Thoughts on a VCR and on Travel

 

Ever since I started pulling wires to disconnect my old DVD player and connect a new one, I have not yet been able to get my old VCR to work.  The VCR is rarely used, but I want to be able to use it once in a while to play a tape of my late wife and I on a TV show.  As much as I'm starting to care for RQS, I will always miss my late wife and how she made my life better.

Although I think I have everything set up right, I know that I'm overlooking something.  I am very lucky to have had this poor quality recording, as it is all I have left of my wife, save for a few tiny pictures.  In the future, all there will be left of me will be a few pictures and the remnants of my thoughts on the blog entries I've posted.  This is normal in life.  From dust to dust, as they say....

Right now, I feel I have a few more good years left in my life.  Over the next two or three years, I plan to go on at least three to five more cruises, plus do some more land trips that I never have had the time or money to do in the past. For example, I will be doing another New England/Eastern Canada cruise soon.  And shortly afterwards, I'll be doing a Hawaii cruise on my own.  If all goes right, sometime next year, I will be doing a Panama Canal cruise with RQS.  Then I hope that we will be able to take some trips to South America (think: cruising by the Tierra del Fuego), Iceland, and Great Britain (with a Westbound crossing on the Queen Mary 2). At that point, I have to determine how much money we can spend on travel while we are both healthy enough to take bucket list trips.

When I went on my last cruise, the ship I was on had only 2 US type electric sockets.  In today's world, this is not enough.  By watching one vlog, I found out that the ship we're cruising on has USB ports on both sides of the bed.  If that's true, we will not need to play games with the extension core I use for my CPAP machine.  

It's nice to know that no matter what happens, that the world will keep moving forward when I'm long gone.  Let's hope that time does not come soon....

Thanksgiving - And nothing got in the way to mar it except traffic.

I'm not sure of what I can and should say about today.  Nothing bad happened.  But part of me would rather have stayed in Westchester and taken advantage of an invite I had to spend the day with my friends from Game Night.

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Not sleeping well last night, I set the alarms to get me moving around 11 - and slept through my favorite TV show of the day.  I prefer the fictional courtroom drama of Perry Mason to the real life political drama going on today.  There is a part of me that always wants to see justice done, and real life doesn't provide enough of that for my taste.  By the time I finally got out the door, it was 1 pm, and I was about an hour late.

My drive to Long Island was uneventful until I reached the Bronx.  From there, traffic slowed to a crawl, and I was forced to get on side streets to make it to the bridge.  Once I was across the bridge, I went back onto side streets again to make it to my brother's place, arriving there at 3 pm, when I was expected at 2.  This was not a problem, as my brother had already picked up my dad from the nursing home, and the turkey was almost cooked.

We chatted about many things, and brought my dad back to the nursing home around 8.  One area of discussion covered addiction, choice of mate, and how relationships flounder. And that gave me an opening to discuss my criteria for choosing my late wife, my issues with Ex-GF-M, and some of the issues GFJ and I are having with each other.  (By my mention of complacency in the relationship, I avoided the need to talk about my transgender nature.) He touched on similar issues he had with his wife.  And we both (at different times) brought up our problems with my niece to make sure that she knows when to cut and run from a dysfunctional relationship.

Eventually, it was time to go home. And I hit only one small traffic jam on the way home.  On the whole, it was a good day - especially, since my brother was able to open up to me and that I didn't have to see my sister in law as expected.  (Nothing against her, save that her presence would have gotten in the way of my chat with my brother.)

And the week started to get busy....

Last night, I saw GFJ for dinner to talk about the problems in our relationship.  Some of you can guess what they are.  But for now, I won't discuss them here.  I want to give her enough room to process her feelings - and discussing them here may not help things.

- - - - - -

Waking up this morning, I felt rested, but lethargic.  Checking my blood sugar levels, I knew why - they were a little bit lower than usual for this time of morning, and I knew that it was time to have something that would pass for breakfast.

Once I took care of this, I figured that I'd check my email.  I received a notice from a TV show filming in NYC that I had a confirmed ticket for tomorrow.  This was no good anymore, as I had dinner scheduled with Vicki #1. So I sent a response cancelling my ticket, and continued checking my emails.  It's amazing how much low-priority email is getting tossed into the spam folder.  Since I see them on my cell phone before they are folder-filed, I know that they have little value.  So I decided not to change my filters for now.

And then, I looked at my schedule....

The rest of my week looked like this:

Tuesday:
1. Volunteering at Arts Westchester
2. Dinner with the Beacon Meetup Group

Wednesday:
1. Volunteering at the LGBT Center
2. Dinner with Vicki #1 (Hudson Valley Restaurant Week)

Thursday:
1. Speech Therapy
2. Dinner with HWV (Hudson Valley Restaurant Week)

Friday:
1. (Possible) Volunteering at Arts Westchester
2. (Possible) Visiting MoMA with my niece.

Saturday:
1. (Possible) Visiting JS and seeing her Psychic.

Of course, many things end up filling in the gaps.  Chores such as laundry, shopping, etc. take up a lot of time when one has the time to burn.  And I burn it well....

- - - - - -

Around 1 pm, I drove to Arts Westchester to do a volunteer stint.  Today's task was to slice and dice information collected on a spreadsheet, and separate each organization's visitors into separate row entries, so that further analysis of that information could take place.  Unfortunately, the instructions given to me was a little flawed, as well as my understanding of those instructions. So I ended up wasting a little time (as well as having to do some rework) because of mutual misunderstandings.  But I got enough done correctly, so that I'll be coming back next week.

After this, I drove to the dining meetup in Fishkill, with a stop at BJ's Wholesale Club.  I figured that I'd pick up some plastic cups and paper plates I often use, killing time before the meetup. Once done at BJ's, I drove to dinner and found a parking spot near the restaurant without any problem.  (Sometimes, it pays to be a little bit early.)  Then I sat down across from a new member, next to one of our regulars, and across from WDJ.  Although it was noisy, I had several good conversations. And all too soon, dinner was over. 

Driving home, I tried to reach GFJ - but her line was busy.  She was chatting with her son about Thanksgiving issues, and called me back as soon as she was off the phone.  It seems like the big family Thanksgiving dinner may be called off due to family complications I can't go into detail here.  Instead, she may end up spending the holiday with both her sons at her youngest son's place.  Although she was originally planning on renting a car and driving 600 miles each way, I suggested that she look into Amtrak.  She could leave her car at my place, hop on the Lake Shore Limited, and reach her son's place about 16 hours later. (That should be enough information to guess where he lives.)  We ran the numbers for the trip, and doing this will cost less than the car rental.  Hopefully, that fare will still be available if she needs to use it.

- - - - - -

Once I got home, I turned on the political news.  And I found that the Democrats won big in the State of Virginia.  Of course, my curiosity was piqued.  Did my favorite Virginia politician win?  YES!!!!!

Danica Roem
Member of the Virginia House of Delegates from the 13th district

On November 5, 2019, Roem defeated Republican challenger Kelly McGinn, becoming the first openly transgender state legislator to be re-elected.

On the whole, this was a very good day - even though I found out that a job application I sent in was rejected.  (I didn't really want to work in a call center.  But it was a full time position in a firm which makes sure that transgender individuals are protected. So, why not email a resume?  It couldn't hurt!)