Top of the 8.

Woo!

I have been achy and sniffly for about a day now. Not sure if it’s middle-age onset allergies or a cold.

My arthritis meds mean that I am disallowed, in general, from using acetaminophen or ibuprofen, which means a lot of cold-remedy label reading.

I spent most of the day engaging in cable management under my desk. I pretty much have everything set up now and have a reasonable amount of desk surface area now. There are still a raft of cables on the surface of the desk, but I will tackle those tomorrow.

Rocket’s counter-surfing proclivities have continued to intensify. Viv called on her way to work this morning to tell me to put her lunch in the fridge, since she had forgotten it. About two minutes after she called I heard a loud THUMP and I jumped out of bed yelling the dog’s name.

Sure enough, he’d found it and had apparently been in the process of carting off the plastic container of watermelon formerly stored in the lunch bag. It’s like living with a small, friendly bear.

Rocket has lately taken to ransacking Viv’s bags in search of food, which has led us to call an animal poison center on one recent occasion when he ate large quantities of over-the-counter stomach medication. After inducing vomiting, he did not even appear to have diarrhea.

Tonight, we found that he’d ransacked her insulin kit, which fortunately did not have any dog-puncturing needles in it at the time he chose to do so.

In addition, he found an overnight bag in another locale and, well, you know the thing about pictures and all.

The soap is 100% vegetable oil based, so there’s no lye or any weird industrial chemicals in it that I can think of or know about. After repeatedly prompting him to go take a dump, he seems fine.

I think I may refer to him as ex-dog breath from now on.

UK electronics manufacturer Leo Bodnar makes a line of USB cards that can be wired into old, well-made, but otherwise now useless Apple Desktop Bus (and presumably gameport) CH flight sim products. I still have an ADB CH throttle, so this is welcome news. However, Bodnar’s selling price is roughly the same as buying new, so this may not be the way to go.

Jets yesterday, hawks today.

Blue Angels picnic, MoF

After the Royals four-game sweep and attending Monday night’s resonant Iwakuma victory over the Blue Jays, I could not resist an $11 free-teeshirt special tonight.

There were Blue Jays cosplay dudes.

Even Santa was there, and he knew what was about to happen.

At the end of the eighth inning, I texted Viv to go visit my older neighbor Dick and his wife. “Get out two brooms and get ready to clean up – Go take them next door! Dick will explain!”

At first she was not going to do this but eventually decided it might be some sort of emergency. Dick laughed and laughed. Viv texted me back to let me know that I suck. I laughed and laughed. I love my wife.

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=51833: a method to enable sliders and faders on USB audio hardware as controls exposed to a flightsim.

Noted.

Yesterday, I leapt out of bed and started doing yard work before taking the dog to Richmond Beach. The yard work was hard enough that I was panting and sweat kept getting in my eyes.

Then, at Richmond Beach, I misread the tide tables and we got stuck out on Duffy’s Point, and had to climb up and over barnacle encrusted breakwater rocks and eventually up onto the Northern Pacific railbed for about a half-mile to get back to the park, overall about a 2.75 mile hike.

Today, we went to the Mariners game with Ken and Mary and that meant we would not be around to give the dog a decent walk in the early evening, so I leapt out of bed and into the fifty-degree rain with the dog at 8:45 or so. Got in a good two miles with him, and off we went.

We had breakfast with our companions at a favored spot about two miles from the stadium, and walked down through the ID and a community festival featuring dragon dancers to Safeco, where the Mariners lost in generally uninspiring fashion. Then we walked back.

So, while my ankle’s been bugging me when I run, I still managed to put some miles in this weekend. Now if only this shoulder and arm pain would quit. Tomorrow I have a gig at noon so I think I will get on it early again and do some road work as early as possible, before any yard work.

News came over the night of the third that a punk rock acquaintance of my youth was killed in a fight at his band’s Orange County practice space. He’d literally flown in the day before, after a couple weeks where he grew up, and I spent those weeks facebookariously enjoying him touching base, including a visit to another punk rock pal’s grave.

So I’m a bit down.