THE KARATE KID AND THE WATER HEATER

 Some years ago I saw a rebooted version of "The Karate Kid", starring Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan and Will Smith's son Jaden.  The movie took place in China, which is kinda odd considering karate is a Japanese thing and Chinese in general hates Japanese, but I digress.

Call me odd but the one thing I remember the most about the movie is the scene where Chan's character informed Smith's character that in China turning on the faucet for hot water requires waiting a little bit for the water to get boiled.  There is an additional switch to tell the water tank to heat the water.  It's a good way to save water, at the cost of some amount of time.  When I recently replaced my water tank, I was excited to finally get one like that.  Alas, it turned out to be too expensive for the budget, so I ended up with the same old system.  I would waste some water by spraying the initial cold water down the drain while waiting for the water to get hot.  At some other time, my bathroom sink got worked on and the strainer was replaced by a screwable piece.  Instead of having to dismantle the pipes below the sink, each weekend I would unscrew the piece and clean it with paper tissues.  Recently, it dawned on me that I can put to work the water that would otherwise be completely wasted.  I would unscrew the piece from the sink, hold it under the shower head, then spray it with the cold water while waiting for the water to warm.  I have a bow to collect water for use as brown water, to flush the toilet.  The nasty stuff would come off the sink piece after being hit by the shower head.  I feel a little better with the lesser waste of water.

SHARE FAIR AT KING'S BAY LIBRARY

Back in January 2020, my local Buy Nothing's co-administrator came up with the idea of asking the local library to host a swap meet, except everything is free because, Buy Nothing...  The librarian approved the request and the rest was history.  Well, sort of.  Recall that by March 2020, the whole world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  No library, no swap meet.  Eventually things got back to normal, hard to believe but it happened.  We continued to have monthly event, lots of stuff changed hands, all free, the leftover went to a nearby soup kitchen the next morning.  The event got so popular that these days we need two cars to take the stuff to the soup kitchen.  With the more recent events, I had to drop some stuff by the side of my house and advertise them as Curb Alert.  I live near a train station so there is much traffic, sometimes everything would be gone by the next morning.

Today, I attended a similar event, organized by the Buy Nothing group in the King's Bay area.  The local library is on Nostrand Avenue, between Avenue X and Avenue W.  It was nice to look at the stuff without worrying about people grabbing too many or helping others separate the donations.  I was just an attendee, not running the show.  I did chat a bit with the organizer.  I only visited King's Bay Library once before and didn't know that it has a sort of an art gallery just to the left of the lobby as you enter the building.  It is a spacious room.  The stuff was spread out on tables and clothes racks along the walls of the room and there was a little island in the middle with shelves and more tables.  They plan to drop off the leftover at the Salvation Army on the same block, near the corner of Avenue W and Nostrand Avenue.  I told myself not to take anything but in the end I took a music CD and two books, the books are for my own faux Little Free Library.  It's good to see the Buy Nothing movement going strong and build the community through events like this Share Fair.  Photos in the following Google Album:

Share Fair 2025 March 22 at King's Bay Library

LOW SEE INTO TOE

"Lo siento", sorry not sorry LOL... For someone like me with a little extra girth, it's a pain to cut my own toenails.  I couldn't bend over far enough to use the nail-clipper to do its work.  I had to wear my near-sight eyeglasses so I can see what I am doing, lest I snip some meat off the little pigs.  How nice it would be to have a servant to do the work for me, but I digress.  Recently, I was able to do it all by myself.  No glasses, bending was sufficient to get the work done.  I wonder if the weekly yoga I do with Wii Fit Plus finally paid off.  Or the more frequent walks I did in past weeks.  Not long ago, I discovered that at CityStrides.com I am no longer at the #1 spot in Staten Island.  Some guy at some point put in lots of work and now I am over 100 streets behind him.  Right away I started to re-focus my walks in Staten Island.  No more Elizabeth, NJ or Bayonne, NJ, all Staten Island.  I usually walk as a form of exercise after work, but some mornings I even got up early to head out early enough to put in a walk.  I am narrowing the gap.  Still, at yesterday's doctor visit, the doctor told me I need to lose some weight, so weight-wise I still have work to do, but maybe I improved a bit.  Small victory.

2:30

 2:30, or two-thirty... tooth hurty.  Tooth extraction sounds painful and it is.  That's what I had a few weeks ago.  I don't remember the last time I had one pulled but this one was complicated.  First, a parabolic X-ray was done to show that the target tooth was in the way of another that needed work.  Next, a 3D X-ray was needed to make sure some nerve is not in the way, otherwise the pain after the tooth is pulled will be permanent.  Ouch!  During the experience, something flew out of my mouth and landed on the floor.  I suspect it was the tooth.  Even with Novocaine, it was still quite an experience.  It helped that the dentist gave me verbal update of what was going on.  I breathed a sign of relief when he said the tooth came out, he just needed to sew the wound close.  Whew!

I was in pain for a few days.  I decided to adopt the new habit of flossing more often and brushing after as many meals as possible.  Hopefully if I can keep up with the new habit, no more bad teeth in the future.  I wish I can be like my father with regards to dentists.  He didn't need to visit any dentists for most of his life.  He did mention about having a string tied to a loose tooth and slamming the door that the other end of the string was attached to.  That was the old days in Vietnam, I am sure it really happened.  But that was a for loose tooth, what if the tooth wasn't loose?  Months before his death, my father had a dentist appointment for something.  His condition got worse and oral hygiene was put in the back burner.  He joked about not having to pay any dentists his entire life.  I suppose my having a sweet tooth is part of the blame for my teeth troubles.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

Planning for my high school reunion is proceeding well.  Initially, the Reunion Committee worried that not enough people will pay up front, that we may not have enough money to pay a deposit to the hotel where we rent the banquet hall and have dinner provided etc.  We did get enough people coughing up the dough, but there was another challenge.  In this day and age (the year 2025), you would think any bill-paying platform would automatically have online payment already included.  And you would be wrong.  The bill-paying platform that we use, which I choose not to remember, at the moment, has no such feature.  Or at least, it's not there until I asked for it.  We used the same platform in 2010, I probably was not a Treasurer for the Reunion Committee, or maybe my memory is really that bad, maybe we paid everything by paper checks?  Based on some old email communications, it seemed money was regularly transferred to a bank account, then somebody wrote checks to cover all the expenses - DJ deposit, photographer deposit, catering hall deposit, etc.  Back to the year 2025, or at least late 2024, when the Reunion Committee decided not to have a bank account.  How would payment be made then?  I can add a Vendor, but there seems to be no way to do online payment.  I had to open a ticket with tech support and somebody turned on some switches and voila I was able to send an email to request the hotel's bank info.  Earlier I went through my Committee contact with the hotel and got some info but none of that matched the form in the payment platform.  By going through the payment platform process, I can see that they had the same bank as me, but their account number is masked, I only see the last few digits, which is how it should be.  The due date arrived, I arranged for electronic payment, and money is scheduled to change hand, sort of.  Whew, a hurdle cleared, but it would be so much easier if it's a standard thing to start with.