Buzzsaw, Forgot two of the best, Swiped
As the afternoon drug on yesterday my roughly four hours of sleep the night before was really catching up to me. When I left the office I went immediately to the DD across the street instead of my normal stop which is about 10 miles away. I needed coffee and I needed it quickly. I threw together a haphazard grocery list and stopped on the way home, grabbing whatever essentials I needed to get me to my normal shopping trip on Saturday.
Once I got home it felt like I was on a constant treadmill of tasks. I did several loads of laundry, cleaned some things up, went through mail/packages, went through an arduous bill pay/credit card reconciliation process and a number of other small things that kept me on the go until close to 10PM. Sleep was welcomed last night, I am going to try to get more of it going forward.
Despite all the things I knocked out I still have a lot more knocking to do. I am hoping we can avoid a deluge today to allow me to get out on the tractor to cut the grass which has grown tremendously in the 10-11 days since it was last tended to. I also have some videos I would like to work on at some point this week. To top it off a new monster EUC is supposedly getting delivered today to my place. I am in one of those time periods where it feels like I am trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, if you know what I mean. I always feel best when things feel balanced.
So I totally forgot to include two amazing/funny stories from the last two days of my travels. So on Friday after Paul, Meg and I got back from canoeing they had the idea to put on life vests and just float in the lake. Paul strapped on his vest and did a power cannonball into the water. There was one problem, he forgot he had his expensive Revo sunglasses on his neck, just held there by tension from the arms of the glasses. Of course the glasses came off. Paul was pretty bummed out when he realized this and chalked them up as being lost forever.
The morning of our departure all of us were out sitting on the dock. The past couple days while we were down there we saw/talked to an older couple that started each day with a swim from the beach to the dock and back. When they reached the dock we were talking to them a bit. Paul mentioned his sunglasses loss story, saying how he had jumped in right around where they were. Less than 30 seconds later the man, who had went below water emerged with Paul’s sunglasses in his hand and said “are these the glasses”? We were all dumbfounded at the series of events and their timing.
The good luck involved was incredible. The man had goggles on so he could see well underwater. He said the depth there was only 8-9 feet, so it wasn’t hard to find them. We all assumed that it was deeper and that the glasses would have been pushed further away. We thanked the man repeatedly for his act of kindness. Several times before we all pulled out for home we talked about the crazy recovery of the glasses that we all assumed were long, long gone.
The second story was from Sunday. When I went to the ticket counter at the Allentown airport I plopped my big checked bag on the scale. As I did the woman behind the desk asked me the standard questions, making sure I had no batteries, computers or other electronic devices in the bag. I said no of course. So as she is about to attach the luggage tag she feels the bag, pauses, and then says to me “Sir, your luggage is vibrating….” She asked me what I had in there that would vibrate. Of course this could lead to funny assumptions about vibrating objects. I touched the bag, confused, it was clearly vibrating. I pulled the bag off the scale and opened it on the spot, in front of a line of waiting customers who surely appreciated the delay. Once opened I felt both sides to find the source, once I did I pulled back the zipper and saw my electric shaver humming away. I love this shaver except for one thing, it has a stupidly sensitive on/off button. Evidently it got bumped enough to turn the damn thing on.
I showed the clerk the culprit. I asked if I could just put the shaver in my carry on. She called down to the TSA desk and verified that I could do so. Even after carefully placing it in my laptop bag in a manner I thought would protect it from accidental button pressing I again heard it buzzing at the Philly airport while I was eating dinner. If I travel with that shaver again I will need to come up with some packing solution to avoid unwanted vibration.
I have talked in the past about the adopted office cat that hangs out in the AC yard outside my office window. I take out fresh food and water to it daily and have done so for a long time. I even bought the cat an outdoor pet bed so it would have somewhere more comfortable to sleep during the day than a pile of leaves. Over time as I have fed it, the cat has gotten less afraid of me. At first it used to stay 20 feet away while I did everything, then it was 10 feet and now it has gone to 10 inches. It will be right there, waiting for me to put down breakfast.
I welcomed this progress and it felt good to be winning the animal’s trust. Then a couple weeks ago I was doing the feeding as I normally do, putting down some soft treats, and then the two bowls of normal cat food. As I placed the one bowl down the cat suddenly hissed and swiped at me which was very unexpected. I finished up with the food and left the area with a revised interpretation of that relationship. Having the cat act aggressively towards the being that is trying to help them survive made me a bit sad and affected the way I felt about the animal. Of course I will continue to take care of the cat but it is with a different understanding and less enjoyment. It is a real life example of biting the hand that feeds you, a feeling that I am familiar with which is never good.
I leave you with one of the countless special moments of the trip. As we started walking towards the dining hall Kennedy came up to me and held up her hand. It was incredibly sweet and touching. We walked and talked holding hands the rest of the way.