Monday Afternoon Musings

WHAT’S ON MY MIND

Greed. I had a major hissy fit over a two day stretch this past week. Keep reading for the deets, but you can probably guess who one of the culprits is from the above image.

WHERE I’VE BEEN

I didn’t go anywhere this week, which is for the best.

WHERE I’M GOING

Bert’s “retirement” is this week and I’m treating him to lunch at the winery. We’ll have a serious talk about what comes next. Financially he’ll be fine, so I’ll help him with the emotional part. 

It’ll be a shock to his system when he wakes up one day and discovers he no longer has his status and a purpose. I’ll sell him on the idea he’s been freed from The Matrix rather than cast aside, and this is an opportunity to reinvent himself — just like I did with writing and investing.

WHAT I WATCHED ON YOUTUBE

Coachella Valley real estate agents. I’m learning and ins and out of its cities and neighborhoods so I can make an educated choice on where I could possibly live part time or full time in the near future.

WHAT I READ

There was no new manga this past week, so I shifted my focus to the J-Novel app. There’s two light novels whose translated portions created a reading backlog. I need to catch up sooner rather than later. Once the physical copies of these volumes go on sale the early access digital versions I read with my sub go behind a paywall.

WHAT I LISTENED TO

To my delight Artoria’s radio picks up SiriusXM’s Road Trip station (Channel 301). It’s an eclectic collection of music genres dating from the 70s to today, and it streams like you’re changing cassettes or CDs during a long road trip except you change them after every song. I love this element of surprise.

WHAT I ATE

Last night I had herb crusted salmon and steamed vegetables with a 2022 Callaway Special Selection Chardonnay. It wasn’t the best pairing but it was still enjoyable. I’ll finish the bottle with yuzu citrus chicken tonight and then a lemon pepper salmon on Tuesday

THE KIER STARMER AWARDS GO TO…

Rockstar Games for giving us two overpriced versions of GTA 6 to preorder on Thursday. You can pay $80 for the base game or $100 for the ultimate edition, which is the base game with all of its Story Mode features unlocked. I canceled GTA+ in response to this shameless pricing tactic.

MLB did me dirty on Friday. Per the Padres online schedule I went to bed Thursday night believing all three Dodgers-Padres games this weekend would be streamed on PadresTV, so imagine my rage when I turned on the MLB app Friday evening to discover the game was moved to Apple TV without warning.

Bunch of wankers...

WHO DESERVES A FIST BUMP

This wasn’t the best of weeks for good things so I don’t have any candidates. Moving on…

WHAT I’M PLANNING

I’m contemplating buying a condo (aka my own Le Crash Pad) in Coachella Valley. This topic deserves its own post(s) so watch this space in the coming days.

WHAT MADE ME SMILE

I bought Artoria a new slim key fob cover that matches her Union Jack mirror caps. This was necessary so I don’t grab the wrong keys when I want to run my errands with a specific car. Yeah, that’s happened a couple of times.

I bought the dip on SanDisk (SNDK) stock just before the market closed on Monday after investors panicked over the South Korean chip stock crash. I sold the stock on Wednesday morning for a nearly 14% gain.