Darkoshi

It took me all day to clean out one small box out of many that I have around the house. This one had a few items I brought back from Qiao's house after breaking up with him. Deciding what to do with each item. Where to put them, and which things not to keep. It takes me forever.

The dog tags were the hardest. I finally found a small cushioned box to keep them in.

The colorful shiny metallic foil chocolate wrappers compacted into various shapes, I put together with others, in a bigger box with clear lid.

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I came across the receipt of a 14" flat CRT TV and a Memorex DVD player I bought from Sears in 2006. The TV cost $99. The DVD player cost only $34.99! Both prices were much less than I would have guessed. I still have the TV in a bedroom though I rarely use it. My mom has the DVD player; I have other DVD players now.

I also have a large CRT TV which used to be Qiao's; he didn't want it anymore. As well as an extra LED TV which I was going to replace the CRT with. But the CRT TV turns on instantly while the LED TV (a Toshiba FireTV - avoid them is my advice) sometimes takes several minutes. I suppose I will eventually get rid of the CRT. I don't know if I can find someone local who would want it, considering it still works. I might have to pay someone to take it to the dump. Or take it myself if it's not the horrible smelling landfill place that it would need to go to.

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On the coffee table is a row of audio cassettes, on which I had copied music for Qiao back when he had a vehicle that played cassettes. I still have the original copies of the music; I don't need the cassettes. So I don't know what to do with them, and they sit there and sit there. I could erase them and take them to Goodwill, I guess? I have occasionally seen home-recorded tapes like that at Goodwill which weren't erased. But I don't think I'd do that.... Hmm, then again what could it hurt. They won't have my name. They won't follow me home to arrest me for having copied copyrighted music to audio cassettes, and then having given the cassettes away.

If someone wants the cassettes for recording their own music to, they can record over them. And if they get a kick out of listening to the music that's already on them, that's great too. But cassettes are old tech; few people would probably want them either way.

Well good, that's one decision made, and an easy solution. Give them to Goodwill in a box along with other stuff I've already put aside to take there.

I have a memory from the 1980s of a certain semi-public restroom (like in restaurants, but this was a building with a big meeting room where one of my aunt's clubs had meetings and events) in Germany. The building itself was probably built in the preceding decades.

The soap dispenser was metal with a small crank-handle that you would turn. Inside must have been a block of bar soap. Turning the crank would grate off flakes of soap into your other waiting hand. I think the soap was pink.

The hand towel was a long length of fabric which presumably was rolled up at the top and bottom inside the device it was dispensed from. You would only see a section of the fabric at a time. To get a fresh part of the towel you would either pull on the fabric, or perhaps turn a knob on the side; I don't recall exactly. This would cause the fabric to unroll from the top and get rolled up into the bottom of the unit.

The towel was mostly white like the one in this photo, but I think it had colored stripes on both vertical edges instead of in the center.

This video shows the inside of a similar device:
Continuous Cloth Roll Towel Machine

The soap device was like this one:
GRUNELLA® -Seifenmühle
Soap for cranking

That wasn't the only restroom I encountered those devices in; they were common back then in many places. Similar devices can still be bought nowadays, and for your own bathroom too, from what I see.

I haven't bought wall calendars the last few years, from lack of finding ones I particularly like, and/or lack of time to seek them out. Instead, I've printed out monthly calendar pages from timeanddate.com, and attached them to old wall calendars with paper clips. It lets me revisit pretty calendar images from prior years.

I have a box of scrap paper where I put papers that are blank on one side. December's calendar page was printed out on the other side of a flyer I made back in... 2009... when I found puppy Zorro in my yard. "Found a little lost puppy [ phone number ] FOUND PUPPY".

It may be the last of those flyers I've finally used up. I'm not sure. I sort of want to use them up, not to get this sad strange feeling every time I see one of them.

It is surreal, Zorro having shown up in my yard, been a puppy, grown up, lived a full life, died, so many years, and me still having these flyers in perfect condition... as if it was just the other day.

I wanted to post some of my memories of Serena here, like I did for Zorro. I wrote them on my laptop in the weeks after her death. Serena died two months ago. But I have not been in the mood to do the necessary reformatting and editing/rewording. When I try, it doesn't feel right. The words don't sound right.

So I think I will keep them unposted.

Qiao adopted a one-year-old dog from the shelter a few days ago. I did not want another pet so soon. But I don't begrudge him giving a dog a home. He named her Venus. Luckily, she isn't terrified of the sound of fireworks like Serena was.

I've discovered that heights bother me less at night / when it is dark. Today I cleared pine straw off the roof, using an extensible pole with a rake-like attachment while standing on a ladder leaned against the roof. The sun set before I was done, so I continued while wearing a headlamp (yay LED bulbs which can shine bright for hours without using the batteries up).

Usually doing the side above the garage feels scary to me. But today in the dark, notwithstanding the flood lights and headlamp, it didn't bother me. Doing this task after dark has another benefit - not having the sun glare in my eyes.

.

It reminds me of an amusement park ride I was on as a child. I'm not sure, but it must have been Space Mountain at Disneyland. It was like a roller coaster, but indoors and in the dark. Normal roller coasters terrify me due to my fear of heights. But this ride didn't bother me and was fun.

I take my first taste of this:
strawberry banana
So Delicious
Dairy Free
coconutmilk
yogurt alternative

and think "It's like that Dannon!"
(re: the strawberry banana flavor)
the memory of which must be from between 1980 and 1986

and I remember again
the yogurt cups back then weren't plastic;
they were wax-coated paper
with rolled lips at the top
that you could unroll
and chew with your teeth.
I don't remember how they were sealed shut on the top.
Aluminum foil like now, or something else?

That sudden memory may even be false.
Was it really Dannon I ate back then?
Did they have this flavor?
I'm pretty sure there was a vanilla flavor I ate.
I think the vanilla came in blue containers. But maybe yellow.
Not sure I really had strawberry banana way back then,
that might be from more recently.

There's this which mentions them using paper-wax cups in the past:
http://blog.trilliumarts.com/2010/03/dannon-yogurt-cups-part-1.html

According to this photo, they did have vanilla in a blue container.
(Photo from: How Dannon Made Yogurt Mainstream in America After Starting as a Staple for Immigrants)

But I wasn't able to find out how long ago they started making strawberry-banana.

Whew, is it hot outside. Upper 90s, but with the humidity and in the direct sun it feels like in the 100s.

Qiao hired tree cutters to take care of the fallen tree as well as another dead tree that hadn't fallen. They finished it all, including grinding the stumps and removing the debris, in under 5 hours. It's a good thing they started early when it was still overcast and not as hot.

I will need to do some more fence repair before I can let the dogs loose again. But it's too hot now; maybe this evening. Although the forecast says it will still be 90 degrees, feeling like 96, at 9pm.

My mom is going to a free outdoor concert this evening. Phew. Hot, hot, hot.

Apparently Fort Jackson doesn't do their annual 4th of July Torchlight Tattoo and Fireworks anymore*. I didn't go often... I'm not into patriotic stuff, but the cannon blasts and fireworks, and cheering for the states and territories in the union was fun. Except for the parts where I worried that the fireworks would misfire and hurt someone.

I am still doing my work-work for the day. Learning to write JUnit tests, using Mockito. I feel somewhat ambivalent about their usefulness. In my experience, they only test what you already know works, and when they break it's not usually because the code got broken, but rather because the test code or test data became outdated.

Qiao's back yard now smells like my mom's oil paints used to. Or rather, the turpentine she used to clean the paint off the brushes. I like the scent, knowing that it is only pine.

I had a small set of oil paints when I was younger. And a small bottle of orange-scented turpentine. The orange didn't mask the turpentine smell at all; it just morphed it into a different strong overpowering and astringent scent.

Oil paints didn't appeal to me much. Too long to dry. Too hard to clean. Too messy. Not very suited to my style of abstract art. Me, not talented enough to paint realistic images very well. Although one time I copy-painted a portrait of my mom and brother from two photographs, and it turned out fairly well.

Turpentine smell makes me think of the Mediterranean too.

Whaddya know: orange terpene is made from orange trees and can be used as a substitute for turpentine. But I still think that the one I had back then was orange-scented pine turpentine. One made from orange tree extracts would probably have smelled better, like one of those citrus-based cleaners.

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*A web search shows that 2017's Torchlight Tattoo event was cancelled due to the year-long centennial celebration that finished up that year. 2018's event was cancelled due to the "Victory Week" celebration in June of that year. But nothing at all is mentioned anywhere about it this year, which seems odd to me, considering that per those pages, "The Torchlight Tattoo is typically one of the most popular July Fourth events in the Midlands. Before last year, Fort Jackson hosted July Fourth celebrations each year in recent memory".
Per a family friend, Fort Jackson is not doing the July event at all anymore, instead having fireworks as part of their annual June celebration, the aforementioned "Victory Week".

I had my headphones on a few days ago at work, listening to my music, and the Muppet Show Theme Song came on. It had a strong effect on me, a sudden welling up of emotion. It was like I suddenly felt what things felt like when I was a child. Feeling content, maybe happy, anticipatory, cozy. All the feels instead of hum-drum monotony. It brought tears to my eyes.

It's like when I'm driving in my car with the radio on, and the radio reception improves so that it switches from regular stereo to HD radio. Until you hear it, you can't really fathom what you are missing. But the moment you do hear it, the regular stereo version sounds so very inadequate.