Ponderings and Musings

This meme is from Mel Robbins. I have followed Mel for many years, having discovered her through a TED talk I watched more than a decade ago.

I find her quite fascinating.

Following her page on Facebook is one of the main reasons I still keep my account alive on that wretched platform.

I find Mel to be quite pragmatic. Her observations on life, and especially what we can do with our lives with just a bit of common sense, is inspiring.

I like to be inspired. Stop being fine. Start being awesome.

Yesterday we drove from Westminster, Colo. to Cheyenne, Wyo. to visit our friends Tim and Gordon. It’s been too long since we last saw them; our last visit was back in 2016. We’ve been friends since 2001 or so, keeping up correspondence over email and chatting from time to time. Tim is an avid clock collector and we met through having collected the same type of clock systems from The Standard Electric Time Company.

In my typical ways, I couldn’t simply drive up Interstate 25, so we took US 287 through Longmont to Fort Collins, and then over county routes to US 85 to make the rest of the trip north.

North of Fort Collins the landscape is very comfortable to me. It’s wide open, with ranches dotting the landscape here and there, and just a whole lot of nothing. I love it in these parts; it’s one of the reasons I enjoy storm chasing so much. I feel like I can just wrap my arms around the big, wide open spaces.

I remarked to my husband my affinity for the area and asked him if he’d ever live in these parts and his answer was a quick, solid “no”. I grew up a little closer to farms than he did, and he likes to be relatively close to urban development, so the answer was not unexpected. Me? I could easily live in the middle of nowhere and not complain about it.

In fact, I’d be immensely happy.

I am a big fan of this new trend of “Lifestyle Centers” popping up in suburban America. If you’re not familiar with the concept, a Lifestyle Center creatively blends retail and entertainment establishments with apartments or condominiums. These centers are popping up around major cities as an alternative to suburban sprawl.

One of the things I enjoy about these developments is the walkability. By having the retail and entertainment venues close by, residents of these Lifestyle Centers can walk to the services they need. This is healthier for the resident, saves on auto pollution, and encourages a neighborly vibe reminiscent of the villages and small cities of the mid 20th century.

Our first encounter with such a development was back in 2012 when we stopped at The Woodlands near Houston, Texas to see what that was about. I found that area appealing. I know something similar recently went up outside of Phoenix, Arizona. The Lifestyle Center, with the prominent JCPenney sign seen in the photo above, is outside of Westminster, Colorado.

As we made our way to the Rocky Mountains during our recent vacation in the Denver area, I noticed a number of these lifestyle centers popping up along the routes taking us from Westminster to the Rockies. While they ring a little upscale in appearance and demeanor, they seem like a better solution than suburban sprawl.

We had a nice drive through the eastern Rocky Mountains today. Our intention was to drive up to Mount Evans (Mount Blue Sky), along the highest paved road in the continental United States.

It’s closed.

That’s right, they have closed this scenic route through Memorial Day 2026 so they can rebuild a 3/4 mile stretch of this road. This really agitated me as I have been looking forward to going up there for a few weeks now, but it is what it is. When the federal government is doing something, expect it to be a mess.

The ride started with a stop in Nederland, Colorado, where the Farmer’s Market was in full swing.

We found a really cool BBQ and beer place called Busey Brews. I had a delicious brisket sandwich and a pint of their porter.

From there we made our way to Idaho Springs and then intended to go up to Mount Evans (Mount Blue Sky). We took the scenic route through the area and stopped at the gate to the Scenic Byway. I did some hiking and put together some footage that will eventually make its way to a video.

All in all a great little experience in the eastern Rocky Mountains. Our highest elevation of the trip was just about 11,000 feet MSL.

It was a good day.

Earl and I have been enjoying LoDo and Larimer Square in Denver today. The weather is beautiful. The vibe is enjoyable. I told Earl that Denver reminds me of a western spin on Philadelphia. He agrees.

Our flight from Phoenix to Denver last night was uneventful. I had a glass of sparkling wine, Earl had a glass of sparkling water, and we both enjoyed a bag of “Skinny Pop”. We agreed with the male flight attendant, that it’s one of our favorite snacks. He was chatty with the eldergays.

Flight time from PHX to DEN on a B737 is about one hour and 30 minutes. I didn’t bother with the wifi. I did take a few photos; the window was filthy so my shots didn’t come out as good as I wanted them to look.

I did get one shot that I’m particularly proud of.

I am using this one as the wallpaper on my iPhone. I find it inspiring.

Earl and I are sitting in the United Club at SkyHarbor International Airport in Phoenix. We arrived a little ahead of schedule, and boarding time is about 90 minutes away.

We are on our way to Denver.

This is the first leg of our 12 day/11 night vacation. It’s been a while since we’ve been gone this long. I’m looking forward to the adventure. I plan on taking a lot of video and photos. I’ll probably share something on my Youtube channel.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, 1-900 numbers here in the United States were quite popular.  Commercials were popping up all the time, urging the viewer to call 1-900-whatever to experience just about anything.  Late night TV leaned hard on sexual escapades. I called one of those lines once and the guy sounded too hot and I hung on him. Too intimidating.

I remembering hearing ads on Kiss 108 in Boston. They went something like, “Are you gay? Does gay life intrigue you? Call 1-900-BE-THE-GAY (or whatever)…” and for only $2 a minute, after $4 for the first minute, you could talk to gay people. 

Not once did I ever hear a word about “grooming” back then.

Most famously, Dionne Warwick (she had dropped her optional “e” by then), led the Psychic Friends Network. Dionne showed all her teeth and glory in rabid infomericals, urging viewers to call a 1-900 number to get a reading from a renowned psychic. I think her name was Linda Gregorian or something ordinary like that. You think she would have had a name like “Zesty Zelda” or something, but no, you could talk to Linda for $6 a minute on your Alltel bill. 

I never called it. 

For some reason I recently remembered an ad for a 1-900 line where people could call in so they could start crying. “Everyone needs a good cry once in a while”. I couldn’t bring myself to call into this line to see what was going on the other end of the wire, but I remember the relentless images of people crying on the phone in this ad to be quite upsetting. 

Posting this screenshot from the ad is still quite upsetting to me.

I had a friend back in the day that called this number once and they said there was a calm voice telling a sad story about someone close to the narrator dying or something. This was back during Desert Storm; even in 1990 there was enough in the news to cry about, I didn’t need to rack up money on my New England Telephone bill to find a reason to cry. Not really fitting into the social scene of Boston was reason enough for me to cry, let alone all the stuff going on in the news back then.

Of course, 1-900 numbers gave way to the Internet. And with the Information Highway and the constant bombardment of other people’s business, we all have plenty of reasons to cry now.

I’ve been making some tweaks to the self-hosted WordPress instance that’s running Ye Ol’ Ancient Blog. There’s a lot of drama going on with the company that owns WordPress, and while I’ve been following along a little bit with said drama, I haven’t really gotten into the weeds on the whole thing. I don’t like the idea of my blog running on software supported by a lot of drama, so I’m contemplating moving to a new platform by the end of the year. We’ll see if that happens.

In the meanwhile I’ve been tweaking settings and trying to make things run a little bit faster. I’ve felt inclined to blog a bit more this week, and that’s probably because of my ongoing social media fatigue. A few of the folks I follow on Mastodon have been striking a weird, self-righteous vibe, at least a stronger vibe than usual. I blame the impending U.S. Elections. Perhaps this is confined to my bubble but people seem a little more high strung and on edge than usual.

I find this fatiguing.