}

Monday, March 18, 2024

Seeing the road ahead

Among the many busy days I’ve had lately was Wednesday of last week. That day I ran several errands, took care of some important business, and as a result of that, I saw one possible aspect of our future when the story concluded today. I really have been busy.

On Wednesday last week, I went to an optometrist mainly for a driver license renewal vision test, but also for an eye health check. I last saw an optometrist 10 years ago—and that was also because I needed to renew my driver licence. Back then, the issue was that my expiring licence said I needed vision correction to drive, something I no longer needed after I got LASIK eye surgery back in 2008 (and I talked about the procedure a few days after it was over).

I wanted an eye check-up, but I also wanted to order some prescription reading glasses, too, because cheap ones from a supermarket or chemist have the same strength in both eyes, and mine aren’t the same as each other. However, my specific motivation was definitely the driver licence, because I don’t like those vision test machines at the renewal place. This way, I could take care of two things at once.

The place I was going was on the other side of the city from me, and my appointment was at 9:30, so I figured I better leave the house extra early due to morning traffic, which, it turned out, was going the other direction, so I got there plenty early—and in retrospect, I probably should’ve realised that. In any event, whenever I have an appointment in the morning I have an absolutely awful night’s sleep, so I began the day quite tired and sleepy.

It turned out that the shopping centre where the optometrist is located also has a place where I could renew my driver licence, something that private organisations are contracted to do on behalf of the government. In Hamilton, my choices were the same place I got my car’s Warrant of Fitness last month (NOT an appealing option), or the place I actually went to. There’s also a supermarket there and a petrol station that was offering 20 cents per litre discount if I used my Everyday Rewards loyalty scheme card, so I planned a morning of errands while I was there.

I ended up renewing my licence in mere minutes: It was so fast, in fact, that I said out loud, kind of accidentally, kind of not, “this is soooooo much better than going to VTNZ!” The agents, two of whom weren’t serving customers at the time, laughed and thanked me, one adding, “we hear that a lot”.

My new licence will be for ten years again (we used to have lifetime licences that were paper and didn’t have photos). However, this is my last 10-year license: Next time (assuming…), I’ll be 75 and the licence will be for five years. Then, at 80 (big assumptions…), it’ll be for only two years at a time and I’ll need a medical certificate from my doctor for each renewal (to verify I don’t have physical limitations that would prevent me from driving safely).

A lot can happen over fifteen years. Fifteen years ago, Nigel and I had our Civil Union ceremony and party, so 15 years from now (assuming…) will also be at least as different from now as now is from 2009.

I’d arranged to meet up for lunch with one of my sisters-in-law, and my brother-in-law joined us, too, at new place a short drive from the shopping centre (after I bought my discounted petrol, of course). After lunch, I went to the nearby Woolworths (more Everyday Rewards points!), and then home to a very happy Leo.

That brings this story right up to today: My new driver licence arrived in the post this morning, the first day that was possible since I only renewed it last Wednesday, and because we only get mail on M-W-F where I live. I think that’s pretty good service! My signature on the new licence looks very little like my actual one—I found it difficult to use the stylus on the well-used tablet sort of thing (plus I sign my name maybe once a year, if that). Ironically (to me), my signature actually looks like what it what might when my license expires in 2034, on my 75th birthday. Also, about 2034 and being 75: WTF?!! Or, more accurately, HOW TF is that even possible?! When I saw the date it expires, I thought to myself, “…assuming I haven’t already”, and then followed my sardonic joke with, “I hope that’s not when I expire”. Both are valid, actually.

When I looked at my new licence, I noticed it has a subtitle my old one didn’t: “Driver Identity Information”, and I instantly thought of all the weird conspiracies the cookers will say that one line is about. I recently found out the cookers have come up with all sorts of elaborate conspiracy theories about the new Everyday Rewards loyalty scheme cards (seriously!), so there’s pretty much nothing they won’t create paranoid and delusional stories about. I wonder if we’ll still be dealing with that sort of nonsense in 2034.

My busy Wednesday last week was a day I got a lot of stuff done. When the story concluded today, I saw one possible aspect of our collective future. Maybe that means that I just need to keep really busy, for a lot of reasons.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Busy not being busy

I’ve been quite busy lately, doing the sorts of things I’d normally mention on this blog and/or on the podcast—yet I’ve done very little of either (sometimes, I didn’t even mention those things on my personal Facebook). That silence is partly because I really have been busy lately, of course, but some of it was because I wasn’t feeling well for awhile, and a sizeable chunk—perhaps the biggest reason—is that I just didn’t feel like blogging or podcasting—not for the first or the last time.

Still, there’s a lot stuff I’ve done recently that I still want to talk about, and I hope to get through the backlog over the coming week or so. That’ll probably mean several days with multiple posts, or (maybe more likely) simply fewer days skipped entirely, but either way, with cooler weather and so many projects approaching, I want to clear out the metaphorical mental filing cabinet.

I can’t promise —well, anything, really, but hope is a powerful thing. If this doesn’t come to be, then maybe it’s not meant to be; I honestly don’t know what’ll happen. Right now, though, I have a post for later today to finish, after I work on a repeatedly begun and abandoned household project. I guess it’s really true: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

A busy day was had

The graphic above tells a joking tale about my main accomplishment today, though there was a bit more too it. In fact, I was busy enough that I didn’t have enough time to do the post I’d planned for today. Not for the first—or last—time.

The graphic is one of those caricature things that Facebook promotes, and I have no idea why they do. The avatar is seldom all that realistic, but the main issue for me is that they seem unnecessarily silly. On the other hand, as someone who has made being unnecessarily silly part of his brand, it kinda fits.

What it refers to is, of course, the fact that I—once again—cleared the convolvulus from the raingarden out front. Ordinarily, I do this right before I mow so the mower can reduce it mulch, but this time there was too much. It has been “some time” since my last major cleanout, with only a littler minor culling this summer.

We’ve had a lot of rain lately, so weeds in general have had a wonderful time, and for my lawn that meant the weeds had yet again sent up flower stalks (with no flowers yet), but it was enough to make it look untidy.

After cleaning out the raingarden, I used the line trimmer around the edges out front until that ran out, then I grabbed the mower and mowed out front. That was it for today.

My plan is that tomorrow I’ll do the back, after refilling the filament in the line trimmer. Splitting the task in two was the only logical thing, really—and not just because I wasn’t in the mood to wrangle the line trimmer. The fact is, I wasn’t into any of it, and it was sheer force of will and bloody-minded determination that got me through the front—and then it promptly gave out.

I knew two things. First, all the rain we’ve had lately will make the grass (weeds) grow well, and also that the front would soon look untidy. No one but me and Leo sees the back, so if for some reason I don’t get it done tomorrow, oh well, I guess (though I probably will get it done).

The other motivation is that the monthly goal on my Apple watch this month is to close my Exercise Ring four times, and if I split the mowing over two days, I’d get the final two rings I needed for the month. Just working the system.

And that was my day. This evening was just watching TV, being too tired to do anything else. That, too is not for the first—or last—time. But I did mange to solve a project-related problem, so there’s that.

Despite everything, a busy day was had.

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

Better morning

The photo above is what I woke up to this morning, and it’s kind of nice waking up and thinking, “Awwwwwww…” first thing. However, it was hard to grab my phone, get it ready to take a photo, and then take it, all using only one hand—while also not disturbing Leo. Or maybe he was just pretending to be asleep because he knows I’m always wanting to take photos of him. Either way, he’s a good boy.

We’d both slept in, as we have the past few mornings, and while Leo is always happy to do that, for me it was that it was raining heavily recent mornings, and I could hear it on the roof over us. It was kind of soothing, since it wasn’t torrential, and there wasn’t any thunder. But once Leo realised I was awake, he decided it was time to for us to get up.

After my first coffee, I decided to make myself a hot breakfast (photo below): Scrambled eggs on toast with thin slices of edam cheese, and garnished with freshly ground salt and pepper, a bit of dill, and some dried parsley from my garden. On the side I had a couple small tomatoes I bought at the supermarket last week.

I recently started sharing food photos again, and the ones I take, even if I never share them, usually have some sort of story behind them. The thing is, in addition to realising that I’d stopped trying new recipes or food experiments, I also realised that I seldom make a cooked breakfast for myself—it’s usually toast or maybe cereal. There’s no reason for that, but I realised it’s something I’d like to do more of, especially because I often have more of a brunch and then dinner later on, but no specific lunch. A little more effort for my first meal of the day, then, can be useful, not just nice to have.

I didn’t share the photo of my breakfast anywhere else, and if my culinary adventures hadn’t all but disappeared, I probably wouldn’t have shared this one, either. But it, along with the photo of Leo up top (which I did share on social media), go to show that I can have an awesome start to an otherwise ordinary day. And having an awesome morning is always something worth sharing.

Photos, though, really are optional.


Flailing to plan

A popular aphorism came to mind recently: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” It’s been popular in business (mostly for managers), but it’s often applied more generally, even as somewhat dubious life advice. The thing is, it can be true, and, I think, it certainly is for me much of the time. The aphorism came to mind precisely because I’m trying to move from flailing to planning.

How much the stuff I produce for this blog is read has never been my metric for determining “success”—in fact, I almost never even think about checking the stats. Sure, I want people to read what I publish, but I’m quite happy even if only one other person (aside from me…) reads a post, and I’m even happier if they find something useful in it.

My personal metric of “success” has always been raw output: How many posts did I publish in a month or year? I haven’t achieved my old goal of an annual average of one post per day for several years, and, on the whole, I’m fine with that. However, there have been numerous things I don’t post about, though I wanted to, and that’s where a little planning can help.

The first thing I did was to make a simple list by month of various posts I want to be sure to do, and some that would be nice to do. For example, I have my “Weekend Diversion – 1984” series, each of which has a set date for publication. I also listed topics I’d like to remember along with things I (maybe?) couldn’t possibly forget. At the moment, that list has only 29 posts on it—it’s merely about being able to plan for posts that have specific publication dates. In this way, I can pre-write posts (like for the “Weekend Diversion” series) well in advance, not the least because most of those posts are at least based on historic information.

I’ve never been particularly good about planning posts in advance, certainly nothing like Roger Green does, but it would be useful, and probably much easier on me, if I took care of planned posts in advance (obviously, I can still make changes right up to the date of publication—after all, I sometimes make changes a long time after publication).

I started thinking about this because as I was writing my post about my father’s birthday, I realised how I’d almost always forgotten to write such a post, and I knew there had been others over the years I’d also forgotten.

Last year, I tried to devise an organisation system for my blog and podcast, but nothing I came up with made any sense for me, how my brain works, and for my work style. A simple list may be too simple, but it should do the basic thing I want: Keep me on track so I get date-specific posts written and published on time.

This, of course, does absolutely nothing for the vast majority of posts I work on during a year—written and published, or not. Those are still in a state of chaos, but maybe that’s the compromise? Tracking and planning for posts with specific publication dates will, at the very least, free-up some head-space for other posts, and aslo preserve the spontaneity that I've always enjoyed.

None of this means I’ll get anywhere near my goal of old, and I’m still okay with that. I know that having something to keep me on track with posts for specific publication dates will also take some stress of me, too, since I don’t have to try to remember such things. In fact, that same motivation was what led me to design my personal organisation system, too (and that system turns one year old later this week).

No one ever plans to “fail”, however they measure that, but plenty of people don’t plan to help themselves “succeed”, however they measure that. Over the past year, I’ve learned so much about what works for me, what helps me to “succeed”, as I define that, and I definitely feel better for having put a bit of energy into frameworks to help me plan so I don’t flail. I don’t “succeed” at everything by anyone’s measure, but most of the time I succeed by my definition, and that’s enough.

Sunday, March 03, 2024

Wish and stomach fulfilment

There are times when it’s useful to be getting fixated on something. In fact, last night it helped me get back into something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile, and I was so very glad that I did. Very glad.

Last night I decided I wanted to make the vegetarian pasta with puttanesca sauce, something I talked about when I first made it back in May of 2019. I’ve made variations of it every since, sometimes using cannellini beans instead of lentils, often with a bit of grated carrot, and maybe other bits and pieces as the mood struck me. Then, I just stopped making it—not on purpose, I just stopped.

The problem I have with recipes is that if I don’t make something in awhile, I forget how to make it, and I need to consult the recipe. So last night I went through my recipe ring binder, and found two different recipes. And in so doing, I realised how I’d combined the two different recipes.

The recipe I made in 2019 was from a circular from one of NZ’s two supermarket companies, but, in July of 2018, I didn’t have a recipe for a vegetarian bolognese. Somewhere along the line, I combined the two in my mind, which underdstandbly confused me when I was looking through my recipes.

Still I saw that I’d downloaded the recipe for the vegetarian bolognese from the BBC’s “Food” part of their site (I fist saw it on a BBC programme). Since I had to follow a recipe, anyway, I decided to try the BBC version. It was outstanding (photo up top), and, in fact, it was so much better than my original effort (either one or later combined versions). I even got to use an onion I grew (which is actually a topic in itself). I’ll definitely make it again.

This is exactly the sort of thing I meant when I shared a photo of a meal I’d improvised, adding that:
I realised that I seldom share meal photos (aka “food porn”) any more, and that’s because I seldom try new things or new recipes. There’s absolutely no reason for that—I just haven’t.
And also:
The last photo I took in February was a meal, yes, but also something I’d like to start doing more of again: Experimenting with new recipes, and/or new ways of cooking things—like I used to do.
Last night’s meal was exactly what I was talking about, which is why I did it despite not being into it that night—well, not at first. The more I worked on it, the more I remembered how fun it is to do that.

Maybe I’d set myself up for it on Friday. I took an avocado I bought at the supermarket recently to make smashed avocado on toast for my breakfast that morning. However, I didn’t use it all, and at first I thought I might make nachos for my dinner on Saturday, but instead I decided to have a poached egg on avocado toast for my breakfast (photo at right). That created the opportunity to make the vegetarian bolognese last night.

I’m pretty good at making poached eggs now, but I have to do them one at a time because I now use the “create a whirlpool in the pot of boiling water” method. I used to cook two in a pan of water with a little white vinegar which, the Internet told me, helps keep the whites together, but, yeah, not so much. The whirlpool method works much better, but unless I have two pots on the cooktop at once, I can only make one poached egg at a time. This is probably just a learning experience; after all, even making fried eggs took some experimentation, and now when I (rarely) make them, they’re perfect (and I do two at a time).

There’s one more thing about yesterday’s breakfast: I’d put a little chilli powder in the smashed avocado, mainly because at the time I thought I was going to make nachos with the leftover mix. There was a time I’d never have done that. I guess all this cooking experimentation is making me more adventurous, too.

I often get fixated on something, and in this case me being determined to experiment with cooking and recipes helped me get back into something I hadn’t done for awhile. I was so very glad that I did.

Friday, March 01, 2024

The first and the last

I take a lot of photos. I share some on social media and/or on this blog, but most of my photos are never seen by anybody else. Today, however, is a story of a beginning and an ending, in reverse order.

The photo up top is one I shared to social media last night. I said:
Leo asked me to let him outside, and I followed him out and looked up. I saw the moon in the clouds, all reflected by my solar panels. It’s pretty. It’s also now after midnight, and so, Match 1, and that makes this is my first photo of an Autumn moon. Yay.
March first is, of course, the first day of Autumn in this part of the world, and just like our brethren and sistren in the Northern Hemisphere, some of us may pause to reflect on seasonal change. Or, not. As it happens, the photo up top just happened to be my first of March, and so, a new season.

The photo at the bottom of this post was the last photo I took in February, and, as is so often the case, there’s a story there. That story was actually completed on February 29.

Recently, I was looking at my Facebook “Memories”, as well as my photos on my devices, and I realised that I seldom share meal photos (aka “food porn”) any more, and that’s because I seldom try new things or new recipes. There’s absolutely no reason for that—I just haven’t. Until this week.

I had a bottle of honey mustard salad dressing in my fridge, and I realised I’d never get to it before it expired. I also realised it’d make a good base for a chicken marinade, so last week I bought some skin-on chicken thighs, and Thursday was the day!

I mixed the salad dressing, some garlic powder, some low-salt soya sauce, a bit of sugar (it was too tart), and a bit of oil to make a marinade. In then end, though, I just used it as a kind of sauce.

The result, in the photo below, was really nice, a bit like a teriyaki chicken. I served it with mashed potato and some peas and corn (from frozen). It was really nice, however, the thigh portions had squillions of tiny bones, which wasn’t ideal. I think the other supermarket chain has ones with fewer bones. Still, I had the leftovers for dinner on Thursday night.

The last photo I took in February was a meal, yes, but also something I’d like to start doing more of again: Experimenting with new recipes, and/or new ways of cooking things—like I used to do. The photo up top is also something I’ve shared a lot of in the past. Say whatever negative thing you want about Kirikiriroa-Hamilton, and I certainly have, but some of the most amazing skies I’ve seen anywhere have been here. I don’t know why that is—maybe it has something to do with the distance from the sea?—but marvelling at the pretty skies is something I never tire of.

Sometimes, the most important thing is to focus on what’s good, what’s positive, and what's right in front of us. SO much in the world today is utter shit, maybe we’d all be better off if we focus more on what’s good, like a pretty sky or a good meal we made ourselves. Whatever. Maybe if we do, we can all help make the world a little less awful.


Wednesday, February 28, 2024

It was about change, not coincidence

On Monday of this week, I went to get a Warrant of Fitness for my car. It was due the next day, but. While I was waiting, I got bored, as I always do while waiting my turn, so I took the photos up top: A deliberately bored looking me and the view out the windscreen (the car was switched off at the time).

When I shared the photos on Instagram/Facebook, I said, “In the queue to get the Warrant of Fitness for my car. It’s only been s bit more then an hour so far…”. When I was finally done, I added a comment: “It was an hour twenty, all up. Next year, I may go somewhere else…” That was that, as far as I was concerned, until I saw my Facebook “Memories” the next day.

It turns out that last year I got my WoF on Monday, February 28—the day it expired. That day, however, was also a Monday. I said in the caption:
Well, ain’t that a coincidence! I just went there yesterday! No, it’s not a coincidence at all: My car’s Warrant of Fitness expires every February 27. BUT, last year I went on the very last day, and this year I went a day before the last day—progress! 🤣
So… progress. Yeah, that’s it. I then went on to explain why the experience last year had been so frustrating, make jokes about jokes I made in a comment I made on last year’s Facebook post. The comments ended up being part of a a blog post (or maybe vice versa—I don’t remember). At any rate, I began my yesterday’s Facebook post by saying that “Last year was so slow partly because they were building two new inspection bays for cars only, and the two that were there last year are now primarily for trucks of varying sizes, and heavy vehicles.” That was certainly true, but only part of the story: It was still slow this year. Last year, I joked about their computer systems:
…their computer system was, quite possibly, running Windows ME and connected to the Internet by 3G cell service.
This year, I had another jab at their “still absurdly slow computer systems”, adding: “I was, of course, joking last year when I said their computers were running Windows ME. Obviously it’s Windows 95. And probably using a 1995 dial-up modem.”

There were several changes this year. First, there were few trucks waiting when I got there, and when they were all done, the inspectors started processing cars, too, and things sped up “dramatically”, if that word can be used to describe such a slow process.

The two new inspection bays were quite different, too. All the inspection facilities of that company that I’ve ever gone to had pits below the inspection bay that inspectors would use to go under the car to inspect things like the car’s chassis (for rust or other damage), brakes, etc. The two new car inspection lanes use hydraulic car lifts to raise the car two metres in the air—which kind of seems like a bigger liability to me, but I suppose they know what they’re doing. The truck lanes still have pits.

In my post on Monday, I talked about maybe making other arrangements next year. There are actually lots of companies authorised to do WoF inspections, but I never wanted to use a place that also does repairs because, cynical me noted, they had a financial incentive to find something “wrong”. In fact, VTNZ (the chain I’ve been going to for many years) used to run TV ads implying that very thing.

I have a year to explore options for places that book appointments, rather than going through these annual wait-a-thons. That’ll give be time to check reviews, too, so I can quiet the cynical demon trying to whisper sweet paranoid nothings in my ear.

This was just one of millions of other bureaucratic machines to wrangle over the next few weeks, but at least one more is now off the list. Those others won’t have any selfies or Facebook “Memories” to mention., but maybe just making progress is enough.

A new read among others—and re-reads

Have I ever pre-ordered a book? I don’t know about the past, but on January 8 of this year I pre-ordered the new novel by Armistead Maupin, a few weeks after I saw his Facebook page announcing the publication of his latest novel, Mona of the Manor, likely to be the final novel in Maupin’s Tales of the City series of novels. The book arrived Monday (photo above). This was also a bittersweet thing.

Nigel had all the original Tales of the City books, and when I arrived in New Zealand to live, I read the first three. Auckland reminded me a bit of San Francisco, which I’d visited earlier that year, because of its waterfront and hilly streets. There’s no reason why I hadn’t read the books in the USA, I just didn’t—though I’d been aware of them since I was at university, and newly out, in the early 1980s. before I emigrated, I watched the first series of the TV adaptation of the books, and Nigel and I watched the second and third series together. We bought them on VHS, and we re-bought them on DVD (though I’m pretty sure that buying the DVDs was just Nigel’s doing).

Maupin began a series of sequels, though at first he didn’t call them that, with Michael Tolliver Lives in 2007, which I bought for Nigel. I also bought him Mary Ann in Autumn (2020), and also The Days of Anna Madrigal (2014), but I don’t know if he ever read that one (by that time he was mostly into audio books, which helped make his work commute much better). Mona of the Manor, then, is the first Armistead Maupin book that Nigel never got the chance to read, and, obviously, I was keenly aware of that fact when publication was announced. If anything, that awareness made me more determined to pre-order.

Nigel and I also bought the non-Tales book, “The Night Listener”, and we managed to read it before the movie came out. Actually, by “we” I mean me: One way or another, Nigel got through a lot more books than I did (as I’ve said many times, I’m a very slow reader). Nigel already had Maupin’s other non-Tales novel, Maybe the Moon, and both of those books had characters from Tales as supporting characters.

It’s clear that I have a long personal history with the Tales books, even if I’ve only read the first three books in the series. Right now, I think I’d like to start from the beginning and continue in order until I get to the newest one. We’ll see. Back in 2008, I published a post about book memes and said that the Tales series was what I’d want with me if I was on a desert island. I also said, “These will, one day, be books I re-read.” Yes, well, only three of them would’ve been be re-reads, and that hasn’t changes in the sixteen since I wrote that post. The other seven novels would still be new to me.

Buying this new book completes the set of Tales of the City novels in my personal library, and that appeals to me for many reasons. It’s bittersweet, too, though, because Nigel never got the chance to read Mona of the Manor. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it enough for both of us.

When something, even a new book, is connected to me so personally, and those connections include memories about Nigel, it’s understandable that I’d feel reflective. This time, it’s mostly happy memories and feelings, just tinged with the bittersweet. As time’s passed, this has become far more common than having memories that only make me sad. Now, I’m mainly just excited to see how time affected Mona. And Anna. And Mary Ann. And Michael. No matter how long it takes me.