Ponderings and Musings

I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in my late 40s. Back in the day I didn’t like the taste of it; and it didn’t make sense to me to add a whole bunch of stuff to a beverage to make it taste differently than it tasted without the additions, so I didn’t bother.

But then I rewatched “Star Trek: Voyager” and when Captain Janeway exclaimed, “There’s coffee in that nebula”, I decided to give it another try. Plus, the man cleaning our condo at the time enjoyed coffee and since it was there, I figured it was a good opportunity.

I have since enjoyed a cup or two of black coffee every day. No cream. No sugar. I like black coffee and I regularly employee a Keurig Coffee Maker for the task. I know, it’s not the best way to make coffee, but it works for me and I recycle the pods.

I’ve tried lots of different flavored coffee variations over the years but lately I’ve been focused on just plain black coffee of various strengths. Tomorrow I’m going to try the two pods shown above for the first time. I’m excited to see how much of a kick it gives my Monday.

My very first blog entry was written 22 years ago today. I didn’t know the word “blog” at the time; instead I was just writing an online journal. I originally wrote the entry using Microsoft Frontpage; it was be a year or two before I adopted the word “blog” and moved to a blogging platform. My first officially blogging platform was Blogger. In 2005 I moved to Movable Type and then a year or two later I moved to WordPress, where the blog continues to live today.

My first blog entry talks about flying with my Dad in his newly built AcroSport II bi-plane for the first time and mentions that “someday I’ll be a private pilot”. It’s good to know I achieved at least one goal in those 22 years.

In the earlier years of this blog and before social media really took hold I tended to share opinions and thoughts on a somewhat regular basis. That content moved to social media once the chaos relocated to those parts, especially after the 2016 election season was underway, though I did do a fair share of griping about George W Bush’s presidency at the time. To this day I still wish we had a better choices on all sides of the aisle. I want to vote for someone, not against someone else. I’ll leave it at that.

Every once in a while I’ll go back and read a smattering of entries to get a feel for my attitude and feelings at a certain stage of my life, and that’s a good thing to do from time to time. In many ways I have changed and in many other ways I am who I have always been.

That’s a good balance.

As a little bit of a hoot, here’s my first image posted to the site. It was taken with a webcam that was state of the art at the time. I was growing a beard and wanted to share a progress photo.

I find it comical that it’s a gif and not a jpg.

Earl gave me a telescope for my birthday earlier this month. Unfortunately, it was damaged in shipment and we had to send it back to the company; the replacement arrived yesterday and we assembled it today.

I’m excited about this Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ telescope, as it works with an app on my iPhone, which will be situated in the mount on the right side of the telescope, and the app will guide me to the various things I’m searching for in the night sky.

I have always enjoyed gazing at the stars and this gift was a complete surprise. When I was a youngster, Grandpa Country had a telescope he would set up in the driveway once or twice a year to gaze at the moon. He had a lot of books on astronomy scattered on the various tables in the living room; and I have one of his smaller telescopes from his estate (a table top model).

I’m looking forward to the first clear night I can take this new telescope out for fun; it looks like it may be a few nights before I have the opportunity as Monsoon ‘23 has finally kicked in and I’ve been enjoying thunderstorms.

The natural beauty of the Universe, in tandem with everything Mother Nature does here on our little rock around Sol, is so fascinating to me.

Youtube channel owner “Vampire Robot” put up another video from what I assume to be a news video archive of B-roll footage. This video is from 1999 and was taken in Kmart, you know, back when Kmart still had thousands of stores throughout the United States.

As I look through these old shopping videos often posted on the Youtube channel, I can’t help but notice a few things. People seem to be calmer in general, but that could be because they’re in front of a large video camera lens, so admittedly they’re probably on their best behavior. But I also notice folks are dressed a little bit nicer than what we see today in the likes of Walmart or any smattering of grocery stores. You don’t see folks in sweat pants and other things that resemble bedwear. The stores also seem a little brighter and cleaner to me; I think that’s probably because today’s corporate approach to retail seems to be “make anything affordable look like a warehouse”. Where we used to have tile floors we now have shiny concrete. It’s cheaper. Cheaper investment leads to larger profits.

I think there’s three Kmart stores left in the United States. It’s a shame they’re gone, leaving us the choice of Walmart or Target in most cities and maybe a Walmart and one of the Dollar Store derivatives in smaller towns. Of course, there’s the higher end chains like Kohl’s and Nordstroms and Belk and the like, but middle-class, small town America deserves something more than what we have today.

Jamie and Mike are out of town but the rest of us went out for ramen tonight. The restaurant is enjoyable and cozy. Lightning was flickering to the east and the sky was very, very black when we left the house, but we were headed toward the sun.

About 30 minutes into our experience a very impressive storm blew in. The power went out and remained out for the rest of meal.

The impressive storm had lots of rain and wind and lightning, and surprisingly, a bunch of hail. Lots of hail. Very loud and good sized hail.

We made our way back home where it looked like it hadn’t even rained. We drove through downed trees, rivers in streets, and made our way along back streets I hadn’t seen before due to a very large power pole down on Golf Links Rd., one of the main thoroughfares on this side of Tucson.

TEP (Tucson Electric Power) is going to be very busy tonight. At last glance over 20K locations were still without power.

The ramen was excellent, by the way. They asked if we could pay with cash, and as expected from a bunch of geeks in 2023, we didn’t have enough cash on us to pay the bill. They agreed to take Apple Pay on one of the server’s phones, and then they’d figure it out later. There was no way I was going to write down a credit card number on a slip of paper for later processing. No reason to think bad things would happen; I just am paranoid about security.

And again, the ramen was excellent.

It’s been quite a week at work! Oh, that’s right, it’s only Tuesday night. I’m writing this at 9:30 PM Mountain Standard Time. Guess who’s on a conference call.

Here you go. 99% of the guest stars ever on “The Love Boat” in a repetitive rendition of the well known theme song.

The things one finds on the Internet.

While we were up at La Encantada shopping mall yesterday we had some lunch at a place called Italia North. A great place for a Sunday lunch, I enjoyed a soup and salad selection, along with a glass of Prosecco. I’ve been getting into Prosecco and Champagne lately.

One of trends of the 2020s is printing the caloric content of the food choices to be noticed by those perusing the menu. I suppose this is to encourage healthy eating, but if I’m having lunch at a swanky shopping center with a glass of champagne, I’m not sure I want all this knowledge.

Admittedly, seeing the calories listed next to each of the dishes inspired me to go with a soup and salad selection. That’s probably the intent; educate the consumer so they can make an informed choice.

On the other hand, sometimes I want to just enjoy some time out without counting calories in my head. Since this trend started I once considered a piece of cheesecake at the local Cheesecake Factory. Since the calories in a piece of cheesecake could support the hunger needs of a small African village, I decided against the experience and breathed in the fumes of a small piece of water cress I picked up at the local Safeway instead.

I now have a hankering for cheesecake. Don’t show me the details.