain. Sigh. If it isn’t one thing…

Tomorrow is Monday. We shall see how much snow we have to dig out from under. And when the State Farm people can get their act together and take my car on its road trip to Baldwinsville. I hope the storage fees at the Seneca Falls place aren’t too exorbitant. (I always want to add an “h” to that word.)

Augustus for President: Guess who didn’t try to play with his video gadgets today. That’s right, this guy. Tomorrow is a lock though. For sure. Ok, 60-40.

And as I said elsewhere, the 50+1 Capitals Tour is going to be postponed. How long? I am not sure. I have to figure out what is happening with my transportation first. My guess I will know about that by Wednesday or Thursday.

Life is…

Bye bye physicians!

Life is unpredictable.

Life is precarious.

Walking is just continually falling without falling down.

I feel like my life is a question mark that doesn’t often turn into an exclamation point.

One thing that happens in my mind is the ever popular “what if” or “if only.” “But it didn’t happen that way” I have to keep telling myself. Reality is.

Then again, perception is reality. So, is reality real or just what I perceive?

Happy Saturday. The car didn’t make it to the collision repair place yesterday. That sucks. And is unsurprising. The towing company was super busy yesterday and they couldn’t make it happen for my car to get to the collision place. And now it won’t get there until Monday at the earliest. Probably Tuesday because we are supposed to be getting big snow starting tomorrow (Sunday) lasting through late Monday. So again, towing companies are going to put low priority on moving my damaged vehicle a long distance when they can move more cars short distances. Why couldn’t I get in a crash on a Tuesday? And during a thaw. Thanks universe. 🤓

The accident could have been much worse. Luckily the other driver tried to avoid me and I tried to avoid her. We hit left fender to left fender. No airbags were deployed. I didn’t take any pictures because it was bitterly cold and windy and I was probably a bit in shock. And as my friend SM pointed out, near death experiences (even ones like this that weren’t so near deathy) take a while for the body to process. And that’s what I am doing, processing.

And working on the Alice film. I think I have gotten about two thirds of the captions from the film and made up text boxes for them. And I tried to get one into iMovie. Took some trial and error. And I think I will have to do it a few more times to make it second nature (for now). It isn’t that hard, but it does take multiple steps which take time. Which I have a lot of just now.

Thank you LF for the apples and the visit! My socializing for the day (week?) is accomplished!

WordPress is messing around again. Now it isn’t working as expected on my iPhone. Not a huge deal, but still frustrating. Maybe I will need to change blogging platforms at some point.

Augustus for President: I didn’t follow through with my friend about the badge. Turns out that their printer was not working so I printed them out the badge inserts. And gave them another badge holder, just in case!

And it is pretty definite that I won’t be starting the trip on February 11 as anticipated. Life is that way sometimes.

Not on my Bingo Card

I needed a foot rest – so I created one that works well enough

The day started like many days recently, a little slowly. I eventually made it out of bed and did my morning ablutions. Lunch was a fruit cup, some green olives and some potato chips. Not thrilling, but ok.

Then, I headed out to see EC and JC. But I didn’t get there. Instead, I got into an accident on East Lake Road. Sadly, not a fender bender. My car was immobilized. As was the large pick-up truck that I collided with. Like jousters, but neither of us got out of the way of the other quickly enough to escape damage. Sigh.

I called JC and EC first to tell them that I wasn’t coming. JC got in his car and came and kept me company while all the crap played out. I called the insurance company next. Probably ought to have called the police first, but I had spoken with the driver of the other car and she said she had called 911. I later called 911 and they told me that an officer had already been dispatched. The insurance company eventually dispatched a tow truck after taking way too many details that ought to have been in their system already. Whatever. Then the police said that I had to get out of the road so they called a local tow truck. That one came and took the car to a place in Seneca Falls. I called the towing company State Farm had dispatched and told them that the car would be there. I also called the collision place up in Syracuse to tell them that I was going to be availing myself of their assistance again. But I only left a message. I will call them on Monday and see if they got the car and ask when they could get me an estimate. And I will ask them about their loaner program. I will also need to call my insurance company and see if they will reimburse me for the tow from East Lake Road to Seneca Falls. So many moving pieces.

Speaking of moving pieces, I got two tickets for this accident. Driving too fast (ha) and pulling into oncoming traffic. The cop said I should have driven into the ditch. Right. That was a good plan. Anyway, that is going to be pricey for those two tickets I am sure. I love capitalism.

I have been having crappy car luck for the past several years. Is there some saying like unlucky in cars, lucky in hearts? That would be a bright spot to an otherwise less than thrilling experience.

Meanwhile, i have started working on making titles for the Alice in Wonderland movie. So exciting.

Augustus for President: This means that the 50+1 Capitals Tour might have to be postponed. I don’t want to do the trip in a rental car. And who knows how long the car will take to repair. Or if it will have to be totaled by the insurance company. Anyway, moving back the start date is a mixed blessing. It gives me more time to get more ducks in a row. But it also messes up the grand plan a bit. Not terribly, but a bit.

And because of the possible postponement, a few ducks will be pushed back until I have a revised date. Such fun.

No Frijoles

Somehow the day got away from me. I mean, totally away. I did absolutely nothing productive today.

Ok, that’s not strictly true. Besides my morning ablutions and eating lunch I did absolutely nothing productive today.

Wait, again, that is a misreprestation of the facts. The fact is that I feel like I did absoultely nothing contructive today. Nothing to move myself and the world forward. Well that isn’t actually the case.

In the world, I did call the moving company and check about boxes for JC and EC? What I was told was that the company had offered used boxes and that someone had just come and cleaned them out. Sigh. They promised to let me know if they got more boxes anytime soon. I will hold my breath.

I also arranged to go back to JC and EC’s place and help them some more. Mostly I want to get their phones squared away. And then see if I can prod them into making some moves in the trouble areas in the house – the two studies. I am going to suggest they use the empty room as a place to make three piles. Things they want to keep, things they want to take, and things they are not sure about. That might help.

Other than that…I brought in the recycling bin. Woo hoo!

Something happened to wordpress and it is behaving differently again. Why can’t they just leave it the fuck alone?

Augustus for President: I did try to contact some travel companies for the 50+1 Capitals Tour. One wrote back and said that of the 25 people in her company, not one could help me. I called and left a message for another company and they haven’t returned my call. It is looking like I will have to be doing this myself. Unless I hire a Virtual Assistant who might be able to handle the work. Still on the fence about that. It is $30 an hour which isn’t insubstantial. But would be worth it if they actually did the work.

I finished a first draft/go through of the 50+1 Capitals Tour keynote presentation/document. I will keep working on it as time passes.

I also added two more email accounts to the campaign. So that when I get a campaign phone, I can use one of those addresses to be the account for it.

There are many things that are still not done.

Picking a campaign reporting website. I still have a month or so to do that and can do it on the road I think.

Pens, coasters and stickers. Time is running out quickly for getting more of those done.

Deciding about a Virtual Assistant.

Finish up the press release. Figure out where to send the press release.

Maybe it would behoove me to actually make a list of all the things I want to have done before I head out on the trip. (I did that at least.)

My yummy dinner – no frijoles though…

360° – I will be testing this

Another mildly productive day here at the chalet. Mostly I did stuff related to the campaign, so that section will be fairly robust today. Besides working on that, I haven’t done much. I ate some lunch, more of the pizza. And I thought about spritzing rain-x onto the windshield of my car. Only to discover that it had frozen. The Rain-X container is inside and will be thawing. Tomorrow I will spritz it on the windshield and see if it actually works. I would think it would…

The highpoint of the day, such as it was, was picking SM up from the Rochester Airport. She had two smooth travel experiences, which makes me happy. I didn’t, though, go up early enough to get boxes for JC and EC. I will head up to Rochester again at some point soon to get boxes, if they don’t drop boxes off first.

Now I am home – a quick evening Duolingo and then dinner. I think I am eating the last of the frozen lasagna that has been in the freezer for quite a while. I will add fresh steamed asparagus, garlic cheese toast and a side salad to make a full meal. I am getting a little peckish.

Augustus for President: Thoughts they keep a thinking. One thing I would like to do before hitting the road early next month, is to set up social media for the account. I am debating getting a campaign only dedicated laptop so I don’t cross pollinate between private life and public life. I want to sign up for each of the sites fresh (Facebook, YouTube, X (ick), (Ok, maybe not X), Threads, Instagram, BlueSky, TIkTok)(what I am forgetting?). I guess I will have to start using TIkTok as it is still very popular. I will need a second address from the campaign website as I need an email address to sign up for each of the sites I think. It has been so long since I signed up for a social media platform…Maybe I will call that one Webmaster or Tech Maven or something.

Another tool in the arsenal

I bought another gadget to use while on the road. This one is supposed to track my face as I move, which ought to be interesting. Tonight and tomorrow, I am going to test out all the gear and see what happens. I need to figure out the optimal distance from me to the phone/camera so that I can have a decent looking image to use. I think a medium closeup would be good. Maybe a little less than that. Waist up maybe? I can use my laser tape measure to check out what that distance is once I have framed myself well. The next question is – landscape or portrait?

My meeting with the travel people was very short. I misread their website. I thought they booked business travel. They do not. They provide a portal that puts up bumpers for employees who are booking business travel. What I need/want is a travel agent. I sent an email to an agent in Canandaigua. If I haven’t heard back from them by noon tomorrow, I will give them a call. If I can find a phone number. It looks like they have a lot of agents. Most of whom specialize in Disney related travel. So helpful. No Disney for me this trip.

Work continues on the travel slide show. Of course, wild ideas pop into my head – like making buttons on the map for each of the locations so that if one clicks on the location, the appropriate page will load. I am also thinking I would like to put the QR code on each page. And I would like to leave room on each page for a picture of me at each capital.

Every Rubel (eek!) Counts: If you are a Russian Citizen (only, dual Citizen with the US is ok, I guess) please do not contribute to my campaign. $10 may seem like a lot of money to give someone you don’t know, but I am easy – any amount helps. One the the statistics that people look at is the number of individual donors. And since this is a grassroots campaign, the more the merrier. Even if that contribution is only $1.