donnunn.com

Phone Wars

I managed to get hold of Katharine’s phone, but she lunged to retrieve it within a couple of seconds.

And then the camera went off:

Mathematically challenged

This morning in the cafe I arrived at the cash register with my meal card to pay for breakfast. I’ve done this hundreds of times, it’s in no way remarkable.

Then my brain kicked in. Or maybe it tripped, or cramped.

The friendly cashier tallied up my purchases. “That will be seven dollars,” he said. It’s always seven dollars, the particular combination of items I’ve chosen over the last couple of weeks. We marveled, again, like we have for the last five or six visits, how isn’t it amazing that it always comes out to an even dollar amount?

So I swiped my meal card, knowing I probably didn’t have quite enough cash value to cover the purchase, and sure enough I was short. “You owe $3.73,” the cashier said.

That’s when the brain kick/trip/cramp started. I fished out my wallet, opened it, saw I had a single bill, and the first thought that flashed through my head was:

Oh shit, I only have a five.

Somehow I managed not to blurt this aloud. I think the part of my brain that was stumbling over the math was also being slapped by the other part of my brain that prevented my mouth from moving and made me just reach out, jerkily, to offer the bill to the cashier, who took it as if nothing was wrong.

If only he’d seen the briefly colossal battle inside my head.

Yes, this.

It really shouldn’t be possible to say, without lying, “I’ve been up for 6 hours” at 10:45 on a Sunday

— Don Nunn (@donnunn) November 25, 2012

Well, hello there.

When Girl Scout skills don’t quite cut it

Julie Anne’s efforts to get a fire going in the chiminea met with... difficulty, shall we say:

The several sheets of newspaper on the lower right was a full New York Times when she started

So I stepped in (at, for the record, her suggestion) with the charcoal lighter fluid.

Kids, don’t try this at home!

A couple minutes later we still had the roarin’ fire we sought. Cuz, science!

No eyebrows singed in the making of this inferno

Flashbacks?

So today, a couple of things:

On the drive home from work—which was itself unusual, I haven’t driven to work without a specific reason (like after-work plans or errands I need to run midday) in I don’t even know how long—I found myself belting out If That’s What It Takes. Which got me to thinking:

1. HOW IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE that I know all the words to this song.
2. Why didn’t I notice what I was singing until the last 30 seconds?

Thank God no one else could hear me in stop-and-go traffic with my windows rolled up, though this kinda shoots that all to hell.

Then for dinner tonight: Fish sticks.

I can’t remember exactly when I last had fish in stick form. I mean, I’ve had fish & chips fairly regularly over the last few years, but that fish is more wedge-shaped or (in many Seattle-area restaurants anyway) random–filet-shaped. There have been other fish entrées in restaurants fairly regularly over the last few years. And I grill fish on a regular basis year-round, mainly because I like to watch the planks burst into flame. But the stick form, they fell out of my life when I was, oh, maybe 12 or 13, and didn’t make another appearance until tonight.

And oh were they good. Crunchy little things, 2 by 1/2 by 1/4 inches. I remember them being much bigger when I was a kid, by which I mean about the same length and width but maybe twice as thick. Also soggier, no matter how long you baked them, but maybe the bigness was cuz I was smaller and now I’m an adult and most things from my childhood seem smaller, like the time I voted at my elementary school and I needed to use a restroom and I thought, good Lord, I’d have to kneel use these urinals.

See the tripping hazard.

Or maybe not. It seems only to be visible to Katharine.

Photo does not match headline.

On the Seattle Times homepage just now, a dour expression for so much lovin’:

When Penny Racers grow up

 

Whimsical tickets

There’s a certain charming whimsy to the cuteness that, to my eye, pervades a lot of Asian culture. Maybe we in America need a bit more silly in our daily lives, eh wot?

I’m glad technology has progressed to the point

where we can inflict weightlessness on hapless felines.

 

Boys will be boys

Local bar’s men’s room chalkboard announcement of their Super Bowl party.

It’s like we can’t resist it.

When ChapSticks attack!

Katharine had a little lip-balm misfire....

Light-bulb moments of the day

This morning Katharine had to confirm her password when she logged into Google Mail. She uses Google’s two-step authentication on that account — when she logs in, Google sends her a confirmation code by text message. I use the same authentication method for my own accounts.

Pretty routine, entirely unremarkable.

Until this exchange just now.

Katharine: [mumble mumble] “‘...phone number ending in 96.’ It never does.”

Don: “What?”

K: “The number. It never ends in ‘96’.”

D: [looks over at her screen, sees the Google logo] “Oh, the 2-step authorization thing?”

K: “Yeah. It always says ‘enter the verification code sent to your phone number ending in 96’. But the phone number never ends in 96.”

D: [brief stunned silence] “Your cell phone number ends in 96. It means *your* phone number*.”

K: [audible click of The Getting It] ”OOOOooooohhhhhh.....!”

A couple minutes of laffter [D] and head-hanging embarrassment [K], then:

K: “So then yours says ‘phone number ending in 07’?”

D, whose cell number has ended in 09 for 6 years now: “No...?”

K: [second audible click of The Getting It]

D: [more laffs!]

"I think this is the most beautiful pie I've ever made!"

From the “things we’ve never heard out of Julie Anne’s mouth before” files.

Not so OK after all

Uh, Twitter?

Kat2-D2

Overachiever

Funny money!

Canadian currency is a bit of a contradiction. Simultaneously high-tech and colourful, playful in its way, but such serious looks on the faces decorating the bills.

And great names for the CAD$1 and $2 coins.

The bowling shoes, they are so pretty

Classy as always.

STELLA

Alehouse restroom. Flashing back to the hospital gift shop in 2004, all those old-lady volunteers.

Which is not to say the old-lady volunteers were in the alehouse restroom with me—nothing so scandalous.

No, one of them was named Stella. And every time I saw her, I’d do the “Streetcar” bit. And she’d smile tolerantly and encourage me to return to the cash-register lesson. ;-)

Today’s earworm, and its source

Set the Way-Back Machine to today, 06:50ish.

I’m waiting at the 4th & Pike bus stop for the Sound Transit 545 to Redmond. I’m holding my freshly prepared (and still a smidge too hot to drink) small skinny vanilla latte from the Seattle’s Best down the street, watching the traffic roll past.

A good many vehicles pass that location in the usually five or six minutes I have to wait for the 545. Fair number of buses, many private vehicles and business trucks/vans/whatever.

One truck catches my eye. Smallish tanker truck, it looks like the type that might deliver heating oil in the suburbs. The company name emblazoned on its side:

BAKER COMMODITIES INC.

In no way remarkable, no idea why it catches my eye.

So then my brain goes into overdrive in something like the following sequence of thoughts, which probably requires all of 10 seconds start to finish:

1. I wonder what they sell.
2. I should look them up when I get to work.¹
3. Commodities. Oil, grain, coal, copper, ....
4. “Commodity” and “commode” are similar words. Same root? I should check that.²
5. “Commode”—toilet.
6. Toilet—potty.
7. “Get off the pot” hee hee.
8. BAM earworm of “Beauty School Dropout” from Grease.

Dammit!

---

1. No idea why I didn’t just whip out my iPhone right at that moment. ↩
2. Yes. ↩

I should not be allowed to dress myself

Tragedy ensues.

Recommendation fail

OK, Netflix, you got me with this one:

How in the world does liking a film about New York City kids learning ballroom dancing translate to a suggestion for a film about the methodical slaughter of dolphins?

Casually overwrought

Without comment, I present in its umodified entirety the severe-weather alert I saw for Seattle just now:

... SNOW POTENTIAL THIS WEEKEND AND IN THE WEEK TO COME... A COLD AND SHOWERY AIR MASS WILL SPREAD ACROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON THIS WEEKEND. SNOW LEVELS WILL FALL TO 1000 FEET ON SATURDAY AND THEN TO NEAR SEA LEVEL OR JUST A COUPLE HUNDRED FEET ON SUNDAY MORNING. IN SHOWERY PATTERNS... SNOW ACCUMULATIONS CAN BE HIGHLY LOCALIZED... DEPENDING ON ELEVATION AND HOW CONVERGENCE ZONES DECIDE TO FORM. LOCATIONS FROM SEATTLE NORTH TO THE ISLANDS AND SKAGIT COUNTY WOULD BE THE MOST LIKELY PLACES TO SEE ACCUMULATING SNOW... BUT ANYWHERE STANDS A CHANCE. LOCATIONS THAT GET SNOW COULD GET A FEW INCHES... WHILE MANY OTHER LOCATIONS WILL JUST GET FLURRIES OR LEFT OUT ALTOGETHER. THE CHARACTER OF THE EVENT WILL BE SIMILAR TO THE ONE THAT HAPPENED ON DECEMBER 29TH... THOUGH THE EXACT LOCATION OF THE HEAVIER SNOWS COULD VERY WELL BE DIFFERENT. MONDAY AND TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK WILL BE COLD AND DRY. STARTING WEDNESDAY THROUGH THE END OF NEXT WEEK... THERE IS THE POTENTIAL FOR A WIDESPREAD HEAVY SNOW EVENT SOMEWHERE IN WESTERN WASHINGTON. GREAT UNCERTAINTY INHERENTLY EXISTS IN A FORECAST WITH THIS MUCH LEAD TIME... AND IT IS POSSIBLE THAT A HEAVY SNOW SITUATION WILL NOT HAPPEN. CHECK BACK LATE THIS WEEKEND OR BY MONDAY FOR THE LATEST ON THIS POTENTIAL HIGH-IMPACT EVENT. IF THE POTENTIAL STILL EXISTS AT THAT TIME... THEN THE DRY WEATHER ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY WOULD AFFORD AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO PREPARE.

Definitely not pretty

“Mornings aren’t pretty”—truer words never spoken, though I didn’t sleep long enough to get a really grand case of bedhead. But I kinda feel like Mickey looks.

And it can’t be purely coincidence that one French press = one giant coffee cup, right? No, it *must* be a greater statement of the proper order of the universe.

Two, eleven, and one

In order: People, beers, and cans of enchilada sauce to ring in the new year.

Usurper!

Katharine has become a fan of the iPad. She landed 58 airplanes in Flight Control HD and now is blasting energy blobs to smithereens in Plasma Globe.

What kind of day has it been

An indicator of how this Monday will likely go:

I required five attempts to leave the house successfully. I believe this is a personal best.

First try: Realized I had forgotten my work badge (and, by extension, my transit card since they’re in the same badge holder).

Second try: Forgot Netflix DVDs for return mail.

Third try: Turned to lock door, determined this would be difficult since keys were still on the shelf inside my apartment.

Fourth try: Halfway down the stairs, remembered my wallet was still on my desk in the living room.

Fifth try: Half a block away, noticed my phone’s charge level was only 63%. Considered returning for the wall charger, remembered I have a USB charge cable on my desk at work.

So then. How’s your Monday?

Seattle Times: Why can’t we handle snow?

Gee, ya think? ;-)

[I]t’s clear from the outcome that the state, Seattle and its hilly suburbs can’t handle a few inches of snow.

via seattletimes.nwsource.com

Full article text after the jump.