only one reality

 my old electric lawnmower finally croaked a few weeks ago. it was a long and painful death that took a few years but she lived a long and fruitful life.  i thought the motor had burned out a few years ago but it was a sears craftsman mower and it refused to die.  this year it was the 2 rust holes that had me thinking it was the end of the line but trying to cut heavy wet grass killed her before she could rust away.

today the adventure was trying to dispose of her which  turned into an unplanned adventure.  the usual recycling depot was shut down  and the city told me to take her to a commercial metal recycling facility that turned out to be very difficult to find. in hindsight, i should have taken the new phone with me and used the map app but the phone hasn't left my desktop since i activated it.

it was a huge commercial operation with a steady flow of huge trucks dumping stuff and there i was walking around with a lawnmower looking like a migrant gardener until a employee came out of the office to tell me i was in the wrong place. when i told him that the city directed me there, he sighed and told me to leave it by some large bins.  upon reaching the bins, i noticed 2 bicycle wheels and being a hard wired scavenger i crawled over some junk and retrieved them.  son of bitch, they had brand new tires and were rock hard!  of course i snagged them and took them home. 

some realities might change, but i'll always be scruffy scavenger at heart. 

shifting realities

 so far i'm really enjoying my journey into shifting realities, it's almost the highlight the of my day. i've read a few articles on shifting realities where the *fool is instructed to have a destination in mind before beginning the quest. so far i've resisted thinking about a destination or goal, instead the only constant in my quest is my companion. my companion has 4 feet and really needs a bath.

one great benefit of the shifting reality is it's allowing me to see my problems and challenges from a different point of view. having a different approach to a problem can make life a lot easier. seeing my problems from a different point of view allows me to separate mountains from mole hills. hopefully i'll have a lot more mole hills than mountains in my future.

the one major change in my current reality is i am now a member of the collective. i hate to admit it but for the first time in my life i am the owner of an activated cell phone, something that i've resisted for decades. when i was working at the cracker factory, i refused the benefit of a free cell phone. the reason for now possessing an activated cell phone is my doctor ordered me to get one. i've had it for a week now and it hasn't left my desktop. in a few months i'll be taking it out to the back  yard to take pictures of the fish.

getting the phone was not a simple task. it would have been easy to contact one of the large providers and pick a plan, but i'm hard wired to find the cheapest alternative. i found cheap third party provider that was basically an on-line service with no human assistance. the company had a directory of physical locations but the locations given were nothing more than  mail drops. the first place i went to was real shithole with trash everywhere and an asian guy sitting at a desk covered in used electronic parts. when i tried to get service the only thing answer i received was "he not here".  when i asked if there were any other stores around, without looking up he said "go to mall".

the mall was like being in hong kong. there were probably 50 stores and about 20 were phone repairs and service. i thought that walking into a store and asking for directions was a simple and straight forward task, but no, not one person was willing to help me so i had to hop on the bike and pedal home to get the store number. armed with the store number, it was easy to find what i was looking for and luckily a young woman spoke english and was willing to sell me the service and install a sim card into the old iphone my princess gave me. all the signage in the store was chinese but through the miracle of modern technology she was able to hand me a contract and instructions in english.

*fool - i like to think of myself as "the fool" from a deck of tarot cards.