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choco_frosh) wrote2017-10-15 07:54 pm
choco_frosh) wrote2017-10-15 07:54 pm
Entry tags:
Realm: Various - Subrealm: Too much driving, pt. 2
Right, I never finished writing up last weekend's adventures.
I arrived in Portland after most of the furniture had been moved; my brother had gathered a cadre of friends, and successfully moved most of his stuff out of the storage unit, across town, and up three flights of stairs to his new place. What remained to be done was to reposition the furniture repeatedly (in an effort to figure out what he was going to do with two couches in a fairly narrow living room, among other things); borrow and set up a bedframe; and grab the last boxes of stuff from Dad's partner's house, where it (and Dan) have been living for the last several months.
Then we went out for dinner, because of course.
And then we got ice cream, and then unpacked the kitchen until we found spoons with which to eat it.
Oh, and: one of Dan's friend's gave him an Intellivision as a housewarming gift. For those not familiar with this name, it was a video game console--a sort of uncle to Atari--put out by Mattell in the early eighties. My grandfather did some consulting for them at one point, and so got a free copy; and these were the only video games that my brother and I got to play during our earliest years. So yeah, mad nostalgia, and also Mattell Electronics actually put out some pretty decent games (a port of Burgertime is perhaps the most famous)--although the ones Dan got this time around...weren't necessarily their best. (We still need to find a copy of Thunder Castle.) So a certain amount of time was spent figuring how to hook this up to Dan's flatscreen, and then, uh, testing to make sure it worked.
Monday I went up to hang out with Squigamunk and partner. Rather a lot of that day (the weather, alas, was crummy) was spent either gathering apples (from one location or another) or cooking things. Their neighborhood's apples are of a sort identified tentatively as a Wolf River (although they don't taste quite as bad as the descriptions I've heard of the latter, and look a bit small, as well.) Anyway, indifferent eating apple even when NOT wormy, but stand up well to cooking--although that's not ideal if you're trying to make applesauce!
Tuesday. Wow. So yeah, on Tuesday I drove home--which for once DIDN'T feature any traffic jams, although it did include some lengthy detours in search of donuts, coffee, interesting churches, and (since I was out of hard cash for fares) a way to avoid the York toll booth. It ALSO featured one of my employment agencies calling me to ask, urgently, whether I'd be able to make an interview in Quincy at noon. I replied, NO, which was technically a lie; but the only way to accomplish it would have been to drive directly there and show up, flustered, in old jeans, unshaven. And, as it turned out, the interviewer stood me up (well, failed to realize I was there, and took off); my employment agency colleague was as WTF as I was, but it was pretty clear that it wasn't my fault, since said interviewer had evidently done the SAME THING to someone else. (Raising the question of how they got their high-level job in HR.) Anyway, big disappointment, since it looked liek a decent job; but at least the employment agency in question now owes me one.
Skipping ahead: the next couple of days were mostly frantic census stuff, as our project was ending on Saturday. And then finding out, on Thursday, that we had a two-week extension. I received this news with mixed feelings. On the one hand, yeah, employment; but I was already tired of this job, and I want it to be over, so I can get back to what feels more like a real job, viz., job applications...
Guess I'll be driving out to Everett some more. I am getting so tired of driving to Everett.
...Though that may, in itself, be complicated. Yesterday, as I was driving around doing errands with Peter in tow, the car abruptly switched back to About To Die mode, complete with Check Engine light flashing. So before I drive to Everett again, I need to get it fixed. Again.
PS Shout-out to Squig. and Partner for fixing my smartphone! OK, really it was less "fixing", more "convincing me that the problem might really be lint in the charge port", but they still saved me like $50.
I arrived in Portland after most of the furniture had been moved; my brother had gathered a cadre of friends, and successfully moved most of his stuff out of the storage unit, across town, and up three flights of stairs to his new place. What remained to be done was to reposition the furniture repeatedly (in an effort to figure out what he was going to do with two couches in a fairly narrow living room, among other things); borrow and set up a bedframe; and grab the last boxes of stuff from Dad's partner's house, where it (and Dan) have been living for the last several months.
Then we went out for dinner, because of course.
And then we got ice cream, and then unpacked the kitchen until we found spoons with which to eat it.
Oh, and: one of Dan's friend's gave him an Intellivision as a housewarming gift. For those not familiar with this name, it was a video game console--a sort of uncle to Atari--put out by Mattell in the early eighties. My grandfather did some consulting for them at one point, and so got a free copy; and these were the only video games that my brother and I got to play during our earliest years. So yeah, mad nostalgia, and also Mattell Electronics actually put out some pretty decent games (a port of Burgertime is perhaps the most famous)--although the ones Dan got this time around...weren't necessarily their best. (We still need to find a copy of Thunder Castle.) So a certain amount of time was spent figuring how to hook this up to Dan's flatscreen, and then, uh, testing to make sure it worked.
Monday I went up to hang out with Squigamunk and partner. Rather a lot of that day (the weather, alas, was crummy) was spent either gathering apples (from one location or another) or cooking things. Their neighborhood's apples are of a sort identified tentatively as a Wolf River (although they don't taste quite as bad as the descriptions I've heard of the latter, and look a bit small, as well.) Anyway, indifferent eating apple even when NOT wormy, but stand up well to cooking--although that's not ideal if you're trying to make applesauce!
Tuesday. Wow. So yeah, on Tuesday I drove home--which for once DIDN'T feature any traffic jams, although it did include some lengthy detours in search of donuts, coffee, interesting churches, and (since I was out of hard cash for fares) a way to avoid the York toll booth. It ALSO featured one of my employment agencies calling me to ask, urgently, whether I'd be able to make an interview in Quincy at noon. I replied, NO, which was technically a lie; but the only way to accomplish it would have been to drive directly there and show up, flustered, in old jeans, unshaven. And, as it turned out, the interviewer stood me up (well, failed to realize I was there, and took off); my employment agency colleague was as WTF as I was, but it was pretty clear that it wasn't my fault, since said interviewer had evidently done the SAME THING to someone else. (Raising the question of how they got their high-level job in HR.) Anyway, big disappointment, since it looked liek a decent job; but at least the employment agency in question now owes me one.
Skipping ahead: the next couple of days were mostly frantic census stuff, as our project was ending on Saturday. And then finding out, on Thursday, that we had a two-week extension. I received this news with mixed feelings. On the one hand, yeah, employment; but I was already tired of this job, and I want it to be over, so I can get back to what feels more like a real job, viz., job applications...
Guess I'll be driving out to Everett some more. I am getting so tired of driving to Everett.
...Though that may, in itself, be complicated. Yesterday, as I was driving around doing errands with Peter in tow, the car abruptly switched back to About To Die mode, complete with Check Engine light flashing. So before I drive to Everett again, I need to get it fixed. Again.
PS Shout-out to Squig. and Partner for fixing my smartphone! OK, really it was less "fixing", more "convincing me that the problem might really be lint in the charge port", but they still saved me like $50.