1. The other day I spent an hour or so rearranging the apps on my phone. All the transportation-related apps (buses, airlines, ride share services) have been banished to the last screen of my phone because I have exactly zero plans to get into a vehicle with anyone at all who does not live in my home unless it is such an emergency that I would be going to the hospital by ambulance.

  2. Entirely deleted United Airlines’s app from my phone because I am never flying their cursed airline ever again. I know, I know, I say that, and in some sort of unlikely future when traveling to Europe is a possibility, I’ll end up booking a flight on Lufthansa and then discovering that it is really just a United codeshare.

  3. Today’s unplanned Amazon purchase was one of those power packs that you can use to jump start your car. My car is roughly nine years old, and I have replaced the battery at most once during the time that I have owned it. I go exactly nowhere these days. I had been driving around every now and then in order to keep the battery from going dead, but either I have not been doing that enough or the battery is just not feeling it any more. This is not the first time that this happened: Two weeks ago, the car wouldn’t start, and I paid someone $55 to start it. I drove it roughly 60 miles in hopes of charging the battery. Clearly not enough. Today I was going to drive the car around to keep the battery charged, but it was too late. Dead again.

  4. Before you suggest that I should drive the car around more often, I will remind you that I live in “No Park North Park.” We are fortunate to have not one but two parking spaces. However, they are tandem parking, and my car is the only one that fits in the top of the space. (This space is so narrow that when the mirror in the passenger side is 1/2” away from the fence, you still can’t open the driver’s side door to the first click.) Thus, if I want to drive my car, I would need to find street parking for Jim’s car, walk back to get my car, drive it around, and then go and get Jim’s car and put it back in the spot. (There are rules about when and how long you can park on the street.)

  5. Today’s opportunity for car-moving was made possible by Jim going on a bicycle outing. He drove to some bike trail in North County.

  6. I joke that he should have a subscription to inner tubes because he gets more flat tires than anyone else who I have ever met. Fortunately, the tire did not go flat before he got back to his car because I would not have been able to drive up to get him. It turns out that some sort of cactus spine had become embedded in the tire and then punctured the inner tube.

  7. He does a lot more bike-riding than I do. I do a lot more bike-part-buying than he does because I convince myself that it’s not me but the bike that is responsible for me not riding it, and then I get some sort of modification and then also bring home all of the perfectly good old parts. I forget why I needed to replace a perfectly good tire with a new tire, but I did, so I had a spare bike tire jammed next to my sewing machine cabinet. Unfortunately, my extra tire is a rear tire, and he needs a front tire.

  8. Technically he is ahead of me in bike-part-buying because he has two bikes, one of which is ridiculous, and I only have one. How ridiculous is this bike? The last time he had it serviced at the bike shop, they checked to see if he needed new firmware for the derailleur. (Also ridiculous: The clippy pedals on this bike are not compatible with the clippy pedals for his other bike.)

  9. The derailleur on his non-ridiculous bike is actually my old derailleur. His snapped off when he was riding, and I had replaced mine because I bought a new rear cassette with gears that have so very, very many teeth, and both my derailleur and my chain scoffed at the idea. Confession: My bike is ridiculous in the exact opposite way as his. I have flat plastic pedals, a basket on the front, and colorful LEDs on the spokes.

  10. We get the keys to the house either tomorrow or Tuesday. I thought that it was Tuesday, but then I heard something that might have suggested Monday. I hope that there is some form of transportation that can get me to my new house to pick up my new keys. There are so many sheds on the property that I am lobbying to have one of them set aside as bicycle storage.