Sunday Scootering!

     The weather was lovely Sunday, breezy with brilliant sunshine and a few clouds until the afternoon, when the clouds thickened up.  No rain and it mostly just spared the city the worst heat of the day.  After a morning of some housework and a long, lazy soak in the tub reading a LeGuin novel,* I garbed up† and got the scooter out.

     A late donut run came first.  A half-hour before closing, pickings were slim at the local donut shop, where the staff has (after a deliciously overestimated first few months) worked out a keen understanding of any day's likely demand.  I picked up a nice chocolate donut free for nothing, because "You're in here a lot."  (Helps that they are on my way to just about everywhere!)

     Took that home for later and set out for groceries, possibly preceded by lunch in Beautiful Downtown Broad Ripple.  Maybe?

     Well, no.  It was one o'clock; the very kewl foodie place over by the donut shop had a private function of some sort underway, and up in the Village‡ proper, all of the usual place were packed.  "Later," I thought, and went to the recently-opened organo-supermarket** to stock up for the coming week.

     Later was too late; I rode home, put groceries away, took a short nap and found myself in the two-hour gap between Lunch and Dinner.  I went to the closer grocer, got a nice bacon-cheddar burger and some onion, bell pepper and a little jalapeno to fry up and put on top, made dinner, watched a little TV, did more housework and went to bed.

     Still working on the touch-typing thing. Typed most of this without looking at the keys.  I'm still fumbling a lot but improving as I build skill.
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*The Eye Of The Heron, which she says might be part of the Hainish Cycle.  Or,  I suppose, not.  It works either way.  The story looks at ideas similar to those she explored in The Dispossessed... and other stories set on the twin worlds of Anarres and Urras, from a different angle and with Earth-humans as the protagonists.  LeGuin takes a lot of flak from some corners of the libertarian SF crowd, which I think is unfair; time and again, she sets up societies that appeal to appeal to her inclinations or hopes and then points out all the weak points by showing how they fall short in actual practice.

† I keep seeing people on scooters without the least nod towards safety equipment.  Most of the scooters are 49cc "DUI specials," but the road remains as abrasive as it is from a Harley and your own inertia at 35 or 40 mph is the same either way.  Helmet, gloves, padded jacket, boots and my usual Carhartt "Double Front" dungarees are about my minimum, and Tam, veteran of motorcycle commuting and motorcycle accidents, considers even that on the inadequate side.

‡ Yes, "the Village." If it sounds silly to you, take it up with the merchants and other business owners of the Broad Ripple Village Association.

** It appears to be booming.  Meanwhile, the venerable Marsh supermarket chain, with a store a half-mile away, had gone broke.  Marsh was on the way out before the new place broke ground -- but the trend is clear.  Along those same lines, long-established Double-8 Foods, with tiny markets mostly in struggling neighborhoods, failed several years ago and has been replaced by nothing at all, another point on the same graph.

Just Hi

     Hello and good morning!

Got Some Stuff Done

     Had a fairly productive day off, for a change.  As in changed oil in my motor scooter, brought the new chair mats in and have mine down already, and made a dinner that I loved: pan-cooked filet mignon so tender it fell apart, a nice baked potato and flash-cooked mixed veggies, with a very small bowl of chocolate gelato for dessert.

     I had seasoned a fresh batch of bacon -- smoked paprika, sage, thyme and mixed peppercorns sprinkled generously over good plain store bacon -- and fried one strip of it in a large skillet, then cooked the beef, browning each side over low-medium heat and then covering it with a pan lid.  Potatoes were nuked during the first of that, then foil-wrapped and set in the oven over the pilot light while an assortment of fresh asparagus, zucchini, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, onion and red bell pepper got the zap.  Turned out very well!

     Tomorrow, who knows -- maybe I'll even get the scooter on the road.  I need to remember to add the 2017 sticker to the license plate before that, though.

I Should Have Left The News Off

     I suppose I have just reached that age where most of the news looks crazy, most of the time.

Back To The Grind

     Touch-typing has caused me to post this already, as no more than a partial title: Learning Can Be A PITA.  So I guess I had better improve, quickly.

     The cats woke me about 4:00 this morning -- Rannie was clawing at the covers and my shoulder, Huck was trying to chew on the microphone-boom-suspended Kindle over my head -- and then they decided to have a little spat.  That was my limit: I evicted them, shut the door. and got a blissful hour's sleep.  Rannie got a nail trim this morning (she was getting snagged) and did she ever complain!  It still left me unduly crabby and in no mood to watch the news this morning.  So I haven't.

     Sometimes pets help reduce stress in unexpected ways!

Hit With A Clue-By-Four

     Yesterday's big-deal problem turned out to be in large part an "upstream" or GIGO issue: if you're sent bad or (worse) inconsistently-wrong content, often you can't fix it in real time.  Oopsie.

     More clue-by-fourage: yesterday's big news was a Presidential policy-change-by-tweet, barring "transgender" persons from military service once again.  Except that:
     A) It's actually "still," the Pentagon having already put off until January 2018 implementation of the Obama Administration policy change that let 'em serve.
     B) The best (i.e., the Pentagon paid for 'em) estimates are that we're talking about maybe as many as 2500 full-time troops and 1500 reservists; this would be a lot if they all showed up at the mall but with over two million people in the armed forces, it's literally a rounding error, 0.19%*  So be outraged pro or outraged con, either way you're snuffling after trifles.
     Sure, it's a big deal, cultural-signalling-wise.  But you could watch a regiment march past with that percentage and never notice.  So I'm calling the whole issue as beneath notice except by those directly affected. Hate it?  Love it? Wait three and a half to seven and a half years.
     My best guess is that people in battle don't spend a lot of effort wondering if they still like being called "Gladys" or if the person next to them does.  YMMV.
     And for those worried about a possible draft, the old standby of showing up at the draft board in a dress -- or, in this modern equal-opportunity age, with a mustache -- is once again good.
     C) The monetary angle is nonsense, another rounding error.  This bothers the hell out of me -- because the price of policing the world is so insanely expensive that we can lose eight and a half million of our nice clean tax money in the sofa cushions. Mote in one eye, log in the other, which you gonna go after first?

     But they wave the ol' freak flag and everyone is supposed to pick a side.  Heck with that; I don't run the .mil.  I'm going to treat people as well as they treat me, and not speculate on their pasts.  Ex-commie?  Former girl?  Married to six people?  Tattooed head to toe?  Voted for the wrong horse, last race?  I don't care, as long as you're clean, polite and not unfriendly.
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* Using numbers from several different articles, the highest percentage I get is 0.51%, which just barely gets out of rounding error territory.  Frank Sinatra songs about rams and dams aside, that's no leverage at all.

And Here's Wednesday

     I spent nearly all of yesterday on a wheel-spinning exercise of genuinely stupid proportions. It's too technical and dull to describe, but it's a recurring problem, complicated by legacy issues from the work of a tech who has since retired. 

     He tended to follow his own path even at the best of times and the thing I am trying to sort may may have been partially motivated by annoyance.  The result has been one of those trouble-shooting exercises where you know there is something wrong but the exact nature and extent of the problem is unclear. 

     Most of yesterday was spent finding out what it wasn't. Maybe today I can start to find out what it is.  Then, perhaps, I can work on fixing it.

Good Scooter News

     I had about given up on the scooter battery.  Trying to be gentle, I had been using the little "battery tender" charger and it was struggling.  Came home last night and decided to give it one more try -- and it worked!  Checked a couple of hours after putting the charger on and the yellow "Charging" led had given way to the green "Storage" indicator!

     Picked up a new funnel for the oil change over the weekend, so now all I need to do is find the time.

Lawnmowing Draws Wildlife?

     It appears to have.  I mowed the lawn -- front and back -- last evening, shortly before sunset.  It was hot work nevertheless.  Once it was done, I went inside, relaxed a little and made dinner.

     Afterward, I went back outside on an errand and looked around for the Great Gray Slugs -- and found a pair of them on the privacy fence!  They are medium-sized as such slugs go, a little more than finger-sized, and didn't like my taking a flash photograph: they froze in place for a minute, then resumed their slug business, whatever it was.

     Still later, I was in the kitchen getting a bottle of water before bed, and motion in the back yard caught my eye: a couple of fat but not too large raccoons were sorting through the freshly-mowed yard, catching something, pouncing after more, and generally looking very pleased.  I tapped on the window and one of them gave me the fishy eye as only raccoons can -- not especially challenging, but clearly a, "Whaddya want?  We're working here!" sort of look.

Quick Notes

     - The final season of Orphan Black is proving to be excellent.  The entire arc adds up to about one short SF trilogy or a very long novel.  TV SF is rarely this good.  I recommend watching it -- in its entirety.

     - The grocery had their house bacon on sale for $3.49 a pound.  I normally prefer applewood-smoked bacon but unless you find it on sale,* the price is crazy high, $9.99/lb.  So I bought some of the cheap stuff and pondered ways to improve it.  Sprinkling it with good smoked paprika, sage, thyme and mixed pepper seemed like a good idea and this morning, I proved that it was!  You need to let it sit at least overnight.

     - Chopped cherry peppers, flash-fried, are excellent in an omelette.  Mozerella, country sausage, sliced green olives, yum!

     - learntyping.org is a good resource if you'd like to touch-type.
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* Their competition had it for $3.99 a pound a couple of weeks ago.  Good stuff, too.

The Trash Runner

     There was a thunderstorm and heavy rain Friday morning.  As a result, I missed taking the trash out early. When I did take it to the curb, I realized the truck was already a block past the house.

     The (standardized) trash can has big wheels, the truck doesn't move quickly and I am my mother's daughter: rain was still falling as I took off after the truck in my walking sandals, nightgown and robe.

     By the time I had closed the gap, he was at the last house in the next block from mine. I waved and yelled and the driver stopped, got out and lined up the trash can with with the loading gadget, chuckling. "Lady, " he said, "next time, just put it across the street from your house. I pick up on that side a couple of hours later!"

     Good exercise, right?

Casino 401k

     Sitting on my desk is a mailing from the people who run my employer's 401k, touting an exciting new investment tool that will automatically maximize my investment and tweak it from "adventurous" to "cautious" as my retirement age approaches.  At least that's what I think it says; I can barely make head nor tail of it, couched as it is in nice-sounding, empty phrases and high-financesque terminology that probably looks impressive to someone who doesn't read the dictionary for fun.  It's low on numbers, contains no math, no graphs, and very little in the way of objectively factual content.   Since my 401k is set to be as low-risk as possible -- I know too many people who took a deep plunge when the market was roaring and saw their savings swept away in one slump or another -- I don't know why they bothered to send it to me. 

     The whole notion of a 401k as usually implemented comes from people who are happy to play the investment market -- especially with someone else's money -- and cannot understand why anyone else wouldn't share their fascination.  That I might be hoping to get back out what I put in, without inflation and taxes taking too big a bite, is beyond their comprehension.

     I'm convinced that J. Random Guy playing the financial markets -- even mediated by fancy retirement accounts -- is not a good thing.  That's a game for those who can afford to lose; most of us shouldn't be sitting at the high-stakes table, staring in fascination as the wheel spins and the dealer turns up a card with a few year's income hanging in the balance.  If you wouldn't risk it in Las Vegas, don't risk it on Wall Street -- and don't kid yourself that one is any less random than the other.