Bed for Labashi’s office, ‘Twin Peaks’, Tracfone, ‘Michael Clayton’, target session, ‘In the Valley of Elah’
(posted from home)
(This post covers 27-31 March, 2008)
-------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 31 March-
This morning was rainy yet I wanted to get out of the house so I drove down to Freedom Armory for a target-shooting session. It wasn’t my best day. My score using the longer-range pistol was down a bit from normal (it’s supposed to go the other way!) and my other one had a failure-to-feed jam. I had resolved a failure-to-eject issue with that one and thought it was good-to-go so it was disappointing to not only have another but a different type of jam. Well, I wanted to get some experience with handguns, so what am I complaining about? They don’t all work all the time, do they?
After the shooting session I stopped by the Tollgate Starbucks and read the Times. Today’s issue had a very striking article about a young Iraq vet who disappeared in the Port Charlotte, FL area a few months after his return. He was having difficulty dealing with post-traumatic-stress-disorder after of his Iraq tour. The striking thing was the commitment made by several Viet-Nam vets to search for him week after week. One of those older-than-me guys crawled into a small drainage pipe with a flashlight and combat knife to investigate a bad smell and found his body some 60-yards in. And these Viet-Nam vets are still hurting emotionally all these years after the war.
I spent the afternoon doing some shopping for some outdoors stuff (ammo and fishing lures) on the way home.
That evening we watched ‘In the Valley of Elah’ with Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon. GOOD movie. It’s the story of a young vet who disappears after returning from his tour in Iraq (sound familiar?). Tommy, Charlize, and Susan are all great and the story is told well. In the extras, we meet the parents of the vet who disappeared and their comments are heartbreaking.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 30 March-
This morning I worked through activation of my new Tracfone with their customer service rep. My technician was working from a call center in Georgetown, Guyana (on the north coast of South America, north of Brazil, east of Venezuela—see http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/samerica/gy.htm ).
I believe I’ve talked to this call center three or four times in the last few weeks (the accents sounded the same) and they’ve done a good job. But perhaps the biggest improvement in the last year is connecting quickly. I had virtually no wait for a live technician for my four or five calls in the last few weeks. I also decided to go ahead and buy some additional minutes for the phone once I found a promotional code on Fatwallet.com which gave me an additional 60 minutes when I bought 60. Tracfone still needs a week to figure out how many minutes were left on my old phone so I may get some of the 150-or-so that were on the phone when I lost it. I also signed up for Tracfone’s Lifeline value-plan. With the transfer of the service time from my old phone and the 90-days additional time from the 60-minute purchase, service now expires the end of August. From that point the Lifeline will extend service month by month for $4.95 a month. Financially, my loss of the phone worked out this way: Loss of 150 minutes= about $25. New phone ($13) + new 12-volt charger ($9)=$22. Replacement minutes (130)= $21. Total= $68. The good news is my old cell phone needed a battery and that would have cost $30 so I can deduct that. Also, I’m guessing that at least some of my minutes from the old phone will be restored since the battery was only lasting about a day. If whomever found it had access to a charger, they could have used up all the minutes, however. Lesson learned: as soon as you suspect you MAY have lost a Tracfone, have it de-activated. That will save the minutes and if you then find it, you can simply activate it. If you don’t find it, your minutes will still be there to transfer to a new Tracfone. I waited almost a week, thinking the phone might be somewhere in the van but I was too busy with other things at the time to look.
That evening we watched ‘Michael Clayton’ with George Clooney. I think I’d rate it in the 80s on the Tomatometer and thus would recommend it. George played the part of a ‘fixer’ for a major law firm. I don’t know that I quite understood all the implications of him being a fixer/bagman and that is important in this film. Nevertheless, recommended viewing.
------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 29 March-
This morning we had an estimator come to measure for new carpet. We carpeted shortly after moving in over 25 years ago and the only updates have been some re-stretching and cleanings so it’s long overdue. The new carpet will really go well with Labashi’s recent updates to the living and dining room and the new art work she created while I was traveling. We’ll get the estimate early next week.
Late that morning we went to a town meeting with state senator Jeff Piccola at our local township office. There were 24 fellow citizens attending and I enjoyed hearing his reactions to our questions and watching him react to a few questions like this: “When is the Government going to go back to being a government OF the People, FOR the People and BY the People?” I would have said something like, “Uh, Sir, what, exactly is your question?” but Senator Piccola ran with the ball and did a good job of making the questioner feel he had been heard and understood. Interesting.
I spent much of the afternoon working on the blog while Labashi watched on old TCM movie then we watched the last four episodes of ‘Twin Peaks’ disk-set 1 (there are two). I can’t really recommend it though I’m glad we saw as much as we did. It’s very clearly the genesis of the series ‘Lost’. With the title sequence, the use of the odd ‘log lady’ plot introductions, the mysterious feel, the music, the interleaving plot lines, it has the same feel as ‘Lost’, just less slick. I’m glad we saw these first 14 episodes but I don’t think we’re going to watch the remaining 13.
-------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 28 March-
Today Labashi and I went shopping for a twin-bed and mattress for Labashi’s office. She often reads in the middle of the night and doesn’t want to wake me so moves out to our living-room couch and reads, then falls asleep there. We’re re-designing our respective offices and thought we’d put a daybed or small twin in her office so she’d have a more comfortable place for this. While traveling, I had seen a relatively inexpensive storage bed in a Wal-mart. I didn’t think it was quite right for our needs but wanted to see if the same bed was available at our local Wal-mart to show her some of the design ideas. Our Wal-mart did one better— it turned out they had another design very close to our ideal and it’s cheaper than anything else we’ve found. So today we went on a search for other possibilities (just to be sure we’ve covered the bases) and a mattress.
Along the way we found a discontinued twin mattress at Boscov’s. It had listed for $400 and was on clearance for $149. Our clerk said she could apply a discount of another 10 per cent. She also offered to hold it for us for up to 72 hours so we did that, then continued shopping.
We went to several stores but that held up (by far) as the best deal on a mattress (Have you priced mattresses lately?) as did the Wal-mart deal for the bed. Later that afternoon we bought the Wal-mart bed, then returned to Boscov’s where our clerk said she had been mistaken, the additional discount she could apply would not be 10 per cent but would be 20 per cent (How often does something like THAT happen?). We ended up paying $126 for the mattress, $150 for the bed.
That evening we watched Disk Four of the five-disk ‘Twin Peaks’ series.
-------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 27 March-
Today I spent the morning on the Web and then took Labashi’s car in for inspection, 21,500-mile service, and to resolve several annoying squeaks and rattles when we drive a rough road. The worst problem turned out to be a silly thing. We had a very annoying chirping sound which sounded like it was coming from the dashboard. I was convinced it was due to the radio/CD unit being replaced last year. So was the technician. But he couldn’t find the chirp. He removed the radio/CD unit and a mounting plate and put it all back together but the chirp was still there on the test drive. He had the service manager join him to help find it and eventually they tracked it to, of all things, the visor. If the visor is unclipped and swung over to block sun from a side window, then returned and not clipped into place, the plastic clip parts rub against each other, making a little screeching sound (sometimes!). The bill today was $88, most of which was the $45 emissions-test fee.
That evening we watched more ‘Twin Peaks’. It has just enough interesting twists for us to keep wanting to see the next one.
==== end of post =====
(posted from home)
(This post covers 27-31 March, 2008)
-------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 31 March-
This morning was rainy yet I wanted to get out of the house so I drove down to Freedom Armory for a target-shooting session. It wasn’t my best day. My score using the longer-range pistol was down a bit from normal (it’s supposed to go the other way!) and my other one had a failure-to-feed jam. I had resolved a failure-to-eject issue with that one and thought it was good-to-go so it was disappointing to not only have another but a different type of jam. Well, I wanted to get some experience with handguns, so what am I complaining about? They don’t all work all the time, do they?
After the shooting session I stopped by the Tollgate Starbucks and read the Times. Today’s issue had a very striking article about a young Iraq vet who disappeared in the Port Charlotte, FL area a few months after his return. He was having difficulty dealing with post-traumatic-stress-disorder after of his Iraq tour. The striking thing was the commitment made by several Viet-Nam vets to search for him week after week. One of those older-than-me guys crawled into a small drainage pipe with a flashlight and combat knife to investigate a bad smell and found his body some 60-yards in. And these Viet-Nam vets are still hurting emotionally all these years after the war.
I spent the afternoon doing some shopping for some outdoors stuff (ammo and fishing lures) on the way home.
That evening we watched ‘In the Valley of Elah’ with Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon. GOOD movie. It’s the story of a young vet who disappears after returning from his tour in Iraq (sound familiar?). Tommy, Charlize, and Susan are all great and the story is told well. In the extras, we meet the parents of the vet who disappeared and their comments are heartbreaking.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 30 March-
This morning I worked through activation of my new Tracfone with their customer service rep. My technician was working from a call center in Georgetown, Guyana (on the north coast of South America, north of Brazil, east of Venezuela—see http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/samerica/gy.htm ).
I believe I’ve talked to this call center three or four times in the last few weeks (the accents sounded the same) and they’ve done a good job. But perhaps the biggest improvement in the last year is connecting quickly. I had virtually no wait for a live technician for my four or five calls in the last few weeks. I also decided to go ahead and buy some additional minutes for the phone once I found a promotional code on Fatwallet.com which gave me an additional 60 minutes when I bought 60. Tracfone still needs a week to figure out how many minutes were left on my old phone so I may get some of the 150-or-so that were on the phone when I lost it. I also signed up for Tracfone’s Lifeline value-plan. With the transfer of the service time from my old phone and the 90-days additional time from the 60-minute purchase, service now expires the end of August. From that point the Lifeline will extend service month by month for $4.95 a month. Financially, my loss of the phone worked out this way: Loss of 150 minutes= about $25. New phone ($13) + new 12-volt charger ($9)=$22. Replacement minutes (130)= $21. Total= $68. The good news is my old cell phone needed a battery and that would have cost $30 so I can deduct that. Also, I’m guessing that at least some of my minutes from the old phone will be restored since the battery was only lasting about a day. If whomever found it had access to a charger, they could have used up all the minutes, however. Lesson learned: as soon as you suspect you MAY have lost a Tracfone, have it de-activated. That will save the minutes and if you then find it, you can simply activate it. If you don’t find it, your minutes will still be there to transfer to a new Tracfone. I waited almost a week, thinking the phone might be somewhere in the van but I was too busy with other things at the time to look.
That evening we watched ‘Michael Clayton’ with George Clooney. I think I’d rate it in the 80s on the Tomatometer and thus would recommend it. George played the part of a ‘fixer’ for a major law firm. I don’t know that I quite understood all the implications of him being a fixer/bagman and that is important in this film. Nevertheless, recommended viewing.
------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 29 March-
This morning we had an estimator come to measure for new carpet. We carpeted shortly after moving in over 25 years ago and the only updates have been some re-stretching and cleanings so it’s long overdue. The new carpet will really go well with Labashi’s recent updates to the living and dining room and the new art work she created while I was traveling. We’ll get the estimate early next week.
Late that morning we went to a town meeting with state senator Jeff Piccola at our local township office. There were 24 fellow citizens attending and I enjoyed hearing his reactions to our questions and watching him react to a few questions like this: “When is the Government going to go back to being a government OF the People, FOR the People and BY the People?” I would have said something like, “Uh, Sir, what, exactly is your question?” but Senator Piccola ran with the ball and did a good job of making the questioner feel he had been heard and understood. Interesting.
I spent much of the afternoon working on the blog while Labashi watched on old TCM movie then we watched the last four episodes of ‘Twin Peaks’ disk-set 1 (there are two). I can’t really recommend it though I’m glad we saw as much as we did. It’s very clearly the genesis of the series ‘Lost’. With the title sequence, the use of the odd ‘log lady’ plot introductions, the mysterious feel, the music, the interleaving plot lines, it has the same feel as ‘Lost’, just less slick. I’m glad we saw these first 14 episodes but I don’t think we’re going to watch the remaining 13.
-------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 28 March-
Today Labashi and I went shopping for a twin-bed and mattress for Labashi’s office. She often reads in the middle of the night and doesn’t want to wake me so moves out to our living-room couch and reads, then falls asleep there. We’re re-designing our respective offices and thought we’d put a daybed or small twin in her office so she’d have a more comfortable place for this. While traveling, I had seen a relatively inexpensive storage bed in a Wal-mart. I didn’t think it was quite right for our needs but wanted to see if the same bed was available at our local Wal-mart to show her some of the design ideas. Our Wal-mart did one better— it turned out they had another design very close to our ideal and it’s cheaper than anything else we’ve found. So today we went on a search for other possibilities (just to be sure we’ve covered the bases) and a mattress.
Along the way we found a discontinued twin mattress at Boscov’s. It had listed for $400 and was on clearance for $149. Our clerk said she could apply a discount of another 10 per cent. She also offered to hold it for us for up to 72 hours so we did that, then continued shopping.
We went to several stores but that held up (by far) as the best deal on a mattress (Have you priced mattresses lately?) as did the Wal-mart deal for the bed. Later that afternoon we bought the Wal-mart bed, then returned to Boscov’s where our clerk said she had been mistaken, the additional discount she could apply would not be 10 per cent but would be 20 per cent (How often does something like THAT happen?). We ended up paying $126 for the mattress, $150 for the bed.
That evening we watched Disk Four of the five-disk ‘Twin Peaks’ series.
-------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 27 March-
Today I spent the morning on the Web and then took Labashi’s car in for inspection, 21,500-mile service, and to resolve several annoying squeaks and rattles when we drive a rough road. The worst problem turned out to be a silly thing. We had a very annoying chirping sound which sounded like it was coming from the dashboard. I was convinced it was due to the radio/CD unit being replaced last year. So was the technician. But he couldn’t find the chirp. He removed the radio/CD unit and a mounting plate and put it all back together but the chirp was still there on the test drive. He had the service manager join him to help find it and eventually they tracked it to, of all things, the visor. If the visor is unclipped and swung over to block sun from a side window, then returned and not clipped into place, the plastic clip parts rub against each other, making a little screeching sound (sometimes!). The bill today was $88, most of which was the $45 emissions-test fee.
That evening we watched more ‘Twin Peaks’. It has just enough interesting twists for us to keep wanting to see the next one.
==== end of post =====
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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