A Fine Kettle of Fish

I started this as a reply to @siglinde999 but it got to be too long so I decided to post the whole thing.

Dana has an aunt with whom she is currently staying.  She and Dana get on wonderfully.  Aunt is a country club type.  Married into the Zeppa oil family (Dana is Dana Zeppa Schubert).  The company was a boom/bust kind of thing with Keating Zeppa in charge during the latter part.  Dana's Aunt was married to him until he died a while back.  All that is prelude to her visiting and enjoying the perks of country club membership and lunch with the Rose Festival Queen contestants.  AKA, one of my inner circles of hell.

I have to watch the dogs.  Aunt has two standard Poodles who probably eat steak at the table with napkins tucked into their collars.  I'd so much love to visit too but I need to do my hair.

Keating had a sailboat.  I've never seen it but I think it is pretty good size.  Moored since long before he died at a dock in lake Tyler.  Knowing what I do about boats I'm sure it is barely salvageable and, if so, for a bunch of money.

Dana texted me and said that Aunt didn't want to sell the boat but was offering it to me for free.

I'm pretty sure she wouldn't be able to give the boat away.  Maybe could sell it to someone on a coast for a few bucks but likely not even that.

If I were in my 20s I'd look at it.  Now I wouldn't even get close enough to count the wasp nests.  

There are few things I'd like to do more than go out on the blue water on a good sailboat for a day or two.  Or sail over to the the Caribbean from Florida.  But a man has to know his limitations.

I'll just stay here and mind the dogs, thank you very much.

My new Chrome box is coming today, two weeks before promised.  Very smart of Amazon. 

So I can finally get everything organized and set up and run the wires and figure out how I want the furniture and pack up the sloooooow Chromebox and get it returned. 

I'm looking forward to having a not lagging computer and I'm looking foward to having everything organized for a day or so anyway.   

And I just got a reminder that I have a one o'clock massage.  Weird that it should have slipped my mind even for a bit.  But I'm on schedule to have a shower and drive there in plenty of time.  

Fortunately Amazon has the deliver in my garage thing so I don't have to worry about the delivery.  We have a visually screened from the street kind of porch but I'd still be anxious receiving something worth that much.  So nice to have it put in the garage.  I love being in that system.  It works so well.

Dana is going to stay in Tyler and return on Monday so I'm all alone for three more days.  About the time I get used to it she'll get back.  I do feel bad for Toby, though.  He is not happy when she is gone.  

Meanwhile, I think Zoe is going downhill.  She is panting a lot and I think it is pain.  She's on two different pain pills and something for inflammation but it doesnt' seem to be helping much.  She still eats and processes the food but I think her pain is getting worse.  She can't much bend her back legs and I think they may be bothering her a lot.  I wrote the vet an email yesterday to get some advice but haven't heard back.  It is a shitty thing to go through but is the price to be paid.

 The new computer migration has not been without a hitch.  While adding a monitor to the computer that I'm not even keeping I killed my good monitor that had another couple of decades of use.  My friend in the computer world gave me a set of matching monitors and I discovered what a bad monitor was like.  So I found a new one on Amazon for a reasonable price and it is clear and clean and crisp and HUGE.  It is a 27 inch which was the size available in the monitor that was reasonable.  But it  takes up too much room so I've got to juggle everything to make it work.  Which I will eventually.  I'm now waiting for another two weeks for the Chromebox that I want to arrive.  Until I've got that I can't really arrange things the way I want them so it is currently all a mess all over the place.

So now I've got one broken monitor and two that work but I either can't use or don't want.  And no one wants to recycle monitors.  Zero money in them.  I've decided to put them in my attic.  They can either come back down when I find a place that will take them or live up there permanently.  Either way is fine.

And I've got a great all in one Brother printer that I put on FreeCycle.  I did get a nibble but no bite yet.  If I don't get anything by the weekend I'll put it out elsewhere.  It needs to go to a good home.  Anyone without Chrome.

One really nice thing is that I found a BW wireless Brother printer that Chrome loves.  Set it up without a manual in about five minutes and printed from my phone and from my computer.  I've never had a wireless printer before.  It is wonderful and perfect for what I want and was cheap.  The cartridge will likely last for a couple of years.

No idea what I'm going to do with the computer.  I'll probably pull the drive and put it up in the attic with the moniors.  Maybe I'll stumble across some Linnux guy that wants a computer.  It would kick ass with Linnux.  

I'll be really happy when I can clean up my office.

Meanwhile Dana went up to Tyler to see her granddaughter for a belated birthday celebration.  Dana was feeling good enough to drive although she took her rolling walker just in case.  She got there.

The upshot of all of Dana's hip stuff is that it is not currently infected.  All the bloodwork markers say so and the redness is slowly going away.  She's still got some weird issues that the doc says are stitches coming up to the surface.  They call it medical practice for a reason, I guess.  This was certainly not medical excellence.  

She'll be years knitting all the stuff back up in her thigh but it will eventually be better and is now, obviously, serviceable. 

I'm enjoying the time and quiet here with the dogs.

I'm watching Alcaraz and Sinner walk out to the courts ready to play.  Last time they played, in Paris, it was a five set battle more like a boxing match than tennis.  I would expect today to be no different.  It is so nice to watch, from the comfort of my home, a match of tennis on a par with any I've ever watched.  As always, I've got Mom on my shoulder saying 'I wish John [Mcenroe] would shut up'.  He still hasn't and won't.  The reason I'd love to have a button to push that would silence the commentary but not the crowd and pop of the rackets.

I expect Alcaraz to win but both are so deserving that it would not matter.

In the family tradition I'm collecting Amazon returnables.  I've got two.  One is a monitor connection adapter I no longer need since I broke the damn monitor and the other is a backup set of what was supposed to be bone conduction earphones but is actually over the ear speakers, not what I want and not what was on the site.  I'll also be returning the Chromebox I have once I've gotten the new one with more oomph.  I've done my bit to keep them profitable, though.  Shoes, another headset, a monitor, a Chromebox and all kinds of 'stuff' critical to my existence.  I'll probably take the returnables with me tomorrow to Georgetown.  There's a UPS there that has an independent set up where you grab a bag, Scan your code, print off the label to seal the bag with and drop it in the hole.  It is a great set up that is as efficient as it can be.  Rather than separate packages it all goes into large boxes for the return.

Today is a rain-ish day.  We now get flood watches all over Alexa and Google if the humidity is even high.  It does not apply to us.  I'd rather have a heat gage warning that I could set for my specific age and such.  If only we had Artifician Intelligence to help with that kind of thing.

I get annoyed frequently that AI is not incorporated into daily existence.  I'm sitting at a red light with traffic backing up behind and traffic backing up on the other side and no one crossing with the green light and it is such an obvious opportunity to use AI.  There are cameras that can see what it happening and even a low level computer system would be able to change the light based on reality.  Can't figure out what that doesn't happen.

First world.