Here are some posts that, because of my mobile WordPress not working properly, I wasn’t able to upload at the time they were written. They’re from the vaults of two months ago.

Nov 28, 2010 1:50 PM

Sometimes it’s funny how much/little time & space actually change. For instance, I’m sitting here in Mr. Henry’s Victorian Pub in 2010, alone, inputing this copy on an iPad, whereas 25 years ago I was here with a table full of friends, drinking and smoking up a storm, listening to the 45s in the jukebox. Today the Internet jukebox is silent, smoking has been banned but I’m still having a cocktail. Because for me that’s what Henry’s is about: cocktails. Well, cocktails and good times with friends. I’m here at an unusual time ( 3:30 on a Wednesday) but the friends will show up later.

Fast forward four days…

Now I’m sitting in my new favorite coffee shop, First Cup Cafe. A random stop that I found here, and they just infirm me they’ll be closing in half an hour, so let’s see how much writing I can get in. First Cup is located across the street from where I looked to move (into Mira’s apt) a few years ago but didn’t make it past the screening process. So it could have been my neighborhood coffee shop but for now it’s one that I happened to drop into for coffee and a place to kill time.

Why am I killing time, you ask? For a number of reasons, actually. The first is that today is (another) Open House day at 1526 so, on my day off, I have to get out and do something. Luckily, Jim Darling was participating in an iPhone-only photography exhibit so I went and saw that since he was going to be at the gallery today. The gallery is Fathom Creative’s and there’s way too many personal references to go into right now about Fathom. Let’s just say I always wanted to work there.

After the exhibit I wandered down to the National Archives to do some genealogy research for my Dad. Since I’m seeing him in a few days I figured I should get this down since he asked me to do it several months ago. I find out they’re closed on Sundays so I will again be playing the role of FailureSon this year for Thanksgiving. Sigh.

I’m meeting with friends later and due to public transportation and needing to be out of the house, it doesn’t make sense to go home, hence the killing time wandering around, it feels like 1995 all over again, when I would wander around DC as a new transplant, maybe it’s time to listen to some Blur.

Now I’ve walked the few blocks to Logan Circle which is nothing like the Logan Circle I used to know. Boughie! And nary a homeless person in sight!

Dupont Circle. Now *this* place has definitely changed in the last 20 years.

And here’s another archive:

Dec 1, 2010 sometime in the afternoon

Today is another kicked-out-of-the-house-due-to-realtors day. Which really sucks because I’ve got an ad that’s due and I’d really like to be working on it right now. Sigh. Another hour to go.

I walked down to Jacob’s to get some coffee but they were too crowded and it was way too warm in there. So I journeyed on down to Sova, on H, and it’s pretty nice in here, sofas and chairs to lounge on but no free WiFi. But that’s fine, I’m using signal from the Biergarten next door.

Hello there.

Today is the 2nd day of the first two days in a row I have had off since August. I am doing absolutely nothing, just like I did yesterday: being lazy at home. Waking up whenever I want, making coffee and surfing, listening to music. I didn’t shower yesterday and I won’t shower today either.

This is the first post of 2011. And the first post since three months ago. I could write the delay off to 1) my last updating of WordPress software went wrong and there are errors in uploading on my mobile devices; 2) the Big Computer Crash of ’11 that kept my li’l iMac out of commish for about a month; or 3) downright laziness. I’ll let you decide which is most appropriate.

Here’s more about the BCC of ’11. My iMac is over five years old and I’ve never had one single problem with it. Last month I started having some strange reboot issues. The computer would freeze up on restarts, turning the fan on before the desktop appears and then hanging there. Sometimes another hard reboot would allow it to boot up properly, sometimes not. Then it got to the point where the freeze/fan would happen every time. Time for a doctors appointment.

It was hard drive failure. Fine. For $200 I get a new, twice as large hard drive (500M). I’m trying to restore my Time Machine backups on there and after a week or so of fidgeting/resetting the hard drive crashes AGAIN. So this is my now 3rd hard drive and everything seems to be going okay. Thank Zod for TM backups, at least I didn’t lose any information.

So that’s about it for now. Let’s talk again soon.

It’s been almost three and four years since Rattle & Hum, The Twins™, have died. Friends and family have repeatedly asked if I was going to get another pet and when. I took care of Mike’s cat, Aris, for a while last summer and that was fun, he is a great cat. But being unemployed at the time I didn’t think it a good idea to take on another expense. I watched the black alley cat, Mama Kitteh, for weeks while she nursed her four kittens. I desperately wanted to do a smash-and-grab on the two gray ones. But again, being only partially employed at that time, economics won out and I had to let them move on as well.

A third opportunity has presented itself. My neighbor Kevin got a kitten for his daughter but his baby-mama said the kitten wasn’t working out so he took the cat back. I volunteered weekend before last to cat sit while he was out of town for the weekend. I assumed this would involved me coming into his apartment to feed and care for the cat. Instead, he brought the cat to me. He either didn’t want the unattended kitten to tear up his apartment or it was a sly way to make me fall in love with it. When he brought the cat over I had just woken up from a nap so I was a little out of it. He said something to the effect of “keeping the cat if I wanted to” but in my sleep/haze I wasn’t sure if he had said it or not.

Over the weekend the cat snuggled up to me and seemed to enjoy her surroundings. His daughter named the kitten Princess, a name I would have to change if I was to become the food FoodGiver. Her pretty eyes are the color of butterscotch pudding so I’ve named her ‘Scotch (note the apostrophe). ‘Scotch is loving and cute and still a kitten. This last aspect is the only thing that irritated me over the weekend, with her hyperactivity, jumping (on me) with claws full-on, etc. And then I needed to remember that this is what kittens do, and in time she will mellow out.

Come Monday when Kevin came back to pick-up/discuss said kitty’s residency I told him that I just needed a few more days with her, through the full week and next weekend to make my decision. Well I think that decision has already been made because I went to the grocery store on Saturday and picked up a big bag of dry food, cans of wet food and some kittie litter.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: ‘Scotch.

I’ve owned four computers in my life: a Performa 630 CD, the very first bondi blue iMac, a PowerBook (Pismo) and my current iMac G5. Sixteen years ago, while owning that Performa, no one thought of backing up their files in case their hard drive crashed. It was just a given that the computer would continue to run as expected. And you could always transfer files to a diskette if you needed to keep them extra special.

Now that my iMac is an achingly old (in computer lifespans) five years I’ve decided it’s time to back up all those old files just in case there is an impending hard drive crash (or monitor outage, logic board death, etc). So now I’ve got all that info saved. I was going to write about this experiencing concerning an Apple product that I’m using but I’ve decided against that so this post may be a little abbreviated from what it was once going to be. Sorry about that. But all’s well with the backup. And it’s being done wirelessly.

Obtaining groceries without a car can be somewhat cumbersome. Thankfully there are now (within the last few years) online services that will deliver groceries to you, just like on those ’50s television shows. But then when you lose your job those convenient online services tell you that they don’t take the EBT Card as a form of payment. That means I’ve been walking (or biking, or evening Zipcarring) to the local Safeway to get my groceries for the past 18 months. Ah, I do miss that EBT Card though…

So now that I am working 55 hours/week in order to make up for all that moola I didn’t make in ’09, and I’ll mention The Crash which has put the bike out of commish, it’s a little difficult to get to the grocery store. I decided to pull up my Peapod account and take a look at what they’re offering now that I’ve been shelf-shopping for the past 18 months. I found that I had an unplaced order already tallied up that I hadn’t set for its delivery schedule when I got the pink slip back in December ’08. Oddly enough, it seems pretty much in par for what I’d be ordering today. I’d have to add a couple of items to get that additional $1 off on the delivery fee though (on orders over $100)—like frozen entrees that I could take to work instead of spending $8 a day on lunch! I’ve still got a pretty well-stocked pantry, due to the EBT system providing much more purchasing power than I would use in a month, $200. So I’ve got boxed goods and canned goods for a while. Bomb shelter!

Item	Size	Qty	Item Price*		Total Price*
Produce Stand
Apples Granny Smith	1 EA	2	.99		1.98
Banana Green	1 EA	3	.39		1.17
Banana Yellow	1 EA	3	.39		1.17
Carrots Baby Peeled Organic	16 OZ BAG	1	1.99		1.99
Lettuce Red Leaf	1 EA	1	1.99		1.99
Lettuce Romaine	1 EA	1	1.99		1.99
Onions Yellow Organic	3 LB BAG	1	3.79		3.79
Meat & Seafood
Ground Beef 85% Lean Big Buy	APX 2.5 LB	1	11.22		11.22
Deli
Cabot Cheese Cheddar Sharp 50% Reduced Fat	8 OZ BAR	1	3.39		3.39
Deli Ham Virginia Style Cooked (Thin Sliced)	APX 1/2 LB	1	2.99		2.99
Beverages
Deer Park Spring Water – 24 pk	16.9 OZ BTL	1	6.49		6.49
Bread & Bakeshop
Nature’s Promise Naturals Bread 100% Whole Grain	24 OZ PKG	1	1.99		1.99
Nature’s Promise Naturals Bread Multigrain	24 OZ PKG	1	1.99		1.99
Cereal & Breakfast Foods
Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts Frosted Strawberry – 12 ct	22 OZ BOX	1	3.00		3.00
Snacks, Cookies & Candy
Doritos Tortilla Chips Nacho Cheese Family Size	17 OZ BAG	1	4.89		4.89
Giant Saltines Fat Free	15 OZ BOX	1	1.50		1.50
Snyder’s of Hanover Pretzels Sourdough Hard Fat Free	16 OZ BAG	1	2.50		2.50
Grains, Pasta & Side Dishes
Barilla Pasta Rigatoni	16 OZ BOX	1	1.79		1.79
Barilla Pasta Spaghetti Thin	16 OZ BOX	2	1.79		3.58
Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper Cheesy Enchilada	7.5 OZ BOX	1	2.19		2.19
Baking Goods
Guaranteed Value Sugar Cane Granulated	4 LB BAG	1	2.29		2.29
Condiments, Oils & Dressings
Giant Olive Oil Spanish Olives Extra Virgin	17 OZ BTL	1	6.29		6.29
Ken’s Steak House Dressing Fat Free Sun-Dried Tomato Vinaigrette	8 OZ BTL	1	1.00		1.00
Ken’s Steak House Dressing Healthy Options Parmesan & Peppercorn	8 OZ BTL	1	1.00		1.00
Sauces, Spices & Seasonings
McCormick Oregano Leaves	1.37 OZ BTL	1	3.49		3.49
Laundry, Paper & Cleaning
Brawny Paper Towels Big Roll 2-Ply Prints	6 CT PKG	1	8.99		8.99
Health & Beauty
Softsoap Liquid Hand Soap Antibacterial with Light Moisture Pump	7.5 OZ BTL	1	1.50		1.50

It may not be the DreamJob but I have phone interview with the COO of a direct mail company tomorrow. The beauty about this job would be that the office is only twelve blocks away, a 20-minute walk according to google maps. Or, a quick trip on the D6.

The DreamJob people had better hurry up and set up that before-the-end-of-April callback interview before I get snatched up by another company!

All this week when the email went bong! I immediately and nervously checked it (not to mention all the constant “check email now” refreshes) to see if I had received THE email from the DreamJob. With a promise of “we’ll get back to everybody this week”, time was running out on a Friday afternoon. Maybe then I thought they said “we’ll get back to everybody in the new few weeks” and it would be another couple of weeks of agony. But today it came:

“I have forwarded your information on to the hiring manager of Georgetown. We did indeed decide to invite you back for an interview but since your preference was for Georgetown, they will be talking to you from here on. They have your info and will be arranging interviews through the end of April.

Good luck!

<signature>”

Woohoo w00t booyah and all that good stuff! I’m hoping I didn’t shoot myself in the foot by requesting the Gtown store instead of one of the existing ones, but that one’s right on the D6 line which goes right in front of my apt and I could travel to work above ground and it would be nice to reprahzent DC instead of traveling to the H8ST8 or Murland.

Now I have to wait for the interview setup but at least I can relax a little knowing that I’ve secured the callback. April is the best month evra!

Either I’ve gotten too lazy or to old to go out and enjoy playing in the snow. We’re getting about 18″ already here and it’s still coming down. I was originally planning to go and do early Christmas with the fam today but that was wisely cancelled. I’m not about to get all bundled up and take a walk around the block with this much height of snow, even if the sidewalk snow is packed down, which I really doubt it is.

This storm, along with Tiger Woods, is why people shouldn’t start doing “Best of…” lists until the year is actually finished. Go December!

Funny trending topics on Twitter today are #snowpocalypse, #snowmageddon and @snOwMG.

Here are some pix, including the buried red Zipcar that I originally scheduled today.

After looking out the window every five minutes this afternoon a Lego shipment finally arrived and I immediately built this sculpture.

Yep, that’s it. It’s a thrill-a-minute around here. Yawn.

They say not to let your work life define you, except here in The District that’s what we do. It’s always the 2nd question asked when meeting someone. “What do you do?” Earlier in 2009 I used to answer this question with a professional title associated with what I’ve been trained to do for the past twenty years but sometimes I answer it with “Nothing” because that’s literally what I’m doing right now. So if work defines us and one doesn’t work, you can do the math.

Today since the weather was nice I went to the grocery store. Big whoop. I did this because basically I had run out of sugar for my morning coffee. Creamer I can do without but sugar, no. So I went. This was the first time I’ve walked there since the weather turned cooler and it instantly reminded me all those cold forays (sometimes at the break of dawn) to the store nine or ten months ago. Thankfully it’s not that cold yet. But it will be soon enough.

It’s funny the familiar people you see in a grocery store mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. Familiar people that you’ve seen at the gym, a local restaurant or bar, the bus. And you wonder why they’re there at that particular time. Did they call in sick? Is this their lunch break? Do they work nights? Are they using an EBT Card?

My favorite checkout employee wasn’t working. Out of chance (or fate) I was always in her line when I first started using my EBT when I was unfamiliar with the process. She always very discreet when she would need to explain to me something paying extra (for non-consumables) or alerting me to when coupons expire. I’ve helped her grab items off the top shelf that she couldn’t reach while she was doing her own shopping. Maybe she recognized me and that’s why she asked, or maybe I was just the tallest, closest person.

So that’s what I did today. Oh, and then I went to the gym. And then I came home and made a sandwich for dinner. Then I went to bed.

Purchase: $37.18
EBT Card Balance: $240.49
Club Card Savings: $1.69

I see now I was charged $3.79 for a stuffing mix that should have been $1.50. Sigh.