Joy in Mudville

Not the baseball Mudville but the coffee mudville. I have found my perfect cup. Also, maybe my perfect water glass. It's from an Australian company called Keepcup. They have a 12 oz size (not that easy to find in lidded coffee mugs) and it's not too hot to hold and stays hot and isn't metal and doesn't dribble and comes in very cool colors. I bought one on Amazon and used it for the first time this morning and it's perfect.

Keepcup also has glass versions and, best of all, double glass versions. I drink a lot of ice water. I keep a glass of ice water near me all day all year round. I'm always on the lookout for glasses that don't sweat. My current ones are getting all beat up and I never loved them anyway and they have no lids. Double walled glasses don't sweat and these Keepcup ones have lids!! Amazon does not carry the double walled one so I had to order it off their website.

Last night, I was trying to go to sleep and the fire alarm went off and off and off and off... it screamed for about 20 minutes. The screaming was then joined by the sirens of fire engines. And then it was 11:30 pm. And I finally fell asleep. 4:30 sure seemed early this morning. I haven't found out what the alarm was about but the building seems in tact this morning so I'm thinking it wasn't a major fire.

At 9:30 (in an hour) I need to leave for Big Fish Games. Their offices are located just on the other side of downtown from here. Too far to walk and no good bus routes from there to there but, happily, it's easy to get to by car. I really don't like the games they produce these days but, I'm happy to play them while they watch for $100.00.

Oops, my brother has his newsletter ready for an edit. Duty calls!

My tweets

• Thu, 15:52: I'm by nearly clever enough to create the best caption for this shot. https://t.co/APKYpegAh0 https://t.co/O5W8f2hEPL

Up and down and up and down

I am typing on my new Pixelbook and I love it. It's very pretty and really light weight. The keyboard has a great feel. Better than my old Pixel Chromebook and I loved that feel. It's white and gray like an Apple laptop which is kind of annoying but, at the same time, very pretty.

It was really easy to set up. I'm going to love it. I already do!

I also ordered a Pixelbook Pen which arrived. However, the Pen arrived totally dead. The pen was $100 and I'm not at all sure I will even use it. I have two weeks to try it out and return it if I don't want it. That decision is going to be easy with this one. I think they are going to replace it. I'm in a long, involved chat session now. I've been transferred 3 times already. I'm guessing they forgot to set up the scripts for dead pens.

My Big Fish thing turned out to be very interesting. I had very low expectations but then I got there and discovered that it was not a game playing session but a focus group with 8 other women. I had heard (and snottily disapproved) some of the others chatting in the lobby. NOT my kind of peops. So, I went into the session with dread.

And it turned out to be very fun. One of the women talked too much and raised not cogent points but even she was not that bad. The session was run by a pro and it was really interesting to watch what he did and how he did it. It was 2 hours long and felt more like 45 mins. And I got $100!

It was a prepaid visa which is always kind of a pain so I learned long ago that the easiest way for me to use one is to use it to buy a $100 Amazon gift card and just add it to my account. Done.

This chat guy is looking to get slapped. He says "I have good news for you!" Then he tells me they are going to replace the pen "Free of Cost!" No shit, sherlock. Not impressed that you sent me broken hardware. Not impressed that it took 30 minutes in ridiculous chat to get you to send me a working replacement - especially after I spent extra to get this broken one shipped faster... yeah, not impressed.

But, I am still impressed with the Pixelbook!

I wore my latest top to the research session today.



In the middle of the session I discovered that I had sewn those cuffs on exactly upside down. the raw edge of one cuff was out with the nice edge sewn into the sleeve. OOOPS. Undoing the cuff was a pain in the ass but kept me busy during that chat session. I am going to go back and sew it on correctly when I finish this. Black is a bitch to sew on and a quadruple bitch to undo.

I got a really nice email today from a woman who is an AP reporter doing a story on online shopping and USPS delivery. She wanted to know if she could interview me for a story. Normally I would say no but her note was so nice and what the hell so I said yes. She just called and it was a really interesting conversation. She told me a couple of interesting things.

She said that UPS was going to implement a holiday surcharge this year and that USPS was looking to offer Sunday package delivery beyond just Amazon and was looking to add a new service. You shop online - like Walmart or some other brick and mortar and then the post office picks it up and delivers it that day or the next. I like that.

What a busy day. I'm on a kick of emptying out my freezer. Today's find was spaghetti. It doesn't look delicious so I think I'm going to casserole it up ... spoon it into a baking pan and top with sour cream and grated cheese and olives and bake it.

But, first I want to fix that sleeve.