Friday 12/20/2022
Went for the benchmark walk and it was fine. Well, the weather wasn’t fine, overcast and threatening, although no rain fell then. But the creek was up. But I felt healthy. As I mentioned the other day, the fact that I’m 80 continues to mess with my mind. Do I feel like an 80-year-old is supposed to feel? Eighty-year-olds are old. Should I be walking like this? Shouldn’t I be more, well, frail? I don’t feel frail. Am I kidding myself? This arbitrary number is dickin’ with my head.
Today I had an opportunity to introduce another resident to the new TV system that will soon be installed for everybody. She has been trying to use the 11th floor TV because there was a problem with the one in her unit, but had some problems with it. Since that is the exact system and remote that will soon be universal, I grabbed the opportunity to try training someone in it. One of her problems was, she couldn’t get the closed captions on. She was tickled pink to discover that you can just hold down the microphone button on the remote and say, “captions on” and it does it. Or say “PBS” and it switches to KQED. “I like the news channels,” she said, so I grabbed the remote and quick succession said to it, “CNN”, and then “MSNBC” and then “Headline news” and it happily switched to each one in turn.
Later on, I took a careful look at the Road Scholar website and made a big decision. Instead of planning my own trip to Barcelona, I will let them do it for me. I signed up for a Spanish Art trip that hits Madrid, a couple of other famous art centers, ending in Barcelona. Almost the same dates I had already planned, mid-April.
Another decision, less momentous, I would go out for an old-fashioned burger and fries dinner. I drove in the dark and the rain — paying very close attention as I drove because I’m 80 and therefore clearly not safe to drive at night, if at all — actually I had no difficulty whatever and I don’t think I’m deceiving myself about that — down to the In & Out Burger place on Rengstorff. Had a cheeseburger fries and a chocolate shake, sitting in my car listening to rain on the roof. Shades of Seattle in my youth.
Codgerville 