Spring like today. Gray, rainy and 48 degrees. Farenheit. I saw a hawk stalk a sandwich delivery guy. I saw a corpulent fellow jogging slower than a walk, nice shoes. I did not see a white ladder all covered in water but that would have been cool.
I was sore this morning so I went out to walk again. Hope to be sore again, with a lessening as time wears on. The weather won’t hold, but, and this is important, the weather in my car is pretty damn stable. There are buttons that make it warmer or colder, that make the music louder or softer, that make the wipers faster or slower. There’s also pedals and wheels and other doo-hickeys including a lever that shows other motorists and pedestrians your intent by flashing a light at them on either the left or right side. It’s pretty cool.
So I cranked up the music and the heat, rolled down a window and stomped on one of the pedals and as though a function of the car the GF called. I pulled over, did some chatting, saw the hawk and the jogger, said something sweet, hung up and drove to a place to walk.
I toyed with the idea of buying the new Tim Powers book. The brick and mortar store in my walking place only had the hard back and wanted a pretty penny. Ok, the pennies could be ugly, they wanted a hell of a lot of them. I haven’t admitted this out loud to anyone but the GF, my eyes give me about ten minutes of reading time before they start bitching. Yes, I have a current prescription for my glasses, wait, my glasses are current. Don’t worry, my eyes are probably fine, I think it’s just a brain tumor or something. At any rate I didn’t get the book. Wait, no, I might have gotten it at any rate, I didn’t get it at the rate they were charging.
I like supporting brick and mortar stores, especially book stores, extra-specially locally owned brick and mortar bookstores, but fuckingshitassmunch more than double the cost? Heck no. Plus there’s that whole brain tumor thing. I figure if I order the kindle version from amazon they’ll send it to Florida and refund me enough to buy the hard back from the locals.
I went into a best buy. I’d like to say shitty things about the best buy bunny bread winners, but, even though the one guy I asked for help was unable to answer a very simple question, he was a nice guy and, honestly, I didn’t know the answer either. If I were in his shoes I would have gone an extra step, not so much for the customer but to sate my own curiousity, but I didn’t begrudge not wanting to place his shitty job in jeopardy. His explanation was tiresome. See they had this software that was awfully light and I read everything on the box, I couldn’t tell if there was a disc in it or not. He couldn’t either. I suggested he open the seal. He gave me the dumbass copyright policy despite my insistence that I’d buy the fucking thing if it had a disc. Probably all for the best.
Let me point out that as tedious and banal this all sounds, it is very rare for me to actively attempt to purchase software, like twice a decade rare, and sort of rare for me to actively attempt to purchase a brand new release book without some incentive (e.g. Barnes and Noble used to offer members 40 percent off retail for new releases.). So it’s a big deal, to me, that not only was there no ticker tape parade, flight of angels, or even any cake, but there seemed to be active obstacles to me even trying to do something so against my nature. It’s not that I’m cheap, in fact I’m foolish with my money, it’s that I believe of all things software and words should be available free to all who want them. Food too, but that’s more of an ideal than an expectation, I mean words and software are free if you’re trying. Food usually costs you sex or money, well, you, me they only take money.
So, yeah, there you go. I sure like my shoes.
Oh this whole ‘I’m-writing-daily?-I guess-I-am!’ thing may stop or at least pause next month. February is weird enough for me, toss in a leap year and oral surgery and I might just spend the whole fucking month under the covers assuming I don’t chew through them or the gods don’t set them on fire.
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