Fun and Games Dept

It’s the kind of night I love. A gentle, warm wind. Temperatures well above 80°F. No moon. Lots of stars nearby, but lighting all around on the horizon.

I’m already looking forward to my next storm chasing week in 2023. Mother Nature never fails to impress me.

We had dinner with Matt and Homer tonight. We went to a casual Mexican place right around the corner from Homer’s house. It was a beautiful night so we walked to the restaurant. We were just finishing up our dinner when a thunderstorm moved in. We talked as the thunder boomed and the rain came down. It was raining pretty hard for quite a while. Homer and I decided to walk back to his house in the rain so I could get the car and pick up Earl and Matt and get them home in a less wet manner.

We had a very nice time this evening. It’s always fun getting together with the two of them.

As a bit of a nostalgic kind of guy, I’m in the habit of watching “Password” from the 1960s while writing code for work. I love the manners and classy behavior of the celebrities and the guests on this show, and the simplicity of the game. It’d be later years when we’d have “alphabetics” and “Super Password” and the like. Here the players alternate through ten tries to guess the Password and the winner of the round goes to play the “Lightning Round”.

Betty White met husband Allen Ludden on this show, it’s fun to see Mrs. Ludden exude her “sparkling personality”, as it’s described during her introduction.

So we’ve been watching “Uncoupled”, starring Neil Patrick Harris, on Netflix. It’s an eight episode series and it was released a few months ago. We’re just catching up.

The reviews on IMDB are unnecessarily brutal.

Some compare it to “Sex And The City”. I’ve never seen “Sex And The City”, other than the spoof of it starring Bea Arthur and Charlotte Rae, so I can’t make a comparison. It takes place in New York, the main cast seems to be quite affluent and many of the gays remind me of the gays we encountered back when we lived in Chicago.

Is the show perfect? Not by a long shot, but it’s light and airy, and has a very casual feel to the cinematography that I really enjoy. We have two episodes left in our viewing adventure and I’m looking forward to them. It’s a fun little show!

Sometimes I take a photo to remind myself of what I want to write in my blog. Apparently I didn’t do that today, so here’s a selfie from a local restaurant called “Serial Grillers”.

Monsoon season is winding down in these parts. The weather forecast talks about dry weather and seasonal temperatures for the foreseeable future. I enjoy the rains of the Monsoon and the ferocity of Mother Nature, except when it penetrates the wall and roof of the house.

Here, sniff this and tell me if it smells like pumpkin.

My husband and I were first in Tubac, Arizona in 2003. In that blog entry, written 20 years ago, I mentioned the quaint little town in passing as we were on our way to Tucmacacori and Nogales. That’s also one of the first time I mentioned our plan of moving to Arizona for our retirement. I love it when a plan comes together.

We headed specifically to Tubac today for a nice ride on this Labor Day and to get some decorating ideas for the house. The little village is charming. I get the feeling that like the rest of the world, businesses were impacted by the pandemic, but many of the quaint little shops seem to be holding their own.

We strolled through many displays and have plenty of ideas for adding to the vibe of our home. Since it’s only an hour away, we’ll head back down and pick up things as the budget allows and the family agrees.

We had a nice lunch outside at Shelby’s Bistro. The table was a little wobbly but it was still an enjoyable experience.

I will admit, I miss my family and friends back East and in the Midwest. Historically Labor Day has always made me a little anxious because it meant cold weather wasn’t that far away and there’d be snow and the like soon enough. I don’t miss that. Living in the desert just doesn’t work that way. And that makes me very happy.

As a full fledged geek I have full fledged geek dreams. It’s not unheard of me for me to remember dreams about school clocks once or twice a month. I’ve fixed clocks for my hometown schools in the past and once in a while I’ll dream about being back in the school and getting the old clocks running again. These dreams are obviously prevalent because of my keen interest in all things connected, including these early and mid 20th century clock systems.

The Historical Society in my hometown set up residence in one of the school buildings closed in the early 1970s. A former classmate has led the effort in restoring the building to its former glory, and the cafe-gyma-auditorium is now a popular spot for banquets, wedding receptions, and other community events. The building has clocks from other schools in the district, including the last wooden cases clock left intact from my elementary school. I’m hoping to get their clock system working again the next time we go back East.

The clock pictured above is a gift from another clock system enthusiast in Central Ohio. Beautifully restored, I am planning on installing it in my office here at home. I’m debating whether to cut a hole in the wall to mount it properly or ask Chris and Mike to build a frame for it. Either way I hope to have it up soon. It’s a touch of class my office needs.

The clock can’t really keep time, it advances once a minute by a 24VDC impulse from a master clock originally located in the principal’s office or something. Originally pendulum based clocks, motorized clocks replaced the function in the mid 20th century and then electronic clocks took over the duty in the late 1980s. My clocks run off a Raspberry Pi switching a simple relay to replicate the impulses needed to keep the clocks on time. Surprisingly, this clocks is not particularly loud.

I look forward to getting this on the wall. I’ll probably dream about these clocks in the next couple of days.

Such a happy geek.