Nobody is Promised Tomorrow. . .
This Blog started in 2001 as a Trip Log to record a summer in Alaska. Since then, it has morphed into my online diary.
Getting a little bored with winter. I walked my two miles inside today. I thought about going to Tristan da Cunha. Or taking the train from Portugal to Singapore. The first trip is almost impossible and the second hasn’t been possible since the Ukraine War. I could just start getting my taxes together or clean out my underwear drawer. But what fun is that?
Unlike the soon to be orangeball-in-chief, I have been to Greenland. And it’s a lovely country. (In the summer.)
Sunny and cold. That’s about it. And the incoming OrangeBall-in-Chief will not rule out invading Panama and Greenland. It’s essential for our national survival. Lebensraum anyone?
After 3 weeks off, yoga restarted today. Yoga provides a great opportunity to practice Accept and Adapt. As does the incoming OrangeBall-in-Chief.
“They” say there will be more snow this evening. To me, it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow’s yoga class has already been turned into a Zoom session.
Of more concern is the apparent explosion of COVID in The Asylum. On my floor, at least four apartments have a case of COVID. I am not as worried about getting COVID as I am about being confined to my room for 10 days. That’s still your punishment here for contracting COVID.
Since my floor’s COVID outbreak, I have become paranoid about the building’s ductwork. Now, I know that during COVID-Time, we didn’t have any issues with COVID spreading via the ductwork. So, I am just being paranoid. Nevertheless. I turned my thermostat down to 65° from its normal 67° – just in case. Our system is 35+ years old and the filters are pretty crappy.
My plan is to hibernate until COVID settles out. Mostly I will be not eating Asylum food. Which is no great sacrifice. Missing my friends and happy hour – that’s not good. But a few days of self-imposed exile seems like the right move. It beats 10 days of solitary confinement.
Yesterday I made a very nice butternut squash soup. I decided that it would be even nicer with the addition of a little heavy cream. So, I wandered over to the grocery for a pint of cream.
It did make the soup better. Not one drop of that cream will go to waste. Even if I have to make butter out of it!
The plan was to finish the BobBox this morning. But one of the COVID victims is my origami partner. So, the BobBox is on hold.
But most importantly – Today is Carlton’s 52nd AA Anniversary.
I am the luckiest old woman on the planet.
I braved the freezing outside weather for a fine winter day walk. Also, made soup. Folded some cranes to go in the BobBox. Failed to complete everything on my ToDo List for today.
Very little was accomplished today. I did laundry, worked on The BobBox, and curled up with a nice cup of coffee in my comfy chair.
The only way I can make it work is by making a scale model. I hope we complete the box by Monday noon.
And by noon Monday our area is supposed to be covered with 6+ inches of snow. We’ll see. I think they have been hyping it too much. We haven’t had “a lot” of snow in many years.
One great advantage to old age at The Asylum is that snow doesn’t matter at all. Well, maybe 30 inches might matter. But 6-10 inches. No worries.
Checked out the window before settling down to work on the next phase of the BobBox. It wasn’t looking too good.
After 30 minutes of fussing with the large paper – the Origami Dojo doesn’t look too good.
And, at 3:34 it appears to be snowing. Alexa just announced that we are having a snow squall.
At this instant, I am hating the BobBox. The colors are all wrong. It’s never going to be finished. Why am I wasting my time on this? This is the normal Peg Project Progression. I was this way at work too.
So, I know that progress is being made because I am now in stage two.
The day started with me getting the Origami Dojo ready for serious action.
Things that haven’t been dusted in almost 10 years were dusted. When the project is finished, the table might get a rubdown with oil.
And, what is the project that requires all this space? And cleanness?
It’s Bob. We are building a nice origami box for Bob’s cremains, and ultimately, a Viking Funeral. How fun is that? Bob is currently in a Christmas bag. I don’t know Bob, but I am pretty sure I would have liked him.
Grateful that I live alone and can leave everything all spread out until the project is finished.
Hopefully, the box will be finished by this time next week. It’s not hard. It just takes a lot of planning. Even with planning, I made a cutting error this morning. We invoked “whatever happens is what I planned” and glued the paper back together.
Had a festive early evening with my Asylum Family. I confess I was asleep well before midnight.
This morning, I happily walked the long way to the bagel store and picked up OK bagels. The usual suspects brunched at The Asylum today, and Asylum bagels resemble hockey pucks. I lived here and complained loudly about the bagels for almost a decade. Last January 1, I remembered that there was a bagel place a block away. Since then, I have supplied the bagels for my table.
This leads me to my New Year’s Affirmation—not a resolution, but an affirmation to Accept and Adapt to whatever 2025 has in store.
Yes, this is how Carlton celebrated New Year’s Eve.
2024 Lesson Learned The Hard Way: I am OLD. No getting around it anymore.
Grateful for small pleasures. The ability to walk 3 miles but only on a warm sunny winter day. For hot coffee and cold beer. For cozy naps.
Grateful for large pleasures. Friends, Family. Far, Near.
2025 Goal: Accept and Adapt. It’s the only alternative.
Carlton didn’t do Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Birthdays etc. But, he did remember anniversaries. And, December 30 is the day that he considered our anniversary. This is year 46. We had a great run.
After all these years, still grateful that I was hungry on Dec 30, 1978 when Carlton asked “Do you want to go get dinner when we finish work?” He had a project that was screwed up and I was supposed to fix it. Before the end of the year.
I was out on an errand this morning and saw a penny on the sidewalk. I stopped and picked it up. Carlton always picked up pennies. “And when did you get too rich to bend over and pick up a penny?” was his question. I am not too rich. But, I am getting too old. I always assume that Carlton puts the penny in my path as a test. Or maybe a reminder that he still has my back.
Good news.
These cranes are not going to be a problem. They are working on an elementary school and a library, neither of which will be much taller than the trees.
And my discovery. The Pixel 8 phone does a fine job with 10X zoom photos. 5X is its optical zoom limit. But while researching my watch issues, I found a little article that urged folk to try 10X (not 9X or 11X) digital zoom on the newer Google phones. It’s some math trick that makes 10X digital OK. This could be fun. Only problem being: It’s difficult to dial it into exactly 10X zoom.
And.
It was surprisingly warm and sunny today. No complaints about that.
Watching “my” volcano on YouTube USGS live stream.
An excellent use of my tax dollars.
And RIP Jimmy Carter.
One of my orphan orchids that I adopted shortly before leaving is with child. In orchid-land spontaneous asexual new orchid is called a keiki which is Hawaiian for baby or child.
The orchids are all doing great. Thank you, Barb, for orchid duty above and beyond…
My five-month-old Pixel 3 watch hasn’t been behaving properly for about a week. I restarted it several times, turned it off and back on, did a factory reset, threatened it, and finally decided it was a charger problem. A new charger arrived late this afternoon, and the watch is all good again. Love it when my guess is correct.