The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Three photos

Photo number 1: Cassie, from above. (My office is in a loft over the master bedroom, where Cassie has a bed.)

Photo number 2: can anyone give this 1½-meter (5'3") scratching post a good home? I'm keeping it for a friend who went back home to Spain "for 6 weeks" in August 2020. He will come back to Chicago eventually—for a visit.

Photo number 3: a Tweet that made me laugh out loud.

I know that the super-rich in previous eras also had more narcissism than good sense, but watching Musk destroy Twitter in real time makes me wonder if our super-rich are massively stupider than the Gettys and Carnegies, or only significantly stupider.

Poor, neglected dog

Between my actual full-time job and the full-time job I've got this week preparing for King Roger, Cassie hasn't gotten nearly the time outdoors that she wants. The snow, rain, and 2°C we have today didn't help. (She doesn't mind the weather as much as I do.)

Words cannot describe how less disappointed I am that I will have to miss the XPOTUS announcing his third attempt to grift the American People, coming as it does just a few hours after US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) announced his bid for Senate Minority Leader. Sad dog, sad turtle, sad party.

Now to walk the dog, pack the bag, and head to the Sitzprobe. But man, my sitz already feels probed.

Fifteen minutes of voting

Even with Chicago's 1,642 judges on the ballot ("Shall NERDLY McSNOOD be retained as a circuit court judge in Cook County?"), I still got in and out of my polling place in about 15 minutes. It helped that the various bar associations only gave "not recommended" marks to two of them, which still left 1,640 little "yes" ovals to fill in.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...

Finally, Chicago gets a new brewery taproom on Thursday when Hop Butcher to the World opens in Half Acre's former Lincoln Avenue space, just over 2 km from my house. Cassie and I might find out on Saturday whether they let dogs in, assuming the forecast holds. (And there it is: a post that literally checks all the boxes for Daily Parker categories!)

0.6% not unpacked

I'm so close to being completely unpacked (except for the books I plan to put on the bookshelves that I plan to have built), and yet I'm stymied by trivial things. At the moment, I would really like to sit on the couch with Cassie and watch TV. And I could, even though the guys won't come to mount the TV on the wall until the 15th, because people get paid fair wages these days.

No, I'm stymied by the lack of a single 2-meter HDMI cable. I could at least have video and sound with one of those. So for $26 I ordered three 2-meter cables, which should arrive tomorrow, and which should at least allow me to watch something for the first time in over two weeks.

I like being moved, but I really hate moving.

Warm day in Autumn

It got up to 23°C at IDTWHQ this afternoon, and even now, three hours after sunset, it's still 17°C. Not a record, but not bad for November. I still have all the windows open. (Not for long though.)

We've also had amazing foliage this year. For example, this ash tree a few blocks from my house still hasn't dropped all its leaves:

And Cassie found another sunbeam after we got home:

The forecast says we get three or four more days of this before we get back to normal autumn temperatures. I'm OK with that.

Unpacking continues

It's a quiet day at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters 6.0 as I bang away at the 60 or so boxes of books in the library. Only 10 or so of those boxes need to go all the way to my office loft on the 4th floor, so I should make do with only a few dozen Ibuprofens this afternoon.

Meanwhile, Cassie has found a sunbeam on the front deck, just as she did yesterday:

And as a bonus, here's our walk to doggie day care on Friday morning:

Our fall colors just keep going this year. The maples have reached their peak, even as the ashes and oaks are finishing up.

A side benefit of moving

Can you tell when I moved from a first-floor walkup apartment into a 3½–story townhouse?

I figure, Cassie has about 7 years of climbing stairs in her. We're both going to have much stronger legs (though only one of us needs them).

Lunch reading

I'm starting to adapt my habits and patterns to the new place. I haven't figured out where to put everything yet, especially in my kitchen, but I'll live with the first draft for a few weeks before moving things around.

I'm also back at work in my new office loft, which is measurably quieter than the previous location—except when the Metra comes by, but that just takes a couple of seconds.

I actually have the mental space to resume my normal diet of reading. If only I had the time. Nevertheless:

Finally, does anyone want to go to New York with me to see a play about Robert Moses starring Ralph Fiennes? Apparently tickets are only $2,000 a pop...

The war on chaos continues

I've unpacked all but one of the rooms in my new house:

Yeah, but this is the "one room:"

It's supposed to rain on Sunday, so what better day to unpack all those books?

Cassie, for her part, only cares that I unpacked her smelly old blanket:

So many boxes

Today's theme song is U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," but I know it's somewhere in the new house...

Unpacking proceeds apace. Last night we were both exhausted and we both had trouble falling asleep. We also both wanted pizza, though Cassie didn't know she wanted it until I brought it into the house.

Back to unpacking. I actually have to work tomorrow, so I need to get at least half my life out of chaos tonight.