Ponderings and Musings

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.

I’m a bad gay. I say this quite bit because I find it to be true. While many in the gay community plan their Halloween activities in months beginning with a “J”, I am not one of those people. Even as a kid I didn’t usually plan my Halloween costume until the actual day of the event. On more than one occasion my mother would have a fit because I wanted to cut up a bed sheet and go as a ghost covered in pastel flowers or something. In seventh grade I did throw on a pair shorts and roller skates and went to school as a beach bum on roller skates. That’s the most creative I ever got and I’m not ashamed of this.

Our neighbors up the street hosted a Halloween party tonight, costume optional (thank God). We decided to go as a family except my husband, who decided to stay back with the dogs and not jeopardize his diet with the goodies that would be out on display.

This was the first time we’ve really interacted with our neighbors since moving to the desert 2 1/2 years ago. Earlier this afternoon, while out on my daily walk, I also ran into another neighbor who was decorating his mailbox to make it distinguishable from the adjacent mailbox. He was quite pleasant and we had a long talk about the neighborhood. It was my first time meeting him as well.

The party was a lot of fun as we mingled with the 25 or so guests from the neighborhood. Everyone was friendly and there was handshaking and smiles and pleasant conversation. There were a lot of questions about our home, which under previous owners had been painted a “Pepto Bismol pink”, as they told us, and apparently we still live in what others call the “pink palace” (even though the house is gray now). I don’t believe the name to be a gay slur and that didn’t really cross my mind until typing that previous sentence just now.

We learned quite a bit about the development we live in, and when the city line was moved to incorporate our property into the city (our house was originally outside the city limits) and the like. It was a great way to meet our neighbors and get to know them a little bit.

It was a very pleasant experience. And no, I didn’t wear a costume.

We recently signed up for Sirius/XM Radio again in the car. We swore we weren’t going to do this ever again, but Sirius/XM gave it to us for free for 90 days and then offered us a 75% discount on the first year after that.

I really like my “Yacht Rock” radio.

Local radio isn’t really that compelling here in Southern Arizona. The stations are alright but there is nothing particularly outstanding or local about them. It’s really a shame; back in my radio days each station had its own personality that reflected the vibe of the area it served. Like so many things in the United States, radio gave way to corporate greed and everything is a cookie cutter presentation from a corporate office somewhere outside of the listening area. Only the major markets have local radio stations; medium and smaller markets are an afterthought.

At least the music stations on Sirius/XM don’t have commercials.

With the subscription we can listen on our devices, so I’ve been enjoying Yacht Rock during my relatively meeting-free Friday.

I mentioned the other day that I had was going through old blog entries and noticed a bunch of photos missing. The photos weren’t really missing, it was just that the JetPack plugin (a service I paid for, mind you) was doing something to the images and keeping them from showing. It was also slowing down the performance of the blog. A lot. I’m much happier without the JetPack service activated. Plus, I’ll save a little bit of money.

One of the harder things about reading old blog entries is seeing a difference in exuberance levels between then (usually before 2016 or so) and today. Yes, I purposely picked 2016 because, as well know, the United States changed a lot when Trump won the Presidential election in November of that year. In my opinion, the country has been in a steady tail spin since that day and things only got marginally better once Trump was out of office. The seeds of destruction were well planted during the Trump years, throughout government, and through the populace.

It’s rather depressing.

I don’t like writing about depressing things. I try to find the happy where I gaze and generally I can find it, but since the Trump years it feels like there’s been less happy to be found. Now, I don’t completely blame the Trump years for all of this, because it coincides with a lot of other things, including the explosion of social media, the general attitude shift to one of “less trust” throughout society, and the general tendency for folks to fear science and reason in favor of opinion and superstition.

Ironically, a blog post I wrote in October 2013 talks about me finding little joy in Facebook. Twitter wasn’t completely off the rails back then, but Facebook was being Facebook and I found that depressing. Here it is a decade later and I could write a blog entry today that would probably go word for word with what I wrote 10 years ago on the subject. That’s a long rut.

I will continue to try to find the happy as I look over this world. I will focus on the pleasant. But I will also be a realist. It’s important to keep it real.

But oh, to have that pre-2016 feeling of optimism again.

I noticed a lot of broken images in posts from days gone by and found the issue was with an add-on to WordPress called JetPack. I’ve never really been a fan of this add-on, so I removed it. Things should still run as intended. If you see something broken, please let me know.

And here’s what I look like right now.

“Temptation Eyes” by The Grass Roots is one of my favorite songs from the early ’70s. Here’s a live(-ish) version from The Ed Sullivan Show.

There’s a reason I still find mustaches and sideburns hot.

As we were traveling over the weekend I noticed a continued trend with folks working in the service industry: the younger people working jobs as cashiers, etc. really like wearing AirPods (or something similar) all the time.

Back when Walkmans were all the rage in the late ‘80s and we had a corded pair of headphones attached to a portable cassette deck on our hip it was kind of fun to listen to music while out for a walk or something. I once tried to wear my Walkman at work while writing code, but I missed one phone call from a colleague (because I couldn’t hear the phone ringing) and I was scolded for my inattentiveness.

I didn’t wear the Walkman at work again.

There are times when I need to wear headphones at work these days to drown out the noise of the landscapers working in the yard or something that’s distracting me from doing my best work, but for the most part I feel to disconnected from the world around me when I tune out my surroundings. One of my strongest beliefs is everyone and anyone should always be aware of their surroundings; it makes the world much better when everyone knows what’s going on in their immediate vicinity, but too many people bumble and stumble through life, blissfully unaware of the safe that’s about to crush them on a sidewalk or something.

When I’m at Target and the person directing folks to the self-serve checkout lanes and their wearing AirPods I wonder why they’re even employed. I have enough IQ digits to figure out the green light means the register is available and the red light means it’s occupied. I don’t need a tuned out teenager telling me to go when the light is green. I’m aware of my surroundings. If the director is Target’s way of keeping a human presence at the self serve registers so they don’t feel bad about eliminating jobs, I’m not buying it. I don’t even know if the person doing the directing can hear what I’m saying so I purposely mumble and smile.

Don’t get me started on someone wanting to check my receipt; I always refuse, opting to just wave the receipt in the air.

I’m starting to go on a tangent and I feel my blood pressure rising a bit so I’ll stop the tangent right here. Suffice it say, there’s a lot of world around us to take in. I don’t get the appeal of replacing the world for music or podcasts or whatever while you’re working with the public. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

And it probably never will.

Maybe I should change the title of this blog to “Get off my lawn”.

I stumbled across this interview with Agnes Moorehead during the fourth season of “Bewitched”. I’ve heard she was an interesting woman; here she’s very frank on various Hollywood subjects of conversation.

I would have enjoyed meeting her in person. I really admire her work ethic.

Earl was enjoying the large wall of screens in the Sportsbook area of Circa Casino here in Las Vegas. He’s always wanted to multiple TVs stacked upon one another so he can watch several football games at once. This 75 foot by 15 foot display takes all of this to the next level.