Tag: me

I stopped by the Starbucks in the Fred Meyer near my house because I needed to buy 6 ounces of coffee to make a cake. Like I usually do when buying coffee to make cakes, I explained that I wasn’t a coffee drinker, but needed a small amount for cake baking. The nice young man working there did some figuring and quoted me the price of $1.77, which was fine by me. I handed over two dollars and was on my way, holding the coffee behind me on the walk home, so I didn’t have to smell it.

The next day, I had another look at the receipt and discovered why the price was so low. I had been elevated to senior pricing!

While I’m still several years away from getting this discount for real, I was happy to take it in my 50th year.

While looking for the age requirement for the Starbucks senior discount, I have discovered that Starbucks does not have an senior discount policy! But! Some baristas might apply one if you ask. So I got doubly lucky. Thanks, Jayden.

I did some activity on a holiday I don’t celebrate, and Garmin rewarded me with this pretty badge.

There is also a Lunar New Year’s Eve one; I earned that one too.

I smugly thought that I had earned a badge every year, but I see I missed 2021. January 25, 2020, I did not yet have my Garmin watch.

Here’s to the new year.

Hank Green, of the Vlogbrothers, was killing time on a video (for algorithm reasons?) and so played through some of the games he plays. One of them was TimeGuessr. I was intrigued.

In this game, you are given a photo and then must guess when and where the photo was taken. It’s quite fun.

And I did really well my first time out, like here where I was only 241.4 meters off! (Though 5 years off.)

And like this where I was only 4 years off, but amazingly 12.1 miles away even though I had no idea what I was looking at except it was somewhere in Asia that used a lot of English in their signage.

I don’t have a lot of room in my schedule for daily games, but I would like to dip into this one now and again.

Getting things done didn’t come as naturally to me in 2024 (and 2023, (and 2022, and 2021, if we are being honest)) as it had before. Early in 2024, I made two sheets of basic stuff, one for my stuff, and one to stay on top of my aunt’s finances.

The sheets took probably 10 minutes to make, and they worked very well. You will notice the additions that appeared as the year went on. The delimitation for books and movies was particularly important. It’s really hard to catch those up in one session at the end of the month so switching up the goal to the 15th and the last day helped.

With my aunt’s stuff, it was nice to cross things off as I canceled things no longer needed.

You will notice that I gave myself the last week in December off. A just reward after a year of good work.

I’ve drafted new sheets for 2025. Let’s see if they work as well as these did.

Why yes! It’s 2025! That means it’s time for a new five-year standard diary.

Look how shiny it is!

This brings my time using the standard diary total to 20 full years.

Usually my favorite part about the five-year diary is reading back through the entries of the previous years as I complete each day’s entry. But 2020 through 2024 were rough, and I didn’t often read back as I filled in the 2024 days.

Here’s hoping 2025-2029 will bring smoother sailing.

I did my part, but I’m feeling worried…

Here you can see all my accruements for hydration at work.

The embroidered landing spot, my usual water vessel, a new thermos (much too large because I bought it online and didn’t properly visualize the size), and the cute mug that Danielle got to welcome me to the library.

Too-large thermos notwithstanding, this has all come together nicely. When I leave work, I tuck it all in a two-drawer file cabinet, so others can use the space for their own beverage station.

We emptied the living room of furniture and borrowed a few folding tables and chairs to seat all the people who came to Friendsgiving. Sara and Shawn surprised me by driving up from Arcata. It was great fun.

I’ve been scanning my grandfather’s slides and he was a fan of the far away photo, so I took a few photos as he would:

The slightly out of focus table.

The back-of-the-head table.

The way-far-away table.

I then had Kelly take the official photo, but forgot to fix the camera before I passed it on to her. Here’s the no-glasses version (I was quite hot and my glasses kept fogging up, so I took them off.)

Here’s the glasses version.

And here’s one last look at the cake.