Just some words

There are times I am compelled to write for no other reason other than I have been compelled to write. This is one of those times. There's not a whole lot going on except a friend of ours from the past popped up unexpectedly and wonderfully out of nowhere. A stab from the past. By a friend of ours I am referring to my sister and I, not Arlene and I. This was years before I knew Arlene. No this friend did not call me but her daughter in law did. The funny thing about it was just the night before I thought about her and checked her out on the web and I found out where she was living. Not that far away from here. Maybe 20 miles. The next day I got a call from her daughter in law. I have not seen these people in over 20 years. They were having a birthday party for her, and they found my number and called inviting me and my sisters to the birthday party. It was this past Saturday. I told them I couldn't make it because I worked until 4 and I really didn't want to drive through Boston to get to what they call the south shore. It's the part of the state that's just before Cape Cod. The idea of getting on the highway driving about 20 miles and then looking for an address in a town I'm not familiar with in the dark just didn't appeal to me. We ended up making plans for a different day, more than likely a Sunday and during the day. But it was wonderful to hear from those folks. I remember when her kids were little and of course they are all married with children of their own. It will also be be wonderful to see all those folks again. The upshot of all this is really me accepting the fact that I am aging. I never really thought about this until about almost a year ago , just before I began to think about semi-retiring. As I have said before, I have been blessed with good health all my adult life. It has been about 8 months since I have semi-retired and I still am adjusting to it. It is a change after working 43 years (soon to be 44) for the same company in a fulltime capacity. I am finding myself trying to find things to do. You can only fool around with the computer so much. I'm not much of a television watcher, except for news and news related programs. I used to like the history channel except there's very little "history" programming on it. It's a bunch of reality shows. What catching alligators has to do with history is beyond me. If you want to see any history programs you have to watch during the day when they re-run actual history related programs that might be 10 years old. The Discovery channel is very similar. Those are the 2 most interesting channels that I get that I would want to watch apart from occasional viewing of network television or PBS. The irony is, I have 4 televisions. One has been hanging in there since the 80's the other from the 90's. The other 2 were purchased in the last 15 years.

One thing that I have started tinkering with again was playing and recording on my own. I did it in the past and it was time consuming but a lot of fun. Making up your own tunes. I don't sing but these recordings are a way of practice. I get to play the guitar, bass and keyboards. I'm not a keyboard player but I can figure out how to bang out a few chords and play the Marines Hymn. Then there's the digital drums. I can't play drums. I have been working on a little tune for about 2 weeks now. I don't know if I can finish this. Sometimes what you want to play and what you can are two different thing, besides I am really out of practice. The last time I did this was around 2000 or 2001.

Let's see what else is going on, oh yeah! I was so grateful I didn't have to work on Friday. There was a protest event that was held on the main highway from the north into Boston. They stopped traffic coming in from the north and approaching from the south. This highway runs through my city and they chose to block traffic by an exit that leads to the road that I use to go to work (and buy my coffee). people were getting off the highway at the previous exit and snarling traffic everywhere around here and several miles south of Boston. They chained themselves to these large barrels right across the road. The picture below is about a half mile from where I live.

     
It was a human rights protest. They had one here a few weeks back but it was better organized and it didn't stop thousands of people from getting to work or whatever their destination was.

     
This has nothing to do with the above but I found this picture while looking for the above pictures. At least we have a sense of humor about our awful accent. I found this highway sign reminding people to use their turn signals. This actually is the same area where the protest was held. I recognize the landmarks,

Apart from all that. All is well around here. In a while I will be going to, conveniently next door, Arlene's to watch the Patriots game later today. We are so spoiled rotten with our sports teams the last 13 or 14 years. The Patriots alone have been to the Super Bowl 
5 times and won 3 of them. Someday this will all end and we will go back to the times before 2001when things sports-wise were not so wonderful, save for the Celtics. Ok enough sports blather. I'm behind in my blogger reading and there is the vacuum cleaner that is staring at me from the living room.

I'm outta here.