Addendum To: Planning World Cup Viewing Where

And complicating all my World Up watch-planning is something I thought of, and just did, this/Saturday morning: The food I have at home.  After I watched the U. S. take it to Paraguay, I'm all in on the World Cup.  Hell, I might take off work to watch Matches.  (I already have one planned for two weeks from now, but I might just take more days off.)  I want to go out every day.  But I shouldn't, because I have milk that's about to go bad, bread that's been in the fridge for two weeks, deli meat that I've barely made a dent on, and frozen waffles and french toast that I should get around to eating.

But dammit, I don't feel like staying home on the weekends and eating them all.  I really, really prefer going out Saturday and Sunday and watching soccer.  Guess that food can wait till the workweek ... but right now I really, really prefer heading out after work to watch soccer at a pub or restaurant, too.  Man, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I was so tuckered out after the USMNT Game that I promptly fell into bed.  Probably conked off around 11 p.m.  Woke up a quarter after 8, totally refreshed.  The one thing I am going to do today is go to this Mexican craft brewery and watch Brazil-Morocco there.  My secondary plan is going to this Mexican place close to me and see if I can watch at least part of Haiti-Scotland there.  They have a TV on, and for some stupid reason it's on a Fox local channel (not Fox News, not the Fox station here in town, but "Fox Local" -- it shows news stories that come from a random series of local telecasts, or at least that's what it appears to be).  I kind of want to know if they take TV requests, and if not, this will be the first World Cup Match I won't be able to follow, either on TV or through the radio.

So this involves a lot of eating out, as you can tell.  And yet I also had a plan to, if I woke up early enough, eat either the frozen waffles or french toast sticks whose boxes I've already opened up.  I just ate the waffles (and chased it down with milk).  I'm not hungry anymore, but because I'm up and because the first WC Game of the day, Qatar-Switzerland, is not until 2, I think I'll go shopping and eat lunch.  I need creamer, but I thought about getting ground meat for spaghetti I might make next week.  But if I'm going out at least thrice next week, what's the point?  And sure, why eat lunch when I'm already not hungry after breakfast?  Good question, but I think I'll still have soup and a sandwich.  Or, I might take the sandwich home and eat it later.  That might be the food I'll have next week ... well, beyond the food I already have at home.

Too Many Oranges

Yesterday/Tuesday evening, helped by the fact that I got out of work early (I had to stop by the local grocery store to get a chicken breast on sale, but even with that I got home earlier than I usually do these days), I ate the final part of the last of five oranges I bought two weeks ago.  I've read on the Internet that you don't want to eat oranges that have been in the fridge for that long, but they tasted like oranges (even though the taste was a tad off) and hey, I haven't gotten sick after eating any of them, including the one yesterday/Tuesday evening.

I bought these at the discount grocery store, so I got, or felt I got, a bargain.  Also, I bought five of them because I wanted to make sure I had enough orange juice to make all the cocktails I wanted to make.  Well, I made one mimosa and one monkey gland, and still I have to eat, oh, three of the five oranges like they were, you know, oranges.  I shouldn't complain; they're a great source of vitamin C, of course.  But I way overestimated the number of oranges I needed for cocktails.  Need to cut back next time.

You know, the big drawback to going out all these days is my disincentive to brush my teeth.  Sure, I have plenty of time after I get home to do that, but I'm tired and there are other things I need to do.  For example, I got home from gorging myself at the Kickoff To Summer At The (Minnesota State) Fair, and I had to buy chocolates online, then I had to watch intently the last episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and then I had to blog post, so now I'm too tired and I have to go to bed!  When will I ever have the time to brush my teeth?

Farewell, Neighbor (Whom I've Talked To Maybe Twice)

The neighbor across the street is moving.  Have seen some stirrings for a month now, but the "For Sale" sign makes it real.  That came up maybe a week ago.  The huge dumpster (like the one I threw my trash into last week) was on their driveway maybe a couple weeks ago.  And the moving truck was there when I woke up today.

I literally may have spoken ... no, come to think of it, I should accurately describe it as "interacted" with the members of the family that lives/lived there two times.  Once, when my niece was little, one kid who lives there, while he was being held by his father (the head of the household) offered her candy, and my niece freaked out.  The other time, the sons were playing catch (they had baseball uniforms on, so they may have come back from practice or a Game) and a baseball rolled to the edge of my driveway; I threw it back, poorly, to one of them.  And that's it.  I never had an issues with them.  They were the perfect, quiet neighbors who left me alone.

So I feel bad that I'm not saying goodbye to them as they're moving.  But, what would I say?  What kind of small talk could I come up with, especially since I made no talk with any of them while they were here?  And yet, when I came home from shopping earlier this afternoon and I saw the whole family running about, I thought about going there and saying hi.  But, I haven't.  And I probably won't.

Gift Wrapping Is An Unlearnable Skill And A Niche Industry

So it's my niece's birthday.  For once I was proactive in getting the gifts.  The problem now is that I don't know how to wrap them.  I think I had done it while I was really young, but back then I realized how much I sucked at it, so I had Mother do it, or, to be quite honest, I didn't buy a gift at all.  That's right -- I learned not to buy gifts because I didn't learn the art of gift wrapping.

But I'm a grown-up now, and I have a niece to whom I want to show love, so I have to buy presents.  I have been able to avoid this situation because I would always send the presents (in the name of myself and my parents) to her mother/my sister-in-law, who knows how to wrap gifts.  But over the holidays she basically that she was done with all that.  I don't think she meant just me having her wrap gifts.  I think she meant being my brother's wife.  But I don't know that.  But I won't bring it up either.  Bottom line -- I am now on my own when it comes to getting gifts wrapped.

Where in the hell can I go in this town to have this done for me?  Hell, where do I even find just one damn box to put these gifts in?  A couple times a long, long time ago I got them wrapped at, of all place, the Rosedale customer service department.  Hell if I know how they did it, but the people who helped you find out where in the mall to go had this set-up where you could walk up to them, give them gifts that needed to be boxed and wrapped, and they'd do it.  That remains a mind-blowing thing a mall just offers to do, and year-round, not just for the holidays.  Alas, it is a bygone feature of their customer service; they say on their website that they don't do that anymore.

There is one store in the Twin Cities that says they just do gift wrapping.  I left them a message but haven't heard back.  There was also, I believe, a company that picks up and drops off gifts.  That seems way too complicated for my need to have someone find a box and wrap my gifts up in it, but come to think of it, having a brick and mortar spot just for that service probably makes no sense.  Regardless, I e-mailed them -- no response.

Shit, man, I have to do this myself.  I'm now reduced to shopping for boxes.  (I looked in the seldom-opened closet right next to my bedroom; there is wrapping paper in there.)  But wait!  How about a gift bag?  I don't need to wrap anything then; I'll just throw them in a bag, then put some fancy-ish tissue paper on it so my niece can't just peer into the bag and see what I bought her.  I need to buy a bag, but at least there are bags to be bought, unlike boxes!  And I won't get frustrated over cutting out too little wrapping paper, or butchering the folding and taping.  Yeah, gift bags -- that's the ticket!

So I need to buy all that stuff after I wake up.  Hopefully I won't fuck this up.  But maybe I will.

Buying Wiper Blades Has Become So Complicated

Finally put on the new wiper blades I bought through Amazon yesterday/Friday.  Bought them for both my car and my parents', so there are six total blades that have been on both since ... oh, I want to say March of last year.

I bought five total.  One of them is the wrong length -- maybe (see below).  So there are two that still need to be replaced: My passenger side and the rear on the minivan (which, I want to say, has been back there for years).  Yeah, it's kind of a half-assed job seeing that two blades still need to be swapped out and I bought one that doesn't fit.  And surprisingly, Amazon wasn't much of a help; I ordered these through them before, but for some reason, like you see, I couldn't all of the right ones ordered.

It still seems strange that I would buy wiper blades through Amazon when Wal-Mart has them, so a few months ago, I went there.  I've bought a replacement or two there in the past, but this time around, things were different.  I'm going by the length of the blade, which used to be printed, in big digits, across the top of each blade package -- you know, "25," or "16," etc.  For some goddamn reason, there aren't just digits there anymore.  Some of them have a letter in front, and then a dash, and then what appears to be the length of the blade, and then some of them have a dash and yet another number after it.  What the fuck, man?  I just want a blade that fits my car, and they're complicating it, and I know it doesn't have to be.

About that blade I may have ordered by mistake: It's 13 inches long, and I swear I was told that is the length of my car's passenger-side wiper.  But I have seen in other places that it's actually 14 inches.  And believe me or not, the manufacturer can't give me a straight answer, and Google can't aggregate the websites that will tell me definitively whether it's supposed to be 13" or 14".  I looked through the links, and I see both lengths given.  Can it be either?  That seems dangerous to me.

Maybe it's my fault for not writing the lengths down.  But damn, they're just wiper blades.

Where My Scatterbrained Stupid Self Pretty Much Fucked Everything Up

I want to think things went downhill as soon as Florida got upset by Iowa last/Sunday night in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.  I had them losing in the title Game.  With that pick gone to seed, I think my chances of winning either of my bracket pools has also gone to seed.

I got the notification from The Athletic while I was about to go into Target.  I had that 5% birthday discount I wanted to use, but I had been thinking all day on how to and even if I should use it.  I knew I wanted to buy baking soda and a new silicone scrubber to replace my dirty loofah (I should blog post about that loofah later).  But what else?  I need to maximize my discount by buying things I need to get, but I kept going back and forth about whether there are items I only wanted to get.  A circle lock, for when I rent out a second storage unit so I can finally really get down to organizing my stuff?  Well, they didn't have one.  Motor oil?  Nah -- I checked prices on my phone while I was in there; it's cheaper in a few other stores.  Should I get a lime?  I think I'll be out and about again next weekend, so it wouldn't make sense.  I swear there was something else I thought I needed to get, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember.  But I did remember the baking soda and scrubber, so that's what I got, and I was able to strike a whopping 60 cents off my total.  Happy Birthday to me!

And then I come home and, once I went into my bathroom, I realized there was something else I really wanted to get: Tea tree oil to put on the back of my head to get rid of the acne back there.  And I knew I was going to forget something when I went to Target.  I thought about writing a grocery list, but I didn't want to write it down, and I didn't want to bring a piece of paper with me.  Still, I knew there would be a good chance I would forget something, and still I didn't want to write anything down.  And so the tea tree oil I really want to buy I will have to buy without that 5% birthday discount.  I'm so ashamed I think I'll have to buy it at Wal-Mart, where I think it's probably a bit more expensive than if I bought it at Target, even without the 5%.  Can't walk back in to Target without hanging my head in shame.

---

I just ate a Krispy Kreme donut with milk.  The Krispy Kremes were free through its application because it was my birthday.  But I didn't want to eat them all at once.  In fact, my OCD compels me to eat them only every other day.  And it turns out I skipped a day.  Hopefully the last one lasts till Tuesday.

Doughnuts, of course, go with milk.  And this quart of milk I had bought, hmmm, some time ago.  I thought it was still good because the use by date stamped on top of the bottlecap reads today/Monday.  So, just like I have done, I poured some milk into a bowl into which I dunk the doughnut.  Once I finish with the doughnut, I slurp up the rest.  But this time, motherfucker, it tasted funny.  And then I smelled it.  Honestly, it smelled kind of funky for, like, a week before today, but it smelled even worse now.  Goddammit, I think I just drank spoiled milk.  I dumped the rest out of the bowl, then dumped the rest out of the bottle.  I thought it would still be good!  But come to think of it, when I opened it for the very first time (I don't remember how long ago), I saw that part of the cap was already pulled away from its rim.  And maybe I'm being a hypochondriac, but I am feeling really dizzy right now.  A little dissociative, too, like I'm not a part of this body that is typing this right now.

But the thing that kills me (literally?) more than wasting milk is the fact that I had, oh, three weeks to finish off a quart of 2% milk and I couldn't fucking do it.  It was just a quart!  Maybe my lactose intolerance gave me second thoughts.  But I had plans on using a lot of it in a smoothie I was going to make.  I have the fruit in the freezer.  But I was going to make it only after I work out, and I've been too damn busy to work out, so I haven't made the smoothie, so I haven't used the milk that way.  Reminds me that I also have greek yogurt inside my refrigerator.  It has a stamped sell-by date of April 16, but that fuckin' stamp did me no favors with the milk, so for all I know, the yogurt's already bad, too.  Might need to bring it with me to work this week.

---

You know what?  I thought I had a third thing I needed to blog post about illustrating how my dumb ass was fucking myself in another, but I forgot.  Oh, my self-destruction is so meta!

"Preparing" For The Biggest Goddamn Snowstorm I've Ever Seen

So this is the literal calm before the storm.  What began brewing Sunday turned, around Thursday, into something big, real big.  And unfortunately for me, the track began curving upward.  Unless I've interpreted things wrong, this blizzard is going to be a direct hit right on top of us.  Two motherfuckin' feet are possible.  What we probably should call The Ides Of March Blizzard might top The Halloween Blizzard of 1991, and that fuckin' storm is affixed in lore.  And even if it's not, it looks like we're clearing a foot here easily, and I don't remember the last time a blizzard that huge has ever registered with me (and that includes The Halloween Blizzard of 1991; I was just a kid who had no cares then).

So ... what to do?  I am bemused by everyone rushing out to do grocery shopping before it hits, which should come in around dinnertime and might not relent for 24 hours thereafter.  Come on, guys, this isn't the Siege Of Leningrad here.  It's going to be bad, and it might be historically bad, but it's only one day ... well, maybe a day and a half, tops.  You should have enough food now to get you through, and if you don't, frankly, you live in a bad situation beyond this blizzard.

With all that said -- well, I looked outside and, like I said, it's calm.  It's just a late-winter day out there -- overcast, too cold for my liking, but otherwise a day that you can travel without incident.  A part of me wants to hunker down and let the snowstorm do what it wants, but that does not sit well with the other part of me.  I will go out, and I probably will twice. I need to dump this trash, get some cash for my stripper girlfriends, and then probably grab lunch.  Later, I might check in and see this band, then probably get dinner to go before the storm kicks in.  It's not going to be horrible until overnight, but I want to be hunkered down before I even touch a flake.  And see, even I am beginning to feel like I want to "prepare" before the storm hits, even if it's just having an empty trash can to begin this storm.

I'm scared.  I'll admit that.  I just went into my backyard to make sure there's no hole in the roof or something.  I just feel that something bad will happen alongside this blizzard because it feels like my lot in life.  Maybe the worst plausible thing I can think of is that the snowblower won't work.  If it doesn't, I might not be working Monday.

I'm starting to understand why people panic-shop at the grocery store now.

I should go now.  Well, I'll juice this lemon, then go.  I think I'll need a cocktail after looking out from my window tonight.

NO, NOT HOOTERS!!!

Heard it on Common while working yesterday/Thursday afternoon: Hooters and The Mall Of America is closing for good.  Last day's next Sunday, the 22nd.  Goddammit.

First things first: I have kind of an obsession with stores that have been at the Megamall from the start.  (The store can't move from its original footprint.  Also, it can be renovated, but it might not count in my eyes if it, say, closed down in order to make those renovations.  Length of time is important in this case.)  Hooters was one of them.  With it being gone, what's left?  Macy's?  Nordstrom?  Cinnabon on the 1st floor?  That alpaca place that somehow stays in business?

But I am sad about what I think of as an institution closing down.  That breastaurant made me a man.  I'm joking.  Well, only half-joking.  Well, that half-joking part is perverted as hell, because going there was the first time in my life I felt good about being proud of looking at gorgeous women dressed daringly (or at least how I thought daring was at the time).  I think the first time I went to Hooters I went with my high school buddies.  My friend noticed that our (hot) waitress was stuffing a pack of cigarettes in her fanny pack, and I thought that was the hottest goddamn thing ever.

Hooters MOA overcame a flurry of sexual harassment lawsuits early in its tenure to just be the place teenage boys go to begin to get in touch with their heterosexual desires, and for parents to bring their boys to prevent them from becoming gay.  I went from time to time to ogle, of course, but there are a few servers there that I'm familiar with.  No way are we friends or anything, but I think that we are acquainted enough that whenever we see each other, we smile, and that's great.  My "relationship" with Hooters was cemented over the past several years once I decided to buy the Hooters calendar every year and, if possible, get it autographed.  It was nice to have the sexiest Hooters girls sign.  I even took the calendar to other parts of the country if I were vacationing so I could have other Hooters girls in other branches sign it.  And, of course, I came back ... well, not because of the food per se, but for the coupons that came with the calendar.  If I spend $15 when I visit this month, I get a free dessert.

I planned on going Thursday to get that free dessert, and to watch the actual start of March Madness, but now I must go.  And I probably will go that Sunday too, its final day.  Thirty-three years, man, a third of a century, and they said it wasn't making enough money.  I will miss the fuck out of that place.

You know, come to think of it ... I know the perfect place to replace Hooters -- Twin Peaks.  Same concept, they're growing (the company, not my dick), and even though the closest stores are in Fargo and Omaha, it might be time to bring one to the Twin Cities.  And who knows, maybe those Twin Peaks girls will do things beyond my wildest dreams.  No, probably not.  But a lonely hetero perv can dream, and Hooters allowed me to do that.  RIP, Hooters Megamall.

It's July 2025 All Over Again

So last week I was at My Favorite Coffeeshop doing, among a couple other things, going through my receipts.  Serves me right to get them all in order but not bring my day planner so I could write the amounts down.  Anyway, I have this leather pouch from culture and lifestyle magazine Monocle, which I bought when I went to Hong Kong, that I purchased just so I can shove all my receipts in it.  I haven't done a good job of cleaning it out, though, because as I was doing some digging, I saw a few receipts that were in there should have been accounted for.  They were from July 12 of last year.

In my day planner, I write down all the things I paid cash for, then see whether I spent more money than I got from the bank or not, and by how much.  To be honest, and this may not make sense, in all but, oh, three months since I started this way back in my twenties, I have finished a month taking out more money from my account than spending it.  Anyway, at the end of every month, I make a table and write all my cash transactions (what I spent and what I took out of an ATM) down.  For the month of July, I now had to re-do that table.  Moreover, I am rewriting it for a third time; it turns out there were some receipts from July 12 of last year I found, presumably in that pouch, after I did this month-end table the first time.

It's all done.  Wait -- I can't say that with any conviction.  There could be other receipts.

My Sister The Proxy

So I told Mother that I got my passport book and card two and three weeks (respectively) after I applied online, and she asked for my help to coach her through the online application process for her and Father at a day I had time to help her with it.  I told her on Sunday that I could help her Monday evening.

Now, I've told all of you how much of a mental and emotional drain being on the phone with My Mother can be.  I think that planning a long phone call ahead of time, like it obviously was going to be when dealing with an online passport renewal application over the phone and not while I'm sitting next to her, helps remind me that I need to be patient.  What I didn't know, however, was that my sister just so happened to be visiting my parents in Las Vegas for a few days.  Awesome!  She basically became my on-site translator and extra set of hands!!  So sis, can you do the application process for the 'Rents ... and ooh, by the way, can you help me install a new modem and router in their condo, too?

This problem of theirs goes back at least a year.  Mother complains of dead spots, namely their dining room table, which is at the opposite end of the part of their condo where their old, slow, obsolete modem resides.  It needed a new one, I suspected, and then it needed something to boost its range and help the signal break through the condo's walls.  But I wasn't planning on going out there anytime soon, not as long as this Republican administration has the gall to snatch up anyone at the airport they decided they don't like, so I figured my folks would have to just suck it up.  My sister being there, however, changes everything.  I could tell her what the problem is and how to fix it.  So once I decided she could do this (and my sis made the online application process for both Mother and Father go so smoothly), I spent the rest of the night looking up the best modem and router to buy at an electronics store and bought them, then I texted her all the information for the three of them to pick up, bring home, and set up so Mother can finally stop bitching about their shitty wi-fi.

That part did not go smoothly.  First of all, the modem I bought for them has to be hooked up with a coaxial cable.  I thought every place had a coax, but apparently this condo only connects to the Internet outside via Ethernet.  My sister tried to see if the modem would work just hooked up through Ethernet, but she told me (on the phone Tuesday night while I was at the Timberwolves Game) that it didn't.  Also, the router I got for them was just one unit of those "meshes" or "pods" or whatever you call it.  I thought one would be enough.  I thought that if I bought them a second (which, presumably, would be placed as far away as the first "mesh" or "pod," which has to be connected to the modem, in order to maximize the range), they would complain that, like, "It looks bad," or something.  My folks can be that shallow.  Well, Mother complained (after my sis attached this new router to the old modem, which she had a bit of trouble reconnecting) that there still wasn't any range.

My sister was leaving Thursday, and there was no way my parents would even dare try hooking up this second router, so my sister got my brother to buy that second router, which could be delivered the next day (which was Wednesday) because he has Amazon Prime.  (This is where I expand the universe of this blog post by reminding you that after I got home from the Game, I saw that my thermostat didn't work and, ironically, decided to accept a free trial of Amazon Prime in order to buy the same brand of thermostat so that I didn't have to do any wire work to put in a different brand of thermostat, and get it delivered as soon as possible ... even though I put in a second different set of batteries which made the old thermostat finally work.)  My sister got this second router, she installed it Wednesday, and it ... well, I haven't asked Mother yet if the range is better.

All through this ordeal, I profusely thanked my sister for doing this favor -- for our Mother, because our Mother wanted it, but frankly, for me, too.  I don't think she had running to Best Buy and spending a good chunk of one afternoon installing new wi-fi as part of her plans while visiting my parents.  I recognize that I ask ... no, use my sister a lot when I want something done.  Most notably, when I feel like I can't talk to my brother about something I need him to know, I tell my sister and she tells him.  We were in Hong Kong for Grandmother's funeral several years ago, and we were not on speaking terms then, so we asked our sis to relay any messages we needed the other to know.  She recognized that; the night after the funeral service, when I took her to this bar I wanted to go to because I needed a drink, she told me she knows what both of us are asking her to do in order to keep the peace between us.  And she almost broke down crying.  The gravity of burying Grandmother had something to do with it, of course, but being the peacemaker brings its own anguish, and that is something we make her do.

She acted as if she didn't mind putting in a new modem and router, even though she had no previous experience.  Still, besides thanking her a lot for being my proxy, I wonder if there's something else I could do for her ... or does she have a favor I'll have to pay her in kind.  Either way, that's an obligation I should do for her.  She did this for me, after all.

I Hate It When I Panic, And I Really Hate It When I Don't Have To Panic

I wasn't in a good frame of mind when I came home last/Tuesday night after the Timberwolves Game (which they won, even though they finally took the lead on The Bastard Vancouver Grizzlies just before halfway through the Third Quarter).  Naturally I checked the thermostat first thing when I got home.  And the thermostat was blank.

Ah, so the batteries ran out.  Well, Father bought a huge stash of AA batteries, so I replaced them.  But the thermostat still didn't work.  Oh, no.  The thermostat we have is just a programmable one.  It also has been there as far as I can remember.  It's been so long since it's been replaced, it makes sense that the damn thing just conked out.

Unfortunately, I suddenly realized I was in the lurch.  You can't really go without a thermostat, can you?  Well, I should take that back; if it were not too long ago, when the temperature was below freezing all day, not having the ability to heat the house with the help of a thermostat would be dangerous.  But we are, thankfully, having a mild (if not necessarily a heat) wave with temps punching into the fifties most days this week.  I have been told that you don't want to let the ambient temperature of the house drop below 60 degrees.  That would happen if it were below freezing, but probably not now when it's much warmer than that.

That would give me time.  To do what ... well, that's what I have been doing the next couple hours.  I ran into a YouTube video whereby you could hack the furnace on using this special two-way wire that does the work of a thermostat, including stopping when it reaches a certain temp.  But my main concern, obviously, is getting a new thermostat.  I tried looking for the exact type of thermostat, but that thing is damn old, so it's not in stock at any hardware store.  It's plentiful online, but that obviously would take time to get shipped, and as much as I think the house could survive without regular heat because of the milder temps, I don't know how long I want to tempt that.

Unfortunately, the thermostats that I could just go and buy are way, way different from the one that's in the house now.  First of all, I see these smart thermostats and they are way too smart for me.  Then, as I fell further down the rabbit hole of learning about the world of thermostats, I saw that the wiring pattern behind the thermostat is very, very important to note and even take a photo of.  Each brand and maybe even each model of thermostat will or might have a different configuration of the ends of the wires being plugged into its socket.  Moreover, the configuration of how the sockets are arranged vary by brand and even by model.  So if I bought one of these things off the shelf, I would have to unscrew the wires, unscrew the mounting plate, put the new mounting plate in (while making sure it's level), then carefully matching up the wires to its socket in the new configuration.  And I'm supposed to make sure the HVAC is completely unplugged while I do this, and I don't know how the hell to do that.  I was going to just wing it and do this intricate wiring work without shutting the power off to the HVAC.  Hey, I'm a big boy now, right?

Ultimately, though, I decided I was too chickenshit to do that.  My dumb ass was sure to get electrocuted.  And then I went on Amazon, saw this particular brand of thermostat, and then saw that magic word: "Prime."  If I sign up -- and, of course, it's only a free trial! -- I can get this same brand of thermostat delivered in two days.  I think the house can go without heat for two days in this weather, right?  So I signed up to get it this Friday.  I just have to remember to cancel Amazon Prime in 30 days because Amazon is the devil.  I just had to dance with him because otherwise I would have no heat.

With that bought ... well, why don't I try new batteries in the old thermostat again?  There are plenty down there, and maybe I just got two bad ones or something.  So I took that old thermostat downstairs, found two other "new" batteries, put them in ... and the display was back on.  Jesus fucking Christ, did I pick two new batteries that just didn't fucking work?  Or is this thermostat being so flighty that it just decided to work then and there?

So I have heat now, and it seems to be working fine.  I thought about cancelling delivery of the new/old thermostat and Amazon Prime.  But remembering how panicked I was, I'm keeping it.  This is a prime example where it's smart to have a back-up.  Of course, I have to remember that I have a back-up thermometer.  If this one conks out for real, there's a good chance I will forget I bought a replacement.  Where would I even put this one once it comes in?  Well, that's not the worst problem to have.

---

I told you at the start of this blog post that I was not in a good frame of mind.  That's because of the car.  I'm scaring myself into thinking it's way too low on oil.  I have checked, or tried to check, the level a few times over the past week or so, but the goddamn thing is so hard to read.  I have a dipstick that has a plastic orange end.  It's hard to read when there's clear, new oil, and it's also a bitch to decipher because it seemingly has oil above the full dot and below the empty dot, and then it's completely drenched in oil on one side of the dipstick but completely dry on the other.

I checked the oil level before driving out of downtown after the Wolves Game.  The dipstick was how I described it above, and it wasn't the first time it looked like this.  So is my car completely tapped out of oil?  I can't believe that; I got an oil change about 2 1/2 months ago, and I don't think it's leaking oil.  And what if I have overfilled it, which is something I am scared as hell I have done if I fully believe what I saw on my dipstick these past few times, acted as if my engine was empty, but got suckered because it was in fact full, or even more than full?

I am in a bind.  Or, I have put myself in a bind of my own delusions.  I have blog posted before that I might be scaring myself into thinking I am about to do catastrophic damage to my car by doing and/or not doing something when the best thing I could do is just chill and drive.  Maybe that's the case here, and I should just relax ... no, fuck no, I need to take this into the dealership.  Maybe they can figure out how much oil is in my car without charging me for an oil change, or something.  And then they can teach me how to fuckin' read the oil level on their shitty dipstick.

And I am changing my mind on that, maybe.  I am leaning toward putting in just a little more oil.  Maybe that'll be the thing that finally gives me the results I want to see on the dipstick.  But what if I overfill it?  I've seen so many fucking disaster films.  Man, why do I have a car?  Why do I even drive?  It's just one more burden you're placing on yourself.

Deep breaths, trying to take deep breaths. ...

This Grocery Store Is Pissing Me Off, Man. ...

So there's a grocery store close by me that my family has gone to ever since I can remember.  For people who will never pass up a bargain, I don't know why they frequent this mom-and-pop, boutique grocery store.  Don't get me wrong -- their stuff is great, and there are some things I can get there that we would have to travel a ways to buy elsewhere.  But knowing my parents, they would not go to this grocery store.  But make no mistake; they still do.

And I do.  It's convenient.  It also makes this great chili that I see more and more as dinner.  If I want to make a steak, or if I need onions and peppers to spruce up my spaghetti sauce, I go there instead of the bigger chains around town.  Like I said, their stuff is great.  Finally, I noticed that these guys compare favorable with Aldi for cheapest prices for plastic bottles of pop, which I need almost as much as water.  I would have to pay 30, 40, even 50 cents more than I do at this place.

OK, so this is how they pissed me off yesterday/Sunday.  I wanted chili, and I wanted to buy a plastic bottle of pop.  I also wanted to see if they were still running their $1 deal for Mr. Pibb, which is a decent soda, but I really wanted one just because their bottles are a buck apiece.  So I went there for the first time in, I think, over a month.

Well, first of all, that promotional deal for Mr. Pibb is over.  Beyond that, their big change, which I saw my last visit there, was that they installed a new rewards system.  Before, I was given this paper card with our number.  We either showed the cashier our card or gave him or her our number.  After we accrued enough points, we would get five bucks off automatically.  But on my last visit, I saw these brand-spankin' new cash registers, and I was told that the old rewards program was killed off, utterly.  In its place is this system whereby, instead of issuing cards with numbers, we registered with our phone number; they track points and after a certain number, we get a discount.  It might be five bucks, I don't remember.  But the first stupid thing is that the points we accrued up till then are gone.  It's a brand new system, fuck your points.

To make up for it, I guess, we were automatically given three bucks off our next purchase after our initial visit upon which we registered.  That next purchase was yesterday/Sunday.  So once I was ready to pay, I asked the cashier where the discount was.  That's when she explained to me that no discount is automatically rung up at the cash register, like the old program did.  Instead, we were e-mailed a Quick Response (QR) code.  I guess we had to go into our phone, look for that e-mail, and scan it, or something.

I tried looking for it since there was no one behind me.  But (and maybe I should blog post about this sometime) using search functions on your email applications on your phone sucks.  They don't find shit.  And I couldn't find it, so I had to just pay full price for my chili and bottle of Pepsi and go.

I didn't think at the time I even got a QR code.  But I did.  Once I got home, I realized that as part of signing up for this new rewards program, you give them permission to e-mail you.  I did find the e-mail where the code was.  Also, and unfortunately, the cashier said that this $3 dollar new program discount lasted only for a month after registration.  And in that e-mail, conveniently, I saw the expiration date of ... four days prior.  I couldn't use that discount even if I were able to find it when I was there.

That really pisses me off, it really does.  I was used to these guys doing everything, but now more of the work, especially the part where I am responsible for keeping up on my discounts, falls on me, and I don't like that change.  So maybe I'll drive down to Cub to get my chili from now on, and maybe I'll then stop by Aldi for my pop.  Because I don't like getting screwed like this, and I did get screwed.

The Joys Of Buying A Robe

It's not as if I don't mind wrapping a bath towel around myself when I leave the bathroom after taking a shower.  And hell, right now I could gallivant around the house stark naked if I wanted.  Well, maybe not; I can't dry the curtains at the back door.  And that's when I thought about buying a robe.  And you know, it gets cold when I gallivant around the house stark naked.  Now, it's just a robe, and I'm not wearing anything underneath it.  But it would be enough for me to wear, and I could do things like do the laundry or make myself dinner while wearing it, and I wouldn't be either cold or embarrassed.

The problem is that the best robes are so expensive.  I rely on The Wirecutter for best products, and I was amazed that all the robes they recommend are at least close to a hundred bucks!  Really?  Are good robest that pricey?

I had been looking at the article in The Wirecutter for a few years now.  They update their list annually, so I kept looking just in case they found a budget pick.  Well, about a month ago I saw that listicle again and, miraculously, there was a sale going on with one of their robe picks.  That discount ran around 30%, and going from almost $100 to less than $70 was the final incentive for me to finally buy a robe.

And you know what?  I love it!  I can walk around the house now after I shower without worrying if any neighbor catches me naked.  It is still new, so the deep and plus hairs of the robe nestle and comfort me.  It keeps me warm as I put-put around the house.  Finally, it solves the reason I wanted a robe in the first place, a reason I let slip from my consciousness frequently: I hate sitting up on my bed waiting for my hair to dry before I could put my clothes on and gallivant around the house.  With a robe, I don't have to pull my shirts over my wet hair and thus making my chest and back sweaty all day.  Instead, I can walk around the house and spend my time doing productive things as my hair dries.  Plus, I don't have to pull a robe over my wet head.

The only dilemma is where to stash the robe once my parents come home.  I can't leave it out in the bathroom.  I think it'll have to be put in a closet, right next to my civilian clothes.  But I don't have to really, really think about this issue until I get a fixed date of when my folks are returning.

New Hat Rack

So just after the New Year I bought on Amazon a new hat rack.  The one I have, which Father helped nail onto the wall, kind of looks like a ladder.  There are hooks that you hang on each "slat" of this rack, and the pincers at the end of each hook is where the folded cap gets attached and hangs on the rack.

Two problems with this.  One, I have bought and got so many ballcaps (I want to say I have at least 50) that there was no more room on the rack.  And two, the hooks have gotten so worn out that they no longer pinch the caps in place.  I try putting them back, and just when I think the hook has a hat in its grasp, the hat falls to the ground.  I have had to throw away many hooks that have worn out.

My Father, in the midst of going through my shit and fucking invading my privacy, did come up with an ingenious way to get all my hats on the rack by putting them on those clothes hangers with hooks on each end, then hanging those clothes hangers on the rack.  But I wound up relaxing in my bed, watching my TV and seeing, over to the left, this ugly mass of hats and a metastatic tumor of clothes hangers squeezing next to and piling on top of one another just so they can stay on the rack.  I normally don't give a fuck about how things look so long as they do the job, but even I couldn't stand seeing that monstrosity every day.  (I have to admit that, as clever as he is, seeing that semi-organized mess was a reminder that My Fucking Father went through my things and acted as if he knew what was best for me, and I rebelled against that, albeit subconsciously.)

I thought I needed a second hat rack to handle the overflow of the first hat rack, but in time I thought I should just get something that could handle all of my hats.  Eventually, I something that fit the bill and bought it on Amazon.  It is a series of five cubby holes on a vertical rack that can hang on doors because there are hooks and grommets on the top.  I installed it on the inside of my bedroom door and, frankly, it's a godsend.  All the hats that crowded my plastic rack I can just fold and place in one of the shelves, and I have two shelves left over.  In fact, assuming I don't buy any more ballcaps (and that could happen), this new rack really could take all the hats I have.  I don't necessarily need my first, old one anymore.  The only thing I'm scared of, and this might just be my paranoia talking, is that the hats on this new, second rack might weigh down my door so much it'll start to pry the door off its hinge.  Hope not; this door has been where it's been as long as I can remember it.

All in all, I'm glad I made this purchase.

I Want To Fight Over Pennies, But Can't

Yeah, I hear that the country would be saving money if we did away with the penny.  I still don't like the idea that we no longer have a denomination of "1," you know?  I think there has to be a currency that counts off one.  Because if now the smallest amount of coin is five, why do we have the number one itself?  (I may not make any sense, or cents, but it makes sense/cents to me.)  And I will do my goddamnedest not to agree with any fucking decision this installed government makes.

But these guys have ended minting the penny, and so stores are beginning to make decisions on what to do if change requires pennies.  Some stores I've been to are going to round the total of purchases I make down to the nearest nickel, which is nice.  But just now I went to the discount food store near me for some stuff, my change was supposed to be $X.XX.X1, and she gave me all the money I was owed except for one penny.  Don't know if she rounds, or is told to round, up to the nearest nickel or round to the nearest nickel, period.  But I'm still miffed.  And before, I swear I would've pitched a fit demanding my fucking penny.  But now, considering this death of the penny, I don't know if I can fight it.  Ah, well.  This is a discount food store; I think I'm getting stuff there for dirt cheap, so maybe the thinking is I shouldn't be fighting over a single penny.  Hrmph.

Two Changes Of Plans

So I was plotting out which days I would eat out and which I would stay in and eat leftovers.  Specifically, because I wanted to finally pay for limes and lemons for the cocktails I am going to make this weekend, and since they're discounted on Tuesdays, I would eat out today/Tuesday and, to make up for it, eat in tomorrow/Wednesday.

But those plans blew up.  While at work, I got this text from ****e saying that she and ***i* are having a party tomorrow/Wednesday.  Then, she texted ominously, "Last chance."  Last chance for what?  Will I not be invited anymore if I don't come?  Are they hanging up the wanking lifestyle?  Is one of the two women going to die soon?  I don't know what she meant by that, but it has been a long, long time since I got serviced by either babe, so I decided I am going to this house party on tomorrow/Wednesday.  And since I'm spending money then, I might as well eat out then, too.

Then, I got another text, this time from my aunt.  She wanted to know when I was going to be home because she made food for me.  Then I remembered that around the Chinese/Lunar New Year, she has always come over to give me food she made for the holiday.  Very sweet of her, and it allows me to eat in several days over the next week.  And it would make sense, then, that one of those days would be today/Tuesday.  It's a lot of food, and I should get on it in an effort to eat it all before it goes bad.  And yes, this blows up my idea of getting citrus for my cocktails, but hey, I can make cocktails without lemon or lime juice, and besides, there's a good chance I will be out both days this weekend.

So, to sum up, I went from eating out tonight/Tuesday night to staying in, and I went from staying in tomorrow/Wednesday night to eating out.  And for once, these changes aren't frustrating to me.  It just necessitates a change of plans -- two changes of plans, in fact.

Bored Me Napping, Then Shopping For Big-Ticket Items

Braced myself for another long day at work yesterday/Friday ... but it wasn't; it was actually tame, and very tame compared to Thursday ... and yet I have to brace myself for today/Saturday, because my bosses said that today/Saturday could bring in a bunch of work which I don't understand why it couldn't have come yesterday/Friday, and so I'm coming in to work as soon as I wake up.

So my plan of staying in today/Saturday has blown up, but hey, I am getting beaucoup overtime this week, so I'm not too upset.  Still, I wondered what I would do once I got home (on-time, which I did not expect) yesterday/Friday.  I thought I would be awake enough to start on the leftover pizza that I had decided I would eat, but the setting sun convinced me to take a nap first.  If I wasn't tired, I'd pop up early, and work on the pizza before the sports Games I wanted to watch would start at 7.

I crawled into bed before 6.  I woke up a couple minutes past 9.  Didn't expect to do that.  I thought I didn't have time to eat pizza and should pivot to spaghetti, which I planned to eat today/Saturday, but I am getting Pizza Hut to watch for the Super Bowl, so I went through with the pizza.

Yeah, nothing exciting.  So, in my bored state, I was reading up on the latest on how these assholes continue to plague and besiege our state.  One person believes that the announcement earlier this week that they're withdrawing troops was just a way to get people in the state and the national news media off their backs.  Then, the next step is for the remaining pricks to go hard not necessarily after non-Whites but observers that have made their loud objections to what is going on here a state-wide issue.  Intriguing, and I can see that that works, and is working now.

And then I clicked on a link recommending the best gas masks to buy.  If I have to physically commit to this struggle, I'll probably get tear-gassed, so I might as well prepare, right?  I looked through not one but two websites dedicated to the best gas masks, and me being a thoroughly-researching consumer, I think I settled upon one.  And, to make things even more tantalizing, the gas mask is on sale.  (I'm not going to link the websites that reviewed the masks or the company that sells the one that appears to be the top-rated one, just in case they're snooping around here.)  I think maybe I'm sounding too paranoid, but dammit, the thing's on sale.  I'll wait till tomorrow/Sunday; if I remember, and if it's still on sale then, I think I'll buy one.

What I did pull the trigger on is a new robe.  After seeing the two website review gas masks, I went to the website that does nothing but review consumer products (to think gas masks are a consumer product -- what a world we live in), The Wirecutter.  And bored me went down another rabbit hole, to their review of robes.  Now, I have thought about buying a robe for the past, oh, few years.  On the one hand I didn't think I needed one; either I would wrap myself in a towel and just hang out on my bed in the nude, or, if I'm alone in the house, I'd just waltz around naked.  But there is a limbo state where you are not totally dry but still want to putz around in the house without your man bits hanging out -- well, unless you want to open up your robe to thrust out your dick.  I'd reserve that occasion when I want to surprise one of my stripper girlfriends.

Anyway, the main obstacle to buying a robe, believe it or not, is price.  The ones The Wirecutter recommends are routinely in the triple digits.  One hundred dollars for a damn robe?!  I may have seen one for $90, but even that's expensive.  However, when I am bored, I am weak.  And thus I was ripe for the picking when I saw one of the recommended robes being sold for about 30% off if I use a promo code tied in with the website.  At $65 ... well, it's still expensive, but it'll be as cheap as these robes will ever get.  Also, I didn't plan on spending any money tonight, but the company said I could pay through PayPal, and my stupid brain has convinced myself into thinking that is not real money, so I bought it under the illusion that I haven't really paid anything today.

So I threw my sleep pattern off last night, I bought a robe, and tomorrow/Sunday I think I'll be buying a gas mask.  This is what bored me does.  Now, off to bed.

Well, Thanks For Telling Me, Amazon!

No joke, I spent a lot of the last 24 hours thinking about what I would do after work last/Tuesday night.  Combining my principles (or OCD) of trying to use only cash or credit cards a day and not making four trips in my car a day (three is fine, five is fine, four is not because four is an unlucky number), I was figuring out whether I should immediately drive home after work or go out and get groceries.

Beyond the OCD principles above, the thing that factored into my decision was that the measuring cup I bought that I was going to use as my jigger for cocktails.  Amazon said it'd arrive Monday, but it didn't.  If it had, I would have gone grocery shopping yesterday/Tuesday at the discount food store close by to pick up a lemon and a lime.  I would only go there yesterday/Tuesday because on Tuesdays everything is an extra 10% off.  And since I would have gone there, I would have gone to the ATM to pick up cash, probably get gasoline for my car, maybe get some fast food to eat both last/Tuesday night and a future day, and, oh yeah, buy more cocktail items like ginger ale and ginger beer.

But yet, I got to thinking at work.  Why buy a lemon and lime if I don't have the measuring cup?  What I do is slice one of them in half and squeeze them into the cup.  That does two things.  One, I can see how much juice I squeeze, and that dictates which cocktail I would make for myself.  Two, I hear that you leave out lemon and lime juice sitting out because it tastes better about four to ten hours after you squeeze it.  It's a waste buying them without getting the jigger first, especially since this is (I think) the second time Amazon moved the delivery date of the cup.  Amazon said that instead of Monday, it would arrive Friday, and in fact, if it didn't arrive on Friday, I could ask for a refund.

So why am I doing all this stuff yesterday/Tuesday?  I could do it, say, today/Wednesday.  I get out of work early because I'm cutting.  For fast food, I could go to the last Godfather's Pizza in the state, which is going to close on Saturday.  Assuming I leave early enough (and that may be in jeopardy because we have been asked to work overtime because the shipments are still playing catch-up), traffic both on the road and at the restaurant will be easier to deal with.  Meanwhile, I took out a rack of leftover ribs from the freezer to the refrigerator on Sunday.  I see on the Internet that leftovers in the fridge are good for about four days before they should be thrown away.  Why chance it and just eat the ribs yesterday/Tuesday when, by the way, I can watch an NBA Game on NBC?

So just going home it is!  And then, once I get home, I check the mailbox and see a package.  I was able to push my thumb into its middle, so it was the measuring cup.  It was supposed to come last week, then Monday, then Friday, and then for some dumb reason it came yesterday/Tuesday.  I thought I should check Amazon before I started my car at work, just in case, but I still blame Amazon for not getting the precise delivery date right.

But I stuck to my guns and went inside to eat ribs and watch basketball.  My plan on doing everything I thought I would do yesterday/Tuesday today/Wednesday after work is still mostly intact.  Well, besides getting the lemon and the lime, since it's not Tuesday anymore.  And I guess I can make do with the alcohol I have now, so the ginger beer and ale can wait.  I just hope nothing goes wrong, like me falling asleep at the wheel or getting detained on my way home.

I Still Live In A Safe, Peaceful Neighborhood

So I ended my lockdown -- which, once I stepped a bit after 9 at night, totalled a bit more than 75 hours -- I was confronted with a very nice surprise.  Not one but two of my packages, comprising of several of the many items I ordered online at once, were at my stoop.  I thought they would get here after my lockdown, but apparently that wasn't the case.

So I checked online.  As is often the case, their initial days of delivery were moved up.  One package, which were two windshield wipers, came, according to them, on Thursday.  The other package, a two-pack of water filters, arrived Saturday.  So, if they're right about when they actually arrived, I had two packages, one stacked on top of the other, sitting outside my front door, for one and three days?  And no one stole them???  I've heard of the rampant scourge of package thieves, and I don't doubt it, but I have to be honest with you, it's never happened to me, at least not yet.  I've come home late into the night to see packages at my stoop and I've wondered how no one has taken them.  But one day would be a record.  Three days, though?  It's pretty much a miracle that both packages were still there.

Or, maybe I live in a neighborhood where people respect other people's stuff, and don't feel the urge to take things that are not theirs because they have stuff of their own.  For as unsafe and scared I have felt these days, that's a reminder that this place is still pretty safe and peaceful, Buddha bless it.