Rain again, drenching the high grass of Sunderwood Park. The morning walk for Birch to drain the tank and fun-factory a log or two is complicated by the sodden ground - there’s no good scent trigger. We walk towards the high ground, and my feet are soaked. My pants are soaked mid-shin. I’ve had one cup of coffee and dearly want the second. I hold the leash lightly, letting him search for the proper spot. I pray no goose or squirrel or rabbit appears and takes him off-message - but ah, he stops, he circles, he lowers, he stares towards the horizon with a look of one who knows that the gloaming distance in the west is the destination of us all, and he does his duty. At this point I have the morning frustration: which end of the bag is the open end? A printed arrow would be nice, but the bags are free, part of the Fred Experience, and that’s a lot to ask. I wet my finger and thumb and try to separate the edges, realizing eventually I’m working the bottom again. Turn it around, work the edges - ah. There. Separation. Bag deployed; bag filled. We trot back to the building. Toss the Chucks in the drier, where they bang around exorcized demons trapped to a barrel.

And so the day begins. The whole expanse stretches ahead without meaning or purpose, and it’s up to me to give it both. I had a hard time doing the morning work - who gives a budgie’s shite about any of this? No! Never weaken! I must lend my idiosyncratic eye and notational duty to these quotidian commercial remainders, lest this 1941 toothpaste ad be forgotten.

Moody clouds, with hope in the distance:

But it cleared! Coolish but bright sun. Lifts the mood immensely.

Elevator conversations today:

One: A guy has a shirt with a company logo that contains the word STEEL. I ask if he’s in the steel business. He says that he is, and I ask which type and purpose? He says the steel that goes on the front of buildings. “Curtainwalls?” I say. “Curtainwalls!” he says, adding “I used to be with this company.” Ding! His floor. Doors open. “Now I’m with another company,” he says. “They also make curtainwalls.”

Two: one of the maintenance guys gets in the car, and I point to the can he’s holding.

“Sprayway,” I said. “That’s the good stuff.”

His eyes widen. “It really is,” he says.

“Doesn’t streak, ever, and I love the smell.”

“It’s great, I use it for everything.”

“Really? The stainless steel, the elevator doors?”

He nods and grins, as if it’s an off-label use, but we’ll keep it between us.

“You have the institutional label there.”

“Yep.” He holds it up so I can see what the pros have.

“I have the classic blue-and-white with the lady on it.” Ding! My floor.

“Have a great day!” He says.

None of that would’ve happened yesterday because I was just staring at the floor.

It also reminded me to get out the Sprayway and do the outside of the balcony door, and the spot in the office where Birch put his nose.

So! How did my evening of gaming go?

First I had to attach the PC to one of the monitors.I had bought nice white HDMI cables so the look of the office is nice and clean. All the cords are tucked away in baskets. There is no rude black cord to sully the purity. I got out the long HDMI cable and plugged it in to the appropriate spot.

Ten minutes later I’m in the living room testing it with a DVD player and the Apple box, confirming that this POS Chinese cable does not work - a stunning development, considering that the company page said it was the Highest Quality and that they had a team of R&D people who were dedicated to meeting my needs. Okay. Well, I have extra white HMDI cables, albeit shorter, so let us root around in the back, trying not to make too much noise - one man’s office is another man’s bedroom, and I don’t want the person below to draw up a brief against me. Eventually it worked, and I was back in the PC environment.

It was foreign. I felt like a man who had two families and hadn’t been backfor a long tome to the city where one family was located. Oh I had a good excuse - the company had kept me in the Congo to finish all the project details, one month had turned into four.

The keyboard isn’t as good as my Mac keyboard and the mouse feels light. (I have a special gaming mouse that’s heavier, and in fact came with an array of weights so I could customize it precisely, but it’s packed away.) Let’s get connected to the internet . . . and there we are!

Call up Steam!

Can’t access my saved Planet Coaster games!

For some reason!

I could still play but nothing would be saved and in fact I’d probably overwrite everything I had never done, so, no. Back out of that, and try the shooter game.

Ah - have to use headphones, because I live in a hive now. Right. Okay, connect the nice Bose I bought ten years ago when I decided I was going to be a world traveler who would have quality noise-cancelling cans on his trips across the pond. They did the trick, but A) they have a stupid robotic voice, and B) the controls are lousy, and C) they occupied too much space in the bag, and D) gave me headphone hair. Much happier with the AirPods, except when they fall out while you’re sleeping and hide between the armrest and the interior wall of the fuselage and can’t be found because it’s 1 AM and everything’s dark and you’re tired and techy.

Anyway, the Bose doesn’t like to connect to anything. It’s like a socialite at Waffle House, vaguely horrified it has to deal. You push the button and it looks to connect to what it knows; hold it a bit longer and it goes into pairing mode; hold it too long and the nasal robotic female voice says “Disconnected.” There is a button on the bottom that has no discernible purpose. You adjust the volume by running your finger up the side of the can, which might or might not work.

I got it connected, logged into Steam. They sent a code to my email, which I didn’t want to call up. I had sent some documents to S. Last time we talked she wanted a copy of all the documents we made for the dissolution. I couldn’t find them. Now and then I would poke through the folders to see where they might be; it was impossible I would’ve tossed them, right? I knew they were somewhere, but every time my mind went to the “find file” directive it skittered away. Not out of denial; that ship has sailed and sunk and broke up heading to the bottom and scattered plates and shoes and luggage on a debris field that stretched from October to Today. It just fell into the “I don’t care” side of the ledger on down days.

Still, had to do it. Yesterday I'd found it. Sent it, hadn't checked my mail since. There’s the code from Steam, no reply from S.

By now it was 10 PM. Too late to be clacking on the keys. Disconnect PC from monitor and call it a night.

I think I go through this two or three times a year and think “I’ll try tomorrow” but never do. I did call up Planet Coaster on the Mac, and the park was so overloaded with wonderful detail the game was incapable of doing anything, and just sat there for five minutes before it responded to a single command, and then it lurched around and froze for another five.

When things don't load and the game doesn't play the solution is often more memory, but with people, sometimes you think less would serve you better.