I went for a hike along the Cactus Forest Trail in Saguaro National Park East today. I made another video.
Caturday.
Truman has been in a rather cute mood this week. His typical routine usually involves sauntering to my office in the morning, standing on his cat tree until we “play ball”, and then staring at me until he gets two treats twice from the ceramic dish in my office.
Playing ball involves me throwing a NERF gun yellow and black ball in his direction and him swatting it back at me. He’s pretty good at getting the ball back to me, but I see his grin when the human has to do the fetching of the ball. Interestingly, he’s the first predominately “right pawed” cat that’s been in my life; his predecessors all used their left paw when playing with balls and other toys back in the day.
So back to his routine. This week Truman has been wanting to spend much more time with me in my office during the workday. He often settled in for a bath and a nap at my feet.
Another change in routine occurred last night. Earl and I were watching “The Lincoln Lawyer” and Truman decided he needed a new place to enjoy the festivities.
This is only the second time in our history together that he’s situated himself on my chest. but he got settled in, all 17 pounds of him, and purred until he fell into a cat nap. When I moved slightly he immediately hopped off and resumed his snooze on the couch snuggled in between his two Dad.
Stepford.
I didn’t watch the State of the Union speech last night. For years these speeches have tended to not be about the state of the union but rather a drawn out, overhyped political speech full of all sorts of rhetoric and the like. Since there is little decorum in just about anything these days, the hooting and carrying on from those in attendance really rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps State of the Union is an apt description after all. We are just one page turn away from “Idiocracy”, anyway. Like humans will survive on a burning planet that long.
I’m digressing.
After the State of the Union address the other party (in this instance, the Republicans), select a representative to give their rebuttal to the points outlined during the hoopla of the SOTU speech. These responses are written well in advance of the actual speech and assumedly the person giving the response works with a coach to present themselves in an articulate, sane manner.
Apparently last night the selected winner was Senator Katie Britt from Alabama. Until last night, I’d never heard of her.
Today on social media, it’s all I’m hearing about.
I was only able to get through about two minutes of Senator Britt’s response before I shut the lid on my laptop and found something more productive to do. In those two minutes I observed the following:
- A string of 10 words would be accompanied by three to four emotions… choking back tears, whispering, a seed-of-chucky like hiss, and fake fire in the eys
- It appears Senator Britt is auditioning for a rendition of “The Sound of Music” taking place in the back of a barn. It’s easy to see she’s auditioning for the role of Reverend Mother. “What is it you can’t face?”
- So, even Republican Senators that happen to be a woman are suppose to be in the kitchen?
- Why isn’t she wearing the red and white cloak thing from “The Handmaid’s Tale?”
- Do women that vote for Republican really weep and moan in their kitchen over the existence of TikTok?
I don’t know what the Republicans are trying to accomplish with this train wreck but whatever it is, it can’t be good. I can’t believe anyone with the IQ higher than the tax on a Big Mac would think this was a genuine attempt at reaching out to voters. If suburban moms are falling for this shtick, we are so further screwed as a country.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This has to be the most bleak presidential election in recent history. It’s certainly the bleakest cluster I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I’ve seen the likes of Dukakis, Kerry, and Dole.
So as not to begin two paragraphs in a row with the same phrase, I’ll simply say, I’m grateful to be on the back half of my life.
Passing Clouds.
Here’s a couple of time lapse videos from the storms passing through Tucson today. First up, is the arrival of heavy rain mixed with light hail.
Here’s the second storm to pass through today. This video is hosted on YouTube because it’s a bit longer. Notice the change in wind direction and the clouds near the end. Cool stuff.
These videos were made with a GoPro Hero 5 in time lapse video mode.
Socialization.
“John is a loner”. I’ve mentioned this statement before in my blog. It was written in one of my kindergarten report cards back in 1973 or 1974. Back then I enjoyed being around people from afar, and 50 years later this is still the case.
My family here at our Desert Compound is rather social. My husband has been a social butterfly since retiring nearly eight years ago. As I type this he’s off to the movies with our friend Marshall. Jamie, Chris, and Mike are all socially inclined as well. A lot of their social interaction is online and they have popular feeds and the like on the social media platforms of varying qualities. Jamie has always been quite gregarious and when he graduates from barber school later this year I’m sure that quality will make him that much better of a barber. He knows how to talk about more than just the weather.
Meanwhile, I talk about the weather a lot. From afar. I can go to events and chat with the best of them but only for a while, then I need some alone time to recharge and get myself back in order. I’ve always been this way.
When I mention this to people they say things like, “but you used to be on the radio!”
As far as I was concerned, back in my radio days I was sitting behind a microphone and talking to no one. At the last station I worked at I figured we were so low powered no one was listening anyway. It was easy to be alone while being “on stage”, I was sitting in a room by myself with a bit of studio equipment and a computer or two.
Even back in my club DJ days it was easy to be alone. I was in the DJ booth, not on stage like the folks do today, and it was just me, crates of records, two nifty turntables, some lighting controls, and hazy figures dancing on a dance floor over there. The door was locked, I didn’t take requests after that nasty woman demanded she dance to Melissa Etheridge NOW, and I liked it that way.
The gay community doesn’t do well with folks that like to be alone. There’s events every weekend in every corner of the country and every other part of the world and like my experiences in the past, I want to be there, while everyone does everything over there. Earl and I were talking about going to a local club to an event called “MEAT”. The social butterfly likes to see all the half dressed people dancing and drinking. I go along because it can be moderately amusing, but I usually dress like a secret service agent or something and stand in the corner with a beer bottle in my hand. When we decided yesterday that we weren’t going to go after all, because honestly we don’t need to be staying up until all hours and drinking alcohol anytime soon, I was very relieved.
I’m going to gather up my wits for a hike on Saturday morning instead.
People that socialize a lot usually think that us loners must be sad or angry or something, and I am none of these things. I just like being alone in my thoughts, doing my thing, and focused on some sort of project or related activity. It’s just the way I’m wired.
And I like it that way.
Dance Break.
One of my favorite songs from the 1980s, I didn’t really get into this song until after I had graduated high school in 1986. I’ve always enjoyed the emotional undercurrent and simplicity of this track, and Chaka Khan’s vocals are amazing. I miss real vocals in pop music.
Jaki Graham released a cover version in 1995 that I would spin as a club DJ, and it’d make the crowd scream, but it didn’t have the same vibe as the original. At the time I was spinning the “Love to Infinity Classic Paradise Mix”, which brought it up to 120 or so beats per minute. Jaki’s original cover is closer to the original in tempo.
From 1983, here’s Rufus and Chaka Khan with “Ain’t Nobody”.
Mobile Living.
The first nine years of my life were spent growing up in a mobile home adjacent to a horse and cattle pasture. Two sides of the back yard were lined with electric fence. Grandma and Grandpa Country lived to the east of our little lot and our front yard faced the south. In the lot to the southwest diagonal, Dad built the two-story colonial home I spent the rest of my childhood in.
The mobile home was made by Great Lakes and I believe it was a 1959 model. The trailer was 10×50, with a very small bedroom in the middle of the unit and the “master” bedroom (that could barely hold a double bed) at the end opposite the kitchen, which was on the east end of the trailer.
I can vividly remember my dad, grandfather, and uncle building the 8×40 addition on the side facing south, which included a new “master” bedroom, a living room, and a laundry room just wide enough for the dryer. The washer continued to live in the bathroom. The old living room windows allowed us to look into the new living room. Mom kept the curtains in place.
Just out of curiosity I did a search and found a promotional photo taken in a 1960 model of a Great Lakes mobile home, and it’s the exact layout I remember from our trailer. In the back of the photo is a wall next to the small hallway; I believe we had a mirror on that wall.
Our stove and refrigerator were both a turquoise blue, with a small broom closet just to the right of the gas stove, and then the Hotpoint refrigerator. The broom closet had a can opener mounted inside. The stove was one that had a pilot light; no “click click” ignition system when you turned it on. In the photo above, the original main entry door is behind the young, handsome man; when dad built the addition that door led down two steps into the new living room. There were notches in the molding around the door noting the growth of my sister and me.
It’s funny that I can remember growing up in that mobile home like it was yesterday, and the sound of rain on the metal roof, the noise of snowstorms coming in off Lake Ontario in the winter and the amazing thunderstorms in the summer.
Reflections.
If you’ve been following along with my blog entries this week, you may have noticed that I have been in a bit of a reflective or pensive mood. There’s a couple of reasons for this. Sometimes I wonder if I’m in the midst of yet another mid-life crisis but then I realize in this day and age I don’t know what defines mid-life anymore. Is it mid 50s? Is it 50? 60? I really don’t know. But then I get lost in trying to figure out the mathematics when it comes to mid-life and I forget that I was trying to figure out if this is a mid-life crisis or not.
I’ve been reading more Stoic philosophical readings than usual. The theme is a continuation of my list of goals for 2024. I am really feeling drawn to reading again, and by reading I mean real books made of covers and pages and the like. I’ve restarted Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations, The Annotated Edition”, as translated, introduced, and edited by Robin Waterfield. When we lived in Chicago I read the “Enchiridion of Epictetus” and found it fascinating and it resonated well. “Meditations” continues this theme.
Every morning I’ve been pulling a quote from a Stoic quote generator and pasting it into my journal. It gives me something to think about. Today’s quote:
I will reveal to you a love potion, without medicine, without herbs, without any witch’s magic; if you want to be loved, then love
Hecato of Rhodes
It really is simple, isn’t it. If you want to be loved, then love. That’s it. In this day and age life seems way too complicated. These studies are helping me bring calm to the chaos.
I’ve kept a journal for over a decade. This particular journal is a personal one with no intention of sharing. While I’m pretty real and open in this blog, there are things that I still keep to myself. The personal journal has been maintained in the Day One app for almost its entire life. I’m not 100% satisfied with it, because I believe there is a certain je ne sais quoi achieved with the handwritten word. I’m thinking of writing some journal entries by hand using pen and paper and then filing them away and/or scanning them into Day One. I’ve also done some handwritten entries on my iPad using an Apple Pencil. For me to write unencumbered I must have as little friction as possible. Day One allows me to use the provided apps or a web interface if I don’t have an app on a particular computer, like my Linux laptop.
But honestly, the mechanics of my journaling are secondary to actually journaling. It needs to be freeform, flowing, and honest.
And now that I think of it, my blog entries are often the same way.
I know that since I’ve been amping up my reading and focusing on philosophies, my mood has been a bit better and I’ve felt more comfortable with being just me.
Positively.
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius
This quote has been going through my head today. I read it a number of years ago when going through one of the many books I’ve read on Stoicism; it popped up again in a daily quote generator that lives on my “miniframe”.
It seems like society, and the mainstream news in general, wants us to focus on the negative. Everyone knows a car crash is more exciting than a high school graduation (just two random examples), and more exciting is what generates money via clicks and ad-revenue and the like.
But what does all the negativity pounding in from the outside do to our well being? How does it make us feel?
It makes me feel less than stellar.
If we are constantly bombarded by bad news we start to seek bad news. And if we seek bad news, perhaps we start generating bad news. We shouldn’t generate bad news. Look for the sunlight, even on the cloudiest of days.
There’s a reason I’ve stopped listening to news briefs and avoided the cable news networks and the like. Too many clouds that I can’t control obscure the sunlight that I seek.
If there’s one thing to take away from this random bunch of words, it’s this: find the sunlight and share the sunlight as much as you are able to do.
Monday.
Today has been one of the most productive Mondays I’ve had at work in years. I don’t know if it’s because of the hike, and subsequently clearing of my head this past weekend, or if it’s because of the dream I had last night. The reasoning doesn’t matter. All I know is that this morning I made a list of the things I wanted to accomplish at work and I’ve been checking these items off one by one and it has given me a strong feeling of accomplishment.
Sometimes just having a checklist on a piece of paper that one can modify with a pen is the way to go.
I’ve mentioned before that I keep track of what I need to do via a loose interpretation of the “Getting Things Done” methodology. Everything goes in a bucket, I review the bucket, and then I figure out what I need to do with the things I’ve put in the bucket. It’s as simple as that. There are hundreds of applications out there that are suppose to make this all move in a very easy way by providing an infinite number of ways to slice and dice the information so you can figure out what you’re suppose to do. Many of these applications are quite nice but I get into “fiddly” mode instead of “productive” mode when I use them. So I just have my little text file with a list of everything I want to accomplish someday, and I review it, pick a few things to work on, and go from there. I do have some coding magic so that I can jump onto any of my computers and type the word “inspire” at a command prompt, and it’ll pick some things on the list that don’t have due dates associated with them. Coupling “inspire” with my regular review of my text file helps keep me productive and organized. Plus, it’s free.
Free is good.
Speaking of free… I’ve been working on cleaning up some audio lately and I was beyond stunned when I saw how much Adobe is charging for their sound editing application, Adobe Audition. I remember buying this application for the radio stations back in the late 1990s when it was called “Cool Edit” and it was a very cool application for its time, and more importantly, it was affordable. These days Adobe doesn’t allow you to buy their software, one can only rent it via a subscription model. I considered subscribing for Adobe Audition for a hot moment, until I learned that it was nearly $35 PER MONTH if I didn’t buy a year’s worth of entitlement at a time.
The heck with that.
This whole notion of renting software from a software company rubs me the wrong way, and that’s probably because I’m an old school geek that remembers the delight I felt when someone bought my shareware cash register program back in the late 1980s. I would never think of renting that software to a business. They bought it, they owned it, and if they asked I’d give them the code so they could do what they wanted with it.
So, no Adobe Audition for me.
There are plenty of fully paid or open source sound editors out there. Audacity comes to mind and it runs on just about anything. I’ll just stick with that.
