Countdown

18 days of work to go.  Not handling it consistently well, either.  About what?  Pretty much what you'd expect.  Do I have enough money (probably not) and what if I run out.  Sometimes I feel like I have enough going on that I won't miss the old job, except every other Thursday when the paycheck no longer gets direct-deposited.  My last planned splurge was a Steely Dan t-shirt, high-priced to begin with, and larded with a heavy shipping-and-handling fee before tax.  But the 1996 Art Crimes shirt is worn out, and the 2003 shirt from the Borgata concert is showing its age as well.  

But I have my essentials:  someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.  Even the virus that laid me low for a few weeks has receded, leaving only an occasional hacking cough.  

Just for my memory, here's the day in a few words:  woke up alone at around 7:30.  PG had already gone downstairs.  I reported for work, booting up and logging in, then walked downstairs for a bowl of cereal and glass of juice.  The workday started slowly and by noon, I had showered, dressed and was ready to drive to Wegmans.  We got everything on the list and took it home, then I made a sandwich, poured a glass of lemonade with seltzer, picked out a half-dozen small pretzels, and went back to work.

Several more hours passed.  I had a bowl of chili for supper, and after that a small serving of homemade vanilla pudding with the last of the canned whipped cream.  Reclined in the recliner and listened to part of Kaleidoscope (subject:  the radio Green Hornet) before Mike Whorf's voice made me nod off.  Watched 15 minutes of "Madison Avenue" and the 15-minute Seinfeld speech at Duke.  Then went upstairs to practice.  

There, short but with enough detail to be interesting to me somewhere down the road.  

Five of everything

Common Cinquefoil, New Jersey, 19 May 2024.  Five-parted leaves and flowers with five petals.  In a pleasant surprise, I learned this is not considered a noxious weed.  The Wikipedia entry says "Pollinators include mason bees, small carpenter bees, cuckoo bees, halictid bees, syrphid flies, tachinid flies, blow flies, and others. Less common pollinators are wasps and butterflies. Rabbits and groundhogs eat the foliage."  While I saw no pollinators at all in the few minutes I was observing the wildflower section behind Tabby's Place, as far as I'm concerned, if it's good for the bunnies, say no more.

 

All kinds of life

Taken yesterday in the same unlandscaped location as the prior photo.  Multiflora Rose is (and I'll bet you guessed this) another invasive plant, unwelcomed by the authorities, although birds and insects appear to be appreciative.  

 

Uncommon

Black Swallowtail butterfly on Dame's Rocket, 19 May 2024

 

Wildflower and beneficiary

From the unlandscaped section of Tabby's Place, 19 May 2024.  Varied carpet beetle on Philadelphia Fleabane.

 

Things work out, I guess

Lingering URI and a night without sleep last night.  Steroid, benzo perles, Vicks in steam, hot tea with honey, and Ricola wild cherry drops, and in spite of everything I coughed instead of slept.  Turns out that being awake at sunrise was the right thing on this particular morning.

Around 5:30, I checked the email from Home Depot and saw that the toilet was going to be picked up by a gig driver for a UPS company and delivered soon after.  Hitting refresh again and again, I saw the completion of each step as Juan drove to the nearest store, picked up the product at 6:15, and began the drive west along the four-lane highway.  I followed the moving icon as it took the exit nearest home and steadily proceeded toward us.  When it reached the final turnoff into the development, I opened the garage door and watched a pair of headlights approaching on our street, right on cue.

Juan stopped his dark red Acura 4x4 some 20-25 feet short of the garage, ignoring my invitation to park closer, and opened the back end.  Picking up the box containing the toilet, he carried it into the garage and set it down next to the township trash receptacle.  I leaned hard against the box to create a little more space between them, and barely budged it.  

We paid the deposit to the flooring company and were told they'd have to order the product and fit us in their schedule, estimating 4 to 6 weeks before they could get started and another week before completion.  Later in the day, a local company notified us of their estimate to fix the crack in our driveway plus resurfacing it.  Five more paychecks to go in my working career, and each looks like they'll be easy come and easy go.  But we can't let the house look like it's falling apart, so we spend for the lawn, the landscaping, the driveway, the external signs that people who care live there.  

Progress report

Still coughing, but more energy.  

What's happening now?

Bought a new toilet for the downstairs powder room.  Well rated, yet marked down $30, plus another $15 off out of the goodness of Home Depot's heart.  Delivery fee brought down by all the discounts.  Should be here tomorrow.  Do I dare attempt to play Handyman?  Well, I've learned from YouTube videos before.

Volunteer butterfly bush in the back, and a tiny volunteer arborvitae next to the garage.  Up the road, dame's rocket in the same spots as last year, next to a telephone pole.  Cultivating the strong greenery that has survived to the point of becoming visible.

Some music, a little of Kaleidoscope before I lost consciousness.  Something about that show that eases me into slumber.

A good result in Immaculate Grid.  I believe every player I input was a major league regular sixty seasons ago.  1955-1985 is my strongest area, and especially the mid-1960's.  

Now after midnight, so enough writing.  Time to check out the Times games and inhale some more Vicks steam before closing my eyes for a few hours.

Just outside the front door

I intended to walk out the front door to go get the mail, but as I reached for the door handle, it became clear that I would have to take a different route.  Rabbits always get the right of way, especially when they are already there first.

What *IS* That?

Driving home from the doctor this afternoon, about a mile from home I spotted several of these purple flowers along a side road.  Naturally, I was attracted, and fortunately, the light was good and there was a place to pull off easily and safely.  

What I should have done is use Google to snap the picture and identify the wildflower.  Thanks to that lack of foresight, the ID had to wait until now.

Answer:  "Ornamental onion", or allium.

 

Time Marches On

Headline I did not expect to see, or "another passphrase I don't dare use now":  

"OMAHA'S LATIN DRAG SCENE"

The philosophy behind Jerry Seinfeld's comedy and his life.  I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the guy who co-created the "show about nothing" also believes his life has been about nothing much, either:

"I really have adopted the Marcus Aurelius philosophy, which is that everything I’ve done means nothing. I don’t think for a second that it will ever mean anything to anyone ten days after I’m dead."

The original sheet music from Drumeo for 16-note rock beats and fills, followed by an edited version where I've added some, um, notes.   

In lesson 2.5, we were taught 10 beats and 10 fills.  The fastest was 80 beats per minute (bpm).  Speaking for myself, I figured the intent was to be able to read the music and play the rhythms at the designated rate.  

In lesson 2.7, the final lesson of level 2 for beginners, we were given a final exam of sorts, in which we would use some of the beats and some of the fills and play along with a pre-recorded track.  The problems: first, the example set by the instructor was much faster than the speed we'd learned; second, the instructor used no sheet music and didn't expect us to use it, either.  Whoa.

It was all a blur to me, and judging from the comments, a good many others felt the same way.  The final exam didn't match the lessons.  I needed it to make sense, so I went back to the 2.5 lesson and made a copy of the sheet music for beats and fills.  Then I put on the instructor's final video and slowed it down to 50% speed so I could follow and figure out what he was doing. 

So it wasn't what they intended, but everything I need is now on one screen.  I copied a couple of beats from the left screen over to the right screen, and color-coordinated the order in which they were played.  Now I can follow what he did and play the same bars in the same order that he played them.  Memorization will have to wait, though.

 

OK, now what?

I came down with a cold at the beginning of the week and have been hacking unsteadily ever since.  It's forcing me to slow down, take naps, get more rest.  PG began to show the same symptoms this morning, and she was in bed tonight before it got totally dark.  

But with just a half-day of work tomorrow, I'm looking forward to feeling closer to normal for the coming weekend.  With PG under the weather, I'll pick up some of her chores.

Here was this day:  not much appetite, so small meals.  Besides the usual chores like scooping cat boxes, I pulled some weeds and whacked some others.  PG and I transplanted some flowers into one planter box; it already contained oregano in one corner, mini daffodils in the opposite corner, and an Indian blanket we found in the front yard in 2021 now filling in the corner between them.  

Still leaves one corner, which is where PG wanted to place an orange geramium she bought a couple of days ago at Walmart.  Then between the oregano corner and the geranium corner, we finally transplanted some white phlox that PG bought late last summer.  She actually bought two of the phlox that day at the farm market west of here, and the second one was buried in the space between the new marigold and the existing mini daffodils.  Got all that?   There's more.

Some intentional white flowers had spread so that there was a small patch right on the edge of the driveway.  We decided I should dig them out whole and put them in the middle of the planter box, the one remaining area.  Not only were they on the edge of a hard asphalt surface, but on either side of the root bulbs were metal pieces that held the border together.  More work loosening the dirt so the flowers could be lifted out, roots and all.  But I did it.

So that's complete.  We also have two planters hanging off the deck rail in which I scattered marigold seeds last Monday, and some sprouts are beginning to appear.  What else?  Whacked weeds coming up through the crack across the driveway, and followed up by pouring cleaning vinegar in it.  The hope is to put some sticky black stuff in the crack to get us through one more year, then having the whole driveway re-done in 2025.

Pulled some weeds near the dying cherry tree out back in preparation to cover a piece of the ground with a thick tarp.  A few weeks and everything under it should have died, at which time I'll lay down fresh fabric and cover that with brown mulch.

Back inside, I worked on my monthly assignment for TP, involving spending time with kittens and talking to people who are fostering kittens.  I forget who said it, but they advised seniors to have not only something to retire from, but also something to retire to, and Kitten Fund letters fit the bill.  Piecing together notes from the foster humans and choosing photos they've provided, plus evaluating kitten videos and deciding how to put them into one quick but entertaining YouTube video.  That's about the hardest part, because I'm now learning OpenShot for the video production; Inkscape for static title production, and today I downloaded Blender to create moving titles.  This is a perfect example of my natural impulse to stress over making stuff perfect instead of settling for good-enough.

Finally, I came up here at 8:00 and fiddled around with practice, not stressing about the slow progress I'm making but instead appreciating that this exercise is intended to be difficult.  By now I know that Repetition and Patience will get me through it in the end.  After 90 minutes of that, I set aside the sheet music and got into Blogger to get it down in writing before I forget (to coin a phrase).

In Google Keep I put together a list of several tasks I began and which are still unfinished because the person who can help hasn't returned my call or my text.  The landscaper was supposed to re-seed the front yard, where his heavy machinery had worn away the grass -- non responsive.  The rollover from my 401(k) to the existing brokerage account -- the 401(k) side says "Rollover Mailed to Institution", while the message on the brokerage website reads "Awaiting Arrival of Rollover."  They've read that way since late March.  So I followed up with the 401(k) team, and after 20 minutes on hold yesterday, I left my number and am awaiting their callback.  

Then, there was the guy who phoned out of the blue about something personal to me.  I emailed him back and asked him to put it in writing, but two weeks later, there's been no response.  If only I could get rid of the spammers who insist on regularly leaving messages for me to call them back at once.  Star-60 blocks the number they claim to have called from, but I know and they know that's not going to stop them for long, if at all.

Way, way back when

Shortly after my 2nd birthday, NBC, whose compatible color system gave them a big lead in the early decades of commercial television, broadcast ("in living color", as they liked to put it) The Kraft Music Hall, starring Milton Berle.  

Only recently, a Berle family member provided it to UCLA's Film and Television Archive, where it became the oldest known color videotape in existence.  Until then, An Evening With Fred Astaire, from later in October 1958, held that title.   EDIT:  Network color videotape, I should emphasize.  Or maybe, full-color videotape.  Neither of which applied to the dedication of color studios at WRC, Washington DC in May 1958.  

The Astaire show was rightfully viewed as an event and worth keeping.  The Berle show, not so much.  But it's color videotape from 65 years ago, plus it contains a brief clip from Bill Cullen's The Price is Right, so it's catnip to me.