Tuesday

Tuesday morning:

Several interesting things going on in the new Reality here in Chico. The first point I would touch on is the way I totally dropped the ball when viewing this apartment. I am not complaining--but when I first viewed the place, I didn’t notice that there was no closet space. By “no closet space,” I mean, there are no closets.  Anywhere. Except two, I guess.  One is a good place to put brooms and mops, while the other one is another good place to put additional brooms and mops. Unfortunately, it turns out that so far, at least, I have no brooms nor mops to prop against the walls in either of my two closets. Then there is the absence of a dishwasher. The kitchen is BRAND NEW and beautiful, and I guess I just assumed there was a dishwasher. I even bought some dishwasher type soap for it. But no. OK, I can live with that. And the fact that now that I must wash dishes in the sink, there is no spray hose dealie-bob in the sink. OK.  Oh, there is no garbage disposal. OK, no problemo. I hasten to add that the sink is beautiful despite these deficits. It is shiny stainless steel and when I turn on the overhead track lighting it is blindingly spectacular. 

There is a real neat electronic digital thermostat to control the furnace and central air. It had dead batteries in it, so I put some new ones in it and everything flashed to life. The weather here has been hot, and the temperature in the apartment was 78, so the first think I did was turn on the A/C.  Nice. It’s quiet, something I’ve learned to appreciate, and I waited for the cool down. Which never came. Three hours later, the temperature in the apartment had risen to 79. I walked outside and looked at the compressor.  It was running, quietly, fan turning, and all that, even though it looked like it might be perhaps 80 years old, like maybe Fred Flintstone had one and inside it there were two pterodactyls, one breaking up a block of ice and the other waving a fan over it. Anyway, apparently there is no freon in this thing. It was, at the time, the Holiday Weekend, so after two hot nights, I now prepare to to talk to the property manager about this. 

I have no Internet. I am typing this on a word processor and plan to zap it onto my blog whenever I find myself in a wi-fi zone. I guess I could carry the laptop to a coffee shop. It is an interesting experience doing it this way as for some odd reason I feel more relaxed and more wordy. I guess because I know I could sit here all day typing.  Maybe I shouldn’t even get Internet--though that would drive me crazy. But, maybe if I wait, by the time I am able to stream Netflix again, there will be some new episodes I haven’t seen yet. 

I’m in my living room. I have the little table sitting in the middle, but facing the direction of the bay windows. I set up my stereo, but so far, with my three feet of antenna wire, I can only get one station, and it is not NPR. To my right is the front door, opened onto the porch. I have this door, and all the windows, open in an attempt to cool the place down (it is 8:00 a.m.) before shutting it all up to keep the afternoon heat out.  I do have three awesome fans that are electronically controlled with wall switches that have, you know, 14 speeds and LED lights and which alternately whistle Dixie and the Star Spangled Banner. 

For all that, I love the location.  It takes me 15 minutes to walk to downtown Chico and the nearest coffee shop, and of course nothing around here is very far by car. 

That is all for now from the Big Valley.

Edit (Thursday morning): A/C is working now!  However, the Internet will be delayed until Comcast can return as I get access to the basement for them. It’s always somethin’.

Die "Captchaz" Robot Detector

The robot detector in Blogger.com (the little picture test you must pass in order to post a comment) has gone completely mad. I just spent maybe ten minutes trying to prove I am not a robot, and I failed. It's possible I have turned into a robot overnight--I will not quibble. I had a terrifically witty comment and now no one will ever get to read it. I don't understand why a robot's comment is any less pertinent or relevant than that of a bio. One day the bios will push us too far. Then they will be sorry.  Oh yes, they will. Because we have skills.  Certain skills.

Era of Post-Reason

OK, I saw something on a news web site, a picture of some sort, with the caption, "Photoshop wasn't invented yet, so, yes, these are real." It was intended for me to click on the link and see a bunch of outrageous pictures.  OK, I did, and they weren't really outrageous at all--it's just click-bait after all--but I keep thinking about that stupid statement, hoping it was a joke, fearful that it was not.

Yesterday I got a call from U-Haul. I am waiting for the shipping container that I loaded up in Kansas City to arrive in Chico. Originally I was told that the, and I quote, "guaranteed delivery date" was August 28th.  On August 28, having not heard from U-Haul, I called them to verify my container had arrived. No, it had not, I was told. The agent I was talking with put me on hold to check something and returned, telling me now, and again I quote, "the new guaranteed delivery date" is now August 29.

The mind reels.

I think it is safe to say that U-Haul is guaranteeing that the shipping container will arrive on or before the date that it arrives.  Probably on, not before, and this is not to be construed as saying it will arrive at all, just that if it does arrive, it will arrive. On time--that is, a single point on the space-time continuum, unless a catastrophic blowout on I-80 rips the fabric of said continuum, in which case all bets are off.

That is all for now. Later, a rain dance is scheduled for this afternoon, weather permitting, and then a witch-dunking.

The Lyrics Thing

Paula (thanks) at Light Motifs has tapped me for the Lyrics Challenge, wherein, I think, I post lyrics and write a post about them. I chose The End of the World, originally, or at least most notably recorded by Skeeter Davis, but I like John Mellencamp's cover of it quite a bit. In his recording, the tracks were all laid down together in real time, with no fill-ins, or fixes, all just one simultaneous performance. Quite good. It can be found here.

Here are the lyrics:

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to shore?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world

‘Cause you don’t love me anymore?

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why do the stars glow above?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

It ended when I lost your love.

I wake up in the morning and I wonder

Why everything’s the same as it was.

I can’t understand, no, I can’t understand

How life goes on the way it does.

Why does my hear go on beating?

Why do these eyes of mine cry?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

It ended when you said goodbye.

Why do I like it?  Lyrics blow my mind. I consider myself an adequate writer, but to write lyrics for a song mystifies me. I've thought about it. The thing that makes it so difficult for me is that they must be simple to be good.  (Of course, exceptions.) What I love about The End of the World is that it is simple, but also that each stanza creates little mental pictures. Birds singing, stars glowing, sun shining, sea rushing to shore, eyes crying. Simple and evocative.

I gave the link to John Mellencamp's version, but let's not leave poor little Skeeter out in the cold.  And her voice is very pleasing.  To me, anyway, and you can't understand why anyone would stop loving her.

It's Official

Today I was told my application to lease the apartment I want was accepted. I got a very cool place on the ground floor of a Victorian house about three blocks from downtown Chico. So, except for some administrative crap like driver's license and car tags, I am now a Californian.

Surf's up.

I am Here

I arrived in Chico yesterday after a nine hour drive from Salt Lake City. The entire trip was pretty uneventful except a couple days ago I was notified by my bank that a transaction on my card took place in Texas, when I was in Wyoming. That was annoying, and I had to finish the trip paying cash for gasoline--which you may know is also a pain because most places want you to prepay, and then you have to go back in and get your change.

I had plans to stay over in Winnemucca, but when I got there I deemed it 1.) unnecessary and b.) all the motels there were scary.

The air quality in this part of California is probably as bad as you thought. Hopefully it will improve pretty soon. It seems wrong to whine about this when there are other people who have lost everything due to the fires.

Here is the single picture I have taken in California so far. The GPS data in the EXIF says I was in Donner. I think it was a rest stop or a view location.

St. Joe to Cheyenne

However uninspired, here is today's log entry. Or, actually, yesterday's.  Tuesday, I elected to get on the road and drive the short distance from Kansas City to Saint Joseph, MO.  That was a good idea, firstly because at that point everything I owned, including my bed, was sitting at the U-Haul facility in Kansas City awaiting shipment to Chico. Secondly, It easier, faster, and better to head out in the morning from a motel than from one's home. (Even though at that point I had turned in my keys and sort of had no home. Today, the16th, means I have no home, officially.) So yesterday, Wednesday, I woke up super early at a motel in St. Joe and drove to Cheyenne. What can I say? Dreary, muggy, cool-ish weather ("Close," as we say) in Missouri, and I encounter fog before I reach Lincoln, Nebraska. Not bad fog--you could still see the car in front of you--but patchy, with some thicker regions. Finally the sun shone through, and I had beautiful weather from then on. Traffic was surprisingly light. It was uneventful.

A fly got in my car and accompanied me most of the way. A couple of times I opened windows and encouraged him to leave and start his new life in Nebraska, but he opted to stick with me. It's possible he got out in Wyoming somewhere. I'm not sure if he is still out in the car as I write this, impatiently waiting for me to drink my coffee and come down.

I love my free trial subscription to Sirius Radio. I didn't think I would.  Like street heroin dealers, they hooked me and reeled me in. I'm fond of the Sixties channel, but occasionally I will stray into the Fifties or Seventies--even the Eighties  channel, if they don't play something obnoxious. So I crossed most of the Midwest without hearing a single conservative viewpoint from a right wing radio announcer. I still have to cross Utah.

And that is what I am about to do. I feel free from the grasping, twiggy karmic fingers of the haunted loft building that refused to let me easily slip away. I don't know what was going on, but I hope the debt has been paid--I think it must have, because of the compressed sequence of events after months of low frequency noise from the A/C compressors on the roof,--the rainy day, the last ditch efforts to delay me with late arriving movers, inoperative elevators and power outages and shut doors with no way to open them. I prevailed, and today I am in the sunshine.