After an Amazon Flex delivery shift, in some exhausting heat, it was home to chill with some Wimblers. First up a fantastic Federer vs. Djokovic match. And then this.
I like to call the Aussie Nick ‘The Prick’ Kyrgios, on account of his spoilt brat antics. He’s a pretty amazing tennis player. But what a farkin’ dildo!
He particularly likes to get into a spat with referees, bullying and insulting them. It seems to gee him up. But obviously it’s going to be counter-productive, inasmuch as the umpire can’t help but be irked by it.
At one point one of the commentators asked fellow pundits Boris Becker and, er… (can’t recall the Aussie guy’s name! Poss’ Todd Woodbridge?) why they thought he, Kyrgios, behaves that way. Boris more or less nailed it: it’s simply a question of maturity (or lack thereof).
I don’t know if it was in relation to this loss against Nadal, or poss’ another one, the following year, but apparently Kyrgios contemplated suicide, did actually self-harm (scarring his arm, later covered with a ‘sleeve tattoo’!), and wound up getting psychiatric help.
Read more on that here. If inclined to do so! As a depressive who has actually attempted suicide, I kind of sympathise. But at the same time, it all smacks of his ‘theatre of me’ ego tripping.
As one of the pundits commentating said, very rarely is there a match featuring Rafael Nadal in which most of the talk is about the other player. The ‘Kyrgios Show’ changes all of that!
At the time of posting, ‘air quality’ is 4. But what does this actually mean?
Insomnia biteth mine arse-cheeks again! So I’m up transferring thousand of photos from my iPhone to my ailing antiquated iMac.
This in itself merits a post, and maybe I’ll get into it a bit later? But my immediate reason for posting – apart from filling wakey-wakey time (that should be dreamy-snoozy-sleep time!) – is that I decided I ought to know what the ‘air quality’ numbers on my Weather App actually mean.
So I googled the topic, and found this, from defra.gov.uk. Tonight air quality is at 4 (and it feels very warm – and close, aka humid – to me, as well), which means folk certain levels or types of condition should avoid strenuous outdoor activity.
Fascinating! At least now I know 1 is ok, or best, and 10 is ‘don’t leave your home, the air outside is toxic’!
Meanwhile, in iMac land, my ageing ‘pooter fails to work consistently. I’ve had to resort – and indeed it’s not the first time – to using Image Capture, ‘cause Photos – the app that’s suppose to deal with pics and videos off my iPhone or other devices is totally crapping out.
I wanted to sit at the computer until all pics and vids were safely backed up. But that might take well into the daytime, by the looks of things. Movies can slow things down. And I have got a fair number on ye aulde iPhone.
Once everything is backed up, I want to have a major purge of said iPhone. I don’t need to be walking around with over 4000 pics in my pocket! And the lack of space on my phone is causing problems with certain other apps; Amazon Flex for instance, which sometimes can’t load properly.
And I need Flex running smoothly right now, as it’s become my main earner, in these recent and troubled times.
Anyhoo, it’s nearing 2.30 in the am, I think I’ll stick it till 3, and then go back to bed regardless. I think sun-up is around 4.30am? And I’ve got some counselling at 21am, and work (Flex, as usual these days) in the art’noon…
Well, many hours later, and the ‘progress bar’ seems to have gotten stuck about a fifth of the way across. So… no realistic hopes of sitting here till she’s done. I gots to get me some sleep!
It’s roughly 3.30 am. Back to bed. Perchance to sleep?
What a fantastic track! Great song, beautifully played. Proper music. I was reminded of this due to the current popularity of his recent track No such Thing.
The latter is good. And in terms of modern pop, great. But Gravity is a tune for the ages, in my not so humble onion!
It’d be nice to think that the occasionally quite attractive (but often quite repellent) inter-buttockary cleft was ‘the bottom line’, which we hear captains of industry and economists blathering about. Butt, of course, that isn’t the bottom line. It’s just a bottom line.
I googled the phrase, and the top result (I can’t be bothered citing the URL) ran thus:
‘What is bottom line? The bottom line primarily refers to a company’s net income, which appears as the final line on the income statement.* It’s the total amount of profit a business has remaining after paying expenses, expressed with the equation: Revenue – Expenses = Net Income.’
The crushingly dull reality.
* My italics. I.e. at the bottom of a financial statement. Rather akin to how musicians say ‘let’s take it from the top’, which refers to starting at the top or beginning of a score.
I post this in part as an afterthought to a previous post (about getting scammed buying apparel via Facebook), and in part because I myself – or perhaps Teresa and I? – well, in all honesty, more me really! Need to clean up my act, bottom line wise!
A while back I enthused over a selection of stylish funky green shorts and tops. I placed an order for three or four items. An eternity later, I negotiated a refund.
I can’t recall offhand if I got a complete refund or not. I think not? If that site (whose name I forget now) carries on like that in high volume, which I suspect they do… then they’re making lots of money out of chumps like me, whilst supplying nothing in return (except frustration disappointment and anger!).
Those items (see these posts) were, I later discovered, probably just photos of more expensive clothing blithely nicked off some other legit site, and then re-used to tempt schmucks like me into spur of the moment or impulse purchases.
And FB doesn’t effectively police such underhand dealings. Indeed, I expect the whole FB edifice is mostly built on scamming and exploitation.
Most users naively see FB and use it thinking of it as a fun friendly furry entity. But it is the giant behemoth it is because it has been a very effective selling platform or tool. And for the money folk, the bottom line is the, er… bottom line!
The shirt pictured at the top of this post perfectly captures a style I went with for my covers band, Capricorn. We played jazz funk soul and Latin, and our ‘colour scheme’ was essentially just like this shirt!
A review from Truspilot.
I’d love a shirt like that. But a quick check on ceballi.com returns too many ‘definitely a scam’ type comments. So I shall exercise caution and restraint. Damn nice shirt though!
Today was a real scorcher. No mistake! I love warm sunny days. But I have to be careful, being pale of complexion. And if I’m working in the heat? Phew…
I was supposed to do two delivery shifts today, for Amazon Flex. The first went off ‘according to plan’, inasmuch as I picked up my packages from an Amazon Hub in Peterborough, and then drove about delivering them.
Most Flex shifts are actually somewhat shorter than the advertised or contracted time. But today’s deliveries – lots to strange addresses (e.g. the many chalet like places within a marina), and not very well sequenced (I’ll come back to this) – were very arduous and time consuming. So on this occasion it took most of the two and a half hours allocated to do all the deliveries
The major headache with the first Flex shift was that where the app usually sequences deliveries very sensibly, today for some reason, it wanted me to be go off hither and yon, and then back again, when many of the deliveries were in fact very close to each other. And the poor Flex app couldn’t handle the layout of Buckden Marina at all!
Still, that shift got done, and done within the allocated time. So all was well, albeit I was really struggling with the heat, which reached a high of 28°.
I then drove to the Cambourne Morrisons, one of my most regular hubs (I wish they gave me more deliveries out of Wisbech Morrisons, it’s so much closer!). But once there – and I was about 30 minutes early (the Flex app advises being there 15 minutes early) – I was unable to get network coverage. This meant I couldn’t sign in and do my shift.
This situation persisted all the time I was there. And whilst it’s pretty much always a weak signal there, it’s normally strong enough that the app works. But not today. I tried calling the Amazon Flex driver support line. But again, no signal meant no dice!
The calls are cancelled because I wasn’t getting through.
Eventually I got through to them, using the Morrisons in-store landline. I was advised to email Amazon Flex support about it, which I duly did. I hope I get paid for this shift! It was no fault of mine I couldn’t do it. And it was a long way to come, and a waste of both time and money on my part, if they don’t recompense me.
As a result of all this, I don’t yet know quite what this weeks Flex earnings will be. And I feel I’ll have to do another shift or two tomorrow, to be sure I’m bringing enough in. But I’m soooo, soooo, SOOOO, SOOOO, SOOOO tired!
Me, in my ‘happy place’ (naked in/on our bed!)
Do I look tired? I don’t really know anymore!
My pal Rod called. Needed to unload, bless ‘im! Psychologically, that is, for any filthy minded Les Patterson types who might be sniggering at that choice of phrase. Speaking of Les P, we watched a show of his yesterday, in memory of the recent passing of Barry Humphries. Very funny!
What a great character!
Whilst chatting with Rod, whose latest band seems to be falling apart before it even gets going, I recalled passing two blackbirds on my Amazon Flex delivery route: on my way to a very remote delivery drop, I passed what appeared to be one immobile (injured?) blackbird, which didn’t budge when I drove by, as another blackbird sensibly hopped out of the road/way.
Of course I swerved to miss the apparently injured bird. Even though it was a one track dirt road with very little wiggle room. It was quite gratifying in the return down that king and winding lane to see them again – in the same spot. This time both hopping about (and hopping out of harms way).
It got me thinking about all the critters I see when driving around, and their short lives. Sadly often all too brutally curtailed by us, in the shiny beasts we rush around in (read more about this here).
It was the apparent contrast between most animal life – which appears to be so much simpler (is it really, one wonders?) – and the insanity of human vanity, and all our projects and goals and desires to achieve, or be seen to achieve, etc.
All of that brought me back again, as it often does, to that Judaeo-Christian Garden of Eden thing, whereby human consciousness is rendered as some kind of curse. And it certainly can feel that way!
An example that’s thrown up when I’m delivering is seeing the incredible variety in how we live; from the many lower rent places – like, in all frankness, where we live – to the ludicrously large and luxurious mini-palaces of the better off. Pictured below is the gated entrance to one such from one of my recent routes.
The folk inside these gates appear to be loaded.*
* But of course I know nothing of whether they actually are or not. One assumes so, on account of the outward show of grandeur, and the very out of the way location in a rural idyll. but I also spotted several wheelchairs and similar conveyances. Who knows what their full story is?
When I deliver to the latter, I can’t help but wish that I/we lived in a much more salubrious location and style! Still, as William DeVaughan sang, we all gots to Be Thankful For What You Got!
Not had a bout of insomnia for a while. But I’m definitely having one tonight! Shouldn’t be, as I’m utterly exhausted. For one thing I was working on an oak tabletop for Hannah today, using wood (from Simon and Claire’s recent kitchen refurb) that required lots of scraping and sanding (and I didn’t have access to power tools!).
Anyhoo…
I can’t be sure quite where I started, but I went down a musical rabbit hole, possibly beginning with Cortex’s Troupeau Bleu album. That lead me to Troc’s Kali Lo, a track I absolutely adore. Andre Ceccarelli drums on it, and his drumming is my idea of musical perfection.
Much later I found the above Ceccarelli drum solo, from a jazz gig with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater. The freedom and intensity of his playing put me in mind of another French Drummer, Magma’s Christian Vander.
And that lead me to the video at the top of this post. I’ve watched it before. But every time I see it, I’m astounded. His ‘in the moment’ commitment, and technique – but technique at the service of expression – are sooo intense.
These guys have – insomnia jokes aside – awoken me from a drumming trance, I think (or is that hope?). I need to stop being an equivocating pansy, man up, and go fully mental! Is this an epiphany? I do hope so!
I’m not a ‘real ale twat’, or even anything approaching an alcoholic beverage connoisseur. But I do have opinions, esp’ as booze is getting to be so expensive.
I’ve drunk San Miguel a little on and off. And I always felt that I quite liked it. But today I bought a four pack of 568 ml tinnies, and have decided it is – or at least these cans are/were – disgusting!
I actually wound up giving two of the four cans away, to a neighbour and his partner, as a ‘thank you’ for a little bit of help he gave me, when I was recently replacing my MX5 wheel bearing.
But I must confess I think most tinned lagers are pretty shite, these days. ‘Who cares what you think of beers?’ I hear nobody say. Well, this is my blog. I do!
And my low opinion of San Miguel is a cumulative thing; it’s the result of several disappointments in recent times. Culminating in a feeling that this last lot was nigh on undrinkable.
I read Gilot’s autobiography some years ago. Very enjoyable. I’ll have to dig out my review, if it still exists, and post it here.
She was, like all Picasso’s ladies, very beautiful. A muse and a model. She was also a talented artist in her own right. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her time with Picasso left lasting impressions, both on her, as a woman, and as an artist.
There’s another book about her, by Malte Herwig, entitled The Woman Who Says No, which I’ve heard is something Picasso called her. Not read that one.
