In order to get the most common letters out of the way early, for weeks I have made my first three Wordle words THOSE, DRAIN, and CLUMP.  On February 1st, the word was THOSE!  I got it in one!  For a minute there I assumed that as an “I just became a millionaire by selling this to the New York Times” celebration, the creator had set the puzzle to give everyone a victory on the first word.

At noon on February 1, UPS sent me an email saying that my new glasses would arrive at noon on February 2.  February 2 came and went⁠—no glasses.  UPS then sent me an email saying that the glasses would instead arrive at noon on Feb­ruary 3.  When was that email sent?  February 3 at 1:53 p.m.  “We promise that something that didn’t happen two hours ago will happen two hours ago!”

One news story this month was that after an outcry the IRS dropped the requirement that people register with ID.me, an identity verification service registered through Montenegro, in order to get an account on the IRS web site.  Due to the IRS’s fuckup that I mentioned last month, I needed to get an account on the IRS web site, so I actually had to go through the ID.me verification process before it was dropped.  It failed.  All the invasive stuff like the video selfie and pass­port scan went through okay, but the service said that it didn’t take Google Voice phone numbers, and demanded that I enter another number.  The only other number I have is my landline’s number, but when I tried that, ID.me rejected it because it said it couldn’t find anything linking that number to me.  Well, no, because the number on all my accounts is the Google Voice number I’ve been using for well over a decade now!  So, no IRS account for me, and so far as I know, the IRS fuckup continues to be a problem.

At Millennium Restaurant in Oakland, Ellie ordered an orange creamsicle soda that I had some sips of and thought was crazy delicious.  Berkeleyside reported that the ingre­dients were freshly squeezed orange juice, sparkling water, and soy creamer.  I tried to make my own at home, but no matter how I mixed orange juice and carbonated water, the result was either way too dilute or not nearly fizzy enough.  I had better results using some Izze clementine soda (70% juice!) that I happened to have picked up at a discount store, but that was a one-time special, so I needed a new source.  But when I went looking for Izze soda, I discovered that non-mass-market sodas are gross these days!  They’re all either “probiotic” (one had “bacillus subtilis” as an ingre­dient) or full of vinegar (?!?) or, worst of all, sunchokes (evil in vegetable form!).  Horrifying.

That takes me through about the first week of February, at which point I stopped noting down minutiae.  Right now I’m supposed to be taking a year off from holding a day job to try to finish the Photopia novel, but after looking at my credit card statement after the holidays, I freaked out and took a bunch of tutoring students.  This was a mistake.  I have never been able to balance work with making progress on my own stuff.  I have pushed the date at which I run out of money two months further into the future, but the same is true of the date at which I finish this manuscript.  Feh.