Friday, October 20, 2023

The header photo is from the aisles and of a twelve-year-old Golden–a sweet guy. His face has turned gray, but overall he’s in superb condition. And that expression! He’s irresistible.

I have this day off from my part-time job plus two more days. This weekend might end our local good weather, a pleasant type once known as an Indian Summer. A weather change might be dramatic in its suddenness, which is what we’ve learned to expect. Already, I’ve sheltered my small motorized vehicles and on-hand tools against possible rain.

This morning, my friend Rachelle and I plan to head toward the mountains and run our dogs. This afternoon, I’ll work on my horse fencing, doing some straightening and strengthening, to combat its chewed and battered appearance. Sometime this weekend I will ride horseback, maybe here in the neighborhood.

Here in what might be summer’s last gasp, I will take a walk and have Cockatoo Peaches on my shoulder. We need more to go out walking. He’s delighted when his cage door opens and he’s invited to step onto my arm. Peaches’ feathers are not trimmed, so he’s fully flight-capable, but he loves to be riding on my shoulder or forearm.

Dear Friends: Just some of my plans for these work-free days. Diana

Thursday, October 19, 2023

At HD, I am learning to use its powerful and user-friendly registers to become a backup cashier. I’m receiving hands-on training with real-time practice using the touch screens.

I am interested in this secondary position because it will break up normal workday routines. During customer-heavy periods, the lead cashiers call for backup cashiers, and by responding, I’ll brush up my register skills while gaining broader store-related know-how.

Learning has had me shadowing very experienced cashiers. I’m finding they know many repeat customers well. I had forgotten that pleasant aspect of cashiering–continuing old discussions, sharing wider observations, and telling new jokes. Of course, “unpleasant” occurs, too, when a customer rattles on and seemingly endlessly about worldviews that are opposite to a listener’s own.

Working in retail, or any other kind of business, requires one to sense situations that could become stressful and know how to be unresponsive and appear nonjudgmental. When someone goes off on views way different from my own, I listen politely, might even nod, but never comment. Hopefully, as a customer’s unpleasant thoughts and words drift off, so, too, may that person.

Dear Friends: I’m betting on demonstrating soon that I can manage a resister. Diana

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Interestingly, there’s little evidence of individual political interests among my several hundred co-employees. Many have visible tattoos illustrating their affinities for nature, wildlife, and such, but none particularly are controversial.

I’ve considered this while rummaging mentally about wearing my favorite pair of socks to work. Each sock’s top sports a clear image of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face. She’s one of my favorite public figures and her image suggests my political learnings. I love the socks but haven’t worn them to work. Recently, I realized that such caution is wise.

I work with a woman who has an admirable understanding of the construction industry. She is able to weld, grade classes of wood, and can comprehend more construction-related technicalities than women in general. She explains that her dad had managed a welding company and got her started welding when she was a small child. He emphasized attention to technology and safety and always supported her. She became adept with skills that led her, on turning twenty, to join the military. There she spent a couple of years before becoming pregnant, a condition that in those days forced her to retire. Her skills and knowledge had lifted her from the rank of Private to that of Master Sargeant.

I have admired all that, but this week working more closely alongside her got an earful of her politics and world views. They’re draconian! She’s a solid Trumpian, believes the world is close to collapsing, saves fresh water, and stocks long-shelf-life foods. She loves her many guns; doesn’t hunt with them but goes out and shoots.

I listened not feeling completely astonished but disappointed, to learn where her working skills journey had taken her, politically and socially. At least, my socks didn’t initiate her disclosures. Maybe she was curious about my personal world-related views, but I never opened my mouth. I did, however, grasp the value of not wearing my RGB socks to work.

Dear Friends: The 3,300 cells in our brains guide us on unique life journeys. Diana

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

The header photo, taken yesterday for my “Dogs In The Aisle” collection, is a mini-Labradoodle. That’s how his person described this total cutie. He’s super friendly, and irresistible, and his coat is as soft as a bunny’s.

I enjoy playing with the dogs Home Depot customers bring into the store. Look, here’s an adorable pair of mini-Aussies.

Most dogs enter the store expecting treats that many employees carry. You can see those little Aussies totally anticipating my hand to dip into my apron pocket. Of course, it did.

Yesterday, my favorite hugger might have been the Rottie, Brutus. He’s a super sweet giant.

Brutus is much larger than my part-Rottie puppy, Chase, but there’s a resemblance in their looks and personalities.

Dear Friends: Ya gotta love shopping and working where dogs are allowed. Diana

Monday, October 16, 2023

This week our local weather will warm up. That will create a window of accommodation for a couple of horseback rides I’m planning. This change is serendipitous luck, as locally and lately, there’s been more overcast and gloom than sunshine. Heralding that upcoming change is this morning’s gorgeous rosy dawn.

Throughout this week, I’ll work in the afternoons and, later, come home in darkness to feed the large animals and medicate my donkey. So far, the news about medicating isn’t good. In the first place, she is refusing medications by avoiding me. That’s not my biggest problem. It’s that syringes tend to become vapor-locked, which locks a plunger and prevents liquids from releasing. My attempts to strong-arm locked plungers had made meds suddenly spurt into the air. Medicating the ground is expensive learning.

I’ve asked both AI and YouTube University how to combat vapor-locking in syringes. Their responses might satisfy typical human medical needs using small syringes but not my veterinary needs with large syringes. The alternative for medicating equines is mash dishes, which my donkey steadfastly refuses to touch, regardless of how attractive they are with grains, pancake syrup, and etc. She smells and/or tastes buried medications. So, I’m stuck managing her meds with syringes.

Anxiety-ridden as this conundrum may be, it too will pass. Because I’ll learn, so help me.

Dear Friends: Enjoy this beautiful start to the week. Diana

Sunday, October 15, 2023

“Crisp air, golden leaves, Nature’s beauty surrounds me, Autumn’s warm embrace.”

I didn’t conjure up the opening phrase; it’s an AI-generated haiku. In experimenting with the technology, I sometimes receive pleasing results, but more often, they’re disappointing. Getting the best from AI requires wording each question or comment correctly or exactly to achieve the desired response quality. If I ask the same question multiple times and reword my request slightly each time, the responses increasingly become pleasing.

I wonder what draws me to this, for I can independently imagine and write. Maybe it’s because AI is a bigger component in modern communications than could have been imagined. It makes sense to learn at least a little about accessing the technology.

For starters, I felt that poetry and weather were a good combination. I had to revise my question several times before AI could generate that likable little haiku.

I want to mention that researchers have discovered that there are 3,300 cells in the human brain, and those are grouped into 461 clusters. That’s our individual “smarts” capacity, which becomes used however one does. All that’s confusing anyway, and oh, by the way, “Howdy, AI.”

Today’s header photo shows Peaches with a grilled cheese sand, one of his favs.

Dear Friends: Everything’s about preparing to roll with the punches. Diana

Saturday, October 14, 2023

It’s a new day and back to work for me. A wonderful thing for a part-timer is the option to choose to have days off in a string. One can get lots done at home in three days, making returning to work a vacation from being off.

Returning to work will be a vacation, however short, from my obsession with news of the wars in Israel and Ukraine, and no less, America’s dysfunctional House of Representatives.

As a young woman, I perceived that economic and political news were distant, little affecting my daily patterns. Certainly, there were inconveniences like temporary gasoline shortages, but soon my accustomed patterns of needing and having returned. I didn’t perceive a slow and cumulative gathering of periodic interferences to daily living. However, progressive communications technologies today bring a common understanding that all past economic and political stumbles remain relevant and affect us today.

As an example, we remember 9/11 while observing distant developments worldwide. We have learned to be keenly aware of differing perspectives among the inhabitants and leaderships of various nations. While watching what’s going on, we worry that another unexpected dreadful fallout might occur close to us.

Yes, while working at a non-military job, my worries might ease a bit.

Dear Friends: Three days off allow a stretch, for focusing and obsessing. Diana

Friday, October 13, 2023

Happy Friday the 13th. Unless you’re superstitious, and then beware.

Donkey update: I have begun twice-daily to use a syringe and force Pimmy’s twice-daily medicines into her mouth. As anticipated, some liquid spills onto the floor, but knowing there’s some in her is better than the alternative. Practicing with the syringe will lead to delivering her meds more effectively.

War in the Middle East: A disheartening situation. It compounds our anxieties over other military situations, mostly Ukraine, and here nationally, those crazy mega-shifting social, political, and economic dynamics.

Maybe one of the weirdest stories today is in the ongoing trial of young Sam Bankman-Fried, who, in his twenties, built an FTX mega-goliath. For a while, Bankman-Fried grew extremely wealthy with FTX, and his associated company, Alameda Research. His recognized business smarts attracted major patrons. Everything, however, was a facade. He was illegally laundering money, had created a method of borrowing and moving massive amounts to spend however he wished. Testimonies now from former business colleagues who knew he was cheating, would be laughable if their stories weren’t tragic. They had been vulnerable to showers of cash from Bankman-Fried, who was anticipating becoming the nation’s president.

The saga of FTX and Bankman-Fried is comparable to the earlier debacle of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. Theranos was a healthcare company founded in 2003 by then nineteen-year-old Holmes and touted as having breakthrough technology. For years, it attracted high profile investors. In 2018, Theranos was dissolved upon a public recognition of cover-ups to serious shortcomings in its core technology. Holmes subsequently went on trial and was convicted of defrauding her investors and the public.

Today’s economic and technical worlds may be suckered up by the young, bright, and beautiful, at least regarding Holmes. As to beautiful, Bankman-Fried, not so much. And, we can travel on a short trip to the past and not forget the master of thievery, Bernie Madoff. I could go on, but you get it.

Dear Friends: Much ado nowadays confuses human situations and rationality. Diana

Thursday, October 12, 2023

Yesterday, I practically starved my donkey, Pimmy. Recently, she was diagnosed with Cushing’s Disease and requires twice-daily medications, but refuses any food except the hay she’s always eaten. I have combated this by mixing her meds with delectable grains and molasses, even topping my offerings with Cheerios. Pimmy won’t touch a thing, even though she hadn’t received hay all day yesterday. I gave up and forked out hay in the evening, and she dived in.

I will prepare a vial containing warm water and medicated powder this morning and squirt the mixture into her mouth. Experience assures me that most of the liquid will spill to the ground. With the donkey, only practice will let me better control the process.

Medicine waste is a big deal because her meds are very expensive. I gasp unhappily while tossing a too-stale mixture she has refused or seeing medicated liquid spill to the ground. My friends with “Cushing’s horses” describe similar problems in getting their animals to accept the meds. The pill they must forever take daily is very bitter-tasting. I get it, but my situation adds a wild card–the donkey, an animal significantly different in many ways from horses. Pimmy’s willingness to remain hungry might be one of those differences.

Whichever way it might happen, by free- or force-feeding, I must learn. She needs two daily meds now, early on in her treatment cycle.

Dear Friends: Another day with the “different” animal and tackling challenges. Diana

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Today begins a new string of three days off from my part-time job. It’s blustery and rain-threatening today, which could interfere with the hope of riding horseback. This weather also might be a put-off to starting some still-needed fence work. I want to stretch new hot wiring to dissuade the horses from backing and leaning into fencing to scratch their behinds.

Those are minor compared to my biggest need: getting my donkey to consume foods offered with needed medications. She has Cushing’s disease, and so far, with a nose that has her refusing anything, even very tempting with a medical odor. Her big nose seems able to detect everything. I will try another tactic this morning and keep up my hopes for success.

The donkey is a creature of habit. This new way of feeding, by separating her from horse buddies, upsets her. But if she’s offered palatable food while out among the horses, they’ll confiscate it. My only option is to keep marching forward in trial-and-error modes.

Such local challenges are less perplexing and disturbing than those reported in the national and international news. The Washington Post is about to lay off 120 employees because its subscriptions are down. Interestingly, it has tried to balance national and international news, reporting local (D.C.) news and providing advice on social situations. It’ll be interesting to see this famous old newspaper evolve anew and maybe with a changed focus.

For my friend, Ava, who recently moved to San Antonio: Reports today assert that TX homes are rapidly increasing in price because of the many transplants arriving there from CA. The stats now are spotlighting San Antonio as having escalating home prices. You got there just in time!

Dear Friends: Have a great day. Diana