SD

I keep on seeing adverts for San Diego on TV.  As annoying as they are, they must be working because they don't just make me want to visit San Diego again but they want me to move back to San Diego.  If only it was more affordable to live there.  Perhaps one day.  I do miss living there. 

TV Theme Tunes #73 to #77

 Some more classic sports themes:

Wind

We've had some really windy weather recently.  As evidenced by all the bits of trees lying on my yard and driveway.  It's a miracle that I haven't had a power outage, because I know nearby neighborhoods weren't so lucky.  But one casualty from the windy weather is my wind chime, pieces of which I found scattered around the ground.  This is the second wind chime I've had in as many years that hasn't lasted, so I guess I need to buy a more durable replacement.  At least I haven't had much snow - just managing to avoid the convergence zone that developed north of me.  But it has been really cold, making for some unwelcome late winter weather.   

Is it Friday yet?

A rough start to the work week, when the very first thing I discovered when logging in today was that a contractor I'm working with had messed up.  However, it doesn't matter how many years I've worked at this company, I learn something new every day.  For example, I knew one location where we kept backups of our network drive.  But I didn't know about another location - which proved to be a godsend, because that second location had the backup we needed to recover the files that this contractor had inadvertently overwritten.  Between Friday and today, it's been a stressful few days of work.  And I don't see it getting better anytime soon.  But this is not untypical for my job - the workload very much comes in peaks and troughs, normally long troughs with occasional extreme peaks.  I happen to be on one of those peaks right now. 

Trail Cam Jan-Feb

Here are the more interesting shots from my trail cam over the last month or so.

Avoiding Scores

Surprisingly, I've managed to avoid finding out what the Scotland vs England score was in the rugby today.  I could have watched it live via streaming, but I missed it - and the replay isn't available until tomorrow morning.  And it's an absolute miracle that I haven't accidentally come across it while on the internet.  Because I was looking up football results, how we are doing in the cricket, and other sports news, scores and headlines throughout the day.  Perhaps I should look the score up now to save me bothering to watch the game if England lost.  No, I will resist and prepare to be disappointed later.   

Friday

Just what you need on a Friday - a long and stressful day of work.  Dealing with incompetence and idiots needlessly creating more work and more drama for others.  I can barely tolerate work at the best of times, but I can't and won't take many more days like this.  Not many people go into the office on a Friday, and by the time I eventually left in the evening it felt like it was just me, security and the cleaners left in the building.  Normally I only stay this late if the traffic is bad - this time I didn't even get a chance to check the traffic because I was so busy trying to put out one fire after another.  So many aspects of the modern office work environment really got on my nerves today - from the lack of telephone (I don't want to take calls at my cube via my computer and wearing a stupid headset), to instant messaging (some people really abuse this and constantly interrupt you), to the fact that not a single person I'm dealing with is based in Seattle nor their first language is English (without face-to-face interaction, all my relationships feel so impersonal and communication is a nightmare).  It's days like this that really make me question my career choices.

A Neighborhood Update

Let's go to the map:

'

1. My house.

2. This house finally got sold this month - shockingly, I believe the selling price was over a million dollars.  Which is why I rent.  Disappointingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it got sold to a Chinese family.  I can't get away from them.

3. This satellite image is well out of date.  They are in the process of constructing a new house here.  The construction noise - particularly from a portable generator they use - has been driving me crazy.  To the extent that I actually bought a noise meter because I wanted to see whether the noise of the generator was too much (it was high, but not high enough for me to justify making an official complaint, which is disappointing - and perhaps reflective of my over-sensitivity to noise.  And at least the construction happened over winter when my windows were closed.  Although now I worry about what construction the Chinese family might do). 

4. I don't talk to these neighbors much, but caught up with them as I was picking up my mail today.  They are apparently looking to move away and to rent out their property.  So that will mean newer, and potentially noisier, neighbors.  Great.

5. I don't know what's going on here.  They've constructed a new house, but no one has moved in yet.  And I don't see (or hear) much work going on there any more.  Weird.

6.  Again, this satellite image is well out of date - they've cut down all the trees around the property.  These are the neighbors that I irrationally hate - from noisy kids, to the fact that they've still got or have got a new rooster (despite my previous complaint), from having way too many outdoor fires, to the fact that they've just installed these really bright outdoor lights that they leave on 24/7.  I shouldn't let these people bother me as much as they do, but I can't help myself.  

TV Theme Tunes #68 to #72

Another theme tune recommendation I was given was the Formula 1 theme.  Which is obviously a classic.  But it did send me down a long rabbit hole of other memorable sports themes.  So here are the first 5 of these, and you can expect more.

Streak Snapped

Well, that's annoying.  My Wordle win streak got snapped today, and it wasn't because I didn't play.  No, it was the rare occurrence (2nd time ever?) that I didn't get the correct guess in 6 attempts.  And it was kind of inevitable when I only had 3 guesses at *ATCH, but unfortunately more than 3 possibilities - batch, catch, hatch, latch, match, patch, watch.  Luck wasn't on my side.  I only recently created a profile on Wordle because it kept on resetting my stats - and now my 100% win record has already gone.  Which sucks.

President's Day

Happy President's Day!  And how did I spend the day off work?  By being incredibly lazy and doing practically nothing.  Sometimes you just need those kind of days.  And, sadly, that also included watching the Everton vs Crystal Palace game - which was a terrible game between two terrible teams (although we blew the win by conceding yet another goal in the last 15 minutes).  Although I don't want Palace to get relegated, I don't think I'll feel so bad if they do because they don't deserve to stay up with performances like that.  But let's see what the new manager can do over the rest of the season.  Got some big games coming up against the likes of Burnley and Luton which could ultimately decide our season.

Forest

Some random photos from one of my regular haunts - Bridle Trails State Park.  Though it's started to become so busy at weekends that they have a park ranger helping out with parking - I don't remember ever having seen that before in all my years coming here, so this is now somewhere to avoid at weekends.

The Boy Who Lived

Note to self - whilst suffering from bad neck pain, don't watch a documentary about Harry Potter's stunt double who got paralyzed after a stunt went wrong.  Because then you get totally paranoid about what your neck pain could become.  I have no idea of the cause of this pain, only that it happened sometime yesterday and that it caused an extremely restless and uncomfortable night.  I'll try taking some pain relief tonight in the hope of actually getting some sleep.  And hope that it isn't anything serious.  

Presidential Primary

I received a voters' pamphlet this week for the Washington State Presidential Primary on March 12.  An absolute waste of time, because it's inevitable that Biden will win the Democratic candidacy and sadly Trump will win the Republican candidacy (all his legal troubles seemingly only make him more popular).  Besides, I'm not a US citizen and cannot vote.  Nevertheless I perused the pamphlet, and was surprised to see 2 other Democratic candidates along with Biden.  2 people I've never heard of.  Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Congressman (and, apparently, a millionaire businessman and gelato company co-founder), and Marianne Williamson, a (in her own words) "successful entrepreneur, bestselling author, political activist and globally influential spiritual thought leader".  Whatever.  And there were a bunch of Republican candidates that I'm fairly sure have dropped out - Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy.  I think the only Republican challenger left to Trump is Nikki Haley, and she doesn't stand a chance (even when Trump wasn't on the ballot in Nevada, "None of these candidates" got loads more votes than she did).  I had to take a photo of Trump's profile in the pamphlet, because again the language and rhetoric is so offensive to me.  I don't care how mentally deficient Biden is - even if he is a drooling vegetable, I would vote for him over Trump.      

Potholes

The roads are in a terrible condition round here - and there are potholes everywhere.  I guess the weather is the main cause, but personally I blame the many, many heavy construction vehicles on the roads - which is why I think the construction companies should foot most of the bill for road repairs.  But because it's the local government, the roads stay in bad condition for a lot longer.  And people like me drive over the potholes and potentially damage our cars.  I'm already thinking that I need to get my car tires checked out again.  So I decided to report a pothole that had developed on the road outside my house.  This was the photo I sent them.

Not even that big a pothole, but one that would be nice to see fixed since I drive over or around it at least once a day.  So imagine my surprise when after having sent them an e-mail on Sunday to report the pothole, it got fixed on Monday.  My oh my, that was a shockingly quick turnaround.  I suspect it's more of a temporary fix rather than a permanent fix, but nevertheless the response time was impressive.  I suspect that's because most people don't even bother to report potholes because they're so prevalent.  But good to see at least one branch of the local government seemingly doing a decent job.

Today Sucks

The worst day of the year when you're single. 

TV Theme Tunes #67

The theme from a show I haven't thought about for over 20 years, but which the teenage/young adult me would instantly recognize from late Friday night on Channel 4.

Adverts

I ended up watching a bit of the Super Bowl - it was a close and tense one, going to overtime, but never felt particularly exciting which was kind of weird.  But the most memorable thing for me wasn't the game but was a couple of adverts that I happened to catch.  The first was - bizarrely - a political ad for Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is apparently running as an independent in the presidential election.  Something which I had absolutely no idea about until I watched this political ad that looked and sounded like something JFK would have aired 60+ years ago.  But to air this ad during the Super Bowl must have cost an absolute fortune for someone most people don't know anything about apart from his extreme anti-vax views.  And who definitely will not win the election.  What a waste of money.  And the other memorable advert was for - in all seriousness - Jesus.  Yes, it was a religious ad.  Only in America.  But this one was just surreal - it's message was supposed to be something to the affect of "Jesus didn't teach hate.  He washed feet", but with all these clips of people having their feet washed it felt more like an advert for Jesus having a foot fetish.  Extremely creepy.  Again, are you sure there aren't better ways you can spend these millions of dollars in the name of religion - like actually helping people.         

Super Bowl LVIII

I'm writing this about an hour before the Super Bowl is due to start.  And I don't know how much I'm going to watch it this year.  It's 2 teams - Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers - that I am totally indifferent to.  I don't particularly like either of them, but I don't particularly hate either of them either - so I don't have anyone to to root for or against.  It's 2 teams that have both won Super Bowls recently and so this isn't a match up that anyone really wanted.  And I certainly don't give a monkeys about all the nonsense that accompanies the Super Bowl - I don't know who is performing the half time show, I don't care about the Super Bowl ads, and I certainly don't give a rat's ass about anything to do with Taylor Swift.       

Happy Lunar New Year

Today seems an appropriate day to post a photo of my most recently completed Lego set.  I've been doing a lot of Lego recently, basically as a means to de-stress.  Which says a lot about my current state of mind.  And although I normally couldn't give a monkeys about Lunar (Chinese) New Year, this year is the Year of the Dragon, which is my birth sign, so was happy to purchase and build this one.  I should maybe display it in my cube, and thus endear me just a little bit to my Chinese colleagues.

PS When I use Google Translate on the plaque, it says "Lucky medicine brings good fortune".  But I'm pretty sure that isn't right, because the name of the set is Auspicious Dragon.

Masks

I went to the doctors today.  The only thing of note, apart from them being unable to find the source of my current ailment, is that I had to wear a mask.  That came as a bit of a shock as I thought we were over all that kind of stuff.  I guess with the current levels of flu, COVID and other respiratory illnesses that they've made wearing a mask a requirement in healthcare facilities.  And I guess we just have to get used to this new reality of mask guidance, even if their effectiveness at preventing illness is somewhat questionable.      

From the Desk Of...

I got an unexpected letter through the post this week.  Here it is, in it's full glory:

I don't know where to start - it's the first time I've received any correspondence like this, and I not sure what words best describe my initial reaction to getting it - disbelief, shock, abhorrence.  It's nothing less than fascist propaganda.  But most disturbing to me is that this is MAINSTREAM politics in the US now.  It comes from the National Republican Congressional Committee - which appears to be a legitimate political committee.  And it does seem to be the kind of tripe that Donald Trump Jr would spew, and the Official Team Trump logo appears elsewhere in the correspondence (despite being "not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee"...).  But the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure it's real.  The envelope to send your donation to has an address in Topeka, Kansas, which seems strange.  The language is just too cliched.  Is this just an elaborate scam?  I simply don't know.  And the fact that it's believable is in itself really sad.  If they had included a stamped addressed envelope, I might have replied with a crude message or drawing.  But I'm not prepared to shell out a single cent on this nonsense, not even on postage.  I'm sure there are lots of possible sources for where they got my name and address from, but I hope I'm not now on some kind of mailing list and can look forward to more of this kind of crap.      

Mount Rainier

An unexpected and unwelcome development, but beginning this year Mount Rainier is going to require timed entry reservations in order to enter.  And not just one reservation, but two different ones for the two main parts of the park.  This doesn't come as a total shock - after all Mount Rainier had started to become increasingly busy, and I knew that some other national parks had also started to require reservations.  But still very disappointing - because although I haven't been there for a few years, when I do go it is generally at very short notice when I know the weather is going to be good or when the wildflower blooms are peaking.  It's going to take a bit more planning next time.  Or I just try to arrive at the park when a reservation is not required (before 7 am - unlikely - or after 3 pm) - though I imagine the timing of when the park gets horrendously busy will just shift to after 3 pm. 

TV Theme Tunes #66

I always welcome requests and recommendations for theme tunes, and this was one.  An 80's kids TV show whose name seems familiar, but which otherwise I don't remember and don't remember ever watching.  Even though it was on for 8 years and 90+ episodes.  The theme doesn't even seem that familiar to me.  But apparently my cousin does remember it, and clearly with some fondness if he suggested it.  Enjoy!

Dad's Army

It was sad to hear that Ian Lavender passed away over the weekend.  He was the last surviving main cast member of Dad's Army.  I thought Frank Williams was still alive - who played the reverend - but a quick check on Wikipedia revealed that he died a few years ago.  A fun fact that I discovered while googling Dad's Army - and something I didn't know - is that Arnold Ridley (who played Private Godfrey)'s great-niece is Daisy Ridley (who played Rey in Star Wars).  Second fun fact - an American remake, called The Rear Guard, had a pilot produced and broadcast, but nothing more.  

Lumen Field

The 2026 World Cup may be ages away, but they've already announced the schedule.  And Seattle is going to host 6 games - 4 group games, a round of 32 game and a round of 16 game.  I've already registered my interest on the FIFA website about getting tickets - but I have no idea if and when they go on sale, and whether they will go on sale when we even know who will be playing.  We do know that one of the group games will involve the USMNT, so I won't even try to get tickets for that one as they'll be in high demand.  But I'm thinking I would like to watch a group game and a knockout game.  I really have no idea how easy it will be to get tickets, but I will try.  Though I suspect this particular World Cup could be something for a drag, what with it featuring so many nations (48) and games (104).  I think my chances of watching England play in Seattle are probably quite low.  

People Suck

As I was heading out today, I noticed that the sign with my house number on was missing from the bottom of my driveway.  Strange, I thought to myself, where would it had gone?  Would someone had taken it?  Why?  What are the chances that someone who has the same house number as me would take this crappy sign?  That seems unlikely.  So when I got back, I had to take a closer look.  It's possible the sign had fallen down into the weeds - after all it wasn't secured in the ground, and I had it just propped up against a tree.  But nope, no sign of it.  But then I recalled the van that had been stuck in the ditch earlier in the week.  Surely not, they wouldn't have taken it.  So I had a quick walk up the road to where the van had been stuck, and predictably yep there was the missing sign.  Face down in the mud.  Where the stuck driver had clearly taken it from the end of my driveway and placed it in front of his tire in an attempt to gain traction.  And left it there in the ditch.  Covered in mud, and probably having been driven over.  The cheek of it.  As you can imagine, less than pleased about this.  Wish I had seen this at the time, and I would definitely have said something - and demanded some compensation.  My landlord went to help the driver, so surprised he didn't see or do anything about it either.  I think I might ask my landlord to get a new sign that can actually be anchored to the ground.    

Reflection

Sometimes you get those days where average weather still somehow creates unexpectedly photogenic conditions.  Such was the case earlier this week when I went for a lunchtime walk from the office, and was struck at how an ordinary view of Lake Union was enhanced immeasurably by the light and reflection of that particular moment's specific cloud formation.  Nice.

Diet and Exercise

Health-wise, it was a pretty dreadful January.  Not eating well, not exercising much.  No excuses.  Well I could make excuses, but I'm not going to.  So it is something I am going to make a distinct effort to improve this month.  And indeed every month going forward.  I was doing a good job after my health scare last year, but I've become complacent.  I can't let that happen and I can't get into bad habits again.  It's not going to be easy.