Ponderings and Musings

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.

What in the fresh hell is this idiocy in ad algorithms from YouTube? I used to pay for premium service on YouTube so that I could avoid ads, but with most of the channels I subscribe to now showing shorts (less than 60 second videos) instead of real content, I’m rapidly losing interest in the platform.

But this ad? I sure fire way to push me off all the way.

Yeah, it was edgy back in 1989 when Kiss 108 in Boston ran an on Saturday nights that started with, “Are you gay? Does gay life intrigue you?” and proceeded to give you a 900 number to chat with someone about being gay. But in 2023, this is incredibly offensive.

This photo popped up in my history today. I love it.

This is one of my favorite scenes from the entire series of “I Dream of Jeannie”. From season 4, this scene is in “Jeannie and the Top Secret Secret”. Kudos to Sabrina Scharf playing Valerie Thomas, the terrorized passenger sitting next to Major Nelson.

I am on United flight 1417 from Denver to Raleigh-Durham. I’m visiting our friends Jeff and Mark for a few days; working from their home and then hanging out this weekend. Flights were more affordable if I did it this way. My husband said, “go and have a good time”.

This flight is at about 60% capacity. i’m comfortable if just slightly cramped in seat 14A. It’s an economy seat but not a basic economy seat because I don’t do that.

The flight from Tucson to denver was interesting; the mother and young child in my row didn’t speak English and didn’t understand how the seat numbering system works, so I ended up sitting in the aisle, which made me a little cranky. These things happen and I shouldn’t let them bother me but they do. Luckily, the flight was only 90 minutes so it wasn’t awful. I just like being next to the window and things going the way they planned.

This flight to RDU is quiet. I’ll probably take a nap.

My husband picked out some new slip covers for our upstairs couch. They’re quite nice and not plastic.

It started with daydreaming. I was working along this morning, minding my own business and trying to concentrate on the task of the moment when I started thinking about chasing storms. This quickly connected to me wondering how many homes in tornado alley actually have storm cellars like we see in “Twister” or “The Wizard Of Oz”. I did a quick search, intending to find a statistic. Instead, I landed on real estate listings in West Texas for homes with a storm cellar. I started looking at these listings. I then noticed a common decorating theme in all these homes.

They have “messages” everywhere. Inspirational messages. Religious messages. Stencils. Framed nuggets of wisdom. Food cabinets labeled “PANTRY”. I can only assume I have missed out on some sort of Live, Laugh, Love opportunity in our attempts at decorating over the years.

My husband and I picked up a few mid week groceries at the Safeway this evening. While browsing the snack aisle I noticed a classic looking bag of Doritos on the bottom shelf. The taco flavor is my favorite. It took a lot of willpower not to eat the entire bag when we got back home.

It’s been a cloudy, hazy weekend here in the Soronan Desert. We have winter like weather coming up this week, with the snow levels coming down to Tucson city proper by this weekend. There’s also a hard freeze in the forecast. Exciting times.

The predicted snow at this point isn’t a huge deal as it’ll be just a dusting that will probably melt quickly, but I’m sure it’ll still make an impact on the area. If it happens.

It’s been raining a lot for the past 48 hours. I still find the lights of the city to be quite beautiful, even under the clouds.