Is 2026 Over yet?

Last night, SM gave me two Christmas gifts. I didn’t give her anything and I feel a bit bad about that. Not hugely, because she has everything she wants I believe. Anyway, she gave me a cool mug that has a QR code on it that takes me to a daily trivia question (and answer). And she gave me a really cool immersion blender set! I have always wanted one. I mentioned once or twice that I was envious of hers.

I’m the luckiest

It has been another quiet day here at the chalet. Surprisingly I did accomplish a few things.

I started emptying out the trunk of the car after the trip to Maine. I think I have almost all of the crap out. And I need to get the charging cable out of the back seat of the car. I think the Frunk doesn’t have anything important in it just now. I’ll have to remember to check.

Next, I did some neatening in my bedroom. This is a monthly or even every other month sort of task. The floor is not cord free, otherwise I would run a Roomba in here. I might do it anyway and see what happens. There is a lot of dust in here.

My receipts from last year all went into a plastic bag. I don’t think I need any of those receipts for my taxes. I might need one or two if I didn’t manage to sort them out and put them in the campaign finance drawer. And I started collecting receipts for the new year.

Why do I have a receipt already? I went to the grocery store. I wanted to get my self generated traditional NYE celebration supplies: Sparkling something – sometimes I get sparkling wines, this time I got some sparkling apple juice, Borsin, Smoked Mussels, Fancy Crackers. I also ended up getting some eggs since mine somehow magically got used up while I was gone (I think I still had at least 6 in there – whatever I don’t really care – it is just sad that my boarder said nothing about using them or replacing them). And I bought some curly fries – one can never have enough curly fries – and a frozen pizza that I might well have for dinner tomorrow night.

Tonight, I am making a light pasta and meatballs dinner so I have room to have a NYE type snacking session later tonight. So excited!

Augustus for President: After I get an accounting system – hopefully one that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg – I will go back and enter the expenses into expense sheets and see if I can reconcile the bank balance with all the stuff I spent money on and some of which I reimbursed myself for. I also plan to fill out a hard copy of the FEC forms tomorrow and then see how one enters them online. If I don’t get any farther than actually registering as a candidate for the 2028 elections, I will have gotten farther than most people in an attempt to become President of the US.

I looked on the internet to see how Presidents ranked in terms of IQ. According to the sites I looked at, all the presidents have had decent brains. Even Drumpf. Which was an abosolute shocker to me. One site rated him at 124 to 145. Hahahahaha. I doubt he ever had an IQ higher than 95. If that one is so inflated, I take all the others with a grain of salt as well. I mean, GW Bush had a 135 IQ? Hahaha. No. And Ronald Reagan 130? Again, nope. I don’t believe any of those three’s estimated scores. I may not be the smartest person on the planet (by a long way) but I know that I am smarter than Drumpf, GW Bush and Reagan. (Not combined, but…)

Travel Day!

Today was a travel day, hence the late post.

Got up at 6 (!) and didn’t go back to sleep. Why? Because I had to be out of the house around 8:15 in order to get to EC’s to pick her up for our trip. But that gave me lots of time to chill out and do some Duolingo before hitting the road. I am in another weekly quest with another person who is not doing Duolingo currently. Maybe they did in the past. Maybe they will in the future. But right now, I get to do the whole quest on my own. Luckily it isn’t anything too crazy and I will finish it. Still, it is irksome to be matched with these people. I am stopping following them so hopefully I won’t get stuck with them in the future.

I got out when I wanted to and got EC and we headed to the ROC airport. Dropped her off and parked in the garage. I have no idea how expensive that is going to be, but I really couldn’t care much less. This trip is about convenience, not about parsimony.

We went to the check in counter and were basically waived away and told that a wheel chair plus attendant would come get us. Paul arrived and whisked us through the TSA check point. EC got inspected a bit and I got patted down. No idea why. But since we hadn’t had to to wait in line, that little delay wasn’t bothersome. On the way to the gate, I sprung for some water and a brownie. Any guesses how much that cost? $13!! Insane.

We were, obviously, very early. But I always prefer to be early than on time. And late. Since I was traveling with someone who needed extra time to get down the jetway, we boarded the plane first. So our bags made it into the overhead easily. Quick flight with nothing too exciting to report. At O’Hare, we were greeted by a young women from a country I had never really registered before (Kyrgyzstan). Her English was great. She also spoke her native language and some Russian and seemed a little surprised that I spoke some Russian. I really need to get back to that. There were three other passengers on the little electric cart she maneuvered through the crazy airport that is O’Hare. I am very glad that we had her. It was a long, long way from our gate to the next gate. Even I would have been exhausted by the time we had reached it. Sadly, we were at the end of a section and there was no food easily available. EC had bought some food and I had the brownie and some snacks I had brought. And the outrageous water. so we survived.

On the next flight, we boarded on time. If I had brought my new suitcase, it probably would have had to have been checked on the jetway because the overhead bins were teeny! My backpack barely fit. EC’s bag was also small enough. Phew! We had to sit at the gate for a longish while while maintenance did its thing. Eventually, into the air we went. The flight was uneventful. Enough turbulence that we didn’t get a drink service, but that’s ok. I napped for most of the flight.

Cool Sculpture in the new Kansas City Airport

Our next wheelchair pusher was from Ethiopia. What an international day! And our Uber driver, who was laquacious and knowledgable was from Pakistan, though he had been away from there almost fifty years, whisked us from the airport to our destination. Taking a detour through Kansas City Kansas as a bridge was backed up and would have added 20 minutes to the ride.

At the C’s building, we had a lovely pasta dinner and great chat. But now I am a bit tired. Though I think a walk would be a good thing after all that sitting around. Tomorrow, off to visit 5 (!) places that CC has organized for us to check out. It will be a long and interesting day I think.

Augustus for President: CC (not the same CC but his wife) asked me about my campaign. I think I gave good responses. It is hard to tell. The more I talk about it the better I feel about what I am saying. Oh, and I gave the cart driver a couple of stickers, even though she isn’t a citizen yet.

Yay Sort of Vacation!

I cannot express how happy I am that I will not be dashing for about two weeks. Dashing as in Door Dash that is. I will be dashing about. Sort of like the reindeer. Hither and yon. Delivering presents? Doubtful. But zipping to places far and wide.

But I am, once again, ahead of myself. Before I can get to the non-dashing, I need to just say a quick word about my dashing today. It was a good dash. Curtailed a tad early. Mainly because I didn’t want to dash anymore. I had lots of short dashes and made decent money. Woo hoo! Not enough to pay for the hot water heater, but still. Every shekel in is a shekel that can go out later. I like leaving door dash on a high note.

After dashing, I came home for lunch and a shower. I was really dirty. My poor hair. And the poor people who had to see me with my hair looking quite so icky. That is one of the issues with long hair – it can look really bad at times. Bald people don’t have that problem, do they? Do they have bad head days?

Post shower, I headed to SM’s to string some evil Christmas lights for her. Somehow she ended up with snowflake LEDs that were solar powered. And they were not fun to try to untangle. I don’t know that I did that great a job stringing them up. But they are up. Huzzuh!

Back at home, I went through most of my reminders and took care of a lot of little things. I skipped some of the tougher things and will see about doing them tomorrow while waiting for the flights. Oh, one of the things I did was to check-in to the flights. We will still have to stop at the Agent Desk to get EC her wheelchair in any case. I do hope that will allow us to skip through TSA easily and board early instead of in the late group that we are assigned. I printed out two copies of the boarding passes. It would be nice if I printed out two copies on purpose, but I did not. In any case, better to have too many copies than too few. And since I am traveling with someone I didn’t want to try to add the boarding passes to my phone’s wallet. I have done it before and it is handy, but…

I will pack after dinner tonight. I don’t have to pack a lot because we will only be traveling for three days, two nights. I will take the kids. And because of the terribleness of travel nowadays, I will pack some snacks for the trip. I hope EC likes peanut M&Ms. I hope that my new suitcase fits in the overhead measuring bins. I think we are on small planes both legs. Ick. I did not book these tickets.

When I get back from the trip, I will take at least one day between returning and heading off to Maine. Hopefully the trips will go smoothly and we won’t get stuck anywhere for an extended period of time. Of course, the driving trip Northeast will be dependent on clement weather.

Oh, it turns out that my right boot is indeed compromised and shipping water. Maybe I will get new boots while I am in Maine.

Augustus for President: I had a nice, though brief, discussion with someone about the campaign. I hope that we can speak again. They seem thoughtful, informed and interested. Good things indeed!

Another possible campaign photo?

Another Typical Sunday!

I really need to bring snacks with me when I travel by car. Oh well, maybe I will remember next time. If there is a next time. I mean, when I next travel long distance by car.

Speaking of cars, I definitely will be buying a new to me car this year. I am really tired of my poor Tesla Model 3 being a standard range vehicle.

So far, it has been a quiet day. I got up and did little until heading to EC’s to set up an opera for them to listen to. I thought their TV was a Roku television, but it wasn’t. Not sure what it was in terms of operating system. But they didn’t have a soundcloud app. They did have an internet browser option and I did that. In sound cloud, I search for the composer and the title and couldn’t find them either way. Instead, I just typed in the whole URL – which luckily wasn’t impossibly long. And it worked! Huzzuh! I also printed out the libretto. Getting the printer to print from my laptop was much easier than I thought it would be. And it printed two sided!

Back at home, I did my normal stuff – lunch – the last dolmades and three chicken wings – shower, change sheets. The laundry is all folded and put away.

More Pow Wow pictures!

My second trip to visit JC and EC didn’t happen. Not surprised actually, since I am sure JC was tired after his visit with TC. So, I have been just puttering around and trying to get the computer stuff for GLO organized. I haven’t done it in a year and needed to look and see how the final sheets looked.

So this week that is the big thing – the GLO shows. After the shows, I will talk to GR about leaving the board. I just don’t like having the commitment hanging over my head.

No big plans for tonight. Just dinner – I think I am making empanadas. And then deep thoughts.

Augustus for president: I wrote another snappy answer for why people should vote for me – I am not them – i.e. I am not the billionaire or even millionaire class. Nor am I a career politician who can seem sincere and then turn around and vote for crappy legislation – because they don’t want to lose their position…grrrr.

Laughing Matter?

My inexpensive headphones

All in all, it has been a pleasant day. Yay! We like those. Lovely weather, no committments, a few accomplishments, food shopping, book listening etc. Woo hoo!

I got up and had a message from AD apropos of nothing. He told me he appreciated my help with driving him around now and again. That was sweet. I also had a message from SM asking me if I could pick CM up from the train station on Sunday. I agreed, though I wasn’t really happy about it. Later she asked me if he could stay here – I told her no – because I have a border and only have two bathrooms. And then a little later, she told me that CM had decided not to come after all. I think it was because his daughter didn’t want him staying in the house that she is living in. The house that belongs to CM. Sigh. People are weird. But at least I don’t have to pick him up from the train station tomorrow. Yippee!

My friend and contractor, true to his word, came by at around 12:30 to install my new light fixture. It is an LED and it only took him about half an hour. I helped. Sort of. He didn’t charge me much, which was nice of him. I was, actually, tempted to pay him more, but restrained myself. I can be too generous at times.

Next up, my typical lunch and some YouTube – nothing exciting. Then more book listening. And some farting around on my computer. I now can listen to books either with headphones and my phone – or I can use my iPad and listen through my Apple HomePod mini. I couldn’t get the headphones to pair with the iPad for some reason. Not a bit deal.

At some point, I decided that I needed to do some work in the kitchen. I had already, last night?, washed the dishes in the sink. Mostly from my boarder who has taken to leaving her dishes there. Even when she cooks and uses many pans. Or on the dining room table. Sigh. Anyway, I noticed that the floor in the kitchen was looking a bit worse for wear – especially with the teeny bit of construction that my contractor had done. So I ran the Roomba. And headed to the grocery store.

My list was short – mostly vegetables. But…I decided to add more snackage to my basket. Four small, but not teeny, Charleston Chews (they are in the freezer as I type this), some cheez-its – cheddar and parmesan mixed together, and a package of Fig Newtons. It seems like the packages of Fig Newtons are getting smaller and smaller as they try to keep the price the same. Capitalism sucks. I can’t wait till I am hungry after dinner. Or maybe I won’t even wait to be hungry to dig in to some of those! Yum city!

Back home, I did some more dishes, set the Roomba to charge (it had done a decent job in the kitchen) and continued listening to my book.

Now I have done a teeny bit of DuoLingo. And I am about done with my blog. Soon it will be dinner time – chicken, broccoli and Corn are on the menu again tonight.

A.S.S. for President: I told my friend and contractor that I was running for president and he didn’t laugh. That was a pleasant surprise! I also did some work on organizing my thoughts on my run. Baby Steps for the time being. I am so looking forward to taking the campaign on the road. Informal at first and later – maybe in January, if I can get my ducks in a row, formal events. We shall see.