The Last Walk Home

21 January 2020

Tuesday (Bagel Day)

Didn’t write yesterday. Most of the day was spent doing things related to getting my new computer up to speed.  From watching my wife with her computer I realized I needed a clean external drive to use with my computer.  This computer is a little thing. All told it has only 128 GB of storage.  To get more storage I spent hours moving files from one old external hard drive to another.  Some stuff would not move.  Thus I ended up with a 1 TB hard drive with 600 G clean and a big folder called Old Immovable Stuff.  I have another external drive now marked backup, in felt tip pen maxed out at 730 GB wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in a drawer. Given I am not working with graphics my current situation should be sufficent.

The picture above is the street where I live.  Winter has come to Michigan.  The picture below is me on the street where I live.  Like the Ray Bans?  

Spent yesterday morning with a married couple that like us wants to move to Portugal.  They have been to Portugal more often than us and they speak Spanish.  However, they have not gone through the bureaucratic process yet. It was a lovely morning get together.  I hope we can have more interactions with these folks.  Perhaps we will meet in Lisboa.  I am thinking I need to call some folks and get dinners set up.  Time now, when there are no work constraints, to rekindle contacts.

I subscribe to the Washington Post.  In the mornings I pick one article about what is going on politically.  Then, I read articles on the environment, writers and musicians, and stuff that just catches my interest.  To me it seems that the voices all across the spectrum have lost sight of what is important.  Every one elected to public office or holding a public position owes a duty of trust to the people to do what is right for the common good. Let the political passion play wind itself to conclusion.  But no matter what way it goes, let us fight for our survival on this planet   Global warming is real.  Overpopulation is real.  Poverty is real. Let us fight to make these issues better.

On a day like this 10 days ago I would be writing something that started like this:  

The Petitioner is a forty-two year old man.  In the course of a 10 year span 2000-2010 he incurred three alcohol-driving convictions.  He states all three involved his being stopped after drinking at the neighborhood pub.  

Mr. Doe was a drinker of hard liquor.  On average he would drink four nights a week consuming a pint of Wild Turkey.  He claims no history with drugs except one night in high school.  The testimony was that he smoked part of a joint at a party and fell promptly asleep.

The Petitioner states he has not used alcohol since his last arrest in 2000…

I would then go on and detail why the Petitioner claimed he would not fall back into alcohol use.  Often it was a twelve step program.  Perhaps it would be Alcoholics Anonymous or maybe it would be one of the similar programs run through a church.   I would mention whether the individual was familiar with the program or not, discerned by asked questions about what is the 10th step and the like.

But I don’t have to do that anymore.  I don’t have to judge people and decided just how much of what they are telling me are falsehoods. Today I have to unpack boxes of stuff that hasn’t been used in years and make trips to the Volunteers of America.  Today I have to think about how I live out the rest of my life. Decent trade off.

Why is today bagel day? Good question.  On Tuesdays here two of the three bagel places in town offer bagels at about a third off.  Everybody goes and buys bagels, eats some and freezes them or they take bagels and cream cheese into the office as a treat. I think right now that is what I miss most about work, taking a treat in and hanging out in the break room. I am missing talking with people about their lives. 

Oh well, I am just prattling on.  I do want to mention as I close this note my Apple Watch and I are on the outs.  Since retiring my wife and I have been walking the mall each day for 1.4 miles in about a half an hour.   When my wife sets her watch to indoor walk she gets credit for the trek, getting both her move minutes and her exercise minutes.  My watch, while it gives me the move minutes, does not give me the exercise minutes.  Instead I have to come home and walk the neighborhood to get those exercise points. WTH.  My only guess is that given the time I have been walking into work each day up until the weather turned, the same level of exercise does not raise my heart rate as much as it raises my wife’s. 

Wow, that just triggered a thought.  I think it was the last week of December when we last had a pretty warm day.  I mean it was about 40 degrees out.  The sky was kind of overcast but there was no precipitation.  My wife was tied up at day’s end with one thing or another and I decided I would simply walk home.  I looked at where the road construction/sewer work stood that had been going on for six solid months.  I looked at the houses that mostly had seen better days, but all still retained some unique charms.  I looked at the oak trees that still held their leaves.

I looked at all sort of things, and I remember most of it.  Funny, at no point in that walk did I think, “This will be the last time I am walking home from work”.  It was a day turning to dusk that was a final moment, but I didn’t realize it until now.