Category Archives: Random Musings

Say What You Want About Amazon, At Least The Trains Run On Time

Sure, Amazon pays their warehouse workers fairly poorly and treats them like common criminals by forcing them to be searched for stolen items after clocking out from their shift, but I ordered an item Monday morning and chose the super-slow-get-$1-credit-towards-ebooks method of shipping and the item shipped Monday night and has already arrived at my doorstep by 1 PM Tuesday afternoon.  Logistics, you’re doing it right.

Of course, UPS also deserves a shout-out for their amazing delivery service.  And they pay their union employees fairly well.  If only Amazon would take a page from UPS.

And yes, my hatred of stepping foot inside a store trumps my disdain for certain companies that treat their employees poorly.  I’m not perfect.

Your Daily Dose of Dawwww!

Nothing like an unarmed black man being killed by a white police officer to bring out the undercurrents of racism that are prevalent in our society.  And nothing like a sham of a grand jury decision and the ensuing riots by a few bad apples to stir up the racists once again.  But I’m not here to complain about that.  I’m here to tell you that things will and are getting better.

I volunteer for an organization that provides lodging for children and their families when the children are in the hospital.  One of the things that we do for the children is bring them to this big old toy room and let them pick a toy of their choosing.  My last time there, I let a white girl who was about eight or so into the toy room and let her rummage around.  She came back to me a few minutes later and said that she couldn’t reach the toy that she wanted.  I went in to help her and she pointed up to the top shelf where there was perched a princess doll still in all of its packaging.  I reach up to grab it and I ask, “This one?”, and she nods so I grab it down from the shelf and hand it to her.  She looks at it momentarily says, “Thank you!”, and walks away.

The doll was black.

And just like that, a one minute interaction with an eight year old girl has renewed my hope that things will get better.

You’re The Best!

I “play” the piano.  Play is in quotation marks because I can not by any stretch of the imagination be considered even remotely good at said instrument.  Nor will I ever be considered remotely good without dedicating a good amount of time improving myself.  I started piano way too late, don’t spend nearly enough time practicing, and don’t have the drive to improve myself much beyond my current ability levels.  I will forever be relegated to pecking out simple songs out of those 88 magnificent keys.  But you know what?  I am one of the best piano players in the world!  You may scoff at the hubris of such a ludicrous statement, but have you ever attempted to play the piano?  I thought not.  Yet another person I’m better at piano than.

Trying new things is hard.  It’s scary.  You have to leave your comfort zone.  You have to meet new people.  You have to expose yourself to embarrassment.  All these things and more prevent us from getting out there and doing something new.  But if you can overcome that, if you can simply get out there and just try, that simple act of trying makes you better than almost the entire planet at what you’re trying to accomplish.  All because you tried and they didn’t.

So, go on!  Get out there!  Try!  You’re the best!

Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl Fhtagn

Cthulu has come and he drives a Toyota Camry.
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I, for one, welcome our new Great Old One Overlord.

If This Isn’t A Portent Of Good Things To Come, I Don’t Know What Is

I open my box of macaroni and cheese (macaroni and cheese, lazy lunchtime meal of champions!) and, lo and behold, what do I see but the holy grail of macaroni and cheese consumption!  Two packets of cheese!  Now, granted, one of them looks like an assembly line aborted fetus and contains about a third of what you’d normally expect from a packet of cheese, but still.  ONE THIRD MORE CHEESE!

Om nom nom nom.

Random Airplane Musing

The world doesn’t come with borders or markings.  Why hasn’t Google Glass come up with an app for that yet?  It seems like you could easily determine borders and roads and rivers with a little GPS magic to determine your altitude and location.  It would then be a simple matter of putting an overlay on the glasses to let you know what’s below you.  You should even be able to identify other planes that pass by and be able to determine their destination and such.  Oh, and clouds!  With Google Glass’ camera, you should be able to look at clouds and it should be able to tell you what kind of cloud you’re looking at.

Get on it Google!  You come up with an app like that and I will buy a Google Glass.

It’s Quiet Around Here…A Little Too Quiet

Well, Lindy has been shipped off to my (favorite) aunt’s place and I leave for Grand Cayman tomorrow!  It’s strange being in the house without a cat.  She should be plunked down right in front of my keyboard as I am typing this.  It does give me the opportunity to give the house a good, thorough de-furring. With the weather changing, Lindy has gone from shedding handfuls to shedding barrelfulls.  And by perverse cat logic, she dislikes getting combed more when she’s shedding lots.

I fear my poor aunt doesn’t know what she’s in for.  She’s a cat addict, but swore off getting another cat after her last cat passed.  Lindy is a gateway cat.  To a normal person, Lindy will induce strong cravings for another hit of cat, but to a cat addict, Lindy’s like a shot of heroin.  When I left my aunt in Lindy’s evil clutches, Lindy had already scoped out all of her new domain and rubbed her face on it all.  It will be interesting to see if my aunt’s sanity is still in tact after a week with the fiendish furball.

1500 Thread Count Sheets, Where Have You Been All My Life?

Groupon recently sent me a Groupon Goods offer for 1500 thread count sheets and I was all like, “Hey, I need a new set of sheets!”, so I checked it out.  They were offering a full set of sheets for somewhere around $80 which seemed reasonable, but not really knowing what 1500 thread count sheets are going for, I did what just about every shopper does and checked Amazon to see what they were selling comparable sheets for.  I found a nice set of chocolate colored, Italian (whatever that means) 1500 count, 100% Egyptian sheets for $26.  Sold American!

Two days later (Amazon Prime, for those people who absolutely can not wait four days), my sheets arrived.  I pick up the box and it is incredibly light.  My first thought is they sent me a single sheet instead of the full set.  Upon opening the box, however, it is indeed a full set of sheets.  The whole set feels like it weighs like one of my normal fitted sheets.

Eager to try the sheets out, I put them on my bed immediately.  The feeling is difficult to describe.  It’s more like a lack of feeling.  Sleeping on top of the fitted sheet gives the impression of sleeping on air with only the resistance of the mattress to realize you are on a solid surface.  With the flat sheet and comforter above, it is more like an invisible weight placed on top of you and you can wrap yourself up as tightly in this cocoon as you desire.  My only complaint are the pillow covers which are slightly too large for my pillows which causes them to bunch up some, so I have to be sure to arrange the pillow so the extra material is in the back of the pillow lest a flap of downy softness tickle my nose in the middle of the night.

It remains to be seen how well the sheets hold up in the wash.  I have a feeling it will not be very well given their daintiness.  Those with experience in these things, are all 1500 thread count sheets like this?  If so, I consider you a horrible friend for not informing me of such earlier.

A Brutal Commute

An affluent neighborhood. 7:30 in the morning. 5 degrees and sunny.

Public transportation is awesome.  Except when it’s not.  This morning, it wasn’t.  I get on to the train platform just as a train is leaving the station.  This is not a big deal.  The trains come every five minutes or so.  Not today.  The train immediately after the one I just missed broke down somewhere before my stop.  At first it was just a delay as they try to fix equipment problems.  This is not unusual for cold weather and the weather was a crisp 5 degrees this morning.  Then they announce that they’re emptying the defective train and have to move it out of the way.  Awesome.

From start to finish, it takes them about 45 minutes to accomplish this.  And soon, the defective train is rolling slowly past my station.  My feet are burning with cold at this point.  In the meantime, they take an outbound train and turn it around to try to get things back on schedule.  Only they choose the stop after mine to start.  Nice.  Finally, a train pulls into the station but it is jam-packed like you would expect a train to be after a 45 minute backup of people.  It then has to sit at my station for 5 minutes as the defective train gets out of the way somewhere up ahead.  Another train comes and there is just enough room for a few people to squeeze on and I make sure I am one of them.  Love your neighbor, people!  No time to be shy.

My connecting train pulls into the station the same time we do and I think the nightmare commute is finally over.  This train is also full, but I manage to squeeze on.  It should be smooth sailing from now on.  But wait, why have we stopped?  Equipment problems with the train directly ahead of us, you say?  Wonderful.  Add another 10 minutes to the already double time commute.  Ugh.

All told, a commute that normally takes 40 minutes door to door took just over an hour and a half.  The burning cold in my feet is only just now leaving my body.  Happy Monday!

Catsplosion

My cat, Lindy, is a massive ball of fur.  She’s long-haired and multi-colored.  She is also shedding like you cannot believe.  You ever see the aftermath of a cat fight where there are tufts of fur everywhere?  That’s what my house looks like.  There are cat hair tumbleweeds rolling across my living room.  The air is so saturated with cat fur that I am waken up multiple times a night by cat hair landing on my face.  No amount of brushing is able to stem the fusilade of fur.  I have never seen so much fur come off of an animal before.  And I used to own a Siberian husky.