I wish I could say I’m excited about the impending holiday season. I don’t even really get excited about Halloween anymore. Perhaps I’m becoming a cranky old man.
While the holiday experience is enjoyable, there’s a certain magic in the air that seems to be missing, at least for me. The coziness of the holidays has been replaced by Black Friday Sales, Online Tuesday Sales, 24 hour shopping experiences on Thanksgiving day, electronics, electronics, electronics, and trying to figure out what to buy people who don’t want to tell you what they want so you have to guess.
I’m not that perceptive in that area.
Halloween is in full swing. I doubt our carved pumpkins will survive the desert heat to make it to Halloween, but we went through the motions and I’m filling up on roasted pumpkin seeds.
We had a load of landscape gravel delivered to our home earlier this week. The load was seven tons and we all opted to move the gravel where it need to be ourselves. Today we finished the project and got the Yavapai (that’s the color designation, apparently) gravel where it needed to be.
I think the results are acceptable. My arms appreciated the work out.
Truman and the combined forces of Lucky and Jinx (our canine representatives in this entry) have come to some sort of understanding.
Canines do not bother kitty when he’s in Daddy’s office
Tails that brush by kitty on a bench are fair game
If one of the canines sniffs a feline butt, the feline shall do the same to the canine
The three of them have actually come to some sort of understanding and I haven’t heard a feline drama scream of dissatisfaction in weeks. I think everyone has decided to be friends.
I went for a ride to the southeast of Tucson and drove through Sierra Vista and around nearby Fort Huachuca. It was in Sierra Vista that I discovered the very first McDonald’s Drive Thru.
I noticed the “McDonald’s” in the main sign and the “McDonalds” in the little sign.
I was a senior in high school when I first heard this track and I found it absolutely entrancing. I was driving a 1976 Pontiac Astre (a Vega wannabe) and had this song on a cassette that was given to me by a friend. For me, this is when I realized that modern music could truly be art. The ambience of this track is entrancing.
From 1985 heres Art of Noise with Moments In Love.
Before the current technology of highly reflective tape, and other 21st century materials, were used to make the road signs along the nation’s highways, we had letters called “Button Copy”. These are metal or ceramic letters with reflectors embedded in the letter, approximating the shape of the letter when illuminated by vehicle headlights.
Lots of folks will say the technology is outdated because new nEW NEW is always better (a 21st century attitude if I ever heard one), but in actuality, button copy signs had a shelf life measured in decades, while today’s signs are expected to last one decade. Original signs did not use reflective backgrounds, only the message legend was illuminated, but back in the 80s some in the U.S. government decided the color of the sign needed to be reflective as well, and that’s when button copy began to struggle a little bit. Signs were actually a little too bright when designed to be completely reflective, and the button copy was washed out by the rest of the sign panel.
ADOT can’t decide whether they’re going to get rid of the metric signs along Interstate 19 and convert the whole road to the inferior English Units. The roadway was built when the United States was strongly considering moving the metric to come up to speed with the rest of the world, but then Reagan was elected to office and we began the whole “‘Merica!!!” movement and for some reason the metric system became associated with the devil and conspiracy theories.
ADOT did replace all the metric signs with new metric signs in the late 1990s, some of the last “button copy” signs to be installed in the United States. Many of these signs stand today and aren’t doing too bad in the reflectivity department for being over 20 years old.
The sign on the left lost its Interstate 10 route marker years ago. I don’t know why it wasn’t ever replaced, probably because the sign was going to be replaced and then they couldn’t decide if they were going to keep the metric system on the roadway or not so it just stays there missing.
Pima County here in Arizona is big on early voting. I like taking advantage of this perk and we did our civic duty by voting today. We just dropped our ballots off a the post office.
We often hear that this election is the most important election of our lifetime, and I’m actually feeling that vibe these days. The U.S. government is in such disarray at the moment and voting is our only weapon to actually help mediate this chaos.
I’m not looking forward to the election cycle after these midterm elections are over, because we all know that as soon as the last ballot is cast we’re going to be hearing about the 2024 Presidential Election. And quite frankly, I don’t really want to hear about that. I’m not particularly fond of anyone in office right now, but we’re doing the best we can do with what we’ve got.
It’s way too early for Christmas decorations to be overtaking the retail spaces. I am not in the mood to hear Barbra warble about Kids Wearing Curtains During A Thunderstorm. But yet, my husband must fling us through the Merry Trim-A-Tree department every time we come within 100 miles of said frivolity.
I noticed a new feature this year: super festively gay Christmas trees. The pink tree is sort of a throwback to the 1960s (though it’s not a lead painted aluminum tree). But the rainbow tree? I don’t know what’s happening there. But I’m sure it brings joy to someone in the season shopping audience.
I’m sure we’ll hear something about the War on Christmas, with this tree front and center, some time before the end of this year.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
