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?

Happy December!

Today was a long one dash day. As are most of the days to come, I think. At least until I hit the road in February. Anyway, my first order tested my decision making skills. Tell me what you would have done. Let me give a bit of context, though. I hate Lowes (the hardware store) orders. They are generally too little money for too much time and distance.

The Lowe’s order was $25.54 (or something like that) for 24 miles. One way. Up to Clyde or something like that. Maybe past Lyons whatever is up that far. And it was to transport 10 40lb bags of de-icer. The kind you put on sidewalks and things. That 24 miles would have taken me at least an hour for the round trip. Probably longer. Especially with loading and unloading times. And I would have had to lug that 400 pounds on my own. And in my car – the weight of two full grown humans. So, I chose not to do it.

I don’t know if it was the “right” decision. But I felt good about it. I might have made less money today because of not taking it, but I am ok with that. For my peace of mind and for my body, I just didn’t think it was a good offer.

The dashing shift came to an abrupt end because I was given a ride that took me very close to home and I had agreed to a personal pick-up around 2. The abrupt end allowed me to eat lunch and change my perspective a bit before my afternoon’s activities.

I gave the personal ride. Then I dropped two books off at the library. And then headed to one of my myriad banks. More on that below. My last errand of the day was to buy two longish eye bolts (with screw ends) at Tractor Supply. They were expensive!! But worth it to keep the ladder from attacking me again. Either I will do the work, or I will see if one of my workers wants to learn how to do it. They might also be the people to fix the front porch that I sort of broke…We shall see how I feel come Friday and Saturday.

After that burst of activity, I did a whole lot of nothing for a long while. I finally got my second wind and here we are. All caught up. Now it is time to eat the most of the last of the leftovers from Thanksgiving. Probably not all of the stuffing though…

My Grandmother on a sailboat – not the Setauket, I don’t think

Augustus for President: I finally got the letter from the IRS with my campaign’s full name on it. I took it to the bank and got E to fix the account’s name. Woo hoo! That means that I can start to accept donations/contributions. Watch that money start rolling in! Oh, wait, I can accept money, but only in person. In order to do it electronically on the website, I will need KSR to set up a company to accept donations through. I still suggest Stripe as that is the one that the campaign website recommended. But I feel the campaign is trudging forward in baby turtle steps.

After seeing what the timing of Bernie’s campaign was (about 500 days (A year and a third?)) before the election), I am feeling better about when I am hitting the campaign trail. I will have a year and a half to enter the country’s awareness before I hit that point. That ought to be plenty of time. At least that is my thought currently.

Ok, I’ve started the process of looking for assistants to help with research, cold calls, and travel.

Look at that View!

Sometimes I make decisions too quickly. Sometimes the results are what I hoped for. Sometimes, not so much. But I think it is better to make decisions than to be frozen by indecision. Though, honestly, that happens sometimes too.

Today was a day off from dashing! Woo hoo! And since it was Friday, everything was open regular business hours. I had planned on running my errands and then spending a quiet time at home, but LD pinged me and asked if I was up for a bike ride. So, that changed my plans a good bit.

I started the day by driving to Canandaigua and back for some campaign stuff – explained below. On the way home, I stopped at the Dollar Store, looking for things I normally wouldn’t consider looking for. With the help of a fellow shopper, I found the stuff I had been seeking. Yes, I am being somewhat vague about it all, but after the fact, I will be able to say more. Next up, lunch!

I ate the rest of the angel hair pasta and half of a garlic knot. And I ate way too much. This was when I was planning to spend as much time recumbent as possible. But no, LD suggested a bike ride. And since I hadn’t seen her to speak of in a while, and because a little exercise rarely has killed people. I agreed.

Lovely!

My bike, luckily, still had inflated tires! I found the basket/pannier that contained the bike lock, plopped it on the bicycle and headed downtown. I was brave and took the arterial (as it is called around here) and stopped at my personal bank. From there I headed to the presidential bank and spent most of an hour getting the new account set up. The account and the DBA for the campaign have to match. More on this below. From there, it was a short ride to where LD and I met for our bike ride.

We are so lucky to live where we live I think. The lake really is a wonderful bit of nature. We road along our regular path, from downtown Geneva out to the Yacht Club and back again. I think we rode for about 40 minutes! Go us! And we chatted about this, that and the other thing.

Back home, I took a bit of time to chill out. Then, I made the poppers. Well, as I type they are still in the oven. (Cooling now) I can’t really see how they can be bad. The filling was tasty – I have a little left over that I think I will put on bagels if I have any. And the peppers themselves are, well, peppers. I’ll let you know how the were.

Now it is time to do some Duolingo, finish up my blog post and then eat some left over Chicken Riggies for dinner!

Augustus for President: The decision I made too quickly has been compounded, making my life a good bit more complicated in this instance. The name I chose for my EIN and my DBA was A is For. Much later, I found out that the FEC requires the name of the candidate to be in the primary campaign name. So I changed it to A is For Augustus and America. A little wordy, but I like all the alliteration. And it has America in it. But that meant that I needed to change my DBA and my bank account. And I will look into changing my EIN as well. On Monday. It was too late today when I got home. Sigh. And I am wondering why my social security number is on my bank account, rather than the EIN. I will figure that out next week to. At this rate, I will be able to start accepting donations by November 7, 2028. You’ll donate, won’t you?

I also made more notes in my docs about things to look up and to do on this rocky road to the presidency.

Oh, I had two good conversations about my candidacy. One was with the clerk at the County Office. It seemed we were in sync (not the band). She said that she would like Michelle Obama to be president. And that Pete Buttigieg, when I mentioned him, would also be good. I also spoke with the vice president of the the LNB bank. I don’t know that I made that great an impression with him, but he did tell me his name twice, so I think that was a good thing.

I have great friends!

DM realized that I was not finding my sewing stuff readily. And that I was not all that interested in going into the attic to look for it, where it probably is. So she gifted me with a couple of sewing kits! How great is that?! Thank you!

I’ll sew on the weekend when my mind can wrap itself around that task!

Happy Monday! I hope everyone survived it. I did. It was a two dash Monday.

My first dash was slightly better than my second dash. A few more rides and a bit more money, which of course means less per ride, but still…And the second dash, the dinner dash, was decent. Nothing too exciting to report. Or nothing to horrendous to complain about. I mean, heck, the weather was great and that just makes dashing all that much nicer!

And it looks like the nice weather is mostly going to continue. You’re welcome for the weather report!

During the lunch break, I went through and completed a bunch of reminders. I still have a few lingering ones that I will hopefully get to tonight or tomorrow. The lunch hour evaporated. Mainly because part of it was eaten by travel. I decided to do two banking errands today. One was personal, one was presidential, which I will talk about in the Augustus for President section. I also went To Staples and Wegmans. At Wegmans I got enlgish muffins. Generic, Wegmans ones. I haven’t knowingly had them before, so I am interested to see how they toast up. I am going to use them instead of a bun for my leftover hamburger tonight. I bet pretzel buns are pretty sturdy…I also got some hummus as I ran out at lunch today. Can’t be out of hummus. I might have to make some at home again soon. My was a lot more garlicky.

I really didn’t want to go out on the second shift. I am hoping that I get to do all 8 shifts this week. That would be nifty!

Now, it is time to eat, drink and think deep thoughts. Well, not that deep. On TV I am watching the British Baking show, Professionals version which appeared on Netflix recently.

Augustus for President: I am trying to get my treasurer signed on to the business account. Lots of hoops to jump through. Sigh. I also am going to call the FEC tomorrow and see if I can get my questions answered on the phone. I wonder how long I will have to wait. I’m surprised that Drumpf hasn’t tried to destroy the FEC. Maybe that’s on the agenda, but not until later…

Today, I got some stickers that I plan to put QR codes on, pointing at the Presidential Website. I printed out one and put it on the back of my home made Dot like card. So that if the card doesn’t work with their device, they can scan the QR code instead.

Have I made an appeal to please go to the above website, look for the survey page, (or you can click the link there to the left…) and fill out the two surveys lately? Please? It would make me feel loved.

Would you like to see more of the Spectrum?

I wonder what the world would look like if people could see other wavelengths. I mean, there are so many signals winging through the air at all times. It would be cool and bizarre!

Random logo I saw today

Anyway, it was a one dash day. It could have been a two dash day, but I did well enough during my first dash that I decided a second dash, though probably profitable, was not how I wanted to spend my time. So, I stayed home. The weather was also a bit of a deterrent since it was raining intermittently. And got colder. Brrr.

After my dash, I ate some lunch and started trying to work through all of the reminders I had lying around. Since I might (probably will) be out galavanting tomorrow most of the day (drives for people in the morning and then to Syracuse to throw axes with a friend) I need to get as much done today as I can. And I did. I feel like I accomplished a good amount of stuff. Not only for my daily life, but also for Presidential stuff.

So, what did I do? I moved forward with my banking surrounding my car. The bank said, somewhere, that I could get a discount if I opened a bank account with them and had my payments taking directly and automatically from that account. I think that they said it would be .25% reduction, which could add up to a whopping $31 over the course of the loan. Probably not worth it in that case. I might call them and ask. And I am still considering asking the Finger Lakes Credit Union if they can give me a better deal on the car loan. We shall see. That whole process took longer than I thought it would.

I also helped SM with some invites to a political event. As is often the case, I needed to hurry up and do it because her deadline was short. Poo. I hate doing things under pressure for other people. I don’t mind putting myself under that sort of pressure, but I don’t enjoy it when it is for someone else. I got the work done before I kick into evening mode, though it wasn’t my best effort.

My reminder list had a few items on it about moving things around, which were accomplished. I also had calling another handyman about possibly doing the gravel in my front yard since JM has not responded to any of my messages. I hope that he and his are ok. It is frustrating though, the lack of communication. I left a message for the new guy but haven’t heard back.

I used one of my many printers (I now have three plugged in) to scan some docs and got those documents sent off. And I wrote a few emails.

EC gave me two cameras as she tries to cull her belongings a bit. One didn’t function even after I put new batteries in it. It was a digital camera, so I checked out the card and didn’t see any pictures on there that I think anyone would want. The other uses a special battery that I don’t have (Photo 123 from Energizer) so I will have to figure out what to do about that. Maybe there is a camera place around here that has a single battery I can try. There is a roll of film in there, so I want to get the camera working, take pictures until the roll is finished and then print the pictures to see what is on there! She also gave me a bunch of other stuff that is going straight to the attic for now. I will deal with that later. Hahahaha sure I will…I will probably be leaving it for whoever I leave the house to.

I’m sure there was more stuff.

Well, yes, there was. Augustus for President stuff which I will write about below. And hey, please, please please take the time to take the surveys. The more responses, the happier!

Augustus for President: At least the people at the Campaign website respond quickly. I asked them if I could use WordPress to edit the site – they eventually said no. They also did not tell me how to make buttons. And they pointed at their teeny editor as a wysiwyg web page editor. Sigh. I still have lots more to do there – like enabling donations/contributions. They recommend Stripe. Not sure why, but I will look into it. I have used it in conjunction with some job or other I think. According to my passowrds list I have a password for the site.

I did lots of little things for the campaign today. One biggish thing I did was to start to figure out the order of Capitals that I want to visit when I take the first whirlwind Augustus for President tour of the US in February. I did what I thought might work. Or rather, I got about 2/3 of the way through. Then I had an Aha moment and asked an AI to give me the best list. It looked decent. I will probably tweak it further. But a whole country tour is definitely doable. Obviously, since I have done it before. I then searched to see if there were websites where I could plan trips with more than 50 stops and there are a slew of them. So I might try one of them at some point.

Presidential Survey – Who do you want to be President

Presidential Survey – If you could ask a candidate three questions

What is stopping you from taking the surveys? I am so confused. They are very short and very easy. Imho of course.