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.

Yay Productive Lazy Days

Decent day, all things considered. Yay. I hope you all had good days too.

Mine started about the same time my days have been starting recently, around 8 am. When my boarder heads off to work. She is like my alarm clock. I did my morning Duolingo and then puttered around the internet. Too much of that, sadly. But these are the times in which we live, so…

Around 10 I got a few reminders and took care of them. Made a couple calls, sent a couple text messages. Did a few things on the computer. That sort of thing. Later, I got out of bed and did my morning ablutions, including a teeny bit of yoga. And started the upstairs Roomba. Which entailed closing all the rest of the doors on the floor so that the Roomba would focus on the hallway. It did a decent job. Though it got some hair twined around one of its paws that I haven’t figure out how to dehair yet. YouTube to the rescue. I will do that the next time I clean the upstairs roomba. Which at the rate I am going will be sometime in 2027. Sigh.

Lunch was a bunch of this and a little of that. Mainly some guacamole and some hummus, plus some watermelon (I know, it isn’t in season, but Wegman’s sells outrageously expensive little containers of it and its one of the only fruits I eat without much foot dragging), and some olives.

After lunch, I started doing more picture scans. I did 40+. And trimmed them. And will name and save them tonight. I might try another method to save them this evening. Nah, probably won’t. I’ll stick with the way I have developed. To get me through the scanning, which took a while, I listened to some of my book. There were some pictures of mom. Some pictures of other family members. Even two pictures of Orville Leonard from the Civil War! I might use one of those for my image tomorrow, if I remember.

I will admit that here and there a catnap or two may have occurred.

When I got a hi tech tape measure for PM for Christmas, I also got one for myself. I haven’t unboxed it yet, but would like to do so. Maybe on Sunday.

Oh, I also did and put away the dishes. See, productive!

Tonight, I might start on the books in the red room. There are two shelves in there and I don’t think any of those books have been catalogued. I will be able to tell if they have because they will have my library embosses in them. And they will be in the database.

It is Friday night. Normally I treat myself to some sort of pizza and wings meal. But since I have most of a chicken left, which I didn’t touch yesterday, I think it would be better if I had that. With the rest of the broccoli. And maybe some French Fries. Not curly fries tonight. I am debating a small salad.

Fairy Blog Mother strikes again!

Who has the best Fairy Blog Mother? I got a text from PvK asking if I was still looking for a round Brita pitcher. I loathe my rectangular one, so I leapt to respond with a resounding yes! She left it on the front porch for me. And it even came with a filter! Yippee!! Bye bye rectangular Brita pitcher from Hades!

Looks like tomorrow is going to be a big driving day. I am picking LD and MD up from the Syracuse airport around noon. And then picking SM up from the Rochester Airport around 4 pm. So exciting. At least I will get to listen to my book. And have good conversations on the way home.

And tomorrow night, if the stars align, EC and JC and I will be going out to eat dinner. That will be nice. They are so good to me!

Ok, time to Duolingo.

Augustus for President: I saw a book that looked interesting on the internet. It came in two versions, a paperback for $13 or a Kindle version for $6. I downloaded the Kindle app to my iPad and bought the kindle version of the book. It is about how Independents have a hard time winning elections and some possible strategies to overcome the challenges. I’ve started the book, but haven’t gotten very far in it yet.

My next gadget arrived – a remote control for my phone. Now I can start and stop video on the iPhone from afar. Or take pictures. I am mostly interested in the video option. On Sunday, if the weather isn’t too terrible, I might try a test or three of videoing myself like I would for a capital visit.

Sniff, sniff. No more donations. Yet. Am I surprised? Not at all. Sad though. Sniff. My fundraising goal for the year is $5,000. At least that is my initial goal. If I can’t even raise that…well, that wouldn’t be a good sign.