Author: Peg

 

And now for a couple of planes.

It was a grand day.

 

Today, Carlton got an invite to a FREE LUNCH with a cardiologist at our hospital. Now, anyone who knew Carlton knows that he loved FREE. Since he died of “cardiac arrest” – I am thinking that maybe this invite comes too late. Too late for him to donate money to the hospital foundation too.

Well, I went to see two (2) studio units. The occupant of one of the units “transitioned”. I don’t plan on “transitioning” – I plan on moving my game to the next level. The other unit belongs to a person who never moved in – she was just using it to get herself a more desirable unit. She is getting her nicer unit in June and will give up her place holder unit. I told you it was a game.

Think I am too frugal to pay rent on a unit and not move in. Especially since I am already paying a sweet chunk of change for my apartment. And, I pay for my digs in Kona too. That would have me paying rent on 3 places this winter. Carlton wouldn’t be pleased it I did that. I wouldn’t be so very proud of myself either.

Well, I will make a decision by Tuesday afternoon. Options:

1. Get the one that is available now.
2. Get the one that will become available June-ist.
3. Just say no to both of them. And wait for the next one.

The most economical thing to do is to move to the Asylum ASAP. Just get it over with. Leave my trendy urban yoga studio sidewalk cafe zipcar driving area in a nice blue county. Move 5 miles down the road to a gritty ESL working class bus riding guard in the grocery store area in a red county. I am perfectly comfortable with the neighborhood. I like gritty working class. The bus service is fine. Not as fine as living right over a subway stop. But fine.

Speaking of bus riding. Half the young women on the bus have knock off Michael Kors bags. You can buy them at any big bus transfer site. So, why, why do non-bus-riding-women buy real ones. I know. I know. Real ones are “real” and fake ones are “fake”. I guess it is like breast implants. Something that I will just never understand. I could never understand why I would want to wear someone else’s name on my clothes or have their initials on my luggage.

Well enough of this. Going to turn off my brain. Do a little yoga. Have a little dinner. Plan tomorrow’s photo event. The war birds. See yesterday for details.

I lied – this is a good article.

Well, been doing lots of thinking about the possibility of moving to the asylum way sooner than later.

Way sooner would mean a crash attack of deaquisitioning, I don’t want to put anything in storage while I wait for a larger unit. And, in the unlikely event that the studio is up high with as good as possible view – I would be happy to move into 300 sq ft for the rest of my life. I don’t need much space. I can only set in one chair at a time. I can only sleep in one bed. Origami doesn’t take much space. My cameras fit in a small box. My clothes require 30 hangers and 6 of the 12 drawers under my one bed.

Today, I took another load of stuff down to Goodwill and scanned some stuff from Carlton’s file cabinet. I have no intention of moving his file cabinet. His tax files will be saved and disposed of as they fall off the IRS radar. A few “vital documents” will be saved. “Important” documents will be scanned and shredded. “Unimportant” documents will just be shredded. All of my documents fit in a banker’s box. Carlton’s stuff will be fitted into a banker’s box. And I’ll find a storage spot for those two boxes.

Friday is the big war bird mall flyover. But, this is what the Mall looks like right now.

Have “they” considered what will happen when bunches of people and low flying aircraft met up in the dirt. Instant dust bowl. Well, from the map it looks like the planes are not actually going to fly directly over the Mall. Maybe someone else thought “dust bowl”.

The warbird fly over Big Old Planes

Got home from work, having a nice little lunch – cauliflower with bolognese sauce. No, cauliflower with bolognese sauce is not traditional. Some folk make faux-bolognese sauce using cauliflower vice meat. But, I had some real bolognese sauce in the freezer left over from the Carlton-Era. It was pretty good.

Anyhow, I got home. Checked the email. And, found an email from the asylum with this phrase

… we are at your name on the wait list for studios, and we have at least one to offer someone who’s ready to become a resident of Goodwin House…

So, I might be moving sooner than I wanted to. But, since I really don’t want to move anyhow – this might not be a bad thing.

Don’t tell me that I am too young, too energetic, too whatever to move to an old ladies asylum. Nobody is promised tomorrow. Everyday I go to work in a hospital. And, I know that people are discharged from hospital in no condition to look after themselves. That happened to Carlton. I was a battlefield medic for 18 months. Remember what Mr C looked like.

Can you imagine living alone and dealing with that? Not to mention the pic-line in his arm. See that post here: April 23, 2013

So, I must get myself somewhere where I hope they will look after me when and if I need it. That is why I am moving while I am still able to make my own choices.

Seeing Carlton, I am reminded of retail therapy. Over the last couple of years, I figure I spent about 2K on retail therapy. The bulk of that went to the new camera, a new lens, and the iPad w/cellular. I love them all and use them everyday. But, there were some mistakes as well. Yesterday I realized that these were not mistakes. They served well as therapy. And, now it is time to let them go. Even two thousand bucks is way cheaper than a shrink. And, the therapeutic value continued when I got rid of them. Money well spent.

BUT, if I do move soon, I hope it doesn’t mess up my Circumnavigation. No reason it should.

Longtime blog readers may remember that I can not take good pictures of irises. And every year those pesky plants reappear to taunt me. Well, once again… It is Iris Time.

This work week started out much better. I was busy. But, by the end of my shift, all my work was done. A good day.

Starting to look into the details of my phileas fogg adventure. Have had several folks volunteer for the role of passepartout. This is the Fogg route.

London, United Kingdom to Suez, Egypt
Suez to Bombay, India
Bombay to Calcutta, India
Calcutta to Victoria, Hong Kong
Hong Kong to Yokohama, Japan
Yokohama to San Francisco
San Francisco to New York City
New York to London

I could do DC to London, would go to Doha or Dubai vice Suez, swap India for Singapore, Hong Kong is good, Yokohama is a suburb of Tokyo, could do that. Then train back to DC from the coast. Just a thought.

I survived my techno-free time fine. So fine that I may have to do on a regular basis.

So, what did I do. For starters I did what used to be called “spring cleaning”. Without any help from you-tube no less. And, I spent most of today down at the mall. Taking in a 3D iMax film. And I went to the Freer. Where, unknown to me, they were kicking off a Korean exposition. Ran into to Carlton’s radiologist and one of his physicists. (Yes physicist – not physician.)

And, I read newspapers. Also things that I had piled up to read “sometime”. And, I decided that this summer I shall circumnavigate the earth. Like Phileas Fogg, but I am figuring about 20 days. Somewhere in Europe, on to somewhere in the Emirates, on to Singapore, (can I squeeze Australia in?), then on to Hong Kong and/or Tokyo, onward to somewhere in Hawai’i and back to the east coast. I will do this just because I can. While I still can. Carlton would love it. Not going. He wouldn’t go. He would love hearing about it, getting Skype calls from along the way and especially telling everyone “my wife is going around the world”.

Since I couldn’t use technology – I couldn’t make and plans. Lovely to think about however.

I stayed off line and off TV for the entire time. If I had seen a big funnel cloud or lots of fighter jets or black hawk helicopters I would have plugged back in. And, I did turn the computer on to do the weekly backup.

Well, enough about my no-tech 36 hours. Time to check the email and facebook. And, tomorrows weather.

It is almost bee and butterfly hunting season!

Note to Carlton: Why didn’t you tell me that the damn vacuum eats the carpet fringe??? What else didn’t you tell me?

After last week’s frenzied computer activities at the hospital. My eyes, not to mention my spirit, need a vacation from all things electronic.

In that vein, I have decided to remove “technology” from my life until 8PM tomorrow evening. That will be 36 technology-free hours.

At the very least – it will be interesting. (And, that includes TV – but not the iPod but only in Airplane Mode)

Oh, and it doesn’t include the camera – which I am sure is the most technology rich device that I own.

See you all tomorrow evening.

Taking sunrise pictures from inside with a macro lens isn’t recommended. But, how often do you get to see “the crack of dawn”.

Spent all day – from 0700 to 1530. That is a whole entire real job type day! Spent all day digging out the data. But, we got it cracked this afternoon. The boss and I. Both of us will have a better weekend as a result.

Long ago – I was sent to rescue a project that was teetering on the brink of default. And, when you were a government contractor “default” was not a term you wanted on your corporate resume. The contract of in trouble because the client didn’t want our company. He liked the previous contractor. But we were the low bidder. To make matters worse, our company project manager missed a key point. Our client’s pay increases depended on the statistics that we generated. Our project manager may have been doing things “right” by generating the statistics which showed a distressing lack of progress against alcoholism on indian reservations. But, he darn sure wasn’t doing the right thing as far as the client was concerned. Needless to say, the client was looking for any excuse to kick our corporate ass out the door. I never forgot that client. We didn’t end up in default. But, we didn’t get our options exercised either. This 35 year old nightmare rattled around my brain all week. “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.” ― Mark Twain.

Note to Carlton: You got a Medicare billing notice for a biopsy you must have had last June. The envelop says “TO BE OPENED BY ADDRESSEE ONLY” – maybe I should forward it to you over at Georgetown.

It is the weekend. I will take in a film. Either an iMax movie at the Smithsonian. Or more likely Dior and I. I can not imagine that it will be around very long. iMax movies are always in town. On the other hand Dior and I will look fine on the iPad. And iMax movie – well…

Yesterday the light was very harsh. Which gave yesterday’s fine cherry blossom. And this tulip. The tulip here will surely be a good photo to play with in post processing.

Today was very tedious. Still digging for data.

For “throw back Thursday” – Carlton long ago and my favorite car of all time, in Combs Kentucky.

Today the volunteer job was a whole lot like a job. Digging data out of the database. Much of it was brute force. And tomorrow will be another day of digging data out of the database. If I have to do this again next spring – I’ll figure out a way to do it smarter. Think I am 40% done. I may work all day tomorrow and just get it done.

Thought I might get myself a ZipCar for a couple of hours. Just for a little test run. BUT, I can not think of anywhere to go that I can not get to just fine via public transit.

It was a lovely afternoon – so I took Carlton’s books over to the Friends of the Arlington Library. I’ll take mine over some day soon. eBooks are better for my old lady lifestyle.

 

It is imperative that my lodgings in the asylum have a view to the sky. I love the sky.

Charm City is “peaceful” this afternoon. The Birds will play tomorrow afternoon. But, there will be no fans in the stands. Interesting times.

A very strange afternoon. Violent teenagers running rampant in Charm City. Interesting really. The point is being made that the teenagers may indeed be young criminals. But, it really should be a wake up call for what has happened to a previously vibrant industrial city. A city who watched her jobs go off to China. What do you have to lose when you have no hope of having a future. It is 1965 again.

May you live in interesting times. Of course, we know that Baltimore is just up the road from us. It could be 1968 again.