Cat Worry Saturday

Ginny the cat did not show up for breakfast.

Sometimes she stays out all night, usually because I turn in at 9. I set an alarm and checked at 11 pm, and then later in the middle of the night: no Ginny. This was unusual, especially because it was soggy, but what can you do?

I had Toastmasters District training in the morning (and so missed Zumba). Ginny did show, so I emailed a couple of neighbors and walked around the block (no little body in the street thank goodness!) and checked the West Seattle Blog Pet Found (nothing). I dread telling Kiara and am sad for Ginny is such a loving and friendly cat.

A Friday Of Pondering

A couple of days ago, I got a NTEU email saying that all IRS offices (including Seattle) will be opening by July 13th. Employees especially vulnerable can claim health & safety leave. What I hear now is that 65 is the usual cutoff age now, which is different from what I'd heard at the beginning of the pandemic. I am planning to retire soon but I feel the right thing to do is to go in for my 2 or 3 weeks and to just be careful. I'm still thinking it over but this seems like the mostly likely decision - I can't just drag this out even if the rules would allow it.
My morning walk started around Thistle and 35th and ended up at the Barton P-Patch, which is a really fine community space. Afterwards I went shopping for FEEST.

Beautiful Neighborhood Dogwood

I had a package to mail at USPS, and ordinarily would have driven but I'm trying to add to my healthy lifestyle so I walked. I needed the extra steps anyway to get to 10,000. In the evening, Google Fit told me I had only 9939 steps so I took a walk around the block to make it an even 10,000. This was very pleasant but by the time I got to the corner I was above 10,200.
I'm not sure the app is entirely reliable.

Uber Peas

Flying Pig On A Porch

Little Free Food Pantry

Spooky Trees

Remember You Love

The other day I added a row of string to the top of my pea trellis. The peas exceeded it within 2 days. Wow!
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I am trying to be positive on social media because it is to easy to descend into meaningless quarreling with angry trolls and deniers, but the technology is compelling. I have to accept that this is a thing. At least every day I take a photo of beauty or fun, that's something.

Thursday Rewriting

I've been getting a lot more hits on 4freeCLE lately, possibly because there's a lot of COVID19 free CLE, and perhaps from a calendar I sent the Low Bono listserve. However, Adsense earnings are still very low, perhaps because I haven't put an ad at the top of the page; it seems to detract from the charitable and educational purpose of the blog. Maybe I need to get over that; everyone expects a reasonable number of ads.  I did break up the calendar feature, putting ads between the months. We'll see.
This afternoon I re-wrote the Toastmasters Club 832 (West Seattle) VP Education handbook, basing it on the outline of duties in the official TM handbook and organizing our special materials around that structure. I wish I'd had this version when I started the gig, although to be fair I could have just mentally retained the information the TM handbook; its format induced total MIGO. Perhaps what I will do with my next role is rewrite the Club handbook?
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This morning I brought a radish to show Hannah and Julie, because I'm happy with how well my little gardening effort is going. We walked the crow route this morning: head to where the next crow is cawing. These days, that's in any direction you want.
There was a huge morning gathering of crows in a tree on our route, and an occasional bird bellow of another kind. Maybe a predator bird was bothering them although we could not tell what kind, if any.
I have seen many parking strip gardens, but I especially liked this one with a wavy border. If you're not going to garden the whole thing, you might as well have a playful border.
There was plenty of found art and constructed art in this ally, well-integrated with a Little Free Library too!

Camp Long, through the fence

We headed over to Camp Long, which I had never visited before. It's not open yet, but perhaps when I retire it will be a good destination for biking.

As we crossed back over I-35, we saw another well-painted traffic signal box. Maybe I'll start collecting those, too.

Another Hummingbird Nest!

Is Ginny Eating Chard???

Busy Wednesday

On the schedule for today: Shop for FEEST, WPTL Executive committee meeting, Stage Time University.
The FEEST program is coming to an end; Jaime explained that they were transitioning into their summer camp program. One of the happy shoppers who I'd first shopped with said she was happy I'd come to this shop in Des Moines because we'd met there on our first shops, which I am sure is true but since most of my shops were in Burien Seattle I didn't form a strong memory of the person. She - as are they all - was very nice and 40 years younger than I, so I guess I'm a cheerful old man!
The WPTL/EC meeting went well over my cellphone as I drove home from dropping off the FEEST food in a trailer park that reminded me slightly of the trailer park I'd once lived in. This one had trees; I wouldn't call it nice but it was nicer.
I volunteered to look into WPTL getting its own Zoom license.
STU was a disappointment. They are rightfully focussing on virtual meetings but had a lot of problems working with technology. That was a lesson right there.

Raised Beds Repurposing Wheelbarrows

COVID-19 Victory Garden

Plant Crowd At Hardware Store

Little Free Library Matches Big Yellow House

Buddha In The Tree

Peace Birdhouse

King Frog Wears Mask

Road From Closed Bridge Is Closed

Road Open For Cats

I Like Bee Butts
And I Can Not Lie

Another Mask

Station 22

This Art Has Heart

When I Got Home,
They Were Finishing Pole Replacement

SIM Adventurers

Tuesday nights are usually one or another variety of Toastmasters: a Club 832 meeting, a SPEAKOUT meeting, a committee meeting. This evening was the last for the club 832 year, our celebration of achievements and final filling of officer slots. I volunteered to take the VPPR slot in addition to the VPM slot, and that's the last thing I'm volunteering for ... until the next. But I really have to stop that!
Last week I'd heard about Ting, a pay-as-you-go phone service. Because I was very satisfied with Metromile, I decided to research and try this. The math worked. I got the SIM card in the mail. This afternoon I decided to implement it, and ran into a problem. As per directions, I requested a "Port Out Pin" from TMobile. Within a few minutes, my phone stopped working. It was still running fine; I could access any information on the device, but it had no internet connection and would not make calls. Ooops.
I found this out because I was trying to put the SIM in using the handy provided tool. Since I never mess with my phone's SIM, I had no way to call tech support. I got to the Ting website and tried to get help, and got put into a queue - 6th in line. After 15 minutes and still being 6th in line, I decided to try Skyping tech support. I'd never done Skype on this machine before, but thanks to Professor Google I soon had directions and away we went. Tech support phoneline responded within a couple of minutes and walked me through the process.
Opening the SIM tray was just a matter of pushing harded on the tool. I had been being to gentle because I didn't want to break anything. Once the tray was open, I saw the old sim was a nano but it looked like the one Ting sent me was standard size. I fooled around with different ways to put it in the tray until Tech Support finally figured out what was going on and told me to break the SIM. What?
Well, it turns out the thing was invisibly scored so I could break a micro sized SIM out of the standard size - and then scored again to break the nano out of the micro. The thing slid in add all worked fine, but I'm not sure I would have figured it out on my own because it involved appearing to break things.
I'm sure there's a metaphor there.
Lesson: don't do this an hour before a meeting!

Buddha In Tree

Little Free Library Matching House 

Peace Bird House

Through The Plant Store Fence

Monday Walk

As we got our morning walk, we saw a house with a dog statue on the roof very similar to the dog on the porch. Perhaps it's an address symbol - after all, dog's can't read numbers.

We also saw a snail at the end of a torchflower stalk, part of the process of disassembly and ultimately new growth.
This seems to be a big year for snails; I don't know whether I'm just around more or whether the weather is helping.
Much of the day I spent updating 4freeCLE; getting thanked by members of the Low Bono Section gave me the reassurance that it might be actually helpful to someone.
We had the usual Zoom Zumba in the evening but otherwise I didn't get a lot of exercise in. I probably waste too much time reacting to Trumpists on Twitter and Facebook.

Sunday Go To Meeting

We had our monthly Time Bank Committee meeting by Zoom this morning. I also met via Zoom with Laura T from Toastmasters about the powerpoint for Tuesday's annual awards. It feels odd to just sit back and let someone else do all the work but she seems eager to take this on, I know she can do it probably better than me. My concern is that she seems prone to overwork whereas I have spare time - of course, I have also overcommitted to various volunteer works so perhaps we are not that different.