OK, so my brother, sister and I are leaving for Hong Kong in a few days, and we've been on WhatsApp planning and coordinating.  So my brother gives a recommendation on where we can eat that night after the cremation.  I don't know if he's been to Hong Kong lately; the three of us went there in 1994, and I know my sister has been there a couple times to see Grandmother, but my brother?  I don't think so.

Anyway, on WhatsApp just now he gives a name of this seafood place I never heard of.  I said as much.  And so he says, "Look it up," and that's something my brother has always said, and it's always pissed me off.  So I defy him, texting back, "No.  Instead I'll trust you," and that is a passive-aggressive way of telling him to stop pissing me off, but I really don't care where we eat that night, I'll probably be too broken up from saying goodbye to Grandmother to give a shit or to even eat.  But now that I think about it, maybe that just pissed him off.  Well, if that's the case then this takes us back to when we fought bitterly as brothers.

(sigh) You'd think that with so much time away from each other, only coming together for a sad occasion such as this, dumb arguments like this wouldn't crop up.  I don't know -- maybe it's me, maybe it's him, maybe it's both of us.  Water under the bridge, hopefully?

Changing Modems Regrets

I replaced cable modems tonight.  Successfully, I think so.  Much better to buy your own modem than rent the modem/router combo given to us when we had cable Internet installed, even if the modem that was given us works just fine.  For this new (and touted as best) modem I need a router, and thankfully Father bought one, so I brought that out of the box and we're using it now.

What I wanted to do before I switched it, however, was apply a speed test to the modem we had.  Wanted to see, just in case, whether the modem we rented is actually faster than the modem/router combo that we're using now.  But I forgot to do that before I switched modems after dinner today.  Meant to do it, but it just slipped my mind.  Still wonder, but it's now too late, because switching modems means connecting online with Comcast to re-activate the old modem, I think, and I guess it's just too much hassle for a point of curiosity at this point.

Oh, well.  Even if it's decisively slower, it's better to buy your own modem than to rent one from the cable company.  Right?

Fucking Dealership Blew My Cover

I have a puny percentage of oil life left in my car.  Last time I was blindsided when it went down to ... 5%?  0%?  Anyway, I kind of flipped out in my car when I was driving ... uh, maybe it happened last week where it went from 15% (which is the point where the warning automatically shows up on the instrument panel) to 10% after, like, a week.

I vacillated as to when I would finally bring it in.  Grandmother's death pushed up my initial hope that I would do it when it got down to 5% because I'm a rebel.  Now I had to do it before I leave for Hong Kong in case my folks want to use the car while I'm gone; I don't want them to flip out at seeing 10% or 5% on the dash.  I made a reservation for the day before I had to leave, but I remembered that I had a coupon for the oil change part of the service (they also have to rotate the tires) which expires today, June 30.  So I changed it to noon today.

When I was eating dinner last (Thursday) night with my folks Mother reminded me of the appointment.  WHA-WHA-WHAAAATT?!?!?!  The goddamn dealership, for some goddamn reason, called the landline to remind me of the appointment.  Why they did that, I have no fucking clue.  Well, I did give them the home phone -- but only as a back-up, in case something serious happened as they looked at my car, for example, and they couldn't reach my cell, which I know I designated as my primary number.  But I never got a call yesterday/Thursday about the appointment.  Someone who wasn't paying any attention just called home instead.

And so that just totally fucking blew my cover.  They now know that I have something planned in the middle of what is supposed to be my workday.  I know for a fact that they now wonder if I am actually going to work tomorrow -- and if I actually go to work at all.  Of course, I'm not, but I didn't think the fucking dealership would rat me out.  My God, this could result in a whole host of bullshit questions I didn't want to deal with, based on getting made in the most unlikely way possible.

I want to scream at the first person at the dealership I see.  I'll just demand that they delete the phone number off their record as soon as I get in instead.  And hope that my parents don't fucking ask any more questions about it.

RIP, My Coke Rewards

So this is the last day of My Coke Rewards, the frequent-drinker's program where you would get codes off of Coke plastic bottle caps and can-pack packaging and enter them into the company's website (or through an app, even though I never downloaded it).  Doing that allows you can eventually redeem them for stuff like ... uh, gift certificates.

I have absolutely no idea when I started this or how I got roped into this.  I know it's been a long time.  In fact, I remember when I was back in El Paso, after some event at a high school stadium let out, I saw all these Coke and Sprite bottles (apparently this high school contracted through Coke) littered on the bleachers.  I had all the time in the world, and I wasn't going to live there long-term, so I decided to not care how I looked and spent a good, oh, half-hour going up and down the bleachers, twisting off the caps of every bottle that had a My Coke Rewards code on the other side.  While I was doing this one woman shouted out to me something to the affect of, "Are you OK?  Oh, you're just finding caps."

I decided to spread out entering the codes because if I didn't enter a code over a period of, I think, 90 days, the account gets deactivated and, at a period of time after that, you would lose all your points.  So I think I shoved all these codes I gathered at the stadium and basically hoarded them for years.  When I visited my sister when she lived in Los Angeles she volunteered to enter some for me.  The rest I finally put in, several at a time, over the winter at work at the health insurance place.  Some of those codes I held onto for years.  I'll be honest, now thinking about it -- the codes I got from El Paso, they may all have been entered by my sister.  Maybe I didn't keep them with me until this past winter.  But I'll say that I kept them for a long, long time.

My plan of meting those codes out every three months so my account wouldn't go dormant didn't work.  I entered codes so sparingly I forgot to enter them at all.  I lost my account twice; the second time, over the past year (did I blog about this?), I had to beg and grovel to get my points back.  That was shortly before Coke announced that they're ending My Coke Rewards.  What timing.

There were two major deadlines.  A few months ago was the deadline after which you could no longer enter codes.  So all these bottles being sold with 10-(?) character strings of nonsense are now useless.  And now, today, is the last day to redeem those codes.  So after last week, when I cashed in about half my remaining points for an Amazon gift card (which I immediately used to knock ten bucks off the new cable modem I purchased), I've been in kind of a frenzy.

Well, make that last night.  After lamenting that I was four points short of another $10 Amazon gift card (dammit) I got a $10 Target gift card, bought this offer for prints on Shutterfly (a site that apparently is just giving shit away for free), made a donation for, get this, a nickel to my high school, and with nothing else I can spend it on, I redeemed the rest for chances on sweepstakes for debit cards.  Thank goodness for single-point redemptions; otherwise I would have surrendered them (after they were converted) to a charity of Coke's choosing, only the categories of their philanthropic aims were known.  (We get to vote on giving unused points to a charity that provides "Education," "Empowerment" or, uh, the "Environment?")

Best to do it now and be done with it.  I guess I had a relationship with it because I've done this for so long.  It was kind of a millstone, but sometimes, when I'm walking and I see a cap on the ground, I look around to see if strangers are looking at me.  And if there aren't (or if the strangers are people who seem cool), I would pick it up and/or twist it off the bottle and put it in my pocket to enter later.  That was a part of my life, irregular as it was, for at least 16 years.

And after tonight, it's officially gone.  I don't know if I am happy.  I don't know if I am sad.  I feel that torn about a lot of things.

ETA at 12:08 a.m. on Friday, June 30 a correction, a pretty big one: I got the end date wrong.  My Coke Rewards ends on June 30, which is Friday.  Late Friday night is when it shuts down.  Apologies.

So to forget about Grandmother I went to *a***'s all the way below 494 to fuck her.  And boy, did I fuck her.  Without a condom too, just the way God intended.

While she went downstairs to shower (which is something she does before our trysts), I took a shit.  I saw a scale sitting on the floor.  I hadn't weighed myself in a while, so I decided to do so.  I came in at around 165, which actually is much lighter than I think I was the last time I weighed myself.

So that's good.  Too bad I think I ballooned past that after dinner, stopping by DQ for a an Orange Julius before typing this at the library, and then going to Taco Bell after I leave here.

It Came Together Quick ...

... but I have a ticket to attend Grandmother's funeral.  After taking Monday night to check for the obviously exorbitant price, on Tuesday night the price dropped by $150 and I had to pounce on it.  And with my brother already booking his ticket, the three of us have been texting back-and-forth to book airline tickets and find accommodations.  I thought there was a decent chance I wouldn't be going; now, I am going.

Now to break the news to my parents.  I did not bring up the fact that I was looking for a ticket to say goodbye to Grandmother to them over dinner, even though I knew they were given information about when the cremation was going to happen.  I did everything I could passive-aggressively to give them the idea that it was bothering me -- staying silent, staring vacantly, checking out the clock, acting sort-of chagrined.  But I couldn't just say it, you know?  I just didn't think I could bring up the subject if they got real upset.  Instead, my brother texted them that we were all thinking about going and that they should go, too.  (They're not going; they say they're too busy with real estate matters at home.)

I totally pussed out.  And so my folks now know of my plan to fly to Hong Kong through my siblings even though I live with my folks.  In retrospect, I should've brought it up, right?

Bad Driver: 792 XDV

This fucker, this young punk, is a trip.  I go around this guy turning 'round the bend on 694 East because I was about to be forced to take the 169 exit off my lane.  I needed to stay on 694; that was the only reason I cut in front of him.  Honest!  (OK, I did see this asshole Fast And Furious has way through traffic like an asshole, so I wanted to show him up.)

I thought I saw the last of him.  But this guy, who was in a red Dodge whip, came storming back.  As I was coming up on a slow car in my lane, he drove up to my right.  No, I thought, he isn't going to cut in front of me.  But he did.  There literally was no room between me and this asshole car.  That's the way he wanted it.  And he actually cut through my lane, to the left lane on my left, and then took off and slalomed through the traffic yards ahead of me.

So this teenage prick cuts in front of cars only to slow down, only to start cutting in front of cars, apparently because I "disrespected" him.  Beautiful.

Oh, I love this part.  Just before he pulled off this stunt, I caught a quick glimpse of him through my rear mirror.  I swear I saw him put one of his hands, balled up into a fist, into the open palm of his other hand.  Like he was saying, "I'm coming for you."  You go on with your bad self, shitstain!  Man, to be young and have a fast car and to think that the most important thing in the world is to show up a car who needed to get onto your lane.  He didn't have the death of his beloved grandmother on his mind, that's for sure.

I will admit that it was kind of cool that he drove so close in front of me without causing an accident.  Doesn't mean I'm not going to write his ass up.

So I fell asleep on a Monday night, again.  And again I woke up to news about Grandmother.

There is now a funeral (well, a cremation) date set.  It is far enough that, with some planning, I can make it.

Unfortunately, on the last day of work today, I was asked back onto another project that is projected to take me through for another two weeks.  And I don't know if it's possible, or even appropriate, to just start this project and then go to Hong Kong for the funeral.

If I go, I don't take on this job.  And if I don't go, well, I don't see Grandmother again.  So I have one hell of a choice to make, and I need to make plans, like, now.

And not to mention what my parents would think if I told them I wanted to go.

Christ, I kind of hoped this arrangement would be happening, say, tomorrow, whereby I have no chance of needing to make a choice.

Back Into The Void

I still can't believe that I'm 41 years old and I have to go back to doing this shit.  After we finish up field testing today, I am back out on the street.  I guess this is what happens when you decide there's nothing you want to do as a career when you get out of college.  Or when you're 30.

I'm not sure this is the right time for me to not have anything to do.  With Grandmother's death, I'm afraid I'll be spending my days alone with my thoughts of her.  They say that time heals all wounds.  That adage may or may not have anything to do with death.  But frankly, the more I think about her, the more I realize that she's not here anymore.  I think it's getting harder for me to deal with, and not being occupied with work during the day may might make dealing with it worse.

I haven't even thought about the disruption being unemployed again will bring.  I have to get up for no good reason, I have to lie to my parents about where I'm going, I need to find a place and a time to eat all the food they're giving me, I need to figure out how to fucking occupy my day.  And that doesn't even include stuff like finding a job, or even getting unemployment.  Further complicating matters is that I have chores that I need to do, such as going to the dentist, and fulfilling this study I started back in the winter.  And I'm still holding out the possibility that I will fly to Hong Kong for any remembrance arrangements.

So I don't know.  In one sense I'm grateful for the free time.  But on the other hand, I'm being thrown (or am I throwing myself?) back into instability, something that I never thought an adult should do.  I hope I find something that keeps the money rolling in.  But in the meantime I'll just ... be.  Because there's nothing else I can do, I guess.

---

You know, I wish I had the chance to, once it's over of course, live this life over again armed with the experience of what not to do.  But that is impossible, of course.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Timberwolves (Re-Entry!).  OK, I don't know if a team that is in the off-season has ever claimed the top spot in a Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey, so this is a first.  And I'll be honest: I wasn't so high on the trade that sends Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn and the draft pick that turned out to be Finnish big man (by way of Arizona) Lauri Markkanen to the Chicago Bulls for Jimmy Butler and the draft pick that became Creighton Center Justin Patton.  But after hearing what other people and experts think about it, I'm warming up to the notion that this was a lopsided trade in favor of the Woofs.

First of all, Patton is incidental in all of this.  (Also, I didn't know till I just looked it up that the T-Wolves sold off their second-round pick.  Wouldn't have mattered anyway.)  Butler's the big deal, for both sides, and this is a signal that the organization believes that they're one piece, a veteran piece, away from being the team to get their brains beaten in by the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals.  He is everything the squad needs: A wing player who can defend, a guy who can create his shot from nothing as the clock is winding down, and a veteran presence that can finally instill some clutch guts in the young pups that blew more second-half leads than any other team in the league.

Tom Thibodeau had Butler as a player, and from all accounts, even though their relationship is combustible, Butler could play for Thibs in a way he never could (or would) under current Bulls Head Coach Fred Hoiberg.  Butler had to leave Chicago.  But he should have left last year, when the Bulls could have gotten him for more than what they got now.  No matter; Thibodeau now has his prized player on this team, and it appears as though he will make Butler the Alpha Dog on this team ... well, maybe co-Alpha with Karl-Anthony Towns ... and the other players will fall in line behind him.

The Starting Five now sets up nicely.  You have four shooters and a Point Guard who loves to pass in Ricky Rubio.  (By the way, trading Dunn squelches forever the feeling that Rubio will be traded before he starts the downside of his career.  The job was Dunn's to lose, and yet somehow he lost it just after his rookie year?  Harsh for a guy who did things "the right way" by staying in school all four years.)  Pairing Butler with a disrupter like Rubio strengthens the perimeter D, and Butler joining the team improves the D, period.  Finally, Thibodeau is probably going to give Butler the responsibility of making Andrew Wiggins a two-way player.

And that's where my doubts begin.  LaVine may have grown the most out of him, Wiggins and Towns, but he was thought to have the lowest ceiling.  However, this year it appeared as though, through taking on Point duties and trying to D up a little more, he demonstrated a willingness to be coached.  I don't see that yet in Wiggins.  For all of his offensive prowess, the Wolves might have a knucklehead in Wiggy who just wants to score, and in my opinion, I'd rather have a team/role player who'll do what you ask him to do instead of a glory boy who can pour in 30 a night by have a +/- in the negative double-digits.  Also, LaVine (and Dunn for that matter) are young, so this franchise is committed to accelerating the maturation of the team.  Guess I'm saying I wouldn't have been totally upset if it was Wiggins leaving and not LaVine.  Finally, I still think of Butler as a late-first-rounder who somehow blew up to be a superstar.  I still can't quite believe he is as good as everyone says he is.  Is he good enough to be the face of this team, like it or not?  Will he leave in 2019 after his relatively modest contract ends?

Nevertheless, LaVine is coming back from an ACL injury and Markkanen seems to be able to only post up on offense.  If the Timberwolves are thisclose to breaking through, well, this move probably is the one that'll take them back to the playoffs.  And if they did it for a song, well, that means these guys win the week.

(Aside: I believe that like the Bulls, the Blackhawks and the Bears also made trades the day of the draft of their respective sports.  What's the deal with Chicago teams dealing on Draft Day?)

#-2: Lynx (Last Week: -Infinity).  I get to put last week's survey, where are three playing local teams lost on Saturday, behind me.  And I put the Lynx in second.  They put their first loss of the year behind them by clobbering Washington Friday, 93-76.  Still waiting for their games vs. the Los Angeles Sparks; this week they host San Antonio (tonight, probably on a Pride-themed night) and visit Phoenix Friday.

#-3: United FC (Last Week: -Infinity).  They still haven't won a game on the road, but at least they're doing pretty well at home.  A win against Portland and a draw with Vancouver this screening week.  Could have been worse.

Both matches were entertaining.  The victory over the Timbers Wednesday featured dueling Own Goals and dueling Red Cards; Abu Danladi was sent off for pushing and shoving.  At least he left after he scored the game-winning tally off a Keystone Kops-like clearance by the Timbers Defense.  (Christian Ramirez scored the third one.)  Portland did not score from the run of play.  They, in fact, scored twice -- once on themselves (the Own Goal), the other on a Penalty Kick.  The Whitecaps also failed to score from the run of play; in the first half they got on the board off a PK resulting from a foul on Goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth after Kevin Venegas made a stupid back pass that Vancouver's Brek Shea (a USMNT mainstay) was going to fire on goal.  The 'Caps made it 2-0 just before the half on a header off a Free Kick.

I was resigned to a defeat last (Saturday) night, but give credit to the Loons -- they came back fired up and ready to play.  And in this match other players put the biscuit in the basket.  Francisco Calvo headed a one-hopper to pull one back (off an assist from Kevin Molina, who may be the MVP of this club), and then Miguel Ibarra slid the ball to Jerome Thiesson for a low one-timer through a thicket of Whitecap posts to tie the game.  It was target practice for MNUFC from there, but although they controlled the match from the start of the Second Half (and really the entire game; they out-possessed Vancouver, like, 77-23% in the First Half), they just couldn't complete the comeback.  So yeah, I bemoan their continuing inability to defend off set pieces, but unlike other people who point out that they still dig themselves into holes to start matches, I really like how they grind throughout the 90 minutes and have the ability to score in the run of play.  Those are qualities you look for in a good team.  And so, even though they technically tied last night, since they were behind and scored the last Goal of the match, I'll treat it as a win.  Sort of.

This week they play at Yankee Stadium against NYCFC.  That'll be the last roadie before they're at TCF Bank Stadium for the next five weeks.

#-4: Twins (Last Week: -Infinity).  And while Twin Cities fans have the new shine of United and the continuing excellence of the Lynx, don't forget about the Twins.  They had a rocky weekend home sweep at the hands of Cleveland, and they only finished this screening week at 4-2, but they're still hanging around with Cleveland at the top of the American League Central.  In fact, they're going for a three-game sweep at Jacobs Field right now.  What's most impressive about this series (BTW they lost Sunday to Cleveland and then took two-of-three against the White Sox at Target) is that they won on Friday and Saturday without either Ervin Santana or Jose Berrios taking the mound.  In fact, Adelberto Mejia's 5-0 win Friday was the first time this season a Twins Pitcher other than Erv or Jose went the distance without surrendering a run.  The Twinks are facing a good team, at their place, and by already winning the series they ensure that they'll be, at most, 2 1/2 games out of first place in the division.  And it's almost June.  I think things can only get better from here for this squad.  Watch this space.

This week will test this club, however; they're just beginning a massive roadtrip.  After finishing up in the Land, they play four in Boston and then visit Kansas City for four games for the weekend.