Probably Never Again

Last night, I tried Salvatores again. I was underwhelmed. I do like how much pepperoni they put on their pizzas. The cheese is ok. The sauce is ok. The crust is ok. None of it is great. So, i guess if I want to do pizza again in Geneva, I will aim for Cam’s. I did like the deal, though: $10 for a twelve inch pizza on Monday nights. I added the pepperoni for a slight up charge. The counter person told me 20 minutes. I went back in at around 15 minutes and it was already ready. There are a couple other 10 deals I might try, but I am going to steer clear of their pizza for now. Sorry for anyone who tried them from my first recommendation for the place.

Looks better than it is

This morning, I turned up the heat before I got out of bed. I wanted to take a shower and I like neither cold weather washing or cold showers in general. I then proceeded to do my morning stuff – moving up the leaderboard in Duolingo, checking socials, seeing if there were any low hanging reminders that I could check off. A typical morning.

Though I did get a text from CC about JC and EC who I planned to visit in the afternoon. They needed some supplies from Wegmans. After my pizza and celery (gotta have some veggies now and again), I went to Wegman’s, bought a few things for both JC and EC and myself and headed to their house.

At their house, I helped them to do more culling. Some pantry stuff. And some stuff from their liquor cabinet. I don’t think either of them are doing much in the way of drinking besides some wine with dinner now and again. I also got JC a new login for his phone. Now I have that password so if JC wants to modify his phone at all, we can do it! Woo hoo! I will do EC next time. And also set up a credit card with JC’s phone in case he wants to buy something online. Baby steps. I hope that JC will remember the password. Anything is possible. I plan to head down there again this week, either Thursday or Friday if they are interested.

I think tonight’s dinner will be another slice of the chicken pot pie and a salad. Easy peasy. At the grocery store, I got some mini Heath bars which will make a good dessert. After my evening Duolingo and publishing the blog post that is.

Augustus for President: I am still puttering along with the file about the 50+1 Capitals Tour. I think I still have 30 states to go.

On my list this week is getting a dedicated phone for the campaign. And I need to come up with a good draft for a potential generic press release about the trip. And me, I guess.

I also need to sit down with the calendar and game out the two trips to Hawaii and to Alaska. Maybe I can do that tonight.

Every Mark Helps: $10 buys me a pizza from Salvatores. True, one I don’t want. But there are other daily $10 specials that I might take advantage of…

Stickers for Everyone!

Ok, the stickers aren’t for everyone. They are only for people who want them. They came in the mail today, a day before Vista Print promised them. Woo hoo! Since I had some down time, I cut them all off their rolls. Most are in a plastic bag. Some are in my name badge so I can grab them easily. I gave out a few today. Not many. If anyone wants some – either for themselves or to give to others (though they haven’t probably met me…), please let me know. They are smaller than I thought they would be. A little larger than the round “I Voted” stickers one can get when one votes.

Stickers galore

I got up this morning in time to get out and do some dashing before running EC and JC around. But I didn’t dash. I decided to just stay in bed and do Duolingo. My quest partner had done a large amount of the work and I wanted to finish it. And get farther up the Diamond Tournament ladder. I think I did a lot of lessons today. At least ten. Maybe more. I did at least one lesson in each of the 7 things that I am currently practicing in Duolingo. Four languages. Music, Chess and Math. Go me.

I went and picked up JC and EC and we headed to the first appointment. It was a follow up visit with their PA. All things looked good. Unfortunately, no one brought up driving. JC forbid us from asking. And PA Fix didn’t say anything about it. Personally, I think JC shouldn’t be driving, and he knows I think that. His eyes are bad. His reaction time is slow. He has some memory issues. And he gets tired. Not a great set of things to have when maneuvering a 2 ton vehicle around. Whatever. I have offered my services if he decides that driving is too much for him. Though honestly, he isn’t the best judge of that. As many people in the same situation feel, he wants to maintain his independence as defined by driving his own vehicle. Sigh. I just hope that everything goes ok.

Next stop the dentist’s office for EC. JC and I chatted a good bit. Mostly about education. I think a good use of taxpayer dollars and education dollars in general is to hire as many retired people as possible – for as little as possible for their help in classrooms from k-8. After that, high school should have much shorter classes. And lots of big group projects. I mean big – like 40 people big. Projects that can also be broken down into smaller groups. Like building floats. Or creating a play or musical or movie or TV show. Anything that takes a lot of people to do. Get them and their hormones focused on group activities.

We had made a quick stop at Grounded for a drink before heading to the dentist’s office. Later we had lunch at Sweet Acres Creamery. I was a bit shocked that they had no vegetarian options. Well, mac and cheese. And a salad. But out of 30 some menu items, that was it. Both JC and EC chose to have a breakfast sandwich, cheese and egg, without the bacon that normally goes in it. They seemed to enjoy their food. We also shared a plate of french fries. The fries were good, but it seemed like we got the bottom of a bag of fries – lots of teeny bits of fries. Not optimal. All in all, the meal was ok, not great. My cheese steak sandwich was decent but certainly not excellent.

After all of that, we headed to the ATT store so that we could try and move forward with JC’s new to him iPhone. Turns out that there is no standard methodology to creating passwords at the ATT store for people when they need a password and can’t come up with one. That’s the first thing I would do if I were the manager there. Eventually the guy got the ability to change passwords on the phone and we did. Yay. Next step, getting the phone more accessible for JC. And, hopefully, set up the GD home pod. Grrr.

I headed off and made a quick stop at home to drop off food. Then I dashed for a couple of hours. Not an excellent dash, but also not terrible. How about, better than nothing.

Home now, and I am ready for nap. But instead I will eat something and then probably go to sleep really early tonight. Tomorrow I think I will have a two dash day! Woo hoo!

Augustus for President: I got the stickers and cut them up. And handed out a few.

I also realized that I will, at some point, need to read some good point/counterpoint arguments for a lot of issues – abortion, gun rights and Israel are the big three I think. Any others that I am missing? Health care. Education. I think I can really only have ten issues total that I can “focus” on during the campaign. Thoughts are welcome. And there are two more surveys up if anyone would be so kind as to do them. Thank you to those of you who have done any of the surveys!

Surveys!

The Wheel of Time Turns…

Since I have already read the DCC books once in hard back and listened to them at least twice, if not three times in audio, I am taking a break from the series until the next book comes out. Though that isn’t supposed to be until July of 2026. Which seems like a long way away. So I might break down and listen to the books again. But…in the meantime, I have decided to listen to the whole Wheel of Time series. It is fifteen or so books, if you include New Spring. I don’t. I mean, I read it and liked it but it doesn’t really move the series forward. Not that some of the books in the middle of the series move the series forward either…anyway, I have started the first book. Just knowing the characters’ arcs is making me tear up from time to time. Yes, this is one of my favorite sets of books! It is not everyone’s cup of kaf though.

I woke up depressed for no reason that I could tell. And honestly, it hasn’t dissipated yet. But it will. I don’t usually maintain a depressed state for long. (It’s gone now.)

My first dash was going terribly. I was afraid that I I wouldn’t even break $40. But the algorithm, which had been hating on my pretty hard with the offers it presented ($7.75 to Phelps when it ought to be at least $10; two offers from two separate restaurants to two separate customers for a total of $3.75!; etc.) and gave me a good, though long drive offer to end my first dash. I also had a not so great offer to pick up at Denny’s and they made me sign something. Not really sure what good that does them, but maybe it might make unscrupulous people less eager to steal food from them. Who knows?

Seen outside of Denny’s!

My second dash was weird. I took my first offer, which was great! Lots of food from Wegmans to the Army people in Waterloo. Then I stopped dashing to get EC back to her house. Where we spent a good fifteen minutes looking for JC’s phone which has totally disappeared. Sigh. I eventually got back on the road and did four more dashes. They were mostly decent so I did ok in total for the day.

Now I am home. Duolingo had two very hard daily goals set – one was for a perfect song – almost impossible I think, at least for me. And to beat Oscar (a character in Duolingo) in a chess game. I have beaten him a few times, but it isn’t easy. It oughtn’t to be a challenge goal. Playing a chess game against him ought to be enough. Same with the perfect song. Two stars ought to be sufficient. Grrr.

Hmm, my sister isn’t calling me back. Usually she is pretty good about that. Oh well. I will try her again one day soon.

The blog is basically done. Time to eat. I am making a little pasta for dinner. No salad because I haven’t been to the grocery store to get lettuce yet. But I still have garlic cheese toast!

Augustus for President: Did a teeny bit more work on the introductory remarks. And added more to my second “Presidential Thoughts” document. Going on 5 pages of new thoughts. At least I think they are new. Maybe when I try to merge this document with the old document that DM is working on, I will find a bunch of duplicate thoughts. We shall see. Still no document from the IRS. Sigh. I wonder how long I am going to have to wait. No fundraising until all of my financial ducks are firmly in a shooting gallery, er, row.

I just forked out $$ for an email address for the website. Info@ I’ll need to add that under contact I guess. Though there is already a form there. I wonder if anyone will write? Heck, I can’t even get people to take the GD surveys!! In any case, I will worry about it another time.

Fireflies are Lit!

Sometimes I wonder if making my yard into a field was a good choice. Tonight, I was, once again, re-assured in my decision. There were oodles of fireflies flitting around! Veritable fairies galore!

Nice day so far. Though I got out of bed really late. The first thing I did was head to Living Center Sounth so I could take AD to the lake. He is stuck with a horrible roommate and can’t stand being in that room. I hope he finds a new place to live sometime soon! I told him to let me know when he was ready to head back to LCS.

While picking up AD, I ran into EC and JC and had a quick chat with them. JC suggested that we get lunch together before heading down to his house to pay the bill. So I didn’t eat any lunch. Then, a little before 1, JC called to say that he was going to go home and take a nap. I suggested he called after he woke up. That also didn’t work out. Too much was going on, so we punted until Sunday, when I will go down a little early to pick CC and his wife up for a trip to the airport. The bill paying should be fine waiting until Sunday, I think.

Off to Lowes. I returned the bulbs that I had purchased in hopes that it was the bulbs dying instead of the fixture dying. Oh well. Then I picked up the fixture (the more expensive one – sigh) that JM had suggested I get. Hopefully he will get to installing it soon. That would be nifty.

A sign with an interesting spelling of Convenience…

AD called and said he was ready, so I took him back. My next mission was to see if I could find anything glowy to put on the ottoman that I almost kill myself on every night when I go to bed. I tried Staples and Harbor Freight. And the guy at Harbor Freight also checked Tractor Supply. Nothing. I even went to (ick)Walmart and they too did not have glowy things. But somewhere in there someone had mentioned glowy stars! Much better than glowy tape.

At home, I haven’t done much of anything. Well, that’s not strictly true. I ordered some glowy stars from Amazon – they ought to arrive on Sunday. And I have started two documents related to my Presidential Run.

The first one is a list of all the types of work I have done in my life. And it is quite a long list. A little bit of a lot of things. I do think that a president who is a Jack of All Trades is a good thing. Better than someone who is over specialized – like a doctor or an economics professor a lawyer. And with that list, I can relate to just about anyone who has every done any job, which is a good thing.

The other document is a catchall for thoughts on what I want to do on the campaign trail and what I need to do to get me there. Like finding a campaign manager (or three). And a couple of finance people – one to track and spend funds, another to be in charge of fundraising. Something I am not particularly good at – but I guess I will have to get better at. And tech people to run the events and maintain all the databases. I would really like my events, from the smallest to the (if I make it there) largest, to be unlike just about any other campaign’s events. I am not going to go into details here just yet. But I do hope that my events will be more fun and interesting than Political Events normally are.

It’s odd. For those who have been following me for a while, you have seen that I have been trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the next few years – and focusing on this might just be the ticket. Not writing or finishing other books. Not even Sirius Theatre. So far, running for president is only thing that has made me feel like tackling it,. Heck, you get a good medical plan – which is as good a reason as anything else to run imho.

Ok, heading into dinner time. I have my second burrito to eat. So excited!

Two Different Dashes!

I managed to get up, take a shower, do my morning stuff (mostly Duolingo) and get out the door at a reasonable hour. Go me!

For naught. Or basically for naught. It was a bad first dash. It started off with bad omens. I turned down a ride for $7.75 for 14.1 miles. Um, no. I might have done it for $10. But I said no. And then my next dash was a no tip dash, so I made $2 for 15 minutes of work. And the rest of the shift, I didn’t make much money and I drove a lot. Boo. I even got home later than I wanted because the last dash I accepted took me over to way out of Geneva. Grrr.

I got home, ate some lunch and called back a member of the GLO board who had contacted me thrice. He needed help because his printer wasn’t cooperating – wasn’t printing envelopes. I didn’t want to troubleshoot his printer, so I offered him the use of the one that GLO lent to me. That didn’t go well. I thought that his computer was already connected to that printer. I was mistaken. And we didn’t have the cable we needed to enable him to connect to it easily. Poo. I offered to take the printer and the envelopes home with me and print them out. He wanted to transfer the printable file to me on a card. I told him to just email it to me. Much simpler.

The printing went ok. I didn’t take the time to figure out how to print envelopes from the paper tray, so ended up manually feeding them all. It was only 90+ so it wasn’t too onerous. Then back I drove to SM’s house. All of which really ate up my lunch/rest period.

My second dash was diametrically opposed to the first dash. My first offer was for $20 and it didn’t really stop except for two little crappy rides before my last two decent rides. And the last two, well, what rarely happens, happened. I had a long drive for almost enough money when another offer was presented to a similar location for a decent amount of money. So the two added together were a great amount for that trip. Oh, and during the second shift I also got a cash tip because the order got to him so quickly! Rock on Char Burrito!!

Instead of heading straight home, I went to the grocery store. I had a longish list. It turned out to be an expensive shopping trip. But I have enough food to last me through the weekend at least. It will be Tacos on Friday, barring strange unforeseen circumstances.

Now I am home. I have eaten, I have done my duolingo. And now I am going to turn off my brain for a while. Maybe play in a little bit. Anything is possible.

One of my favorite shirts!