🧟 Jet lag sucks. Last night, pill aided, I slept for 12 hours, after a day of feeling delirious as I tried to stay awake following my early morning arrival.
Today (or yesterday, Tuesday, as I write this) fresh air, a massage and a good meal helped me relax and feel more back in my body. I went to bed feeling tired, but a little fearful that I was not tired enough…
Sure enough tonight, although pill aided again, I am typing this wide awake after maybe one hour’s sleep. I slept better on the airplane. I can feel the call to sleep knocking on my eyes. I feel a little lightheaded. However, so far no luck. I fear morning will bring a discombobulated day.
I’ve managed to stick with learning Portuguese for 30 days. I’m surprised with myself and happy. I’m unclear as yet what that means for making myself understood or what I understand? Of course 30 days is little time on which to build such expectations, but I do congratulate myself on getting this far.
I feel as though I am pretty tolerant of different toilet facilities that one might encounter in daily life. This is especially so for me while traveling. I’ve used some very basic, very impersonal, very smelly toilet facilities. I’m not saying that I enjoy them or go looking for them, but I find that I can let my guard down and tolerate more.
However none of this stops me from grading my experience and I think the toilet that I used on my flight from Maui to LA yesterday evening was the worst that I can remember. Where do I start…or maybe I shouldn’t?! Discoloured toilet seat, paper littering the floor and something of a questionable nature on some of that paper. Water everywhere. I tipped toed in and shakes off the paper as I walked out. Thankfully only one visit was necessary!
🥱 Waking up at LAX, or rather an airport hotel nearby. Heading to the UK to help see my mother and hopefully help with some water leaks in her apartment.
I made mention that in an earlier post of the Pacific Golden Plover, or kōlea, which visits Hawaii for the winter. This morning I tried to capture some photos of a Plover feeding in our front garden. They are fairly tame, and there is still a limit as to how close that I can get to them. There is also a limit to the resolution of my iPhone 13 Mini zooming in. But here is an effort to share a visiting Plover with you.
I’m sitting outside. Everyone is out. The day is ending, this little corner of the world is quietening down. The wind is waning to a gentle breeze. The sun has set and the light is starting to fade. Scattered clouds fill the sky to the horizon, all slowly drifting westwards. The ocean from here looks calm, but I’m really too far away to say if that is true.
A car drives home, breaking the stillness with joyful music singing out through the windows. An airplane flies overhead.
Neighbours’ voices drift over the hedges. Birds fly by, heading home to roost.
My body rests and settles, falling back into the arms of the stilling atmosphere around me, grateful for this time alone.
OK, time to age myself. I was just looking at PCalc on my iPhone. I have the display set to that used by old LED calculator displays. I remember when such calculators first came out, the cool thing was to see what words you could spell out with the display.
For example, 710.77345 would spell SHELL.OIL if you turned the calculator upside down (and used a little imagination…actually not too much. The old LED displays did a pretty good job of spelling!).
I can’t remember other words that we figured out. Anyone out there have some? Perhaps I’ve set myself a little game for the next few days?
🌃 6:10pm and I am in my pyjamas. Well I am home, eaten, showered, I'm not going out anywhere for the rest of the evening....so I figured that I might as well get ready for bed (though I'm not going there quite yet).
There is still a week and a half to go before September ends, and this is the site that greeted me when I walk into Lowe’s this afternoon. One of those big figures was singing Christmas songs. Meanwhile outside the sun beat down with late summer heat.
I have found copies of old blog posts on my computer from an earlier incarnation of my website. This one was from I know not when, but will guess around 2010. I have edited the post lightly to provide link references and clarification where appropriate.
While in New York last week for Thanksgiving and a host of other family events I visited the wonderful Rubin Museum (which sadly on October 6th, 2024 will close and move to a “global museum model.
My 61st birthday today. I have just learnt that it is my cousin’s daughter’s 21st birthday today. That 40 year gap makes me feel old! The opportunities of youth, the perspective and learnt lessons (though probably a few more to learn!) of later years.
Watching my grandson playing football (soccer) last Saturday morning. His team won 3 - 1. I was sitting to the left where there are a crowd of people on the touchline, but the sun was brutally hot and I had to take shelter under the shade of a tree. Those tent structures were all accounted for!
