Whenever I come home, I check to ensure the cats are still alive. I do the same with my wife if she’s napping or in bed. Is this normal behavior.
Signed, Am I Being Macabre?
Monday’s Wandering Thoughts
When the rain or snow has been falling from a sky that’s almost as dark as night, and then sunshine breaks through and spreads bright waves of light and warmth, it’s a dazzling, uplifting scene to contemplate, pulling up my spirits with promises that it’s really not that bad.
The power of sunshine can be so theraputic.
Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts
My good ol’ Fitbit, which isn’t that old, actually — I’ll need to look that up — stopped working again.
First sign: at 9:15 this morning, it declared that I’d walked over 18,000 steps.
Had I been sleepwalking, I wondered? Chasing the cats, or saving them from a bear, cougar, or other beasts? Not that I recalled, and I believeI would have remembered that. So, must be something else.
Okay. I added resetting the Fitbit to my list of things to do but it was still nominally functioning, until, ‘lo, in the coffee shop, I tapped it for the time and got nada.
Well, I muttered in my mind. That sucks.
But what was really irritating was that, just a little later, as I wrapped up my reading day, I tapped my Fitbit to check the time.
Idiot! Habits are really difficult to stop.
Today’s Wandering Thought
Heading into a store, I encountered a woman standing to one said, leash in hand. On the leash’s other end was a handsome but elderly golden retriever, sitting and yawning. I said good morning to her and then addressed the dog, “What a handsome, yawning puppy.”
Without a beat passing, the woman replied, “I’ll let him know what you said.”
We both burst out laughing.
Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts
Had to replace the overhead bulb on the stove. It’s for one of two lights setting on either side of the exhaust fan, below the microwave, above the range.
As I’m removing the old way and going through the usual questions of what watts, what size, all that, I see that instructions for replacing the bulbs are printed on a label right there by the exhaust. Only problem for me is that this required me to be on the other side of the stove to read it, you know the rear of the stove, the part residing against the wall.
Boy, someone was thinking hard when they made that decision.
Friday’s Wandering Thoughts
Do you know that they still sell packages of cookies that don’t reseal? I’m not talkin’ of one or two cookies; these are packages of twenty-four cookies. It’s like they expect us to eat all the cookies at once so they’d don’t bother with a resealable package. It’d be uncivilized for us to eat a few and then set aside an open package of cookies. The cookies’ freshness must be preserved.
Those manufacturers not providing resealable packages are really cruel. Mean. Barbaric. I’m looking at you, Trader Joe’s.
Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts
The man at the table beside mine is a coffee shop regular. Don’t know his name but I know his habits.
A woman approaches him. I’ve seen her once in a while. They chat for a bit. He mentions that she’s back from her travels and elaborates, remarking that she returned to Reno to see friends and family, like, her daughters and parents still live there. “Oh, yes,” he responds, “you left everyone back there, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I love living here in Ashland. I think it’s great.”
Then he asks, “Remind me your name again?”
“Donna, and you’re?”
“Jack.”
I‘m a little amused by the sequence. Then again, I’ve gone through those sequences myself. A face and history is recalled, but the name is swimming through the mind’s lower depths, beyond your reach.
Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts
A friend sent me an email which included a recent Charles Pierce column in Esquire.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a46506384/trump-rally-new-hampshire-qanon-hecklers/
My buddy closed his email, “I especially liked the phrase, ‘he will wrestle unsuccessfully with the spark gaps widening in his brain’. Although it occurs to me that few under 60 will know what ‘spark gap means.”
Spark gap might be one term falling out of use. Another is DMZ, as in De-Militarized Zone. A friend teaching network security began talking about a DMZ with servers as part of network security and had to stop and first explain ‘DMZ’.
No surprise for me, but a little sip of delight. The world is always changing; word use is just more piece of evidence.
Monday’s Wandering Thought
I watched a young woman walking past the coffee shop. Wearing light-toned blue jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt, a dark blue ball cap let dark hair escape but was pulled low, like she was some manner of gunslinger from wild west days. It was her walk which struck me; her white shoes seemed to slap the concrete and she kept her head down, as though she had to concentrate like the Newman song, left foot, right foot, left foot, and so on.
That walk and style reminded me of someone I knew but no names came to mind. I’ve always been bad with names and faces.
Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts
They were a couple, with those socks. Skin-tight, displaying every angle and curve of their ankles and feet — they both wore sandals on this warmish winter day — his socks were as golden as a Trump Towers sign, while hers were hot pink. Though he wore loose trousers and she wore capris, both garmets displayed a good six inches of their interesting socks.
They raised some questions, they did.
Michael Seidel, writer 