Wet Socks Suck!

Why was my pail so much smaller?

I do not understand how my socks are getting wet. I have good boots that I am pretty sure don’t have holes in them or leak. Yet…my right foot continually gets soaked. Maybe I step in wetness when I am not wearing the boot. And because the water might be warm, I don’t notice that my sock is wet. Then, later, when I take my boot off, and find my sock wet, I am confused. And unhappy. And I cry. Ok, I don’t really cry. But still. I don’t like wet socks. On my feet. Or in general. Just say no to wet socks!

Today did not go to Augustus’s plan. My plan was to do some dashing and then go look for a suitcase. Hahaha. I don’t think I will ever learn to not make plans. But, I do am able to adjust and to go with the flow, even if the flow is the opposite of my plan.

I did dash. And it wasn’t a great dash by any standards. Too many miles for too little money. Poo on Door Dash. And despite it saying it was busy or even very busy, I sat long enough to read once. And drove around for 20 minutes, two screen refreshes, without a ride, even though the app said that orders were flowing in rapidly. So I stopped. Fuck that.

At home, I had a little lunch. Yum.

Off to help JC with his phone problems. I thought it would be an easy fix. It wasn’t. The phone was well and truly bricked. Probably due to the new system software that Apple installed when he wasn’t looking. The screen wasn’t recognizing any touches at all. I even managed to restart the phone and still no joy. So we headed to the ATT store to get him a new phone.

Everything takes longer than one anticipates. Ok, not everything, but most things maybe? Anyway, I thought we would be in and out quickly. We weren’t. Somehow I had forgotten to write down the password to the gmail account that someone else had set up for JC. Go figure! I had to come back to the house and check my computer to see what the story was. I eventually found the email address, but not the password. As I was driving back to the ATT store, I recalled what I thought the password was. I was wrong. So, JC got a new phone. It works as a phone. But he doesn’t have his contacts on there because we couldn’t reset the password. He is supposed to get a message from Apple at some point telling him how to reset his password since it is an Apple issue. Which for some reason they couldn’t do at the time. Who knows.

Back at the house, I cleaned up the phone for him, hiding almost all of the apps and things on his screen. And went to plug it in, only to discover that Apple phones no longer supply a charging brick – the cord, yes, but the brick, no. And because JC has only had older phones, all of the bricks we could find were USB-A and we needed a USB-C. Sigh and grrr.

All of that took so long that I didn’t get a chance to go look for suitcases. Instead, I just had time to head to SM’s to help her check in for the flight I am driving her to tomorrow morning. To top things off, due to Augustus error, I sent myself the wrong boarding pass to print out. I need to clean up her desktop next time I am on her computer I guess. But I got home and rectified that problem without having to go back out to her house. Phew!

And now I am home. I am going to do some Duolingo and then head out to get some dinner. I am sure I could make a dinner at home, but I just don’t feel like it. Unless…maybe I will have soup and salad. I will check my soups. If I have anything worth eating, that’s what I will do. Save some money and save the effort of going to a restaurant, ordering and bringing it back (way cheaper than Door Dash btw).

Augustus for President: I ran into one of my fellow dashers who had said she was interested in volunteering for my campaign. She said she couldn’t figure out how to submit her information. I helped her to get to the Volunteer page. Hopefully she will really sign up. That would be the third or fourth person to sign up. Not that the other three have responded to emails from the campaign. Sigh.

SM also said that one of her son’s, who is a political consultant, was going to send me some discouraging information. She seemed happy about that.

Brunhilde!

Our Childhood Dog!

We had Brunhilde from 1971 until 1982 or so I think. Partly my dog. Mostly my mom’s dog since I went away to high school in 1974. Great dog! So sweet. She spoiled me for all other dogs, though I have had partial ownership of a couple of short haired mini dachshunds that were pretty cool.

Today was Tuesday and I did not have a long dash day. Yippee! In fact, the first dash session was terrible in terms of money. Luckily, the distance traversed was not great. Because…Someone who shall remain nameless forgot to plug their car in last night – despite the 10:30 pm alert. I think s/he looked at it and said, aha, yes, the car is not plugged in and then didn’t move…which meant that when they went to start their morning drive, the car was at 40% charge. Plenty as it turned out. Woo hoo! Anyway, the dash was not great and I was unamused. But I did get a lot of reading accomplished!

At lunch time I charged the car and ate some lunch. Two good things. I haven’t been charging the car much at lunch time since I got the new to me Tesla. I also added some things to the presidential database. And had some deep thoughts. I tried the IRS again and was basically still hung up on. I have now set that reminder to occur everyday. Though I am thinking I might look for an IRS office near me and drive there on Friday. (There’s one in Rochester and one in Syracuse!)

My second dash was the complete opposite of my first. It was good money for not a lot of driving. Woo hoo! I had a chat with one of the McDonald’s managers and maybe a regional manager too. Mainly I told them that when the store prints out the ticket, it shows up as ready for dashers which is bad because then we often have to wait for orders to be completed. Which is bad for everyone…we shall see if anything comes of it.

I’m home now. Duolingo is complete and the blog is nearly done.

I need to check with my sister and see what day, if any, would be optimal for me to arrive for my week’s Christmas visit.

I am leaning towards going to try the trivia at Red Brick Pub on Thursday. It starts at 6:30. I’ll ask PvK and MF if they want to try it with me. I stopped in and spoke with Char and Samantha and they filled me in on the deets. It does start at 6:30. It is a paper based quiz, not a phone based quiz. And it hasn’t started getting crowded again, yet. So seems like a perfect time to try it out.

I have another potentially bad night of sleep to look forward to tonight. The person who wanted to go to Olean on Monday wants to go there on Wednesday now. Sigh.

Augustus for President: I looked up the Democratic Socialist party and was disheartened to see that they only had 80,000 registered members so far.

I understand the idea of discontinuing production the U.S. penny but it also seems like a bad idea. Though Canada did away with theirs all the way back in 2013.

Heard a very interesting person speaking on Connections this afternoon. I am not sure when I want to reach out to all of the people that I think are interesting and might have good ideas about campaigning and about governing. Maybe after I have accomplished my first 50 state tour in April. We shall see.

So Much to Write!

I keep getting notified that I have new subscribers. Hi!

Today was a dashing day – two dashes. And my Friday! Woo hoo! Tomorrow is July 4th and I am not sure if a lot of places are going to be closed. So I might find my day of errands pushed back to Saturday. I am guessing government offices will be closed at least. Maybe? Who knows?

I had to stop watching Being Erika. I liked the first few episodes. But I was watching one last night and I just couldn’t stomach how obviously inconsiderate the lead character was being. Sure, she may redeem herself eventually, but I didn’t want to stick around for that to happen. Next! I flipped around, watched pieces of a few shows and wasn’t all that impressed. So, I started to watch Ted Lasso again. For the fourth time. Sigh.

Anyway, back to the exciting world of dashing. My first dash was, overall, quite pleasant. I didn’t have to drive that much. I declined a bad ride. And unassigned from a ride that I accepted before it registered in my pea (not pee) brain that $3 for an 8 mile trip was not a good thing. What’s funny is that after I declined the one and unassigned from the other, both times I was offered a much better ride next. I have no clue what the hell Door Dash’s algorithm is doing. And I have decided that I just don’t care. And it seems that acceptance is way less important to Door Dash than completion is. Which is weird to me, but ok. Note to self (and any other dashers): better to decline than to unassign!

Flers

Second dash was, well, lots of driving. Almost 100 miles in one shift! Decent money, but not enough to cover that many miles. Damn door dash stuck it to me, once again. I was offered $13 for two orders – one nearby, the other far away – I thought maybe Phelps. But the distance was, sadly, measured as the crow flies, and not on actual roads. So what was supposed to be a total of 14 miles was actually more like 18. The second delivery was to Clifton Springs!!! But it took me to a decent amount $ wise. My next two rides were also long. But I survived and did ok for the week. Yay!

My mom used to say my brother’s head was too small for his body. I hadn’t really noticed it myself. The other day, though, I either saw myself somewhere or maybe it was a dream, but it looked like my head was teeny compared to my body. Thoughts? Do I have a teeny head?

Since the worst bill in history just was passed (WTF!!!) that means the EV incentives will end on September 30th. Hopefully by then the new Tesla models will be ready for primetime. And I can decide whether to buy another model 3 or wait until the new models are actually for sale. It’s a money thing. Who knows how Tesla will respond to this change? I certainly don’t. So, I will wait and see what happens. Plans are good. And better when they are flexible!

I am home. I have done my Duolingo (bunch of freakin’ tryhards again), and am finishing up my blog post. I have done some grocery shopping and have all the ingredients I need to try and make a lemon blueberry trifle. And lots of other semi-frivolous stuff. Yes, I bought some swedish fish. Sue me.

Oh, and I have pretty much decided that I am going to at least seriously consider running for President in the 2028 election – if there is one. Even if someone as potentially good as AOC runs, I will still run. I don’t trust anyone to not kowtow to the money people and the powerful. Or to the GD DNC. If only they had run Bernie instead of Hillary, we might not have had to deal with all this crap from Drumpf. IMHO of course.

I got a cookie

What a terrible first dash! The weather was atrocious – cold, windy and snow. Luckily not too much snow. And there were way too many dashers. How do I know? Door Dash gives estimates on time between orders. The lower the number, the more orders flowing in or anticipated to be flowing in. And when that number is 1-3 minutes and I don’t get an order, that means that there are a lot of other dashers since I didn’t get an order in the ten minutes that such a prediction pertains to. Grrr. Hopefully a lot of them will stop. Dashing isn’t to everyone’s taste.

So, on this dash, I didn’t even get ten rides. I did get ten offers, but two of them were terrible so I had to decline them. One was $3 for 7 miles. And another was similar. Sigh. I also, recently, not on today’s dashes, had someone complain that there food was delivered too early! Another dasher complained that their food might be cold because I had to wait and pick up another order. I pointed out that good tippers get their food faster. He was a non-tipper. Sucks to be him, I guess. Oh, and I made a mistake, but I don’t think it cost me anything. A person working in a business noted that she wanted to food left at the door of the business but I delivered it inside. Oops. People just can’t be satisfied.

During my down time, I charged the car, ate my lunch (leftover omelet and other bits and pieces), took a shower, and played a bit. Yay!

Good thing I charged the car! The second dash of the day was one of the weirder ones I have had. And it was mixed – ok money but way too much driving. I got a great first dash. Then a good NAPA dash. Then I had a dash that was decent money but took me all the way to Auburn!! I don’t get to Auburn too often as it is just a tad too far to go to for fun. Like Rochester and Syracuse and Ithaca. They are all an hour away. Auburn is a solid 42 minutes away.

Anyway, as I was heading back to my regular dashing area, I was offered two dashes locally for decent money. The first pick-up was at Little Caesars. At one point there were six dashers waiting for their orders. Luckily, mine did not take an impossibly long time. Longer than I would have liked, but not too terrible. Then I had a pick up at Swaby’s – a place I have been to play trivia long ago (and across the street is a new to me brew pub). I dropped off the pizza and wings and headed to the second delivery. The car had the wrong pin. As did the Dasher App. Two different ideas where the delivery location was supposed to be. I called the person and they guided me to their location. Done and dusted!

It was going to be 6:10 or so by the time I got home, so I decided to just end my dash. Who knows what the next dash when I got back to Geneva was going to be. And I didn’t want to risk either a decline or a stupidly long drive. The money might have been good, but so what? My time is more important than money. All in all, a weird dash.

Ribbit

Now I am home and about to cook myself some dinner. I am planning on making some pasta Alfredo, with a piece of beef and a salad. Maybe garlic toast if there is any in the freezer. I think there is.

Ready for my brain becoming mushy. And only one more day for dashing to do this week! Huzzuh!! I will be lucky to make my minimum weekly target, but life is that way sometimes.

Beep Beep

This truck is large, but not that large!!

Seen at Wegman’s the other day. People are not very bright if they try to sit in this vehicle. Then again…

The more I think about it, much as I admire Optimus and would like one, one day, I would really like to have a Robovan. Maybe I will keep my current Tesla (which I would love more if it were a long distance one) until Robovan is available. If a list comes out, I will add my name to it no matter the cost. The possibilities with that vehicle are pretty vast!

Last night, I was hallucinating a bit. I thought I heard my guests in their room. But no, they weren’t there. I also thought I heard a cat mewing. Craziness. I don’t have a cat. There hasn’t been a cat in this family since Tiger died back in the 1980s. There couldn’t be a cat meowing anywhere. But wait! I recalled that I had left the front door open. And the door to the side porch. Having earlier remembered about the side porch door being opened, I closed it at some point. And then i heard the caterwauling.

Sure enough, some cat had decided to investigate the side porch and I had trapped it in there. Hopefully it wasn’t there long enough to pee or poop on anything. When I opened the door from the house to the porch, the cat zipped inside. Bad kitty. Get out, I said. It headed for the kitchen, but I shooed it out and closed that door. I had already opened the door to the outside from the porch and was ushering th kitty that way. It wasn’t happy about that. Hissing and spitting ensued. But the silly thing didn’t want to go out that door, it wanted to go out the same door it had come in. So when I opened that door, bye bye kitty! Phew! I did not want to adopt a cat!!

It has been a quiet day. After using the copy function of my printer last night to do a little task for S, I took those documents to her in the morning. And that was about it for me outside, despite the weather being sunny and in the 70s! Inside, I didn’t do much. I ate some lunch, watched a bunch of YouTube videos (not the one I had told myself to watch) and generally was lumpy.

Eventually I did a few things around the house: stripped the guest bed, stripped and made my bed (with flannel sheets – I am sure after this brief warm spell, cold weather will return with a vengeance), started another load of laundry, put together the doors I had taken apart, watched the video on transcriptions (If I can do that instead of dashing, I would be thrilled) and even started the paperwork to do that gig. And Duolingo.

I am taking a break from Vikings. I have watched a couple of movies – nothing too exciting – and started a couple of series that seem ok. I think I will watch the MacGyver reboot for awhile and see how that goes. And maybe some little Anna Kendrick movie that she is promoting on Instagram.

Speaking of which, I am not missing X at all. The next step will be to delete the app. I am so angered by the change in blocking behavior I could spit.

Tonight, more Chinese food and more crab rangoons. I want to use up the stuffing I had left over from Friday. Not exciting but life is that way sometimes. I have a lot of containers of leftovers in the fridge and want to pare that number down! Wish me luck!