Kids and Cars

With every intention of taking the bus to the University this morning, that plan went awry when I awoke at a very late 9:30.

Quite a surprise, since I never sleep that late and wasn’t ill; but oh well, time for a new plan.

I drove and ran into a sea of kids and cars. The campus was packed, the parking lot was full to overflowing.

Fortunately, when I’d tried to find side street parking last week, I ran across an area off campus, by a field, with no parking restriction signs. Unsure if it was okay to park there I’d passed on it but, checking back today, cars were lined up and none had been ticketed, so I took a spot, set my Lucky Egg for extra points and began the next stage of Pokémon Go -- Evolving.

What evolving does, besides earning me points, is it transforms a creature into a new being.

The egg was only good for 30 minutes of extra points, 15 of which was taken up by the evolving process because I had quite a few I could evolve, the remaining minutes of which was me walking across the field to get to the University’s PokéStops, capturing Pokémon and PokéStop items before extra points time ran out.

By the time all was said and done, I must have collected points in the thousands because I leveled up from 13 to 15.

Campus was so alive with activity that I hung around, logging in 1.44 slow miles as I took it all in remembering that the plan after retirement was to go back to school. For what specifically, I didn’t know. It was just that I had a thirst for knowledge. Looking around, I was glad that didn’t happen because I woke up, spiritually speaking, realized that road was not for me and, looking around heard myself say to myself, “What was I thinking. Why would I have wanted to put myself through this? To what end?”

Inasmuch as I’d had that thought earlier in the day, I had to laugh when I logged on this evening and saw Mage had commented on the last post, “You could take a class”.

In addition to kids and cars, there were sorority tents, vendors, free ice cream (I declined), and bus loads of elementary school children on what I surmised was a field trip.

Leaving campus an hour or so later, walking slowly back to the car on an out-of-the-way narrow path between what looked to be maintenance buildings, I heard rustling behind me.

Looking left, right, I didn’t see anything and decided the rustling sound were leaves hitting the ground, as it was quite windy.

The rustling continued and something told me to turn around.

I did, and there was a woman driving a cart.

I think she thought she’d scared me (she didn’t), that I thought she was going to run over me (I had no such thought) because she said, “You’re alright. I make it a point never to drive faster than the person in front of me is walking.”

She pulled up beside me, held out her hand and introduced herself as J from Risk Management.

Knowing I was walking someplace I shouldn’t have been anyway, I felt awful that I’d been walking so slow, holding her back and said, “You should have honked. I’m just here hitting up your PokéStops”.

“Oh do you play? I play too.”

We chatted game for a bit, I said “It was nice meeting you”, she went back to whatever it is Risk Management people do, and I headed to the market to pick up turkey dogs and potato salad for tomorrow's "Summer BBQ Potluck", here at the complex.

We had all summer to do this but the powers that be decided to do it the day after the official start of Fall.

ROFLMAO!

Big Girl Undies

Couldn’t find those panties this morning, so that didn’t happen.

You can’t believe how difficult it is for me to step out of my comfort zone and do something as simple as taking the bus versus driving this morning.

The buses in this area, especially the express bus to the University, looks clean, safe, fast, so I'm not sure what the holdup is.

It’s not like I’ve never been on a bus before. In fact, there was a time in my past when I did not have a car, and buses, trains, cabs were how I got around, no problem. When I did have a car, it was not unusual for me to leave it at home, continue to take the bus and/or train. I had a monthly pass and, before monthly passes were a thing, I’d drop money into a fare box.

It was simple back in the day.

Now it’s those daunting looking fare monstrosities, and machines that take money have never been good to me, so that scare me off; plus the fact that buses run on schedules, and if you don’t meet that schedule, there's wait time. Looking at the bus company's website last night, “peak” and “non-peak” hours were indicated, with wait times of 15 minutes and 1 hour respectively.

Life's too short.

Plain and simple, I’ve become accustomed to the freedom of not having to meet schedules, whether peak or non-peak, not having to wait for someone/something to get to where I’m going.

I needed more PokéBalls, plus I had a Lucky Egg – which is best utilized in evolving a Pokémon in a crowd, so I jumped in the car, drove around the area outside the University looking for a side street to park.

For those of you following along, learning the game with me, Pokémon Go is much more than just catching. I’m actually having to do research and make notes. A Lucky Egg is a PokéStop gift, the advantage of which is double points from PokéStops and capturing.

To take full advantage of the Lucky Egg, it’s suggested one finds an area with lots of PokéStops -- the University is the place to go, but also to go during the busiest hours of the day, activate the lucky egg and start evolving Pokémon – “Evolving” being transforming a Pokémon into a stronger more fierce version of itself.

You still with me?

At any rate, the surrounding neighborhoods are all marked “No Parking At Any Time” or “Permit Parking Only”. Even the residents of nearby homes had permit stickers on  cars parked in front of their own homes.

Driving onto University property, thinking I might risk it, but then deciding NOT when I saw the number of Parking Enforcement Men/Woman on duty, I spied a “Get Parking Permit Here” sign and decided to check it out -- $2.50 for 1 hour, $5.00 for 2 hours. One hour would be rushing my time on campus, but I went for it, fed $2.50 into the machine and got nothing in return.

I pushed, I banged, I cancelled … nothing.

See what I mean about me and machines that take money. Even when ATM’s first came out, I twice ran into an ATM taking requested cash from my account but dispensing no money.

So that’s $2.50 down the drain. The bus would have cost $1.50. I could have stayed home and bought 100 PokéBalls for $1.99.

Tomorrow is another day, but I don’t think my Big Girl panties are gonna turn up. I’ll just head out early, try to beat the triple digits Saturday/Sunday and, since there are no crowds at that time, hold onto the Lucky Egg for my next crowd event – the Halloween Monster Run 5K in October.

Senior Happenings

Except for a Crisis Team coming in and taking Creepy Guy to the VA Hospital for evaluation; and except for next door neighbor confronting the Maintenance Supervisor, who lives upstairs across the quad, about the ongoing mess his family keeps on their patio ruining her view, there’s been no happenings here at the senior complex as we wait to see if things are going to get better for us, i.e., more activities, fewer rules, now that Nurse Ratched is gone, or worse – though I can’t imagine worse.

Creepy Guy, the complex’s pervy perv, was observed behaving erratically over a period of days and, when someone saw him outside the complex, standing in the same spot for two hours, talking to himself, a call he might need help was made. When help arrived and decided he needed to be taken in for observation, he didn’t want to go. Taken anyway, he was released the same day, so I guess he talked a good game, though the fact someone reported having seen him walking around with a machete indicates he does need help.

Thankfully, I haven’t seen him leering about and thus haven’t had to go out of my way to continue to avoid him. I'm not worried about the unconfirmed rumor of the machete, because I'm way faster than he.

So there’s that.

And then there’s the next door neighbor’s patience coming to an end when the mess on the patio across the quad went from just the children’s drum set, some sort of tool, clothing piled in a corner to this …

Dirty Diapers, Empty Diaper Box, Drum Set, Clothing

Her complaints to the office, during Nurse Ratched reign, had gone unaddressed so she decided to complain to the Assistant Manager, who is now in charge until someone is appointed to the position. Neighbor said she went down yesterday morning, found the office closed for “Training”, then marched across the quad, knocked on the door, said “Are you ever going to get that mess off the patio? I’ve been looking at it for over a month!”

It’s been way longer than a month but, at any rate, the direct approached seemed to work.

As for me, I've been taking advantage of the cooler weather with daily walks -- including hunting for Pokémon, trying to reach this year’s goal of 100 walking miles by year’s end.

This weekend’s weather is predicted to reach triple digits again, so I’m going to try to get in as many miles as possible before that happens.

Since walking at the University this weekend if we do get to triple digits is out of the question, and since I can’t park at the University during the week, I’m trying to work myself up to taking the bus.

The express stop is just across the street from the complex, and takes me straight into the university but, and this sounds a bit pathetic, I'm having a hard time pushing myself to do so because I actually don’t know HOW to ride the bus – how much does it cost, how do you get tickets out of the complicated looking machines, what do you do with the tickets once on-board.

Tonight, I’ll be Googling the bus website, looking for step by step instructions and hopefully I can put my big girl panties on tomorrow, head across the street, and figure it out. Maybe I’ll run into other folks there who can help me.

Senior Perks

After a cup of fresh-brewed coffee this morning … yes, by me, in my little percolator, it was off to the Community Room to sit in on the bus company’s presentation, which took place after all but with the actual bus cancelled out.

Worried as I was that this morning’s brew would be full of grounds, I’d done some research online into Terry’s pour-over method -- Terry being the coffee connoisseur husband of dkzody, and learned a nylon stocking could be utilized.

What are the odds that just yesterday, in de-cluttering containers in the bedroom closet, I ran across a couple pairs of unopened Nordstrom nylon stockings. Having not worn stockings since retiring, those packages I guessed to be from the year 2010. Another clue as to the age of those stockings were that the packaging was beginning to discolor, and the price tag was listed as $6.00. That Nordstrom brand now goes for $12.00.

At any rate, anticipating no need for stockings in future, I put them in the thrift store donation pile, but removed them after reading they could be used for straining out the grains and for the pour-over method.

As it turns out, there was no need to cut the stockings up because, when I poured my brew into a cup, there was not a single grain. However, there didn’t appear to be any coffee either because, what I poured from the percolator into the cup looked like lightly colored water.

I think because I made so little coffee, there wasn’t enough water to percolate properly.

I thought about that pour-over method and simply poured the lightly colored very hot water over the whatchamacallit in the percolator that contained the grounds, once again poured the brew into a cup and tada, perfectly brewed coffee.

Tomorrow, I think I’ll dispense entirely with percolating and utilize the pour-over method.

This morning’s presentation was fruitful. I learned of a Lyft program for us seniors, based along the lines of Uber which, instead of an expensive rental, seems like will be perfect for me if and when I have to leave the car for service.

Inasmuch as there’s been so much negative news about Uber, I inquired about how they vetted their drivers, which turned out to be the usual background and criminal checks.

Uber did that as well, yet and still I’m reading about women being attacked. So I then asked if I could request a female … answer was yes, but one idiot of a resident, sensing my mistrust of males blurted out, in what sounded to me like a snide manner, “What … you afraid of men?”

“Yes. Life experiences have taught me to be leery of anything with a penis.”

That, plus the don’t-test-me tone of my voice when I said it, shut her up.

At the end of the presentation, we were rewarded with a 1-Day Free Pass, good until September 2016.

After the presentation, I wasted a couple hours trying to locate a Salvation Army Donation Center. The center listed online for this area, turned out to be a self-serve storage. I pulled over, made a few phone calls to other so-called centers listed as being within 10 miles.

Phone calls went unanswered.

Getting frustrated at this point, I decided to just drop everything off in one of those donation bins I’ve seen in the area.

The one in front of the Thai Place was full, and I didn’t bother to try the one closest to the complex because I’ve seen people digging through the contents, taking off with what they want to sell, spewing the rest all over the place.

At this point, I was so ready to just return to the complex and toss everything into the dumpster, but my heart wouldn’t let me do that to perfectly good shoes and clothing that someone else could use, especially since there were shoes that had only been worn once, and summer tops, shorts, capri leggings that had never been worn, tags still attached.

Making one last effort, I used the cell phone internet, found a Goodwill a few cities over, called to verify and (after picking up dinner at Thai Place since I was there), finally four hours after the quest for a donation center began, managed to make the drop off.

While there, I saw what looked to be what once was someone’s treasured doll collection being donated.

Upon closer inspection, the collection made me smile. Some look to be quite old and valuable. I can’t imagine someone donating such a nice collection, so my guess is the collector passed away and the donations are from her estate.

At any rate, the closet is now de-cluttered and just needs items remaining to be better organized. I’d hoped to finish that when I got back but, exhausted from all that running around, I’m done for the day.

Going to brew another cup of coffee, self-medicate with Thai food and chill out.