Partial Ordering

My plans for the yard include a fair amount of hardscaping, most conspicuously in the form of doubling the size of the patio, adding some rain cover to it, and building in a Traeger electric pellet smoker and perhaps a natural-gas grill as well. I’ll be talking to the landscaper about the preliminary design on Wednesday, but I just ordered the Traeger, which will arrive well before they build out the patio, so I can use it for a while.

The good news is that this model doesn’t need any complicated assembly; you basically tip it over, add the wheels, and stand it back up.

The bad news is that that means I have to drag the 300-pound box a good 50 feet across the grass to the back patio, and then open it up. After convincing whoever delivers it that they have to back their truck up my steep 70-foot driveway, because there’s no way in hell I’m dragging it uphill. 😁

(Kiki does not accept delivery orders of items larger than she is)

Belated Christmas present report

Many years ago, I found myself in Ohio for Christmas, and discovered that the gift exchange would include my step-sister’s three young daughters, whom I’d basically never met (I’d seen the oldest a few times when she was a toddler). On very short notice, I had to come up with something that they might like. I went with the DVD box set of Kaleido Star, about the only age-appropriate anime series I could find in a quick trip to the mall in the snow. (three girls, three discs, perfect!)

I had to cross my fingers on “appropriate” because I knew they’d watch the dub, and I’d heard that Fool’s dialogue had been cleaned up at least a little. I figured that anything left would go over their heads, and nothing in the visuals would upset their parents.

On Sunday, I went over for dinner with my parents, and one of the three, now age 20, was there learning recipes from my mom. After dinner, she asked if I was the one who’d bought that for them Way Back When, and I found out that they adored it, and still watched it together at least once a year. When one of them moved out of state, they fought over who got to keep it.

So that worked out.

(picture is unrelated, but does include a star…)

Dark patterns…

A vendor I recently did business with sent me an email asking me to verify my email address. This is not an unusual practice, but usually happens before you can use the account you created with them.

Sure enough, if you click on the “verify email” button, what you’re really doing is verifying that you want to receive more than a dozen types of marketing emails.

Nailed it!

In which Michiko Hada absolutely nailed my invisible-handcuff fetish. 😁

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