Ponderings and Musings

Today I am watching a video from 1960 featuring the beauty of an all-electric home, A Medallion Home.

My dad built his own all electric home for us beginning in 1975. We moved in September of 1977, the day before my first day of 4th grade, as a matter of fact. I can easily remember my night in my own bedroom. The hallway light fixtures hadn’t been installed yet and we had “pig tail” lightbulbs hanging down in the appropriate places. There were bare wires where the smoke detector was to go. And while my sister and my ceiling light fixture in our own bedrooms looked identical, one of them had a pull chain that was cut off in the very center of the shade while the other did not. I believe it was my sister’s fixture that had the pull chain. I also had to use the Nutone Central Vacuum outlet in her bedroom to vacuum my bedroom. I found this upsetting; why wasn’t I worthy of my own plug? Occasionally she would get angry with me about something and then I’d have to use the one in the hallway that didn’t allow the vacuum to reach the far reaches of the room. No one would notice.

Our family’s all electric house didn’t last for very long in that a wood stove was added a few years later because electricity prices skyrocketed in the late 1970s and the bills became a challenge. Years after I moved out on my own Dad installed a forced hot air furnace for the first floor but the second floor retained its electric baseboard heat.

I often write about the world inspiring me in ways just when I need inspiration. As mentioned in my previous entry, I’ve been struggling a little bit and I’m always looking for ways to alleviate that struggle.

A quick aside: there’s a part of me that struggles with the fact that I share my feelings like this in a public forum such as this blog. Just to let you know where my head is at.

Anyway, another bit of inspiration that fell into my lap was this excellent blog entry from The Original Mac Guy. It’s called “Garbage In, Garbage Out“. Jim writes about we are what we consume. I really enjoyed his blog entry and it’s just the reminder I needed today. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Here’s another link in case you didn’t see the one above.

I came to a realization over the weekend. While I don’t necessarily like spending copious amounts of time with people, I do like being in the vicinity of activity that involves people. Online activity is a poor substitute for this sort of thing.

I’ve been struggling with less than happy feelings for a little bit, and I’ve determined this is because working full time at home and then not going out for some sort of activity on a regular basis is living a little too much like the pandemic days.

While I survived the days of COVID just fine and found ways to live a healthy, happy life, it’s not the same as the days before the pandemic.

After supper I told Earl I was going to go out for a ride and stop at Starbucks to write a blog entry. I actually finished up a couple of drafts I had waiting for publication and am now finishing up this blog entry. There’s a young man to my left typing away on his iPad Pro and an older gentleman wandering around the store looking for his lost cell phone. Loud music that I don’t recognize, even with the copious amounts of auto-tune strung through the music, blares from the overhead speakers.

While not my favorite public experience, it is a public experience and it’s fulfilling a need I have been ignoring. Let’s get out there and get some happy.

I could tell by the landscape that we were somewhere over Kansas as UA 531 made its way from ORD Chicago/O’Hare to TUS Tucson International. I’m seated in the very last seat on this Airbus A319, seat 35F. I’m not uncomfortable.

As I watched the landscape go by I noticed the placement of the streets and the adjacent airport of this small town and said to myself, “wait, I’ve been there before”. Sure enough, in June 2021 I had chased a thunderstorm through Cimarron, Kansas. I Quick Look at FlightRadar24 confirmed our flight path and I was indeed looking at Cimarron.

I’ll have to stop by again and say hello the next time I chase storms in the area. It’s a totally random memory but it has made me smile.

Yesterday I wrote about training to maintain some semblance of exercise while in Upstate New York for a long weekend. I’ve been trying to burn more calories on a daily basis for the past month or so; results are starting to pay off.

I believe the world gives us little signs here and there to let us know we are on track. Today there were two random Army soldiers working out in the middle of a field at Onondaga Lake Park. I wanted to get up close and watch them workout, get pointers, etc., but I’m not the sort to do that type of thing and I didn’t want to interrupt their rhythm.

So I watched them for a few moments from the car after my three mile walk and snapped this photo from far away as I way of reminding me of the moment.

It’ll serve as inspiration to continue on my exercise goal, as meager as it may be, because I’m feeling better when compared to a month ago and feeling better at this age is a great thing.

I’ve been trying to keep up some semblance of exercise while visiting Upstate New York. This morning it was unseasonably warm in Syracuse (with temperatures in the high 60s Fahrenheit), so I opted to go for a walk in Onondaga Lake Park.

The park has been a favorite spot of mine since it was expanded and made exercise friendly a decade or two ago.

I’m staying with my cousin Sarah during my visit to The Salt City. Before visiting Mom and picking her up for a lunch date, I stopped for breakfast at one of the many Dunkin’ Donuts in the area.

Have you ever seen a more 21st century breakfast?

The truth is, I really like Dunkin’s avocado toast with bacon. It’s not crazy high in calories and it keeps me full until lunch time. Maybe the millennials were on to something.

I like the term “back east”. It makes me feel like I don’t live back east anymore, which we don’t. Though today I headed back east solo to visit my mom and other family for the annual holiday visit. Earl didn’t make the trip with me this time so we could save on airline expenses. Airline tickets are not cheap these days.

I really lucked out on the flight from Tucson to Syracuse. The same airplane from Tucson to O’Hare in Chicago was used from O’Hare to Syracuse. So my layover involved no gate change. I was able to score a Chicago Hot Dog from the quick food stand across the gate from the busy terminal.

The flights were uneventful. Due to the unfortunate costs, I sat in plain ol’ economy on this trip and the experience was not bad. I always opt for a window seat which always gives me a sense of having a little more room, but we all know that’s not really the case.

I made myself comfortable though and I had an inch to spare.

My premier status on United still allows me to board with group two, so I can get situated before economy fills up.

I still enjoyed a respectable snack on the flight. Never give up an opportunity to have sparkling wine.

Overall it was a good experience.

“Hello, world!” is usually the first thing a coder outputs to the screen when they’re learning a new computer language. This has been a thing since the 1980s; I remember doing it on a VIC-20 on display at a local department store.

10 PRINT “HELLO, WORLD!”
20 GOTO 10

This would cause HELLO, WORLD to scroll endlessly on the display until someone hit the BREAK key. Good times.

For the last week I’ve been getting up before sunrise and going for a 30 minute walk to start my day. The practice has improved my mood and an improved mood is always a good thing.

This morning’s pre-sunrise sky said “Hello, world!” to me. It was simple, but beautiful.

I could have watched it forever.

I occasionally look at real estate listings to get decorating ideas for our home. I’ve written before that some of the decorating choices are interesting. My question is, do people really mark up their walls with messages like this? I look at fairly expensive homes and I see random markings on the wall, such as the command to “relax” stenciled about the bathtub here.

It’s not my thing, obviously, but I guess I didn’t realize it was as popular as it is, especially in more rural areas of the country.