Author: Peg

After a lot of data wrangling, I went out for a very little walk mid-afternoon. I had a macro lens on my Olympus Pen when I saw a really handsome house finch at one of our feeders. Well, shooting birds with a macro lens isn’t ideal. But, whatever happens, is what I planned.

You know you are in trouble when this is the “Special” for dinner. For an entire week: That’s the special. Quinoa. 

I am settled in for a long campaign to return The Asylum food to “good”. I am not sure it can get it back to “excellent” without personnel changes that I don’t see happening. 

Tonight, I plan on having a BLT. With a side order of avocado. The Asylum does make good bacon. No complaints with the fries or onion rings either. Last night a couple came down to dinner. They brought I nice bottle of wine and ordered fries and onion rings for their supper.  

Spent a couple of very frustrating hours this morning messing with a spreadsheet that kept coming up with a #VALUE error. Tried everything. Absolutely had to make it work.  Finally, RTFM.

Important: Each additional range must have the same number of rows and columns as the criteria_range1 argument. The ranges do not have to be adjacent to each other.

Thank-you Microsoft. I knew that. What I didn’t was that I has screwed up a range name. All was well. Just in time for my Zoom yoga class, which was lots better knowing that my spreadsheet would indeed provide the required counts.

Now actually, in Hawai’i “two scoop rice and one scoop macaroni salad” is the base of our famous “plate lunch” – beloved by everyone including President Obama.  But, this is not Hawai’i and that is not “plate lunch”.  

Strangely busy day. And, I didn’t do any work work at all. 

About the food here at the Asylum. When I first moved in it was good. Then we got a new chef and it was excellent. Then we got a new chef and covid happened and we were locked up for over a year.  When we came out of the bunkers, the food was dreadful. And it still is. 

The menus are odd and the preparation is poor. That is not a winning combination. Speaking of combinations. Tomorrow the entree is mac-n-cheese. That’s good. With turkey meatballs, that’s bad but you don’t have to eat them. Actually, nobody eats the turkey meatballs. I suspect that when the meatballs get back to the kitchen they go into the dishwasher and return later in the month to once again sully otherwise fine mac-n-cheese. And one of tomorrow’s two side dishes is Garlic Fried Rice. That’s just odd. Starting a campaign to get someone in the kitchen anyone to engage their brain. If that works, I’ll try to engage their taste buds.

Absolutely delightful weather today. Always look on the bright side of life!

Today, I went to the little farm market a couple of miles away. Got tomatoes and peaches. They will be next week’s lunches.  I took the bus, so, I had to take a little fitness walk as well.  And, I tweaked the spreadsheet that I a working on a bit. Then I emailed it off for “review and approval”. Then, I’ll clean it up and start thinking about getting a job description so they can replace me.

Today’s travel photos are wall art from Strasbourg.

And some vintage advertising.

 

Spent the day working. And a little goodtime reviewing my photos from the last day on the Barge. We ended up in Dijon. Where we started. And the day started with outstanding “French” toast.  

 

I hope I can do this again.

This was our last day on the barge and this was the last lock before we docked back in Dijon. Most of us had spent the morning walking or biking. I realized that I had not made any videos of our barge getting into a lock. So, here it is at double time.

As for today in real life. Some of the government covid vaccine reporting requirements have changed. So, I spent the day doing major modifications to a huge spreadsheet. I sort of have two weeks to get the job done. I will try to get it completed by noon Monday. Just because some things only require so much attention. Government reports are one of those things.

My job at the hospital is to get rid of my job at the hospital. Well, actually, it is to figure out what I actually do and turn that into a job description. This is a lot harder than modifying the monster spreadsheet. But, I am 78+ years old. Time to pass the torch. 

June 8. On the Burgundy Canal. The video is the actual speed of the barge. It was easy for 7 people, mostly old, to outwalk it. Our two oldest passengers stayed onboard. They were over 90. 

A perfect, if a little damp, day on the Burgundy Canal.

Lazy sort of a day today. It’s hot. But, it is summer. Thinking about a little train trip to somewhere cooler or beachy. Most likely will not do anything. But, I can think about it. 

Still have lots of photos from the trip to process. Thought I would show you how skillful a barge captain has to be.

Going through a lock.

If the lock had a tender the Captain always gave the tender a beverage and maybe a pastry after she got our barge safely nestled in the lock. One day we went through 16 locks but most days it was about 7 or 8. 

 

Actually, I took more than a few. I took over 200. And got a couple good enough to keep. I didn’t try very hard. Just braced the phone on the balcony ledge and tapped away on the “shutter”. While drinking and talking and watching. Lots of deleting.

Recorded a little anniversary greeting message for one of my neighbors this afternoon and I failed to get them to turn off the A/C. Really didn’t want to have to ask them to redo or. Or worse, have them send it to friends with the A/C in the background. 

Then I remembered. The newest feature in Final Cut Pro – one that I thought I would never use “Voice Isolation”. Well, it worked great. It would have been better to turn the A/C, but FCP cleaned up the audio track in a wink. 

 

I know, I know, you all have seen this picture before. But, to me it is special. And this is my blog. This is when Carlton issued his “after I am gone orders”:

1. 1. Take care of my sword, toy steam engine and chrome nut and bolt.  You can pitch everything else.
   2. When the lease is up move to Goodwin House.
   3. Don’t buy anything with wheels. Skateboard, bicycle, motorcycle, car, airplane, and if he had known about them he would have added electric scooter. 

And, except for breaking the lease to move into The Asylum early, I have followed his orders. The best one was giving me permission to without guilt get rid of all of his stuff.  

Going to a friend’s apartment to watch the fireworks tonight. Don’t need to take pictures. I have taken all the firework photos that I need to take.  Let’s look at the photos from 2014.

It’s hard to be a citizen of the USA at this point in time. Where did my generation go wrong?

Took a few flower and bug photos this afternoon. 

The only butterflies around were a couple of cabbage whites and this skipper. You photograph what shows up. 

Tried very hard to not obsess about my email issues today. Looking at things carefully, I think this problem started in mid-April if not sooner. And, I suspect it is as much caused by Gmail security as anything else. 

Warning: Old woman complaining. My legs have caused considerable  “trouble” since 2017 or so. They have been pretty good for the last couple of years but really started acting up on the trip. I have been taking the Carlton approach: It’s the legs problem and I just carried on. I don’t know.  Operating on the cheery assumption that the legs will get better. They actually seem to be worse if I let them rest. 

Observation: Trip to the grocery this morning resulted in serious sticker shock. Doing my quarterly financial review yesterday was a serious wake-up call as well. 

That was a great trip.

I had to put myself outside this afternoon in the heat and humidity. I was entirely too wrapped up in sorting out email addresses, logins, and passwords. Hence photos of bees and chipmunks. 

The good news. No great news. I downloaded my entire blog structure. The first ten years of “roll your own HTLM” and the last 11+ years of WordPress. So, I can bail out of A Small Orange hosting if I need to. And, I will download the entire site once a week. Right before I unleash my TimeMachine backup. 

That’s about it for now. The old eyes can only look at screens but so long. Fortunately, the Kindle seems to annoy other parts of my eyes. So, I can read some. And there are always audiobooks. Old age basically sucks. But, for now, it beats the alternative.

For the last few years, I didn’t obsess over Le Tour.  I think this year I may. Men in spandex with a death wish. What’s not to love? Years ago I went to Paris for the finish. Don’t think I could do it now, but that was 17 years ago. 24 July 2005 – Paris.