Ponderings and Musings

We’re fortunate to live in a house large enough for many rooms. I have two places I can call “my office”. During the day I work in what would be typically thought of us the library. It’s on the main floor, has a wonderful view over the front landscaping, and keeps me productive all day long.

Upstairs we have a room that is dubbed “The Observatory” on the blueprints. The house was originally built by an astronomer and the room was designed to have a large telescope mounted, with lots of equipment and a large concrete pad in the shop below the room to support the telescope.

While we don’t have a large telescope, the Observatory serves as a “man cave” of sorts. I have been working on cleaning up the space. It’s in this room that I have my Mac mini setup, along with plenty of room for my flight simulator controls. I enjoy playing X-Plane from time to time and flying when I can’t get myself into an airplane.

The space is enjoyable and now that I’ve organized it better with shelves and the like, it’s more functional. Truman likes to sleep in his cat bed I’ve put in the corner for him. It’s his escape from the rest of the house as well.

I’m on a work call at 10:20 PM on a Tuesday night. This work call was scheduled earlier today, because the management team felt it was important to push code to the production servers tonight until waiting for a full week of work with a full staff. Because priorities.

This call is going as well as I thought it would be. My part of this effort will be changing one file at the very end of the call. But here I am, listening to people call other people spanned across three continents.

My husband suggested we go it for a drink. I’m giving up beer. Too many colonies. So I had two martinis. Whoo hoo my husband is driving us home. My godmother liked martinis but I never had one with her. I miss her. She was awesome.

Two olives for the both of us.

My husband and I have been putting up Christmas decorations. Like my father, I will not allow the lights to be lit up until after Thanksgiving. Since we are traveling to the Northeast for 10 days at the beginning of December, Earl wants to get the decorations up early so things are nice and festive for the rest of the family here at home and for when we return to the beautiful weather of the Sonoran Desert.

The photo above was taken just as I started this blog entry. I am sitting on our back patio enjoying the weather; it is 21ºC (approximately 68ºF) and quite lovely. I’ve been seeing photos of Buffalo being buried in snow. The warmer Great Lakes at this time of year, when brushed by cold air masses from Canada, make for some really great snow making events. My hometown in the Lake Ontario Snowbelt is also seeing some snow, though not as much as is coming off Lake Erie farther to the west. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes and has a habit of turning colder and possibly freezing earlier in the season. The Lake Ontario snow belt will get theirs soon enough.

It probably wasn’t as cordial as I could have been by mentioning on Facebook the warm weather down here in Tucson. I do miss snow events like they’re seeing back East, but maybe a day of it per winter season.

Otherwise I’m quite happy writing a blog entry from the back patio while wearing shorts in mid November.

Some days it just feels like you’re represented by the woman in blue.

I don’t want anyone else to get my accounts over on that hellsite, so I locked down my account and decided to just keep it real.

We are at the local Starbucks this afternoon. I’m enjoying an unsweet black iced tea while my husband has the same with just a touch more lemon. It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog entry whilst in a Starbucks; I still enjoy the experience.

There is a smattering of iPads, MacBooks, and PC laptops amongst the audience here in this Starbucks. The wifi is very slow. I ended up using my Personal Hotspot on my iPhone to connect as speeds were below 1Mbps when I was connected to Starbucks’ wifi.

There’s a lot of Christmas decorations up in this store because it’s the first week of November. Christmas in the desert is still weird to me, because I’m wearing shorts and the sun is shining brightly. It doesn’t make it any less valid, it’s just different. I’m still used to being under grey skies and in waist deep snow.

One of the amusing things about living in the desert this time of year is the number of people wearing toques and heavy jackets even though it’s 22ºC/73ºF outside. It’s quite pleasant and standing in the sun is still a warming experience.

I spent a few hours working this morning to try to catch up to the chaos left behind by the work week. I’ve been having too many chaotic days at work for the past few months and trying to bring calm to that chaos can occasionally be a challenge. Working a few hours on a Saturday morning, purely for my own sanity, helps keep me grounded.

And now I shall enjoy my iced tea.

The date stamp on this photo is 15 years ago, but I suspect the photo was taken a few days earlier when we were in Dublin, Ireland. I think this photo was taken in a pub in Temple Bar.

I do enjoy my Guinness.