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Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Calico Train - Steve Martin

Built to last.

Because it's the world we live in, I got a virtual consultation on my wallet today. There's an assortment of leather repair shops in New York City, and they now offer the option of having someone check out a piece through video conferencing rather than legging it out to Midtown. My wallet's been getting fairly ragged for a while, so I figured it was time to look into seeing if it could be fixed. It turns out, not so much. The guy took one look at it and said that it probably wasn't possible, given the overall wear and weathering and and rips at the seams, and even fixing up the seams would be difficult. He gave a timetable of several days, if not weeks, and a price point of a few hundred dollars.

The thing about this wallet that's got me considering that price and timetable is that this is my wallet. To be clear, this is my only wallet. To be even more precise, this is still my first wallet. It's the wallet my parents bought for me when I'd have been five or six, old enough to be trusted with one. To illustrate how long I've had it, it's got the address and phone number of the house I grew up in. My hometown changed its area codes in 1997, and the number in my wallet has the old area code. When I told the leather guy I'd had it for at least 30 years, I wasn't exaggerating.

Besides the sheer emotional attachment to this thing, it's also a good wallet. It's got a clear slot for emergency contact information, it's got an ID pocket, it's got six thin credit card sleeves and a larger pocket for a few more, it's got a lot of room for bills, and it's got a coin purse. A coin purse! With a clasp! A coin purse with two pockets, one I use for pennies and one I use for all the other coins to make exact change that much easier to manage. That's not a feature on most modern wallets. It's barely a feature on vintage wallets, at least going by what's being offered on eBay.

A few hundred dollars to fix this would still be getting my money's worth out of this wallet. I'm also thinking that given I've had this over thirty years, it might be time to buy a second wallet for a good deal less than a few hundred dollars. Provided, that is, I can find one that's also capable of doing what this one does. Hopefully with all the same features, ideally for at least another thirty years.

Current Mood: scared
Current Music: nothing now

Phobic.

Visiting my parents' building is always a gamble, and it's both rare and memorable when I lose. Specifically, when I have to deal with a dog. More specifically, when a dog needs to be held back from attacking me. Once about a week ago, down the hallway, and today. The encounter that happened about a week ago took place when I was climbing up the stairs and got to a floor where someone had their dog on a leash, waiting for the elevator to take them down, and without any provocation, just from seeing me climbing the stairs, their dog starts barking at me. Clearly at me, needing to be held back, its owner holding the leash to keep it from coming in my direction. Why it did that, I don't know. It wasn't a very large dog, but the bark was angry enough I was worried about its teeth.

This afternoon, I got on the elevator, and as it descended, it picked up a dog, who came at me but got pulled away when the owner saw my body language - stiff, pulling inward, steadfastly looking away. Then a couple floors below that, it picked up another dog, and I behaved the same way, shifting my legs when it came close to my bare skin, and it begins barking. Loud, angry. I keep looking away and it keeps barking, getting violent enough its owner picks it up to hold it and make sure it doesn't do anything.

Someone on the fourth floor called the elevator. I leave and head down the hall, and look back to see see that they were waiting for the next one, too.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Big Machine - The Goo Goo Dolls

Waiting for you.

The first day of fall. Rosh Hashanah beginning a new year. And giving blood, too. It took me just over six minutes, which isn't bad except for how I know I can do better than that. I'll keep hydrating and hitting the treadmill.

I'm also going to leave the bandage on until bedtime, as usual. It's yellow, so I feel like I should pick a dress for tonight's dinner that'll really make it pop.

Current Mood: discontent
Current Music: Mr Jones - Counting Crows

Strolling through.

The highlight of the day was sending out a pair of novel queries, the first in a while. Beyond that, not much. I got the flu and TDAP boosters yesterday, so my arm's sore enough I didn't want to move it a whole lot, certainly not for weightlifting, so all it was in the gym was the treadmill.

I also found out why I hadn't been informed of certain family developments: they're all on the family group chat. However, everyone else is using the iPhone's proprietary message system. Last week I turned that off to just get text messages, thinking that might help with coordinating movie theater seats - if an iPhone message wouldn't get sent, maybe a text would. Then the other people arrived and I didn't think about it for several days, until my dad gave me a call the other day about recent ongoing developments. I tried turning that feature back on, but it didn't bring in the backlog of things that'd been shared, so I'm still at a loss for how things are going. I'm also really tempted to turn it back off, just to see what happens. Except given how my phone's already largely incapable of getting internet-based message services, there's not much of a difference to be made.