Much-Needed Quiet

As I type this the only music in the vicinity is coming from next door, which is only audible from the home office and should abate soon. I understand that some cultures are loud, I grew up in a noisy Jewish household, but loud and selfish, completely indifferent to and inconsiderate of those who live around you... well, that must be a 21st century artifact. Regardless, today was a good recovery day, provided I leave this room in the next five minutes or so before the unwanted music gets to me.

Wedding Out the Window

White Rabbits! And I thought this was going to be an especially lucky day, what with my usual weekend chores all done before 8 AM and the grocery shopping (and gas station) before noon and the lovely emotional nostalgia kick I got from the 1986 NY Mets reunion ceremony... but that all came to a crashing halt around six hours ago when extremely loud music started emanating from the Hot Tub House outside our Yonkers-facing windows (home office and bedroom). Apparently it wasn't a run-of-the-mill party, but a complete wedding party, all in white and enjoying music that must have been too loud for them, and was certainly too loud for a suburban-city enclave surrounded by neighbors. I'm usually not that passive aggressive any more but I called the cops as the speakers blasted it out well above the 60db allowed before 10 PM (and the 50db allowed after 10 PM). No idea if the gendarmes ever arrived, but I've spent much of the last six hours in a very shaky state, wearing earplugs as well as the new noise-cancelling headphones Robin purchased for our flights to and from England. Unfortunately we couldn't get the earphones to work with the bedroom TV, but they worked well enough with my iPhone that I was able to listen to (and thoroughly enjoy despite the circumstances) the new Paul McCartney album. But the wedding noise put paid to my plans to, you know, get a nap in which I couldn't do earlier in the afternoon because screechy children, or even take a much-needed shower which will now have to wait another day. The music is finally winding down now, although loud voices still prevail, so the earphones are off (tried in vain to doze with them on) and the earplugs are in until the madness abates entirely. I reckon I'll be a wreck tomorrow, when I do hope to get in at least one nap and definitely a shower, and am very grateful it's a Sunday as I'll need the extra day to recover.

Wrapping Up the Month

Weird day, I had dreams of my mother back when she was mobile (pre-COVID) but I knew she was gone so I kept wondering if I should ask her how she could be there when she was dead. Not the first time this has happened, but it was impetus enough to keep me up in the wee smalls as well as ta post-logoff visit to my uncle in his current assisted-living facility a short bus ride away. And my cousin showed up while we were there, so that was a nice bonus! While we were out I mailed some checks at the post office and we had some copies made of our mailbox key (alas, we'll have to return as, while they fit the lock, we couldn't turn them to open the mailbox). The heat took a lot out of me, and I've been hydrating like mad since we got home. I'm just happy July is over with.

Silly Site o' the Day

My feet are still hurting, nobody really needed me in the office, so since I've done my two mandated days today and tomorrow I get to keep working from home, which usually means I'm more productive than usual anyway. Of course, I do miss watching the water towers:

Via Laughing Squid.
 

Homeward Bound

After three straight days on my feet, especially with yesterday's commute (MTA's BusTime lied to me about my commuter bus not being in operation in the morning so I wound up doing the local bus/subway/ walking thing both ways and that really did a number on the tootsies), I decided to take it easy and work from home the rest of this week, having met my 2-day-in-office mandatory quota. And I really needed it, I'm still very tired from all the flitting about. Fortunately I had a chance to relax a bit, although not really all that much since my workload continues to be surprisingly heavy for this time of year. It does look like things will calm down next month, but I don't want to speak too soon.

Silly Site o' the Day

If you're gonna do a LEGO ad, here's the right way to do it:

Unfortunately the LEGO don't actually move or do anything, so the ad is a tad deceptive.

Can't Trust That Day

Still somewhat exhausted from yesterday's sojourn, I nonetheless schlepped into the city with my backpack to help greet a bunch of peer reviewers and make sure all was in readiness for this very busy week of both peer reviewing and PCAOB inspections. I'll be so thrilled when the week is over! July has been a heck of a month, and I need a vacation more than ever, but at this point I'll settle for a quiet August. I tried to keep my movements to a minimum, and it was really nice doing the homeward commute unburdened as all my stuff was left at the office in a temporary locker. Still, methinks I'm getting too old for this, Riggs.

Zoo Me

This morning we made our final preparations for the 20-minute drive down to the Bronx Zoo to stroll about and schmooze with coworkers and take photos of the animals. This time we stayed longer than we'd planned as we had "table duty" for an hour where Robin drew sketches of the mascot for one of the firm's charities and I got to exhort folks to donate to receive very cute little animal keychains with KPMG t-shirts (I got the little lion, which goes with my work backpack). Unfortunately the volunteer hour meant there was no way we could realistically make the monorail in the Asia exhibit, probably my favorite part of the zoo, because if you don't go in the morning (which we couldn't as our time started at noon) you will never get into as the queues are too long. That did me in for certain, and we decided to abandon the queue and head on home to watch our recording of the last Tour de France stage and pretty much collapse. I'm still somewhat somnambulant, but managed to shower thanks to Rob's assistance. All my stuff is now packed for tomorrow, it's just a matter of getting up at 5:15 AM...

Back in Business

The new printer arrived while we were out shopping and sush'ing, and I still can't believe Robin was able to carry it up that indoor flight from the landing to our apartment. Goodness only knows when it'll be out of the place entirely, it sits near the old air conditioner in its box. It may be time to take our downstairs neighbor up on his offer to help with the schleppage. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready for tomorrow's company outing to the Bronx Zoo, which is sure to exhaust me as I then have to go into the office two days running. Ah well, one day at a time!

Hardware and Software

Few things put me into fight-or-flight (in this case, always flight) mode faster than tech going wrong. And of course with built-in enshittification (used to be "obsolesence" but enshittification is so much worse) things go wrong a lot more quickly than they used to. For about a week I haven't been able to log onto a client site, and neither the helpdesk at my firm nor theirs has been able to help me. So this will probably necessitate a trip to the physical client site in the Wall Street area in my near future to get someone to fix it there. Then our printer gave out today, shortly after I printed my pay stub. Robin's kept it going for about eight years but couldn't manage whatever was wrong with it today, so we bit the financial bullet and bought a new one, arriving tomorrow. Lastly, what the what with our cable? We haven't been able to tune into a bunch of channels for a few days now. Our workaround was watching them via Apple TV, which means it's not the carrier but the physical cable boxes. I suspect an update caused something to break, and it turned out the boxes needed a hard reboot (which the carrier usually does remotely but didn't this time). Voila, our channels are all back now, albeit with occasionally jumps in the transmission (which I still think of as glitches in the matrix). I miss the days when I could just turn on a TV and adjust the antenna...