Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Lisa and I went to Reno today for several errands that were of increasing urgency, as time is running short. While Lisa is not going to Westercon, she will be leaving on a trip for two months for which she leaves on the Wednesday after I get back from Westercon/Baycon on Monday the 7th. I hope we don't have to make any more Reno trips and that the next time I see Reno it will be on the morning of July 3 as I'm driving to Santa Clara.

We did get the things for which we were seeking: a new band for Lisa's watch (the old band broke), some additional socks for both of us as many of our socks were worn out, and a bit of material for Lisa to repair something. Fortunately, there is a good independent fabric store (Mill End Fabrics) that is not going the way of Jo-Ann or other fabric store chains.

This afternoon, Lisa (whose sleep schedule has rotated back to the Dreaded Day Shift) asked if we could go to Reno for some grocery shopping and other errands. After I said goodbye to Kayla for the rest of the day and packed the small coolers with ice, Lisa and I headed into Reno. First we went to Staples for something Lisa wanted, then it was off to WinCo Foods, where it was much less crowded than it usually is on a Sunday afternoon. There were a few things she wanted that she couldn't get there, so we went to Raley's for them.

I'd been up since around 4 AM, which isn't that unusual for me, but my eyes were burning as we turned for home. I think there is a lot of pollen in the air. I can see that the cottonwoods are starting to shed. I'm glad I have tomorrow as a holiday and am not traveling this weekend any farther than I have already gone over the past two days. Kayla might go to the Wigwam tomorrow, but that's about the limits of our ambition at the moment.

Because of both me and the Astro being out of service for the past two weeks, we were behind on our grocery shopping. So this morning at 2 AM, we set out to Winco Foods in South Reno and did a pretty large grocery run. It took a while and cost a lot, but we have the larder refilled. The minivan ran without problems.

Lisa's sleep schedule is such that when got home, it was the end of her "day." I, however, had slept for about four hours overnight and drank a bunch of coffee to keep me awake for the drive to/from Reno, and consequently I could not go back to bed. I went and had breakfast at the Wigwam (arriving just as they opened), then later in the morning ran over to Walgreens for a few miscellaneous items that I've wanted to get for a while, and otherwise took it relatively easy. But there's a good chance that I'm going to fall into bed early this afternoon.

Last night, Lisa recovered sufficiently that, at her suggestion, we went out to see the holiday lights, particularly the one part of town where people go very hard with big displays. No pictures because they never turn out, but we enjoyed the drive.

The plan had been to go to Reno today around 10 AM to do the shopping we didn't get done yesterday. I woke up this morning at my weekday 4:30 AM time, and after breakfast I was overcome with sleep and went back to bed and slept for a few hours. We didn't get away until 12:30.

We went to Butcher Boy meats first, but they were out of ham. We probably should have ordered something ahead of time.

The SSD drive I bought Lisa from Best Buy for Christmas turns out to be too large for her machine, so we returned it and bought one that should work on her older computer.

WinCo Foods was, to our surprise, not nearly as crowded or busy as we expected. They had nearly check stand open, so we got through much faster than we thought we would.

At Raley's, we bought our Christmas ham and other stuff that we can't get at WinCo.

Despite my nap, by the time we finished at Raley's, I was feeling pretty worn out. Lisa offered to drive. Although she only has her right arm available, the Astro has an automatic transmission, so she said it was okay.

Unloading a van load of groceries once we got home took longer than usual, which is no surprise given that Lisa can't use her left arm. But we got everything put away eventually. Aside from things like milk and a few other perishables. we should be good to go for a while now.

This afternoon, we took the recycling to Reno. We really couldn't put it off much longer, because there wasn't any more room in the minivan. (To recap: the county in which I live does not offer much recycling, and certainly not curbside pickup. The nearest comprehensive recycling center is in Reno.) Because the recycling drop-off center closes at 3 PM, we needed to get moving moderately early.

After dumping the recycling, Lisa said, "Now we need to go to Big O Tires."

"Why?" I said.

She replied, "Because the right front tire is low."

Oh, brother. It was the right rear tire that went flat on Saturday morning, so at least it wasn't that the tire they fixed had failed. I drove on surface streets at relatively low speed over to Big O. It took them about an hour to get to us and fix the tire, but fix it they did, and it was still all warranty work, so we were on our way with no charge.

We only had one other errand, in that we wanted some HP sauce, and while sometimes we run across the licensed US version in stores, the only place we can get it reliably is the imported stuff at Cost Plus World Market, so that's where we went. We were here over the weekend, but forgot to get it.

We got home just before dark, and I went back to Day Jobbe for an hour or so, having left a little early because of needing to make the cut-off time at the recycling center.

Not terribly exciting stuff, but at least our problems were only small ones, and if the tire was going to go flat, I guess it's better to happen while we are near the place it can be fixed than, say, out on the road on a long trip.

Aside from my emergency extra trip to Reno to buy a new cable modem on the day I got home, I'd gone no father from home than Grocery Outlet, Walgreens, and the Renown Health Urgent Care clinic since I got home. I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about going anywhere this weekend, but I've recovered sufficiently (including from the leg infection) that it seemed like I should go take care of things. Also, I had a birthday offer from Cost Plus World Market that would have expired if I didn't use it this weekend. So I decided to get mildly adventurous.

I haven't been to any Reno buffets since the pandemic started. Unfortunately, the pandemic killed my favorite, which was the Peppermill's — they've remodeled it out of existence — and the three major downtown hotels ("The Row") have also discontinued buffets. The Atlantic still has a buffet, and it still has a weekend brunch, so I decided to give it a try.

Brunch doesn't start until 9 AM, and I woke up much earlier than necessary, but I killed enough time so that I arrived just after they opened. It was not that crowded, which was a relief. It's not cheap, even after my 10% locals discount. Unfortunately, it turns out that I did not bring a big enough appetite. I don't care for lobster (too much work to crack it; the lobster Newberg was good, though) and I don't drink alcohol, so the free-flowing champagne was not for me. They did have a good omelette, and a fine Asian and Mexican section. But the real issue was that I wasn't nearly as hungry as I should have been for such a huge selection of food. I felt stuffed after far less food than I would remembered getting from places like this. Maybe that's good.

One thing that was good, and partially makes up for the cost of the buffet, is that I was so full that nothing looked appetizing, so I didn't really overspent at Cost Plus World Market or WinCo Foods, the latter of which was nowhere as busy as I'd feared it would be. Between the two I went to the Reno Lush store, because I was nearly out of both of the things I use from them. I was in the UK for so long that I ran through what I'd bought at the Lush at Paddington near the beginning of the trip, although admittedly I bought smaller sizes to reduce how much I needed to carry around.

While I was in Lush in South Reno, I told the staff there about visiting the biggest Lush store I've ever seen, and as luck would have it, one of the two staff members had also been there. He said that apparently there's at least one larger one in Liverpool and another large one in, as he recalled, Amsterdam. The Glasgow Lush on Buchanan Street is four stories tall and very wide too boot. I mentioned later to Lisa (I went by this store shortly after dropping her at Chris off at Glasgow Queen Street for the start of their rail journey) that if I'd had more time, I would have sprung for their one-hour foot spa treatment, after the days in Iceland and London and a lot of time on my feet at Worldcon (albeit less than usual thanks to being sat in those marathon Business Meetings). She told me that she wouldn't have blamed me for doing so.

I was out for about six hours on Saturday, and was a lot more tired than I expected to be. Unless I've done my sums wrong, I may not need to go back to Reno again until Lisa gets back home a month from now.

I woke up around 0530 this morning, having slept around seven hours. I did not have to check out until 1100, so I could have gone back to sleep for a while, but I decided that it was in my best interest to get back on my normal work schedule. While I was in the UK, I was sleeping in each morning, starting mid-morning or sometimes as late as Noon, but tomorrow I'm back on "normal" hours.

Not being in any rush, I finally got the WiFi in the room working (I couldn't actually connect last night) and wrote yesterday's entry, backdating it to last night before I went to bed. I had a couple of cups of coffee, got showered, packed up my bags, and checked out of the hotel.

As I was packing, I realized that my initial plan to take a taxi to the Amtrak station to collect the minivan (which I'd made before booking into the SureStay) was a waste of money and energy. There is a Reno Transit District bus that runs past the airport and goes to the Central Bus Terminal, which is a block from the train station and from where the Astro was parked. So I stored my luggage with the hotel and walked to the bus stop.

( Slowing Working my Way Homeward )

Initially everything went fine on the home network. Unfortunately, after a short time the network went down. Investigating things, I found the lights were off on the cable modem. All of them, even the power light. I tried plugging the modem into another known good power outlet, and nothing happened. So I concluded that the modem was dead.

Having a dead modem was not really something I wanted to have to deal with after a seven-week vacation, especially given that I need to go back to work (online) tomorrow morning. I got the computers running somewhat by bridging my smartphone, but that's not ideal and it's slow. The cable modem was out of warranty, so I ordered a new one (the old model isn't made anymore) from Best Buy and went back to Reno. Again, this is not something I wanted to have to do.

Returning home, I set to work trying to get the new cable modem to work. Unfortunately, now it looks like tonight that Spectrum Internet has a website outage and all of the support options come down to something along the lines of "not tonight, I have a headache." Also the manufacturer's installation instructions seem to assume that of course everyone has a wi-fi-enabled home network, which we do not (and that Lisa does not want). So at least for tomorrow I'll be stuck with the slow bridge over the phone until I can (I hope) work with Spectrum to figure out how to make the Arris modem (which says on the label that it's compatible with Spectrum) to work.

Tonight, however, I am home. This is the final installment of my 2024 Worldcon travel story. Lisa is still in Europe, though (she went to see the Wuppertal suspended monorail today), so there will be different travel tales (and stories of my doing my travel agent act) to come.

We had several things that needed to get done in Reno during "working hours," including some with time constraints, so as I soon as I could get off work today, we headed in to get as much done as we could.

( Shopping List )

It was around 37°C today, which is pretty hot. Thank goodness the air conditioning in the Astro works now. However, it bogs down in city driving, so we only got the full effect while driving between Fernley and Reno/Sparks on I-80. This was also the first time that the rear air conditioning has worked in years, as a previous shop threw up their hands on a repair and simply cut it off from the main system.

It was, however, a decent test to confirm that the A/C works under conditions that will likely apply when we drive to Westercon in Salt Lake City in a few weeks.

Lisa and I (and Kuma) went to Reno today. The main event was an ultrasound on my leg. The longer version of that is on a friends-locked post. Short version: good news; it's just an infected leg, without arterial blockages.

Since we were in town anyway, we ran a few errands. The US FoodSource wholesale grocery where we bought lots of stuff for Tonopah is only a few blocks from the hospital, and we went there because I wanted to buy a large supply of whole peppercorns, on account of most of the places where I've been getting whole black pepper have started selling it only in pre-packaged single-use grinders, which seems a waste to me. I reckon the container I bought will last a good long time.

The spray nozzle in the kitchen has been leaking sideways, which is messy and annoying, so we went to RESCO restaurant supply and bought a new rubber gasket for the nozzle. Lisa installed it this evening.

Finally, we fought our way through rush-hour traffic up to Raley's to buy some groceries that we can't get from WinCo. Then we headed for home. I don't like driving in heavy traffic, especially in the Rolling Stone, but fortunately things lightened up just outside of Reno and we made good time. Including the time spent at the imaging center, we were out for around six hours.

Lisa and I planned to go to Reno for grocery shopping at WinCo at about 1 AM Friday morning. Unfortunately, I never was able to get to sleep yesterday afternoon (which is odd because I've been doing so a lot lately, but I had a lot on my mind yesterday and couldn't sleep). So a little after 11 PM we decided to go ahead and get it done while I was still awake.

Fortunately, aside from the aisles being full of boxes, forklifts, pallet jacks, and people working on same, there were not a whole lot of actual customers. As usual, we did two trips: once for bulky things and then again for smaller stuff. (Otherwise we'd need two shopping carts, and we'd rather make two trips with one card than one trip with us both pushing carts.)

The weather was mostly clear, and so were the highways; however, there were strong gusty winds in the Truckee River canyon between Sparks and Fernley. I'm glad traffic was light, because the Rolling Stone was getting pushed around. A couple of times, I felt the need to reassure Lisa that I was awake, just being buffeted.

We got home around 1:30 AM and got the goods unloaded and put away before 2 AM. Given that I'd been awake since 5 AM the previous day, it was definitely time for bed for me. The next eight hours was pretty sound sleep for me.