sneaking a peek!

 so many things i had thought i might accomplish today. pretty typical that i got very little on the list done though.  i got the bike on the bike rack and successfully drove it around town without it falling off so that was good.  never rode it though.  met friends for dinner and then it just felt chilly out and was cloudy.  probably should have said screw it and went.  looked like a sunset may have turned beautiful after all.  oh well.  ran a few errands then went moose spotting.  saw this gal and she seemed chill about me stopping and taking a few photo's of her.

 so i did do the laundry/dishes/voting and groceries...so not a total waste of a day.  walked with a friend TO out at Jodphur.  we did the loop inside to outside and out to the dunes.  Blossom always enjoys that walk.  she's pretty tuckered out now.  Rio was acting like she wanted to go but i finally sat with her until she decided to stay home.  she can be pretty headstrong but some of these walks will just be a bit too much for her these days.  the right treat combo and she was willing to couch it.

 we appear to have a new mayor.  the one we had drove me nuts.  arrogant and a bit of an idiot.  there is at least the hope of improvement.  fingers crossed.

 remember being so shocked talking to my gramps about life when he was younger.  amazing how things had changed.  he lived before there were cars and television.  this just seemed so unreal to me.  there are pictures of him as a young man with the old fords and stuff so it he probably wasn't riding any horse and buggies.  not sure and can't ask him now.  you always wish you'd asked more about those days long gone.  i wrote a song years ago about gramps.  he had strokes in my tween years...a term that didn't exist when i was a tween.  i make up for not asking him the stuff by taking the time to ask those older than me stuff.  it's always fascinating.

 i suppose some of us are just more curious about such things than others. now that i am not a young punk sometimes the younger co-workers will ask me and others my agish this stuff. there have been big changes in my life as well and for these young folks...one day people will look at you shocked by the life you lived and wonder how you survived without the things that they take for granted.

 changes in television in my lifetime.  there are many of course. the remote control was a nice plus.  of course as kids we only had less than 15 channels to fight over.  when i was really little those channels were all in black and white.  at midnight i think the tv coverage would end and the star spangled banner would come on. as i left for college MTV got it's start.  cable was becoming the norm and the old television sets that took up half the room were gone and instead big screen tv's were coming.  still not sure which way that goes...super sized tv's vs tiny ones.

 microwaves...those showed up when i was a kid and my mom was very concerned about us getting radiation from the thing.  we were told to never open the door when it was running...seems like common sense anyway, but i think my mom figured our heads would explode.  we weren't to sit close to the tv either.

 families...they were just larger.  a family of less than 3 kids was unusual and the whole only child thing was super rare.  being an only child back then was very different than it is now.  familes of 5-10 kids were not really unusual at all.  was it cheaper to raise kids.  i suspect it was.  none of this electronic stuff existed and the stuff that did was shared in the entire household.  our rooms had a few beds, a few dressers and some toys.  the house had a communal phone, tv and radio.  we had records...before that there were 8 tracks.  i never owned an 8 track, but i know my older siblings did.  none of us had record players in our own rooms.

 having our own phone...no way.  no cell phones existed.  we had a phone upstairs and one downstairs, they were out where everyone could hear your conversation.  before my time there were party lines and you had to take turns with your neighbors i guess.  that was before me though.

 for fun...we played outside.  we were all "free range children" as they call it now.  we rarely had parental supervision.  we came home when the sun went down or when dinner was served.  there were some organized sports, mostly for boys, the girls softball was getting started when i was in 5th or 6th grade i  think.  i wasn't involved...we had church that day.

 planes, people traveled but with larger families most people i knew took road trips.  my first flight i was 21 i think.  international travel was just no where near as common as it is now.

 computers, the internet...there were a few huge IBM computers at big schools or governments i think being built. no home computers.  we used typewriters. in my teen years i think the word processors showed up.  those things were the devil in some ways.  you'd think you were doing a great job writing a paper on this fancy tool but if you went to make a correction, bam..your whole paper could get messed up and you'd have to start over.  we were the test dummies for all things computer so if you wonder why people in my age group are wary of the technology.  it's failed us many times. we learned to be afraid to push buttons.  i'm trying to recover from that.  i see that young kids/adults have no fear of pushing buttons.  crash isn't a common issue now.

 calculators didn't even exist when i was a kid and when they became more of a common thing, we were not allowed to bring them to class or use them in exams at all.

 a little sense of humor...a bit of a sick sense of humor, but i can appreciate that.

 games were board games.  we got a pinball machine one christmas and one year we got pong...that was the first computer game that came out big on the market.  it was pretty bleak and dull compared to all the stuff the computer games can do now.

 we didn't know what terrorists were.  it was the age of the cold war.  we had earthquake drills and bomb drills at school.  when the Guerilla's took the Israeli Olympic team hostage i had no idea what a Guerrela was.  that was what a terrorist would have been called i guess then.  i remember watching the coverage of that with my family as a kid.  i was seriously wondering how a bunch of gorilla's had gotten out of zoos and why they would take the Israeli team hostage.  it made no sense to me at all.  at one point in the coverage they said and showed the guerilla's on the outside of the building and i figured out they weren't actually gorillas at all.  really news was just a nightly thing, less than an hour a day and then the papers.  everything else it seems you learned in National Geographic or the Encylopedia Britanica which everyone had.  

 the man landed on the moon..in black and white.  we all watched it.  everyone.

 pictures were taken with film cameras.  you had to put the light sensitve rolls in  to your camera, you took your pictures 24-36 of them.  film was either color or black and white.  then you unloaded the film from the camera and sent it to a lab.  after a week or so you would find out if any of your pictures had actually shown up on the film.  kodak ruled the film industry.  my first canon actually was one of the first that had any sort of auto mode.  there were no selfies. who would be nuts enough to waste film and spend all that money in developing fees.

 a girl at work was shocked to hear that we would take city buses to the mall, alone or just with friends.  kids these days have adult supervision for everything.  we climbed trees, climbed on the roof, rode bikes and trikes and scooters and skateboards, all without protective gear.  we had no seat belts in the car and if we did we never wore them.  i walked or rode bikes to school nearly every day and for is this was 2-3 miles i'd guess at least.

 we worked.  i was a babysitter by the age of 10.  on my own.  we had no classes for this.  i got paid $1/hr no matter how many kids there were.  we sat outside and sold anything we cold think of to get money for stuff.  we sold flowers, bean bags....then we'd jaywalk alone across a busy 4 lane street to get to the 7-11 near the house.  there for 15 cents i remember i could buy a slurpee, chips and a candy bar.  a big bar, not a mini sized one.

 by age 13 i worked at the local YMCA doing child care.  again, no class but a bit more money.  started working at a taco joint at age 16. other kids were working too.  seems much more restrictive now.

 we got our drivers licenses at age 16 or pretty close.  having a car and a job meant freedom.  at our house you couldn't drive until you could pay for gas and insurance.  gas was cheaper though.  i remember being able to go to station with a few dollars or a 5 and have enough gas to get around for awhile.

 i'm sure i'll think of more, but that is a start.

 i didn't become a nurse until i was 30 but i was the last group in our area to take the 2 day long written exam.  it was brutal.  we then had to wait 6-8 weeks to find out if we passed it. there were over 5000 hopeful nurses at my test site alone.  we were divided into buildings at the L.A. County fairgrounds.  there were 1500 people taking the test in the same big room/building as me.  all in one space. no walls.  as we finished each test session we left the building and congregated in a common area.  i was one of the first 10 out each test session, there were 4, two each day.  morning and afternoon.

 thank you moose for letting me admire you...

 leg is a wee bit sore, not bad. have taken ibuprofen a few times.  gotta wear the stockings.  out walking. i think it just seemed a good idea to let all the tiny needle holes heal a bit before i hit the pool.  got a look at my leg this morning. the veins are gone but little bruises are there where the needles went in. he must have stuck me 10-12 times.

 still coughing. like the knee, after some time you start forgetting to do the basics like inhalers and ice and elevate for the knee.  need to be better at all of that and not skip it. the inhalers especially.  for sure a bit short of breath these past days on walks.  the hills are a bit more of a work out now than when my lungs are more healthy.

 i'm a mess...what can i say.

 she is a lovely moose.  i sure love the moose around here.  i'd miss them if i moved south.

 enough of the past for the day...i'm sure you all have similar memories.  would love to hear them and add to these.

thankful for:  A.  many of the things that have been invented that make life easier.  not everything makes life better but a few things really are pretty sweet.  B.  moose...they are beautiful and entertaining C.  friends...a bit more of a social week for me this week.  it's been nice!