Man in Black

That’s me tonight!

One of the things that I liked about Dashing was that it gave me the opportunity to read. When the calls were coming slowly, I could crack open a book and read while waiting. Made the time pass much more pleasantly. And I got a lot of reading accomplished. Since I stopped Dashing, I haven’t made the time to read pleasure books as much.

I did not get started as early as I had sort of planned today. About an hour late (but not a dollar short). But I still got my few tasks taken care of. Even did some food shopping. Though I did it at Walmart (ick). They are the only store in the area where I can get Tang. While I was there I bought a few other things that were on my food shopping list. Woo hoo.

Next up, dinner with EC and JC. I have no idea why they want to take me to dinner, but I certainly won’t complain. This will be the third time that we have arranged a dinner. The first two times didn’t happen – once for snow and once for night time driving problems. This time, I hope that it will all work out. I played chauffeur.

It did work out! We went to Geneva on the Lake. I was not impressed. I did see a friend from when I worked at The Smith. That was nice. And our server was ok. I had a delicious bowl of cream of spinach soup. I ordered the pork chop only to be told that they didn’t have it. That irked me. I was trying to stay away from beef for one reason or another. Instead I ordered chicken wings and fries from the bar menu. The fries were undercooked, which was bad. The wings were crispy, which was good. But they were all flats, which was weird. I expect an equal number of flats and drumettes. I told the manager, who agreed with me and apparently had words with the kitchen. Sigh. At least EC and JC enjoyed their meals.

I am home now. I have done my Duolingo and am about to move into phase three of the evening. I hope to get some scanning of photos accomplished and maybe some other stuff.

Augustus for President: I set up an appointment to chat with a travel company about them possibly helping me with travel for my upcoming 50+1 Capital Trip. I didn’t think to check my campaign website for messages. Why? Because I just didn’t think of it. I need to be better about that. When I get my dedicated phone for the campaign, I will set up the email account on there so I will get the messages as they arrive. But, this meant that I didn’t see that I was supposed to call them, not them call me. Which is messed up, imho. When I didn’t hear from them at 2, I checked my email to find that there were a lot of messages from the company. One of them asking me questions that would help them figure out if their services were a good fit for my needs. I called the number as soon as I saw the message and had a pleasant chat with the sales person. They will set up an appointment for Monday or Tuesday next week.

Since I have the new Chrome created QR code, I think I will print out a sheet of the QR code stickers. How exciting is that?

Every Shekel Helps!

Long Time No Face

Here’s my face. Woo hoo

While dashing my first shift, I picked up from a new place today. Nom and Go. It opened in September and just started Door Dash deliveries last weekend. They are only open four days a week – Monday and Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Run by a nice seeming fellow named Fabian. Since I had never heard of Nom and Go, I called and asked where they were. The sign said Community Kitchen, but I found the right place eventually. Woo hoo!

Other than that, my first dash was pretty good. I had a chat with a dasher I have spoken with a few times. He says he makes $200 a day most days. Only working 7 hours. I find that unlikely. But anything is possible. He did say that he dashes using the time and distance option rather than the per offer option. I might try that tomorrow and see what happens. It didn’t seem to make much difference the last time I did it.

At lunch time, I charged the car a little bit and did some of the reminder tasks. Nothing too earth shattering. I charged because I had an airport run to make during my lunch period.

SM’s flight was on time and she popped out of the terminal in a timely fashion. She just came back from a great sounding trip to exotic places. She also made noises about me getting out and traveling more. Sadly, it looks like the next few years will be almost exclusively domestic travel. Anyway, we will probably get dinner together in the not too terribly distant future.

The second dash shift started immediately after I dropped SM off at her house. The second dash wasn’t as good as the first. Way too much distance for not enough money. But still, it wasn’t bad.

I finished the first book in the Rivers of London series today and asked OWWL (our local library system) to put a hold on the second book. To tide me over, I have The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck which I started. I didn’t really have a lot of time to read, though, so I brought the book inside. If I finish this before the next Rivers of London book comes out, I have lots and lots of other books and things to read. It is a good thing that I like reading, don’t you think?

Tonight, I start to eat things out of the deep freezer. Honestly, not too excited about it, beyond getting rid of some food that has probably been there for a while. Not forever, but long enough.

Oh, I saw a youtube about guy who spent a few hundred dollars on a solar panel and a charging station to charge stuff in his shed. I think I might follow in his footsteps. I can use the set up to power the heater on the side porch. And then when I travel, I can use it to power my sound system maybe. or charge the car a little bit in a pinch. I’ll check it out on Friday.

Augustus for President: I will believe I am starting to gain some traction when people I do not know start filling out the surveys. When more than 10 people who I don’t know have taken at least one of the surveys, that will be a good sign.

I gave out a lot of stickers today. One guy cackled when I gave it to him. He is a man I have seen hanging out at McDonald’s a lot. He didn’t keep the sticker, just stuck it to the McDonald’s table he was sitting at. Sigh. I am not responsible for what other people do with my stickers, am I?

A bunch more thoughts went into the Presidential Thoughts document. Don’t let the name fool you, not all the thoughts are very lofty and Presidential. They are just thoughts that in some way relate to my candidacy and eventual time in the White House. Some of them are probably downright silly…

I was pleased to know that AOC was outspent 10-1 and she still won her first race. Gives me even more hope than I already have (which is a decent amount, by the way) of carrying the election.

3 to 0

More Gandalf than Harry (the yeti)

Easy come easy go. On Thursday I wrote to my three most recent helpers and asked them if they wanted to work this weekend. One said they couldn’t. The other two said they could. I said how about 1:30 on Saturday. Both said they could. Then today, both of them wrote and said they couldn’t because they were out of town. What the hell? I guess I am putting my help wanted sign back up again. Not that I want to replace them, but they are being flaky. And I hate flaky. One more chance to the latter two, two more chances for the first. Three strikes and you’re out of my work force.

A little bit more about the State Fair. I thought the Ice Age (movies) exhibit in the Exposition hall, where I last was back in 2020 to get my Covid shot, was pretty lame. Not really sure what they were going for but it was just a bunch of animatronic animals and not much else in a big open space. Seemed sad.

I was surprised that cash was no longer king at the Fair. As I mentioned, I think, the parking was by credit card or by prepaid voucher (which was also probably paid for by credit card) only. The ticket kiosks for the rides in the midway pushed people towards credit cards. I only ordered one food item and they at least said that cash was preferred. Speaking of which, my bacon bomb sandwich was not what I was expecting at all. It was tasty, but I was expecting a few layers of thick cut bacon with more bacon crumbled on it etc. And by thick cut, I was thinking maybe 1/4 inch thick. Instead, I think I got a piece that was about an inch thick! I guess I will never really know for sure what the heck was going on with that sandwich.

I only rode one ride – the chair lift ride that moved from one side of the fair to the other. $7 which seemed a bit pricey – but everything is pricey it seems these days. Though I was tempted to ride a camel – a two hump (bactrian?) as I have only ridden the one humped variety before.

Not a fan of crowds. But overall, I am glad I went.

As for today, I did a lot of nothing. I finished a book. Yay. I put some straps on the quilt on my day bed, which I hope will keep it from slip sliding away and off the mattress, as it has in the past. I had a nice talk with my sister and brother-in-law, who I hope to visit in October. And I found out that one of my nephews and his family have moved to Halifax for a couple of years! No one tells me anything. And yes, I have not been good about keeping in touch with my sister-in-law. Sigh. I will try to do better. Maybe even go visit her at some point. Maybe on the way back from CT. The new long range car makes the idea of traveling much more palatable.

I have done my duolingo and will be eating the last of my duck and drunken noodles tonight. And maybe a side salad. I really need to cook the aspragus(tus) soon. But I really don’t feel like doing even that little cooking.

Augustus for President: I worked on the vinyl for the car. Sigh. I don’t know if it is any good. And I am worried that it will just peel off and I will have wasted $100. Mostly I’m worried that it isn’t any good. Maybe if I angled the text? I wish I were a graphic artist. This will be about 24 inches by 14 inches. And I plan to get two – one for each front door of the car. Or maybe I ought to have two different designs? This one and maybe one that is more funky? Or that has a slogan on it? I’m also thinking that I might like to go darker purple – not quite to black, but closer… My brain hurts.

My serious face

Do I look Serious?

I think I was actually trying to smile. I am not fond of smiling on command. Which is one reason that I didn’t really pursue acting and chose to direct instead. Anyway, I do look serious. Or at least I think I look serious.

It was a pleasant day. I ran some errands in the morning. Got another book from the library that someone recommended. I wanted to see if I had checked it out before and I couldn’t figure out how to access my list of books I had taken out. The librarian helped me find it. Only to discover that it wasn’t all that useful since there was no way to sort or search that list. Oh well. Better than nothing I guess.

I then went to Staples and Harbor Freight. At Staples I bought myself an inexpensive pair of bluetooth headphones. I mean, really inexpensive. Maybe I will splurge at some point and get a much better pair, but these are ok for the time being. I was getting tired of the Airpods. They bothered my ears, mentally at least. At Harbor Freight I got more rubber non-skid mats for the stairs. The front stairs needed two little pieces to hopefully help keep the squirrel off the front porch. And a couple more for the side porch stairs. I still have a whole lot to go on those, but this is a start.

Back home, it was my normal lunch – olives, veggies, chips and dip and hummus. Yum!

After lunch, I knocked a few things off of my todo list. Does anyone else add things to their to do list just so they can cross them off? Not that I have ever done that (recently). I took care of two GLO items. And started looking into how to get a variance. They application is really long and costs $150. I think I will go talk to someone and see what my chances are of getting a variance. I don’t think I actually need one since my property is in the college’s Multi-purpose use zone. We shall, I guess, see.

I have dined already. SM and I went to the BBQ place down the lake a bit. It was really good! And very crowded. Because of SM’s forward thinking, we managed to avoid waiting in line. I had ribs and pulled pork. She had just the pulled pork. All the sides were good – though I think I would have liked to try the coleslaw. But I do always like beans. And SM got a pecan pie, so I got one too. I have a lot of leftover food for the next couple of days. Yay!

ASS for President is percolating along. I heard back from the person I spoke with before and she said that none of her campaign managers would be good at doing a national campaign. And she didn’t want to spend the time to look for their contact information as she had run 8 years ago and had no idea where their contact information was. That’s ok. I would have liked to have spoken with them, but I will seek others to speak to. I also decided that I would go to a powwow next weekend. There is one about two hours from me. I don’t work on the weekends anyway, so…I wonder how expensive the tickets are. I will have to remember to take my hat as I am guessing it will be hot…

I told SM that I was running for President and her response was typical of the responses I have gotten before – laughter. Which isn’t surprising. I think most people don’t expect someone they know to run for president. And other thoughts probably ran right along after that thinking – who the heck is he to think he could become President of the US. I just have to point out that three people (at least) who really were not “Presidential Material” have run and won – Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and Drumpf. The first and last had name recognition primarily. And GW had his father as a former VP and President. Meanwhile, other people who have run have been unknowns. But none of them have really been one of the hoi poloi. Not that I am exactly that, but I’m closer than most of the elites who run for top offices. Anyway, we didn’t talk of it further. Maybe we will again one day.

Happy Friday!