I used to Work There!

About time! I wonder why it took so long…

Wow, what a weird start to the day. I rolled over, pulled up my iPhone, which I had left charging overnight and started to do some Duolingo. Yay. Except that a few minutes later the phone blacked out. The battery was basically dead. No charging had happened. Grr. I futzed around with the charging cable and – no love. No charging was happening. I went through all of my charging cables and nothing. I had contingencies in mind – like driving to Rochester to buy a new phone. Or getting it fixed. I had one more thing to try, plugging the phone into the car charging cable. Which I did. And that worked. So, I ended up charging the phone in the car. At least I got to read. But I started my first dash almost an hour late. (Later, I decided to try to clean out the charge port – maybe that helped as well…)

Yes, I did a first dash. And it was ok. Of course, the dash I was offered just before I wanted to quit was a long trip for not enough money. Sigh. Oh, and I took Dunkin to Canandaigua. Luckily, I got to chat with the person I delivered to, who told me that a water main had broken and lots of restaurants along the main drag there were closed! Poor them! And poor dashers over there.

At lunch time, I was going to wash more dishes, but having burnt my thumb a teeny bit and put a bandaid on it, I didn’t then want to put my hands in soapy water. Yes, I wash all my dishes by hand. I’ll do the dishes tomorrow I guess. Not that there are a lot of them…

My second dash was bad. First offer, too far, not enough money. A few decent rides, but most were also too far for too little money. Though someone did add $5 to one of the orders, which is a good thing. Because I wanted to do trivia tonight, and in honor of that wanted to take a shower and eat something before heading there, I decided to stop early. Yes, again this week I did not make a buttload of money. But that’s ok. I wonder what the ratio of good overall dash sessions to bad overall dash sessions is. I’ll do the math at some point. I am guessing it is at least 1:4.

Anyway, I am going to take a shower, eat something and try to get to Twisted by 7. That should be doable.

Augustus For President: I know that third part candidates don’t do well in Presidential Elections. Or at least they have never done well in presidential elections. Though there was a time when the “republicans” replaced the “whigs” back in 1860-1896. Anyway, how dare I think that I could do better than Jill Stein, who has run three times? She didn’t even break a million votes nationwide. Am I sincerely crazy? Probably. I just think I have more going for me than Dr. Stein. Hubris, don’t you know. Honestly, I think it is a function of time and message. She didn’t give herself enough time. And her message, though good, didn’t resonate with the masses. In my humblest of opinions.

The process to become president really puts parties and people who aren’t the Democrats and the Republicans at a severe disadvantage. I mean, really terrible. We have to split our resources, sort of, between gathering support and gathering signatures and money to get on all the ballots.

And can someone explain to me why people in US territories cannot vote in presidential elections.

I need a good project manager. Any volunteers? You will eventually, hopefully, be paid…

W.I.P.

Aren’t we all just WIPs? (Works in progress) Maybe life is a work in progress. No, I don’t know what I am talking about. It is early, I have been up for a long time, already spent a fairly productive hour at the Smith and have a load-in and show to look forward to today. And another early morning tomorrow – and longish day. Sunday, I sort of get to rest, if being on call for two showings of a movie is considered restful…

Lately, my brother has taken to calling early in the morning – mom seems to be awake more often at that time-ish. That is to the good. His calling any time is to the good, I think. The bad part is that sometimes mom isn’t all that awake and I have to get up and answer the phone and give it to her. I really, really, really hate getting up early. I am a night owl. If I am in bed and heading to sleep before 2 am it is an early night for me. And getting up at 6 or 6:30 means I get only 4 or 5 hours of sleep. And I think I need more beauty rest than that. At least that is what the mirror is telling me.

Meanwhile, we got a new railing put up in the bathroom – and one will be going up in the hall soon. All in an effort to make mom feel less scared and wobbly when she is heading to and from the bathroom. Fred, who helps out at the Smith a lot, is doing the work. He does such good work!

Our usual aide is taking vacation starting today. Poo. Mom doesn’t really like the other aides. Oh well, we will all survive. Vacation! I would love a vacation. Not a staycation. I want to get away. Preferably far, far away. I saw a really good deal to Costa Rica – $700 including air for 5 nights I think. I didn’t look at it too closely as it isn’t feasible just now. I need to get a lot of ducks in a row before that can happen. Or any vacation at all. Heck, finding two hours to be away is starting to be a bit of a challenge. Maybe I will get my act together and start getting more help lined up. Anything is possible.

By the way, I am still playing Fallout Shelter – and I am trying GTA 4. I don’t like it as well as I liked Saints Row – Saints Row is just way more over the top. Anyway, I just like to play.

V is for…

Lately at the Smith, I have been dealing with HVAC issues. I know what the H and the AC stand for. But never knew what the V was. I thought maybe it was a 5. Or maybe just a nonsense letter so that people wouldn’t be working in the HAC field. Turns out it is for Ventilation. See, it really is doable to learn something new every day.

Long time, no write. Someone posted on FB that pain is what drives people to write. I guess that could be one motivator. In the past, I have written out of pain. And I have written out of happiness. I don’t really know what makes me want to write. Ok, money. I write because of the fiscal rewards. Hahahahahahaha.

What has happened since last I wrote a blog post? Lots and nothing. Mom had visits from Karl and his family. And from Mary Flett who was also in the area for a reunion. (Karl was here for his GHS reunion.) The Smith continues to keep me interested and busy. Mostly, though, nothing too much has happened. Mom continues to decline. She has basically forgotten how to take her pills. And she is eating so little, I don’t know what to do about that. Food she used to eat readily, has become icky. But I have found a few things that she will still eat. Oh and the chew some food a bit and then spit it back out – that is just lovely. Sigh.

If I can get my act together, I will post some pictures. Ok, that is pretty unlikely. Oh, wait, no it isn’t. I can always add them to this post (or any post) from my phone. Hopefully Alzheimer’s doesn’t run in the family…

Deus Ex Machina

Yes, I am a fan. It probably isn’t the best way to live one’s life – abiding until a Deus Ex Machina sort of event occurs and then going with that. Sometimes it is hard to recognize them. Other times they literally hit me over the head.

Let’s start with working. I hate looking for work. Interviewing and all that sort of thing bores the heck out of me. What does a resume say? Nowadays, nothing. You can copy a resume off the internet and as long as you are moderately competent, end up with a decent looking piece of paper. How have I gotten my jobs? Sure, a little bit of chatting – but mostly, it hasn’t been me interviewing – it has been me showing up and somehow proving what I am capable of. My job at Rose Hill was given me because the director knew me and knew my capabilities. At Perkins, yes, I did apply, but they were just opening and were hiring everybody. I rose from sandwich cook to king of the kitchen, running the wheel in almost no time. At my first real job, I got that by being able to type 50+ words a minute on a mac. And from there, I ended up being a system administrator and office manager, after a short detour as a special assistant to the director of the Lawrence Hall of Science.

Macromedia – my friend got me in the door and from there I moved from position to position as they became available – ending up as the Manager of my sales engineering group. Joy.

At Clubcorp – moving from a part time bartender to Private Event Director in less than a year.

At the Smith – starting as a lugger and am now the Technical Director/Production Manager and Film person.

I need a Deus Ex Machina in other parts of my life. In my love life – I have been putting myself out there, but so far, kismet hasn’t happened. I have faith it will. I just have to be patient. Meanwhile, what do I do, thumb twiddle? And where my mom is concerned – a deus ex machina would be good there too. I am not good at making some decisions – others are really easy. Most decisions are pretty easy or me, actually. And I am good at problem solving, doing the work and or delegating effectively. Well, not always effectively…

On a completely different note, a good friend and her friend came for a lunch visit, all the way from NC, sort of. It was great to see her (them) and nice to be out and about for a short bit. Yay!

What a day

Wow, that was a long day. Not as long as it could have been, but pretty long feeling in any case. And today is off to a crappy start. Only work, luckily, not at home.

Saturday was a high profile event at the Smith. We had over 1000 guests. Unfortunately we tried to do too many new things at once. And I had to try to fix or mitigate the problems. When all I wanted to do was hang out at home to take care of my mom. Sigh. I don’t know where the problems lie, but it wasn’t a pleasant front of house sort of day. Stage-wise, my group did great. It was one of my worker’s last day, since he is heading off to greener pastures. Poo. One of my best workers and someone I could rely on as a solid crew chief. A mini-me in absentia. Or something like that.

Ok, that’s all boring. Who wants to hear about my silly work stuff? Like yesterday afternoon, when I got a call 10 minutes before the movie was supposed to start, saying that there was no projectionist. And said projectionist being really sorry “if” he signed up for the time because he was not available. So I got to go in and start the movie. Luckily, I had a responsible person there who stayed and let me know if there were any problems with the film. Huzzuh.

While I was home, I took this lovely cabbage and made it into coleslaw. I am guessing cole slaw doesn’t freeze well…

Same Old Weirdness

Totally weird. I walked into my bosses office and a young woman was sitting there. She looked oddly familiar. We were introduced and her name did nothing to jar my memory of where I knew her from. I kept thinking and thinking about it and later asked my boss who she was. She said who she was her significant other’s daughter and it still didn’t clarify if or how I knew her. Then she mentioned something about the woman saying she recognized me from Wegman’s! (Auto-incorrect wants to change Wegman’s to Legman’s – sigh) Turns out she is a checker there and we have spoken a few times. Out of context, I just didn’t recognize her. Small, weird world. Now, if only something like that would happen with a woman with whom I was romantically interested, that would be nice. Sadly, that doesn’t happen, or hasn’t happened yet.

I am up at 6 this morning (yesterday) for some reason. Oh, right, the phone was ringing. Mom couldn’t or wouldn’t pick up the receiver. So I leapt out of bed to try to help, but too late. It was Karl calling. And mom was wide awake, so it is a better time, generally, to call than the afternoon when I am not around and mom is likely to be caught napping. I texted him to try again and he did. Huzzuh! I still smile (ruefully) when I think about the time recently when the phone was ringing and I told mom to pick up the phone – and she did – the whole device. Tee hee.

What was the second thing I did after I woke up? (First being get mom and Karl together on the phone) I did Smith stuff. I am a sick puppy. I tried logging on to computers at work and mostly failed. Then I built a ticket announcement email for The Chris Robinson Brotherhood that is supposed to go out today at noon.

Maybe I oughtn’t to say this since Karma has a way of mucking things up, but I haven’t been sick in a long while. Well, not to speak of. And I don’t get owies very frequently, but I got one yesterday. Trying to get out and go to the Smith, I tried to step over the gate at the head of the stairs and just didn’t lift my leg far enough. Owie.

Unimpressed with Impress from Open Office (and more)

So, here’s the 411. We have an event on Friday (it may be Friday when I publish this) that is a high school graduation. They gave me some files that they wanted to have projected. No problem. We can do that. I thought, heck, why not use one of the laptops we bought so that I won’t have to use my computer for the event, especially since I am not going to be at the event, my staff will. I thought that Open Office had a presentation piece of software. It does. Impress by name. Yippee! I go to put the thumb drives into the laptop so that I can get the information off, and the laptop doesn’t read the thumb drives. Sigh. I have a call into our tech support guy, but he hasn’t responded. Work around – upload to Drop Box and download onto the laptop. Slow network at home means a 5 hour upload time! Eeek! But I do it. All the files are on the laptop, finally. Open impress and try to import a graphic – comes in wonky. I try again – message – no graphic filter found. Sigh. I try a video – mp4 is not a supported format (contrary to what the open dialogue shows for supported formats). Poo.

On my mac – it took me about three minutes to put the files on my computer and to build a presentation. Sigh. I have exported it to Powerpoint and am downloading a Powerpoint reader (which almost never works – oops, it didn’t). I went to work to get a CD to record onto – forgetting that CDs only hold 700mb of data and the powerpoint is 1.75 gigs. Sigh. Plan M?, heck, I don’t know, L? I tried the thumb drive again and it magically worked. Yay and poo at the same time. I have the file on the PC now – and am downloading a reader from Microsoft. Fingers crossed and breath held. Almost there – needed to download Quicktime since Keynote converted the video files. But it worked. A little slow the first time through, so whoever is running the presentation will have to go through it once or twice to get it into memory. How exciting!

In other news, mom took a teeny tumble. We got her back on her feet readily enough. And there was no harm done that I or the aide could determine. Yay!

Rarely do I ask

I rarely ask “Why me?” A longish while ago (20 years maybe?) i decided that I really was in control of my bus, captain of my ship, ultimately responsible for my life. I also realized that things and circumstances are what they are. True, they can change (and change is the only constant) and they do. There are some things within my control and some things that aren’t. I think I know which is which. So, I don’t lament my current state – no social life (not that I really need much of one), no travel (that is the biggest lack just now in my life) (is travel part of social life?) and constantly having to consider all my choices in light of my caretaking duties. Ok, I don’t lament it frequently. I know that I have chosen this and that I am here, doing the best I can on a minute by minute (even nanosecond by nanosecond) basis. Huzzuh.

I bought mom a little marzipan. Hmm, maybe two pounds isn’t really “a little” marzipan.

Going cold turkey on Instagram and Snapchat. And not missing them at all. Phew and yay. Another obsession that has passed.

Busy day today – and exciting. We are supposed to be getting our Assisted Listening System installed. That is great! I am going to try and set it up so that I can get sound from the sound board to the projection booth and vice versa. We shall of course see. And I have to get going. Time to put out the recycling, brush my teeth, check on mom and head to the Smith! Eeek!

Latest Binge

Agents of Shield Season 2 is now on Netflix! Huzzuh! Do I mind being a season behind? Sure. Do I like being able to watch the episodes anytime I like? Yes. Do I like watching as many as my eyeballs and my brain can stand to watch before they melt? Yes. Life is full of trade offs. I was depressed to see on the internet (so it must be true) that people who tend to binge watch tv shows also have a higher probability of being clinically depressed. Sigh.

The other day I was at Wegman’s, which isn’t odd since I am there fairly frequently (and still haven’t met the love of my life wandering the Lucky Charms aisle), and I was in the beer section. In NYS, we can buy beer in a grocery store – but not wine. I thought about buying some Yeti Imperial Stout from Great Divide (one of my all time favorite beers – and it comes in all sorts of variations as well, but I, as usual, digress) when North Coast’s Old Rasputin popped into my mind. And lo and behold, there it was.  Old Rasputin was the first Russian Imperial Stout that I remember tasting. I might have tasted others before and have certainly tasted many since. So I picked up a four pack. Yippee! I like to mix the Imperial Stout with Yuengling’s Black and Tan. Yum! Somewhere else I have a beer blog – well, a blog about places I have been that have a beer like focus – brewpubs are a passion of mine – ok, I will go to breweries as well. And Wineries. And Distilleries, though I have been to very few of those. Where was I?

Turns out that the reason the DVDs sounded bad is because they were mixed so that 90 percent of their sound was going through the center speaker. Sigh. The amp for the center speaker seemed to work fine when I tested it Monday. And it didn’t look impossible to switch the amps around (given 20 minutes or so) so that the sub woofer amp would be feeding the center channel. I am going to look at the back of the server today and see if it has audio out just in case as well. And I hope to contact the Amp manufacturer and see what they have to say. I don’t have to call Oppo (the Blu-Ray player’s manufacturer) since there isn’t anything wrong with it. Yay.

Mom’s listening comprehension is getting worse. Very sad. And the weather is making her all itchy and scratchy. That isn’t fun for anyone, mom least of all I am sure.

Open Pulteney Street Makes Me Happy!

It is so wonderful to be able to traverse Pulteney Street again after so long. Phew and yippee! It would have sucked if it had never re-opened. It is funny how quickly my mind has readapted. It has been frustrating for such a long time, having to drive a mile out of my way to get places sometimes. Ok, not really a mile, more like a quarter of a mile. Still. Those quarters add up. Just look at your change collection! When you start counting your change, you end up with a bunch of quarters and suddenly you find you have $60 worth of change! Woo hoo! I love change. The money kind best, but the other kind is ok too.

It is Sunday and feels like it. Yay! I will be heading into the Smith later today to do a little work and check on how the flood damage has been handled. And I have some work that can be handled from home – theatre manager and adding an event to the website. I haven’t heard back about the movies I requested for July yet, but hope to hear about them on Tuesday or so.

It is also time to order mom some more marzipan. The last two pounds went pretty quickly. But she needs little treats and marzipan fruit are pretty easy to store and distribute. I will admit that I ate at least two or three of the last 48(?) pieces myself. Is that evil? I don’t think so…

The fridge is full of food. Tomorrow I will do a good deal of emptying as I make chicken casserole again. I am actually getting better at it. Funny how practice works. And finding out important ingredients, like adding some broth to the mix. I am thinking of adding Broccoli cheese soup instead of cream of mushroom soup to this batch and see what happens. And lots of left over veggies. And chicken of course. Oops, just drooled on the keyboard again. Poor computer…