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Honestly. I”m sure reality has just run right off the rails. 

Case in point: this morning I roll out of the sack. Stumble to the back door to let Ruby out. Stagger over to the pool, figuring to take a fast dip. And…

…Whazzat?

There’s a big, round damp spot on the KoolDeck. It’s about, oh, a yard in diameter. Not a puddle. A wet spot. Perfectly circular.

I didn’t put it there: haven’t been in the drink since 10:00 last night.  It’s 110 this morning, headed toward 115. Trust me: if that water had hit the KoolDeck  before 10 last night, it wouldn’t still be lingering there. And no: nary a cloud in sight.

New Pool Dude didn’t put it there. Ruby would have gone screaming batsh!t if he’d walked into the backyard in the wee hours of the morning. Or at any hour.

Coyote? Possibly Mr. Coyote hopped the back wall (he can, pretty easily: it’s only 8 feet high, not counting the shrubbery), took a dip, climbed out, and went on his way?

If that were the case, surely there would be at least a few coyote paw prints. ALL that’s in evidence is a round, flying-saucer-shaped wet spot.

Uh huh. Martians, no doubt.

Hey! Martians like to cool off, too. right?

The pool, under the ministrations Swimming Pool Service & Repair, is sparkling, stunningly, almost frighteningly clear. Feeling good about that. Evidently what I was trying to get across to Canned Pool Dude — that the filter needed to be cleaned — was spot on.

***

Irrigation Dude  shows up shortly after dawn cracks.

He’s another highly amiable and ingratiating working-class fella.

I suppose I find these guys charming because that’s what my father and all his pals were: working-class fellas. They’re just nice guys to have around, guys who know how to do their jobs and seem to take pride in doing them well. They may hate their jobs, but they hide that sentiment well. 😀

He had a kid with him — well, a young fella in his 20s, who to We Who Have Circumnavigated the Block Too Effing Many Times looks like a kid. Irrigation Dude was earnestly teaching the craft to him.

Heh heh! Keep that young man out of the slam, sir!

Left a small lamb shank to defrost overnight. Snab that out of the fridge and set it to marinate in lemon juice (the last couple of viable Meyer lemons from the backyard tree!) and garlic and herbs. But I’m out of fines herbes, lhudly sing goddam! So this is something that needs to be purchased soon. Like…today.

Bang around thrash around thrash around bang around…eventually it’s TIME: cannot put off a grocery-store run another minute. Dayum!

Cruise down to the Sprouts at the corner of Main Drag South and Conduit of Blight. Get most of the stuff I need. But…yeah, they do have a rack of bottled spices. And noooo… NOT A CHANCE do they carry fines herbes!

Why did I not know?

Run into WonderAccountant there, at the checkout stand. So that was nice. She really is such a sweet person…WHAT LUCK, to have that pair move in across the street!!!

Okay. Surely the Albertson’s across the street — being part of a regional (maybe even national) supermarket chain — will have a jar of fines herbes.

Veer across Blight (six lanes of traffic plus the accursed train tracks), skid into the parking lot, come to light fairly near the door. Quickly find the spices…

and…

and…

you can see this coming, cantcha?

NO they do NOT carry fines herbes!!!!!!!!!

Hey! They’re right across the street from a Catholic Charities home for the elderly (very!) poor, across Conduit of Blight from a neighborhood featuring apartment houses where you dare not leave your cleaning goods (if you’re a cleaning lady) in the back of your pickup lest they be stolen while you make a quick run up to your apartment to bolt down a peanut-butter sandwich, and where a cop was shot through an apartment door by one of the fine residents. Yes, so lovely. So WHY would you expect any of their clientele to even know what “fines herbes” ARE, to say nothin’ of buying them???

I suspected as much. But hoped for the best. Wrong hope.

Decision time: Drive down to AJ’s or over to the Safeway? Or order the damn things from Amazon?

Given the price of gas (of late it’s dropped to a mere $4.88/gallon), I decide to order from Amazon. I yam peeved, but tell myself it’s just not that big a f*ckin’ deal.

Already have the lamb shank that calls out for this particular spice combo marinating in red wine and lemon juice. I reckon tarragon will do as a substitute.

Pass the goddamn cheapo wine, puhleeze!

And we’re brought back to the question of what DID leave that perfectly circular yard-wide wet spot on the CoolDeck????

Oh well. Pass the wine again, if you will.

…Among which we can number the things that don’t happen to us.

As Ruby and I started our morning constitutional into the Richistans, we came across a bevy of fire trucks, emergency vehicles, and cop cars.

One of the big old 1950s ranch houses in Lower Richistan — to the east of Feeder Street N/S — caught fire during the night. The carport and the vehicles therein were carbonized. The neighbors escaped with their two dogs and teenaged kids, but apparently their two cats died.

What a mess! It looks like the house is probably unlivable — the smoke damage would make it impossible to stay in there, even if they could turn the electric and water back on.

Jeez…they’re long-term residents who have been in that place longer than I’ve lived here.

Unclear, at last mention, what the cause could have been. One of the neighbors remarked, on the ‘Hood’s Facebook page, that a female transient had been seen making a fire — presumably for camping purposes, unless she just liked to watch sparkly stuff. But another discounted that theory. A lot of houses in this neighborhood — mine included, lhudly sing goddam — have aluminum wiring, which, as you may know, entails a fire hazard.

At any rate, it’s one unholy mess. Sure hope they were fully insured! The neighbors are taking up a collection for them, though…so it doesn’t sound like they expect their insurance to cover what will be some very large expenses.

For the moment, the Funny Farm itself is quiescent. That’s something.

Well, not exactly: a brisk wind has been whaling around all afternoon, and one of the whirligigs on the roof has decided it needs to be lubricated. So as it spins in the breeze, it goes wooodleoodleoodleoooo. Charming. I ain’t a-climbin’ up in the attic or onto the roof to spray it with WD-40, so I’ll have to wait till Monday to hire a handyman to come lubricate the damn thing.

But that’s one heckuva lot better than shoveling out ashes and fighting with insurance companies…  🙁

Well, in the course of the last threat to remove Funny about Money from the air for alleged non-payment of hosting fees, we learned that the autopayments to the host and the Web guru are indeed going through, and the threat was a scam.

Interestingly, they came back. Yesterday was largely absorbed by another threat to kick my site off its host. After literally hours of farting around, we ascertained that yes, the payments are being received.

So we seem to be looking at a persistent scam.

However, I have to allow that I’m not very techie, and there’s a whole lot about online website hosting that I do not understand and do not especially want to understand. And if this campaign is over something real, then Funny is gone. Ohhh well. We’ll all have to find something else to pass the time.

Like you (no doubt), I already have plenty of tasks to fill that purpose. But if FaM goes off the air, keep an eye on Amazon. I’ve downloaded all its content and, if the site is closed down, will put it together in a book and peddle it on Amazon — probably in both e-book and hard copy format. So, for old times sake, do buy the thing. 😀

 

So in came an email, allegedly from Ting (mobile phone by-the-minute provider) thanking me for paying my monthly bill.

Say what? I canceled that account.

This morning I was up at the credit union wrestling with an issue having to do w/ my account, and I mentioned that I couldn’t get in to check this supposed  payment.

He said a message thanking you for paying your [XXX] account is a scam. And apparently the scammers are blasting them out by the berjillion. He flipped open his own phone and showed me an identically worded message thanking him for paying his AT&T account!

So if you get a “thank you for paying” message, do not reply to it! Yes, it is a scam.

Now we know why “balmy” has that double meaning…

It’s a lovely morning and any time now, my head could stop hurting… Wow! WHAT a day!!!!!

And it’s only half-done. Here I am, down at the church office for the weekly sit-around-doing-nothin’-for-four-hours volunteer gig.

Shortly after dawn cracks, word comes in on the cormputer that someone has hacked into my Amazon Sellers account, my websites, my email, and possibly from there they got into my credit union accounts. I believe this attempt was headed off at the pass, but cannot prove it….and am especially alarmed because the CU won’t let me into my business account. The hacker’s strategy was surprisingly credible….so much so that Grayson (FaM’s Web guru) remarked on how well done it was.

Oh, my GAWD, what a series of run-arounds, hassles, and hair-yankers ensued!!!

Of course, you can NOT reach a human at Amazon, not for love nor money.

Getting one on the phone at the credit union: not much better. After I said my next call was going to be to the FBI, one of the CU nabobs finally connected me with their fraud department. This woman managed to get my password changed and get me into my bidness checking account. Far as I could tell, nothing had been siphoned out of it…yet.

So…godlmighty was i ever furious! As you can imagine, that made for a just DUCKY morning — several hours of it!  Once the dust settled, I decided that by dayum! I am closing that seller’s account. The thing has sold exactly zero (count’em: 0) books. It really hadn’t occurred to me that the damn thing represents a security risk to my own bank accounts, forgodsake. But of course it does: a good hacker could easily get access to your account information.

For awhile it looked like I was going to have to cancel this afternoon’s Boredom Shift at the church office, go to one of the CU’s offices, and sit there refusing to leave until someone in charge got off their duff to help untangle the mess. But apparently the simple statement, “…and my next call will be to the FBI” is the banker’s equivalent of “Open Sesame!”

I think that in addition to closing the Amazon seller’s account, I should also close my bidness account at the credit union. There’s a decent amount of money in there, but the truth is, about 97% of it was earned quite some time ago. I haven’t had a decently paying client in many a moon. And the other truth to tell, that’s probably because I can barely contemplate the thought of reading another line of gawdawful Chinglish academicese. Really: I’d make better money cleaning house, and the work would be a whole lot less brain-banging.

Seriously: I need to find something else to fill the empty hours. Before the Plague, I’d thought about volunteering at the wildlife rescue. Now, of course, one would like not to expose oneself to the Disease (to say nothing of rabies, ticks, and fleas). Drawing and painting is a possibility… Heh! The other day, I came across a drawing I’d made of my son while he was in San Francisco and thought…jeez! That thang ain’t half-bad! Maybe I can revive that talent.

Otherwise, while the weather is almost coolish, sorta: maybe a whole lot of hiking? Or else just walking on the flat through the city. Last time SDXB got the bright idea that we should go up the back trail into the Px Mountain Preserve, everybody else and his little brother, sister, mother, father, aunt, uncle, and dog had the same idea. It was just MOBBED up there. Dunno about you, but I do not go hiking in the desert so as to rub elbows with every hoi and polloi in the city. Blee-agh!

The canal is too dangerous — too many bums and pree-verts. But one could just start walking south out of the’Hood or easterly into the fancier realms of North Central. It’s really a lovely area…why not use the whole district as a giant hiking park? If I drove us down here to the Cult HQ, we could leave the car in the parking lot, go down the Central Avenue walking trail south to one of the fancier neighborhoods, and roam back and forth amongst the Mansions of the Richerati. That would be reasonably safe, and if you like over-reaching architecture,  pleasant enough.

OMG! Gary — office manager — toddled in, dropped his lunch dishes in the dishwasher, and then turned on the damn machine. The kitchen/junk room is right adjacent to the reception cubbyhole, and that damn washer is spectacularly un-soundproofed. It whines, a nice steady wooooooooooooooooo. And it thumps: ker-thum-THUMP-thum-thump in perfect harmony with the throbbing of one’s headache. Ohhh gawd, I wanna blow the thing up!

Two more hours to go.

One thing about sitting here twiddling your thumbs all afternoon. You learn some exotic things and meet some exotic folks.

Guy comes sashaying past the windows up to the front door. He’s tall, dark. slender, ever-so-slightly surly-looking, longish hair tightly wrapped to the back/top of his head with an elastic band, and not someone you’d wanna meet at the end of a dark alley.

“‘I’m with Sun Devil Hoods,” says he. “Here to clean the kitchen stove hoods.”

“You prob’ly want the school kitchen.” He looks blank. “Straight across the parking lot.”

The hood guy… LOL! Has ever a man been in a more appropriate job? 😀

One hour and 15 minutes left to go.

UPS Dude: Hallelujah, he knows to put the boxes on the table in the next room. I don’t even have to carry them in there.

One hour and 5 minutes left to go.

A little stack of the past four issues of the Smithsonian, sitting here. My…its former glory has faded. At least, so I think. Was it always 8 1/2 x 11? Was the content always ever so slightly condescending, dumbed down for the ill-educated products of American public schooling? Did it always look like a wan knock-off of National Geographic? Funny…i don’t remember it that way.

Yipes! Phone rings…lifts me out of my chair, here in the silence.

“All Saints Episcopal Church this is Vicky how may i help you?”

“Hello my name is Audrey and i’m with mumble disability yadda blah blah”… A tape recording.

Hang up.

I hate that phone.

59 minutes left to go.

Is this headache and nagging dizzy spell a clue to ambient smog?

Wunderground won’t let me see the weather report without turning off my ad-blocker. FAT chance, Wunderground!

Over to Accuweather: “Air Quality: Excellent.”

Say what?  Sooo…the headache is an incipient covid symptom, right?  Eeeeek!

Are there really people who LISTEN to a tape-recorded telephone sales pitch? Why? Why on earth would a person do that? How stupid would such a person have to be? And why would you want to sell something to someone whose IQ is presumably so limited that it is illegal to enter into a contract with them?

Hungry. Yea verily, one might even say “spectacularly hungry.”

Go by AJs on the way home and pick up some prepared chow for dinner?

Naaahhhh….can’t stand the prospect. Got salmon. Got steak. Got asparagus. Got roasted taters. Got a barbecue. Go straight home.

44 minutes left to go.

Accountant slips out early. She worries that the (UNholy!!!) traffic from the school may not have thinned out yet.

38 minutes left to go.

Gary, having finished off a late lunch, sneaks in and snabs a piece of candy. He’s only slightly heartbreakingly cute…what a doll! Unfortunately, rather too young (by about 35 years).

31 minutes left to go.

Phone jangles.

“All saints episcopal church this is vicky how may i help you?”

{silence)

Third hang-up of the day.

Fourth, if you count the robocall that I hung up on.

Gary inspects the conference table, seeking more candy. Putters around. Chats. leaves.

27 minutes to go.

Fr Dan out the door. Headed to meet his physical trainer. Right age. But also gay.

What IS it with all the gay staff in this place? 😀  Not to say <3 …

17 minutes left to go.

It’s clabbering up. Please, Gawd, don’t let it rain before I can get home and toss some chow on the grill.

hmmmmmmm…. Yeah, it’s definitely gonna rain. But maybe not very soon.

15 minutes to go.

One ringy dingy two ringy dingies… A woman. Wants Nanette. Nanette has flown the coop. She wants to confirm they arranged for altar flowers for some upcoming rite of passage.

Am I right that Nanette has left? I think so. I’m not getting up to ask, though. Ugh.

Yes I am.

No, I’m wrong: she has not left. She and Gary are trying to get her computer to do some damnfool thing: they’re totally absorbed. I leave the message for her: she’ll probably be just as glad not to have been interrupted.

7 minutes to go.

It’s getting darker out there, damn fast. I yam soooooo hungry! Ruby Doobie must need to go out. If it rains, she’ll miss her doggy-walk and then will be a pissed pooch.

Hmmmm…..  If one were to wrap this up and send it off, then get up and turn off the lights and lock the front door, it would be exactly time for me to leave.

4 minutes to go.

Outta here!!!

 

LOL! I am totally spoiled to having a cleaning lady descend on this place twice a month. But sometimes…

Sometimes the term is “ruined,” I s’ppose. 😀

Having a beloved cleaning-lady around is the same as having a beloved anyone-else around: They dork up your carefully ordered life!

This is because cleaning ladies, like other specimens of humanity, have their own idea of how and where things should go and will brook no interference from the likes of you.

Luz is given to removing all the clutter…uhhhh, collectibles…from the mantel, setting them down on the hearth or the nearby desk, dusting the mantel, and then putting the junk back where she thinks it looks nice.

This is not where I think it looks nice.

So this morning I set my butt down at the dining room table for breakfast, gaze across the family room, and see…all my tschotchkes arrayed across the mantel, higgledy-pigglety! Arrrhhhhhggghh!

Finish breakfast, traipse across the family room, and attempt to rearrange the junk the way I want it.

No big deal, one would think. EXCEPT…I can’t remember how I had them. I know that the way they’re now rearranged is NOT that way, but exactly how and why not…i dunno.

Godlmighty. Fiddle around and fiddle around and fiddle around trying to get those things back the way I imagine I like them.

So now we have a new array. Fine. Good. Go away…

Down the hallway in the office, what do we discover but…but…but…

W?
T?
F?
???

Somehow, for reasons unimaginable, she’s gotten into my Vision System: the collection of accursed spectacles I need to navigate the world.

Back there, on my desk, I have three pairs of glasses:

• Distance only
• Close-up only (for reading)
• Progressives (distance melting into close-up)

Keeping these things straight is a real nuisance. To facilitate that, I’ve got thee glasses cases, one labeled “distance,” one labeled “close-up,” and one labeled “progressives.” But…

Yes: but… Since I tend to be pretty slap-happy, I often don’t bother to put x or y pair of glasses away. So they end up strewn across the desk in my usual slap-happy way.

Well. Luz is the exact opposite of slap-happy. She can’t stand it. So she puts the glasses into the cases…having NO clue what those little labels on the cases mean. This means that now the glasses are all mixed up. And since I don’t wear the individual close/distance/bifocal/progressive pairs often (I use an old pair of progressives for navigating the house and have a pair of driving glasses in the car), I can barely remember which one is which, myself.

It must have taken a good half-hour this morning to untangle THAT mess. And now we’re talkin’ “no small order.”

With the distance glasses, I can see the side of North Mountain (two or three miles off) in exquisite detail.

With the reading glasses, anything beyond the end of my arm is a blur.

With the progressives, I can sorta see the desert on the side of North Mountain, and I can also see to read print on a piece of paper…or the speedometer in the car.

So I have to take three pairs of glasses outside, along with a piece of paper containing 12-point type, and stand there experimenting with them.

Sounds simple, no?  Peer through a pair of spectacles: if you can see the shrubbery on the side of the mountain, those must be the distance glasses or the progressives. Look at your hand: if you can see your fingerprints, then they have to be the progressives; if you can’t, they have to be the distance glasses.

Well.
No.

How well this strategy works depends on the lighting conditions. And today the sky is overcast. I might be able to see my fingerprints through the progressives, sure…but the creosotebush on the mountain, not so much.

This leads to a certain degree of ambiguity. Not to say “rage.”

ohhhhh well….