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.

Blasts from the Way Back Past

Lots of old pictures

The pictures I scanned yesterday were all of people related to my mom. And some of mom herself. I scanned at least 40 images. I think some of them might have been duplicates. A few had some writing on them, either front or back or in some cases both. They really liked their goats! I opened up the box that I found the album on top of and discovered many more photo albums from that era and before! Sadly, it doesn’t seem like any of the pictures are labeled at all. I am not going to digitize those right now because I don’t know who would look at them and have any clue who those people were. But I may digitize them someday and put them up online and see if anyone can identify any of the people in the them. Instead, I am going to look for more modern pictures and digitize some of those. I hope to find pictures of the current and previous generation. And maybe the next generation. In other words, pictures of my mom and dad, their kids and their kid’s kids. Here’s hoping!

So far this morning, I have again accomplished some good things. Most of which have been campaign related.

It is afternoon now. I ate leftovers for lunch. And will have left over pasta for dinner tonight I think. Though, on second thought, I think I will have breakfast for dinner instead and save the pasta for later in the week. Much better plan.

At some point tonight, I will digitize the more modern pictures I have found. I think they are from around 1998 if I had to guess. Some family Christmas pictures, some pictures of some road trip. And some pictures of one of my exes and our dog. And some pictures that don’t have people in them that probably won’t be digitized at this point. Certainly not all of them. There are around 90 pictures in this album. I think I will digitize about half – which is about how many I digitized yesterday.

I’ve gone flannel. I decided to start putting flannel sheets on the bed again for the winter season. Starting with a penguin set that I believe my lovely sister gave me one Christmas. Yay sheets!

Speaking of Christmas, it looks like I will be heading to Maine this year for that holiday! Huzzuh!! Back in time for New Years as SM is tentatively planning a New Year’s Eve party of some sort.

Augustus for President: I have gone through the database of thoughts once. I created a second layout so I can hopefully do some cleanup and re-categorizing and condensing and deleting where it makes sense. I love Filemaker so much!!

I did a draft of my letter to the governors for the trip in February. I will try to get that in the mail in early January. I wonder if I should email it and snail mail it. That will be determined later, I guess. I also drafted a form, like the form I used for “And the Pursuit of Happiness” trip I did back in 2002. This one has four questions instead of just the one. Basically the same questions I will be asking the governors with a tweak for people who aren’t politicians.

My first draft poster for possible meet-ups is in my folder now. I will let it rest for a bit before revisiting it.

Lastly, I updated the survey page. Though I have discovered something distressing and haven’t figured out what is happening. People have said that they have answered the surveys but for some reason their answers aren’t showing up. No idea why that is happening. I guess before I start my tour in February I will have to pay for a survey site subscription. Poo.