Even without the app, one is thoroughly tracked at McDonalds.
Calm.
Apparently this is the calm before the storm. The National Weather Service is advising of a Winter Weather Advisory starting tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM and going through Tuesday morning. Naturally I am on the schedule to fly an airplane smack in the middle of this event. I will not be making that flight if it’s snowing or close to freezing rain because that’s not how I roll. Or fly.
It’s pretty out today. Truman wants to go out on the roof and explore. I go out there with him but I’m not dressed for it at the moment. I should probably get dressed.
Especially if it’s going to be unseasonably cold for the next few days.
Defiant.
The captain on the flight from Philadelphia to Denver was very pleasant. About 60 minutes before our arrival he announced, “Folks, if you haven’t flown into Denver before, you’ll notice turbulence can pop up at any time. This is due to the proximity to the Rocky Mountains. As long as you keep your seat belt on, you might feel uncomfortable but you’ll be safe. I’ve asked the flight attendants to prepare the cabin for landing early and for them to take their jump seats. Please be seated and make sure you’ve fastened your seat belt.”
So, of course a gentleman promptly gets up, opens the overhead bin, pulls down a whole bunch of stuff and apparently starts rearranging his bag. I took this photo just as he was opening the bin for the purpose of griping about this sort of thing on my blog. Two flight attendants asked him to have a seat but with his rearranging it looks him a few minutes.
Now, he could have been moving around a heart monitor and medication or something. Perhaps he had his wife stowed up that and she needed more Cheerios. Maybe he didn’t hear the announcement due to his AirPods. But of course I rolled my eyes and wondered allowed to my husband, “why is there always one that defies the seat belt light and announcement and insists on doing their own thing”.
After a few bumps that caused the open bin to bounce a couple of times, he swiftly put his bag up with his wife and had a seat.
Caturday.
Truman has been very vocal since our return from vacation last night. He wants to be very close to me and he’s been purring very loudly the entire time. He’s generally the most “standoffish” of cats that have adopted me over the years, but he’s showing me his love in his own way.
Apparently he experienced a deficit in treats or something while staying here at home with the rest of the family; he’s been banging on his kibble dispenser with a noticeable intensity. If I give him a treat he purrs while he eats. I get that.
Club Life.
We are at PHL Philadelphia Int’l Airport awaiting our flight. The rental car had to be back at the lot a little early to avoid another day’s worth of fees, so we are at the airport a little early. It’s the perfect time to take advantage of our passes at the United Club.
I’m missing traveling a lot. Since the pandemic work has slowed down on travel a bit, though they’ve started up with some travel again over the past few months. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to do some quality travel for work and pleasure in 2023, because I really enjoy the Jet Set Life.
As Jeannie’s sister once said, “Your Major Nelson has Jet Set potential and you’re a horse and buggy genie!”
Over breakfast I was mentioning to Earl that one of the reason I get into a “funk” at home is because I’m not interacting with the public enough. It’s not that I want to interact with the public, but I like being around the energy of being in public, from a corner where I can watch. I have always enjoyed people watching. Working from home, playing at home, and spending Saturday nights at home is kind of wearing on me. Since the pandemic is as close to “over” as it’ll ever be, and let’s face it, COVID is never going away, I’m happy to see public life getting back to something akin to “normal”. I’ve never been “normal”, my thought processes just don’t work like typical though processes and cover a whole spectrum of things at any given time, but interacting with the community in some sort of way gives me energy.
Until I have to rest from it.
Connected.
As a geek that is fascinated by all things networked or connected, I have always had a fascination with electric power distribution, and more specifically, the higher voltage power lines that cross the country side.
There’s a particular style of pylons that support these wires in Upstate New York that I haven’t seen elsewhere in the country. Most of these carry two circuits of 115 kV (kilovolts). Their unique in that they don’t have a four point base, instead they’re designed with a two point base. I’ve never heard of one falling down because of the wind. When the North Country had their huge ice storm in the mid 1990s, this design withstood the weight of the ice.
I’ve never known who made these pylons but they’re found primarily in what used to be the Niagara-Mohawk footprint.
These lines cross the New York State Thruway just east of the Verona interchange. There’s always been several obvious “generations” of this design. The first tower is the older, the second was installed during the mid 1950s during the building of the Thruway, where an original was probably in the way of a bulldozer.
Tick Tock.
I went to the historical society in my hometown today. I had donated some of the clocks from the elementary school in the area and I finally had the chance to get them working for them. They were delighted when everything was working in this old school building.
They have a LOT of information on the surrounding area, including history on families and towns and all sorts of things. I have a copy of the yearbook containing my grandmother as a sophomore in high school. I recognized her right away.
Since the master clock that runs the old clocks is an electronic unit it doesn’t have an easy way to advance the clocks if the power goes out or at the seasonal time changes. I built them an auxiliary control box with buttons and switches to make this easy. It works great.
I told them if they have an issues we can easily solve the issue over FaceTime.
Really?
Do we really want to live in a society where the highlighted instructions above are necessary?
I’ll say it again. The movie “Idiocracy” was not a user’s guide for the future.
Nanny State.
I had forgotten that many of the gas stations in Central New York require that you hold onto the pump handle for the duration of putting fuel into the vehicle. There’s no little flippy thing to hold the handle in the on position until the pump senses it’s time to turn it off.
I do not enjoy this, especially in the frigid cold weather of Central New York.
I found an article from 2014 in Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle that indicates there are two states in the nation that don’t allow the hold and close clips, and that’s New York and Massachusetts. There’s a petition on change.org that is petitioning to allow these mechanisms to be used in New York. Whether the hold and close clips are allowed isn’t the issue in the law, the issue is that New York requires a person present to dispense gasoline into their vehicle and this is how the filling stations follow the law. There’s stickers that say things like “don’t wedge your gas cap into the pump nozzle”. One sticker had a user added advisory note, “use a screwdriver”.
Many years ago there was an overzealous cashier at a Wawa in the Poconos that would turn the pump off every time someone stepped away from the pump while filling up. This was occurring in the middle of a torrential rain storm, and even with the presence of hold and close clips on the pumps, she felt the need to end the transaction if you got yourself out of the rain while the pump dispensed gasoline into the vehicle. I went in and complained several times, along with every other customer at the station at the time, and she was adamant. There was talk of forcing her and her cash register out into the rain but we just paid the $1 she allowed to be pumped into the tank and went across the street to the filling station where folks were friendlier.
I miss friendly folks.
