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Weekly Wrap

First up is a picture from last Sunday and if you follow me on Instagram you will have seen part of this before:

Monday we walked downtown and did some geocaching on the way. We DNF’d the first two. Number one is in a small park we walk right by every time we do walk downtown. Number two was a caboose at the county museum and not finding it was expected, we never seem to get these. We found the third and then promptly DNF’d number four. We did find the next four we hunted for, but three of them were virtual, so there wasn’t an actual container to look for.

Tuesday we walked downtown and had pizza for dinner at Rodeos Pizza and Saladeria. A medium The Boss pie, six slices consumed on site, two taken home for my lunch the following day. This is the first time we have eaten here for dinner and have decided that the lunch cook does it more to our liking. This one had a touch too much sauce and came out of the oven a minute or two early making the crust not as crisp.

Wednesday I prepped the master bath for painting by removing the shower curtain rod, towel racks and patched the holes with spackling. Then I masked off everything. It was also our biannual visit to the dentist for teeth cleaning.

Thursday was painting the master bath.

Friday was pulling down the tape in the bathroom and putting it up in the master bedroom.

Saturday was supposed to bring wet winter weather so we had planned not to even leave the house. The weather never materialized, but we still didn’t leave the house. I painted the bedroom, which took most of the day, and Donna spent just as much time in the family room downstairs sorting the jumbo cache of Morrison memories. She is trying to go through all this and separate the stuff that belongs to each of her three brothers, so as to pass it along to them.

Today I put up the old shower curtain rod, new towel racks and TP holder in the master bath. Put the master bedroom back the way it belongs, but we probably won’t sleep in it for a couple more days so as to let the paint smell totally dissipate.

Happy Thanksgiving

“What kind of Thanksgiving dinner is this? Where’s the turkey, Chuck? Don’t you know anything about Thanksgiving dinners? Where’s the mashed potatoes? Where’s the cranberry sauce? Where’s the pumpkin pie?” – Peppermint Patty

Because we are still firmly ensconced in the AirBnB we decided that instead of trying to find a really small turkey or do a turkey breast we picked up a couple of Cornish game hens. We used to do these as a regular meal a long time ago, but stopped for some reason, and remembered them fondly. We did a couple of baked potatoes along with corn for me and carrots for her.

Either our memories are faulty, possible, our tastes have changed, also possible, or they have started breeding these hens to be more like turkeys because the breasts seemed overly large in comparison to the rest of the bird and it tasted pretty bland. Turns out we really missed the mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and apple pie flavors. We may have to search out a local restaurant next week that is serving a Thanksgiving-like meal…

Hey, Where Ya Been?

I’ve been here, just one part busy, one part watching TV and one part not feeling like writing anything.

Turns out I wasn’t the savior the Red Sox needed. I watched half a game on ESPN then listened to the other half a game and they lost. I listened to a game and they won. I didn’t listen to two games and they won one and lost the other. Since the last time I posted they have played .500 ball, which if that trend continues probably won’t get them in the playoffs, but it may keep them from finishing last.

I have been re-watching some of my favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe flicks. Not because I’m anxiously awaiting the next Avengers movie, but more because everyone is talking about them. There are a ton of lists online how to watch all of them in order to prepare yourself to watch Avengers: Endgame. There are 21 movies released so far and I was surprised to realize that I had copies of more than half of them. Growing up I was a fan of both the Iron Man and Captain America comic books, so I have the movies with those guys in the titles. I was a casual Thor reader too, so I have those three flicks. The first Ant Man movies struck the right cord with me, so I got the second one too. Never knew of the Guardians of the Galaxy but the first movie was fun, so I picked up the second one as well. I haven’t re-watched it yet and I may not because if I recall correctly I didn’t like it as much as the first. But then again, I am a sucker for origin stories and so far I have liked the first movie of the hero’s series more than any of the followups.

Not just watching movies either. I went back and re-binge watched Season 1 of Killing Eve because Season 2 started last Sunday night and I wanted to remember what went on. I also re-binge watched Season 1 of Fleabag because Season 2 is coming to America soon.

Add on top of that, Donna and I spent nearly 32 hours over 4 days this past weekend sitting on the screened porch watching golf on TV. Neither one of us golfs and we don’t watch it any other time of the year, but, because we have actually trod the hallowed grounds of Augusta National, every year for the first week of April we become fans and watch The Masters. Thank heaven for masters.com where you can watch practically the whole tournament commercial free. You just need to select “featured groups” and they follow 2 groups over the whole 18 holes and when they finish you get 2 more groupings.

We also managed to sneak in a couple of short Moss Motoring Challenge trips locally. We snagged 5 on Saturday morning and 3 yesterday afternoon.

12 Rules

The other day on my morning walk, I listened to an episode of the podcast Revisionist History entitled “Malcolm Gladwell’s 12 Rules for Life“. He was reacting to a whole 12 Rules meme that was generated by a book called, surprisingly, “12 Rules for Life” that came out last January. He had an interesting take on the idea and in typical Canadian fashion it ended up being mostly about hockey.

In typical Life of Brian fashion I knew nothing about this meme until after it had been around so long it was already out of fashion so, you just know I’m going to make my own anyway. Trouble with that is, there is no way I can come up with 12 rules without doing a whole lot of cognitating first, so I’m going to take a play from Mr. Gladwell and name only one. His rule is: Pull the Goalie (it has to do with Risk vs, Reward and is worth a listen.)

Here’s mine: Life is too short to drive boring cars.

The Past 4 Days

Things that have happened in the past 4 days, listed in no particular order or level of importance:

  1. I managed to get two photos posted to Instagram.
  2. The Mini got a bath.
  3. Managed to bike ride to work on Friday.
  4. Donna got a flat on her bike ride home.
  5. Watched Up in the Air on HBO – again.
  6. The Miata got a bath.
  7. Bad breakfast sausage?
  8. Got 5 more pairs of glasses from Warby Parker.
  9. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

Underfoot Matters II

Over Spray/Dribble Mat

This is new. These cute little mats have started to appear under the urinals in the Valve Store. On Tuesday they were in place in two of the bathrooms and today they arrived in a third. I guess tomorrow they will make it all the way to the last one back close to where I am.

I’m no janitorial expert, but I’m thinking these things should be rotated 180° with the wide ends lined up with the outside edges of the porcelain fixture, that way you’d get better dribble coverage. Plus another clue making me think they are upside down is that the name of the company that supplies them, Cintas, is written in the lower left at an angle that would be easier to read if the thing was rotated around.

The only thing I can think of is the person who is distributing these things believe they are dual purpose and they not only absorb tee-tee, but thinks that maybe they are for the comfort of the person doing the tee-teeing.

Underfoot Matters

The bright light coming in the window overpowered the auto-focus feature on the camera, but you know, it kind of looks nice all soft and fuzzy.

When the Valve Store added on a big metal room in the back for us engineers, they put in a small section of tile at the entrance and rest of the floor was done in a mostly tan-ish colored industrial grade carpet squares (the Emperor actually had a free set of floor mats of the stuff for awhile.) The carpet was a nice compliment to the tan cubicle walls, but I think they underestimated the amount of foot traffic from the machine shop floor we would get. Within 2 weeks there was a noticeable greasy trail to the shift supervisors office’s. Within a month you could start to see the same thing leading to the department’s engineer’s abode. After a couple months the powers that be thought we need to do something to protect the new carpet.

They contacted our uniform supplier and the next week we had 5 dark brown throw rugs placed in a ‘T’ shape near the entrance in hopes of them removing the oil from the bottom of the shoes coming in. And while the rugs did a good job of hiding most of the really bad oil paths you could still see some lighter shading in places. In the 6 or so intervening years we have been in this building we have learned that while the carpet oil traps work, they don’t work 100%. Those faint trails that appeared in the first few weeks have now moved to cover nearly every aisle and in some case into the cubes themselves.

While the rugs were only sort of good at keeping the carpet clean, what they were really good at was creating an occasional trip hazard. If you have ever placed a rubber backed throw rug down on top of carpet you know that the throw will move very, very slightly with each step and eventually become crooked or buckle up like a little tectonic plate. Over that same amount of time we have had at least a dozen near misses, just stumbles, not actual falls, but complaining didn’t seem to do any good. Well last week the right person finally took it seriously and the Tool Crib Attendant (and Uniform Supplier Liaison) came in, rolled up the five throw rugs and tossed them aside.

Overnight, someone on 2nd or 3rd shift or maybe even the night cleaning crew decided that something was off and put the rugs back in place. Friday the Tool Crib Attendant rolled up again and told the 1st shift supervisor to pass the word. I thought it might help if she hid them and that’s when I went, “Hmmm.” I bet one of those rugs might look nice in my cubicle, sort of class the place up, so I re-purposed one. I’m not too sure how long I’ll get to keep it, no one seems really jealous of my new look, but all it will take is one comment to the wrong person and it will get re-re-purposed back to the uniform supply people.