This is the first year where I’ve used my iPhone on a tripod instead of my Canon DSLR for the family photo. The feast was quite enjoyable.
Spaces.
We’re fortunate to live in a house large enough for many rooms. I have two places I can call “my office”. During the day I work in what would be typically thought of us the library. It’s on the main floor, has a wonderful view over the front landscaping, and keeps me productive all day long.
Upstairs we have a room that is dubbed “The Observatory” on the blueprints. The house was originally built by an astronomer and the room was designed to have a large telescope mounted, with lots of equipment and a large concrete pad in the shop below the room to support the telescope.
While we don’t have a large telescope, the Observatory serves as a “man cave” of sorts. I have been working on cleaning up the space. It’s in this room that I have my Mac mini setup, along with plenty of room for my flight simulator controls. I enjoy playing X-Plane from time to time and flying when I can’t get myself into an airplane.
The space is enjoyable and now that I’ve organized it better with shelves and the like, it’s more functional. Truman likes to sleep in his cat bed I’ve put in the corner for him. It’s his escape from the rest of the house as well.
Predictable.
I’m on a work call at 10:20 PM on a Tuesday night. This work call was scheduled earlier today, because the management team felt it was important to push code to the production servers tonight until waiting for a full week of work with a full staff. Because priorities.
This call is going as well as I thought it would be. My part of this effort will be changing one file at the very end of the call. But here I am, listening to people call other people spanned across three continents.
Floating Turkey.
I love following the missions taking place on the International Space Station. I can only dream of living in space but that dream is fueled by a lot of passion. It’s so awesome that we have a human presence circling this planet.
This video made me smile today.
No Concern.
My husband suggested we go it for a drink. I’m giving up beer. Too many colonies. So I had two martinis. Whoo hoo my husband is driving us home. My godmother liked martinis but I never had one with her. I miss her. She was awesome.
Two olives for the both of us.
It’s November.
My husband and I have been putting up Christmas decorations. Like my father, I will not allow the lights to be lit up until after Thanksgiving. Since we are traveling to the Northeast for 10 days at the beginning of December, Earl wants to get the decorations up early so things are nice and festive for the rest of the family here at home and for when we return to the beautiful weather of the Sonoran Desert.
The photo above was taken just as I started this blog entry. I am sitting on our back patio enjoying the weather; it is 21ºC (approximately 68ºF) and quite lovely. I’ve been seeing photos of Buffalo being buried in snow. The warmer Great Lakes at this time of year, when brushed by cold air masses from Canada, make for some really great snow making events. My hometown in the Lake Ontario Snowbelt is also seeing some snow, though not as much as is coming off Lake Erie farther to the west. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes and has a habit of turning colder and possibly freezing earlier in the season. The Lake Ontario snow belt will get theirs soon enough.
It probably wasn’t as cordial as I could have been by mentioning on Facebook the warm weather down here in Tucson. I do miss snow events like they’re seeing back East, but maybe a day of it per winter season.
Otherwise I’m quite happy writing a blog entry from the back patio while wearing shorts in mid November.
Caturday.
Truman watching his morning “television”. He has a very specific ritual that must be adhered to else he’ll rattle our bedroom door, make loud demands, and rattle the door again. At sunrise.
The routine is: daddy gets up, makes a cup of coffee, checks the water dish, moves the existing food in the bowl around, cleans the litter boxes, and then dispenses five treats while Truman stands on his cat tree. After this is complete the human may return to bed as Truman jumps all the way up on his perch and watches his morning television of birds and javelinas in the back yard.
Nope.
I had my latest COVID-19 booster and yearly flu vaccination on Tuesday. I haven’t felt right since. In fact, I’ve felt awful. Better yet, I’ve felt the worst I’ve felt in several decades.
I am never getting two vaccine shots at the same time ever again.
Politics.
The people Arizona showed a spark of sanity in the recent elections and have elected Katie Hobbs as our next governor. The margin of victory is less than 1% and has been right down to the wire with vote tabulations. Of course her opponent, Kari Lake, an ardent Trump supporter who denies anything that makes sense and is obviously vying to be Trump’s running mate, is having a hissy fit of ridiculous proportions and screaming about fraud and cheating and the like.
I’m really, really tired of sore losers.
The election was way too close for comfort and it’s disconcerting knowing that probably half the people you encounter on the street supported a candidate who feels Arizona should secede from the United States, basically stripping folks of their social security, Medicare, and countless other perks of being part of the Union, as well as getting rid of the six military bases here in the desert. Her approach sounds so patriotic. Yet, nearly half of the votes went to that nut job.
I’m interested to see what Katie Hobbs does as governor. I’ve been shying away from politics in general because the whole affair is incredibly depressing and disillusioning, but at least with Katie Hobbs at the helm of Arizona I feel a little bit of comfort.
