Transplanting a Seattleite

I don’t really know what the category of LEO is that is patrolling the roads — I know it includes all levels of law enforcement, because there are roads at all jurisdictional levels. City roads. Town roads. County roads. Interstates.

Anyway. They have drones. FB has a fucking wave of AI generated content with a certain “I’m cool and not in the police way” vibe (“yo, …” type thing) about how police have drones and they will catch you speeding wherever you are. Do police have drones. Yes. But are they really using them for speeding? Seems like a waste of time and resources, honestly.

Washington State, interestingly, has a comparatively large drone program, and has for longer than a lot of states. Once upon a time, they probably had the largest law enforcement drone fleet, but that was maybe 2019 time frame. Not recently. They — and other states — consistently say that a primary use for drones is to collective evidence after a collision has closed part or all of a roadway, so they can reopen the roadway more quickly. Washington State’s Amtrak derail towards the end of their drone pilot program really opened their eyes to this and is a big chunk of why they made it a permanent program and invested so heavily.

Maryland has a program to fly radar around on drones _to trigger radar detectors_ to convince people there is speed enforcement and thus slow down.

https://roads.maryland.gov/OOTS/06DroneRadarW-Summary.pdf

Various agencies also use drones to find missing folks both very young and older, and in lieu of high speed chases, and, yes, to sometimes enforce speed in work zones.

I don’t know who is doing the FB AI posts, but it absolutely bites. I’ve stuck with FB through a lot of garbage, but in combination with the increasingly fictitious “science” posts about “breakthroughs” that are done by scientists (that no amount of searching can turn up), I’m thinking about giving up entirely. It’s discouraging. On the other hand, I’d get some time back for reading and playing Sliding Seas and maybe I’d be motivated to go hang out with friends in person, or at least call people on the phone.

I drove A. to school and R. to the airport. He’ll spend a night in Miami and then get on a boat and see a helluva lot of bands.

I walked with M.

Other than the driving, it was a nice, quiet day all around. A. and I went to Season’s 52 after I picked her up from school.

We all woke up feeling really bad, so A. had a zoom school day, and I put the checks in the mail and did the meeting virtually. Oh well! I later took another zyrtec (usually I take 1 per 24 hours, so this is 1 per 12), and that helped some but not completely.

I got a phone call from SH and while she was stressed, I always really enjoy chatting with her, and I learn new things every time. It’s so lovely to know her.

I canceled tomorrow’s therapy for A., and I rescheduled tomorrow’s dentist for me. Fingers crossed I’m back on the mend soon. Oh, and I rescheduled a walk with BW on Thursday, because I figure if I get a couple days to recover, maybe Murphy will make me entirely hale quickly.

B, my not BIL, reached out for some family dobs and citizenship and similar information for background check (easier to get it from me than my sister). We also discussed the angle steelcase desk he bought from FB marketplace, and whether it would fit in the short end of his office. I’ll need to do some measuring when I am out there on Tuesday.

As I was researching citizenship, I realized that my dad inherited his dad’s Dutch citizenship, and it looks like so did my siblings and me! What?

I had a delightful chat with K., typing instead of talking because I have limited voice. K. is exceptionally fun to do this with; not everyone is as quick to speak with their typing as with their voice, and she is amazing.

A. did zoom school again, and only had one class so that was comparatively easy.

I did cocktail zoom, and totally blew out my voice, but this is what I was saving it for, so good enough.

I walked with M., but continue to avoid indoor visits.

I’m alternating between rereading JAK (writing as Jayne Castle, IIRC) Harmony novels and watching short form video (mostly TikTok). I’ve watched so much Lucy Darling that now the characters in the Harmony novels sounds like Lucy Darling and I’m starting to visualize characters as if they were animated. I have no idea wtf my brain is doing but I’m enjoying it.

I’ve also been watching a lot of Will Hitchins videos again. He’s definitely evolving, without losing sight of his core format. But there are some nice stitches with Here’s How It’s Done Right, instead of exclusively roasting Trust Me Bro University creators. And there’s a much more well developed, concise explanation of the scam in all the Trust Me Bro University videos, which is really nice to see. (These creators benefit when their target audience does not get better / gets worse in relationships, because the money flows.)

I had already canceled my dentist appointment and A.’s school before getting on the flight. Go me.

I got a call from Stephens and sent them a photo of my license and gave them my credit card (I had wondered about this last night, but they have my car, so they don’t really need anything else from me). They towed the car up to Sudbury, and I left messages with Sudbury and eventually they called back. The video inspection confirmed all of what I suspected: 4 new tires needed because they were all bald. I will note that I probably would have been even more annoyed if I hit that thing with new tires and immediately needed to replace one.

Wheel bent and needs straightening — I’m still waiting for the bad news that it needs a new wheel and possibly worse. Fingers crossed.

And a mice nest in the frunk. I did not actually see that one coming.

I have never actually understood the whole “dealer service departments sell unnecessary services” thing, because it has not been my experience. OTOH, I mostly bought Hondas, Subarus and BMWs, so maybe it’s different at different makes. Oh, and in The Price Is Right adjacent observations, I had figured this whole thing was going to cost me at least $2500 (for the service part — the tow is already substantially less than I had anticipated) and the estimate is $2800. But I didn’t anticipate the mice nest, so there’s that. It’s also really tough for me to estimate tire prices without research right now with a war on that is blocking petro shipping. Crude spikes = tires are more expensive.

I got a notification of Wednesday therapy, which was unexpected because I had canceled that in favor of a school bowling outing which we probably will not go to. So I recanceled that due to illness.

ETA: It is an indication of how ill I am that I asked R. to make me dinner and I requested oatmeal.

I read a collection of short stories called “The Secret Romantics Book of Magic”. I think I got this because I was trying to figure out if anything labeled Romantasy was going to be appealing to me, and this had short works by a bunch of authors who write romantasy, and a few authors who I was already familiar with. As with all such collections, the works vary in type and tone. Some were really good. One had a rape / SA as part of a really interesting reworking of doomed / fated lovers in Chinese / Japanese stories. I would have preferred a warning, honestly, but I don’t regret reading it either, which is saying a lot for me because in general I feel like this is a choice and it’s a choice better not made most of the time.

Next up was a sample of Siggy Shade’s Tentacle Entanglement, which I think I got when I learned that tentacle wtf was a whole subgenre of monster wtf. The sample was good enough to get the whole thing (via kindleunlimited, so this wasn’t much of a commitment) and I read it through. If spoilers bother you, you should never be reading my book reviews.

Both the Kelly Armstrong short story in the previous read, and this novel share a certain gleeful justified homicidality, a vigilante vibe, if you will. In the Armstrong short story, the aw shucks I’m a virgin just in from the woods and you need a virgin sacrifice for a monster so why not me is cover for offing the royal families that engage in such. There was a recent movie along these lines as well — royal family has to sacrifice a member, so they marry someone to a son and then toss her to the monster, but it turns out poorly for the royal family. I can’t recall the name of the movie at the moment, and don’t know if this short story and that movie are in any way related beyond sharing a story arc. The nature of the monster is definitely different — in this one, the teen girl is partnered with a shapeshifter. The heroine of the Siggy Shade novel is a barista by day, artist by evening whose boss rents her an attic room and lets her hang her art in the shop. She does NOT know that he is secretly stealing and selling her work for a ton of money and claiming he is the artist.

Into this sad and lonely existence, the heroine invites — using a “meditation podcast” a friend at the shop recommends — her soul mate who she imagines in some detail but not in others. She gets an Umbra from a doomed planet, a lot of tentacles, and a weird fated mates bonding process that requires the Umbra to assimilate … a human. Not the heroine! Yay for that. Oh, and in the process starts out looking like whoever they assimilate well enough to pass as them, but retains shapeshifting abilities.

The boss is awful to the heroine, particularly after the Umbra first shows up and shows the heroine a really good time all night long and the boss hears it through his ceiling / her floor. The heroine at this point is afraid of being fired (multiple hours overslept missed her shift type of thing) and honestly it is a little strange that he does not because he seems like the sort of asshole who would fire someone and dump them out on the street in the middle of winter. And we don’t even know about the stealing her paintings thing, which is of course the explanation.

After another day or two, the boss grabs her by the arm and the Umbra takes, er, umbrage and the three of them have it out in the boss’ office. This is where they learn all the details, and they discuss what to do about it and oh, look, how convenient, this will be the meal Mate needs to fully bond / convert / be able to live in our world. Also, this way they own the building the coffee shop and the two apartments are in, which is FURTHER convenient for the coworker who has an Umbra too, and they are waiting for him to sell his first book and get paid (he’s a writer).

As a moral system, this thing is pretty bent. Was the boss horrible? Sure. Deserved a death sentence? Absolutely not! FAFO, and fictional, and thus fun? Probably? But I’m not completely certain. This book has some of the best boundaries involving sexual activity that I’ve run across in a while, and really takes seriously the idea of aftercare (as these things go). I do love a heroine who speaks up and says, No, not that, but I’m willing to do this other thing. And I truly love a book that takes the need for lubrication seriously, which in this particular subgenre is … wack.

It reminded me in some ways of a series I gave up on when a witch heroine tied up a couple witch law enforcement and then kept them tied up on the floor for days, showing up only to untie them long enough to use the loo and eat and drink maybe a couple times a day for less than an hour. This is _not okay_. And Linzi Day’s Gretna Green series takes very seriously the morals of imprisoning someone, when that someone has the ability and in many ways the authority to be judge-jury-executioner of extremely bad folks. I don’t regret reading it, but I’m definitely finding that I care about this more than I used to and I don’t necessarily want to reverse course.

But if you are here for some tentacle sex and making a meal of the Bad Boss, well, Siggy Shade has got ya!

We got out of VGF and over to Helios. We passed a Walgreens on the way and I stopped to get starlight mints, ricola and hand lotion for A., and burt’s bees lipbalm for me, because one of my lip balms hopped out of its plastic container in a Disney companion bathroom. May it rest in peace, but the bathroom gods have been unusually kind to us so perhaps a sacrifice was required.

A. likes the pb and strawberry uncrustable. I had the pb and chocolate, because I’ve only ever had the pb and grape before. The bread is a little better than it used to be, and the innards are fine. A. picked out a “That’s It” apple and blueberry bar. It’s a little bitter, but fine. The tea here is above average. Juice is available on request. There’s a freestyle machine and a coffee machine (fancy kind that will make espresso style drinks, but predictably I’m using it for hot water). I thought I was going to have to go track down real food, but since the uncrustables are workable, and there are pastries and chips, I don’t think I will need to do that.

R. is out for a bike ride. I’ve caught up on blogging. My sister’s family is having a good time doing shows in the park. The view from the lounge is, as reviews online mentioned, the checkin turnaround, the top of the parking garage and a more distant parking lot, as well as some kind of water retention pond which is full due to recent weather.

St Patrick’s Day!

Lunch was at Skipper Canteen and dinner was at Kona Cafe so that was pretty easy. We had some lightning lanes set up, but we did Laugh Floor first. We’re a lot more sensitive to the violence (heavy things landing on Mike Wazowski) than we were in the past, so it’s less funny, but still a good time. The castle moat is empty and there are lift cranes in there so people can paint the blue roofs. It wasn’t obvious that’s what they were doing so we asked, and a woman cast member said she was literally “Watching paint dry” all day on the job. LOL. She had a funny joke, too: did you hear about the toast at the zoo? It was bred/bread in captivity. Her delivery was also excellent!

We tried to go on Peter Pan, but it was down. We came back later and it went down again, but came up so we did get to ride it. Yay! We also rode Haunted Mansion and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. I did Tron by myself, well, by the time I got on, I was part of a group from Make a Wish, which was really nice. The actual wish-recipient was overstimulated and elsewhere, so I got to meet family members. Apparently the airport they flew out of in Indiana had a disability coordinator to help them get in their plane with the extensive carry-on / gate check medical equipment, but MCO had nothing and it was a nightmare getting unloaded. Yikes! Nice people, happy to have met them.

C. is really sensitive to the floor movement at Kona. That’s such a bummer.