Voting, Etc.

I drove to the City Hall yesterday (September 25) and cast my early vote in the 2024 Presidential election. I got there about 12 noon, and they were moderately busy but there was no line and no waiting. I picked up a ballot, then took it to a desk where I marked my choices, then took the ballot to the vote-counting machine and fed it into the machine. That was all there was to it. From leaving my home to getting back home took about 30 minutes. The ballot also enabled voting for town council, but I didn't know any of the names on the ballot, nor their positions on any issues, so I couldn't cast a vote for any of them. I decided to vote early because last year I tried to vote on Election Day and the line to vote was so long that I knew it would take hours to get to the Voting Room, and so I left without voting. I didn't want to repeat that experience.

My partner Nuria and I went to Walmart this morning and got our 2024 flu shots. The pharmacist pushed hard for us to also get our Covid shots along with the flu shots, but we resisted just as strongly. We did that last year and we both felt miserable for several days after getting the shots. So I did some research and discovered that many people who got both shots at the same time last year reported feeling bad after the shots. We'll return next week and get the Covid shot.

I was sick last month (August). For the first 19 days, I was unable to eat a bite of food. The thought of eating anything made me want to vomit. So for 19 days, I didn't eat anything. My weight went from 216 to 197 pounds. Since I resumed eating (one small meal per day plus a couple of snacks during the day), I gained a couple of pounds to 199. I need to lose more weight so I'm going to have to double-down on not eating during the day. A small meal at dinnertime is all I really need. But it's hard to resist the call of crackers and cookies.

It's been cloudy all this week. It's overcast today, though the National Weather Service shows a picture of fluffy white clouds in a blue sky. The forecast for today reads, "A chance of showers, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 5pm." Does that sound like blue skies and fluffy white clouds?

I mowed my yard about two weeks ago, and it needs mowing again, but to do that I have to buy a battery for the lawn tractor. Those small lawn tractor batteries last about two years, and if I buy one at the end of the mowing season, and the battery is dormant this winter, it may not last two full years. So I'd prefer to pay someone to mow the yard, but there are two kinds of lawn-mowing crews. There's the crew that shows up and does a bad job, and there's the crew that shows up only once and you can never contact them again. It looks like I'm going to have to buy that battery and mow the yard myself.

Stay well people, and don't forget to vote.

Keys

I was going to a university in Richmond, VA, in 1966 when we had a big snowfall. On one Tuesday it snowed about 13 inches. I don't know if "official" observations recorded this amount, but I was there and I shoveled snow for two or three hours to free my '55 Chevy from the snow, so I remember how deep it was. Then two days later, on a Thursday, it snowed again, about 12 inches, and my Chevy was buried again. So once more I had to spend two or three hours digging it out. You don't forget experiences like that. No, they're not major life changing events, but they're unusual enough, and pain-in-the-ass enough, that they stay in your conscious memory bank.

That same Chevy has another small story. One night I drove home and parked in front of my house. I got out and shut the door of the Chevy. Only then did I realize that I had just locked my car key inside my car. I had no spare key. So I went inside the house and told my dad what I had just done. He pulled his Buick key out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Try this key," he told me. Chevy and Buick were both made by General Motors, so he had the idea his key might fit the lock on the Chevy. 

And it did. I unlocked the Chevy and retrieved my key and all was good again.

A week or two later I was at my college campus in Richmond when I overheard someone complaining that he had locked his key inside his car. "What kind of car is it?" I asked. He told me. I don't recall the particular make of car, but it was a GM brand. "Take me to your car," I told him.

We walked a couple blocks and he stopped beside his car. I took out my Chevy key and inserted it into his door lock and turned it. The lock popped up and the vehicle was unlocked. All was good again.

I guess that trick with the key is probably in the past. But you never know, so if the situation is dire, you might try it. What do you have to lose?

Golden Gate Bridge

It has been fifty years since I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, so a couple days ago I did it again. I mainly wanted to see if the toll booths had been taken down. I had heard that they weren't collecting tolls on the bridge any longer.

I had forgotten how tall the bridge's supporting towers are. They are impressive. The roadway seemed different. A little more narrow, perhaps. Did they take part of the roadway to create a sidewalk? 

I entered the bridge from the northern end. The last time I drove across the bridge, the toll booths were at the southern end of the bridge. I thought perhaps they would be gone, but the toll booths are still there. But now, they are devoid of employees. There is no one manning the booths. Signs read "Do Not Stop". The toll is still collected, but it is collected by an electronic mechanism rather than human tolltakers. Virginia uses those automated toll collectors, too. I guess the technology spreads fast. 

Crossing the Bridge, you can pay with FasTrak, License Plate account and one-time payment, or toll invoice. If you have two axles (a car) the toll is $8.75, License Plate and One-Time tolls are $9, and a Toll Invoice is $9.75. But if your vehicle has three or more axles, they sock it to you. A License Plate account or a One-Time payment are $27 for 3 axles, $36 for 4 axles, and so on.

I used to think that "Golden Gate" was the name of the bridge. But I learned long ago that "Golden Gate" is the name of the strait that connects San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean.

Full disclosure: I didn't travel to the West Coast. I visited the bridge electronically. I've driven from Virginia to California (and back) and I've traveled to California on business trips when I was younger, But this time I made the trip the easy way: I used Google Maps. You can go there, too, the same way.

Shower Chair

Because of my age and condition, my partner Nuria decided that I might fall down in the shower and therefore I needed a shower chair. In case you don't know this, you can buy a shower chair and sit in it while you bathe. So she bought a shower chair at Walmart. It came in pieces in a box.

We opened the box and took out bag after bag of parts. There were instructions on how to assemble the chair, but assembly required as much guesswork as reading the instructions. It took 30 minutes but we got it assembled. We took it to the bathroom and tried to fit it into the bathtub, but it wouldn't fit. It would fit sideways, but who takes a shower with the water coming at them from one side? Nobody.

We took the chair to the living room and disassembled it. Taking it apart took only half the time that putting it together required. We put the parts back into the plastic bags, but we had bags left over. We stuffed those into the box and taped it shut.

A day or two later, Nuria brought home another chair. This was just an outdoor folding chair that you might use to seat your friends around a BBQ pit and enjoy the warmth of the flames and the smell and taste of pit-cooked BBQ. We opened up the chair and put it in the bathtub facing the shower head. It fit perfectly. 

Now it remained to try it out. I had doubts, but I turned on the shower and adjusted the water temperature and then sat down in the chair.

The warm water sprayed over me. I washed my hair and face, my chest and stomach, and my arms and legs. Nuria washed my back. It was like a massage combined with a warm shower. It was better than I could have ever guessed it would be. I've had a massage done by a professional masseuse and this felt better (though not nearly as long). I'm a believer now. 

What happened to the first shower chair? Walmart said they'd refund our purchase price but they didn't want the chair returned to them. It makes sense. They'd have to open the box, remove all the parts, make sure all the parts were present, repack the parts, and put them back into a new cardboard box. The cost of the labor for doing that was more than the profit they'd make on the chair. 

All in all, it was an interesting experience.

Alcohol

I've never been much of a drinker of alcohol. I used to hang out at an Applebee's bar, and sometimes I would have a beer, but usually it was just iced tea. 

However, in the past year, I've put the pedal to the metal and my consumption of vodka went through the roof. I'm an artist (writing is an art) and everyone knows artists are flawed -- especially the great ones. Look at van Gogh -- he cut off an ear. Artists are famous for drinking themselves to death. Hank Williams. John Bonham. Amy Winehouse. It's a long list, my friends.

My father was an alcoholic. His brother (my uncle) was an alcoholic. His brother's son (my nephew) was an alcoholic. I've no doubt that my family tree, especially on my father's side, is littered with alcoholics.

So I've been trying to cut back. I think I will have to stop completely. I'm okay with doing that. My father was a heavy drinker for many years, and then he stopped completely. But if he went to a party where alcohol was available, and if he was offered a drink, he would accept it. It's a social politeness, But he would never drink more than one or two drinks and he never resumed buying bourbon. But he did have an incentive to quit drinking: his doctor told him on several visits that if he (my dad) didn't quit drinking then he (my dad) would die soon. 

continued a day later... 

I too have an incentive. I've been drinking to get to sleep. My doctor refused to prescribe sleeping pills or even mild tranquilizers for me. So I turned to alcohol. However, I have to drink a lot more than I should in order to get to sleep.

Early Monday morning I got up to drink another shot so I could go back to sleep. But something went wrong and I fell down and hit my head on the floor. I think it knocked me out. Nuria found me but I was too heavy for her to get back into bed, so she called 911 and asked them what she should do. Fairly quickly the street in front of my house looked like a parking lot for emergency vehicles. There were two police cars, two fire trucks, and the paramedics in an ambulance. She said there were eight men in my bedroom trying to talk with me, but I was not responsive. So they took me to a hospital. I "woke up" in an ER room next to a nurse's station. I was there for about six hours before they released me.

I told Nuria that I wasn't going to drink any more alcohol and I meant it. Alcohol is not good for me. 

I had some debate about whether I should publish this blog. I felt like I shouldn't. Nuria encouraged me to publish it. She said there were millions of people like me and some of them may find my blog and benefit from reading about my experience. If you are one of them, you know that what happened to me can happen to you. Don't let it.