Now to go to Long Island to have my printer serviced.

 

One would think that I'd be having no problems with a printer which is only 3 1/2 months old.  Yet, I'm reminded of John Belushi going "But Nooooo!" on early episodes of Saturday Night Live.  Yesterday, from what I can tell, all of my printer nozzles got clogged, and I can't clean it myself.  So, off I will go to Long Island to have the printer serviced.

Going to Long Island from the Northern Suburbs of NYC is a pain in the ***.  Luckily, I already have an excuse to cross the bridge to get there: I have to bring RQS home and pick up the suitcase I had packed for our Eastern Canada / New England cruise.  So, after I drop RQS off (and retrieve my suitcase), off I go to Farmingville, NY for printer servicing.  Of course, I'll have to find the time to retrieve the printer once it is fixed.  But until then, I'll have to do without a color printer and scanner.

The question remains: In which gender do I want to present in the morning?

The way I feel, I will likely present as Marian, as I'm in the mood to wear a dress.  So, if I do, I hope I don't get any flack from the person who owns the place.  But then, I could change my mind before the morning comes.

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I am overdue for my car's oil change, but there's nothing I can do about it right now.  My appointment is scheduled for another 1 1/2 weeks from now, and I'm trying not to put on too much mileage before my appointment.  (I set the date for my 18k mile service to take place after I returned from the cruise that was postponed.  I'm hoping that I don't break 20k miles before then.  

 

I didn't have problems with the Clapper, just a Flapper.

 

Instead of talking about GI-Tract issues that cause toilet problems, today's focus is on the more mundane - a toilet flapper.  RQS and I were ready to go out and get a mani-pedi together, and then we had a problem.  The toilet wouldn't flush, and water was continually running.  This could only mean one thing: The toilet flapper was stuck in the up position and wouldn't close. 

I've been dealing with this problem for ages.  It was not because the flapper wouldn't make a good seal.  It was because the chain connecting the flapper to the flush handle kept getting stuck or disconnected. I jury rigged some solutions, but hoped I'd replace my ugly yellow toilet before having to deal with the flapper.  You may say that replacing a flapper is easy.  And so it usually is.  But I couldn't get the darned thing off of its mount, and I refused to call for expensive help. To make things a little worse, I couldn't turn off the water to the toilet (a problem which will require a plumber's help to deal with a frozen shut-off valve).  So I knew that whatever solution I chose would need to be done while water was flowing into the tank.

This was not a task I wanted to do on a Saturday when everything was going to be expensive.  I'd rather be getting my Mani-pedi.  So, I rushed to the hardware store and bought 2 flappers to be safe.  After 30 minutes of half-assed work, I got the new flapper installed and ready to use.  Yes, I expect a few problems with the chain.  Now, it's much better than it was a day ago, and that's what counts. And I did get a pedicure later in the day - a nice way to end the afternoon....

It's a bitch when the cable goes out for the day.

 

I had originally planned to sleep late with RQS and then go out for the day as Marian.  Those plans all went to blazes around 10 am when the internet went out.  Normally, an internet outage would be short, as a minor server glitch would be resolved without having to call the cable company.  Today's outage was worse, as the TV signal died around noon, and took over 6 hours to get back to normal.

When I called the cable company, they claimed that there was no outage, and had me go through the usual routine of doing hard reboots of both my cable boxes and cable modem.  At this point, I knew I'd have to untangle the spider web of cables behind my computer desk, as well as the wires leading to my land line. One problem - the computer desk is way too heavy to move while loaded, and I needed to get things done without moving the desk.  Now, I know how a "shade tree mechanic" feels when working under a car.

Once I was done untangling the mess of wires and disconnecting my extra computer to make space in the corner where my main computer sits, I had a mess of stuff piled on my bed.  This wasn't going to be dealt with in the afternoon.  I needed to get showered and dressed, and do something worthwhile.  This meant going out as Mario, and delivering another donation bag to Green Drop before their 5 pm closing time.

RQS and I had different reasons to go to Walmart, mine being a need to buy more storage containers.  While on the way there, I received a call from the cable company telling me that they were working on the problem that caused me to lose my internet, and asked me if they could cancel my service call.  Of course, I said YES.  Now, RQS and I could sleep late, and I wouldn't have to present as Mario for part of the day.

By the time we finally made it home, the cable company was still working on the problem.  An hour or two later, cable/internet service was restored.   Now, we cold catch up viewing what we missed earlier. 

New York City has nominated a Muslim Socialist for Mayor

Zohran Mamdani, a name you'll be hearing more of over the next few months.  He recently became the presumptive winner of the of the Democratic Primary nomination for the NYC Mayoral election taking place this fall.  Why is this important?

America's "Leftist" party has had to move to the center to capture voters who have been abandoned by the GOP and the MAGA cult that hijacked it.  Unfortunately, the Democrats do not excite many people due to the lies spewed by the GOP and their propaganda outlets.  Whenever people like AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and Bernie Sanders hold meetings in "Red States" friendly to the Orange Snowflake, they get a large vocal audience which supports Democracy and wants to fight our Oligarchy.  The question is: Is this a fringe movement?

I think the recent NYC election which made Zohran the likely winner of the NYC Mayoral election (rarely do people other than Democrats win the election here) also is a reflection of a sea change in American politics.  Gone are the people who would support Andrew Cuomo (NYS's former governor) because he is an experienced, but flawed leader.  Most NYC residents want real change.  If Zohran wins, he owes little to the traditional Democratic Party machine.  But he will have problems because no one owes him anything. 

How much of a liability is this?  Given that the city is too big to fail, I figure that it can survive 4 years with an incompetent mayor, as it has done in the past.  Yet, it signals a great opportunity for people on the left, as it means that there is a strong message that can be used to fight the GOP - if only more people could jump on the bandwagon.  As much as I am an economic conservative, I am a social liberal.  And I think that this primary election could signal a sea change in American attitudes taking place soon.

 

Keep your fingers crossed. 

We're still having problems with our rebooked cruise.

 

This will be a short post.  

Tonight I had to script a letter to the folks at Princess Cruises about how our reservation was screwed up after we accepted their Moveover offer to make room on an overbooked cruise.  

Last Friday, I received an offer to give up my cabin on an overbooked cruise, and in return, receive a free 7 to 10 day cruise (with our money returned to us as refundable onboard credits.) After some thought, RQS and I accepted the offer and booked a substitute cruise for later in the year.  On Saturday, we noticed that RQS couldn't access the new cruise booking, and we contacted Princess.  Their representative told us that the Captain's Circle number (Loyalty ID) was entered incorrectly, and that we should contact our travel agent to get this corrected.  We did this on Monday, and he did some work with Princess, saying that we should expect to see a correction in their app in a couple of days.  Today, RQS logged in, and saw different information coming from their website and from their app.  To make things worse, she still had no access to the replacement cruise AND had some information fouled up on our upcoming Alaska cruise.

So, I sent an email to the woman who made the Moveover offer AND copied our travel agent on the email.  If the problem is not fixed, I will continue to escalate things up the ladder until we reach someone who can get things done. 

We would have been leaving on our cruise today

 

If all had gone to our original plan, we'd be on a ship headed for Nova Scotia.  However, we took a "Move Over" offer, and got a free cruise out of the deal.  (How often does a cruise get overbooked?  I don't know, but I'm glad that an offer was made to me to take another cruise for free as our compensation for the change in plans.)

So what did we plan to do instead?

We figured that we would leave for Mystic, CT for 3 mid-week days, and take a trip with me in Marian mode.  However, the hot weather forecast for the rest of the week made this trip impractical.  So, I suggested we cancel our reservations, and put the trip off until it is "cooler" outside.  Now, we're hanging out in the apartment in the flimsiest of jammies we own.

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Co-op business keeps getting in the way.  We had a legal issue that required the use of an attorney, and several board members treat their responsibilities as something that will occupy their time 3 hours per month.  The president of the board is getting tired, and I won't take on her responsibilities.  When the president asked for approvals during the day, I had to text some of the board, so that a majority approved using the attorney.  This is a familiar pattern of behavior, and we're tired of people who don't take up their share of the burden of running this place.

Once I get the co-op's ATM card, I will apply for a domain name for the co-op's web site.  (I will not publish it here.)  Hopefully, we will have people interested enough to write newsletters to send out, and for the co-op site to be a repository for them.  I figure that once I've used the co-op's needs to learn the basics, then I can start working on my other blog's domain name.  

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Keep as cool as you can this summer....

 

 

By now, I would have been reporting about a 10 day cruise

 

This is how I looked over 6 years ago.  I now have a better hair style, and I have a partner that I can count on.  But picture is a reminder that no swimsuit is going to make me look like something other than a transgender woman when presenting as a female.

Why do I mention this?

RQS and I will be spending a few days away from home, as our cruising has been postponed for a while.  Any short, inexpensive trip we take will have me presenting as a female, and will be in hotels which have a swimming pool.  So, I'll finally be able to break out and use this swimsuit again.

Right now, we're looking at places we can reach within a 3-4 hour drive, an inexpensive train ride, or by a cheap flight.  One of these places is Mystic, Connecticut.  A person can easily spend a day viewing the maritime museum at Mystic Seaport, and visiting the nearby Aquarium  But, what else is nearby?  Do we want to spend an evening at the casino?  I'm not so sure if that's the best way to spend an evening or two.  If we were in Mystic, we could do a day trip to Newport, RI.and view a couple of the Gilded Age mansions there.  This would force us to leave on a Monday, and return on a Friday.  Is this practical for us?

Where else could we go?   Philly?  Boston?  Toronto?  Looking at these options, I found that these options would be more costly, as we'd be buying tickets and reserving everything at the last minute. I know one thing - we will discuss this when we're next together.