So I did this today. And then rode twelve miles home via Lindbergh Boulevard, for a total of 26 miles.

I didn't realize I'd covered so much ground until I recognized buildings on the outskirts of the airport.

The Heinz Wildlife Refuge (aka the Tinicum Wildlife Refuge) has many miles of hard-packed gravel trails in decent condition for cycling, even with cheap-hybrid-bike tires.

I was trying to follow the East Coast Greenway. There's lots of signage for it now, but you still get dropped off the face of the earth sometimes. I kept finding it though.

I want to pedal to my mom's house in Connecticut in the worst way. It's smack on the Greenway.

I don't have to take off work! I can just get up at 6am, pedal until it's too hot, and hide out in an AirBnB somewhere! We all need practice with remote working anyway. That's totally practical right? Hey it actually might be.

Yesterday I brought a group of people to the Musem of Modern Art in New York City. Due to minor mishaps I had two extra tickets.

This is not a huge deal and I immediately considered just writing them both off as donations, it's a worthy cause after all. But we did decide to try offering them to folks in the ticket line, for something less than original price. Waste not, want not. Habits of a lifetime.

Nobody was interested. As someone in our group pointed out, this could be because they didn't know if I was honest, and that's a good point, although it's also easily solved: come with me when I go through the entrance; see if you get in or not; pay me then.

But what stopped me from even suggesting that was the looks people gave me. They weren't doubting looks. They were incredulous, snooty, dismissive looks.

You speak of MONEY, sir? You disturb the AESTHETIC of this LOBBY? How GAUCHE! This is an ART MUSEUM!

These are the same people who probably wrote poignant tweets when they encountered the Minimum Wage Machine, a performance piece in which anyone can turn a crank to produce a trickle of coins, which is exciting until you realize they are being disbursed at the rate of $8 per hour and gradually become depressed by the knowledge of how little that is.

Screw those people and their faux concern for the truly poor and their open disdain for the middle class. I'm glad I made them see me and my Target clothes and my perfectly good extra tickets.

(Yes, I'm sure I'm misjudging somebody in that line, but they'll live. Very well.)

OK Philly, it's Primary Election Day! I'm voting for:

MAYOR: Jim Kenney. Not much of a surprise. Broad support for him. He's an honest guy, rooted in the community and highly intelligent. He's taught local government at Fels for years. I prefer his labor connections to Anthony Williams' charter school dollars. I think Kenney is our next consensus Mayor.

CITY COUNCIL AT LARGE:

Helen Gym: forced the Parking Authority to cough up their profits to the schools like they are required to. Saved the last public school in Nicetown.

Paul Steinke: successfully led the Reading Terminal Market in complex times.

Jenne Ayers: wonky in the right ways. Interested in data-driven do-gooding like the STRIVE partnerships in Cincinnati. A milliennial, for a change.

Tom Wyatt: the local community gardeners like him. (Hey, that's important in our household.)

Sherrie Cohen: key issues for her include libraries and public pools. Widely endorsed.

DISTRICT 1 CITY COUNCIL: Squilla's decent. Nobody's running against him. Zzzz.

HELL NO: Wilson Goode, Jr: a little bird tells me he "can't read a spreadsheet." Frank Rizzo, Jr.: accepted a DROP retirement plan the first time around; these were never meant for City Council. Blondell Reynolds-Brown: in hot water for ethics reasons in 2013.

NAH: Allan Domb is running a straight "I am good at the business things" campaign with no interesting ideas on what he'd do on council. We could do worse, but we could do better.

CITY COMMISSIONER: not excited about any of the Democrats, and I'm one. But in the general election I plan to vote for Al Schmidt, a Republican. He's got a deep resume and has been doing the job well for a while.

JUDGE OF THE ANYTHING: THIS SHOULD NOT BE AN ELECTED POSITION. WHAT. THE. FRICK. So, let the Philly Bar Association's website tell you who is at least a competent lawyer, and vote accordingly. See the comments.

BALLOT QUESTIONS

"Abolish the SRC and return control of schools to the City:" no. The state's not great, but we had corruption problems on our own, remember?

"Commission for women:" yes.

"City agencies to prepare plans for participation of those with limited English skills:" yes. Anything to anger Joey Vento's ghost.

"Commission on universal pre-kindergarten:" DEFINITELY.

See below for useful links for making up your own mind. (What, you're just going to vote my slate? Um, I mean, sure. Do that, thousands of you.)

Download a sample ballot:

I cannot stop playing this awesome little game.

You ramble around a tiny solar system, exploring and discovering crazy stuff. That's it. It's great. Still in alpha, way more fun than "finished" things I've played with.

After weeks of playing with absolutely no googlin' for spoilerz, I finally broke down and peeked at a playthrough to find out how the heck you land on that wacky disappearing moon. Turns out it's something I never use because the controls are difficult on a mac and I forget how to use stuff that seems less important. So I don't feel so badly about missing it.

Speaking of which, for the benefit of others who were horrified when that other page with the keyboard controls went down:

Outer Wilds Keyboard Controls

move - wasd
look - mouse
interact - e
jump - space
open/close map - m
toggle flashlight - f
toggle telescope - middle click
zoom in - left shift
zoom out - left ctrl

>> Probe Controls <<
launch probe - right click
forward snapshot - right click
reverse snapshot - q
retrieve probe - hold right click

>> Flight Controls <<
thrust horizontally - wasd
thrust up - left shift
thrust down - left ctrl
pitch/yaw - mouse
acquire target - left click
match velocity - space (target required)

>> Ship-Only Flight Controls <<
toggle landing camera - q
engage autopilot - r (target required)

Don't thank me, thank archive.org.

Riffing: check out NASA administrator Charles Bowden looking the Balrog straight in the eye and bellowing "you... shall... not... pass!"

Warning: Barbie wants to take your child's brain into the cloud. Brr brr brr brr brr!

Plumbing: I replaced a tub spout today. Super easy, but I'm proud of myself anyway. Except this one is super noisy when you fill the tub, so I've ordered a nice Delta faucet with a pull-down diverter. The kind that automatically switches off the diverter when you stop the water. Which means no galactic conflict in the bathroom.

Reading: The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women. I bought it cuz Shari Lipkin's Valentines is in it. I dig that story.

The book is very uneven, some of the first stories in the book are poorly edited. Too many of them are lazy as science fiction. But others, like Alice Sola Kim's "The Other Graces," are excellent.

And truth be told, like most people I care more about an internally consistent story than I do about adhering to the tenets of "hard SF," although I admire that as a challenging creative constraint.

Wearing: I recently ordered three pairs of dockers online and they fit. Roberta approves of the way they fit. For a guy like me, that's a major fashion breakthrough.

I'm also wearing a super warm, super fuzzy flannel shirt. It doesn't match the pants, but it's a Saturday morning.

Planning: this weekend I'm gonna be a dead sexy man. I'm gonna be so dead sexy, I'm gonna install a shower diverter. Boom chickawaba.

Next week at P'unk Avenue we are celebrating our tenth anniversary. Holy crap. I've been there for most of that. Holy crap.

I am fortunate to work with friends and to look forward to work almost every day.

By Canadian artist Marian Bantjes, this lovely illustration of a classic spam email is on display as part of the Fraktur exhibit at the Free Library of Philadelphia. I was amused. The show is free and well worth your time.

Well, I have a cool job now. And I go dancing when I can. And that leaves... not a metric ton of spare creative energy.

Creativity strikes, but I rarely come home eager to write something epic outside of work. I tend toward the bon mot; the long-form stuff tends to flow at work. This is not uncommon for people in creative jobs.

But, when I read some of my past LJ posts, I am flabbergasted by the outpouring.

I was hungry, and angry, and excited, and amazed, discovering and rediscovering things. Right now I'm in a different sort of place.

That's okay? I guess? For now.

I made a website and then I got really busy and just skimmed it. And then I noticed that there's a small community or two using it rather happily and not much caring if the rest of the world does. Interesting.

Hello, still-tuned-in members of said communities. What's working? What's not working? What might I do for you? I can see that the upgrades I did to link sharing a month or so back are a win, at least.

As for me: I'm planking and programming and dancing and pretending to learn to play the guitar all over again. I don't know how far I'm going to get with that last one. But this is awesome.

I needed a name for some software (don't tune out yet) and I wanted something that invoked the idea of migration. I googled migratory birds. And I fell down the wikihole checking out this magnificent bastard:

Check it out: the arctic tern migrates from the north pole to the south pole and back every year.

It does this for 30 years.

You ain't no wanderer, you ain't no travelin' man, just hang it up, the arctic tern has it all over you in the meandering department.