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.
Spent today working on my Asylum photo project so I didn’t make it out to make new pictures. But, I do have LOTS of photos from my lap around the planet.
Singapore is a very small country. About 2/3 the size of New York City. But, it is stuffed with fanciful gardens and greenhouses. More like greenpalaces.
These were all from the Gardens by the Bay. Singapore was an altogether satisfactory country.
No blog-worthy bugs today. But, I rather like this image of a couple of the older ladies. The one on the right is a tiny 93-year-old woman who has only lived in the asylum a couple of years longer than I have. After she moved in, she took up wood carving. Mostly, I think, because she gave up stone carving when she moved into the asylum.
This photo is one of the outtakes from the photoshoot I did of residents about a month ago. By tomorrow this time – I’ll have that part of my project all wrapped up and ready to pass on to my “clients”. They do not need it until early December, but I will be long gone to Hawai’i by then.
Wayback on August 9, 2001, the blog (which wasn’t called a blog) was young and so was I. I was reporting on the “Girls of Summer”. We had lots of lovely young rangers working in Skagway that year. The pages didn’t age too well, I was using some funky formatting that isn’t supported by modern browsers. And, the pictures were tiny. But, those were dial-up days.
But wait. This time two weeks from now, I will be chillaxing in Bermuda.
I was about to give up on bugs today – when I found a nice fat clearwing hummingbird moth. I know that I have never seen one here at The Asylum before. This photo makes the moth look rather clumsy. They are really very elegant. Just a little on the pudgy side.
I can always find a skipper hanging out with the zinnias.
That’s about it for insect life at the Asylum. Well, except for the bed bugs and that is an entirely different story.
For Laurent: Today’s photos were taken with the Olympus 60mm micro 4/3s macro lens.
Busy today on my “advertising” campaign for our annual effort to get the inmates to contribute to our “employee gift fund” campaign. We have about 475 employees who do actual work. (plus some management types.) And as of right now, we have 504 residents. So, we are well looked after. Goodness knows I didn’t have .94 of a person looking after me before I moved in.
Not a huge rain. Just enough so I didn’t feel like a need to water my flower boxes. Today or tomorrow.
I am trying to avoid most things political. But this little exchange is priceless.
Back to the regularly scheduled boring old blog.
Yet another eastern tiger swallowtail.
For the last 15 or 16 years, I have walked over Four Mile Run – either coming or going to the Hospital. Hoping that some of today’s rain landed on those black-eyed susans.
Dinner tonight: Salmon, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and cream cheese sandwich. Plus a takeout order of bread pudding.
A couple of Eastern Tiger Swallowtail’s were hanging around again today. I think one was leftover from yesterday. I choose to believe that one is a male and one is a female. But it is hard to tell since their hindwings are a little worse for wear.
And that is about it from the old woman today.
Let’s think about ants for a minute. Millions of ants die
every day, and do we care? No. And I’m sure that ants feel the
same way about us. The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard.
Now, the question of the day is “How the hell did I get so fucking old and when did it happen?” I wonder about my aches, pains, and memory lapses. Then I remember that I am currently playing the game in the bonus level category.
Just checked on my investments. Not pretty. Thank goodness for the fixed income component. I am ready to take a substantial hit if it will help unseat the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Not happy. But ready.
Speaking of money. Carlton never passed up a penny. When I got off the bus this morning, I spied a penny. I tried to just walk over it like every sane person. But no. I heard Carlton ask was I too lazy or too rich to pick up a penny. Every time I see a penny, I figure it is just Mr. C checking up on me.
Just in case you are not a fan of B/W butterfly pics.
I had the great luck to stumble upon a collection of every short story that Arthur C. Clarke wrote from 1937 to 1999. In Kindle and Audible format. It is about 1,000 pages or 50 hours of vintage goodness. What surprises me is that I actually remember reading some of them back in the 50’s. I think I am up to about 1949. Lots more hours of reading and listening pleasure.
One day last week, while the blog was broken, I was walking home from work. It was hot as the hinges of Hades. My trusty umbrella was deployed and I wasn’t happy about the rather steep uphill that would be happening at the end of this block. I come upon this frail older lady. She doesn’t even have an umbrella. I walk because I chose to. Chances are really good that this lady was walking because she has to. Old women are tough. Hoping that she made it safely to her destination.
Diversity here is black and white napkins. Salt and pepper. Plus beet sugar and 3 types of “sweeteners”.
The new CEO of The Asylum wants us old folk to be able to “follow our passions”. I overheard one old gent tell another that his passion was to get through the day without having to change his undershorts.
Today, I had the wrong lens on the camera when I came upon a big butterfly.
Enjoyed a very lazy hot summer day. Time for a shower. Then dinner. Maybe hot dog and a cold beer. Good summer dinner.
Mindless shooting at a Walmart in El Paso today. Wondering how it went down. El Paso was always a rather heavily armed town. Once when I was there I was offered a gun “because everyone packs”. Well, said I, if everyone is armed then I don’t need to be.
Surprise surprise. Two in a row. Two days in a row my blog seems to be working. Two days in a row we have prunes.
And, I wandered by a black swallowtail with the correct lens on the camera.
Made some progress on my project at work. Spent a few minutes talk story with the new person in charge of The Asylum Foundation. She has the unenviable task of trying to separate old people from their monies. (Don’t worry Carlton, my hand was clasped on my wallet.) And, had a nice dinner on the patio with a couple of friends. A good day.
Three weeks from now, I will be in Bermuda. Funny, that will be three times in the last 12 months. Bermuda must be my new favorite place. But, if I lived on the left coast – I am sure I would go to Hawai’i 3 or 4 times a year. So, it isn’t so strange. All up, it would be cheaper for me to go to Hawai’i. But, it is hard to beat the 2.5-hour plane ride.
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Mark Twain
I did not get my blog going again. My hosting service did. I checked around and have no clue what they did. Well, I have been with them since 2012 and this is the first major outage I have had. So, I am just happy that they got it going again. I backed everything up. Twice.
The continuing Prune Outage.
Some grumbling was heard that the prunes were too hard. But other people liked hard prunes.
This is the normal breakfast fruit lineup. Sliced oranges, prunes, pineapple, melon, and grapes. The three tubs of library paste looking stuff are cottage cheese, plain yogurt, and regular yogurt.
You get a lot of really fun junk mail when you are old. Like this one: Free Lunch and Informational Seminar for those “considering cremation”. If it had been at a barbeque place, that would have been finest.
Now, how exactly are they going to tell me that their crematorium is better than the other crematoria? Must be a pretty hard thing to sell. Thank you, Carlton, for leading the way for me by going to Georgetown as a “First Patient” AKA cadaver. And Georgetown did give me a free lunch. And you got a free cremation. What’s not to love?
Consider the Anatomical Donor Program at a medical school near you.
For 48 hours or so, I lost access to my site. I still had FTP access. So, I tried everything I could think up to get it going. And, I can think of a lot of things.
Finally, the good people at A Small Orange, my hosting service, got it going while I was sleeping.
So, now I have to go back in and very carefully put things back to “normal”.
Thanks to everyone who was concerned that I might have been the one who was down. Some day that will be the case. But not this time.
Today was one of those hazy summer days. It is 88° at 8PM. But, we still had a nice dinner outside on the patio.
Hopefully, Sisco delivered a case of prunes today!
Pretty simple make that boring day for me. Work, yoga class, water my flower boxes. And by then it was dinnertime. And tomorrow will be the same. Just a different yoga class.