Riding the CTA without touching anything. We have a car all to ourselves.
Timely.
There are people working everyday at the local elementary school. For the past 60+ days I’ve noticed March events on the marquee. I guess they’re too busy cleaning the building to share well wishes or even a blank message on the sign.
The lingering messages of events in March are a reminder of what was and what is now.
Scents.
My favorite scent of the season is the scent of lilac. Dark purple, light purple, white, doesn’t matter, lilac is a glorious scent that makes me feel centered and happy.
Grandma City had several lilac bushes along the back fence of her backyard back in the day. I wonder if the lilac bushes are still there. Every spring she’d cut a couple of flowers and have them in a vase on the kitchen table. The scent was wonderful in the carpeted kitchen. She took a couple of shoots of one of the bushes and planted them near our mobile home in the early 1970s. It grew slowly but sturdily and would have a couple of flowers for the rest of the springs we lived on that lot. I missed the scent of those lilacs when we moved across the street to the new house. Curiously, we had no lilacs at the new house. I always wondered if there was just too much sand in the soil. We lived over what had once been Lake Ontario thousands of years ago. There were sand dunes not too far from our little village, even though the shore of Lake Ontario was seven miles to the west.
When my husband and I moved into our first house together in 1997 I was happy to see there were lilac bushes along the back deck. When we had new landscaping installed a couple of years later the lilac bushes all stayed; the new landscaping was designed around the lilacs. Over the years a couple of smaller bushes started popping up in the vicinity of the older bushes. We took one of them with us to the new house in 2003. When we moved to Chicago in 2017, the relocated lilac bush was tall and strong and doing quite well. I hope it’s still there.
There are a few lilac bushes along the sidewalks in our neighborhood. At this time of year I stop and smell them during my morning walk. I think of Grandma City. I can hear her saying, “Hi, John”, in her Grandma City voice.
It all makes me smile.
Push Button Magic.
We are the point of quarantine where I just watched a 25-minute infomercial advertising a General Electric Stratoliner Cooking Range. The advertisement is dated 1950. Push button technology. What will they think of next?
Escape.
I spent nearly three hours in the air yesterday. The time was split between two different airplanes. The first flight was my annual “proficiency check” with the flight school I rent the DA40s from; this is a requirement of the school, not the FAA. I like this requirement, it keeps me on my game. I probably don’t spend enough time practicing some maneuvers when I’m up punching holes in the sky. It’s good to have a sanity check. Adoption of bad habits can be stopped faster if you’re going up with an instructor more often. The flight went very well. I was able to do everything the instructor needed me to do and I did it well. I really like flying the DA40.
The second half of the flight time was in the Cessna 182 RG (Retractable Gear). “Large Marge” flies quite a bit differently than the DA40 but an airplane is an airplane. It’s all about learning how it handles, the extra equipment and procedures around the retractable gear, and the workflows and thought processes around the high performance engine. When you’re going faster and getting there faster you need to be thinking faster.
I still record all my flights but I don’t share them on YouTube like I used to. My primary focus is to review my flights and take notes to keep in mind for the next flight. There’s a couple of things I should have done quicker, some things I should have done better, but overall I’m coming right along with the requirements for this next endorsement.
Mother Nature has been kind the last three Saturdays in a row. Let’s hope she maintains the same mood for next weekend!
Caturday.
Truman is slowing getting used to having to be in a harness to go out on the balcony. I can’t use the harness or leash to guide him in anyway, he has to be leading the way at all times. If I give it a little tug to suggest he go to another part of the balcony, he’ll flop over on his side and start playing with the leash.
I’m happy that’s he’s getting to experience the balcony a little but I’m very happy he’s on a harness, he’s pressed his head against the metal mesh below the railing and goes to the floor. I don’t have to worry about him ever falling off the balcony, but I wouldn’t put it past him to try to jump on the railing and we can’t have that.
I think he’s looking forward to the warmer weather just as much as we are.
Finale.
Last night was the series finale of ABC’s “How To Get Away With Murder”. No spoilers here; so you don’t have to worry about the content of this blog post.
My husband and I have watched the series since day one and while some of the storylines have been a little out there and there has been some unevenness along the way, particularly with the last one or two seasons, Viola Davis is a powerhouse and for the most part the supporting cast has been strong.
With the series finale I know I’m a little sad to see the story come to an end but they wrapped everything up well and didn’t take any last minute wild detours to try to close everything up with a pretty bow. In the series’ universe little of the finale felt contrived.
I particularly enjoyed the addition of Amirah Vann to the cast a couple of seasons ago and I always enjoyed her scenes. While a completely different experience, I feel the same way I felt when “Downton Abbey” came to an end, satisfied with the ending, hopeful for a movie someday, and sad that our regular viewing has come to an end.
Alternate Universe.
We’ve been watching the documentary “Hillary” on Hulu. The documentary blends events from Hillary Clinton’s past with recorded events from her 2016 presidential election run. There are few restrictions around the direction of discussion or the comments made on any of the events shared.
At times it’s hard for me to watch.
I fully believe Secretary Clinton was the best choice for president in 2016, the majority of American voters felt the same way. I loathe to go through the 2020 election cycle because I have absolutely no faith in the American people doing the right thing. Trump is a disaster in every sense of the word. No self-respecting, intelligent centrist can honestly say with a straight face that he’s doing a great job.
We could have been in a better place today, right now, with Hillary Clinton in the White House. Unfortunately the electorate opted to take us into the dark, alternate reality.
Changes.
I’ve spent much of the evening doing research for my ultra-geek website, The Vintage Point of Sale site. Tonight I concentrated on the systems at the long defunct department Store, Zayre. Or, maybe it was spelled *Zayre. Either way, I’m pretty sure *Zayre was using the asterisk long before Wal*mart, which is now *Walmart.
As I browsed through some old *Zayre commercials, I remembered that back in the day they were the stand-out discount department store at the holidays because they were (gasp) open 24 hours a day between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Unheard of in the 1980s!
I know everything is open all ways all the time these days, but back in the 1980s *Zayre would feature these “60 Hour Sales” during the holidays, where everything was specially marked for 60 hours straight, morning to night and back to morning again.
I shopped at *Zayre in the middle of the night during the 1986 Christmas holiday shopping season simply because I was in college and I could. It was around 3:00 a.m. and there were quite a few people in the brand new store in Dunkirk, New York. There was a little bit of a kicker though; you couldn’t check out for about an hour in the middle of the night because the cash register system was doing its close of day. So the staff invited you to browse the specials while they moved the date up a notch.
I don’t think I’d want to walk into a *Walmart in the wee hours of the morning in the 21st century, but back in the day shopping at *Zayre in the middle of the night was kind of nifty.
Ah, simpler times.
Observation.
I haven’t ridden the train in over two months. This is highly unusual but to be expected with this whole pandemic thing going on. On my daily walk this morning it suddenly hit me, I miss silently observing people and watching the world go by.
It’s difficult to sit and observe people when everyone is trying to avoid one another and/or have masks covering their face. I thoroughly enjoy watching people just go about their business. I learn from people and I learn to appreciate people. Two months into these lockdowns and I’m realizing this may be the hardest thing I’m dealing with, not being able to watch people as easily as I’d like to.
Being around people, but not necessarily interacting with them, is what keeps my introverted self happy. Many think of introverts as folks curled up in a corner reading a book. That’s definitely something I enjoy. But I’m probably happier when I’m alone in a crowded room. Let me sit on the sidelines and watch people be people.
People are fascinating. Yeah, lately they’ve been rather irritating, but for the most part, people are fascinating. I’m almost always impressed in some way with a person.
I look forward to the day when we’re all able to be in relatively the same space again. It’ll be nice to watch the world go by again.
