Monday, December 21, 2020

Getting out too late to see the sun.

 

There are parts of me that should have been born in another era. For example, I would have liked to have traveled by train across the US in the age of peak passenger rail - even with all of the headaches of doing this kind of trip. I would have loved to see people such as Benny Goodman, Chuck Berry, and Dave Brubeck in person in their prime.  But I would have felt out of place, as well as being crippled, as my life has been defined by the ever growing importance of computers in our lives.

Today, I decided to stay indoors and watch old movies on the TV.  The selections I had to choose from would not have been available to me in a pre-computer age.  Not only could I select a movie I wanted to see from several libraries available to me. But I could view the movie without having to load film reels onto a projector for viewing.  While the movies were on the TV, I could surf the web from a tablet computer - something I never would have dreamed possible when I first came in contact with computers half a century ago.  So, the movement of the sun in the sky has much less meaning to me today than it would have meant had I been around a century ago.

When I finally took my daily shower, I knew that I'd be going out to the grocery store as the sun was setting, and coming home in the dark. My life is only loosely tied to the sun.  But it is still connected with the weather outside.  For example, as I write this entry, the weatherman predicts a small snow storm for tomorrow, where 1"-2" inches of snow will need to be plowed away.  A couple of days later, the same weatherman is predicting 12"-18" of snow to be dumped in my area of the New York City suburbs.  Since I hate shoveling snow, I've started to consider the idea of driving North of Albany, NY early that day, staying the night, and taking a leisurely drive home the following afternoon.  Is it worth the gas and driving to get out of shoveling snow?  Who knows?  But I'll make that decision in a couple of days, then plan accordingly.

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Lately, I've been in contact with someone I used to communicate with on a daily basis.   It's nice to be back in contact again.  But I'm being careful, as I don't want to be hurt or to cause hurt.  (It took 3 years for me to repair things with my brother, and it took the death of my wife as a catalyst for this to happen.  I don't want similar trauma to either get in the way of a rapprochement or a disconnection. )  I'll keep my readers informed as things progress.

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