Roscoe's Story

Flag Corner

Many of us are conducting more of our business online these days, and that sometimes involves participating in online webinars or meetings with our presence shared via webcams. The webcam in my home office is situated so that this corner of the room shows as the background.

This morning I hung another flag to make the corner more appropriately express my loyalty and attitude.

And the adventure continues.

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Published on 29 June 2020, this is my post number 39/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #flags #photograph #SevenTwoProject

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by Roscoe

Very good advice, this.

And I intend to follow it.

The National Weather Service warns me through a widget on my phone that the air quality is “Low” here in San Antonio, and I am advised to stay inside under air conditioning from 11:00 this morning until Noon tomorrow.

Luckily for me, I finished my yardwork (trimming bushes and soaking up healthy vitamin D) this morning and the only planned foray out my front door before Noon tomorrow will be to check the mailbox in a few hours.

So don't yell at me for spending so much time stretched out in my recliner. I'm only following orders, avoiding the dust blown over from Africa, and trying to stay healthy.

The adventure continues.

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Published on 27 June 2020, this is my post number 38/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #SeniorLiving #health #weather

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by Roscoe

And the take-away lesson from that dream...

...must be that I need to invest in new luggage.

Last night's dream was very vivid and realistic. Sometimes the Melatonin brings dreams like that, and lately I've been eating the Melatonin like candy before putting head to pillow in order to safely fall asleep. It works.

The dream found me packing up my gear in a non-descript hotel room. I was getting ready to leave. The gear I was packing was just vacation clothing that I was tying into bundles and some miscellaneous “stuff” that I'd loaded into a cardboard box. I put the cardboard box onto a two-wheeled cart and piled the two or three bundles of clothes on top of the box, and wheeled my gear out of the room, down a hallway, then down an elevator to the hotel lobby.

In the lobby I stopped at the checkout desk to take care of that chore then wheeled my stuff over to a guarded metal detector set by the exit door. Apparently it was necessary to scan my box and bundles and myself before leaving the hotel.

An old bus about 75% full of other passengers was waiting for me at the curb. Hauling my bundles and box with me, I climbed into the bus and found myself a double seat. After piling my stuff into the window seat, I sat in the aisle seat and thought to myself, “Man! This would be SO much easier if I just a good suitcase!” And then I woke up.

Now, before the world went into its current CCP-flu lockdown earlier this year, I HAD been planning to take a major trip this summer. But, given the state of that lockdown, those plans have been put on hold for another year at least, maybe two or three more years. We'll just have to wait and see how long it takes for international flights to safely and practically return. And given my advanced age, I'm holding myself under a very strict self-quarantine until either an effective vaccine against the CCP-flu is developed, or until I'm proven immune to it, or until that scourge is somehow removed from the land.

So there are no trips of any kind planned for this old boy. Not now. But hopefully... in the future? And was my dream telling me that I should start checking my luggage? Hmm...

The adventure continues.

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Published on 26 June 2020, this is my post number 37/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #dreams

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by Roscoe

Summer of '66?

Or maybe it was the summer of 1965, I don't remember. But that skinny boy in the picture above was me standing in front of the family house over a half-century ago when I was a Junior or Senior in High School.

My sister has taken upon herself a project of digitizing some old photographs and slides that our parents had collected when they were alive. And she's emailing the image files to me and our remaining siblings. How nice of her! She tells me there are approximately 400 pictures all together.

Earlier this year I “sort of” committed myself to a #SevenTwo photo sharing project. With my January birthday placing me well within the ranks of septuagenarians, I decided to post two photos every every week for the remainder of the year. But that was before the CCP-flu pandemic put the world on lockdown and me under strict self-quarantine. Not being able to leave the house with my camera I quickly ran out of current images to post and that project fell by the wayside.

Maybe with these old pictures my sister is sending I'll be able to do a #ThrowbackThursday for awhile, satisfying one picture to post per week of the #SevenTwoProject. And if I stretch my imagination a bit, maybe I'll be able to scrounge up something else for the other picture. Hmm...

The adventure continues.

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Published on 25 June 2020, this is my post number 36/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #ThrowbackThursday #SevenTwoProject #photograph

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by Roscoe

His name is Leo and ...

... he is on the wrong side of the fence. And he knows he is in trouble.

Leo is a young adult male Husky who thinks he is still a puppy. He is a barker (though not as much now as when he was younger), playful and, obviously, a jumper. He's still on his leash, the other end of which is still fastened to something over in my next door neighbor's back yard where he should be. But he's jumped over the fence and is now humbly hunkered down behind my sheds in my back yard and wanting some attention.

Oh Leo, whatever are we going to do with you?

And so the adventure continues.

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Published on 22 June 2020, this is my post number 35/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #dog

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by Roscoe

Before the heat chased me inside...

... where the air conditioned air is much more comfortable, I was enjoying a peaceful Saturday mid-morning on the back patio with Kindle, radio and mug of freshly brewed coffee.

It was nice out there, but it's nicer in here now.

I know, I know... it's such a rough life. But somebody has to live it, and it may as well be me. (Heh.)

And so the adventure continues.

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Published on 20 June 2020, this is my post number 34/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload

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by Roscoe

If there was ever a time to watch Dr. Who...

...this would be that time. Luckily for me, Pluto TV offers Classic Dr. Who episodes 24/7 and for free.

Several days ago I noted in conversation elsewhere on the Internet that time had been blurring for me lately. You know, days running together, that sort of thing.

This morning, after someone mentioned to me that the weeks seemed to have been going quickly for her, my honest response was:

Yes, they do! The days seem to drag, the weeks go quickly, and the months fade away into a fog of sameness. The passage of time has become quite weird this year.

And all day long I've had the strangest sense of being somewhat out of phase with, well... everything going on around me. Rather disquieting, that.

So it's time to switch on Dr. Who. Maybe things will start to sort out after I spend a little time with the Time Lord.

The adventure continues.

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Published on 18 June 2020, this is my post number 33/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #time #DoctorWho

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by Roscoe

Moving through my Monday chores

They say that holding to a regular schedule is important if one wants to have a successful retirement, and if one wants to maintain good mental health during the pandemic lockdown. Fortunately for me, scheduling and prioritizing my chores and activities has been a time management habit of mine for decades.

Mondays now always include at least two particular chores: 1.) doing my laundry, (two loads are moving through the machines now and there will be a third); and 2.) filling my morning and evening pill boxes with the medicines, vitamins, and food supplements I take daily. Pill boxes and bottles pertaining to that 2nd chore are pictured above.

And so it goes.

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Published on 15 June 2020, this is my post number 32/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #SeniorLiving #timemanagement #chores #blogging

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by Roscoe

Happy Flag Day, USA

Ours is posted. Is yours?

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Published on 14 June 2020, this is my post number 31/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #SeniorLiving #FlagDay

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by Roscoe

For a normal person, this would have been easy.

But for me it was a long, stressful, very major deal. Let me explain.

I bought a new phone recently, a pixel 3, and it arrived yesterday. This isn't the very latest phone in the pixel universe, but I found it available at a good price and it's gotten pretty good reviews. And I've almost always had Android phones. My current primary phone is a Galaxy 10 and this new little pixel phone is intended to serve as my back up. So I hoped all would go well.

Now I've been a computer hobbyist since the 1980s, and a full-time Linux user since the late 1990s, Heck, I've assembled computers from the motherboard on up and had great fun doing that. So being hands-on with technology doesn't bother me. As long as it's computers, and as long as it's Linux.

But I have NEVER been a telephone person. I absolutely HATE having voice conversations over the phone and am quite comfortable turning off the ringer at all times unless the wife is out of the house or I am. Face to face conversations in real life I'm perfectly fine with. And emails or text messages, I'm good that way too. But talking over the phone? If it's not an important business or legal call of some kind, forget about it. Ask anybody, they'll tell you. Roscoe is NOT a telephone person.

Somehow that attitude of mine carries over to the point of making it difficult for me to work with phones. Anyway, somehow I botched things up when I tried to set up this pixel phone and actually had to reach out to the phone company's customer service department for help this morning. Thankfully we were able to text/chat and get everything working okay. Finally. But it took HOURS! Man!

But all systems are working well now. And I'm moving steadily along the pixel learning curve.

And the adventure continues.

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Published on 12 June 2020, this is my post number 30/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.

#100DaysToOffload #phones #SeniorLiving

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by Roscoe