Ramblings of a rural(ish) geek

Somebody on a mailing list I read said that he didn't know about XYZ because he wasn't on FB. Dude, we talked about XYZ *on this list* three months ago, and it gets mentioned on a regular basis. But because he didn't notice it, the discussion must have been on FB. bwah?

"Liftgate service" for freight does no good if the pallet won't fit on the liftgate. So J and I moved the 24 solar panels. Twice (once from the truck to the front yard, and then again to a spot in the garage). The driver unloaded the panels from the pallet and slid them down to us (more work than he expected, but we're not allowed on the truck). That was Tuesday, and my shoulder is still a bit sore. And now the local building authorities say 'you can't do that yourself'. So J is now back to the supplier "you guaranteed that I'd get installation permits for this project. have at."

J is being such a teenager. again.

The blood drive scheduled for Tuesday afternoon was cancelled Tuesday morning. I was able to get into a blood drive one town over on Wednesday. They were understaffed, so it took longer than even the usual COVID-19 time to get through.

We will miss the Bridge Walk gathering next weekend. Some of the peeps we usually go with will still be going North for the weekend, but adding another couple to the mix would make the social distancing exponentially more difficult, and while seeing other people would be nice....

J and I went to GV on Saturday. It was a bit hot and sunny, but not bad for August. As expected, J was 'done' after a couple of hours. (worse than a kid sometimes....)

I told them it was a bad idea. I asked them if it was something they really wanted to do. But they went and did it anyway, and so it took an extra four hours to close out the absentee board yesterday. A really stupid procedural error that didn't affect anything except the election workers. And I'm leaving it at that because I'm still fucking annoyed by it. Getting home at 1:30am is not my idea of fun. Worse off were the township clerk and deputy clerk who still had to take the USB sticks into A2 for the Board of Canvassers to verify before they could go home.

Apparently, the live floor was worse in many ways. Lotsa people are publicly worried about what the Board of Elections can do to make it safe for voters, but the biggest problem they had was other voters, not the facility or the voting procedures. People who think that policies (masks please; if you're not wearing a mask, use this booth over here, out of the main path; etc) are great for other people, but not them. And people who don't care that the workers are following the book, the rules should be different for them Right Now. And entitled parents who blame the election chairs when their teenager's first election experience isn't what they wanted for him (but they didn't care enough to come with him, but complained after he got home and they asked him). And then there was the election worker whose abrasive entitled partisanship has gotten the clerk to say that she won't ever ask zie to work an election again - zie'd said that zie wouldn't work the election if there was no way to make voters wear masks (in bold text, even), yet there zie was on election day, insisting that zie'd never said that to anyone. The floor chair had cc'd us all on her reply to zie (in which she included the official policy on masks), so we'd all seen it.

And I haven't worked live floor in an election for years, and the site chairs called me upstairs three separate times to help with the electronic poll book. Two of them for really simple shit that should have been obvious and one of them a user error that probably would have taken me about five minutes to back out and repair if I could sit down with the machine. But I couldn't touch the machine because I wasn't working floor, and there was nobody on floor whom I could trust to walk through it; not that I could have anyway because they still had voters coming in. It didn't affect anything except ease of recordkeeping, so I told them to document the hell out of it, and deal with it after.

(edited for pronouns and clarity.)

3 PTs in the last 4 visits, due to scheduling, etc. They're distributing the limited hours evenly among the still working PTs (a couple have taken furloughs, the first one I saw had non-COVID pneumonia, one broke a thumb playing catch with his 10yo, etc), and the one I'd been seeing most recently is now off on Fridays; and as I am good at symptoms and feedback and flexible about working with different people, I get bounced around. I don't really mind - they keep good notes, and eventually someone's gotta figure out what's wrong. Today was a Report Day, so more evaluations, and a note back to my doctor. PT thinks there may actually be a partial tear in one of the muscles in the back of the shoulder, based on the notes and my reactions to tests he did today. He may ask the doc to request an MRI, as I haven't had one done on that shoulder in 15 years or so. (A partial tear is one that doesn't require surgery....) Following a electro-stim trigger-point attempt to break up a stubbornly tight muscle, today's exercises were really specific and small.

J's been in A2 with K since Tuesday. They're here now, and will be driving to Howell to catch a Wings of Mercy flight sometime tomorrow. Apparently the plane is in Howell tonight, and as we're actually closer to Howell than A2.... (due to roads, it takes about the same time to get there).

It's cold today, and looks like it will remain so into next week. I am so ready for it to warm up and stay warm.

Very quiet day here. Sunny in the morning, and then the high clouds came in. Three for dinner (ham, roasted veg, salad, crescent rolls). No dessert, because we've got lots of fruit and cookies anyway.

EU got her Xmas box in the last mail delivery before Xmas. She put the entire box under the tree, and opened it on Xmas day.

Mum called from FL, where she and MidSis and AC were gathered for their holiday, and sang me "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" with AC on 'pianner'.

We skipped the Xmas Eve service at church, as we were not performing! (first time in over 20 years.) Well, and J was shuttling someone to Roscommon. The Bell Choir played on Sunday, and it was more of a train wreck than expected. Someone (not in the choir) removed a couple of pages of music between rehearsal and performance, and so we had to shuffle music & performers so everyone had appropriate music, and we wound up with misordered music and two rookies next to each other for the first time so that they had problems keeping their place. And then while we were performing, some late arrivals took our place and there was no-where to sit. So we left. (Late arrivals were annoying, as they were ostensibly there for peeps in bell choir. Service nominally starts at 9:30, with bells scheduled very early in the service. Service was running behind, and bells wound up at 9:50, and they were *still* late. sigh.) And there was a 'student choir' - youth too old for the children's program - that was horrid in rehearsal, so I didn't mind having an excuse to duck out.

Today, I finish clearing up after Christmas dinner, and then start on the cards. My plan is to get them to people by 6 Jan, but I should start sooner rather than later.

So, the FCB has known for a couple of weeks that yesterday's rehearsal was going to be at a different site -- announced at the previous two rehearsals -- and that at least some people would need to bring a chair and/or stand. (Middle school bandrooms don't usually have chairs & stands for 85.) Over the weekend, the FCB board sent out a reminder, reminding us to 1)arrive early and 2)bring a chair and/or stand as assigned. We still had people wandering in at 7:25, without chair or stand. And these people had the nerve to complain about there not being a chair/stand/space for them. Did you not pay attention to the announcements, or the email you got?

In other news, due to the quite nice weather over the weekend, I was able to get a lot of the fall garden cleaning done. I finished weeding around the pond edge, planted some spring bulbs in the space where we yanked out an evergreen -- I think I'll move a couple of larkspur and maybe a california poppy there for summer & fall color, but that's for next year. The front bed by the forsythia is cut back (except for the milkweed and the spiky thing that still has seeds on it) & weeded, and I got the garden by the side door mostly cleared out. There's one more garden space that needs to be cut back/weeded, and I should do some thinning of the daisies & goldenrod. (I really should think about doing the rest of the irises or another peony, and I will if I have time before it gets too cold.)

Of course, due to the garden work I did over the weekend and the hour in the dentist chair on Friday, my back was really cranky yesterday, and still is today. At least it's chilly and rainish out there, so I don't feel quite so guilty about not doing any garden work. Tomorrow is supposed to be cool but sunny and no wind, so I should be able to get something done out there.

Today, I have to either find or make (more likely) a wide black belt for my Halloween costume. I was thinking about making a red w/black trim 'spanish' dress (to go with the Zorro music on the program), and then remembered that I'd made one seven or eight years ago. I found it, it still fits, but the belt is missing. So that's today's project. I'll probably spend an hour putting things away first, though. There's also a stack of turquoise & plum taffetas/satins/embroiderys that I need to decide what to do with - a mix and match set of skirts/vests/victorian-style jackets is my current plan.

Not quite as hot as it was, but still summer. Considering that it's July, I"m OK with that.

Sunday the FCB played at FoxRun. After having parking issues for the last few years, this year FR had guides telling us where to park. (Apparently, some lazy FCB folk were parking on the street or in resident spots, rather than the designated visitor parking farther away.) There were still a couple of problems - there weren't spots in the loading area for a late arriving percussionist (with a drum set) or the librarian, so they had to park elsewhere. As I was leaving, I saw that two of the spots in the loading area had been occupied by able-bodied clarinet players. Thanks, lazy people.

The concert itself went well, which is what really matters. Monday's rehearsal was sight reading a few things for fall, and announcements. I spent more time commuting than I did playing.

Tuesday I went off to Fowlerville for a LCCB performance. The downtown park there is quite nice. They put us in the picnic pavilion, and open sided pavilions with tall pointy roofs do weird things to sound. I think it would have sounded better had we set up in the park, but that's very much Not My Circus. I was home before dark, as Fowlerville is less than half an hour away if I go back roads. Twisty-turny back roads, to be sure -- the turn-by-turn map gave me 16 actual road changing turns in a 22-mile trip, not counting getting out of the subdivision. There's swampy bits and forest between here and Fowlerville, too, so there are a lot of curves and hills.

I'm still trying to decide whether I'll be going up for the Annual Picnic. I haven't been in a few years dues to schedule conflicts (and J's car). Last year, J said that he was trying to cut down on the amount of stuff he hauled up, and maybe WE could take my car, depending on scheduling. The various schedules came out, and hey, look, I don't have the end-of-season FCB concert the Monday after the picnic. But J decided that we were going to go up the Saturday before (without asking me or even looking at the calendar), and I do have a gig the Monday before the picnic. So rather than change his plans and come up Tuesday with me, J says "well, I'll go up Saturday, and you can come later". Erm. right. Not what I had in mind, yanno? If I'd wanted to go to the AP solo, I could have any time in the last four years, and left on Sunday rather than hanging around into Monday.

I finished weeding around the lilac+lilies in the front yard. Later today, I'll go cut the edge around the geranium+forsythia bed. That will probably take me a week to finish weeding. The roses we transplanted last spring have begun flowering. There will be at least a few flowers from now until September, if past history is any indication.

I think I heard a frog last night.

(I know, I missed Day 1. DB was on my computer when I got home, and he went to bed after I did.)

Our township clerk asked about half of her "usuals" if we'd be willing/available to do the recount. Five of us said yes. We started yesterday morning, and will go until all the ballots are either hand-counted or the precinct is declared "un-recountable" (due either to improper seals or incorrect pollbooks). I'm working with a random-guy-off-the-street who called his township clerk and asked if he could help count. He's quite competent, if unfamiliar with some of the voting floor procedures, but since there are very few people there who've done any sort of recount, he's not too far behind; and he learns quickly. Yesterday we got out 'early' as we finished off a precinct at 4:40pm and the county people stop handing out new ones at 4pm (the average is 2.5 hours/precinct). Today we ran over, and left the building at 6:50pm. I have not been tracking all the results, but the tabulators that Washtenaw uses are good -- the only changes we've had are when people write in an invalid write-in candidate and also vote straight ticket. (MI allows for a modified straight ticket - a straight ticket vote is assumed to include president unless otherwise indicated. When handcounting, an invalid write in vote is ignored and the straight ticket vote is counted. The tabulator has no way of knowing whether it's a valid write in or not, and doesn't count the straight-ticket presidential vote).

Many election workers are taking advantage of all the observers (at least two, sometimes six) to do some civic education about how elections work, and how much work it actually is to keep track of the metadata (who voted in which precinct using which ballot) and keep both the metadata and the ballots secure and unassociated with each other.

There are things going on at church this weekend, and people keep asking me to do things. "I can't. I'm working the recount until they tell me not to." "but This" "no" "this Other Thing" "no" "What about Yet Another Thing?" "I make no promises, but I'll try to be there."

Grrr. What part of "I'm doing this thing, I don't know when it'll be done. I have to leave space for it through Saturday for sure, maybe into Sunday." is hard to understand? I'm actually on the program for a keyboard dedication concert on Saturday, and I told them "put the duet late in the program, and note that it may be a solo depending on the recount". (the concert was on the schedule before the recount, but I didn't know I was playing until after the recount was announced. yeah, it's a bit free-form.)

It shouldn't be this hard. I'm trying to find three different (admittedly, somewhat specialty) items, but cannot find them anywhere. And no, even if Amazon has them, I don't want to spend half again as much in shipping.

I need another set of plain metal measuring cups and nobody local has them. They've got plastic or fancy $15+ metal ones nearly everywhere, but the basic Foley/American Metalcraft ones? nada. There's a restaurant supply company online that has them for <$4, but there's $6 shipping. I put a set on my Amazon wish list, and I'll add them to my next order.

I need a doll stand for a tiny doll. Can't find doll stands at all locally -- even the craft stores and the hardware store (where I got the last one) don't have them. They're $2 at the online craft stores, but it's another $6 for shipping. Amazon doesn't sell them by the each.

And doesn't anybody use plain paper for shelf liners anymore? The stores all have vinyl or padded or cork shelf liners, and wrapping paper is too shiny (and bright!). I dug around in the craft papers and found a roll of very slightly corrugated paper that should work as shelf liner for the china cabinet.

Being a geezer is hard.