Auguries of Sweltering (monthly mini-rants)

The BBQ Pit
161

I’m about to have a little breakdown. It’s been a sucky year at work, and I just found out that the parking deck will be closed for repairs, and parking is going to be a problem. I barely have enough energy to make it through the day now, and I really don’t have enough energy to walk a quarter mile to the car. That might not sound like much, but I have post-Covid on top of chronic fatigue, and there’s no way I can do this for more than two months.

To make things worse, my apartment is not in good shape, and my landlord sucks. They’re trying to charge me $14 more than I owe them according to my lease, and my air conditioner is broken. In August, in North Carolina. :worried: It’s going to be at least a year (probably more) before I can move out. I don’t like it.

162

I just had one of the dumbest conversations with a Grub-Hub driver I’ve ever had. Before I get started, I think I’m done with Grub-Hub. This is the second time in as many weeks that I watched a delivery driver drive all over the city trying to find my building … which isn’t hard to find. Chrissakes, it’s on one of the few two-way streets in this part of the city. How hard could it be?

So I see the guy on the tracking app circling my building; he actually drove right past my lobby on his trip to nowhere. I see him stop on the other side of the block and I thought he was going to walk the order to my building, but instead I get a call from him.

“Yeah, I’m here with your order?”
“Where?”
“Um …”
“I’m standing in my lobby, if you were here I’d see you.”
“Um …”
“I’m at 123 MyBuilding Avenue.”
“That’s where I’m supposed to be.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not.”
“I must be close.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”

He hangs up. Never did see the order. I did get a refund and I had fun with a flowery little review and some suggestions about what Donavan the driver should do with his future. But, goddamn it, I’m hungry and I was really looking forward to that sandwich!

163

I don’t remember what it feels like to not be tired.

Took a nice road trip to see my Aunt & Fam. We had a great time at the water park and zoo, but my kid. Would. Not. Sleep. And I had to crash on the couch because everywhere else hurts my back, but it was restless there too. Fun times, very little sleep.

Finally got home last night, crawled in bed early, went to sleep at a reasonable time… Woke up, majestically, to my new sunrise alarm clock, at 6:15 on the nose. This clock and its ultra bright light really gets my ass out of bed, it’s a little miracle.

All that said, I’m still fucking exhausted. It’s not the kind of tired that sleep can fix.

164

Suggestion. Post on your page something like. “Facebook, you suck for constantly hitting my page up with suggested posts of a sexual nature. I don’t want these posts, I try to hide this post but you persist in affronting my sensibilities with these girlie reels. Knock it off, you stalker!”

Calling them out in front of all your FB friends will have a better response than not. Every time they start throwing ads at me for content I’m not interested in, I do this and the boom; the content goes away. Or maybe I’m just lucky. But it’s worth a try.

165

You get girlie reels?

I get guys solving quadratic equations.

166

So… it’s 4:00 AM and I get up to do what a lot of guys my age get up to do at 4:00 AM.
I suddenly see lights through my window; a car slowly driving down the street. When it gets in front of my house, it stops… and then a spot light (or one of those super powerful flashlights) pops on and it starts to move slowly across my front bushes. The car then does a U-turn in front of my house and heads back the way it came with its flashers on.

I became curious about this, so I threw on some clothes and went outside. On my porch, I found a package from Amazon Prime! I guess they take their delivery dates seriously.

.

On a side note, it’s garbage day today and I was happy to see that the cans in front had not been knocked down by our resident ‘playful raccoon’. Cleaning his ‘mess’ up before the trucks get here is not fun.

167

Yep. Every reel I get is a young female wriggling around to music.

168

A lot of that is called “shuffle dance”. Has nothing to do with sex exactly. It’s just a music video sorta. Which includes young women dancing. Apparently you like music.

169

Most of them are less than a minute long, so it’s hard to tell what their actual purpose is. I do like music, although I can’t figure out how FB knows this, as I never post anything about music there.

If FB was posting reels based on what I post, I should be seeing videos about my health issues, raccoons, and stray cats.

170

No one has mentioned the Sam Asghari filing for divorce from Britney yet? Priorities people!

171

I have never heard of the guy, and had no idea Britney married after Kevin Federline. I also knew she’d previously married some guy on an impulse and then the marriage was anulled a couple of days later, but I have no idea who that guy was.

172

Sam married her about a year ago, hes very handsome. People are saying he now wants to void the prenup.

173

Man, can’t Britney catch a break?

174

Time for another rant, in the form of a Q&A.

Q: Does Wolfpup have a new keyboard that he ranted about recently, and does this keyboard have illuminated keys?

A: Yes he does, yes he did, and yes it does.

Q: In order for the letters to be illuminated, they must be translucent areas of the keys, right?

A: Right.

Q: So the pup’s complaint about his previous keyboard, wherein the printed lettering was wearing out, cannot happen with this one, right?

A: Wrong.

Q: How is that possible?

A: It’s possible because now the pup’s paws are wearing out the opaque covering around the letters.

Q: Maybe the pup’s vet should trim his paw-nails shorter and more frequently?

A: Maybe you should stop with the personal judgments. Maybe the pup should have bought a better keyboard. The pup already had half a mind to trot down to the local computer store and audition other keyboards anyway, for other reasons, and claims that this never happened to any of his other keyboards.

Q: Did this pup also do grocery shopping recently, equipped with a list to make sure that nothing was forgotten?

A: Indeed he did.

Q: And what did the pup forget this time?

A: He forgot that some of the things he bought weren’t needed, particularly the bottle of Caesar salad dressing where, when opening the fridge to put it into its appointed place, revealed that there was already a nearly-full one there, and behind it, a new one that had never even been opened. And the new mayonnaise, wherein the extant mayonnaise jar was nearly full with enough to last months.

Q: What does this portend for the future?

A: It portends further memory problems, and that the pup now needs two shopping lists: List #1 is things to buy, and List #2 is things NOT to buy.

Q: Wolfpup’s life sounds like it’s fraught with miseries, large and small.

A: You have no idea! Wolfpup is one of the very few dogs known to veterinary medicine that day-drinks martinis.

175

Q. Does an unopened bottle of salad dressing even NEED to be refrigerated?

ETA: I do realize that some brands are shelved in chilled compartments near the produce.

176

Preach it brother! I feel your pain.

I have learned to NEVER buy regular-use stuff from memory. After my own 3-bottles-of-salad-dressing event. Oddball items that catch my eye that I don’t normally stock? Sure. PB since I think I’m nearly out but it’s not on the list? Never again.

177

That’s funny. To me, anyway. Sorry about your keyboard woes.

178

I have several unopened bottles of salad dressing on my shelf now. I had stocked up when there was a sale, and as part of my (supposed) diet program I’ve been trying to eat more salads. I also occasionally have homemade crudites for which I use ranch dressing for dipping purposes, and frozen chicken and pseudo-chicken nuggets which I like to dip in honey mustard dressing.

179

I have mostly given up salads now. I found that I primarily like salad as a vehicle for high calorie, high fat dressing. When I switched to less of low fat dressing, I found that I didn’t like salad so much after all.

I try to eat more in the way of steamed or roasted vegetables now instead.

180

In Autumn 2020 my parents had scheduled a big trip to Europe, including a cruise. You all know how that went.

This is now schedule for this autumn. All the main things, that is, travel and sleeping arrangements, have been made. So there’s only the tours to arrange.

Now this:

Our train trip to Rome is now a mess. My current understanding is that we will have to leave 2 hours earlier to make the connection. We were already leaving at 8 am.

And it’s not stable. So I’m not sure if I should go and talk to somebody soon, or wait a few weeks.

Either way, it’s a mess.

And I’ll probably go down on Wednesday or Thursday. Or at least I might wait until the chance of melting is back to normal. I don’t like 33 C / 91 F.