Remember, like driving, voting will get you somewhere.
D for forward
R for backward
N for not moving anywhere
Navigation!
Our new(ish) car has Apple CarPlay (and Android Auto) built into the entertainment system. It’s a corded affair but it meets our needs and after going for years without the functionality in our Jeep Cherokee, we have enjoyed using Apple CarPlay.
Most of the time.
I have a love-hate relationship with Apple Maps. At times it shows us traffic lights that aren’t there, or it labels roads with route numbers that never came to fruition. But I think the biggest frustration I have with Apple Maps is that it doesn’t “plan ahead” when displaying maps in rural areas and cell signal is suddenly lost.
As you can see, I have apparently driven off the edge of the planet, even though I still have a 5G signal on my iPhone. Whereas Google Maps will download ahead as we drive merrily along, Apple Maps doesn’t seem to be as proactive in the practice. Google Maps has other issues, hence the reason I use Apple Maps.
Maybe there’s a setting or something that I need to tweak. In the meanwhile, it’s a bit maddening driving in a pedestrian version of a Tron grid.
Spelling Counts.
I spotted this spelling mistake as soon as I saw this sign in Flagstaff. It’s not “Humphery St”, it’s “Humphreys St”, at least according to the U.S. Postal Service.
The sign that was there in 2011 (as seen in this Google Maps snapshot) is closer, at least displaying “Humphrey St”
As a sanity check, I checked further downstream on Google Maps and discovered that the street is indeed “Humphreys St”.
Flagstaff, Part 2.
When we were in Flagstaff this weekend I spotted some religious-themed candles for some of the Gay Saints.
I also found a display where I had a hard time making a decision.
We also may have gone to a few places for some adult beverages and a bite to eat.
Caturday.
Truman has decided to start hanging out with the rest of the family this week, usually stationing himself on the bar stools between the kitchen and the family room. He’s been quite attentive to the activity surrounding him and seems to be quite comfortable in this location.
He took a moment to pose for me when he saw me waving my iPhone around. He’s tolerant like that.
Flagstaff.
I took half a day off from work so we could get a head start on the weekend. The original plan was for me to go hiking early Saturday morning up in Flagstaff. However, when we got up there, I reviewed the weather forecast and it was calling for morning thunderstorms.
Morning thunderstorms are not a good thing when you’re hiking on a mountain peak.
So I made the determination tonight that we’d change the purpose of the weekend and just have a relaxing time. It was easy to come to this decision; the both of us have been quite stressed for the past week or so due to a myriad of reasons, so having a “down time” weekend was just what we needed. So Friday night we explored Downtown Flagstaff, which is a wonderful place on a Friday night in August.
Downtown Flagstaff sits at about 7000 feet above sea level. The higher elevation isn’t particularly noticeable to me, but I did have a low grade headache by the time bedtime rolled around.
The first photo is a hotel. We had dinner here together the first time we were in Flagstaff, which was back in 2003. I believe it’s called the Hotel Weatherford.
Relax.
I’m sitting outside after having a nice lunch with my husband. The breezes are pleasant, and it’s mid August, so the temperature is currently around 100ºF with the humidity on the low side. I’m used to this desert weather now. Everything is fine as long as I’m not in the sun.
Several of the folks I follow via my “Resurgence” blog roll (see the sidebar) have paused their social media activity and are concentrating on just their blogs. I like this. At times my social media feeds are filled with way too many opinions and nearly not enough facts. It’s good to step away from the noise from time to time. It’s not like pandemic times when we didn’t have a choice for interaction with other people.
Earl and I are planning a little road trip this weekend that involves my most strenuous hike to date. If I reach the heights I hope to reach it’ll be me hiking at my highest elevation thus far. I’m looking forward to the challenge.
This guy bonked himself on Mike’s office window yesterday, but sorted himself out and got himself together while sitting in the palm tree adjacent to the window. He’s was only about seven inches tall.
Another reason for sitting outside is because I enjoy the fresh air, regardless of how warm or hot that air is. Air conditioning is a wonderful thing and a necessity in the desert, but sometimes I just want to feel Mother Nature’s natural breezes.
I find it refreshing.
Expiration.
I think I’ve written about this before but I’m too lazy to go through 23 years of blog entries to see if I have actually put these thoughts to paper, so to speak.
I recently had a birthday reminder pop up in Facebook and the face associated with the reminder was unfamiliar. I then realized it was a co-worker from a job I had 14 years ago. We haven’t spoken or interacted in any way, including on Facebook, since I left that company back in 2015.
I have no idea why we are maintaining a connection on Facebook. So I removed them from my friends list.
Social media, and in particular Facebook, allows us to make electronic connections easily, sometimes judiciously, and often frivolously. Here’s ago I was at a going away party of a friend in Chicago and I met one of their friends, who promptly friended me on Facebook. He seems nice enough. Our paths are most likely never going to cross again. I have no idea why we are friends on Facebook, as we don’t have common interests. He had some laughs, good conversation, and a couple of beers during this one event and then we moved on. In the pre-social media days, this would have been a fond memory and nothing more, but now there’s this electronic connection and I felt a couple of pangs of guilt as my mouse pointer hovered over the “unfriend” link. I don’t want to tarnish a happy memory that I can vividly remember, and admittedly, they may or may not remember, by severing a connection that wouldn’t have lingered had it not been for Facebook.
As we navigate our way through this chaos through life, there are folks that are meant to be in our lives for a long time and folks that are meant to be in our lives for just a moment. I truly believe this is how we are wired and this is how this whole existence thing is suppose to work. We have memories of folks that we have crossed paths with, albeit good or bad memories, and then we move on. Building a connection through Facebook, and to a lesser extent, other social media platforms, artificially extends a connection that was probably not meant to be. I believe our minds and/or genetic makeup in general is not designed to handle all these extra connections.
Hence, just more ammo for the constantly growing ball of chaos.
I’m on another quest of sorts to clean up some of the chaos in my life, and a good chunk of this extends around technology, and in particular, extraneous connections. “Unfriending” is such a harsh term that evokes an emotion it shouldn’t have the right to evoke. But social media is engineered to tug at the emotions a lot so that you forge a dependence on the dopamine, which in turn helps build a data profile for profit purposes. Selling data is first and foremost the purpose of social media.
Don’t let your happy memories linger beyond their intended expiration date just to become a profit opportunity for a corporate conglomerate.
“We had a nice time together, it’s time to move on, have a pleasant and happy life.”
June Is Bustin’ Out All Over.
I never knew that June Lockhart was an ally of the gay community over 50 years ago. I just discovered this 1970 interview today. I find it very interesting. June is fabulous in her statement.
And as a big aside, I love those sideburns the priest is sporting.
