Why.

We often hear how the American airline industry is a mess and traveling by air is a chore. I agree with much of this. I cringe whenever I hear I’m on a “very full flight”, as described by the gate agent. First of all, a very full flight isn’t a thing, it’s either full or it’s not. If it’s a very full flight I can only surmise the bulkheads are bulging with people, folks are sitting in the aisle, and the pilot has to maneuver around a pink carry-on that was thrown in the cockpit because there’s no room anywhere else on the airplane. The other thing that bothers me about a “very full flight” is the amount of people shoving way too much stuff up in the overhead bins.

Yesterday we lucked out on our flight from Orlando to Houston. The empty seat next to us remained empty. It was enjoyable.

This flight also sealed my Silver Premier status for 2024. I’m looking forward to complimentary upgrades for our upcoming flights.

Today is Election Day in the United States. It’s an off year, so the focus is on an assortment of local elections. Here in Tucson we were given the opportunity to vote for a mayor (the incumbent is a Democrat) and there was a couple of propositions including determining the salary for the mayor and the city council.

I voted by mail last week.

Pundits, pollsters, and the screaming media are watching elections across the country to try to get a read on the pulse of the nation. Will the local elections swing blue? The media has been pushing polls for the 2024 presidential election, trying to narrow the gap between Biden and Trump as much as possible so they can ramp up the drama and get more ad revenue. In my honest opinion, both choices are bad but there’s one choice that’s much worse than the other so there’s that. I’d vote for a third party if it made a difference but the machine in Washington makes sure there isn’t really a choice for the average American. Just screaming and empty promises and power hungry idiots and profit seeking grifters and people that have been in office for too many decades. I’m discouraged with this whole democracy thing, but I’ll still vote and I’ll always try to cast a vote that will actually accomplish something.

So little choices. I hope the local elections go well, though, with plenty of pleasant surprises.

It’ll give the media something to scream about.

I just read a tirade (that I won’t link to) of a person upset that Daylight Saving Time starts and we use this time to SAVE UP DAYLIGHT FOR SPRING.

I have no words.

1. Daylight Saving Time has ended for the year. We don’t do DST in Arizona; we are on Mountain Standard Time year ’round. Right now we are two hours behind Eastern Standard Time. During Daylight Saving Time we are three hours behind Eastern Daylight Time.
2. We do NOT “save up daylight” during standard time to use during daylight time. To even think that someone believes that is mind boggling to me. The tomfoolery is Daylight Saving Time is pushing the clocks forward an hour to make you THINK you have more daylight in the evening, but you don’t. It’s just the government messing with the clocks and you thinking you have more daylight because the clock shows a later sunset than it really is. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

But in no way is anyone saving up daylight in a bank or something.

OK, this is beyond ridiculous.

Disney+ is increasing from an annual fee of $79.99 to $109.99 on our next renewal in November. That is a very large hike and we’re deciding if we still want to pay for the streaming service.

The streaming companies are getting out of control with their fees. It’s like every one of them said, “we know no one liked cable, so let’s see what we can do to make it worse.”

Like so many things Disney as of late, this is very disappointing.

Apparently Congress is taking a recess because they can’t agree on anything. The government is going to shut down again in a week because no one can agree on anything.

I’m really, really tired of stupid people voting for stupid people. Maybe they can just stay away and let someone competent come in and do the job they can’t do.

Our government was not designed to be run by stupid people, and that’s what we’re stuck with.

My husband occasionally tells me I get too worked up with road rage as we’re navigating the roads, streets, and stravenues of Tucson, Arizona. For those not familiar with Tucson, as the city has grown the citizens have struck down any and every suggestion of building a crosstown freeway, eschewing the fast roadway experience for a consistent, “it’s a big city but still feels like a small town” experience. Instead of freeways we have arterials with plenty of traffic lights, lowered speed limits to make six- to eight-lane roadways “pedestrian friendly”, and folks driving quickly on surface streets because we don’t have freeways.

Now, I’m not an overly aggressive driver, but because I’ve done a considerable amount of college-grade studying in the whole civil engineering/traffic engineering arena, I know what the books say about highway design versus what the city of Tucson and Pima County have opted to do instead, and there’s a lot of weirdness out there. Add to this the fact that a sizable number of motorists don’t even know how to work their headlights, let alone pay attention to driving instead of using their cell phone like they’re talking into a pop tart, and the plummeting average IQ of the American citizen and I’m pretty sure we can figure out why I occasionally exhibit road rage behavior. It’s not that my husband finds I’m too aggressive, it’s that he has to hear my screaming when no one else on the road is aware of my screaming.

I’ve been doing my best to keep it inside lately. We are too far along our life paths to die in our sleep after listening to the rantings of a bald man.

The thing is, people are stupid, and driving forces everyone down to the least common denominator, especially without freeways. If someone is doing something stupid in front of you, you have to slow down and let them make their dull-normal decision to turn right from the very left hand lane. There’s never a turn signal involved with this, it’s just “oh the GPS just told me to turn right and even though I’ve been in the left lane for the past 65 miles, I’m going to dart across and turn right so I can get into the Walmart parking lot”.

I’ve recently discovered that if drivers can manage to turn their headlights on, they can’t figure out how to use their high beam switch, so in addition to these needlessly bright headlights on trucks that are too tall to begin with, drivers are navigating the stravenues of Tucson with their high beams on because no one knows what that stick on the left side of the steering wheel is suppose to do. Left, right, high, low: just ignore the switch and hope for the best.

Luckily, I’m one of the few remaining Americans that knows what this is.

For those unaware, the little switch hanging down from your rear view mirror switches the mirror from “day” to “night” mode or vice-versa. Night mode dims the entire scene displayed in the mirror so the $100K Ford F350 with a nuclear fusion powered headlight system of eight, ten, or twelve lights barreling down the ass end of your Jeep Cherokee isn’t burning your retinas completely out of your head.

Unfortunately, I live with a few people that don’t know what that switch does and they leave the switch in the night position in the day time and opt to just swing the mirror around instead.

And now you know why I might yell a lot in the car.

I was surprised to see “orange lights” near Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains last night. I spotted these “lights” during my sunset walk; once the sun was down I realized it was a wild fire.

Dubbed the “Molino 3” fire, it was at approximately the same area as a fire earlier this year where a guy shooting target practices fired off some rounds that sparked a fire and didn’t do anything about it, resulting in the “Molino 2” fire. At last check they were reporting 425 acres were on fire.

I hope they’re able to get it out quickly. Admittedly, I’m worried about the wildlife and the ecosystem in the area more than any human installed dwellings down the mountain. Too many humans have a tendency to do terrible things to this planet. Hopefully good humans will help get this fire under control quickly.

Again, just a reminder, the movie “Idiocracy” is not a user’s guide or instruction manual.

Fuel prices have been outrageously high in the Tucson area for the past two months. The oil companies say it’s because there’s been maintenance on the pipeline from California or Texas, I’m not sure which, and that the oil companies were also doing maintenance on the refineries during this time. Interestingly, fuel prices at stations just outside of the city limits were sometimes over a dollar cheaper a gallon.

I also find it quite interesting that all the fuel prices at all the gas stations in the area went up to these outrageously high prices at that same time.

That’s not supply and demand. That’s corporate greed.

Fuel prices have started slowly coming back down toward the national average, but they’re not coming down nearly as fast as they shot up earlier this spring.

Again, more corporate greed, plain and simple. We live in discouraging times.

Yesterday’s shooting in Nashville was awful. Some sources say there’s been over 100 mass shootings in the United States in 2023 and we haven’t even hit day 100 yet. Unfortunately it feels like the country is numb to this sort of thing. Children should never be afraid to go to school. Teachers should never have to worry about evacuating their classrooms during a mass shooting. School was always suppose to be safe space.

There are no safe spaces in the United States in 2023.

According to some reports, the shooter, who was also killed, was a trans individual. Some of the news outlets are not reporting this, others are trumpeting it quite loudly. Apparently the shooter had been a student at this private school back during their school days.

There are some opinions I have that I won’t share here on this blog. My opinion of the recent trend of conflating gay rights with trans rights is quite complicated. My opinion is probably best left unwritten in this space. But the fact that the shooter was trans will definitely affect the increasing political spotlight on the subject.

And we don’t need that right now.