Month: September 2026

–Took Grace shopping at Smart & Final.

–Went to the DMV site to see where my application for a disabled placard was. Turns out it’s probably in the garbage. They have a whole new system now where I fill out the form online, take it to the MD for a signature, make a jpg out of it, then upload it, along with a photo of my license, to DMV. Un-be-fucking-lievable. Now I have to make another visit to Dr. Montemayor and start all over again.

–Hot and muggy today.

–Refilled bird feeder; watered plants.

–Roasted some Colombian beans. That roaster is so good I don’t understand how it has serious competition.

–Made pizza with my dough, Grace’s (watery) sauce, leftover bell peppers, Mozzarella cheese from Bel Air. Cooked at 550 for 8 minutes. It was good, though soggy. Hoping thicker sauce will be better and validate the cooking method.

–Went to Bel Air for milk and cookies.

–After several false starts, I found that Turbo Tax has a “what if” feature built in. I used it to see the tax bite for various levels of IRA withdrawals. Bottom line: $300k is about the max I could stomach. This would get me half the PG duplex or the entire HMB condo.

–Marie’s meat loaf for dinner–the only one I can enjoy at present.

–More to come, but a quick comparison of Canon Kiss–low-resolution, cheap zoom lens, auto-focus–blew away the Leica SL2-S on a shot of the button cactus. Canon was sharper and much more saturated. I also thought I had really nailed manual focus on the Summicron 50. We’ll see.

–Went to UPS to drop off the Samsung Z Flip 5 trade-in and pick up some nice Sacred Spin buttons.

–Really depressed about things in general and coastal weather in particular. Half Moon Bay shows partly cloudy with highs in the low 60s for the next 10 days. Same with Pacific Grove. Seems like if I bought a condo in HMB I’d cross 92 first chance I got and enjoy some sunshine.

–Was going to ask Tom Elken to come over for a ride tomorrow, but Grace had a fit about cleaning up. Wrote an email to Tom’s accountant (in Montana) to ask for help in devising an optimum strategy for buying a second home.

–Canon Kiss camera came in. Got it (sort of) set up, but don’t want to put on mosquito suit to go out and takes photos.

–Samsung Z Flip 8 came in. Way beyond the Razr in every way. Thinner, lighter, feels better in hand. Had a lot of trouble with hearing aids UNTIL I asked Google and it told me to turn them off on the previous phone. Perfect now. Also got the pacemaker monitor app working, after a phone call to Medtronic. Apparently you can’t have phone app and bedside monitor going at the same time, so I was instructed to return the bedside device when it comes in. All good now, just have to set up screen layouts, sounds and such.

–Bel Air Italpizza for dinner.

–Amazingly, found what could be an ideal condo in Half Moon Bay. More to come.

–Also amazingly, an Instagram ad hooked me with a quick clip of the best knife sharpening system I’ve ever seen. Bought it immediately. Can hardly wait.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Wot a day.

–Called Vector; they will send me a bedside monitor for the Medtronic pacemaker, since the Motorola Razr 2025 I’m now using won’t work with the My Heart app. Free, apparently.

–Got a call from Sandy McCarthy Elken’s daughter, a local Coldwell Banker realtor. She put me in touch with Lucie Campos, a Pacific Grove CB realtor who, in 23 years, has sold a billion dollars worth of properties. That’s a lot of homes, considering what prices were 23 years ago. I need to talk to an accountant soon.

–Got bagels at the New York Bagel Cafe. Got a breakfast bagel too.

–Went to the Verizon store to sort out the mess I made trying to set up my Verizon account with the 2025 Razr. Spent a half hour there at a set-up cost of $39.99, and all seems good. There are STILL issues with Verizon needing to verify me EVERY time I try to log in on the Mac. Seriously annoying, but hopefully I won’t need to log in often, and it’s easy to log in on the phone.

–Played with phones again, all day. Got the old Razr running on Tello after a call to their help desk. Turns out it works poorly with my hearing aids, AND, when I tried again to switch to the new Razr, I got locked out again. A little research showed Tello does this as policy, and it always requires a phone call to get back in. Sooooo…I moved to Verizon. Yes it’s $30/month, but I’m hopeful they’ll be a little more lenient on new phones. Also, Verizon will be on the new phone, and I’m hoping it will work better with the hearing aids. If not, I’ll try the incoming Samsung Z Flip 50000000, and if that don’t work, back to the iPhone. Gettin’ tired of this stuff.

–Grace’s super-nice mood of the past few days went back to surly today.

–Kenny took us to lunch at Carmelita’s in Fair Oaks. Pretty good stuff.

–Searched for and learned a lot about pacemaker monitoring. Long story short: if my Android phone do it, there are devices that will.

–Bought a new Samsung Flip, then decided to go back to my old Motorola Razr 2023, because of its ergonomics. Visible is being unbelievably resistant to making the change. Like EVERY time I try to log in, it says “Okay, let’s set you up with 2FA.” I go through the motions, and it usually freezes at some point so I have to start over again. Curse these guys.

–Went on a 10-mile bike ride with Tom Elken in El Dorado Hills. Stayed a while to chat about second houses. I get the feeling he’s too down on Pacific Grove weather to be interested in the duplex–plus he doesn’t walk easily, so PG’s high Walk Score is not a huge draw for him.

–Motorola Razr came in. Pretty easy to switch phones at Visible. Razr has a lot to like, e.g. it seems much better at automatically setting up and remembering auto logins to web sites. However, it does NOT work with my Medtronic monitoring app, so I may have to get another device, like a “bedside monitor.” It also sends but does not receive text messages from Grace, even after a ton of “fixes.” Maybe later, after iMessage has been completely de-registered…

–Pizza for dinner.

–Went to UPS for (I thought) a couple packages. “Not in the system yet,” he said. Turns out they were in our home mailbox. I guess “USPS has delivered…” looks too much like “UPS has delivered…”. I’ll learn.

–Stopped at Bel Air for milk, cream cheese, bagels.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Went to Lowe’s for Whink (removes anodizing), Bona and mop sponge for Grace.

–Spent a LONG time polishing the LIC EDC Edamame from Drake Sexton. Whink worked great, but revealed several dings deep enough to be resistant to polishing. Finally got it decent, but not perfect.

–Took a short bike ride (tiring), then rode to UPS to pick up some bearing tool parts from Monoskate. It’s a bizarre collection of parts. Some of the metal parts look appropriate, but they don’t fit anything, and there are no bearing pushers. Pretty much useless.

–Went with Grace to the Folsom farmers market for melon, tomatoes, garlic.

–Stopped at UPS for something, then picked up three packages from our mailbox. Got nice fidget buttons, an LIC EDC Edamame, some spin stick beads, and the Galfer brake rotors for the InnerLight.

–Installed the rotors. They make a slight swooshing sound, but seem perfect; also a little thicker than the others so the lever feel is great. InnerLight has reached its final form.

–Went with Grace to Costco for toilet paper, Kleenex, muffins, San Pellegrino.

–Stopped at Smart & Final for groceries.

–Went over to Kenny’s to watch an electrician fix his rear patio light.

–Super hot today, and kind of stuffy.

–Went to UPS to pick up spin stick, then Grocery Outlet for Italpizza. No Italpizza, so got a couple of clones.

–Watched the penultimate episode of the latest Reacher. This season is far below the level of the previous three.

–Found a “master list” of pirate streaming sites on reddit. Hoping one of them works for the Australia 49ers game today. Pretty soon there will be nothing on network TV except “news” and scumbag lawyer ads.

–Went to Dr. Aryana’s office for an appointment made months ago, which I suspected had been canceled since he did the surgery. It had been canceled, with no word from them.

–Played with spinner bearing tools for a bit.

–Got a Blaze Margherita pizza for dinner. Pretty good.

–Went to see PA Tiffany Wong, Dermatology, UC Davis Health on Turn Pike in Folsom. She was great: knowledgeable, thorough, chipper. She nuked a few, will have me back in a month to look at a gnarly one, then again in six months as normal. What a relief!

–Stopped at UPS for (a) fidget bearing tool (okay, but I really need to sort these out in terms of collars and such for 188 AND 106 bearings; (b) three abrasive wheels from China (total crap, hard as rocks, tossed); (c) 106 bearings (installed in the Rotobow—dead silent and smooth; (d) four 3M Scotchbrite belts from Curry. These are very nice. I used a couple on Kenny’s Wusthof and the new Devin Thomas, and they worked great. Finally!

–Stouffer’s stuffed peppers for dinner.

–Went over to Kenny’s with Grace to try and figure out his low-voltage outdoor light that isn’t working. Didn’t get very far: our meter showed that maybe .9V was getting to the bulb, while Kenny’s cheaper meter would flash briefly at the lowest level (6 volts, maybe) and that was it. So, either we haven’t exposed enough shiny uncorroded wire yet, or there’s something amiss farther back in the system.

–Took a shower and shave. N of 1, but the Martin de Candre Rose soap I used today gave a really close, smooth and comfortable shave, in contrast to the super-rare and expensive Vetiver I’ve been using for a while.

–Spent a LONG time sorting through camera boxes trying to find the (mislabeled) Leica SL2-S I was fiddling with a couple days ago to see if changing the Viewfinder Sensitivity from High to Low made any difference in how quickly it blacks out when moved way from the eye. I couldn’t discern a difference, and it’s still WAY worse than the exact same model with a Reporter skin. Beats me.

–Went to Chalk It Up 2026. Parking was pretty straightforward. Weather was coolest ever. Event wasn’t so great: Numerous empty squares, much less “fine art.”

–Stopped at Osaka-Ya for peanut butter mochi. They’re charging 4% now for non-cash payments. Things continue to deteriorate.

–Went to the Folsom farmers market for a melon.

–Biked to UPS to pick up the Case Razor knife. Centered, not tight, very pretty after a bunch of polishing.

–Made a Boboli pizza for dinner, with Honey-Baked Ham and tomato. That ham doesn’t really work on pizza. Not sure what it does work on.

–Went to UPS to pick up Lil Roo Roo spinner. Stopped at Bel Air for corn.

–Barbecued turkey burgers, corn, plum tomatoes; had with Grace’s potato salad. Tasty!

–Finally got cameras sorted out. SL2-S Reporter in business now…….for a while anyway.

–Got bagels, banana bread, bagel dogs at New York Bagels. Picked up Brother drum assembly at UPS. Installed it and printing is perfect.

–Learned at UPS that they starting to implement overage fees. I’m fuzzy on details, but opted for middle tier. Payment won’t be required until renewal in February 2027, but I don’t know when they start applying charges. I’ll be dropping them at renewal; may go to the Olsen store, may just get packages at home. Is it greed? Yes, as all of these tiers and charges are 100% optional for individual UPS franchisees.

–Played with Leicas a bit, updating firmware. May go back to SL2-S, black or Reporter.

–Went to see Dr. Nandyal in Roseville. Nothingburger.

–Had lunch at Jersey Mike’s in Folsom. Good as usual.

–Went to see Dr. Montemayor in Folsom. She put in a referral to Dermatology; they will call me. She filled out the DMV placard form. She was a little reluctant, but I swayed her with my sob stories.

–Rode 8+ miles on the ARP. Drank lots of water. Seemed less tired at the end than yesterday. Blood pressure was better, but still had a little dizziness when standing on occasion. More water!

–Went to UPS to pick up Indy Thicc Wee Yeti. It’s far too wee. Stopped at Bel Air milk, cream, dessert, dinner pizza.

–Took a shower and shave.