life in the old lane

I would have long since stopped lugging jammies around. We are eating Weet-Bix – but we are in Fiji. Interesting time to be in Fiji – they were having some sort of revolution, our hotel’s plan to ensure safety was to keep the lovo – sort of a Fijian imu – going and just feed any army that came through. 

When Carlton posed by this statue of Captain Cook in Napier NZ – Carlton hadn’t discovered history yet. 10 years later he was all over Captain James Cook. Of course, Capt Cook was the real man behind Capt James Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. And it was Capt Cook who wrote “ambition leads me … farther than any other man has been before me”.

I seem to recall that I didn’t pay enough attention to the sign. It was a long walk. 

Enough of 1987 – I’ll try to finish up the South Pacific trip tomorrow. Big accomplishment today was “checking” the taxes. The “guy” does the taxes. I “check” them. Last year, I found a mistake. This year was OK. 

Now, how shall I get to Kona this year? All plane, plane and train, go east instead of west? The earth is round. No reason not to take the long way home.

In 1987, Carlton and I headed off for 4 months in the South Pacific. I insisted that we only take a little carryon bag each. But, Carlton found room for his jammies. Which he always wore completely buttoned up – like he was the leading man in a 1930s film where everyone slept in twin beds. 

Damn, I was young then. Not sure I could make it up there anymore. Well, lets see – 1987 – 30 some years ago. I wasn’t all that young. 

From today on the bus. Those guys don’t know each other. 

One does not get to be a little old lady without admiring some damn fine scenery along the way. 

Made much progress on my photo project today. I am almost half way through the binders. Took 7 binders to the dumpster today. Also ditched many of those things that were called “print files” which are actually archival print, negative and slide sleeves. 

I still haven’t parted with any actual photograph. But, I am almost there. 

This sort of pre-death tidy up is hard. I am not downsizing because I am moving to a new apartment. I am not getting rid of the stuff that belonged to a much loved but very dead husband… I am getting rid of stuff because I am the one who will be dead. Swedish Death Cleaning isn’t for wimps.

As far as I know, I am in good health – of course – like Carlton, I am not much of a believer in much of the testing and medicating that we the elderly are subjected to. So, I don’t actually KNOW that I am in good health. But, I think I am. 

Speaking of health. Employee Health went out for dinner tonight. Well, part of Employee Health.

We had a good time. Funny observation. The youngest person and the oldest person came to dinner via public transit/Uber the others came in the privately owned vehicles. Not thinking this bodes really well for the automotive industry. 

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia The Summer of ’92. I was hating life. Working the front line of visitor services. But, I was doing a lot of black and white photography. And, that was a great place for B/W. This is one of my favorites from that summer. It could have been from the Summer of ’65, 1865.

On the other hand, Carlton was having the time of his life. It was his first summer doing really solid interpretation. He discovered his passion at the age of 58. When he died, he was looking forward to another winter of talking about Hawaiian history. He had 20+ years of doing what he loved. In places that he loved. And, some places that he only tolerated. But, as long as he could “do history” he was a happy guy.

But FINALLY, I am doing something about all of my old photos. I could do nothing and when I die, someone will take them down to the dumpster. But, I need to do it. I need to be the one who dumps them. We are talking about binder after binder of old photos. All from film-time. 

I have an OK DIY copy stand set up in my room. And, I am photographing my photographs using Shamu 2. I had one of the binders that I photographed printed – just in case someday I absolutely have to have a hard copy of these binders. The print quality wasn’t National Geographic good. But, National Geographic isn’t going to print any of my stuff.

So FINALLY… I am getting this one done. It will be done before I go to Hawai’i this winter. 

Oh, and my photo books… Maybe I’ll leave money for a memorial cocktail hour at the Asylum saloon and the books can be passed out as “funeral favors”. Don’t worry, I am pretty sure I have more photo books than friends. But, free booze might increase my number of friends. 

For some vague amount of time, I haven’t been able to import videos into Lightroom. I don’t take many videos – so I just sort of let it slide. 

Today, I tried again and got this message:

An unknown error has occurred while reading 
the video file. 
Connecting to Dynamic Link server failed. (1)

    /Users/peg/Desktop/My Movie 1.mp4

After much searching, I found some directions that involved sacrificing a goat that might fix the problem. By this time of day, my old brain isn’t going there. Besides, I am fresh out of goats.

Enough techie complaints.

Today’s dead tree Wall Street Journal had this picture above the fold on the front page of this weekend’s white racist rally in DC:

My quesion is – if there were fewer than 20 people – GREAT, FANTASTIC, WONDERFUL – but where did they get the black guy? Was he undercover for Spike Lee? 

And, I have been away from work for a week. In our kitchen this was on the wall with a note: “Ask Sally about this…”

Sorry, Sally is the boss, but I ain’t asking anyone about anything involving INSERT, ROTATING and POSTERIOR!  What a collection of words. 

Decided to round up a goat. Sacrificed said goat. Lightroom does videos again.

OK, about this exercise crap. I could walk 2 miles on the treadmill – or walk 2 miles in hopes of finding peaches at the Columbia Pike Market. I could have made it into a 4 mile walk – but I hopped on a bus back. Don’t need of over do this exercise business.

The Asylum is owned and operated by The Episcopal Church. They have been unwilling to remove this obviously dead cherry tree. It did not leaf out this year. I am pretty sure that it is dead. Dead as a door knob. But, they are waiting to see if it recovers. Makes one wonder. I do know if this tree were a resident in our nursing unit – it would be pronounced dead, removed and the space rented out to a new patient in 48 hours.

I upgraded Shamu 2 from Oreo to Pie this afternoon. Haven’t played around with it enough to see any real differences. After dinner, I’ll play around with VR and see if they changed anything there. Methinks Google will roll out any new glitzy features later.

Speaking of dinner…

Don’t think there will be al fresco dining this evening.

What exactly was this cicada thinking? Every year, no matter where I live – a cicada will come and spend a couple of hours or even a couple of days hanging on the window screen. There is nothing up here that any cicada needs.

When I was dressing for dinner – a fine rainbow appeared. Dressing with more care than usual because it was a birthday party. 

Last year Sally started our “If it is your birthday – you give the party”. The Asylum provides the dinner, and the wine, one of Sally’s son’s provided the dessert – Texas Trash Pie from Round Rock, Texas. Go on – Check it out.

Of course, we had a great time. 

And then when I waddled back up to the Old Bat Cave – there was an OK for the east view sunset. Not Bermuda good. But a nice close to the day.

I shutter to think what “DEAD SLOW” would mean here at The Asylum. 

Today, I put stuff away, did laundry, did some weeding and generally tried to catch up on the latest gossip.

And, nothing much has changed in my garden box or weedlot.

And now it is time to get ready for dinner. We always have filet mignon on Friday night at dinner. This is a rather nice Asylum.

This might not be the best idea I ever had. Come back from vacation, drink a bunch of wine with dinner and then install an entirely “new improved” WordPress editor.  Yikes, I just realized that I don’t seem to be able to edit the HTML.  Not good. I lied. I can edit the HTML. 

Had a superior time in Bermuda. Will definitely be going back. The goddess willing. Nobody is promised tomorrow.

After my generally crappy trip to Bermuda – I was rewarded with a fine trip back to The Asylum. The flight was on time, I was home from the airport in 30 minutes using Metro and the bus. Even caught the bus that lets me out just outside the Asylum front door. 

Had dinner with the Asylum Sisters and everything is good. Now, why exactly do I need this new editor? What does it do?  Being an old fuddy-duddy, I liked the old editor better! 

Back to real life tomorrow. And, no more pictures tonight. Lightroom is busy backing itself up. 

as has been my routine, I took the ferry over to Hamilton for breakfast. Unfortunately I was poorly positioned for serious eavesdropping. two Bermuda shortted finance types were discussing the East coast power gird and several generation facilities. But, I was too far away to follow the conversation. But breakfast was great.

Then in my usual fashion, I decided to take a bus trip. Any bus trip. Hopped on the first bus that came along. It went along the south shore and ended up at the cruise ship docks where I was on Sunday.

I wasn’t interested in spending anymore time at the cruise ship dock, so I got the next bus back towards my lodgings.

I had a seat and was hoping that Google would help get me off within mile of. Greenbanks. It did and I was happy to discover a public staircase that got me off the major sans-sidewalk road.

that was about it. No. surprise Bermuda will not let you check in on line. Well, you can check in, but it doesn’t do you any good because you have to check in in person. Bermuda likes things nice and old school.

Went for a swim off my dock, lounged in my chair, watched the various sailing classes. Less wind today so no tipping over. Bermuda has been great.

And one last sunset. This one with Harry the Heron

started my busy day with a late breakfast in exciting downtown Hamilton. Different restaurant today and different eavesdropping. Two young guys in Thomas Pink dress shirts and Bermuda shorts discussing regulatory issues. I so wanted to hear a little bit of information that I could use to make a buck or two. But no such luck.

Then I walked around town. A couple of signs.

Back to Greenbank’s on the ferry.

It is summer camp time in Bermuda. And learning how to sail tiny little boats seems to be a big activity. They go out in color coded bunches of 6 or 7 with a teacher in a Zodiac. And they sail around the little islands and tack up and down. Today was windy. Today they tipped over a lot. It was fun to watch while I was floating around.

And another busy day in Bermuda comes to a close.

today, I did very little. At my age, I am very happy to have a leisurely late breakfast, wander around and window shop, slowly swim around off my dock and read. So, that’s what I did today.

I also found several streets around Greenbank’s that are suitable for walking. Bermuda is not at all walkable. The roads are very narrow and sidewalks are nonexistent. In fairness, Hamilton, has sidewalks. But outside of downtown – no sidewalks.

And, I continue testing scones.

This is EXACTLY what I want to be doing… But, I feel guilty. I feel like I should be out doing stuff and seeing things.

Reinsurance is also a big business here. The news paper reported that coal was becoming increasingly risky to insure. One entire page of today’s paper is devoted to reinsurance. As I mentioned, Bermuda is a very wealthy place.

And rich people have kids. There are no franchise food operations in Bermuda. So, it’s not too surprising that a couple of young teenage girls were having breakfast next to me. And these kids were discussing the relative merits of London vs Paris for ones back to school clothes shopping. BTW breakfast was great. I had an omelet and coffee and the girls had Belgium waffles and hot chocolate.

There were a lot of these odd gates back in the seventies. Nowadays they seem to be like me _ a relic hanging on for dear life.

And …

Sunset with”my” ferry.