Bad headache just now, from a pint of Platinum last night, a half of Pinnacle the night before that, and could it be a pint of Platinum the night before. I just felt weak and hungover from this stuff yesterday (Friday) and Thursday, but now the cumulative effect has given me a migraine-line sinusitis headache of the sort that usually clears up by 4 in the afternoon, but is still sitting there now at 5:42 pm of a Saturday.
I ended up throwing out that risotto. I threw it out just last night. It may still be in the garbage. I took a garbage bag out recently, so am not sure. I made chop suey, of a sort, with ground beef and stir-fry vegetables and 90-second microwave brown rice yesterday, and have gobbled it all, meaning I won’t need to eat again for several days.
I spent part of the afternoon detaching that Verizon “extender” I was supposed to send back a month ago, and deciding how to replace it. Basically it was only feeding, via ethernet, a couple of my antiquated Macs. A few weeks ago I moved the Airport Extreme router into the bedroom, running it off the coax/ethernet extension device that’s been there for over ten years, from when we first got FiOS in early 2014. No need for it here; I could move it back, and use the extension device the same way, as a coupler, but out in the living room. I thought perhaps of buying another extension device, but I found they start around $80.
Finally I remembered the old 2014 Verizon router in the closet. I thought it wouldn’t work as a router anymore, because it’s code wasn’t actively registered with Verizon, but it turns out I gave up too early last time I tested it. This time I hooked it up to an open coax, north wall of the living room, and found that it worked only with hardwire ethernet but with its old wifi address as well. So I detached the extender tower they gave me a year ago, put it and its AC adapter aside, plugged in the old router where the extender used to be, and—voilà, I now have three live wifi addresses, two more than I really need. (In extremis, I can attach my iPhone as a Personal Hotspot, a virtual router.) I am probably going to switch at least one of these off, along with the unused computers, to save on ConEd bills. I’ve assumed their power usage is de minimis, but maybe not.
A lot of nastiness with the GC crank crowd on Twitter during the last two or three days. That lowclass “Birdy” person, who does computer graphics attacking the virtually nonexistent phenomenon of “trans kids” came a cropper recently, with both her and her “fella” supposedly being fired from their jobs and forced to live in a van, or something. Details are missing, the story is murky. Anyway, Mr. @wcobbett thereupon posted a parody of one of Birdy’s stickers, in which he or someone else spells out the actual subtext of Birdy’s lampoon.
No further happy news from Social Security. I did go to the local 48th St office a week ago yesterday and talked to a respectable negress behind the plexiglas. I told her I had ‘dire need’ at the moment because of back rent and unpaid back benefits. She put my request in for a recomputation of what I am owed. I fear they will up my monthly benefit by $200-$300 but neglect to pay the $20,000-$30,000 outstanding for years 2017-2024.
I called the SSA 800 number a few days later but they said there is a 20-day wait on these things. 20 days or 20 working days? Will it be in two weeks or three weeks? This is all a matter of anxiety for me because although I paid nearly $3000 to the landlords 2-3 weeks ago, I now owe out about another $7000, or close to $9000 as of today, this being first of March. I am barely keeping the lights on with payments for accrued bills to ConEd…going to be like $200 or more per month for a long time to come. Which would not be a problem if I had the SS benefits owed; they could see me through the year, with or without employment. I don’t know what’s happening with the VCF/WTC stuff.
I’ve spoken to the Bern lawyers and Marrlrria (Maria the chiquita at Bellevue) but they’re waiting for more information from Sloan-Kettering. I don’t know what additional information they can get. I do know I qualify for the award, same way Anthony did, even though he was already HIV+ with KS at 9/11 but it kept getting worse afterwards. If the Bern outfit and Bellevue say now, I’m signing up with the other lawyers I’ve contacted.
I stopped watching Fox News a month or so ago because I couldn’t see paying $50 p.m. for Sling just to see Fox News, which I didn’t like that much anyway. Very milksop, you know, and has been ever since Tucker left. Instead I’ve been watching OAN, which costs just a few dollars and is really lively, spicy, with little of that anodyne filler that mars Fox News. No widemouthed negress running the show at midday. Matt Gaetz is a live wire and always fun, the strange Chanel Rion (anorexic Eurasian? can’t tell) is enjoyable, as is this Dan Ball, a California boy who’d be a star of Fox News if it weren’t for FN’s deplorable devotion to racial diversity. I mean, really, the number of Jews (Levin), half-Jews (Gutfeld, Watters), and negroes (the Falkner negress) is out of hand, and those are just the few who come to mind.
The newswires these days have mainly been filled with visits to the oval office. Big huzzahs for Emanuel Macron and Keith Starmer, last week and this. Very warm and fuzzy meetings in yellow armchairs. Then yesterday Zelenskyy came in and it was a hilarious meltdown. He arrives in his Action Man commando wear and after a half-hour of serious chat it all turns into a series of colossal missteps and provocations, with Z suggesting America won’t feel so safe when someone starts lobbing nuclear warheads (“you have nice ocean but you will feel that in the future”). He’s really there begging for more money and he goes on and threatens us with bad karma if we don’t give in to his demands. Vance is there like Sonny Corleone, chiming in, making a bad situation worse by being candid, accusing Z of taking people on propaganda tours and giving speeches on behalf of Kamala Harris last fall, and staging this Oval Office meeting with the international broadcast press on hand so Zelenskyy can perform his little actor turns. Nearly every American on social media, every one who is not bought and paid for or utterly mindless, came down on Trump’s side, even though T went off on tangents about Russiagate; Brits, and those speaking for “Europe,” particularly the postage-stamp countries, all pledge eternal support to Zelensky. Katie Hopkins in England is absolutely wonderful, as she usually is, and the serious papers in London are also, on balance, sympathetic to Trump. One exception: Daily Mirror.
So, after 8pm now and headache still there. OAN keeps showing the Oval Office disaster over and over. Trump really got triggered when Z got mildly belligerent.
Gusto payment yesterday but not an awful lot. $150 or less? I had to pay $123 to my Apple Card, $150 to Citi Cash, about $30 to the Moki Apple Card, and I think about $98 (thought they want 3x times that) to Chase Amazon Visa. Next SS in a week and a half, but all that has to go to rent (I think!). Another Gusto, for maybe $260, in 13 days. No nruns for the next month, then a deluge beginning with back-to-backs on first weekend in April, Governors Island.
Much enjoyed my last stint six days ago (Feb 23rd) in Central Park. It was my anniversary nruns race; I began last Feb. on a biting cold night after 3 in the morning, with temps around 20º, feeling 10º or worse, by sunrise. We then had both a 5k and the HM running concurrently. They simplified it this year with merely the HM, which was the larger draw anyway. About 1800 starters. I didn’t have to hang around in the cold much, and it wasn’t all that cold, not after 9am anyway. First couple hours it was in and out of a U-Haul van with the Croatian big blond lady (who also works for NYRR, good to know), and a tall young intelligent black kid, first time there. When he came around the corner at Engineers Gate at 3:35 in the morning, I told him that our job today was the best we could have: clocks and signs. There were 18 or 19 sets of these, with both mile marks and major km markers. The clocks are easy to assemble, one bolt with wingnut through the bottom and its seat on its tripod. The A-frame mile markers (etc.) were much trickier. You have a bolt and a wingnut, again, but also two rubber tubes, separators between front legs, sign, and back legs. Difficult to position. We started on East Drive in the 90s, slowly made our way around past the finish turnoff at 102nd St Transverse. Chad on a Citi electric bike was a big help, scouting out our next “chalk marks” (white spray-paint, actually) for the signs and clocks. He also helped disassemble clocks and signs, making it much easier for us when we were driving around after 12:30, striking the set. The HM loops did not cover the full Park 6 mi loop, they instead cut through the 72nd St Transverse, thus about 5 miles each. Start at 94th St near the El Dorado, then 5 miles around, then another 5 miles, after which you’ve got about 5k to take you to the finish. I finally got home around 2:30. This was about an 11-hr shift. I drank a Resin from the drugstore, I think, fell asleep, woke after 5 and did not go to mass.
The previous weekend, another shift on a Saturday, Similar hours, not so long, and in Prospect Park. My fingertips in gloves were almost instantly frostbitten. (I ordered new gloves via Amazon last week, and they’re really not much better. I think the trick is, really warm gloves are going to be like ski mittens and useless for this kind of work in the cold.) I saw Senka and John last Sunday doing most of their work without any gloves at all, which seemed horrible to me. Fortunately April races won’t be frostbite weather. The Prospect Park race was the last of the three winter 5ks with cute “Frozen” names. Erica ran the finish, and my job was mainly setting up the audio. Half the time we have an audio vendor with professional DJ. This time we had a DJ with the soundboard, as well as the bearded announcer guy, but the DJ was not setting up the speakers. I winged it, not really knowing what I was doing, was generally successful hooking up the 100″ audio cables, AC extensions, and even getting the Honda 2200 generators started. Funny to start these lawnmower engines with frozen hands.
I barely made it to the meet spot, 16th St/PPSW, at Prospect Park at meet time 4:30am that weekend (Feb 15). Planned to catch the F around 3:40am, but F was closed at 57th, so I had to hurry down to Rock Ctr, subway entrance near 49th, dashed down steps, and it was just pulling in as I got down to the platform. After that, I found that it wasn’t going to stop at Prospect Park 15th St (Bartel Pritchard Sq), so I had to pick a stop before or after. I did this once before when it skipped my stop and I had to get off at Church St and find my way up to the SW corner of the park. About a mile, 20-25 minutes. This time I got off on 7th Avenue, went south to 15, turned left, and was somehow astonished to find myself back at Bartel Pritchard Square. I had the strange idea I’d be a block north of 16th St. Instead I had that nearly-half-mile walk down to the meet spot…and I got there just before 4:30. Miracles all around.
I’m coming to the end of that EasyPay card Moki encouraged me to sign up for back in mid-2021. I look saggy and ancient in the picture. I have about 8 dollars left on it, I think, and it expires for good on March 25th. After that, my OMNI card, which has about $5 on it and is set to automatically renew when it drops below $10. Fascinating stuff. I used the EasyPay card to take the A train up to 207th St on Tuesday. I was visiting the Medicaid office up there. A new, clean facility, mainly populated by nogs and demis, but not too packed with them at 4 on a Tuesday afternoon. Was returning them a deferral notice where they wanted pay stubs and a pension award letter. I have no pension award letter, so brought my 1099 from Met Life, showing my $398 pension from last year. Living large. Stopped in one of the nasty drugstores on Broadway, bought some cheap Bayer aspirin and a ginger ale.
I meant to get up to Medicaid midday Tuesday but put it off and when noon came I got a call on the intercom from Carlos. Once again, Christian wanted to visit to check out the noise coming from my radiators, or not coming from my radiators. Lady down below keeps hearing a lot of noise. Christian had been there a few days earlier, Saturday I think, but couldn’t find anything. This time he came with Jamie, and they decided it was the bedroom radiator at fault. So I sat out in the living room for an hour or two while they took that apart and changed the motor, or something. Quiet as a mouse peeing on cotton now. Mamet line, from Heist. Gene Hackman and wife and dog discovered dead this week. No foul play suspected, but it could be suicide. Their bodies were decomposed and “mummified” after what looks like a few weeks.
A while back on eBay I bought some juicer attachments for the Cuisinart Little Pro Plus food processor. Very white, pristine, unused when they came on Tuesday. The big opaque bowl with the shooting slot on the side isn’t really meant to be used for the juicer strainer and coring knobs; that’s for big-load slicing of vegetables. The juicer is supposed to fit over the transparent bowl. That’s what it said in the LPP manual I downloaded and after experimentation I find this to be the case. I went through a bag of 8 little ‘organic’ grapefruit from WF and got not much more than a pint and a half of juice. Those big red juicy grapefruits are the ones best used for juicing, but that seems almost a waste; those grapefruits are for eating, not juicing. Perhaps we could do both.
Thursday, I think it was, I made “tobacco onion rings” with big onions and an inch of oil in the big skillet. Tasted great, but a lot of trouble for a tiny snack.
Oh, you know, I was signed up for the Coogans 5k tomorrow, no intention of going, but I could at least have walked over to the new NYRR offices this afternoon and picked up the bib and t-shirt. Ugh. Have to renew membership shortly. Not too bad, senior rates. For that and for CPTC. You know they’re not doing the cheapo dormant membership anymore. Now it’s $10 per month. Which sounds good. I renewed inadvertently with USATF around New Year’s. Rather proud of that. Haven’t peeled the plastic card from its mailer yet. I have my bc birthdate at USATF currently, and my pp birthdate at NYRR.
Bought Kindle version of Ed Dutton’s Jonathan Bowden book the other day; have barely got into it but it seems very very good. Greg happy to hear I’ll review it. My first appearance in maybe 8 months in C-C.
A bit after 9 on Saturday night now and it seems the headache is about 90% gone. I put tea in the mikeywave an hour ago when planning to go out for a drugstore snack. It must be dreadful, but full of honey.
