Ponderings and Musings

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.

It is Sunday morning in the desert southwest. It’s currently 67°F and the sun is shining. Birds are singing in the distance and a few are fluttering around on tree branches. Every once in a while a warm breeze comes down off the nearby Rincon Mountains.

This is peace.

After a stressful end to the work week, some work yesterday morning, and other things that were basically jumbling up my thoughts a little bit, we went out with our friend Marshall last night for dinner downtown and a drink at one of the local gay bars. The particular bar skews older in attendance, and they had a DJ that was playing music from the ’80s. His playlist was really close to what I would have played at that time and I found that rather exciting. We had fun and the stress melted away.

I slept really well last night.

The car is back in our hands; we have a new premium MOPAR battery as installed by the dealer and several sets of fingers crossed that this will fix the issue. The old battery was six months old but the desert southwest is brutal on car batteries. I don’t know how folks with electric vehicles manage it. Maybe it’s the different type of battery or something.

I have a short work week as I’m traveling back east later on to visit family for the annual holiday visit. Insane airline prices have led to an agreement this would be a solo trip; Earl is going to stay home and take care of Truman and the rest of the family. I’ll be sitting in the back of the airplane for this journey, but as I always say, there is no bad seat on an airplane. It’ll be fun sitting in the double digited rows.

Last week I kvetched a little bit about the holidays. Looking over the landscape shown above I still can’t believe that we are 10 or so days from Thanksgiving.

Sometimes it feels like time stands still, probably because of the abundant sunshine and warm temperatures I still haven’t grown accustomed to.

Life could be worse.

So we had an adventure last night. We were on our way home from having a drink and I pulled over into the left hand lane to make our way home. The car turned off at the intersection, as it’s designed to do. We have that feature where the car turns itself off when it’s at a full stop and then starts itself up again when you release the brake.

There’s an IBS, or Intelligent Battery Sensor, that tells this nifty feature to not do its thing if the battery voltage is low. They don’t want you stranded at an intersection with the car failing to start. This feature has worked for us in the past. Living in the desert southwest we go through batteries quickly due to the summer heat. Several folks have told us about this and it’s apparently fairly common knowledge that you’re going to replace your battery once a year. When the car stops turning itself off and on and I subsequently check the battery indicator, we replace the battery. We did this six months ago. Yay for battery warranties!

So the car turned itself off. The light turned green, I let up my foot, and the car tried to start itself and then everything went black. All the lights went off (it’s never done that before, even with a failing battery), I couldn’t turn the flashers on (the indicator on the dash would just flash erratically) and the gear shifter got cranky. It took some effort to get it into park, and even after I did that I couldn’t turn the ignition switch to off. Turning the ignition switch to ‘start’ did absolutely nothing. Even when then former batteries were at their last gasp the car would at least try to start.

I opened the door and a relay under the dash started clicking really fast and a faint, white indicator light under the dash started blinking. The car was acting like the computer that controls everything had lost its mind or locked up, much like a blue screen of death in Microsoft Windows.

The (presumably) homeless folks sitting on the curb offered to help us push the car but we couldn’t get the gear shift to move back anywhere near neutral. So, Earl called a tow truck, while I waved cars around us.

I must take a moment to give a positive thank you and shout out to all the folks that offered to help us. There were a lot of them and many wanted to make sure we were safe.

The tow truck arrived 30 or so minutes after the call, and friendly Chris took apart the gear shifter so he could get the car into neutral. The car was towed to the Jeep dealer and we called home so someone could pick us up at the adjacent Walgreens.

We’re waiting to hear back on the diagnosis of the car. We bought our Jeep Cherokee back when we lived in Upstate New York in late 2016. The car is still in fantastic shape, but the mechanics are starting to show their age. We’ve been on numerous adventures in this Cherokee and it’s been across the United States a few times. It’s been licensed in three different states. I’m not ready to say goodbye to this car yet; hopefully they don’t have to replace the entire computer system and it’s just a cranky battery or something.

I thought yesterday was Friday for a bit. I posted a selfie on Instagram with a tag line echoing my thoughts.

Today is Friday. And that makes me happy.

The holidays are approaching. I know this because we were in Target the other night and “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” was blaring from the intercom speakers in the ceiling and there were Christmas decorations strung about. It’s weird to see displays of snow and other frigid weather and hear things like “oh the weather outside if frightful” when I’m in shorts and the outside temperature is in the 80ºFs. Since moving to the desert I never really know what time of year it is.

I wish I could say I get worked up with joy when thinking about the approaching holiday season but to be frank, I’m not really that excited about it. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m older or the end of the year responsibilities that kick in at work or the crass commercialism of it all, but I’m just not hyped about tinsel and garland moments. Do people still use those things? I miss tinsel. I will admit that.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year and aside from eating too much food, there’s not a whole lot of other things associated with the holiday. I like sitting around the dining room table with our family and talking to friends in far away places and nearby too. I like that stuff.

We have a vacation planned for mid December and perhaps I’ll find some time to relax and reflect on the approaching holidays. Maybe that’ll kick something into a higher gear for me.