Columbia River Gorge

I hope to do more weekend road trips this year, and first up is the Columbia River Gorge.  This is somewhere I've been meaning to go to for quite some time, so I'm taking the opportunity to go there this weekend with the decent weather forecast.  Columbia River forms the border between Oregon and Washington State, and I'm on the Oregon side which is where the best views and best waterfalls are.  I probably could have done this in a day trip, but I'm staying overnight in East Portland in what is something of a dodgy motel.  Thanks TripAdvisor for your dubious recommendation.

Ping Pong

I'm tired this evening - and I think the reason is too much ping pong (plus a few beers!).  We have a table tennis table at work, and fortunately there's a group of about 4 of us that play regularly amongst ourselves- so I've been playing almost every work day, which is a great way to break up the day, and my game has substantially improved.  Even though we're all quite well matched, I'm known for my power forehand - or as my competitors call it, the "fearhand".  Nice.

Brats

I've been accused, not entirely inaccurately, of being overly sensitive to noise - noise from neighbors, noise from outside. My apartment is close to a play area, so at times I have had to put up with the shouts and screams of children no matter how much it might get on my nerves - but this has only worsened as the weather has got nicer and the evenings have got later (shame on me for not realizing this when I took the apartment...).  So, I don't know whether to be amused or saddened by the following e-mail that I received today - this is genuine and unedited:

  Dear Valued Residents,

We are writing this email because we find ourselves in a position where we have to suspend Cookie Friday again. This last week’s Cookie Friday (April 22^nd) was another unfortunate and unpleasant event.  Many of the children were conducting themselves in the same way as they did the last time we suspended cookie Friday.  Their actions included pushing each other, yelling, cutting in line, being disrespectful to our staff and seemed to be uncordial in general with the lack of “thank you’s” and by their overall mannerisms towards our team when their desired cookie preference was no longer available.  We decided that it is necessary to suspend Cookie Friday for 2 weeks this time around.  We understand that everyone looks forward to Cookie Friday, but we ask you, the parents to remind our younger residents that this is a place of business.  They are expected to uphold the same manners and etiquette that we would expect from anyone while in the office and throughout the community. 

Secondly, we also need to mention that when the children are playing within the community they should be supervised by an adult.  This includes the older kids as well.  We have received many complaints of children climbing on top of the playground equipment and trees, pulling rocks from the retention walls, pulling out the pet waste bags from the receptacles and leaving them on the ground, throwing rocks around other residents patios/slider doors, screaming at intolerable volumes as well as disturbing other residents by knocking on doors and running away.  We understand that kids will be kids, but there comes a time when this behavior is unacceptable, unsafe and very disruptive to other residents.  If you experience or witness this behavior, please contact the office and provide us with as much information as possible including a description of the child(ren) so that we may be able to discuss the behavior with the parents directly. 

Please inform them that Cookie Friday is suspended for the next 2 Friday’s April 29^th and May 6^th due to this behavior in the office as well as around the community.  We will resume Cookie Friday on May 13, 2016.    We want our younger residents to understand that Cookie Friday is a privilege and a reward for good behavior.  If this continues to be an issue, Cookie Friday will be suspended indefinitely.  We thank you for taking the time to have this discussion with your children.  Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Respectfully,

Sucker

I use the service center at my local Ford dealer for my car maintenance and repair.  I shouldn't.  My car is no longer under warranty, so there is no point in taking it to a place which overcharges and has terrible customer service.  This is the place that I took my car to a few months ago to investigate the coolant smell I was occasionally detecting - but they couldn't find anything wrong, didn't do anything to the car, yet still charged me for the time and labor.  So, like the sucker I am, I took it there again today.  Actually, this was something of a necessity this time - there was a safety recall that I wanted them to address, plus a potential transmission issue I was having (shuddery acceleration) related to a previous safety recall.  I guess that serves me right for getting a Ford Fiesta - what with the Fiesta known for its reliability and durability...  But then after having dropped off my car and taken a shuttle home, I never heard back from them.  Knowing that the shuttle only runs up to a certain time, I eventually had to call up and get it back to the service center.  And then found out that they hadn't finished working on my car, that they weren't going to finish today and it is no condition for me to drive back today (the safety recall had something to do with the door latches, so presumably my car is currently in pieces in the garage whilst they fix these issues).  So I'm currently driving a rental car - which is highly inconvenient (and a very weird car at that - a Chevrolet Spark).  At least they're paying for the rental, but I let myself get roped into paying for insurance for a day and some fuel for it.  And I've got to go out of my way to return the rental tomorrow, assuming my car will be ready by then.  Sucker.  

Austin

It’s been over 6 months now since I left Austin and moved back to Seattle – how time flies (when you’re having fun or not?) – and I can reflect on my brief fling with Texas.  Whatever my thoughts are on my current situation, I can definitively say that I am doing a lot better back here than I was in Austin.  Austin was an immensely and frustratingly disappointing experience in every aspect, and I’m not in the least bit sorry to leave it behind.  I don’t necessarily regret giving it a go there, but the combination of terrible living experience and the worst job environment I’ve ever worked in meant that I was desperately unhappy and that it was not going to work out for long.  Which is a shame, because I had such high hopes – Austin is always ranked highly as one of the best cities to live in the US, and it has a relatively affordable cost of living (at least compared to the West Coast) that meant I could have afforded a great first home.  Perhaps if a few things had been slightly different I might still be there – but that doesn’t really change the fact that Austin offered (and offers) very little of interest to me, and I struggled adjusting to the new environment and climate.  So perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be.

Games of Thrones S6E1

With the new season having started yesterday of the best show currently on TV, I feel obliged to say something.  So here is my random thought on the first episode of the sixth series of Game of Thrones:

I can't believe they killed off Dr Bashir so quickly.

Celebrity deaths

David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood, Paul Daniels, etc.  Is 2016 just gearing up to be a tragic year for celebrity deaths?  Or does the prevalence of "celebrity" in our society now mean that we shouldn't be shocked by this? I don't know - but it won't stop me feeling a little sense of loss when somebody dies who has had some impact on my life, even if it's very minor or incidental.  I could easily use this as an excuse to list a few more celebrities who I think (or hope) might pass away in the rest of the year, but that seems a bit tacky and overdone.  Instead, I'll just mention another celebrity who passed away who might have got overlooked - Guy Hamilton.  As any Bond aficionado knows, this is sad news indeed.  Director of many Bond films, I recommend you re-watch Goldfinder or Live and Let Die in his memory.  

Fox Sports 2

Coverage of the English Premiership is fantastic on US TV - all games are televised live, and the commentary and analysis is pretty good.  I was worried when NBC got the rights a couple of years ago, but they've done a good job.  I can't say the same about Fox, who have the Champions League and FA Cup rights.  And the main issue I have with them is that they televise most of their games (such as the FA Cup Semi-Finals this weekend, which I was keen to watch) on channel Fox Sports 2.  Unfortunately, my cable provider doesn't provide Fox Sports 2.  This sucks.  I pay a load of money each month to get as many channels as I can, most of which are absolute junk and which I'll never watch, yet they can't even add this one extra sports channel that I would watch.  And this is Comcast we're talking about, the largest cable company in the US.  Ridiculous.  Thanks also Fox for not showing these games on Fox Sports 1 instead, which I do have.  Nope, instead you'd rather show Drag Racing or Supercross or some other tertiary sport on this channel.  And you wonder why so many people are cutting cable.  

Windshield

Well, my plans for the weekend just got ruined.  Something large hit my windshield on the commute into work this morning.  It caused a small crack:

That was not how I wanted to start the day – and I’m still a bit shaken up by it (thank god it was the passenger side, otherwise I would have been totally screwed!).  So it is going to be a scary ride home to make sure that the damage doesn’t worsen (I dread to think how bad it could get if the cracks widen or increase, and/or the windshield just totally collapses….).  And then no driving over the weekend until it gets repaired on Monday.  Coincidentally, not, the total cost of replacement will come to about the same as my deductible.  What a swizz.

The why

So why have I started blogging again?  I think it is mainly because I am absolutely abysmal at keeping in touch with people, and I’ve been asked a few times how am I doing back in Seattle.  This is a seemingly innocuous question, but don’t be fooled.  This is a loaded question that does not warrant a throwaway answer of just “I’m doing OK”.  No, this would be disingenuous and discourteous – I’d rather you judge for yourself the answer from future blogs.  But, put concisely, my answer would be “I’m doing as well as could be expected”.  Ha, I think that is suitably vague and ambiguous!  But I hope to blog almost every day if I can, even if it’s just a sentence or a link to something.  And it could cover anything that happens to be on my mind at that time, no matter how mundane – an event, an observation, a rant, an opinion.  Even if my life is not particularly interesting, it is at least an interesting time to be in the US (politically) and I have got plenty of thoughts to share on that!

When music moves you