Fun and Games Dept

It’s been over two years and at least two time zones since we stepped foot in a movie theatre. Our favorite theatre chain in Chicago, Arclight, has closed. We always liked Arclight.

Not too far from us here in Tucson in Galaxy Luxury+ Theatres. Many rating apps in Tucson rate the Luxury+ experience as the best theatres in the city, so we decided to venture down to the movies to see “Downton Abbey: A New Era”.

The theatre is very comfortable. Reserved seating. Reasonably priced tickets. Moderately priced concessions. Barcalounger style seats with plenty of room and a convenient tray that swings aside. And most importantly, Maria Menunos!

We haven’t seen Maria Menunos in the pre-movie clips in a long while. In fact, I thought she’d given up the silver screen and was now only to be found on our gas pumps, but there she was looking lovely and bright and cheerful during the pre-movie clips.

I have been very much looking forward to this second “Downton Abbey” movie and I was not disappointed. Seeing the Crawleys and their staff do their thing on the big screen felt very comfortable. I shan’t give away any of the details of the story; I rated the experience a 9/10 and I liked this movie a slight bit more than the first movie. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I may go back and see it again.

In Luxury+.

Jamie found an older roll of film and had the pictures developed earlier this week. This may be one of my favorite photos of recent times. My best guess for the date is right around when we moved to Chicago in 2017.

There’s a craft beer place here in Tucson that I really enjoy.

Arizona Beer House on S Kolb is an open air experience (a natural, here in the desert) with a food truck or two in the parking lot. The space is very comfortable, with plenty of beers to choose from in cans and bottles or on draft.

I just have to enjoy in moderation or with someone in the family or a friend, since it’s a not a reasonable walk home. To get anywhere in Tucson from our house is either 20 or 40 minutes; this location is a 20 minute drive.

I’m good with that. It’s worth it.

Four out of five of us went to a friend’s house for a pool party yesterday. Earl agreed to stay back to take of puppies Lucky and Jinx. Chris and Mike were thinking of bringing them along for the party but the hosts have several dogs that aren’t particularly hospitable to other dogs, so Lucky and Jinx didn’t get to socialize.

But we did.

Joe and Aidan have a wonderful space not too far from us. Their home is cleverly decorated and they have a desert friendly jungle in their back lawn. We were very comfortable and enjoyed time in the shade, some time in the pool, and some time in front of the spread of food.

We got to chat with Matt and Homer and other party guests. It’s always good to see Matt and Homer, they have become very good friends since we’ve moved to Tucson and I enjoy their company very much.

It turns out one of the other guests, Jamie, is from Rome, New York and our paths have most likely crossed many years ago back when I was a club DJ. His partner is from Chicago, so we had much in common to talk about.

We had a very nice time in the desert sun, and I’m not sunburned at all today. It pays to stake claim to the shade whenever you have the chance.

We have a very big software migration project coming to fruition next weekend. The requirements have been all over the place, some of the testing team has been quite cranky, and the migration date has been pushed off a number of times. It looks like things are a “go” for next weekend. Of course they picked the weekend our friends Jeff and Mark in town for a visit.

I’ve been working many extra hours over the past few weeks, trying to keep up with all the demands of the job. I’m tired. And as I discovered when we first moved to Chicago, the business world in the United States is all about the Eastern Time Zone. Folks on the East Coast forget that a meeting at 8:30 AM there is a meeting at 5:30 AM here. Oh well, I guess.

I was playing around with a cheap webcam on my old Mac mini in my office and just took this photo. The workstation behind me in the photo is where I do all my day job work. I’m not particularly a fan of Windows 10 and there’s many times when I think, “I could do this much faster on a Mac”, but I don’t have that choice. My employer is in love with Microsoft.

It could be worse.

Jinx still isn’t sure about me yet.

I’ve been wanting to escape to our northeast for a week in pursuit of some severe storm chasing. My husband said he’s not really feeling the need to join me on this trip. With his blessing, I’m off for a week the first full week of June.

I’m really excited about this.

I think I’m going to fly to a destination and then rent a car to drive home, focusing on storms and back roads. My plan is to avoid freeways whenever possible.

I’ll be armed with a camera or two, some weather radios, some “real” maps, and a little more than a week of open calendar and open road.

I’ll be blogging about the experience when this takes place. Hopefully Mother Nature will be cooperative.

My mother hates being called “Ma”. As kids we were always corrected to use “Mom” instead of “Ma”, usually through loudly executed dialog.

I talked to Mom this morning and wished her a Happy Mother’s Day. She was outside enjoying the Central New York spring weather with my nephew’s dog. As part of the CNY ritual, she was sitting in the garage with the door open watching the activities in the neighborhood. That’s what folks do up there.

Here’s a photo from 2019 that makes me smile. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Waiting in a drive thru shortly before 1:00 AM.

We decided to go out to dinner this evening. It was a good time; even after 26+ years we still very much enjoy each other’s company

The service at the restaurant was a little uneven. This didn’t deter us from an enjoyable evening, but the awkwardness was noticeable. The server seemed to be struggling a little bit, for example, when he ran down the dessert list he mentioned “chocolate chip, pumpkin, strawberry shortcake, etc.” but didn’t tell us what the dessert actually was. To avoid making things more confusing, I passed on asking “chocolate chip, what?” and just went with strawberry shortcake, which turned out to be a cookie with a scoop of ice cream.