Endings and Things Past

  • I have watched the last episode of ST:TOS.  This means I have watched all of Star Trek.  I am fully prepared to begin watching ST:DIS when it begins.  Well, prepared except for access to it.  I have discontinued my cable television service.  I assume I pay to subscribe to CBS All Access, and I assume my Roku can do that natively.  I’ll have to check it out.
  • Speaking of discontinuing my cable television, the cable company has now targeted me for a telephone harassment campaign.  The same woman called three times this week, and each time I was in the middle of something.  This last time, it was driving.  I pulled off the road and parked so I could hear her out.  She didn’t listen at all.  I told her that I canceled my television and telephone services because I almost never used either.  She continued to offer deals and other things I won’t use.  I finally had to hang up on her.  I fully expect to get these kinds of calls incessantly.  I may have to block them.
  • Speaking of media company salespeople, AT&T sent a solicitor around yesterday.  He didn’t have a solicitor’s permit, and I called the police on him.  I plan to start doing this on a regular basis.  I really hate door-to-door salespeople.  Many years ago, I lived in an apartment complex that prohibited solicitors, and I learned to call the police on them.  I have lived here for more than three years, and I was delighted to discover that this city has an ordinance requiring a solicitor’s permit.  No one ever gets one.  If you demand to see a solicitor’s permit and they don’t have one with them, they are breaking the law, and the police are obligated to investigate.  If these companies are going to make the effort to bother me, then I’m going to make some effort to bother them in return.
  • I finally gave in and started to watch Longmire.  I had seen parts of a couple of episodes, but now I’m watching from the beginning.  Katee Sackhoff is all the justification I need.  However after watching a few episodes, I find much of their police procedural to be naively inaccurate, and Lou Diamond Phillips’ portrayal of a Native American to be more than a little stereotypical.  All I’m currently watching now are Longmire and the new Twin Peaks, and Twin Peaks has allegedly concluded.
  • Where do the miles go?  In 5½ months, I have driven 8,300 miles in my truck.  I work from home, so zero of those miles are related to my daily commute.  About 3500 of those miles came from my recent trip to Montana.  However, that’s still about 200 miles per week, which I find surprising, especially when I frequently don’t leave the house for days at a time, and many of my errands stay within the confines of my local town.
  • Perhaps I should start watching Back.  I’ve become a Louise Brealey fan since listening to her performance on the audiobook for The Girl on the Train.  Back is a new British comedy, and it looks like she has the lead role.  I’ll have to figure out how to access the show.
  • My Savage Model 16 Lightweight Hunter has arrived.  It really does seem light.  The optics should arrive on Monday.  I’m eager to get it ready for hunting, but it seems a little unlikely that I will manage it in time for this year.
  • I have decided that I need to work on my grammar in regard to the past tense of the verbs “boot” and “reboot”.  Somehow, decades ago, I picked up the idea that the past tense is “boot” and not “booted”.  For the life of me, I can’t figure out why I thought that.  So, I have decided that I need to make an effort to include the -ed suffix whenever I am using the word in the past tense.
  • Starting explanations with the word “So” is an even worse habit I have.  Long ago I noticed that pedantic speakers start explanations that way, and several years ago I dipped my toe in the water.  It sucked me in, and somehow it become an instant habit.  I’ve been trying for a while to avoid it, but the word usually escapes my mouth before I think about it, and then it’s too late.
  • It makes me irrationally sad to read about fires in Glacier National Park, just weeks after I was there.  I didn’t go to Sperry Chalet, though I had considered it, and now it’s gone.  I know that fires have passed through areas to which I have definitely been.  It’s irrational because I may never go back there again and see the damage.  I am lucky to have gone before the destruction, rather than after or during.  Still, I have fresh, fond memories of those places, and now I know that they are gone.