Ponderings and Musings

I am off to the Raleigh-Durham area for a couple of days. I’m currently sitting in Tucson International Airport waiting for the first flight of two; I’m connecting through Denver this evening.

The gate agents keep asking folks to remain seated until their group number is called and she is basically being ignored. A woman in a wheelchair is making loud noises asking people to move out the way as her companion pushes her to the gate, as the gate agent called for “folks that may need some extra assistance”. I would say her wheelchair qualifies her for this category.

The budget airlines, with their herding-cattle-through-chutes-by-number shtick, have really destroyed any remaining semblance of class and intelligence when it comes to airline passenger comfort. It’s bad enough that everyone has a carry on the size of a small Subaru, which of course must either be hoisted by a man, because chivalry when it’s convenient and all that or shoved under a seat the size of table side coaster. Now we have to endure people fighting like it’s Black Friday at the Walmart to get to the seat they already paid for and no one else will occupy. Because as I understand it, on the budget airlines you just get a ticket to get on an airplane and then you scratch, bite, and claw your way to a window seat with no window or a seat closest to the self service beverage machine in the back. Buy yourself some M&Ms.

Capitalism really does suck in this regard and it’s just going to suck more and more because no one will do anything to change it. A selected few count their billions and the rest of us are treated like cattle. It’s that simple.

For some reason, the American mindset is endless growth. Everything must get bigger, everything must get better, and more, more, more, how do you like it, how do you like it. But the truth of the matter is, nothing natural undergoes infinite growth, other than some cancers. Even our sun, the one thing we all need to live, will only grow for so long before it collapses upon itself and becomes a mere speck of its former self, destroying all life around it in the process.

Wait your turn until your number is called.

I noticed an owl stationed in a nearby tree during my evening walk. They were just hanging out looking over one of the many washes in our neighborhood. Every once in a while they’d make an owl “whoo whoo whoo” noise and I found it fascinating. So calm and confident. I like that.

I couldn’t get a great photo, as I did not want to disturb the owl while they were looking over the wash. I suppose their demeanor made disturbing them something outside of their concern, but nonetheless, they seemed like they deserved a good deal of respect.

Here are some hiking photos from my hiking adventures in Saguaro National Park this past weekend.

As I understand it, before the days of the Interstate, US Route 80 was the main east-west route through Tucson. US 80 was primarily replaced by Interstate 10 back in the day, a now there are “Historic US 80” signs guiding folks along the path of the former main route. East of downtown Historic US 80 follows Benson Highway, aptly named because it used to go to Benson.

In parts of Tucson Interstate 10 was built right on top of US 80. There are service roads on either side of the Interstate to accommodate the businesses that have been here for decades, and that includes the Silver Saddle Steakhouse. Earl and I have been wanting to go to this seemingly historic restaurant (or at the very least, vintage restaurant) and we finally took the opportunity to do so last night.

It was exactly what I expected to be, and that’s a great thing.

Earl and I are fortunate to have traveled through all 50 states of the U.S. at least once. We tend to focus on locally owned establishments when traveling and are usually delighted. The Silver Saddle fits this vibe perfectly. Though it was busy on a Saturday night there was no wait for a table of two, the service was quick and efficient, the menu had plenty for the carnivores (I didn’t notice if there were vegetarian choices, but I’m doubting it) and there’s a full bar in the back which is celebrated by a “Cocktails” sign in script reminiscent of Lucy and Desi.

Earl and I had an excellent prime rib dinner with enough to bring home for lunch (which he served Aunt Meg from “Twister” style for brunch today). I mentioned during supper last night that this is the type of place I look for on my storm chasing trips. There were folks from all walks of life enjoying each others’ company and that was a good thing.

I look forward to going back again.

It is Sunday. This is traditionally a day of rest in this part of the world and I tend to treat this day of the week accordingly. I usually use Sunday as a means of getting organized, cleaning up bits and bytes that have been scattered about over the past week, and taking a gander at what lies ahead for the week so I can get my brain in the proper frame of mind.

To many this doesn’t sound relaxing, but it is relaxing for me because then I don’t have things weighing on my brain in the “unattended” category.

I started my hike yesterday in a not great frame of mind because the weather was much better than what had been forecasted the night before. I had canceled yesterday morning’s flight as a result of the forecast and I was frustrated with the fact that I had released the airplane on a nearly perfect day to fly. On the bright side, it was a good lesson for me to learn and now I have a new approach to determining whether I’m going to fly or not: just wait until the flight time and make the decision at that time. This is how I used to plan my flights back when we lived in Upstate New York, but the various flight clubs and rental outfits I’ve worked with since then have had varying rules, including one place outside of Chicago that required you canceled for weather purposes at least 24 hours in advance. Honestly? Mother Nature doesn’t work that way, but I try to cancel as far enough in advance as possible so that another can take the airplane if they feel comfortable feeling in weather that exceeds my personal minimums. It’s a balance. I like to be a great member of the general aviation community and show respect to my fellow aviation club members.

As I gained nearly 1300 feet in elevation during my hike yesterday, my brain processed a lot of things as I tend to do when I’m by myself out in the wilderness. I’m really enjoying making the videos. In fact, last night I met a quick little snippet just to amuse myself.

I’m starting to feel more confident in my presentational style and content of the hiking videos. This is leading nicely into the upcoming storm hiking trip in mid May. It’s really amazing to me that I can grab these videos, make all the edits I want to make, and give them the shine I want them to have with just a MacBook Air and a little bit of software.

I’m probably going to go for a short hike this afternoon, once the sun calms down a bit, just to get that last push of exercise in before the end of the weekend.

This type of activity keeps my blood and thoughts flowing nicely.

No, this doesn’t have to do with a wedding. Our wedding is well in the rearview mirror and after all these years we are still happily married. We’re beating the odds while we refrain from beating each other.

I’m off track and it’s only the second paragraph.

What I’m actually talking about when it comes to “Engagement Fatigue” is the fatigue I feel after dealing with people all day long, mostly through electronic means. All of my work interactions are through Zoom-like meetings, that PTSD inducing “ding” noise spewed by Microsoft Teams, or responding to an obviously chatbot crafted email from someone that felt they had something important to say. That’s my work day. Then, if I choose to partake in a little social media, it’s all electronic there as well. Everything is digital, digital, digital, and quite frankly, by now I’m super tired of the bits and the bytes. This is one of the reason I enjoyed living in Chicago up until the pandemic; one could go to a neighborhood pub and talk to people in an analog sort of way without having to star in a sitcom with Ted Danson and Shelley Long. I like analog. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy my storm chasing trip; I talk to people I don’t know and that I’ll probably never talk to again, and it’s face to face in the way humans were originally intended to communicate. Sure, they may have written a book and there’s a super slight chance (less than .0001%) that I read their book about their wife’s quilting hobby but it’s a book and like face to face communication, that’s analog.

I’m getting Engagement Fatigue from digital communication all the time. It’s probably as tiring as watching me pop in and out of “Bewitched” like videos on a regular basis. I need some analog in my life.

Maybe I’m turning into an 8-track tape.

It was June 1985 and the first day of a new job. I was on the crew that would clean the high school during summer vacation and it paid more than minimum wage. We started with the cafeteria. If there was anything left we could eat it, drink it, or throw it away. Unfortunately, there was none of the famous apple crisp that was served on the last day of the school year left behind. I had hope. There was plenty of half pint sized containers of milk though and even though the date showed we were a wee bit beyond that stamp, the head custodian said it was fine and everyone should have a chocolate milk on their break.

I opened mine up, took a swig, and was introduced to something akin to chocolate cottage cheese. Typing this sentence is about making me gag a little bit.

Since that chocolate milk incident I have lived very close to the dates stamped on food packaging. I live by them. At one point in my life, before I met my husband, I wrote them with a sharpie in big, bold notification style numbers on the container when the item was purchased. I wasn’t going to mess around with another incident akin to that chocolate cottage cheese. I abandoned the practice when I moved in with my husband because I didn’t want to scare him away. But I ALWAYS keep an eye on the dates on food packaging and I usually have a running inventory of what’s what in my head.

So I went to get some orange juice this past weekend and noticed the date was nearly two weeks in the past. I brought up my concern with the family, and my husband being my husband, assured me that was the “sell by” date and not the “expiration” date. I don’t care. If there’s a date and it’s food, I’m not consuming that which exceed that date. If it’s not good enough for the shelf at the Safeway, it’s certainly not good enough for me.

I really wish there was a standardization in the date stamps containing this sort of information. “Freshest by”, “sell by”, “discard when”, and “best before” are all different things. I want one date: “discard on this date”. That’s it. Until then I’m going to treat any date as a “discard date”. I know I’m buying into a capitalism trick of forcing me to discard and buy before necessary but I’m not chancing it. Nope. I’ve seen moldy chemical cakes from Entenmann’s. I’ve been served McDanishes with ants living inside the styrofoam. I’ll eat just about anything, as long it’s dated and the date has not come to pass as of that moment.

But I really wish they’d stop using these date stamps as marketing ploys. That’s a little irritating to me.

Things have calmed down on the weather front here in the Sonoran Desert. While quite chilly, as the daytime high was below 70ºF today, the sky was beautiful and the birds were chirping. A complete turnaround from the weather yesterday.

When we moved here three years ago, we went nearly 45 days without seeing anything but sunny skies. This year has been a complete 180º on that front.

Things should be fairly quiet on the weather front through Friday. It looks like another storm system is going to move through on Friday, bringing high winds and rain, with snow on the mountains again. It’s not completely unheard of at this time of year in this location, but it’s not very common.

We are scheduled to fly on Saturday morning but I’ll be keeping a close eye on the winds. It’s not a lot of fun to go up there and just bounce all over the place. I’d rather save that energy for a smoother day where we can enjoy all the beauty General Aviation offers.