Thursday Evening Musings

Tweet

Good evening, everyone. First, for the folks in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and even here in Kentucky: praying for y’all. Helene is a monster. Earlier today it was 255 miles west of Tampa and the feeder bands were setting off tornado warnings 550 miles away in coastal Georgia! Our meteorologists are doing a live update even as I type, and they’re talking about the hurricane’s remnants and their effects on us. Our problems are supposed to be primarily rain, with wind gusts around 40 MPH. This is being caused by the Fujiwhara Effect…a meteorological term that would make a great name for a punk band. Next up is LouAvul. We were supposed to go to the zoo tomorrow. It would’ve been canceled by the weather anyway; however, she has covid. I got a text from her yesterday that says her husband has it, too, “so we’re making each other miserable.” I’ve told her that you’re asking for her and I’m keeping you posted and her response was: I got a “new” phone. Not the newest, latest, greatest phone, oh no. I learned how to do this. Now that the new phone is out, Apple is discontinuing the iPhone 14 to make room for the newer (and more expensive) models. So I bought an iPhone 14. Apple gives a 10% military discount, which is cool, so it was about $130 cheaper than getting it through my phone carrier. Plus, it’s MINE, so if my carrier starts to jack up my rates I can leave. I’m not stuck for 36 months, the usual length of time associated with getting a new phone. Speaking of phones, I just offloaded my vacation photos to my external hard drive and flash drive (always good to have a backup to the backup!). I told the kid at Apple, “You have NO idea of the pain ‘back then.’” I explained to him that, when I was a kid, you only had 12 to 24 photos to take on your roll of film, so you had to plan accordingly. Couldn’t “waste” a picture of a marker in case you saw a bear or an eagle an hour later. With a phone camera? I have 128 gigs of space on the phone, and another 200 gigs of iCloud space. TAKE THOSE PICTURES! (That’s how I can give you details: I take pictures of the informational plaques or signs so I can “know” what the main display was. ) The photo here is a Muscovy duck. I had never seen one of these until I had lunch in the park at the state capital building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I went for a walk a couple of weeks ago at a park in Elizabethtown (about 50 miles from here and the namesake of that Orlando Bloom movie from 2006 or so) and there was another one! And that’s not zoomed in: it let me get relatively close because I had a bag of bird seed with me. Y’all have a great Friday, and everyone in the southeastern US, STAY SAFE.