De Fenestra

With the predictable resurgence of COVID infections last fall, our local library went to curbside pickup (previously, they'd been allowing patrons into the lobby to pick up holds). I just swung by for a couple of brain cleansers and was pleasantly surprised by a line item they've recently added to email receipts:

You just saved $72.05 by using your library today and $203.25 this past year!

That's some clever incentivizing right there.

I can't unfuck most of what's fucked up with the world right now. But this morning, while riding my bike downtown to pick up mail from the PO box, I found an adolescent house wren in the middle of the street. It didn't appear injured but it was immobile - either it had tried to fly and wasn't quite ready, or it had been stunned by a close encounter with a car. I picked it up, got about five seconds of dashcam video, and moved it under someone's landscaping. I don't know if that did any good but at least it was something I could affect.

Tired.

Spent Sunday through Wednesday at an emergency management conference. Good networking, good presentation tracks, but I never sleep well in hotels and this was no exception. Traveling west didn't help, either, as my body clock was badly de-synced. I wound up getting up an hour or two early every morning and running laps in the parking lot of a nearby hotel that was still under construction, and thus wholly deserted.

Came back to work on Thursday and logged a 12-hour day facilitating a disaster exercise for 60 undergrads. Garmin showed 22,000 steps when I got home.

Yesterday, the girl and I took her car in for scheduled maintenance and a minor warranty repair (oil level sensor was throwing false warnings). We got a loaner Forester of similar vintage to her car. Nice vehicle, nimbler than hers, with a better (to my kinesthetic sensibilities) transmission, but it wouldn't really add any capability to the current fleet as long as I have my truck. We did some shopping to support various planned adventures, then hit the zoo. Got some good photos of the big cats; her camera's optical zoom is better than the digital on mine, but I think mine has better low-light capabilities.

Still very tired. Blew off running today. Planning to open the windows and do some writing - and waste some time on the new Battletech PC game before storyline spoilers become inescapable.

In the second season of Stranger Things, we learn that Lucas (the one protagonist of color) is the party's ranger. Max tags him with the nickname "Stalker."

In the 1982 G.I. Joe release, Stalker was the one Joe of color on the team, and his qualifications includes US Army Ranger School.

Someone went to a lot of trouble to set up that joke and I am impressed.

E has been out of town all week, visiting family. I am reminded of what an incomplete human I am without her. Especially where food is concerned.

I've gotten a surprising amount of stuff done around the house and yard, though, and I've kept up my exercise schedule. Not sure how well that would work in the long term. Fortunately, she's due back tonight.

I've also spent a fair amount of time doing nothing productive. I'm eight episodes into The Expanse. It's a pretty good adaptation of the novel series. The visuals are fantastic, albeit a little poorly-lit at times. I only have a couple of gripes. Some of the dialogue is unclear, and I'm not sure if that's the audio quality or my rapidly-aging ears. And I'm not very happy with the fact that it took the main crew seven episodes to start acting like a crew, in large part due to the ham-handed characterization of Amos (which I suspect is on the writers - the actor's doing a fine job with what they've given him). But things seem to be evening out as the situation on Eros begins to go sideways.

I've also spent a handful of hours this weekend on the fresh beta release of the new Battletech PC game. It's limited to 4v4 matches against the AI, so that's not going to hold my attention for long... but based on what I've played so far, and Harebrained Schemes' track record with story for the Shadowrun Returns series, I have high hopes for the finished product. I've been playing mainly in the lower end of the weight range, with light/medium lances totaling 15M C-Bills (the balancing system for this mode), with occasional forays into the 20M bracket. MVPs so far: Centurion and, surprisingly, Commando. And a full backshot from a Victor is just as spectacular as it should be.

Happy St. Zevon's day, all.

Enjoy every sandwich.

Finally back on a regular running schedule. For the last four weeks, I've gotten three runs a week logged. Not great. I've lost a lot of cardio. Did 3 miles today but 0.25 of that was a walk, so it doesn't really count as a 5k. But it's more than I've accomplished since December.

( Also accomplished today: )

Whew. And now it's flake o'clock.

Please don't make a memorial Facebook page for me after my death. Of all the places I don't want to be bound to...

I think the last time I watched television news was the weeks after 9/11. For me, the signal-to-propaganda ratio is no longer favorable. Fox is better pronounced "Faux," the rest of the national channels fail to deliver anything of substance, and the local programming isn't even on my radar.

This piece on television news' loss of legitimacy in the eyes of anyone under 40 is well-presented, interesting, and a bit disturbing. I'm looking at it not only as a member of that age range, but as someone whose job may occasionally involve getting citizens to take actions to save their own lives. How do we reach a fairly large demographic that fundamentally distrusts - or outright ignores - the only information channels that our chain of command wants us to use?

ETA: Chain of command reference here is in a general sense. In my specific office, I'm fortunate to have a director who gets social media's importance. A lot of shops run by Boomers who still think of Facebook as a fad don't always have that recognition at the policy-setting level.

We're not avoiding you. It's just that it's now tax season.