What I'm Reading...

Dixie leaned against my leg while I rested from all the organizing and decluttering I was doing. I said, "Hello, Dix, what's up on the dog world?"
"Sparky's been stuck inside because of the rain. The dog next door, who never tells me her name, doesn't say anything unless she's singing to the sounds that come and go fast."
"What? Oh, yeah, the sirens on fire trucks."
"What's a truck?"
"A big car that has space in the back so people can carry things; that's open to the sky."
"Oh, those – there are ones made of fire?"
"No, they're made of the usual stuff, but they go around putting out fires people don't want."
"Oh."
"What about Morris?"
"He's not part of the dog world – you've told me that before, and he also says it a lot."
"Well, he's right, he's a cat, so he's different from dogs and Two Legs."
"Pack leader?"
"Yes Dixie?"
"You're quiet."
"Yeah, I am."
"Why?"
"Why is someone like they are? That's a deep question that often takes a while to explain."
"Oh."
"Let me try – I spent what you would of think of as my puppy time in a place that wasn't always safe. My brother got into trouble a lot, so I learned how to be quiet so I didn't draw attention to myself. I didn't want to be noticed."
"Your brother? That's Molly's and Boo's pack leader?"
"Yes."
"He scares me. He's loud."
"Ah, and I'm quiet, so you're used to me. That explains something, he wonders why you shake when he's around – not shake paws, but shake your body. I'll tell him what's up with that."
"So you move so quiet because you were scared?"
"Wow, way to cut to the root of the situation, Dixie Pup. Yeah, that's probably it. I like being quiet too, it's better, in my mind, than stomping around like the roommate and some other people I know."
"Hey, talking about stomping, did I hear someone stomping on the roof?"
"Yeah, I need to get some work done on it."
"How do they do that?"
"They scrape the shingles off and put new ones down."
"I bet they're tall."
"No, they have things they can climb up on to get up there."
"That's the big difference between dog people and two legs people, you have all those things to do things."
"Yes, it's part of what makes us who we are. It took a long time to develop those things."
"Okay, so if you have all those things you can use, why can't you turn the backyard into inside?"
"Not this again, Dix, we've already talked about this."
I got up and got back to work before she drug me into that conversation again.

Well, let's see what's been going on with me… look into the crystal ball… Ah, that.

For the most part things have been quiet. But at the suggestion of just about everyone I know IRL I got a new phone on Saturday. Oh boy. The person selling me a phone wasn't much help at all in configuring it – he told me multiple times that my questions would require me to take them to Best Buy's Geek Squad for help, because they no longer train their people on configuring phones – they have only what they can find out on their own. They are there to sell phones and deal with billing issues. In the past I could call the Disability Support Line, but they only help deaf people now. Grr.

I got a Samsung Galaxy S25 for reasons I won't go into because there are some of you that will ask me why I didn't get a phone from a specific brand and I don't want to go into that yet again.

It pains me to admit this, because in general parlance I'm a geek, and in some arenas a full-on nerd, but I could get better results out of trying to make telephone calls with an alto saxophone. If someone calls it's a strong chance I'm going to miss the call, and calling back can take a long while because getting the phone app opened is an iffy proposition. I have no idea how many voicemails I've got waiting for me at this point, and I spent forever deleting text messages, which I don't use anyway. It has things on it I'll never use, like Facebook, Spotify, etc., and there's a bunch of stuff on my main screen that I'll never use and I don't know where the other icons are for my blind apps. Nearby Explorer got bought by another company, but I can't find that email telling me what needs to come from the app store, Sero is also not there, and the same is the case with Scripttalk. I've got a Geek Squad appointment at 10:20 tomorrow morning, so I hope we can get a lot of this stuff resolved so I can start using my phone. And I should have known better than to buy a communications device the day before the start of a Mercury retrograde.

My roof is shot. I got it appraised and talked to a general contractor, and it's going to need a full replacement. The appraiser was from my insurance company, which is now looking to be my ex-insurance company come the start of next year, and they're not going to help me one bit on it, thanks to a high deductible I have. What's it going to cost? $13,500 if nothing pops up, so I'm really going to need around sixteen and a half grand. I've got a first mortgage that I'm paying down well, and a second mortgage that I don't pay anything on and that gains no interest, though if I refinance or sell the house that'll have to be paid off. But I can't be sure to be able to pay another loan for the roof. I'm going to talk to the city and the county about this issue and see what can be done, and if I don't find anything I'll call my state representative, who wouldn't do anything himself, but one of the people in his office will – I've had luck with this in the past.

My room is starting to get set up. Part of me is doing that attraction energy thing and not putting anything on the bookcase headboard on the other side of the bed, leaving the drawers empty, etc., but to be honest I'm not moving anyone I get involved with into my house ever again – I read a book on living apart together that cemented my thinking, but I've been of this mind since, hmm, let's see, April 9th of 2011. So the hard part will be deciding what goes in those under-the-bed drawers. And yes, this is sort of flying in the face of my resolution to give up on romantic relationships (I almost wrote entanglements), but there's a difference between stepping away from something and nailing the door shut.

A friend of mine is playing with graphics through Chat GBT and Cockpit, and he's managed to do a couple of covers for me. I'm almost giddy about this.