The last Sunday

Well, most of what I have is packed up in plastic totes, cardboard boxes of various sorts, etc.  I pick up the rental truck tomorrow morning and then it's on - the loading part.  The only big awkward thing is the tall bookcase, and I don't really use it the damn thing.  I'll have a dolly but up I'm not sure if that would even help.   I might have to stop and get some bungee cords so that I can secure it.  I'm not worried.    The heaviest box is the one that's right behind me.  Superheavy and filled with hardback books.  I'm hoping that the dolly can handle it otherwise I'll have to unload some of it and then reload it.  More of an annoyance than anything else.

On Tuesday at some ungodly hour, I'll grab the pets and hit the road.  And then the real fun begins!  Get the key, pay the pro-rated rent, and then unpack.  I fully expect to feel like a zombie by nightfall but I need to gas up the truck and drop it off somewhere.  Ok, so maybe some zombie looking guy will snarl at the rental place.  I am not a monster!  I'm an idiot who didn't hire movers.  I had movers when I came here a couple of years ago and then I had movers when I moved out of Texas to Washington (or was it Ohio to Texas?).  One of these days I'll figure out what to do with all these boxes of stuff.

I ain't be got no weapon

I've started running along the local river trail.  My fitbit helps in telling me the number of steps and the distance but doesn't say anything about the sore left foot and walkers who can't stay on their side of the road.  At least I have new running shoes and a bright t-shirt that screams don't run me over, bro!   I'm not a runner and pretty much never tried to.  The zombie apocalypse wouldn't scare me as much as a legion of bill collectors or Puget Sound blood center people.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. --Thoreau

My ear buds keep popping out so I don't have anything to drown out the noise from the highway.  It's so nice when the trail deviates from the road and it gets quiet.  Somewhere there has to be a nice bucolic trail that was built by Luddites who only became Luddites after cashing out their stock options.  Maybe those idyllic roads have been photoshopped into existence. To be fair I should mention that I still use a real ipod with moving parts and a selection wheel that going clickity click click click.  No wifi, no USB, no nothin'.

I forgot to see if anything happened last night when the deadline passed the democracy protesters were to stop.  I totally support the protesters and their efforts of choosing their own course.  Of course it'll end badly because that's what typically happens.  We (or someone) better get to space soon otherwise we'll bash each other with a giant club.  America seems pretty tame in spite of the faux hysteria that's fueled by social media.  If one didn't know better one would think that cops routinely shot citizens for no apparent reason.  Yes, it happens now and then and hopefully there's an internal review as well as big lawsuits.

Never begins

Today was much cooler.  I even turned off the ceiling fan because a part of me thinks that it Deserves a Break Today.  I think I could've used an air conditioner over the past month, but like anyone in Seattle-land, no-one bothers to get one.  Oh well.

No gym today but I did walk to IKEA.  I went to get a coffee refill when lo' and behold someone had moved into my booth.  I laid into them and then I stormed off.  Immediately I felt guilty and mad for not being calm and collected, and mad because it kind of sucks there because it's a mad house.  Not crowded but like being at the matinee showing of "Frozen" or "Despicable Me."  I would've quickly made it back to my booth if someone didn't snag the big coffee maker forcing me to walk around to the other side. Yeah, there was a big run on Swedish coffee.

I did move a few boxes around but I haven't downsized like I was hoping.  Maybe tomorrow.

In the middle of a  frantic bus riding daze, I realized that I don't have a book to read.  Don't get me wrong, half of the volume inside this apartment is comprised of books but I don't know where the little pile of here are books to read next is.  Maybe I packed them up. Maybe the book genies took them and brought them to someone who'll read them.

Say hello to my little friend

I think Sinead has a new album...sometime.  Not sure if people still use the term album these days.  CD?  A good number of people I hear on Sirius XMU have just a few songs or something that looks album-y but was cobbled together by....someone.  It should be even easier today to come up with some sort of package to prove that you're a Real Musician.  I'm not sure there's enough originality or talent so it's hard to say.  Still, I like new stuff even if very little of it I can later remember.

Yes, it's a stunt bee or someone has Photoshop 

I wonder what Yogi Berra thinks of "Brooklyn Baby."  Maybe someone should ask him about his thoughts on "Fucked My Way to the Top" which is a much better song.

To be honest, I've been on a XM sabbatical/boycott/meh because the XM app on my phone will flake out for no reason at all.  It's buggy and should not be giving me trouble on a Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.3.  That's as vanilla as one can get. Other apps do crash but music apps should never ever ever crash.  That's almost as annoying as a sports team that always loses to the same sucky team no matter what.  This is not supposed to ever happen.

I used to upload every mp3 I had to Google music but then I realize how shoddy the upload functionality was.  My playlists would have missing songs and then the damn "smart playlists" would have the missing songs.  If you're forcing me to use iTunes to define the playlists then you damn well better respect the playlist.  I don't want/need/care for a "smart playlist" that I didn't ask for.  You'd think it would let the user sit in the captain's chair.

Assigment

I'm not sure what's up with the cold gloomy weather. At least I remembered my sweatshirt which tells me I'm not entirely sans clue. No more Android classes. Not sure why I bothered to take these at UW. I'm not a classroom learner even if these have been virtual.  When I worked a t Keybank (yes, that place) I'd invariably choose one of those conferences (LinuxWorld, Tech Ed) over any classroom stuff. I think this habit dates back to Stanford where the hands on stuff was far more interesting than big-O analysis in ML.  I guess they still have conferences today but nobody us going to be paying for yours truly. Besides, it's not like anything is all that different. Bright and shiny but with the same tiny abacus inside.

I'm glad that the Spurs won. Naturally, Tim Duncan and Pops and Many should ride off into the sunset. Don't really care what Lebron wants to do. I don't live there anymore.

Strange cargo

Wrote this in May and it's been in draft mode because i'm a dork. -DW

At the current rate that I'm reading,  I may finish before football season. Granted, reading Little Dorrit on a bus isn't the easiest thing to do, especially with loud, obnoxious people who just won't shut up. The BBC series on Amazon Prime is pretty good too. I just have to remember to watch in small portions otherwise I'll cheese out with the book.

I'm glad that today is Friday but I know I'll be bored come tomorrow. I don't even know what would help but I doubt that it'd be another book.

Today was so dreary.  Seattle has more dreary days than anywhere else.  I wonder if England is like this.  I heard it's also super expensive to live in London so we can cross that famous city off our list.  It would be fun to visit along with Paris, Rome, Berlin, Helsinki, and pretty much any place not in the US.

Paged out

You really can't blog with a cell phone. Maybe if you were locked up in a prison and you were near a power socket?  Right. I don't even remember to blog to my 2 or 3 friends.  Um, one friend?

Still, a writer writes always.  Even on a Galaxy Nexus.

There is truth, and there are lies, and art always tells the truth. Even when it's lying.

--Being John Malkovich

Pumpkin

I figured the idiots in DC would shutdown the gov't. No matter. What else could happen when nothing's changed? I don't remember the previous shutdown if only because I was working in St. Louis.  The big news back then was that the Anaheim Rams were moving to the STL. Oh, yeah, and AT&T decide to break up. (I was working at their Easylink service.)

I was hoping that the USPS would be affected since that would adversely affect people (read: idiot voters who elected the OTHER idiots), but that's not the case. Damn you self-funded USPS! FWIW, the stoppage of public services is high on the suckage list.

The Cleveland Indians have a one game playoff tomorrow. I'm impressed that they're even here given that the owner doesn't care to win and city is fickle.

Top Chef NOLA debuts tomorrow. I've seen most of the previous seasons and the show is waning. There are too many cooking shows!

Agents if SHIELD is kind of silly. Basically, it's Agent Coulson babysitting some annoying kids.  I wonder if the gov't shutdown will furlough SHIELD and there flying cars/ships.

What Renton couples fight about

Well,  they raised the monthly rent by $60.  I haven't signed a lease renewal but I did apply at another apartment thingie.  Yeah, economics.  I don't want to move because I'm an immovable object.   I can't for the life me escape this dilemma.  Moving would force me to revisit the boxes and boxes of stuff that I brought from Texas/Ohio.  Have I downsized in the 18 months that I lived here?

It's less about the number crunching and fiscal business case.  What I've done today is added an option: moving to a cheaper one bedroom apartment.  I have a two bedroom place now but the second bedroom is just a storage room.  I'm much rather be moving to another state or country.  Does that make  any sense?  The sameness and predictability of everything is driving me nuts.

Play Pretend

One of my habits is going to the gym and then walking over to McDonald's to have a coffee.  At $1, it's very much the only thing I can find for one U.S. dollar.  Today is Friday and there were a lot of kids there.  When did kids get a Friday reprieve?  When did the school day become optional?

When one considers the race to the bottom when it comes to jobs and education, shouldn't the kids be doing even more?  Whatever.  I have no kids but I doubt that I'd let them run wild or have an adventure at McDonald's.

The teenage girl who lives upstairs with her mom is always home.  At noontime on a Friday, she was home, that is.  I guess school here in Seattle-land is definitely optional.  I can't remember all the details when I was a wee one but I can remember high school.  I was incarcerated from 8am to 4pm.  And that don't include after-school band practice in the Fall (marching band, you know).  Sometimes I got a ride from my mom and sometimes it was the public bus. McDonald's was one of those rare treats and we didn't hang out there.

My brother is adamant that kids call the shots.  There's a lot of truth to that but I think yours truly is old school.  I'm so old school I looped back and became progressive.  No, you're not special at all.  You are cannon fodder for the faceless, anonymous companies who'll value your worth far less than a McDonald's coffee.

Army Dreamers

Sometimes I'll stumble onto an old song that brings back even old memories. The Kate Bush song "Army Dreamers" magically teleports me to college and reading Brit Lit. I didn't have many friends let alone friends who even liked Kate Bush or The Cocteau Twins or Sinead. I wonder what would have happened if I kept doing fuzzy things, like taking English courses for nought.

I managed to run for 32 minutes which just happened to be 3 miles. The next goal is to keep doing that. I am so not a runner. But I now realize that things fall apart.

Google's Music Manager is wacked. I upload iTunes playlists that are simply an album, but only a couple of mp3s make the jump to lightspeed. And it keeps making Instant Mixes that were designed by interns smoking something. Ok, it's free but I hate things that don't work. The Windows-based Music Manager feels really dot-oh. I wonder if there are replacements. And yes, Windows sucks but that's like saying the economy sucks.