Some people I know

Tomorrow, I am going to help K paint her room.

Wish us luck!

I want carrot cake for my birthday, which means that we need some unsulfited coconut. The easiest place to find that is Trader Joe's, so I headed there after lunch. They've moved all of the bulk items of that sort to a different aisle, but I eventually got a pointer and tracked them down.

The slot where the unsulfited shredded coconut goes was absolutely empty. Drat. There were coconut strips nearby, but they would not work nearly as well. I poked around and then noticed something *behind* the coconut strips. This turned out to be the single remaining bag of the coconut that I was looking for. Having won the scavenger hunt, I picked up a few more items for the household and headed home.

At 2 PM, I had the video appointment with the La-Z-Boy tech to inspect my broken recliner chair. They are sending parts and will send a tech to repair it. This will cost about $250 total, but that is still better than replacing the chair, even if it is 13 years old. Looking at the website, matching the original leather recliner would cost around $2100. Eek!

Then I called Home Depot and managed to get the order for the new storm door set up. This had gotten dropped on the ground in the general confusion of getting K back from college, but is now paid for. Now someone just has to install it.

Meanwhile, K is ready to begin painting her room. Whee!

Yesterday, we got everything done for Gretchen's Medicare enrollment. Yay!

Today, I made the COBRA payment for the kids and me. Ouch!

And then I went to the Social Security website to see how my Medicare enrollment is coming, only to discover that the website is being very, very ill right now and can't locate anything.

In any case, it looks like we will be spending a lot of money on healthcare. This is somehow not a surprise.

Cubs pitcher Shoto Imanaga tonight had a terrible outing in what has been, so far, a pretty good season for him. He ended up giving up eight runs which was plenty for a 9-3 Brewers victory tonight in my third game of the season.

Why is this only my third game of the season, given that I am no longer employed and theoretically have more time -- *and* when the Cubs have played a lot of very good baseball? Well, it turns out that I've been busier in unemployment trying to sort everything out than you'd expect.

And the remote parking situation is execrable. The new parking is 15 to 20 minutes farther away from home than the old lot, which adds a lot to the transit time for getting to the park. It is completely unfriendly to anyone who has difficulty with stairs, because the elevators are *still* shut off. Supposedly they work and just need to be inspected by the city before they can be used. This was the same thing I was told a month ago at my previous game. Someone *has* done an excellent job of cleaning up the various flyers that complained about the broken elevators though. It's good to have priorities.

It took an hour after the final pitch to get back to the garage and out to the street in my car. I have had times in the past with the old parking lot when I was able to be *at home* an hour after the final pitch. Mind you, that was a case of *everything* timing out right, but it was *possible*.

This is the situation when the night games are starting at 6:40 PM. When they move to 7:05 PM shortly, traffic is going to be even worse.

Clearly, this is not going to be fixed this year. Maybe next year.

Maybe someday, they will inspect the elevators.