J.P.

This photo was taken yesterday during our decorating festivities. We are putting up four Christmas trees this year; the fifth tree may be put up closer to Christmas. We have contractors coming in during the month of December to replace carpeting and fix the drywall that’s missing due to all the leaks during Monsoon Season 2021. We’ve decided we’re done fighting with the home insurance company (something something about being “in good hands”, yeah right) and we’re going ahead and getting the water damage fixed.

Decorating the house has improved my mood a little bit; it’s hard for me to find the holiday spirit here in the desert southwest. I’m always in the mood to go hiking and sunbathing and such; ho ho ho just seems out of place here.

But the inside of our home is becoming quite festive.

I love being able to say the phrase “back East”. I use it to describe where we were born and have lived the majority of our lives. When we first moved to Chicago I heard Bea Arthur use the term describing her first appearance as Maude on “All In The Family”. “I went to cousin Edith’s home, back East, where they were all sick as hell and had no one to take care of them…”. Of course, Archie and Edith Bunker lived in Queens and Maude lived in Tuckahoe, so I don’t know why Bea mentioned the character going “back East” but she did and the term stuck with me once we moved to the midwest and then when we moved to the desert southwest.

“Where are you originally from?”

I start with “back East” and then narrow it down to the region then the city then a smaller city then the small village when describing “back East”, depending on how invested I am in the conversation.

I bring all this up because on Wednesday my husband and I are headed “back East” to visit family on all side of the family tree. We haven’t been to his hometown since well before COVID and it’s been over a year since we’ve visited any of my family in snowy Upstate New York.

I’m thinking about my wardrobe here in the desert southwest and I’m realizing I don’t have that much in the way of cold weather clothing anymore, but I suppose I’ll make do with what I have.

Gotta dress for the snow when you head “back East”.

There are some songs from the 90s that still make my heart very happy. I remember spinning this song a lot back in the day when I was working in a couple of clubs and it always filled the dance floor. It was fairly popular on the radio charts as well.

From 1991 (and 1992 in the U.S.), here’s Rozalla with “Everybody’s Free”.

This is the first year where I’ve used my iPhone on a tripod instead of my Canon DSLR for the family photo. The feast was quite enjoyable.

We’re fortunate to live in a house large enough for many rooms. I have two places I can call “my office”. During the day I work in what would be typically thought of us the library. It’s on the main floor, has a wonderful view over the front landscaping, and keeps me productive all day long.

Upstairs we have a room that is dubbed “The Observatory” on the blueprints. The house was originally built by an astronomer and the room was designed to have a large telescope mounted, with lots of equipment and a large concrete pad in the shop below the room to support the telescope.

While we don’t have a large telescope, the Observatory serves as a “man cave” of sorts. I have been working on cleaning up the space. It’s in this room that I have my Mac mini setup, along with plenty of room for my flight simulator controls. I enjoy playing X-Plane from time to time and flying when I can’t get myself into an airplane.

The space is enjoyable and now that I’ve organized it better with shelves and the like, it’s more functional. Truman likes to sleep in his cat bed I’ve put in the corner for him. It’s his escape from the rest of the house as well.

I’m on a work call at 10:20 PM on a Tuesday night. This work call was scheduled earlier today, because the management team felt it was important to push code to the production servers tonight until waiting for a full week of work with a full staff. Because priorities.

This call is going as well as I thought it would be. My part of this effort will be changing one file at the very end of the call. But here I am, listening to people call other people spanned across three continents.

My husband suggested we go it for a drink. I’m giving up beer. Too many colonies. So I had two martinis. Whoo hoo my husband is driving us home. My godmother liked martinis but I never had one with her. I miss her. She was awesome.

Two olives for the both of us.

My husband and I have been putting up Christmas decorations. Like my father, I will not allow the lights to be lit up until after Thanksgiving. Since we are traveling to the Northeast for 10 days at the beginning of December, Earl wants to get the decorations up early so things are nice and festive for the rest of the family here at home and for when we return to the beautiful weather of the Sonoran Desert.

The photo above was taken just as I started this blog entry. I am sitting on our back patio enjoying the weather; it is 21ºC (approximately 68ºF) and quite lovely. I’ve been seeing photos of Buffalo being buried in snow. The warmer Great Lakes at this time of year, when brushed by cold air masses from Canada, make for some really great snow making events. My hometown in the Lake Ontario Snowbelt is also seeing some snow, though not as much as is coming off Lake Erie farther to the west. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes and has a habit of turning colder and possibly freezing earlier in the season. The Lake Ontario snow belt will get theirs soon enough.

It probably wasn’t as cordial as I could have been by mentioning on Facebook the warm weather down here in Tucson. I do miss snow events like they’re seeing back East, but maybe a day of it per winter season.

Otherwise I’m quite happy writing a blog entry from the back patio while wearing shorts in mid November.