The other day at Safeway I happened to end up in line in front of the young lady I sold Crayola, my old Ford Escort, too. I was particularly happy to sell the car to exactly the kind of person she was: young and poor. I offered the car for a really low price and even knocked another $150 off after I met her and her boyfriend, the prototypical struggling young couple. I almost had an offer for the full asking price, but I ended up glad that didn’t work out because it was a gift for a grandson who was apparently less than impressed that his first car was going to be a compact. I wanted the car to go to someone that would appreciate it the same way I appreciated having any car that would run.

While we were waiting, I asked them whether they still had the car, and they did! I thought that I had seen it around town, but I hadn’t seen it in a while. Apparently, the old car successfully drove from the Mountain West, to the Great Plains, to the Texas, and back. I was pretty stunned since I had become reluctant to try to drive it to Redstone.

I will confess, however, that “wait, so you’re saying I could have held on to that car for two more years?!” crossed my mind. But a greater part of me was glad that I didn’t rip them off with a car that had less than a couple months left on it. Besides which, the car had become unreliable in extreme cold conditions. We haven’t really had that since I sold it to them, but piece of mind was also one of the things we purchased along with the new car and warranty plan. Also, with little Lain, the two-door compact would no longer have been useful to us anyway.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law is asking me about smartphones and is interested in upgrading to one. That sort of stuff makes my day to begin with, but it worked out even better when it turned out that a phone I have that’s been gathering dust (literally – I’m looking at it now and it’s very dusty) fit her needs perfectly.

I always like it when things I can no longer use can find a home with someone who needs them.

I am back at the bookstore/coffeeshop that won’t let you use the bathroom without an escort.

When you tell them you need someone to unlock it for you, they go on the intercom and apparently their code for “Someone needs to unlock the restroom” is “Code USA.”

I went to Walmart earlier today to start getting everything in motion for a new pair of glasses. I specifically asked the Eye Care Professional if it was a problem that I forgot my prescription. Could they just get everything in line and then get the actual prescription tomorrow since I live an hour away? They said yes. By “yes” they apparently meant “no.” I spent fifteen minutes looking at frames, sat down to tell them what I wanted, and she then told me I would have to come back next week because apparently they need me and the prescription both in the same place.

It’s almost enough to make me just get the glasses in Callie. The gas costs of coming up here for a pair of glasses strip any savings. As it turns out, I have a job next week at the Holding Tank Alternative School. So I should be able to do it then.

Meanwhile, at my favored coffee shop (which closed at hours thus why I am now at the bookstore), the Truthers that own the place are apparently voting straight ticket Democrat at least at the state level (Democratic signs all over the place – sans Obama). I was actually wondering. The last time politics was discussed, they weren’t interested in voting for the Kenyan, but also had some pretty big reservations about voting for the Mormon-Freemason Cabal’s candidate.

The air quality up here is worse than it’s been in Callie.

From a piece about SeaWorld (subscription maybe required):

The first Sea World opened in San Diego in 1964. It was the brainchild of four college friends who originally planned it to be little more than a restaurant with some aquatic viewing areas. Featuring dolphin shows as the main attraction, the park was popular from the start. But when the owners purchased the original Shamu in 1965 for $70,000 and began displaying her, revenues soared. Eventually Sea World would open locations in Florida, Ohio and Texas, and orcas came to be the parks’ mainstay. Sea World is zealous in defense of its use of orcas for understandable commercial reasons: Mr. Kirby cites figures suggesting that orcas account 70% of the parks’ revenues.

Huh. I’ve been to three different SeaWorlds and have absolutely no recollection of seeing Killer Whales. I had no idea it was that central to the business. I was always more interested in the dolphins (which killer whales apparently are a type of, but I mean dolphins-dolphins). Or maybe it was that the Killer Whale shows were too crowded, thus explaining both how important they are to Sea World and why I never saw them.

Anyhow, the piece is about a book about how it’s wrong to keep killer whales in captivity. It apparently makes a pretty good case, if it has Jon Last convinced.

I overheard at the supply store today someone telling a story. He was relating a conversation with a third party. Somewhere in the words or thoughts were “Hey man, fuck that, this watch cost $8.”

I was not sufficiently curious to inquire further about the conversation, nor did I see his watch, but as a fan of $8 watches, I’m pretty sure I take his side in the conversation.

I accidentally ordered one too many of my US Polo watches. The extra one has been sitting in the basement unused. I fished it out yesterday and can’t for the life of me figure out why I sidelined this one in particular. It’s cosmetically superior to the one I was using in every way. It was a $22 watch and not an $8. I feel inferior to the guy who makes do with an $8 watch.

Well, it’s one part bookstore and one part coffeeshop. A competing chain of B&N. I come here because, aside from Starbucks and convenient stores, it is the only place in Redstone where I can get frou-frou coffee after 5pm. Most of you know that, but I mention it in case you have forgotten.

In order to compensate for the Internet, I have my phone rigged up for tethering. Since I’ve started relying on WiFi at home, I have bandwidth capacity to spare on my plan.

Here’s an odd thing. The poster for this place here in Redstone has a mildly hipster-looking guy a tattoo and a wedding band. The same guy, I’m pretty sure the same picture, back home in the South has neither the tattoos nor the ring. They’ve been photoshopped on, or off. Either one got the poster before the other, or it has something to do with market research. That would be some pretty wicked market research: I would actually bet that people (whites, anyway) around here are more likely to have tattoos, and more likely to marry young.

I arrived in time for happy hour, which is buy-one-get-one-free. Frustratingly, they won’t let me buy one now and get the free one later. I guess they’re betting I say “never mind the second one” but the end result is that I get two, just in case. I may put the second one to waste.

Sitting here alone with two cups of coffee on the table makes me feel oddly lonely.

Next door to this place is a Rent-a-Center. The existence of Rent-a-Center brings out an unpatriotic side of me. It… should… not… exist. At least not in its current form. A more stunning indictment of American consumerism/capitalism does not come to mind.

I got to see the world premier of a movie over the weekend. The world premier was in… Callie, Arapaho. Namely because it was filmed around these parts. It was a really low-budget film, though they did a really good job of making the money count.

We have a two-drop theater here in Callie. Most of the time, we don’t get first-run movies. When a big one – particularly, fortunately, one that stars a Marvel superhero – comes out, we’ll get that one. But otherwise, it’s dollar-theater timing at real theater prices. Of course, not many real movie theaters have reclining seats. This one does. It’s pretty rare there are more than a dozen people in the theater for any given movie. I’m a little worried that they will go out of business, but they seem to be getting by.

Today, in stark contrast to usual, they had a packed house. The movie was a half-hour late getting started as they tried to fit everyone in. Fortunately, the fire marshal wasn’t around. I ended up with what might have been the best seat in the house. It was almost certainly the only seat where nobody was sitting behind me and I could actually recline.

The movie itself was worth my time. It was free, though I wouldn’t have felt bad putting money down for it. It mostly took place on a ranch and the open range, but the “city” scenes were recognizable Callie locales. The story itself involved a ranch family and one of their ranch-hands. There were a number of predictable elements, such as the ranch hand’s love interest being the daughter of the ranching family. There were some interesting class elements in the movie, wherein you look at a set-up where one family has accumulated enough so that they can mostly rely on others to work on the ranch, while the hands do the heavy lifting and wait on that paycheck. The patriarch is handicapped, and the older son is works on the ranch (until he disappears, which is the plot). The younger son is sort of kept away from it. The idea was apparently to groom him to help run the ranch, but since he was never relied on, he was never groomed.

When the film ended, I felt the urge to clap, but nobody else clapped. They eventually did when the credits started rolling and some local names appeared. It was a little bit weird when the lights turned on and one of the main actors of the film (and the director) that I’d been watching on the screen was suddenly standing right there. It felt a little bit like when I was in a urinal next to a guy that I had previously seen on CMT.

I took a rare trip to Redstone that did not involve a substituting gig so that I could take care of some of the stuff I don’t have time to when I am in school all day. However, I got a bit of a late start and by the time I got up here and through Walmart (to return those clothes we bought in Delosa in lieu of having luggage), it was too late to go to either of the ideal coffeehouses. So it was Hastings or Starbucks. I opted for Hastings.

And wouldn’t you know it, I ordered the coffee and fired up the computer only to find out that the Internet was down. I couldn’t get an IP address. I convinced them to reboot the router, which turned out to be a mistake because they inexplicably put their business operations and “Free WiFi” on the same router. So their entire system was down during the reboot and nobody could buy anything. Oops.

Anyhow, rebooting the router didn’t work. So I decided to put my nice new Android phone to the test and see if I could tether (connect computer to phone to Internet). This involved two OSes that I am not remarkably familiar with, Linux and Android. But I got it to work! Booyah! Linux has actually made significant strides in making it easier to install third party software. And Android has turned out to work quite well.

I do have to watch my usage, since I’m on a 4GB limit. At least for now. I called Verizon to ask about something else and the girl on the other end very helpfully pointed out that I was only put on the limit by mistake. She submitted a request to get me back to unlimited. We’ll see if it happens.

I only got up to .5GB last month. I only had it part of the month, but I spent the whole time downloading apps and other stuff that would use an abnormal amount of bandwidth. So I feel pretty confident about staying within the limits.

Unfortunately, I can’t check past usage because of a glitch on Verizon’s site. Another glitch on the site is why I had to call. And yet another glitch is why I was put on 4GB in the first place. Verizon’s website needs work.

It’s hard not to get a chuckle from this:

The cheap signs smashed into lawns and along the corners of busy intersections are hard to miss. “We Buy Junk Cars!” ”Cash for Your House!” ”Computer Repair.” The eyesores have vexed Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober for the past few years as he wastes valuable resources plucking up the signs only to watch them pop up in even greater numbers.

While stopped at a red light a few months ago, Bober studied the unsightly signs and came to a realization that would help him fight their proliferation: The criminals had left their calling cards in the form of business phone numbers.

“These people want us to call them, so let’s call them so much their head spins,” said Bober, who bought a $300 software program in March that makes robocalls to the businesses. The volume of calls has reached as high as 20 calls each to 90 businesses in a day.

Not sure if it’s legal, but I like it if it is. I’ve had that thought before. It’s not like we don’t know who is putting up the signs. The companies in question can say “Hey, that must have been done by some overenthusiastic boy we hired, sorry or whatever” or something, but this gives a particular incentive for them to take it down. There’s little more obnoxious than repeated calls. And unlike tickets, you don’t end up losing money due to court costs (if the businesses are smart, they collect the fines and then go to court and demand a separate hearing on each ticket).

There was an article in the Redstone newspaper a while back about the city coming down on people who aren’t taking care of their property. Most notably it was about enforcing a little-known rule that if the registration on your car isn’t current, you can be ticketed whether you are driving it or not. They’re starting to write these tickets now. The goal is not revenue-generation (for once!) but rather as a means of getting people to either fix or dispose of old cars that are considered a blight on the city.

More locally, there is the case of Kevin Erickson. The first time I met Kevin, it was because he called the police on me. We’d just moved in and he wanted the police to look into who these people were hanging out at the house next door to his aging mother’s. I haven’t seen much of him since his mother died.

Erickson has been in the Callie paper recently. He is an entrepreneur of sorts with a couple of businesses, selling off old stuff. Not the old stuff that we approve of like antiques and whatnot, but rather old cars and tractor equipment. There is a push to shut him down because the old tractors and such are considered, at least by some, to be unsightly. It doesn’t help that one of Erickson’s lots are seen by everyone who passes through Callie.

Now, in one sense, I am more sympathetic to Redstone than Callie, and in another sense I am more sympathetic to Callie. I have some sympathy for Redstone because it does have a pretty serious image problem. As a sort of junky place. And things like cars on cinder blocks for years on-end aren’t helping. And, to their credit, they’re also starting to offer people free disposal service. Whatever it takes, just so long as you get rid of your junk! Callie, in my view, has less to complain about. It doesn’t have a huge image problem. In fact, Erickson’s lots are really the only place in the entire town that is any sort of problem. On the other hand, unlike with Redstone, the lots do stick out like a sore thumb.

Ultimately, I sort of give Redstone a pass. But generally speaking, I look at some of these things as the things that make Arapaho what it is. And not entirely in the negative way. The fact that some people around here are only vaguely aware of what an HOA is just makes my heart sing a little. And when I am driving in the middle of nowhere, a broken down car in the middle of a field is actually more interesting than it is unsightly. The mountains out here are beautiful. We have trees and rivers. But I consider some of the broken down sheds to be a part of the landscape. There are some things about Arapaho that I consider unsightly, but these are not among them.

At the same time, I sort of do understand why these things are considered unattractive in suburban Colosse (for example). I’d probably be kind of upset if I just spent $250k on a house (which is a lot, in Colosse) only to have some hucksters next door making the neighborhood look a lot more like that other neighborhood where people spent $150k on their house.

However, the most enduring characteristic of Arapaho, and I would actually say the Mountain West more generally (outside some of the larger cities) is that you simply don’t have to care about such things. It’s the freedom of not caring. I read somewhere that the average car on the road is 11 years old, which once upon a time would have seemed bizarre. But around here, I even see Dodge Colts. Nobody cares. We live in a 2,400 square foot house (not including the basement) that is adjacent to trailers and mobile homes. It’s not ideal, but unlike the hustle and bustle of the suburbs where the “right” neighborhood means everything, it’s actually quite liberating.

The freaking out over Erickson’s lot reminds me of one of the things I was happy to leave behind from Colosse.

I am not what you might think of as a fashionista. I like to tuck in my Hawaiian shirts. The only matching I really care about involves belt-shoes-watch.

Every now and again I will do something conspicuously right. I bought an old cop’s shirt at a thrift store and would sometimes wear it unbuttoned over a white t-shirt and for whatever reason strangers would compliment me on it back in the early aughts.

And, apparently, I am a very good Walmart dresser.

When I suddenly had to replace my missing warddrobe in Genesis, we went to Walmart in order to restock. I bought a black plaid button shirt and some black jeans. Both of Clancy’s sisters complimented me on it even before they realized where I had bought the outfit and put it together.

It came up again at the wedding when their aunt complimented me on my suspenders (suspenders being another thing that I have done right over the years – people apparently like suspenders) and commented “I’ll bet you didn’t get that at Walmart.”

I hadn’t gotten it at Walmart the day before, but with the exception of the shirt, I had indeed gotten all of it at Walmart. The pants were Wrangler slacks, though, and not the typical Puritan/George that one things of as Walmart pants.

The whole weekend was another one of those God Bless Walmart situations. If you’re stranded without your luggage, there’s one place you can go to get things in order in a jiff even in a comparatively rural place like Genesis.