Category: General

Awful, awful dreams last night. The worst ever. I’d describe them, but I’d have to hide them somehow, like they were spoilers for a movie, because they were gory and horrible.

I almost took a sick day from work, due to lack of sleep, but then realized that if I stayed home, I’d probably just sleep all day, and probably have more nightmares. Yes, I’m choosing work because it means I’m not in any danger of dreaming.

I beat the Burnside this morning. I started out around 8:06 by my watch, and I found out at the end that my watch was about a minute behind the official clock, which means I had to run 5.1 miles (8 K) in at least 53 minutes to make it before the bridge went up. Translates to a 10:39 pace or better.

Well, I did it in 48:17, or a 9:42 pace. I could do better, but… I think I hurt my right heel. It’s been sore all day. I hope it’s not plantar fasciitis. I’ll start doing my stretches again this week, and I won’t run until… um… Tuesday. Late Tuesday. OK, OK, I should probably stay off it for longer but, dammit, I’ve got Run Hit Wonder next weekend.

My good mood from beating the Burnside faded as I ran into problem after problem the rest of the morning. My phone stopped working, taunting me with four full bars of signal… and a “No Access” error message. WTF? Rebooting and reseating the SIM card didn’t help. I had to walk a ways to the gym to shower and change and every single Starbucks I found had a long line – lack of food post-run (the bagel with peanut butter and the water they fed me afterward didn’t really fill me up) and my sore heel didn’t improve my mood.

Once I was showered and changed, I went to pick up the FlexCar I had checked out for the day… and realized that I had checked one out clear out in Northwest Portland. It was a “special”. I had thought it was closer. I then had to walk for another half-hour or more to get the car. I was holding out because my reward for finishing the race was to be a Burgerville raspberry shake… Mmmm.

But when I got to the car… .my card wouldn’t open it. And my cell phone was still kaput. I couldn’t call and complain or find out what was wrong. I had to traipse all over NW Portland to find a free WiFi spot to email FlexCar about the problem.. and by that time it was nearly noon, I was nearly keeling over from hunger, and thinking of all that I had wanted to get done while I had the car… and having to cancel most of it. Argh.

I then had to find the nearest T-Mobile store, to get my phone situation taken care of. The closest place was the one at Lloyd Center. Another long walk, and a light rail train ride, and more walking. However, when I approached the store, in a distant corner of the mall, I found a long line of people. Turned out it wasn’t just my phone; the network was down. The customer reps at the store apologized and let us know that if we contacted T-Mobile after our phones were working again, we would be credited for the lost time. They expected the network to be back up in several hours.

My day was shot. After I got some food (finally made it to Burgerville! Mmm… raspberries are The Kings Of All The Berries) I went to see a movie, to get off my aching foot and out of the heat.

Small things.

Starbucks has discontinued my favorite raspberry scones. Lacking a pictoral representation of them, I would describe them as delicious thick biscuit-y triangles, with a scoop of raspberry (truly the king of berries) jam on top and center. I would always eat the scone-y parts and save (and savor) the center for last, making, in essence, a little cup of scone filled with red sugar and seeds. Mmmmm.

But Starbucks, in in finite corporate bottom-line but customer-oriented thinking, has discontinued those. Last week I inquired of my local baristas whither raspberry scones, and was told that they were going to be replaced by… strawberry scones. My mind wandered but truly, my imaginings were limited to… um… imagining a raspberry scone, only with a distinctly strawberry flavor to the dollop in the middle. OK, I suppose I can live with that.

Today, however, they finally had these strawberry scones in stock. And they’re so much better in some ways and messier in other ways. Instead of a well of jam, the scones have been sliced horizontally into a top and a bottom half, and the strawberry jam has been spread across the entire top of the bottom half. A layer, an entire layer, of strawberry jam. And then, as if that wasn’t messy enough, the whole has been sprinkled with a light… um… sprinkling of powdered sugar, always a consternation to me, a man who often wears only black.

So if you see a guy dressed all in black, with a light sprinkling of powdered sugar on his shirt and lap, and smiling while he brushes away the powdered sugar, walking around downtown, that’s me.

Wow.

Long Winters posters.

The one with the weasel is kinda fun. Even though it should be an otter, which makes the posters really, really off-topic.

…A river otter.

Dammitall.

Dilbert.

It’s funny…

…’cause it’s true.

Amen.

Ran to work. Juuuuuuuuuuuuuust over a 10:00 pace, 5.5 miles in 55:42, or (for those Mr. and Ms. Mathgeniuses out there) a 10:07.7 pace. Damn. I’ve got to be more faster. Or more endurance-y-er. (enduro-er? endur-er-er? Shut up. I’m a writer. I can make up words if I wanna.)

I used the showers in my new building. The lights are on a timer in there. My advice to myself (and anyone else that will be using the showers) for next time is: “Don’t take so long in there!”

Man, it gets dark in there.

How to lose your mind:

1. Lose checkbook.
2. Search for, and fail to find, rest of checks.
3. This step doesn’t exist
4. Search everywhere, including in jackets not worn since winter even though I had my checkbook just a couple of weeks ago since I paid my rent with a check.
5. Toss contents of two backpacks and a bike messenger bag out on bed. Huh. No checkbook.
6. Repeat previous step.
7. Suspect cat of dragging checkbook into some odd corner of the house. But no dice.
8. Suspect neighbors of stealing checks.
9. Realize I’m being exceptionally paranoid.
10. With beginning of month approaching, realize I need to order replacement checks or at least get a money order to pay rent, since that’s the only thing I write checks for now, because if I used the free online bill pay my bank offers I’d be late every month (don’t ask).
11. Order replacement checks one week before rent is due, figuring that’s enough time.
12. One week later, no replacement checks arrive in mail.
13. Find out that “one week” to a bank means “7 to 10 business days”.
14. Stop looking at me like that.
15. I’ll get to the point when I’m ready.
16. Try to buy a money order since, y’know, rent is due, motherfucker. Banks, however, don’t sell them anymore, which seems even odder than the strange calendary they use where “1 week” = as many as two regular, non-banking-employee weeks (see Step #13).
17. Buy money order from Post Office. Even more odd.
18. Mail money order to landlord, call landlord to let him know it might be a little bit late.
19. Upon arriving home from mailing rent check money order, find replacement checks in mailbox.
20. Upon dumping out contents of backpack that was searched at least twice, find old checkbook.

There. That was easy-schmeasy.

My neighborhood is asploding. At least it sounds like it. And on top of the fireworks, there’s the late-night traffic coming home from the larger fireworks displays; there’s one in Milwaukie, and one down at Oaks Park, and my ‘hood is right in between.

And just as I observed the last time we had a lightning storm, Smacky no likey the asploding noises. Poor guy. I should have called him “Spooky” instead of Smacky, but that’s a bit too obvious for a black cat.

The situation at work just gets worse and worse. Management is going ahead with an aggressive schedule to roll out a thin-client network, with basic, no-nonsense network appliances on the desktop and having all the applications running on servers. They’ve been told that they can drastically reduce the number of techs they’ll need to support all those appliances. Unfortunately, I am one of those techs, so that means I will probably get demoted or laid off in the next year.

Bummer. On the bright side, I pretty much hate that place anyway, so in many respects I’m not too unhappy. And I am fully vested in the pension plan, so I’ll have a little somethin’-somethin’ to look forward to in my golden years (provided management doesn’t raid the pension plan between now and then, or lawmakers raid it for them; that seems to be all the rage now).

But on the other hand, it’s a good thing to keep other skills polished, and to have an idea of what I would need as far as a bare minimum income to pay all my bills. Assuming no change in my current bills (except for credit cards, which should be completely paid off by September), and further assuming a full-time, 40-hour a week job, I could scrape by with a $12.00/hour job. That’s not too bad… I hope.

Maybe I should go looking to see what jobs are paying $12.00/hr., eh?

Bright side is, I could supplement that with cleaning up people’s PCs from vicious spyware and other basic computer maintenance or training. I do that on the side anyway, and I’d have more incentive to do that if I wasn’t working for the County. And that’s usually all tax-free money, and I charge a bit more than twelve bucks an hour for that.

I also went to the Oregon Labor webpage and calculated what my unemployment benefit would be, and it comes close to what I’d need. I’d still need some supplemental income, but not the whole thing. I also looked at what I could cut back if I needed to — I could lose my broadband internet, cut back on FlexCar useage, cut back on my cell phone… that saves me $225/month right there.

So I’m feeling better, if not completely safe. At least I’d be able to keep a roof over my head if worse comes to worst.

Scary.

Back when I lived in Texas I had my checking account with NationsBank. I’d link to it, but it’s no longer in existence; it was purchased by Bank of America.

Fast-forward a half-decade. I still have my checking account (plus a savings account and a credit card) through BofA, plus a loan through MBNA.

Well, looks like BofA is buying MBNA. Soon, all financial transactions will be through BofA. Or at least all of mine.