Musings

I really don't care that one of the Beatles now actually is sixty four years old. As I told my wife, if it were possible for me to negatively care, such that I went past neutrality and into actively un-caring, I would do so.
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A magazine supplement to the Sunday papers, Parade magazine, is usually filled with light, fluffy reading. I think it's aimed at people who find Readers Digest a bit too challenging. Today, Father's Day, I expected that it would have mindless drivel about how wonderful fathers are. Instead, the first article was about how married men live longer; the second was suggestions to increase your testosterone level; the third was about hair replacement strategies, and toward the end of the magazine (because, by then, I had flipped to the end and begun to backtrack, looking for the comics), was an article by a comic actor who specializes in roles of stupid young men saying why his father was the best. Curious, I asked my wife if they carried the same kind of material for Mother's Day, and she said that they did, pretty much -- slightly higher elevation, but not overwhelmingly so. Fah.
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Last night I achieved a personal best, or perhaps personal worst, depending on how you look at it. I have had for some time the opinion that it takes slightly less (in hours) to overcome the beneficial effects of the same number of days of vacation. That is, if you go on vacation for five days, it will take slightly less than five hours of work to substantially undo the benefit of being away. I never feel reinvigorated for a longer period than that. But this week, there was a personal best. Without going into the details, suffice it to say that I had a contact with work on the evening that we returned which so enraged me that I almost popped a blood vessel. My wife said that she has never seen me that mad. Part of the reaction was that I was tired from traveling, but part was anger over the characteristics of the group where I work. They're not idiots; they're not bad people; they're just follow-the-rules bureaucrats. I intensely dislike that kind of person. Normally , I can ignore them, but I think my ability to do so is wearing thin. Once the dental is done for this year, I think I'm out of there. Anything that can trigger that much anger, that quickly, is not a good place to continue to be.
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I liked using the Canon S3. It was pleasant to be able to take the camera wherever we went without the weight of my other camera (a Canon AE). I enjoyed transferring them to this PC and being able to select just what we want to print, too. There were a couple of unwelcome surprises. We were startled to find that there was no power meter to let you gauge the health of the batteries (an icon would flash when it was low). We found this when we discovered that the batteries that came with the camera were only good for about four days. Also, I missed the ability to take a snap-shot -- ie, see something, flick the camera on, and shoot. It's possible, but three or four times I missed a shot while the autofocus cycled, or the zoom tracked. I found myself wondering if that ability really requires a TTL camera, like the AE. And, finally, some of the anti-skid covering on the body of the camera, around the hand grip, has already worn off, much to my surprise. Not a big deal, but not something I expected. None of these significantly diminished our pleasure with the camera, though. We're glad we got it.
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Seeing all the retired people out in Tucson led us to mull over retirement options as regards location and then travel from that location. We couldn't live in Tucson year round -- its simply too hot for us (or at least me). But we did start thinking over what we could do. We don't see ourselves as traveling a lot, but we'd like to do some, and perhaps to do it to a known, comfortable place. Lots of ways to do that, of course, and like most, we'd want something that was not terribly expensive (because we already assume that it'll cost more than we want). One thought is a condominium, on someplace pleasant -- northern Arizona, perhaps, or perhaps someplace further west (I hear an island off the coast of western Canada is particularly nice...) Oddly enough, I realized at one point that what sounded good in terms of climate and location was, basically, the climate and description of where we live now.
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Happy Fathers Day, y'all.