Fall Down, Go Boom

A friend fell today. Luckily, she wasn’t hurt so far as we could tell. Time will reveal if she did in fact hurt anything. It was kinda scary, as most falls are. She fell in the middle of the road, having missed the fact that she was stepping off of a curb, thinking she was continuing on the same plane. Cars stopped, people came to help. We got her back to her ride and hopefully she is lying down and has taken a lot of pain medication. No bueno.

Actually there was a notable event yeesterday while dashing. My first dash of the second shift was a two parter – a pick up from Walgreens and a pick up from CL Luffy. The money wasn’t great, but I didn’t care. I accepted. Then a note popped up about the Walgreens order. I went to hit “agree” but the car bounced and I hit something else instead and the order went away. And I got a ding for not “completing” that order. Grrr. If I cared, I would call Door Dash and complain. But I have done that in the past to no avail. So, why bother. It is only one. And in a hundred more dashes it will be erased. I still think that I ought to have gotten a lot of credit for the days that I have had 100% acceptance. Whatever. Door Dash is not the best organization to work for. But it does allow me to only work when I want to work. Which is great!!

The toys in the claw game seem to be Christmas related. Weird.

Today was one of my Saturdays. Woo hoo! When I was lying in bed, I was thinking that I really didn’t want to do much of anything today. And I didn’t. But I did. Weird, right?

Mostly, I just kicked back until about ten when I set my morning reminders to go off. I had a few and took care of them. Like printing out a few documents that I wanted JC to peruse and give me feedback on. More on that in the Augustus for President section below. I also did things like thaw some chicken wings for dinner tonight.

Eventually, I made it out of bed and headed out to run errands. First stop was the car wash. My car hadn’t had a bath in a while. And honestly, the car wash didn’t do so well on the bird poop. I don’t really care though. It is good enough for the time being. At the car wash place, I washed my two front mats and also did a little bit of vacuuming. Go me!

Next stop was Sweet Acres Creamery. I had seen something there that I thought might make a fun gift. There was no price on it, which was a red flag. And the actual price was definitely a red flag. I didn’t buy it. A trip for nothing. And I forgot to look and see if the cheese tasting bar was out. Poo.

Off to Harbor Freight. I wanted to get a spool for my long extension cord so if I use it, it doesn’t get tangled up again like it did before. I had one of these when I was using a corded electric mower and it wasn’t that useful. This one is for a cord if I end up having to use 120volt charging for the Tesla. 100 feet is a lot of extension cord! I need to see if it is better to put the plug to the wall on the inside or the outside of the spool. Thoughts are appreciated. I just watched a YouTube video that helped a lot!

Last stop for this set of errands was Wegman’s. My main goal was to get a frozen pizza. I ended up with a Newman’s Own as it was rated pretty highly by some online pizza pundits. And of course, I ended up buying a lot more crap. But I got out of there for under $50 which is always good.

Back home, I ate some lunch and did more little things from my reminders. Gosh I love them. They really help me to feel like I am doing stuff. Though I will admit that sometimes I put things on there just so that I can cross them off.

My next goal was to spend a little time with EC and JC. Turns out that they were peckish, so we met at Grounded. They had lunch, I had a hot chocolate. We talked about Thanksgiving. I think the plan was changed from eating at Geneva on the Lake, to making some sort of meal at their house. I will provide turkey, my favorite brussels Sprouts dish and a few other little things. They are providing appetizers, some sweet potato dish and wine. I think TC will be joining us. A productive and fun time!

At home again, I did more of my reminders. And suddenly, poof, it is time to do Duolingo, right the blog post and then cook pizza, wings and a little salad for dinner. Yippee!!

Augustus for President: JC is looking over the three docs I printed out for him, a draft of a possible poster for upcoming events here in Geneva, a potential letter to all the sitting Governors, and a draft of the Trip Question Form that I hope to use while doing the state capital tour next year. I also asked him to answer the questions on the Trip Question Form. Lastly, I created a small Filemaker DB for the answers when I start getting them.

Other things I accomplished – asked some questions of my campaign money guy (Hi KSR), looked into the best way to use a Tesla for the Capital City Trip, spoke with a person at Wegman’s about the campaign, tweaked the poster for the upcoming events in December (I hope to have three – all in one weekend),and added more thoughts to my thoughts and questions and actions database. Sounds like good set of accomplishments to me!

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.

Ought or Should

There are probably lots of things that I ought to be doing. Or should be doing even. I just don’t really want to do any of them. Like cataloguing. Or cleaning. Or sorting. So much to do and I am not doing any of it. Bwahahahaha. (That is diabolical laughter.)

And there are other things that I could be doing. Like playing the piano. Or being creative in some way. But again, I am not doing any of that.

I woke up a little later than I normally do and decided I was going to get some reading done. So that’s what I did. I read until around 11 when my reminders reminded me that I wanted to separate and freeze the chicken wings and one bag of meatballs. Two wings to a bag. And three meatballs, plus one had an extra. In three of the meatball bags I added BBQ sauce. I wanted to use up those two bottles I bought a long while ago. Mission accomplished.

Everything all bagged!

After I finished bagging, I did a light yoga. Then ate some lunch. It has been a long time since I have put (garlic) hummus center stage in my lunches. I had forgotten just how yummy it was! I was even dipping my potato chips into the hummus today. (On a side note, why are potato chips so delicious? It can’t just be the salt…)

And after that, reading. Lots of reading. I have basically been reading for about 3 hours! And yes, the book is interesting enough for me to have read that much and still want to read more.

Oh, I turned down two concert tickets tonight. Was that crazy of me? I don’t think so. Since I hadn’t planned on going out, I didn’t want to go out. The concert wasn’t going to be at the Smith, so I could have gone. I just didn’t feel like it. But if I am to change my relationship status, I need to do different things. And that would have been different. Then again, it was a concert. And I didn’t have anyone to really ask to go with me. I mean, I guess I could have asked MT but I anticipate rejection from her, so I didn’t put myself out there. Sigh. Oh well. More time to read.

I have done my Duolingo, Italian today. I am in a group aiming for a “tournament.” I rarely try hard to qualify for the tournaments. They are mostly the haunt of tryhards. And if you have spent a long time on reading my blogs, you know that I am not a fan of tryhards. At least that leaves the regular league levels with fewer of them for a few days…

Next up, pizza and wings and a salad, I guess. Definitely pizza and wings…and then maybe some TV (generic for watching anything on any device or platform – is there a better word?). Maybe more reading. Time will tell.

Lots of Pillows!

Lots of pillows to help me sit up straight closer to the “TV”

What do we call watching TV now? I for one don’t watch a lot of TV in real time. A few live streams here and there. But I certainly don’t spend the bulk of my time on ABC, CBS and NBC. Do people still do that? When I am watching streaming things, I could be watching anything from a streaming platform or service. I spend a decent amount of time on YouTube. And I have a few streaming services that I watch routinely. Can I just still say “watching TV?” If there is some new vernacular, please let me know.

My ambition for the week is to have my bedroom roomba ready. To be honest, I don’t think this room has ever been Roomba ready. It shouldn’t be that hard. Most of the “mess” is clothes that haven’t been put in their proper places. Pants in a pants drawer. Shirts hung up in the closet. That sort of thing. And then I will go on “wire patrol” to see if I can nip any trouble spots in the butt, er, bud before setting a roomba to work.

Charging my phone in my car ought to be an easy thing. I mean, it is an electric car, so charging an electric phone ought to be simple. Sadly, my 2019 model 3 has an issue with its USB ports. (As many other model 3’s from around the same time do.) One that isn’t fixable for a reasonable price. The reasonable price being “free.” So, as a work around, I used a long lightning cable (I have an older iPhone) to bring power from the rear seat USB ports. Woo hoo! Unfortunately, they don’t make cables like they used to. Or they make them to fail too quickly. My latest cable died recently. I will, I guess, buy another long cable one day, if I keep the car. But in the meantime, I am using the battery pack that PV gave me. And it works pretty well. It is small enough that I can put it in my pocket with the phone when I am walking about. Yippee!

Today was a Monday. I slept a little later than I normally do. And got up and got out to do my one dashing shift of the day. It was a little bit above average in terms of earnings. A little long in terms of driving. Both due to a late offer from Door Dash to pick up from NAPA Geneva and deliver to NAPA Penn Yan. It is so weird how Door Dash seems to so frequently send me on a long dash just when I am getting ready to end my shift – even though I don’t have the shift scheduled to end for an hour after the time I am actually aiming for stopping. But I don’t mind. Long drives that are decently compensated make my shifts more pleasant!

Today was also a Wegman’s day. I didn’t have a lot to buy – eggs and bacon because, well, I like both of those items. I also bought makings for desert. SM gave me some of the Angel Food cake to eat. And some strawberry sauce she made. Which she says will go bad soon. So, I bought some chocolate ice cream and some whip cream to make the deserts more festive. I also bought two bottles of soda water. Unlike Ted Lasso, I like some bubbles in my beverages.

Tonight’s dinner will be leftovers from dinner with SM on Saturday. And a salad. Leaving lots of room for desert. Woo hoo!