errands « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

errands

The video, at the end, is the only impressive thing here

Things that will impress no one: Today I got both of my inboxes down to 30 or less emails. Also, I reorganized some of the subfolders. You can take pleasures in the simplest, dumbest, weirdest, least useful, and effective things if you don’t try too hard. In a related story, I have a document on my computer where I keep several small bits of code that get used a lot on the blog. It had become a sprawling thing. Four pages, some of it outdated. But, today, I shaped that up. Now it is two pages. And it is organized by section! This will come in handy since — when I know I want to go C&P a bit of code — I just use Command-F anyway. But it made me happy and looks neater because, again, if you don’t try too hard.

This is what it looks like outside. This is the best it has looked since Wednesday evening. Sometimes it has been almost-drizzling. At some point, after hours of that, you just want to fling open a door and yell, “C’mon and rain already!”

We need the rain. And I won’t begrudge having the rain. But if you’re going to look like this, make with the rain.

It’ll be like this through the weekend. Through Memorial Day, according to the latest forecast. Maybe the clouds will move off or burn off by Tuesday.

Something else that will impress no one: I went shopping today. There’s a Kohl’s 20 minutes away and it is a straight shot and, honestly, I thought it was farther away than that until I really studied the map. So, I went there. I discovered it is right next to a Home Depot. These are good things to know. We’ll never know why it takes me so long to learn these things.

I needed some jeans. I couldn’t tell you the last time I went to a store for jeans. I’ve worn the same size for ages and it’s easy enough to order online and that’s life in the 21st century. Well, I wanted a 2003 experience today, and let me just tell you … everyone in this town wears the same size jeans that I wear. Or the store thinks no one wears the same size I do.

Two walls of neatly folded pants — respect to the person working in retail there — and exactly one pair in my waist and inseam size. I also picked up two pairs that are slightly longer, because maybe I’ll grow into them.

Grabbed some socks, which you can buy in sets of three or Thanks For Propping Up The Sock Darning Factory for Q2. Has anyone ever asked why someone needs to buy 12 pairs of socks? Has anyone ever asked if the sock people and Big Dryer are in on this together? And what about — hey! Look at those shirts on sale!

The soundtrack was from early 1990s, I don’t know when the last time you heard “U Can’t Touch This,” but I heard it today.

Kohl’s does this neat thing now where they leave you alone in the store, and then urge you to walk through this maze of impulse buys aimed at children — this poor mom and her 4-year-old, ‘I want this!’ daughter in front of me — and then proceed to ignore you while checking you out in the slowest speed quantified by man. This store was operating as a -4 on the Disney World scale, that is you could be getting on your fourth ride at the Mouse before you got through this line.

I asked the woman at my register — the one who was demonstrably the slowest, because you have time to assess the efficacy of each register and eventually it come down to you and “Next!” and you’re thinking, Please not that one, please not that one, please not that one. — how her day was. She seemed surprised and pleased that I asked, but these are the joys of going to a store, that little bit of banter. Or so I’m told, anyway. I’d watched her try to ring out one customer for about 15 minutes, a demonstration of “Oops!” with good cheer. Sometimes we have days like that, and maybe the good cheer helps. It’s the right attitude. I helped her by presenting all my items scanner-side-up. She said no one ever did that. I began to think I might be the person that keeps her in this job another month. You never know. She tallies my totals, or totals my tallies, and gives me the price, but if you had a Kohl’s card it’d be something like 40 percent of that, somehow. And, once again, I wonder who they’re stealing clothes from. There’s just a bunch of people on a highway somewhere in maroon vests with giant Ks on the back and they’re knocking off trucks bound for TJ Maxx and Belk and JC Penney, I’m sure of it. Anyway, I do not have those cards because I never come to the store. This is the first time in more than three years. Probably six. Let me pay and get out of here because this line is embarrassing and it’s quite warm in here for some reason and 55 degrees outside sounds lovely right now.

Which was when her entire cash register went down.

And friend, mindful of those Progressive “homeowners turn into their parents” spots, I resisted the urge to say, “That must mean it’s all free.”

Only, what I do when that happens is, I don’t deliver the line and smile and wait for the obligatory customer service laugh. I deliver the line, gather the things up and hit the door.

I did not do that. Seeing blue lights in my rear view mirror didn’t seem worth it for a few pairs of jeans, and more socks than all the children in my neighborhood could need.

But that was what I did today. Also, the grocery store. Strawberries for lunch. And the bank.

Three stops for me is a full day. Impressing no one.

But this! This is impressive. I’ve been living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation and sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. This is the last post (for now) with video from that trip. It is fitting that it is the last video I took at the end of our March journey.

This is the northernmost point of that beautiful island nation.

errands / Ireland / memories / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off
14
May 26

The grocery getters

I am grading. I will finish tomorrow. Using the power of will, I will will it to be done. It will be done. I have made great headway, but the alternatively best and worst thing is the little counter that shows me how much more there is to go.

Actually, maybe that’s the worst thing. The best thing is seeing people turn in good work and watching their grades improve. This has to do with how finals are weighted, maybe someone finally took it seriously, or it just all clicked into place. Whatever the individual reason, the grades are going in positive directions. I haven’t seen anything scary or negative. May the trends continue.

I was sent to the grocery store because my lovely bride had done the regular shopping, but forgot an ingredient for tonight’s dinner. So I volunteered to go. What’s one brief trip for one item compared to all of the shopping she does? You just go back to the dairy aisle, confront yourself with the modern age of dairy products, and grab the thing you need. Also, you might cruise by the cereal aisle for something you’ve lately been craving. There’s no need to get all the things you’ve been lately adding to your mental list, because why be efficient when you can go back again? What, then, is one brief trip? It is a pleasure to provide some brief relief to the bringer of groceries, the standard in lines, the regular pusher of the shopping cart.

But let’s talk about what you’re driving to the grocery store. Why are these trucks taller than the car? What do you think you are buying at the grocery store? You certainly aren’t filling the bed of the truck. It’s a sizable store, but I know you aren’t because you are doing the TikTok Combat Park Challenge for no reason whatsoever.

The person driving the truck on the left here, I saw them loading groceries. (In the cab, of course.) The man driving the truck on the right was sitting in his truck. You shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but you can tell the price, and in this case, it is hard to imagine these trucks living a heavy duty lifestyle.

I bet they feel pretty gratified, right now, about gas prices, too.

Anyway, ricotta acquired. Self-check out checked out. I had determined to stop using those things, but the checkouts with employees were backed up considerably. Maybe that means other people are also over the whole “You aren’t paying me to do the work you are no longer paying your employees to do” concept. We’re all going to come to that conclusion before long, I think. Next time I go to the store, this will be my stand.

After I marvel at the oversized vehicles out front.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?

This is Horn Head.

errands / Friday / Rowan — Comments Off
23
Jan 26

Winterpalooza is coming

With the beginning of a new semester — we wrapped the first week today — comes a whole slate of meetings. Friday is a big meeting day around here, and you can see them coming. Meetings, I mean. Sometimes, the Fridays are obscured. You can see the meetings coming. Mostly, because we have too many calendars.

So, today, I had meetings two and three of the semester. It was a faculty meeting Wednesday. Today I had a committee meeting I sit on a university-wide committee that aspires to work with students, helping them interact with other elements of the university. We meet every other week. We talk about helping students. And that is what we did today, most successfully. We also established the next two meetings, and some of the things we might work toward.

That was this morning. In the afternoon I had a sustainability meeting. It was a meeting about sustainability, but not, necessarily, a meeting about sustainable meetings. (Those usually come in the middle of the term, when we’re delirious, but not yet worn out.)

I wrote my online classes. They’ve heard from me three times this week. Usually it is twice a week. But, today, after sending normal class stuff Monday and Thursday, I sent out a campus resources email. I like this email. Shows you care. One of the great things about the university, the note starts, is all of the resources they devote to you. And then I just start listing them, with links, contact info, and details, until I’m worn out. Then, at the end, I remind them that this is not a complete list. There are always more services! I offer to help them find those things, because I care. I am also now in charge of our department’s running list of campus resources, because I volunteered, because I care.

It’s Friday, you can do a lot of caring on Friday. Monday night, Tuesday morning, all day Thursday, not quite as much.

We are bracing for weather. This is how I am bracing. I went into the laundry room and rearranged two cabinets. The idea was that the handwarmers can be right up front, right in the center of the room, and easily accessible in the dark.

I pulled the phone bank chargers from their storage space, because I had the bright idea sometime back that all of these should be in one place should we need them, or if we are packing for a trip. I got four of those. I need to grab the one out of my backpack to complete the set.

I dug out the battery-powered lantern that I bought from a closing K-Mart in 2016. I grabbed every AA battery we have to power that lantern. Next to it is a lithium-powered work light that was a Christmas gift a few years ago. I pulled out the running headlamps. I got my bike flashlight and two backup batteries for it. (Others are stored elsewhere, and I can get to them if it gets desperate.) I made a note of where a few other little emergency lights are hanging around, should we need them.

I started charging all of these, and made two neat piles on the bar. Charged, and waiting in line.

Two shovels and the snowblower are in the garage. There’s a new quart of oil waiting to be put to use. I’ll top off the gas tank in my car and the gas can for the blower tomorrow. The fridge is also getting stocked tomorrow, if there are any groceries left to be had. The university announced today — and this is no easy decision, multiple campuses in various places, a hospital, commuters, etc. — that most of its operations will be closed Sunday and Monday.

We have one thing to do tomorrow, but we’ll beat the weather back home. Winter rolls in tomorrow night. We will be getting somewhere between two and 84 inches, depending on which forecast you check, and when you look.

Here’s my prediction: this will be one of the first big clues that killing so many of our national weather resources last year was a fundamentally stupid idea.

If you’re getting bad weather this weekend, I hope you can stay indoors, safe and warm. See you Monday, when we will hopefully all begin digging out.

adventures / cycling / errands / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
21
Jan 26

From my well to Norway

Got around to calling the well guy today. Your well is due an inspection every two years, turns out. I’m only a few weeks behind. We had them out to do the inspect in 2023, and not a minute too soon. The old one was about to rust out and explode. What had started as a well inspection appointment grew a bit alarming for me in the days running up to the actual visit. When the crew got here the guy said I could replace the tank now, or wait until it exploded, which would, he said, be soon.

Thanks for the options, pal.

The guy had a new one right there on the truck. These, he assured me, are much better. Fiberglass never rusts. Well sign me up, and keep the water off my floor. And you might think this sounds like a very sophisticated confidence game from the well guy, but the rust that was everywhere looked plenty authentic.

Anyway, time marches on. The well provides water. Many showers were enjoyed, dishes washed, water bowls filled, etc. Everything behaves more or less as it should. We are pleased with this sequence of events. We made the right choice in replacing it that November day.

But now I have to call to set up that inspection. Because they don’t have a service calling to remind people, which seems like an opportunity lost, if you ask me. Also, the water running through our house is making an odd noise just now, which seems like the beginning of a problem, if you ask me. Also, as I noticed this morning when I went down to the well to verify I had the right phone number, I noticed that there was suddenly an error code on the water softener device. Error 102, which I’ve since looked up, could mean any number of things.

So I called the guy.

And he’s a genial fellow. He is also slammed because of the snowpacolypse rolling in this weekend, and can we schedule something next week?

Sure, I say, but first you have to convince me that these problems I’m telling you about aren’t going to do me in between now and then. He assures me with the practiced, steady tone of a man who’s been dealing with all of this for too long.

And what he’s dealing with here is that fiberglass tank. He said he bought a bunch of those. All but two of them went back to the manufacturer, because they’re krep. Guess who has one of the two. The guy said he’s taken it in the teeth on these things, and he’s going to again. This is under warranty.

He tells me we can live our lives for a few more days and nothing we’ll go wrong and I guess we’ll see. He’s getting another phone call as soon as the roads clear.

I had a checkup at the dermatologist late this morning. Good thing I took all of my skin with me. This was a simple follow-up after they carved a little piece of my back off last fall. I think it took longer for me to take off and put on clothes again than the whole of the appointment.

I got the once over, under a flashlight. He froze one little mark off my shin. It’s nothing, probably stays a nothing, but just in case. Would that all of life’s problems could be dispatched so quickly. But if you can avoid getting that frozen spray in life, do that. That stayed with me for most of the afternoon.

Turns out they left a sliver’s worth of stitching in the skin on my shoulder The assistant tweezed that out before I even realized she was back there.

I set up another appointment for the summer. Because of the spot they took off last fall they want me back every six months to study my alabaster skin. The doctor would not commit to how long we’ll be running at this pace. You’d get the sense from talking with them that being dismissive of it all is SOP.

Guess what conversation we’ll be having with them at my July appointment.

My lovely bride and I then had a nice lunch date. We enjoyed a few minutes of not doing other things at Chick-fil-A. It seems a good prescriptive. I’m glad I thought of it.

Since we were there, we stopped at Lowe’s. I picked up some 4SL 5W-30 oil for the snow blower. “Everyone’s getting ready,” said the woman who was working in the outdoors section.

I thought she could put that perfunctory cheer away, put a little panic in her voice, and help goose this week’s sales figures.

We cruised the light fixture aisle, because that’s what one does when one goes to a place with many fixtures and bulbs, but one also did not think to bring the TWO different specialty bulbs (for comparison) that need replacing. Then we went to the tool section. Brad nails, if you please. And hey, since I’m here, a few new fine-toothed jig saw blades.

One impulse purchase isn’t terribly impulsive, particularly if it A.) won’t spoil and B.) you have an eventual need for it’s use. (Just as soon as the weather turns.)

Then we headed to campus for a late afternoon faculty meeting. While working in the office, I received this email.

I wondered How far from the base of the building can I fling my computer? A good way, I’d imagine. My office is on the 6th floor.

Look, it’s one thing for young people and/or whining adults to mangle the language, turning an adjective into a present participle, but I am going to demand a little more from the marketing whizzes hired by the health system.

And don’t think I won’t bring that up to them, the next time I go to see my doctor and run into the direct mail tech team.

At our faculty meeting, well, faculty met. Things were discussed. Successes celebrated, grievances distributed. New policies were announced.

Then at home, in the driveway, I just missed the sunset, and the Canada geese.

Oh, they honk and they honk, they can’t help themselves. But while you can discern the direction, at that time of night you can’t get everything to work just right, camera-wise. I have a cool blurry one though, if anyone is interested.

I decided to take an FTP test. Your classic functional threshold power test, a ramp test, is a way to gauge your current level of fitness. I don’t really need to take this because my current level is: unfit. On a ramp test, and this is oh-so-interesting, you add power every minute and keep riding until you can’t. I sat up a bit early, I could have done more, maybe a little bit more, but I wanted to also cover some casual miles. Besides, this test showed an increase of 15 percent in my recent FTP.

I was riding somewhere in Norway.

Not very well, mind you, because, again, see above, unfit. But a January baseline is established. And now I can ride and see if it will improve.

And then I did the 10 miles or so around Plum Island, Massachusetts. Wikipedia:

The island is named for the wild beach plum shrubs that grow on its dunes, but is also famous for the purple sands at high tide, which derive their color from tiny crystals of pink pyrope garnet.

And it all sounds lovely. Looks it, too!

A bit farther down the Wikipedia page, there’s a list of beach and dune pests. And while, just a moment ago I wanted to go to northeaster Massachusetts and see this barrier island, I have now realized that things are so bad that each of these have subheadings on Wikipedia: Greenhead flies, ticks, mosquitoes, poison ivy.

That same place on the island, on Google Maps.

Want to see where I was on the FTP test? Somewhere just outside of Hjelle.

My avatar is riding in the Strynefjellet Mountains:

Here you will find a true wilderness, inhabited only by birds and animals adapted to an arctic climate, perhaps a predator in search of prey, a wild reindeer, a golden eagle, or sheep in summer pastures. Here there is plenty of space – and plenty of time. Change down to a lower gear and head into the mountains.

You think, “Norway in January, brr and no thank you.” Their weekend forecast and mine is about the same temperature. We’re expecting all of that snow — or maybe some of it, truly, no one knows, because who needs robust weather forecasting capabilities in the 21st century? — but in the Strynefjellet Mountains, they are under a Yellow Warning for Avalanches. I clicked that, and I am left to conclude that this is so commonplace that they don’t even include details. The blurb basically says, Don’t do it if you don’t have experience.

Not to worry, Norway, not to worry.

errands / Thursday — Comments Off
8
Jan 26

It’s true, you really can — and also moats, and a hardware store

There were actually more interesting parts to yesterday. I just didn’t tell you about them because I had the parts that I wrote about on my mind. Also there were parts that weren’t worth telling, so I didn’t tell them. The opposite is also true.

But the other parts of the day were like this. I had to drive somewhere to return something. The recipient was not home, which was my fault. We’d vaguely said “afternoon” and that was it. So I left the thing on the guy’s front porch, just beneath his Ring camera, which I’m sure saw me walk up, press the ring button, ran a series of not-at-all-intrusive algorithmic searches and cross-database and multinational platform searches. Also, three satellites were contacted in informing the guy that a person was on the porch.

People, you can just get a dog.

It was not intrusive because I was, of course, in this person’s yard. On his porch, to be specific. I very carefully avoid the yard in case people are put off by that. If a man’s house is his castle, then his yard is his moat. His driveway and sidewalk, though, are asking for it.

So ring the Ring. Rang the Ring? Rang the Rang? I pressed the button and waited for an appropriate amount of time. Left what I came to leave, and then returned down the sidewalk and driveway to my car, and tried to exit the neighborhood in a different way, in case I just caught him off guard and he came out and we had to have an awkward yard exchange. “Good to see you, and, dude? You’re standing in a moat right now. I mean, it’s your own moat. This is embarrassing for both of us, I should think.”

I composed a quick text message apprising him of the situation his non-dog doorbell had already told him about. I complimented the holiday decorations. It’s a classic white house, black shudders style, and they have really tasteful wreaths on the windows. Nicely done. You deserve compliments even after Epiphany, I think.

Anyway, I could not exit the neighborhood the way I went. So I had to turn around and race up the street, just in case he was on the porch, or in the drive. Or in the moat. I ducked down low, holding my cell phone up, with the camera acting as a periscope as I drove by because, please no eye contact, not now. None of this will look suspicious. None of that happened.

Except the part about having to drive right back by. That part definitely happened.

An hour or two later he returned my text. He’d had to run an errand which took longer than normal and nice job staying on the sidewalk.

Part of that text didn’t happen, either.

I went to the hardware store. I had two things on my list. Two! And this is where the day gets interesting.

Oh, now, 493 words in, now it gets interesting?

Hush, you. Just read the thing. Comments go below.

I walked up the stairs of the porch to the hardware store, because it is designed in that style.

“Riveting.”

Seriously.

Walked in, and at first glance it looked like they’d taken away the checkout island. That threw me right off. Now there’s a guy there, leaned all casual on a stack of whatever and we’re doing the eye contact thing and he is not in a moat, and now we must speak.

Some warm kinda day out there, I said, because it was that precise level of mild that, standing under the sun made you feel like it was a perfect temperature.

“Wait until you see tomorrow,” he said, “and the next day. I was going to go skiing, but not now.”

Sure does look like great weather ahead, I said, or something like that. I don’t know. I wasn’t taking notes. I agreed that forecast was surprisingly wonderful for early January, and what am I even doing here anyway?

(Update: What I am doing here is shaking an ancestral fist at the forecast algorithms. Nothing of what we’d been promised for days came to pass on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. First it was cold. Then it turned gray, and also damp.)

I was there for two things. I wanted to stock up, perverse as it sounded with weather like this, on snow blower oil.

They did not have snow blower oil.

I wondered if all oil is the same? Sure, there are different weights of oil, owing to viscosity and their purpose, this part I know. But is there snow blower oil? Is that different than car oil? Does that suggest there are snow blower oil tankers? And car oil tankers? Are there snow blower oil fields somewhere? How far away are they from the car oil derricks?

So I wandered over two aisles to look for brad nails. The hardware store had two options for brad nails on their shelf. Neither of those two sizes will suffice for the intended project. (I did the math.)

So I left the first hardware store empty-handed.

(Told you this was the interesting part!)

I did the math twice because this means I’ll now have to go to a big box store. I’d much rather just go to a hardware store. But everyone’s needs are different to the point of exotic, and every store’s inventory space is finite.

Well, there’s one other ma’ and pa’ hardware store I can visit first. Its name hearkens back to a time when you went into town to pick up your order of coal and/or ice. The marquee out front, the last few times I passed by, proudly boasted of having Ivermectin in stock. Surely, they have the longer brad nails.

And, then, back home to the emails I can’t do anything about, and also the ones asking ‘Should we meet?’ And also the class prep. Most of today has been in that same vein. These are lost days, then. I’ve hit a bit of a wall, this week. I’m predicting a breakthrough tomorrow.

It’s interesting, how you can see motivation coming.