Friday 11/06/2026
Started the day with our usual muffin walk, and on up to Town&Counry for coffee and to shop Trader Joe’s.
The bulk of the day I set about getting control of my photos. Yesterday I went to try to find a certain picture that I remembered taking um, two years ago? Or was it three? And started scrolling through Photos, and scrolling and scrolling… and noticed that I over 2,500 pictures on the phone.
I probably have that many in my official picture folders on the desktop machine, but those are all organized and especially, they have keywords assigned so I can search for all pictures with keyword “Marian” or “Sculpture” or whatnot. The ones on the phone are not so, just a stack of pictures that the phone organizes by date taken, which is better than nothing, but — 2500?
So today I synced the phone with iCloud (should have done that long ago) and then synced the desktop machine with iCloud also, and after a little while, I could review all 2500 on my big 27″ monitor with a full keyboard and mouse, which makes it so much simpler than working on the phone. So I started through them. Oh my is that going to be a big job. But I took a bite of it. I got partway through the last trip we took together, in 2017 to Lake Como and Milan.
At 3:30 there was a sudden announcement on the building-wide PA system. “A slight odor of gas has been detected on the third floor. All residents please report to the lobby.” So all 180 of us trooped down to the lobby, and eventually to the auditorium for seating. At 4:15 it was announced that the gas leak had been found, in the basement, and was under control. OK to return to your rooms.
Talked about it over dinner: what they did made sense. The usual rule when a fire alarm goes off, is to “shelter in place”, stay in your room. That’s because a fire, if there is one, is localized and likely confined to a single floor. It’s safer to have everyone in their rooms than trying to get down the stairs, especially since the elevators are automatically disabled by a fire alarm.
But in this case, the danger was a potential explosion. Until they found the gas leak, the potential was for a sudden explosion somewhere, but where? Better to get everyone down, because in this case the elevators could remain in service.
So that was the amusement this afternoon.
