Category: odds and ends

 

Yeah, I gotta move. Took longer than I thought it would to get the place, but I really like it. Took the first week off of work to get the move done. Hired movers, reserved the truck, etc. Mother nature has different plans though. Now I’m not sure when I’ll get this done. Grrr….

 

UPDATE 3/2/14 I have cancelled the move for this week. Will try to do it on my next day off, the 9th. As it turns out, there is some ongoing weirdness and late fees due to the previous occupants. I’m not on the lease yet so it isn’t my problem. Hoping to sign the lease on the 5th and move in that weekend. Sucks that I’ve taken vacation time to sit around but I’d probably not be able to go to work in any case.

Seemingly every idea I’ve had for writing has been little more than a rant. The political grandstanding, ongoing economic issues, and various pop culture things just seem to make me angry. I’m really trying to not just vent, I’m trying to stay sort of positive. I’ll see if I can’t figure out some sort of positive thing, or at least some personal news that might appeal to folks.

I miss Yemen. Hope to go back some day.

The house I live in has a strange living arrangement. Originally, my landlord’s plan was that this house was where his parents could live in their retired years. He was going to turn the basement into a living space for them and rent out the other rooms. I rented out the smallest of the rooms and there were 3 other people living in the two other rooms. Well, then the landlord lost his job and moved into the master bedroom, displacing two of the people that had lived here. He finished the basement apartment and his parents moved in. Then his ex-wife and daughter lost their place, so they moved in. They slept in the front room for a while until the remaining tenant’s lease ran out, then they moved in there. is parents didn’t like living in the basement, so they went back to Bolivia and I moved into the basement.

So for a while, it was me in the basement and my landlord (who is employed again), his ex-wife, and their daughter were sharing the three rooms upstairs. When my lease ran out, he asked me to move into the master bedroom. Part of that was because he was going to have to do some work on the basement but a large part of it was that he and his ex-wide were at each other’s throat.

Is it any wonder? For a long time, people were urged to keep marriages together “for the children.” I think we now all understand that often times it’s better for the children if the fighting parents are separated. If nothing else, it allows everyone to get on with their lives. Imagine deciding to call it quits and then have to live with the ex. Ugh. Now their daughter has to live in some sort of purgatory. Every kid dreams of their parents getting back together again, and hers are but in a really bad situation.  It’s the worst of all worlds.

I feel really bad for all of them when I come and they are eating dinner together, silently.  Never felt so thankful for normal relations between divorced parents and family in general. It’s weird how you never notice healthy relationships until they are contrasted with unhealthy ones. I’m feeling thankful, that’s for sure!

There were a few new stores around one of the shops I go to every couple of months. One was called Cavern Cairo. I had no idea what it could be. A middle east restaurant? A shisha bar? It turned out to be a place dedicated to card games of all things. It was almost all Magic the Gathering oriented, but there was the inexplicable mix of UNO decks mixed in too, I spied a few board games on the walls too. Nothing I was interested in, so I moved on.

There was a “newsstand” next to it. I was curious what a newsstand looked like in this day and age. I used to go to one in Ithaca to get my copy of Goldmine. Back in the early 90’s there were a slew of interesting magazines and a good newsstand was an amazing place to go. Goldmine was a paper/magazine that specialized in record collecting. There were all sorts of ads for places selling any number of different types of music in all sorts of formats. Yeah, I used to have to read a newspaper to find obscure songs and albums… This newsstand was really kind of sad. There was a smattering of magazines, but they were mostly catering to gun, tattoo, craft builders, and with some titles like Mother Earth News, Architectural digest, etc. Nothing I was interested in. There was the mandatory “adults only” section. I didn’t go back to check that out. I assume that the adult stuff is what is keeping the store in business, but I’m amazed that market exists at all. I would have thought that the internet would allow anyone to find whatever it is that floats their boat, and in their own home to boot. Hmm, there’s also an adult video store in Springfield, that’s another business I would have thought would go under in modern times. Maybe it’s Springfield that keeps those types of businesses around…

 

I also went into an HH Greg store. I had seen their ads on TV before, but I had never been in one. What a strange place. I mean, I guess they have a  similar product range as Best Buy (with one exception) but it felt rather odd in there. I can’t put my finger on why, but things seemed to be just… sort of plopped in there. There were a ton of TVs, and as usual, I was mesmerized. They are so beautiful, if I watched TV I wouldn’t be able to resist one of those. Luckily for me, I don’t really watch anything… The salesperson was rather put off when I told him that I don’t watch TV, LOL. They also carried appliances, cameras, computers, vacuums, etc. Two things they didn’t seem to have as compared to Best Buy were cell phones and car audio.

Like Best Buy, a lot of their demos weren’t working. Unlike Best Buy, several people came up and asked if I had any questions. One thing that was different was that HH Greg sold mattresses. It was an odd thing. Lots of electronic things, and then tucked back into a corner, in it’s own walled off area, were beds. I don’t see the connection, but I can guess why they were there. One thing that really struck me was how inexpensive things have gotten. Flat screen TVs are now down below what I remember tube TVs costing, and these are bigger. It looked as though I could buy a decent stovetop and oven for $600. The mattresses? $1200 for a twin. Granted, they were Temperpedic, I’m pretty sure those are going to be expensive anywhere you go. I’m also positive that they have a lot bigger profit margin in them than anything else in the store. I can’t imagine that designing and manufacturing mattresses is all that high tech, especially when compared to the TVs there. I can’t be the only one wondering about the value proposition of a bed that costs as much as a 50″ TV. A rather nice 50″ TV at that.

I also got to play around with a few Android tablets too. The Galaxies from Samsung were the ones I wanted to try the most. They weren’t working of course… I did try a few others from Archos, Sharp( I think), and a smaller one from samsung. Ugh, not impressed. A couple of them seemed to run OK, not that there was much on them. The internet worked OK, and I assume that gmail would be good on there. My big problem was that they just felt terrible to hold. Not one of the large tablets were comfortable to hold. Plus, they just felt cheap. The 7″ one was rather nice, I can see the appeal of that size for internet, ebooks, and email on the go. I was disappointed to get mobile versions of sites though. There’s probably a way around that. In any case, maybe the Samsung tablets are amazing performers, they’d have to be to get over the way they feel. Several of them were plastered with stickers announcing features like SD card slots, USB, HDMI, etc. Unfortunately, they didn’t tell me what they could do with those things. Even if they did, I’d have to use my imagination to see how they worked since most of them were dead. I understand why the iPad is going so well, there doesn’t appear to be any actual competition…

 

Anyway, an odd store. I guess I’d go there if I wanted a TV, not sure what else I;d go there for. Oh well, at least I know where to go for adult magazines and Magic the Gathering cards… Oh Springfield, you are a shoppers dreamland!

The news and internet were all a-twitter when Amy Winehouse died. Lots of shaking of the head and “I told you so’s” were going around. The general assumption was that she finally OD’d on whatever it was she was taking. The initial autopsy was inconclusive. That just set off more snark, “They just aren’t sure which drug killed her..” was a common joke running around. Now that the toxicology reports have come back inconclusive as well, I’m not hearing anything about it.

I assume that if she actually did OD on something it would show up in both the toxicology and probably the autopsy. Is there a recreational drug out there that kills you and leaves no obvious trace? So if she didn’t OD, what killed her? Her family thinks that the stress of quitting drinking cold turkey did her in.

People forget just how nasty alcohol is. It’s bad enough when you’re drinking and wrecking everyone’s lives, but even stopping drinking can be dangerous. Her family had begged her to quit gradually in order to avoid the worst of withdrawal symptoms but she decided that it was either cold turkey or nothing. In hindsight, that wasn’t a very good decision, but I can see her reasoning. If you really do have a drinking problem, having “just a little” isn’t always possible.

 

We still don’t know what happened but it does look like Amy died from her abuse as opposed to a specific event. It’s also plausible that her effort to quit is what got her in the end. Alcohol is just as dangerous as any other addicting drug, we should never forget that.