Friday Randomness

Just some random thoughts that have nothing to do with the heartbreaking fires in Southern California. I don’t know what to say about the fires except that it is shocking and horrible. Lives lost, homes lost, communities destroyed. This drone footage reminds me so much of the fires in Paradise and Santa Rosa from several years ago. I am shallow enough to be specifically sad about the homes that I visited 5 years ago that were prominent in the TV show, Beverly Hills, 90210, which are about 1/2 block from each other in Altadena. I cannot tell you how stupidly happy it made me to stand in front of these houses. (I have not seen any confirmation that they are gone, but I cannot imagine that they are not.) I am also shallow enough to laugh at this fake news in The Onion, poking fun at our Governor for dining at a very expensive restaurant in the early days of the pandemic, and tying in this current disaster.

Moving on to our regularly scheduled post, mostly written before the fires.

In Which We Discuss the Price of Eggs
The avian flu epidemic has hit California hard. Eggs are especially expensive and sometimes hard to find. I am picky about my eggs, I like pasture raised, which are more expensive than cage free or free range (the only 3 options available in California). The chickens have a healthier life, and the eggs taste better, with rich, orange yolks. Whether the eggs are more nutritious is up for debate. I can sometimes find pasture raised eggs for as little as $7.50 a dozen, but they are often $10 – $12.

We haven’t seen pasture raised eggs in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if our favorite egg farms have been hit by avian flu (they seem more susceptible to me to avian flu, since the chickens spend a lot of time outdoors, and wild birds carry the disease) or if the demand for all eggs is so high that they are being snapped up before I can get them. So we recently paid $13.69 for cage free eggs, and we were glad to find them.

In Which I Tell You That Directions are Confusing
I love our new washing machine, but wow, computers and instruction manuals are flawed. Periodically, I like to run a load of white towels on the ‘sanitize’ setting, and I put some bleach in the bleach compartment. I am hoping to maintain the pristine rubber seal on it, as mold and mildew tend to grow there and are difficult to eradicate. (I also dry it after each use, and leave the door open to dry completely.) Guess what? The bleach dispenser still has bleach when the load is complete. What? Why? I am not sure that this has been the case 100% of the time, but I finally looked it up the other day. It turns out that our washing machine has two settings for adding bleach to the laundry, Yes and No, and the default is No. So you have to program it to use the bleach that you have added to the bleach dispenser. I am not going to waste my beautiful mind on trying to figure out the logic on that one. I did waste quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to change the setting, however.

The instructions say that to change the settings, you need to press the ‘Start/Stop’ sensor button, with the door open. My washing machine does not have a ‘Start/Stop’ sensor button. It does have a ‘Start/Add laundry’ button, which is only visible with the door closed. Could that be what they mean? Surely not, as on the very next page of the user manual, they reference the ‘Start/Add Laundry’ sensor. They must be two different things, right?

OK, I’ve decided this topic is far too boring to continue griping about. Here’s the resolution. In order to program the washing machine to transfer the bleach you’ve put in the bleach compartment into your wash, you have to push the spot on the panel where the ‘Start/Add laundry’ sensor WOULD BE if the door were closed. Hold it, and close the door, at which point the ‘Start/Add laundry’ indicator lights up and starts blinking. Continue holding it until it stops blinking. Then pick your code and change the setting. These instructions could have been more clear, is what I’m saying. I did a load of towels yesterday with bleach, and it worked! YAY! Thank goodness for people posting videos of themselves doing stuff on YouTube.

What’s in a Name?
Kyria had a post of 24 things she learned in 2024, one of which was how we pronounce our daughter’s name, which she learned when we met for breakfast and a walk last month. I guess this is a good chance to tell that story. 99.99% of people pronounce Maya ‘My-uh’, but we pronounce it ‘May-uh’. She is named for my sister, who (clearly) pronounces her name ‘May-uh’, or as she explains it, ‘like a New Yorker saying Mayor’. The story behind it is a song (described as an extended tone poem) by The Incredible String Band, Maya, which my dad and my sisters’ mom loved. Is it a good song? Let’s just say it’s very late 60s. When Ted and I were discussing the name, we considered pronouncing it the more traditional way, My-uh, but decided to stick with the familial pronunciation, thus dooming her to a lifetime of having her name mispronounced EVERY DAY OF HER LIFE. When she was born, one of the nurses at the hospital tried to convince Ted that he was pronouncing it wrong. When she was 2, the director of her pre-school asked if she could pronounce it ‘My-uh’, an interesting question from a woman named Shashi, who surely had her name butchered on a regular basis. She asked me, “Do you mind if I call her My-uh? That is how I think of her.” Had I been quicker, I might have replied, “Do you mind if I call you asshole? That is how I think of you.” But she was the director of the school, that would have been very rude, and I wasn’t that quick. So I didn’t, I just said no, her name is pronounced the way it is pronounced and we would prefer that you say it correctly. (I mean really, how confusing would it be for Maya if this woman pronounced her name differently? Then again, when there were substitute teachers who called her My-uh, a classroom worth of 2 or 3 year olds would helpfully correct them, so perhaps the director would have learned anyway.) The song is almost 10 minutes long and really pretty bad. The ‘Maya’ part comes in at about 3:53, and again at the end. All I can say is there were surely drugs involved.

Snail Mail
Look at this awesome box of postcards that I found in Berkeley at Moe’s! (Moe’s is a landmark bookstore that has been a Berkeley institution since 1959.) I’m thrilled. And I have postcard stamps. Watch your mailboxes, friends.

My Tree is Thriving
My avocado tree continues to recover from almost dying of heat stroke this summer, and remains unmolested by that asshole squirrel, George Bush, thanks to the mesh cage I have built. (Also! My predictive text tried to change ‘asshole’ to ‘assholery’, and I FEEL SEEN.)

One Line a Day
What else. Maya gave me a One Line a Day 5 year journal for Christmas, and I’ve started using it. The first few days were pretty good, thinks like, “Went to Berkeley with Maya, Ethiopian food for lunch”, “Went to Berkeley with Ted, Moe’s Books”, “Saw live music with Ted”. But now the holidays are over and we’re back to real life, and it’s more, “Weights, Yoga, Walk, soup for dinner.” Am I not using this to its full potential? If you use a One Line a Day journal, what sorts of things do you track? Can you tell I’ve never had a diary?

In Which I Complain About Losing a Perk
Speaking of back to real life…after 2 1/2 glorious years of 3 day weekends, my company has ended the ‘Fabulous Friday’ perk. This perk started in July of 2022 (likely as an employee retention thing because the labor market was so tight), and was originally supposed to be for 2 months. They kept extending it, first for another month, then to the end of the year, then the next year, etc. We’ve all gotten quite used to it and have been thoroughly spoiled. Of course, we have gotten no official announcement informing us that it has ended, just no announcement saying it is continuing, and our boss said that since we had not received any notice, we should plan to start working 5 days a week. Muh. I am trying not to complain too much. I still have a job (which wasn’t certain a couple of months ago), I do not have to commute an hour each way into the office (which was supposed to happen and was cancelled), I like my job and my teammates. But I’m going to complain a little bit. The silver lining (and it’s small) is that I will no longer have to see people write Fabulous Friday’s on their out of office email replies.

Any silver linings in your world these days? Do you use a Line a Day journal? Are eggs stupidly expensive and difficult to find in your neck of the woods? Anything else you want to share?