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captainsblog(Not by me. Keep reading.)
I spent the birthday weekend mostly quiet, often happy, but occasionally annoyed. I'm getting to Get Off My Lawn age, so I guess that's part of it.
Annoyance the First was actually Friday. The day dawned cold, and my car, along with thousands in the area, promptly had their tire pressure sensors go off. In my case, it's a yellow screen on the dash saying, eh, no biggie, but check it out, willya? At the end of the day, in the middle of some errands with a few minutes to kill, I decided to. The gas station closest to Eleanor's store has one of the newer-style air machines; by "newer," I mean (a) it costs more, but (b) you can pay by quarters or credit card, and (c) it registers the pressure digitally and stops when it achieves the recommended PSI you tell it. Or at least sometimes it does that last part, as it did with my right front, when it actually inflated the tire from 25 to the target 29 PSI. When I moved to the left front, the gauge told me it was down to 8 PSI- and then it went even downer, actually hitting zero before popping an error code. The machine ran out of time before I even got to the rear tires. I figured I'd just use a manual gauge at home in the morning, but when I turned JARVIS back on, this time I got a scary red screen on the dash saying severe tire failure. So off I went to a second station with an older-school manual gauge built into the hose. More quarters (the only option), less time, more dark, and if you weren't keeping score, I'd been sick for the fourth straight day and was not looking forward to writhing around on asphalt- but I did, and fixed whatever Hose One had done to my left front.
Now to get my damn snow tires on, since today some sticky snow has joined the cold and I did a fair amount of slippin-anda-slidin' around out there. But no deer. We'll get to her.
----
Birth Day itself was relatively inauspicious. The late-arriving birthday bling was mostly cute things- this from the kid-
-and this from one of my offices, which is great as long as I remember not to put it in the microwave-
As I mentioned near the end of the 9th, I devoted much of the day to home-remedying this annoying cough, downing bottle after bottle of H20 and sucking in steam on multiple occasions. That, and a quick lunch with friends, were about the extent of the celebrating. When the Sunday dog park alarm went off, and another night of coughing fits had gone by, I resolved that Enough Was Enough and instead arrived at 8 a.m. at my friendly neighborhood Doc in a Box. I was the first one there, got seen quickly, and walked out with good diagnoses of things I didn't have- no fever and no pneumonia. They prescribed Flonase for the post-nasal drip that probably started the whole thing, an inhaler for the wheezing, and good ol' codeine for bedtime. They've helped, but not cured. They also created the second annoyance: the scrips are now all done electronically, and Wegmans texted me within an hour.... to tell me that the inhaler wouldn't be available at my store pharmacy for 2 days. Um, what part of "urgent" are you not getting? After an eon on hold, I asked if they could transfer it to a store that DID have it; they asked if the branch two miles east would be okay. Hell, I'll drive to the new one in Brooklyn rather than wait two days with this. Two stops later, the drugs were all inventoried.
Eventually, Pepper and I did make it to the parp, and then company made it to us; when my college roommates Jim and Jean got here Sunday afternoon after their Saturday in Ithaca, we had no plans and made none, other than just talking for a good three hours. These are folks who we can literally pick up where we left off with, whenever that was. I haven't lived with them for almost 40 years. Haven’t seen them in person in over 10. Neither of us can remember the last time Eleanor saw them. I don’t do nearly a good enough job of keeping in touch with them. Yet, when they detoured here after a Saturday in Ithaca, they still know what the only two things are I’d have wanted them to bring: Empires from the Orchards and the most recent Cornell Sun:)
They left before dark, we finished the evening continuing a binge of a British tv series we've become addicted to, and I got through a better but still not cough-free night sleep. Waiting this morning was an email from Jim and Jean: they'd had a more exciting evening than we did, to say the least. Just east of the first rest area on the 90 heading back whence they came, a deer ran in front of their car. They're fine (the deer, not so much), but Jean's airbag went boom and the car could not be driven further. Between an Uber and a rental, they got back on their way and should be home by now. I offered to help however I could in reuniting them with their car should it be deemed reparable, but driving it the full eastern stretch of the 90 is probably out, since despite all of my driving, me and Bambi have never even come close to an encounter.
Damn venison need to do a better job of identifyin' themselves;)
----
I'm scheduled for Rochester tomorrow, but the OMGFirstSnow is falling and I'm not ruling out everything getting shut down before I have to leave. Maybe I should ask Eleanor to knit Bambi a nice blaze orange sweater.
I spent the birthday weekend mostly quiet, often happy, but occasionally annoyed. I'm getting to Get Off My Lawn age, so I guess that's part of it.
Annoyance the First was actually Friday. The day dawned cold, and my car, along with thousands in the area, promptly had their tire pressure sensors go off. In my case, it's a yellow screen on the dash saying, eh, no biggie, but check it out, willya? At the end of the day, in the middle of some errands with a few minutes to kill, I decided to. The gas station closest to Eleanor's store has one of the newer-style air machines; by "newer," I mean (a) it costs more, but (b) you can pay by quarters or credit card, and (c) it registers the pressure digitally and stops when it achieves the recommended PSI you tell it. Or at least sometimes it does that last part, as it did with my right front, when it actually inflated the tire from 25 to the target 29 PSI. When I moved to the left front, the gauge told me it was down to 8 PSI- and then it went even downer, actually hitting zero before popping an error code. The machine ran out of time before I even got to the rear tires. I figured I'd just use a manual gauge at home in the morning, but when I turned JARVIS back on, this time I got a scary red screen on the dash saying severe tire failure. So off I went to a second station with an older-school manual gauge built into the hose. More quarters (the only option), less time, more dark, and if you weren't keeping score, I'd been sick for the fourth straight day and was not looking forward to writhing around on asphalt- but I did, and fixed whatever Hose One had done to my left front.
Now to get my damn snow tires on, since today some sticky snow has joined the cold and I did a fair amount of slippin-anda-slidin' around out there. But no deer. We'll get to her.
----
Birth Day itself was relatively inauspicious. The late-arriving birthday bling was mostly cute things- this from the kid-
-and this from one of my offices, which is great as long as I remember not to put it in the microwave-
As I mentioned near the end of the 9th, I devoted much of the day to home-remedying this annoying cough, downing bottle after bottle of H20 and sucking in steam on multiple occasions. That, and a quick lunch with friends, were about the extent of the celebrating. When the Sunday dog park alarm went off, and another night of coughing fits had gone by, I resolved that Enough Was Enough and instead arrived at 8 a.m. at my friendly neighborhood Doc in a Box. I was the first one there, got seen quickly, and walked out with good diagnoses of things I didn't have- no fever and no pneumonia. They prescribed Flonase for the post-nasal drip that probably started the whole thing, an inhaler for the wheezing, and good ol' codeine for bedtime. They've helped, but not cured. They also created the second annoyance: the scrips are now all done electronically, and Wegmans texted me within an hour.... to tell me that the inhaler wouldn't be available at my store pharmacy for 2 days. Um, what part of "urgent" are you not getting? After an eon on hold, I asked if they could transfer it to a store that DID have it; they asked if the branch two miles east would be okay. Hell, I'll drive to the new one in Brooklyn rather than wait two days with this. Two stops later, the drugs were all inventoried.
Eventually, Pepper and I did make it to the parp, and then company made it to us; when my college roommates Jim and Jean got here Sunday afternoon after their Saturday in Ithaca, we had no plans and made none, other than just talking for a good three hours. These are folks who we can literally pick up where we left off with, whenever that was. I haven't lived with them for almost 40 years. Haven’t seen them in person in over 10. Neither of us can remember the last time Eleanor saw them. I don’t do nearly a good enough job of keeping in touch with them. Yet, when they detoured here after a Saturday in Ithaca, they still know what the only two things are I’d have wanted them to bring: Empires from the Orchards and the most recent Cornell Sun:)
They left before dark, we finished the evening continuing a binge of a British tv series we've become addicted to, and I got through a better but still not cough-free night sleep. Waiting this morning was an email from Jim and Jean: they'd had a more exciting evening than we did, to say the least. Just east of the first rest area on the 90 heading back whence they came, a deer ran in front of their car. They're fine (the deer, not so much), but Jean's airbag went boom and the car could not be driven further. Between an Uber and a rental, they got back on their way and should be home by now. I offered to help however I could in reuniting them with their car should it be deemed reparable, but driving it the full eastern stretch of the 90 is probably out, since despite all of my driving, me and Bambi have never even come close to an encounter.
Damn venison need to do a better job of identifyin' themselves;)
----
I'm scheduled for Rochester tomorrow, but the OMGFirstSnow is falling and I'm not ruling out everything getting shut down before I have to leave. Maybe I should ask Eleanor to knit Bambi a nice blaze orange sweater.