No Money, Some Problems

I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this blog already knows exactly why I'm writing this from Utah instead of Idaho, but in case someone missed the memo (because I am, after all, an award winner at not telling people things) I'm here because, well, I lost my job.

There isn't much of a story to tell, except a short and sad one. I was hired working part-time with the goal that I'd bring my case load up to full-time by early this year. At the time I was hired, the company was getting a lot of new clients. But over the summer, we lost clients right and left. I was willing to be patient because I loved my work, but-- you know how I kept joking about being dirt poor? That's because I was donating blood plasma twice a week to be able to afford both rent and groceries at the same time. And you know I have a history with that profession. (Though the place I went to in Boise was much more professional than where I had gone before, so it really wasn't so bad. A bit of poking and a couple of hours sitting in a chair playing a game on my tablet, and I came out with forty dollars-- my parents were more unhappy with the arrangement than I was.)

So I really shouldn't have been surprised when my boss had to come to the decision at the end of October that the company just didn't have enough business to sustain three therapists. I was upset to leave, of course-- I loved my job, I had amazing roommates and good friends, I'd just started some volunteer work with tutoring refugees at a local high school, and there were so many adventures I hadn't managed to get around to yet. I loved my clients, and I'd come to love the area. But I understood why it had to happen, and all in all it's probably for the best.

That gave me about two weeks to prepare my clients to switch therapists, find a replacement for my contract in my apartment, and get packed up to move home with my parents. The plan was to go home until I could find a job.

And, well, I'm still looking. Not very many places are hiring right now, and I've had a few promising leads turn out to be disappointments. Discouraging, to say the least. It's hard not to feel like I've lot of "adulting cred", now that I'm unemployed and living in my parent's basement. But now that the holidays are over, it's time that I start looking for, well, any kind of job, even if it isn't a music therapy job. At least something temporary that can pay for health insurance and gas while I try to find a job I can love.

Man, 2016 really cleaned me out. I had a great time, but I lost all my money, my job, and my car, not to mention having to move all my stuff three times in one year. Here's to hoping that 2017 is better.

So where does that leave this blog? Well, I have a few stories from my time in Boise that are still halfway written, and older stories that I think will entertain. Lately I haven't been getting out much, but I've still managed to have one very crazy adventure that I think will be the subject of my next post. So despite the hiatus, I'm not planning to walk away. After all, life doesn't stop being weird because you leave Idaho.

See you soon.

Warm Springs Avenue

I love old things. Well, OK, I'm actually pretty enthusiastic about a lot of things of various ages and provenances; if you know me well you know I get excited about ideas. But one of my interests is in older buildings, so when I had a chance to drive through Warm Springs Avenue in Boise, I knew I had to come back on foot.

So what is Warm Springs Avenue? Well, the photo below might give you some details but basically it's where all the rich people in the early days of Boise decided to build their mansions.

Well, they aren't all mansions, and some of them have definitely been restored or altered. But overall, it's a street full of unique and beautiful buildings, each interesting in its own way.

Lucky for you, my phone was giving me problems. That's lucky for you because you would get sick of looking at these houses much faster that I would get sick of taking photos of them, and even so I'm holding back from posting them all.

Even the lamps on this street are pretty!

This house just randomly decided to use a vintage ice cart as a lawn ornament. Sure beats garden gnomes.

There are so many beautiful old oak trees that I couldn't always get a good shot at the buildings. I could hardly complain, though -- I think some of them date back to the  1800s and they are wonderful.

Like I said, a few of the houses are more conservative in size, though still elegant and charming  with Victorian details. But on the other hand, one house on this street is a freaking castle.   

I understand it's for sale right now for the low, low price of six million dollars. And, no, they won't let you tour the property unless you can prove you have the money.

Still, in the meantime it's a gym in Pokemon Go, and a great place to catch Evees.

Moving to Meridian is Actually Pretty Straightforward...Except when I'm in charge

Well, I'm pretty much moved into my new apartment. Unpacking went much faster the second time around, so if I keep up this trend of moving to a new apartment every month, by September I'll have It down to a science! (Please oh please let this not happen).

I was a little concerned about how we'd get everything from point A to point B. My parents were a little busy meeting my newborn niece, so there wasn't a great chance of them bringing the trailer up, and most of the people we asked about helping us had some kind of activity going on Saturday. Not to mention that Saturday is often my busiest day of working, but was the only day my other roommates could move. And while the old apartments had elevators of respectable size for transporting larger and heavier items of furniture, the new apartments have no elevators. Just three flights of stairs.

But moving the furniture was actually pretty simple. My roommate who was moving from the same place as me and I split the costs on renting a U-Haul trailer for a day, and the elders quorum presidents of both our old and new ward were able to scrounge up enough help that all the furniture was moved in a matter of a few hours.

The new apartment is brand new, so for the first couple of days nothing worked. The AC didn't work properly until it had been running for three days, we didn't have internet yet, the washing machine wasn't hooked up properly to the water, and the ice maker still isn't working. For these reasons, though my roommates moved in and stayed immediately, I opted to stay at the old apartments until my time was up. After all, I'd already paid for that wifi and AC. My bed was big enough I had to put it on the trailer, but my mattress is a memory foam one that came rolled up in a pretty small bag. I figured I'd keep my mattress behind and sleep on it on the floor until July 25th, move out day. Then I'd just roll it back up into the bag, stuff it in my car with a few other odds and ends, do some cleaning, and scram! Out of there with hours to spare.

My first problem came on the morning of the day in question when I attempted to roll up my foam mattress.

It didn't want to roll.

When it did, it was about four times the diameter the opening of the original packaging. I tried sitting,  then laying, on the rolled up mattress to squish it down into shape, to no avail. Finally I turned to the internet for help.

Turns out you can't put a foam mattress back in the original packaging. You can vacuum pack it to take up a bit less space, but you'll never get it in that bag again. And trying risks damaging the layers of foam. Heck, leaving the mattress on its side for too long can damage the layers of foam, though the internet lacks unanimity on how long is too long.

But the moving van was long gone, and Sheila (my car) is not big enough to lug around a mattress. So I did the best I could.

Yes. I cannibalized the straps from the original packaging bag, and fastened it around my best attempts at rolling the thing up, by hooking the straps through the cheap carribeaner I use to keep my keys together. It barely held for the entire drive back to Meridian.

I'd planned out in advance how I'd make everything fit in the car, but with my mattress three times as big as I'd anticipated those plans got thrown out the window. Still, I was bound and determined to make everything fit, even if I had to drive with a box in my lap.

It didn't get quite that bad.

Next came clean up. I'd managed to get everything in the car by 11, so I figured an hour would be plenty of time to clean the apartment.

I started by vacuuming, using the vacuum I'd borrowed from my roommate-in-both-locations. I vacuumed the floor, the moulding, the walls, even the windowsill--and then, to my dismay, I ducked the ends of the cord to the window blinds into the end of the vacuum hose.

The little plastic caps managed to jam at an angle which made it impossible to just pull the cords out. Believe me, I tried. My next thought--I needed something long and skinny I could push through the house to dislodge the plastic caps. But everything was packed except a few pieces of cardboard. Oh, hey, cardboard, that rips, right? I tore off a long strip and ran it through the tube.

A bit of wiggling, a bit of creativity, and a few minutes later--I had the window shade cords AND a big piece of cardboard stuck in the vacuum hose!

Now I only had half an hour left, and I was starting to panic. Getting desperate, I went to the kitchen to borrow a knife so I could cut the cords--the only option I could see before me. As I prepared myself mentally and emotionally to saw through a pair of window cords, a sudden thought came to me: the knife in my hands was long, skinny, and, best of all--rigid.

So I spent another few minutes trying to use the knife to dislodge the cords. Turns out the knife wasn't skinny enough. But now I had new determination to find a solution less drastic than damaging the window blinds. So I borrowed a rattail comb from my roommate and finally, finally, I was able to remove the cords with a sharp tug.

So now I just had to clean the walls and Windows and mirrors in the remaining... 5 minutes until checkout.

It might not have been my most thorough cleaning job.

But, I turned everything in on time and hit the road.

Anyway, my new apartment is in the middle of nowhere. Heck, I can't even play pokemon go here, the little features don't even show up. I have to play:

While going grocery shopping 

In line at the DMV

And when I visit the library.

So there is at least something to be said for making my errands more entertaining.

But anyway, I'm moved in and unpacked, and this may be further from everywhere exciting, but it's home now and not a bad one.

Sign I made for my door.

Poke-Progress

Update on the Pokemon Go thing--today I've had much more luck getting the game to work. I was finally able to finish the tutorial and choose my "nickname".

Sadly, pretty much everything I could think of was taken. Which somehow led to me getting stuck with the nickname of "mmcboise", which sounds like some kind of DJ name but is actually an abbreviation of the name of the company I work for.

I then discovered that you can catch a decent number of Pokemon just hanging out in your room:

I also figured out how to take photos of the Pokemon, so here, have an awkward photo of a "Rhyhorn" sitting on my lap.

This one is called an "eevee". Whatever it is, it's my new favorite--look how cute!

Geeze my room is depressing with everything packed up. Adding the Pokemon is kind of an improvement.

I then took my new game skills out on the road for a test run, heading towards Ann Morrison Park. While there, I saw a few people who maybe could have been playing? Maybe? But the only other person who was playing for sure was a guy who passed me in the park and asked me if I'd been finding anything good. I pointed him towards a section of sidewalk where I'd found a "Graveler" and felt like I was one of the cool kids.

This early in the game, it's pretty easy. Mostly I'm catching lots of "Pidgeys", pigeon looking things which I use to make my new geeky hobby even geekier by giving them names like "Shuu", "Yuuya", "Sakuya", and "Okosan". (If you got those references, you might have a problem.) But I did meet my first real challenge with a cephalopod looking thing called a Tentacool:

Do you see those beady eyes? Those are the eyes of a jerk.

I used up about twelve Pokeballs trying to catch that thing, and crashed the app twice and my phone once. It even jumped back out of the Pokeball when I caught it-- something no one had told me was even possible! I had been planning on giving it an awesome name, like "Cthulhu", but after all that, I took revenge on the thing by naming it "Squidworth" instead. And I don't even like Spongebob Squarepants.

When I got back to my apartment, I'd walked 3.5 kilometers, had taken an hour longer than I'd anticipated, had completely worn out my phone's battery, and had caught fifteen Pokemon. Not a bad start.

My roommates think it's hilarious that I'm playing this game, but so far it's kind of fun.

Pokemon Stop

In case you haven't noticed, there's a crazy popular mobile game right now that is taking the country by storm. And that game is Frogger.

OK, no, it's Pokemon Go. If you are uninformed about the game enough that you took the previous paragraph seriously, I'd better explain what the deal is. If you already know, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

Basically, it's a game you play on your phone, where you catch imaginary monsters called "Pokemon" and then train them and make them fight each other. The game has been around in one incarnation or another for a long time--I was well aware of the Pokemon craze back in the 1990's when I was in elementary school-- but this new version has added an interesting twist. In order to catch Pokemon, you have to walk to a real world location where the Pokemon is hiding. The game uses GPS to figure out where you are in relation to these Pokemon, and gives you hints about how far you need to walk to find them. The idea of the game is to get the players to actually get up and walk around outside.

Now, understand that as far as Pokemon go, I am a definite ignoramus. Back in the 90's when everyone else my age was in a Pokemon craze, I had only a vague awareness of what the game actually was. You see, I was not allowed to play Pokemon. (Well, that's what I believed at the time. I also believed I was not allowed to own any video games. But more recently I found out that this was never an actual rule; my parents just never bought us any because we never asked for them, and my siblings and I just assumed it was a rule because my parents never bought us any. So, likely as not, I interpreted my parents making some comments about how unimpressed they were with the snippets they'd seen of the anime as a household rule that never actually existed.) So as an adult, I have no particular nostalgia for the game. I don't even know what more than a couple of the little critters are called, I've never seen an episode of the Anime, and the closest I've come to interacting with Pokemon in the past was when a friend insisted on calling me "Jiggly Puff" for a week in what I could only assume was a crack about my weight.

So I was not one of the people that went crazy when the game came out--what is it, now, two or three weeks ago?

But I couldn't help hearing about it all over the Internet. And while I don't care much about Pokemon, there is a certain appeal to me in having a game based on walking around and exploring the area around you.

More than that, though, I've been drawn to the community. You see, the stories that come back from those playing the game-- players can identify each other easily because of the way you walk and hold your phone when you are playing the game, and so what's happening all over the country is complete strangers of different ages, races, backgrounds, and cultures are striking up friendly conversations and having friendly interactions in the street all over this Pokemon game. And I'd like to live in the kind of world where that happens. So, finally, I gave into curiosity and downloaded the app onto my phone.

It is a free app, so if you would like to try it yourself-- go do that. But if not, sit back and let me experience the adventure for you.

I opened the app. It crashed.

I tried again. This time, I got a picture of an old man, who proceeded to ask me if I wanted to help him catch Pokemon. Well, obviously, that's why I'm here, right? So after choosing my "style" (read, hair and shirt color for the little person who walks around on the screen), I began my adventures as a Pokemon trainer.

I immediately found one (later I figured out it was so fast because I was still in the tutorial), a little blue turtle thingy called a "Squirtle". It popped up on my camera screen, bobbing cheerfully in the street in front of my apartment building.


Well, to capture the Squirtle, you "throw" a Pokeball at it. This much I knew from hearing so much about the game. The problem-- how to throw? I kind of figured that actually throwing my phone was not a great idea.

(Yes, this video is a spoof made by a comedian)

Well, I spent about five minutes tapping my screen, sliding my fingers around my screen, and waving my phone in the air. Nothing happened, and the Squirtle just sat there and mocked me.

So I gave up and went back to my apartment.

After doing some research (turns out you need to gently "flick" a finger across the screen, and that if you disable the camera thing it's easier), I opened the game up (let it crash three times, restarted my phone, and then finally got it working) and tried again.

This time, there was an orange lizard hanging out in my bedroom. Using what I'd learned, I "threw" the Pokeball--and, success! I caught the charzar or whatever the heck it's called. I was a real life honest to goodness Poketrainer! (That is the word, right?

And then my game crashed.

I haven't got it working since.