nosrednayduj

Sunday I biked to the new bridge, but it was threatening to rain, and as soon as it started to sprinkle I bailed, only being there for 15 minutes. So I'm not really counting it. It was the first patriots home game, and so we timed it to get a lot of the traffic. There was a lot of traffic! It really looks like a regular commute home day, maybe even more congested. Now I understand why Monday night football commutes were so terrible. Our message was "real patriots vote for change".

Tuesday Valerie and I drove to the old bridge, where we stayed for the full hour. Our message was "Seeing red? Vote blue!" The old bridge is not over quite as much traffic as the new bridge, but I suppose it's close to some people's houses. It's also closer to a more conservative area of the state, so maybe that is important also.

Today, Perry and I took the train into Boston for another rally at the Statehouse and pester our representatives about a particular energy bill that's currently in reconciliation, and they did some things which this organization (350 Mass) thinks are bad. There were about 100 people for the rally. They were disorganized about the pestering our representatives. They had a particular set of representatives in mind to deliver some specific documentation and petitions to, specifically the people who are on the committee that is trying to reconcile the House and Senate bills on this issue. They should have just had a couple of people from their main organization pre-designated to do this job. But instead they said "we will all go to room 222 in the Statehouse and organize". So about 50 people show up in this room and one person starts getting people to volunteer to visit each of the specific committee members, and another person says no we should do it differently. And we ended up with a bunch of people being asked to go to random other representatives and deliver a flyer about this energy bill. While this disorganization was occurring, I quick looked up the office numbers of my particular representatives, and learned that they were on the same floor, so I volunteered to be on the team of people for that floor. Then we had only like 20 flyers and there were many more representatives on the floor. Plus, the people we did talk to are not on the committee; those were handled separately. But maybe they talk to the people who are, and say "we had a visit from constituents and they said this". I did make sure that we visited my representatives, so that I could say "I'm a constituent and also from 350 mass and blah blah blah".

I had never been inside the Statehouse (that I remember anyway). It's very big and there's a carriageway separating two halves of the ground floor. And of course they want to do security, so you can't get between the two halves without going upstairs and across unless you want to go through security a second time. It's also very old and there's marble staircases everywhere and it's pretty cool.

I kind of want to go to another big rally, and there's going to be something on October 17 for no kings, but all the websites just say "this is not going to be a rally", but not yet saying what it is going to be.

I went to the spine doctor. He doesn't have any idea. However he doesn't think it's likely to be skeletal. So he suggests continuing with PT and if nothing gets better for a couple of months then come back and we can "discuss some injections". He didn't say with what, but I'm guessing cortisone.

Something does seem to be helping; it's happening with less frequency. Though "teaching my subconscious to be better about how I stand up" may also be in play.

Turns out, electrical tape does not actually work as a rim strip. I got a flat today, and after popping the tube out and finding the hole, I discovered it was kind of on the inside, so I examined the rim, and the electrical tape had slid in various ways exposing the little holes. I went back to the bike store and said "wah wah wah". I got a different clerk, and she said "I wouldn't have done it this way", and proceeded to use something that wasn't electrical tape. It was some other mounting tape for some bicycle wheel purpose, but it wasn't for rim strips, but it did work. (Well, the electrical tape worked for 100 miles, so I don't actually know yet. This stuff has worked for 4 miles so far.)

Same bridge, biked there. Message: "UNIONS BUILT USA", lots of support. The organizer said she liked this message because a lot of union members are Trump supporters, even though he is antiunion, and so it's hard for them to be against this message! Maybe it will also make them think.

On Tuesday it was the Massachusetts primary. I volunteered to work at the election. It was interesting, but also slightly boring. In my town, they allow you to volunteer/work for only half the day, which is good because it starts at 6:30 in the morning and doesn't end until after 10 PM. Apparently in some towns it's all or nothing – I was talking to a friend who also volunteers for the polls and she was surprised we had a half day option. I worked in the afternoon, you are not surprised. I wore my mask, and I think I was the only worker doing so. I did see a couple of voters wearing masks. I figure, it's kind of like taking public transit – everybody in the town might come.

There are a million different jobs, and mine had slightly too many people doing it at the time that I did it. I processed advanced/early voting ballots. People are allowed to drop off their ballots at the town hall, and throughout the day someone (two people actually – anytime there's ballots involved, you need two people to keep yourselves honest) would go up to the town hall and fetch whatever had come in, which generally numbered in the 5-10 range. Then you need people working in pairs, and they have to be "different parties". My town is heavily Democratic, and it's a good thing that "unenrolled/independent" counts as "different". Most of the unenrolled people choose the Democratic primary ballot, but they get their choice, and so if they stay unenrolled then they maintain that status. Somebody was speculating about "what do you even get by actually registering as a Democrat", and we didn't actually know, other than obvious things like being able to serve on committees for the Democratic Party, but none of us did.

Anyway these pairs check off people from a printed list of those who had requested early ballots, and open the envelope (but don't extract the ballot). Then we walk over to the regular check-in desk for the precinct (we have 5 precincts and they all vote in the same place, so there's this whole lineup of check-in tables), and go through the process of checking in the early ballot person. Then we walk past all of the voting booths, to the tabulator machine, interact with the person staffing that machine, extract the ballots from the envelopes, and "without looking at them", stick them into the machine, and make sure that the machine accepts them. So each ballot takes a few minutes. We do them in batches if there is more than one for a particular precinct, so there is some speed up there, but only the actually walking the circuit of the gym portion is saved. So about once an hour there was a flurry of 10-15 minutes of work. There would've been more work if there had been fewer people doing this job; we had 2-3 pairs (some had other "free floating" jobs). Probably there was a lot more work for the morning shift because they had to handle anything that had been dropped in the ballot box since Friday when they made up the checklist of "who had requested such ballots". Early voting and advance ballots prior to Friday were processed at the town hall and fed into the tabulator machines there before election day.

As a result, I got quite a bit of my book read. I wasn't sure before I got there what kind of dead time there would be, so I brought a novel, and a bunch of things I didn't care as much about like magazines. I ended up reading the novel mostly. Even the check-in desk and the tabulator staff had some dead time, though probably not as much, because midafternoon is not a high volume voting time. You could tell when 6 PM came around because there was a big flurry of commuters stopping to vote on the way home.

At the end of the night there's a whole counting situation, because we have some stuff done by computers at the check-in desk, but also a paper check-in that needs to be consistent with the computer part. And then they had to look at all of the ballots from the machines to handle write-ins. My job had some consistency checking at the end with the check-in books that we had been using, but not as long as the other people. So I ended up doing a lot of teardown and cleanup. There were signs in lots of places that needed to be removed from the gym, and there was a break room we had with food that needed to be organized and either thrown out or found somebody to take home, and there were piles of pens and such to be re-boxed, and chairs and tables to fold up. The counting people were not done when everything except the things they were sitting on and at had been cleaned up, and so I went to the town clerk and said "put me to work or send me home" and he sent me home around 9:45. I don't know when the counting people finished. They had called a few of the elections by the time I got home, and so that must mean that other towns have more automated ways of reporting. Or, maybe we have a preliminary report that we send based on non-write-in votes. Perhaps next time I will have a different job and I will end up being one of the counting people and staying until 11.

I had my option of volunteering or being paid approximately minimum wage. I elected to volunteer, because "tax the rich". The town can use the money for something else.

We stood on the "new usual" bridge. Our message was "more Dolly, less Donald". Lots of support from the underbridge traffic. The organizer turns out to be a Dolly Parton fan, and she had a T-shirt and a sweatshirt from Dollywood. She also brought a boombox with a Dolly Parton playlist. The first one that played was Jolene, and I started to sing along, and then I burst into tears. Apparently I had a little grief to process. I'm not exactly a fan. I could sing along with Jolene, and some of 9 to 5. I recognized some other songs, some of which I didn't know Dolly had had anything to do with, and some I just didn't know at all. I grew up with country music, so I generally like it, but mostly I listen to soft rock/pop or classic rock and so I don't actually know any current country songs (except the crossovers that get played on the pop stations.)

I did not ride my bicycle there because when I went to pump up the tire, it did not in fact hold air, even though it took me 8 miles yesterday afternoon. Turned out that it was the patch not holding. When the patch was in the tire, it made a horrible squealing noise when I tried to pump it up, as the patch flapped while the air rushed out. It did not make that squealing noise when it was not inside the tire, but when I submerged it, bubbles came up rapidly. After we got home, I put in the tube that I had found in the spare parts bin, but it did not hold air either. It had 5, count them, 5, patches already.

So I got a friend who has Amazon prime to order me a tube. Mostly I hate Amazon, but when I'm in a hurry, I cave. Unfortunately it's a weird size, and it's not actually stocked by Amazon, so it won't come until Tuesday. I could try putting in yet another dodgy tube (the first one with the damaged patch from the previous tire), or I could just go swimming or something instead for exercise. Today I kayaked. As well as pumping up tires, which is effort, you know? I'm sort of on track for 2000 miles for the year with 1448. I'm ahead percentagewise, but there's less riding in December so I have to be ahead now.

When I went to go bicycling yesterday I discovered that my tire was not exactly flat, but squishy. I intended to go only a few miles so I just pumped it up and crossed my fingers. It took me to the library and back.

I popped off the tire and took out the tube and could not find the leak, even with submerging in soapy water. However, I could see that one of the matching patches previously reported was damaged on top. So that means that this tire has a bit of shrapnel embedded within, even though I can't find it. Fortunately I have a spare tire, so I mark this one for recycling and go get the new one. For good measure I go get a new tube as well, since there must be a leak, or it wouldn't have been squishy, right? And we know that the patch is damaged.

I also discovered that my rim strip (the thing that protects the tubes from the tops of the spokes in the wheel, so on the inside) was kind of coming off, and a little bit of it had adhered to the tube. We seem to have a new strip in our spare parts bin. So I peel off the existing strip, which had adhesive on the back, and then discover that the new rim strip doesn't have adhesive. I watch a YouTube video. Their rim strip didn't have adhesive either, so maybe this is normal. So I stick it on. It doesn't go tightly. Maybe this is wrong. But, I don't have any other choices, since I only found one spare, and peeling the old one off destroyed it.

So I try to be careful getting the tube in and the tire on. I go for a ride today. I don't go down any steep hills. I make it 1.65 miles before I get a blowout. I was not surprised. Called for rescue because I'm pretty sure that just patching the current blowout will not solve the problem because there are 30 spokes or something so I'll just get a blowout in a different place.

Tomorrow I will take the wheel, the tire, the newly patched tube (blowout was in fact in the inside, just like I expected), and go to the bike store, where I will have them install a new rim strip, and for good measure let them put the tire on too because while I love my gator skins because they don't get flats as often, they are a real pain to get on.

We got to Jocelyn's apartment at noon. She was sitting in a chaos of belongings. Some of them were in boxes and bags. I delivered three suitcases, so she could decide between the two carry-ons. We started loading the mattress and boxes into our car. The mattress fit and the tailgate closed! If you want to sleep in your car, get an EV6!

Meanwhile she started putting things in the suitcases. At some point I picked up the big one and said "wonder how this compares to 50 pounds", and that ensued with a Google search for "how much more does it cost for a heavy bag". Turns out it's surge pricing, and it's hard to actually find out. It costs more "in the summer peak travel time". Is that now? I mean, it's the end of summer, and a lot of people are moving to college. She also kept saying "OMG where did these things come from" and "oops I forgot about that drawer", so the number and volume of things she's taking is kind of a lot. Eventually I recommended that she take both carry-ons and check the larger one. There wasn't a scale at her apartment, but there is one at her friends house where she staying tomorrow night, so I suggested they take all three suitcases to the friends house, weigh the big one, and re-assort if needed. We discussed "how do you drag these things around on public transit", and how to strap the smaller carry-on to the large suitcase to make that possible. If the friend ends up with the smaller carry-on, we'll get it back sometime.

Our car ended up being very full, so we had to put more things in hers than expected. We discovered that she had a large object in her car that did not belong to her, or her friend, but a second friend. So it was hard to get all the rest of the stuff into her car, but we managed, and then they had a detour to first the second friend's house to drop off the big thing, and then the original friend's house to drop off the suitcases. Unfortunately this meant that they would have to unload everything including the bicycle to get at the big thing. (I think some different organization of the car could have occurred, but I decided that sometimes my input is not necessary.) We finally got underway around 2:30.

She left us all of her food, and we've been consolidating spices and such.

My daughter is going back to school, across the country, to finish her degree after a three-year stop out. So first we have to retrieve her and her stuff from her current apartment tomorrow, and then she needs to get on a plane Thursday morning. She'll be moving into an apartment which is partially furnished (and already occupied by housemates, who she hopes she'll get along with).

In her usual "maximum chaos" fashion, the plan is to bring her a big checked bag suitcase, a carry-on size suitcase, any household items that she needs from our house, and she will pack the things that she's taking into those bags at her current apartment, then we take all the other stuff from her current apartment (including her mattress and bicycle) and bring it back to our house. Meanwhile she takes the two suitcases to a friends house, where she plans to stay overnight on Wednesday night, so that it's easier to get to the airport Thursday morning than it is from our house. Also, she goes to some poetry slam thing in Cambridge Wednesday night "one last time"; she would definitely not want to travel back to our house after poetry and then get up early enough to get to the airplane from our house. (There's a reason that she doesn't live with us. We are out in the burbs and she is in the city where it's all happening!)

We'll see if this whole plan works out, and how long her brother and I get to cool our heels while all this organization/repacking occurs tomorrow before we can figure out what stuff is coming back with us. She will come back and stay here Tuesday night, but she has her own car. She's taking the commuter rail and the T to poetry, and does not wish to transport those suitcases on public transit more than one time. She's texting me "oh bring me this, bring me that". Hopefully this will taper off BEFORE I leave tomorrow morning for her apartment.

I've already made an appointment at the car shop to turn off the "service required" light that's been bothering her for a few hundred miles. We will actually have them do the service as well. It's an electric car so usually the service is just rotate tires, but sometimes there's inspect this and that as well. I have the webpage of the service schedule so after I find out how many miles her car has, I will figure out what the next "major service" is. Because she hasn't done anything for two years other than have the service required light turned off. It will be vaguely nice to have 3 cars for the winter when bicycling can be dodgy, and to have a second long-range car. Hers gets about 220 miles per charge. The Kia gets about 320, and the Leaf gets about 50.

Today I went to the Boston exhibit of The Great Elephant Migration after being told about it by somebody who had seen my write up of trolls. It will be in Boston until Sept 13.

These are life-size elephants, or perhaps a little smaller, and they are all made with the same technique, and intended to be representational. So there's less variety in the elephants than there is in the trolls. Still, it was pretty cool, there are at least 100 in the herd. Perry came with me, and when we were done looking at them, I went off to a square dance and he took the train back home.

The herd was "migrating" along a longitudinal park in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. There were a lot of informational signs about the elephants, art projects, fundraising for environmental projects, etc.

The elephants all have names, and while most of the names are Indian language in origin, some of them are not, and I noticed some elephants with the same names as some of my friends, so I took some photos of those particularly and sent them to said friends.

Side view of part of the herd


Perry standing with a big elephant and smaller elephants behind and to the side