Thinking out loud

I have done a lot of video conferences lately. This is not the "am I too old" bit. I know we've all done a lot of that for the last few years. I am good at knowing when to turn on my camera and microphone. I know how to turn them off if I'm having lunch during a mandatory meeting (because no one wants to watch anyone eat a salad). Here's where I get to my question. WHY AM I WAVING AT THE SCREEN? I caught a glimpse of myself yesterday and it made me gasp. I looked like Forrest Gump waving at Lieutenant Dan on the dock. Definitely a vibe. Definitely not the one I want to give strangers. It gives a little too much, "I'm friendly and you can probably take advantage of me." I'd like to present a little more Lizzo, like, "go ahead and try me because I'll beat you at your game and write a song about it and when I win a Grammy you'll wish you hadn't." I mentioned this to a few friends and, like me, they do it and wish they could sto...

  I got this message the other day and I was wondering why it would take 14 HOURS to fully charge my AirPod Pros!?!? Because I have been out on a long walk and had my AirPods die long before my legs, I take these warnings seriously. I put the Pods in the case and charged them until 11AM the next day. BUT WHY? Apple created this optimization because it can allegedly reduce the wear on the battery and improve the lifespan "by reducing the time that your AirPods Pro spend fully charged." Apple also claims these little inner ear headphones "learn from your daily charging routine and will wait to charge (them) past 80% until just before you need to use them." I suppose this may actually work because my unprofessional AirPods did not hold a charge for long. They were the ones that died mid-walk, leaving me to wonder what happened next on my podcast. For safety reasons, I do not have the volume up and often walk with just one pod in my ear. I also try to have my hands em...

  This little guy gets it. Two day weekends are not enough! Like Brodie, I would like to protest the five day week. I might want to have more time to play or, like Brodie, do whatever I want outside. The more I watched this pint-size plea, the more I wondered why weekends are relegated to two days. I realized many have already done a lot of the investigating so I didn't have to do much work. Blame Henry Ford Well, maybe don't blame him. Just know that in 1926 he decided his workers would have five eight-hour days on the job . He thought this would encourage workers to take vacations and go shopping on Saturdays. Ford was also paying his workers double the going rate ($5 a day) so once they had time off, they had time to spend their hard-earned money. "People who have more leisure must have more clothes. They eat a greater variety of food. They require more transportation in vehicles." Nearly 100 years later, after a global pandemic that forced a lot of people to work...

  While I ❤ my many insulated bottles, cups and mugs I am annoyed that they require hand washing.  Why is it they can bounce off the ground (not recommended but it happens), yet they are too delicate to take a trip in the dishwasher? WHY? I have put them in before and have only noticed the outside looks a little beat up. Paint might peel off. The writing might fade or even fall off. That's cosmetic stuff. Adds character. Shows that I don't just buy them because my social media ads are influencing me. BONUS: I can cover up those battle wounds with a sticker if I want. But is there any real harm caused by a weekly run through the dishwasher? Yes.  My Google search turned up lots of posts about why. I found this from Southern Living magazine (which I presume consulted with more experts that the many blogs I saw). I also found this post from Whirlpool . The answers from those sites and a few others said the dishwashers can damage the seal and insulation. YETI will let you th...

 One year ago, I was VERY sick. I knew I was sick, but didn't know how sick I was. I posted that from my hospital room the day after I had been admitted. I had COVID in mid-January 2022. I started to feel better, then got nausea and vomiting that would not stop for a week. In the middle of that, I had a nurse come to my house and give me some IV fluids which made me feel a little better but really delayed me from going to the hospital. I really kept thinking I would feel better because I always recovered. It was a late night attempt to get water that made me realize I was definitely not getting better. I remember feeling my chest tighten so much that it made my shoulders roll in. I was trying to stay focused on the task (because I was just so SO thirsty) and leaning on the wall for support. I remember trying to take deep breaths and I couldn't. Then, I was on the floor. I told myself to hang on until 8:00 because I wanted my doctor to be at the hospital. I also knew I couldn...

I am a creature of habit. I like to start my day with a workout, have some coffee and spend some time reading a chapter or two of a book. This allows me to focus on things that challenge me before the day's stressors have even opened their eyes. I'm currently reading the novel True Biz by Sara Novic.  I tend to read fiction, then some type of non-fiction and repeat. Coming off a  book about some heroic Jewish women who fought Nazis , I had fully prepared myself for a little bit of brain candy or at least an escape from harsh reality. I knew that the primary setting in this new book was a school for the deaf and that the primary characters were also deaf, but I found quite a surprise a few pages in. That is some American Sign Language ! Pictures and translations with directions are scattered throughout the book. I've always been curious about this language but have no real excuse for not having made an effort to learn it. Now, it looks like I will. I think. Maybe. I don...

 If you are not from Texas, you have probably enjoyed smirking at the Lone Star State and how it completely shuts down with actual winter weather. Here's the thing: our state is just not built for this.  At all. Not the roads. Not the houses. Not the people who have spent at least five years here. Here, cold is maybe close to freezing in the wee hours of the night. Until the last few years, most people had seen snowfall that wasn't measurable. Now, we see ice and snow each season around January. *NOTE: I am not a meteorologist but I have stayed at Holiday Inn Express. After yet ANOTHER few days of watching Old Man Winter squeeze Texas so hard that schools and businesses had to shut down, I did what most home-bound people were doing. I watched weather coverage from all over the state.  The photo above is from this Dallas Morning News article about the Metroplex turned Tundra. Many cities faced this struggle. Bridges and overpasses were turned into slick parking lots, some...