donnunn.com

I’m really not as much a lush as my blog and social media would have you believe.

Left to right:

• My own MacBook Pro. It started coming to work with me a few months ago.
• My older work laptop, a Dell Vostro something or other. It’s connected to the dual widescreen monitors.
• My new work laptop, an HP Envy dv7. Hoping to have it fully configured and switched as my main work machine by this afternoon.

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:

(Source hardly matters on a chill morning)

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.

They’re dicking with beloved tradition!

Sun peeks out just before it sets.

Bit of a wild workday. This wall decoration at Bake's Place perfectly matches.

<squint>

I never get the flexible straw!

Oatmeal and an apple fritter.

Cuz, you know, I’m all about balancing things out, even though the Diet Coke wouldn’t fit in the frame.

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

And Seattle set a record low temperature.

Katharine has become a fan of the iPad. She stole it away from me and landed 58 airplanes in Flight Control HD, and now she’ss blasting energy blobs to smithereens in Plasma Globe.

Fired up the laptop to configure it for my own use. It went immediately into Startup Repair mode, which included warning me about the battery health and prompting me to initiate a system restore.

Now it’s in the 6th minute of Windows 7’s Startup Repair impersonation of a Cylon:

* Where by “new” I mean “refurbished hand-me-down” but I’m not at all bitter

Your coworkers make little signs to save your seat. :-)

NO ONE should have a stack of pancakes this high. Even for a promotional photoshoot.

Southbound I-405 out of Bellevue.

IHOP’s newest thing: Football-shaped stuffed French toast for the new NFL season. Strawberries for AFC, blueberries for NFC.

So this morning at IHOP the server asked if I wanted my usual, and I said, uh, what is my usual? and she said eggs over medium and pancakes with link sausage, and I said, how do you know that? I’ve only had that once here and you weren’t my server, and she said, when folks come in two Sundays in a row, they always get the same thing.

It was kinda creepy. But the food was good.

So I’m 37 today, which doesn’t faze me in the least because in my brain I’m still maybe 23 or 25 at most and that means I won’t be a grown-up for, what, 10 years at least?

Halfway through, then, here’s how the day has shaped up:

1. Actually got some sleep, glorious sleep! I’ve a mild cold and the biggest problem I experience with such things is sleeplessness, but I managed almost 7 hours last night. This despite the fact that
2. I woke up half an hour early so I could ferry Katharine to work so she in turn wouldn’t have to worry about her car during the fabulous Spa Day she would be enjoying courtesy Julie Anne’s gift for Kat’s own birthday 3 days ago. So I picked up Julie Anne and we headed north to Bothell, picked up Katharine, and
3. Stopped at Starbucks for caffeination. I ordered my usual, a triple grande non-fat no-whip white chocolate mocha (yeah, I am “that guy in line at the coffee shop who places an order with way the fuck too many syllables”—but I knows what I wants and I speaks their language!), which they got entirely right except for the “white mocha” part—I received a standard mocha. But I didn’t much care because we had already left the drive-thru lane and I was already starting to twitch from the caffeine. And then we were off
4. At work, with the caffeine and a slighly slow day making things tolerable, and now I’m waiting for
5. Julie Anne to pick me up for a couple hours of billiards and a beer or two at The Parlor in Bellevue.

Woo birthday!