Friday Randomness

Not my photo – I grabbed it from Facebook. These folks have signs up over the freeway in the next town over at least once a week, perhaps more. Ted and I saw one last week that said ‘Pete Hegseth is a Douchebag’, which gave us a good laugh and is also absolutely true. Moving on.

This week feels even more random than usual. Will I ever write a post where I write about one concept that is not a book or a recipe again? Time will tell, but I wouldn’t take a bet on it if I were you. At least for now I’m in a ‘save it for Friday’ phase of life. Let’s dive in, shall we?

I recently mentioned a lunch that Maya and I had in Berkeley, and I was so happy with the smoked salmon sandwich that I had, I decided to make it at home for our Easter brunch. After the busyness and fun of the prior weekend, it was nice to chill out and stay home. We went for walks, had brunch, took showers, and napped. Kind of a perfect day.

I spied this license plate the other day while out and about, and had to take a picture. “Yo Zafo” is a Spanish phrase that means “I’m out”, but the reason I took the picture is because of the 2003 song, ‘United States of Whatever’, which always makes us laugh.

Classic weird awesomeness, right?

What the heck is this disgusting picture, you may ask? The other day I was listening to my book using my earbuds while in the car*, and one of them fell out right as I was turning onto the freeway. It fell onto the rubber gasket around the parking brake, and by the time I could safely pick it up, it had fallen down inside that black hole type situation! Ack!

See the red arrow above? That is where the earbud fell. When I got home, I took a magnet from the fridge out there, attached to a hanger, and tried to get it out that way. No luck. I texted Ted, and he checked on YouTube, and found a video about how to take that entire part off of a 2005 Camry so you can get inside. Thanks Ted, thanks YouTube! So I took it apart, and put my phone in there to spy around using the camera as a periscope. And there it is, wedged in a tight spot, surrounded by hair and snack fragments. I got it out and put the car back together, and was mighty happy with myself.

*Before I had earbuds, I always thought I didn’t want them because I don’t want electronics right up next to my head. Then I decided I wanted some to listen to books or podcasts while exercising, because my wired ones were getting in my way. I figured I would use the wired ones whenever I leave the house, so I wouldn’t risk losing one, as both Ted and Maya have done. That decision lasted about 15 minutes, and I now take them everywhere with me. Will this event serve as a warning to me? Absolutely. Will I listen to this warning? Absolutely not. I went out the very next day wearing them. Twice.

In case you, like me, were wondering after Adrienne’s last video (Yoga for Heavy Hearts), no, she did not cut her hair into a cute lob, as evidenced by this week’s new video, Yoga for People Who Sit All Day. Unless they filmed this one first, and released them out of order. Hmmm.

Here’s your gas price update. This is the Shell station down the street, we can get cheaper gas at a few spots. The last time I took this picture, March 11, the lowest price was $5.49, and it was darker at 7:15am. I had to take this picture from the opposite direction because the sun was so bright and you couldn’t really see the numbers.

Sarah commented on my post the other day about how rabbits are eating the flowers in her neighborhood, which reminded me of how Mulder and I used to sometimes see bunnies on the trail path nearby. I did a search on my blog to see if I ever posted a picture of said bunnies, which brought me to this old post from 2007, about my love for the 1983 music video of a movie, Flashdance. I love this post. Why? I don’t know. But the YouTube links were all broken, so then I had to spend a bunch of time finding videos of dance numbers and fixing them for the exactly zero people who are likely to read a 19 year old post on my blog, and it was a whole time suck thing. One thing I like about reading really old blog posts is finding comments left by my mom, even if the comment is something like, “I never understood why you liked this movie”. HA! I later discovered that we do not have Flashdance on DVD. Luckily, while I cannot buy new DVDs nearby anymore, there is a store that sells lots of used DVDs, so I will not be without for long.

Construction is coming along. When the workers reattached our gate, they attached a bit of spare wood so it would hang correctly. Does anyone else think this bit of spare wood looks like Mr. Pointy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I’m glad to see he’s gotten work, though certainly this could not be the end he envisioned for himself.

Speaking of construction, this is the current situation around here. Definitely coming along. I think they may be finished with adding the siding by EOB today, and then Monday or Tuesday they’ll come and do some final bits like installing lights, moving our mailboxes back where they belong, putting the doorbells back, all of that.

Pretty landscaping in front of an office building nearby. I love these purple poppies.

Here’s a before and after for a Little Free Library in a local park. I find it satisfying to straighten them out and make the books look inviting. I feel like they are more likely to find new homes this way.

I grabbed this book, My Russian, at a different LFL on this same walk. It comes with a bookmark, which makes me wonder if it’s a DNF for the last person? Will I fare better?

I found some cookbooks like these at my Grandma’s house. Cooking with Sour Cream and Butter? Yum. I’ll admit to being a bit tempted, but decided that I do not need any more clutter in my house.

These are the current cats at the rescue where I volunteer. Two orange cats in the top kennel, with beautiful markings, and one very shy cat on the bottom kennel. The orange cats are Summer Friday and Burberry, and they enjoy pooping right after you clean their litter box. The shy cat on bottom is Anastasia. She likes to hide under the cushion in her little cave, but I did peek and make sure she is OK, sort of a welfare check. She comes from an abusive situation, which makes my stomach hurt. But she let me pet her, and with a lot of patience and love, I think she will be a great cat for the right person.

Speaking of sweet animals, Monday was Mulder’s birthday, he would have been 11. There were some tears shed, especially during morning yoga. Why does yoga bring ALL of the emotions out?

It looks like we’re going to get some rain over the weekend, which is absolutely fine by me. It’s too late in the year for any of it to be beneficial snowpack, but if it puts off fire season a bit, that is definitely a good thing. We don’t have any outdoor plans for it to ruin. I am intending to go to this week’s protest, which will be in a spot with plenty of shade if the weather predictions are entirely wrong. It will be nice to be out there again after a month off.

Any randomness that you want to share with me? Do tell.