Potpourri

I don't feel coherent enough today to put together a cogent post on any particular subject, so here are a few fragments of thoughts on several topics...

• I didn't get around to doing my usual baseball postseason predictions, but if I had I would have predicted thusly:
  • LDS: Houston over Boston, Cleveland over New York; Los Angeles over Arizona, Washington over Chicago.
  • LCS: Houston over Cleveland, Los Angeles over Washington.
  • World Series: Houston over Los Angeles.
  So I'm batting .500 so far. Houston is, unfortunately, very very good, and I don't see them losing more than a few games the whole way. If anyone can beat them, though, it's probably LA; the Dodgers are crazy deep and might be able to keep the Astros in check, but it'd be an upset. So far, the playoffs have been fun but not that memorable save for the Cubs/Nationals Game 5, which was insane. Reminded me a little of the 15-14 game in the 1993 World Series, but the '93 game at least had rainy conditions and a wet field to blame the horrible pitching on; the Nats and Cubs were just playing as if hexed, which some Washington, DC, fans might think is plausible given the Nationals' seeming inability to win a playoff series no matter how may leads they take. One of the freakier games I've ever seen.
• My housing search has been going in earnest for a few months now, and I'm getting rather discouraged. When I was looking "unofficially" over the past year or so, before I had the money in hand to actually buy anything, there seems to be enough listings popping up every now and then to make me feel like this would be a relatively quick to-do once I had the cash in hand, but it's not turned out that way. Just in that time the market seems to have inflated to a disturbing degree, and I've started expanding my search radius outside of the city. I don't want to leave the city proper, but thanks to fucking Amazon and other big biz luring people here with higher-end paychecks and a lack of development in housing starts, I might not have a choice. Even if I continue to rent, things are bad — I got socked with the second rent hike of 20+% in the last few years recently, making staying where I am untenable in the long term. Goddamn Amazon.com... I'm having a look at a townhome near the edge of the city limits tomorrow at an open house. We'll see how that goes.
• In addition to Discovery, the premiere of which I opined on here and which continues to be solidly engrossing, I've been enjoying The Orville, The Good Place, Mr. Robot, and The Gifted on the TeeVee. I'm unsurprisingly disappointed so far in The Inhumans, though. Still, it's a good time to be a nerd with all the geeky TV series these days.
• I thought I had more brain droppings to write about, but my mental haze must be thicker than I realized. Bleh.