Ponderings and Musings

I spotted this over the weekend and the first thing I thought was, “Shasta has a new flavor”?

I am trying to renew my passport online. I can submit my own photo. It must be snapped in front of a plain, white background. I thought I had the perfect background except there’s texture. Too much texture. Ever wall in the house has some sort of texture. It’s the desert.

I’ll have to come up with something else.

This couple appeared in the “Bewitched” season four episode, “Once In A Vial”. A fun little farce where Endora gets smacked with a love potion she insisted to be used on Samantha, Endora ends up almost marrying one of Darrin’s clients.

When Endora and Mr. Callahan appear in front of the Justice of the Peace, hilarity ensues as Samantha tries to stop the marriage. The couple in the photo above are the justice of the peace and wife. They’re an old couple, quite friendly, and confused at all the witchy shenanigans going on.

Except, they’re not old. In this episode, the Justice of the Peace is played by Frederic Downs and his wife (Edna) is played by Mary Lansing.

Mr. Downs was 52, Ms. Lansing was 57. That’s not old. THAT’S MY AGE!

Back when I was young I thought 50 was old. Heck, everyone in that situation feels 50 is old. At 54 I don’t feel old at all. I hope Mr. Downs and Ms. Lansing felt as young then as I do today.

I went on a 4 1/2 mile hike today. The weather was beautiful and I had the opportunity to enjoy a lot of quiet.

I feel fantastic.

We are hosting our first party in the house later this month. Of course, this means finishing what we started here nearly two years ago, and that’s unpacking everything and finishing off the repairs of the monsoon damage from mid 2021.

These two photos used to hang in “the parlor” at our last home back in Central New York and have been in storage since then. I decided to hang them in the upstairs office called “The Observatory”.

They are a nice compliment to the room.

After writing this morning’s blog entry, I got to wondering if during their annual holiday tradition of watching wholesome movies like “White Christmas” (a true classic), if the Christians suddenly grab their children in fear, anguish, and disbelief when this scene comes on in Act One.

Since Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are dressed up like Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen, their antics would absolutely be illegal under some of these ridiculous bills being offered up by members of the GOP.

Do the far right Christians drop to their knees and start praying at the television? Are grown men weeping? Are children so stunted and impeded in their perfect, Christian ways that they suddenly feel compelled to throw on a pair of stocking and start singing, “Extra value is what you get when you buy Coronet?”

No, of course not. None of these things happen. Because people are not inherently stupid. They have to be taught to be stupid.

By stupid people.

With all the homelessness, poverty, climate change, brewing wars, and other travesties too numerous to list here, the Republicans in various states and districts are focusing on what’s really important.

Where drag queens are performing.

In Arkansas, there’s a bill to label drag queen performances as “adult entertainment”. If passed, and with their new governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, it probably will, performing in clothing and makeup contrary to your gender assigned at birth will become a crime.

The bill is so arbitrarily written that it will essentially make it illegal for kids to see Bugs Bunny trying to fool Elmer Fudd in a Saturday morning cartoon.

I did a little digging on Arkansas and how they’re faring these days.

• 28th in education
• 17th in quality of roads
• 28th in unemployment

They’re pretty middle of the road, but could do better.

On the other hand, Arizona is 50th in education. That’s right, last place. So of course, goth queen Justine Wadsack, after finally being elected to the state senate here in Arizona after years of trying and resorting to infesting the entire desert landscape with her visage, has introduced a similar bill here in Arizona. Because the roads and the homeless and the poverty and the lack of education and all that are not important. Men that appear prettier than her must be stopped. At all costs.

Personally I’ll stick with Bugs Bunny instead of this nut job. I am really, really tired of stupid people being so stupid.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to run through an airport at top speed to make my connecting flight. Last night, the relaxed folks at KDEN took their time parking our flight from KRDU (Raleigh-Durham), leaving me 10 minutes to get from gate B25 to A25 to catch my connecting flight home.

I made it.

However, my sprint through airport left me no time for a snack and no time for a bathroom break.

Not wanting another can of Pringles to substitute my supper and not having enough elbow room to go through the rigamarole of trying to assemble my “Take Off Snack Pack”, I opted for some beef jerky to tide me over until we landed in Tucson.

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so patriotic while consuming a snack but the peppered jerky turned out to be quite good and kept me from going over the edge before getting home.

For those that eat meat, I highly recommend the experience. This Peppered Jerky has a bit of a kick but I didn’t find it overpowering.

I did not find these packs on Amazon, but their website has a storefront. It looks a little pricey. Perhaps these can be used as a stocking stuffer at the end of this year.

I’m at RDU airport awaiting my flight to Denver, which will connect me to my flight at Tucson. I’m slightly worried about the weather but I’ll deal with whatever comes up.

I’m enjoying a cup of seafood bisque and I have a sandwich and fries coming along. I’m also enjoying one glass of Sam Adams. I’m eating my large meal at lunch time today so I don’t feel as hungry on the flights.

There are fewer choices in restaurants here at RDU compared to when I was here in 2021. The airlines have rebounded from the COVID stuff but I wonder if the airport services will ever get to pre-COVID levels. A part of me thinks the pandemic was an opportunity for corporations to scale back and stay that way, regardless of the need today.

The visit with Jeff and Mark was very enjoyable. It’d been too long since we visited. Last night I went full geek mode and was able to install a new server for Jeff in about an hour. He was delighted to see that he has secure access to his home from the outside world now. It’s one of my talents. And he’s running all this magic on Linux, which makes me happy and is probably the most secure, and most affordable choice for this endeavor.

Since stepping away from Twitter a few months ago I have been slowly scaling back my other social media activities. I don’t use Facebook nearly as much as I used to. Instagram is hit or miss with me; I usually like looking at photos of people doing things in other parts of the world but I don’t really care about reels or other things that make screaming noises, which Instagram likes to do. Reddit has always been it’s only special dumpster fire and I’ve been maintaining my own Mastodon instance, but I follow and drop people there on a daily basis. I usually drop the ones that want Mastodon to be like Twitter.

During my mini vacation I’ve been thinking I need to do more in the way of creating things and less in the way of consuming things on my computer. There’s a part of me that believes the human brain was never designed to consume the amount of information flung at us on a daily basis; I mean how could it? Up until this century we had newspapers and television giving us spurts of news. It wasn’t until the advent of 24 hour news channels and then the Internet that we were given the minutia of happenings in every corner of the globe. I know my head can’t handle that amount of input like it used to be able to.

I find contentment in doodling on my iPad and playing with music and writing. I don’t share most of my writing but it’s a wonderful exercise to engage in getting words down and stories flowing.

I need to create more and consume less. It’s as simple as that.