I really want to

Ride this carousel.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-seaglass-carousel-new-york-new-york

Christmas someplace else

We’re going to go out of town for Christmas this year. The first year without Mom. I’m both really sad and really excited. The family’s only down one member, but she was a large presence in the family and she was pretty much in charge of Christmas. And we’ve done the same thing every Christmas for the past fifty years. This year I just want to do something else, to be someplace else. I don’t want to get stuck trying to make things the same as they were like my mom did. It was just sad. We have a chance to do something different. With no guilt. The Wonderful Spouse is doing the planning. It’s a first.

The Hat

Was at Mom’s house the other day and went back to the office. The first thing I saw was Dad’s white hat. He wore that hat on all of our international trips. It was always easy to find him when we were out in a group.

What was said and what we hear

When I was a kid we went to Canada. It was really beautiful.

That’s me, in the middle.

It was a pretty wild place.

I remember this river. I remember it rushed by so quickly. I remember Dad telling me that if I stepped into the river and got pulled away by the current, he wouldn’t come in after me. What I heard was that he would come in after me, but he probably wouldn’t be able to save me and might die himself.

So I heeded the voice of caution and didn’t go too close. And my memories of Canada are beautiful.

The backwards plane

Saw the backwards plane at about 2:00 pm this Sunday. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. It may not be exactly this one, but it sure looks like it. This one has the propellor in the back. That’s something I couldn’t see from the ground. I always get a thrill seeing it fly over.

Unicycle guy

Four or five times now I’ve seen this guy on a unicycle while on the way to my mom’s house. Around 5:40 pm each time. He wears a helmet, a polo shirt and khakis, like he’s on his way to or from work. On a unicycle.

The world is a very interesting place.

Paint

A few days ago on the way to work I saw this. Spilled paint. I followed it along for more than a mile. Oh boy, somebody’s in trouble. How much paint would it take to leave a foot wide strip more than a mile long? And how much is it going to cost to clean up?

Death Valley

We really had a good time in Death Valley. It wasn’t at all what I expected, what with the rain. I just never thought about what Death Valley would be like in the winter. Instead of dry and barren, it was damp and barren.

One other thing I didn’t expect out of it was a restaurant with a dress code. I guess it was meant for the elite people who actually know that it’s there. People who can’t be troubled with the riff raff that hang out at the cafe and saloon down the road a couple of hundred yards. At least the guy at the front desk was kind enough to tell us about the dress code, so we didn’t wander in in shorts and flipflops. Sheesh.

Our waiter was so in love with his own voice. He came into the room humming, broke out in song and was seldom actually silent. He really did have a great voice and seemed determined to make the most of it. The hotel was pretty neat; probably built in the forties or fifties and with as much of the old place left as it practical to keep. The place was appointed very nicely, even though the rooms were small by modern standards. It’s the best in town, even if there’s only one other.   I noticed that the metal-framed doors to the patio looked to be original to the hotel and still working nicely.  There’s a longish tunnel from the parking lot to the elevator, which I twas pretty cool.  It’s actually long enough to have an echo.  The hotel staff were all very friendly.  The busboy had the answers to a couple of questions we had about the area.  I guess I would recommend this hotel no matter where it was.  I’ve been to a wide variety of hotels in a wide variety of areas.

It was very pretty.  There were people at every stopping point.  I can see why it is a popular time of year to visit there.  The weather was pleasant.  Although it was raining, it wasn’t raining hard enough to keep us in our cars.

These signs are posted all over the valley.  Kind of weird to think I’ve never been as far under water as I would be now, not even when I was scuba diving.

Wanted to take this rock home.  As it’s about a foot taller than my almost six foot husband, that didn’t happen.

Even damp Death Valley is quite beatiful.

On a sunny day in winter it’s breathtaking.

Death Valley

Going with my sister and her husband to Death Valley this weekend. I think I’ve been before, but I don’t remember. We drove through a lot of stuff one the way across country to Michigan when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure I remember my Dad saying that we did, I just don’t remember doing it.

I’m looking forward to having something to take pictures of besides the back yard. It’s supposed to be wildflower season, so the pics might not be what one usually expects of Death Valley, but I’m OK with that.

I’ve traveled a little, but really have never planned the itinerary. I’ve kind of always just gone along with what other people plan. Of course, my contribution to the plan is going to be a list of places to go. Then we’ll pick and go. I would really like to see the beehive charcoal kilns. I think they’d make a great photo subject.

Sony Vaio, part 3

The third week after I got the Sony, I took up a new hobby.  Swearing.  Granted, I was often swearing at the abomination known as Windows Vista, but I was still sitting in front of the computer at the time.

I don’t know who’s to blame for Vista, but I think torture might be justified.  It tortured me often enough.  I do not want my computer to think for me, or do things I haven’t asked it to do.  I really don’t want it to decide where to put my files.  Especially if it decides that they need to be seven layers down on a different drive than where I would like them to be.  And someplace different from the last time I downloaded files.

More than once I offloaded files from my camera only to have a heart attack because I couldn’t find them afterwards.  Thank the fates for the WonderSpouse.  He was able to find them and I went back to the old select and drag method of moving files.

Add to that random program lock ups or shut downs or just being unable to start a program without turning the computer off and waiting through the 10 minute start-up routine.  Often I couldn’t get it to shut down at all.  That probably should have been a sign that something was likely to go seriously wrong, but it’s not my area of expertise.

In more current news, there is a squirrel running in circles in the back of my head muttering ‘pictures, pictures, where are the pictures?’  I don’t think it’s going to stop until I have my pics safely offloaded and backed up to two separate locations.