Sunday, January 08, 2023

Yesterday, I made a “quick trip” with a shopping list to Costco but was there for over an hour. I kept running into folks I know, some whom I’d met up with recently and others not so much. Our catch-up meetings later felt unusual and I am reflecting as to why.

There’s some history in that I used to be a sample server at our local Costco. While working, I’d watch as people “ran into one another” and for long periods talked and blocked some of “my aisle.” I could see that the store had destination value stretching beyond the main goal of selling merchandise. “Shoppers” conspicuously relieved boredom on rainy and snowy days by coming in and just wandering or hanging out reading the books for sale. Parents routinely brought in their school-age children for entertainment and treats from sample tables. Many shopping or wandering bumped into acquaintances, and all would group for a while.

Back then, on my off days I could be among the “boredom group” but never in the “bumping into” crowd. While working and distributing food samples, I disliked meet-and-greets who blocked my aisle and chatted noisily. After yesterday when I, too, met and greeted, I considered what seemed different and concluded it’s that I don’t work in the store. In the old days, my shopping friends would stop, say hello, and we’d catch up. After leaving my inside-Costco job and making new friends in subsequent workplaces, we’re meeting while shopping in the store.

Unlike a large urban environment, for example, LA, here in Central Oregon there’s one Costco. Yesterday, while chatting with friends, I avoided glancing around apologetically at a nearby sample server. I had begun realizing and accepting that meeting-ups are part and parcel of shopping in the large general marketplace.

Going forward, I will count out any possibility of successfully “quick tripping,” with or without a shopping list, to our local Costco.

Dear Friends: To avoid or shorten casual meetings, shop in the store’s earliest- or latest-open hours. Diana

Saturday, January 07, 2023

Today will be horse-focused and busy. A load of hay is scheduled to arrive and be stacked. It’s a “relief infusion” that will provide food aplenty for my equines until well into next summer. For a change, I’ll be relieved from having to scramble in early summer to locate available hay, as drought has shortened supplies. This winter is wet enough that next summer’s yields may be greater. I’ll resupply from later summer’s second cutting.

My farrier, Russ, regularly drives from his home base in California and works locally for a few days. Today, he’ll be here to trim my trio’s hooves. Russ knows his business. He watches as a horse trots, sees how its hooves strike and its weight shifts, and then shapes hooves so that each lands most efficiently. I trust Russ’s skills, and moreover, think he’s unique among farriers. Russ has politically liberal views. Today, he’ll offer an interesting perspective on the House’s choregraphed voting to tame a potential leader.

Last night, I couldn’t resist watching a live video stream from the House, as Representatives entered their fifteenth voting round. Theater!

Small wonder that so many people worldwide are addicted to Tik-Tok’s unending, brief, funny videos.

Anyway, I digress from my original point, that today will be busy and interesting. Plus, the local weather is warming up again. Today will reach into the mid-forties, and maybe slightly higher here at the ranch. Weeks of freezing temps make the grounds frozen. I can’t drag the dry lot to clean, so it’s a territory of frozen muck. Walking on those solids is like navigating an ancient lava flow, carefully placing each foot to avoid tripping on protrusions.

Still, it’s the mid-forties! Ah, summerlike.

Dear Friends: Hay, hooves, warmth, and humor; everything a doctor would prescribe.

Friday, January 06, 2023

I’m thinking about pulling up an adventure fantasy, featuring a Welsh Pony, which I drafted years ago. Its title is, “Little Miss Merry,” and in it, the pony narrates her story in first-person.

The real Merry lived with me before suddenly becoming the victim of a severe colic episode. Losing her occurred rapidly and was heartbreaking to me. For months afterward, I worked at working through some of my sadness by creating an adventure story that featured the pony’s individuality and courage.

The near-final draft read well enough for friends to see, and they generated encouraging feedback. That draft needed more editing, however, and the pony’s clear and interesting activities begged for illustrations to enhance her story. Real photos of Merry weren’t the right solution. I am incapable of illustrating and wasn’t able to afford someone who could. The project long has been on hold.

Perhaps until now, though, with DALL-E available. The header photo from DALL-E pretty well illustrates an important scene. In it, Miss Merry accidentally has met and begins to exchange perceptions with a big, old, wise draft horse.

Dear Friends: I’m running out of time, might write more after experimenting with illustrations. Diana

Thursday, January 05, 2023

I had a jolly good time yesterday shopping, to furnish a couple of gaps in my home. Unless I want to drive clear to Portland and shop at Ikea, I am comfortable substituting the local Bi-Mart. The stores have similar furnishings, minimalistic, inexpensive, and rather nice-looking.

I like Idea and hope it comes to growing Central Oregon. While Ikea merchandise is available online, my experience with its products has taught me to see, touch, and evaluate, before buying. I approach what’s available at Bi-Mart in the same way. Cheap furnishings require assessing their potential for surviving routine wear and tear. I’m not particularly hard on anything but have dogs that might chew and my cat sharpens his nails. I like it when replacing something isn’t a big deal.

Lots of big things come packed in flat boxes and require assembling. I dislike assembling furniture, first, because instructions difficult to understand are hard to follow. The provided assembling tool is too small for easy use. There are differing bolts appearing alike too much. Finally, pieces could come together too heavy for me to manipulate. But cheap furnishings are self-hauls to home, and one assembles.

My new stuff doesn’t need assembling as I selected carefully. Most pieces simply require “putting into place and using.”

Starting this New Year, all inside is shiny. Time will tell how long that may last.

Dear Friends: This “discardable age” is good for pocketbooks but lousy for the environment. Diana

Wednesday, January 04, 2022

After acquiring the needed basics for a well-enough life (e.g., shelter, food, health, and [for me] re-flooring to ease living with dogs), I have begun re-exploring my potential to be more creative. In other words, with the floors done and my housework comparatively effortless, while moving and rearranging household items, I’m rediscovering pastimes to which I’ve paid little attention.

I’ve been dusting off and finding places for the tools of those pastimes. There’s my sewing machine. On it a couple of years ago I made a skirt. That became an article I loved but never wore, which still hangs in my closet. Now, on finding more clothing patterns, I remember wanting to keep sewing but lacked both the time and space.

Now, about the oil paints, brushes, pastel chalks, and watercolor supplies I’m finding. All were played with and then dropped. Along with those tools, I’m finding sketches and trial paintings. None were very good but all showed potential. I needed schooling and practice and without time for that hoped to dash off some sort of recognizable art.

I hope to return to those activities.

For sewing, I have set up my machine again. I have snow pants and jeans needing shortening that could provide useful practice if I could remember how to thread the complex electronic machine. In making room so the floor guy could do his work, I lost several instruction books supporting my hobbies. Recently, I found on eBay an instruction book for my sewing machine and ordered it. I might be sewing next week.

For the art supplies, it seemed I couldn’t restart without first taking classes. But I’ve had an epiphany! Recognizing that my outcomes needn’t be figurative but impressionistic, AI popped into my head, specifically, DALL-E, which can render pieces less figurative but very expressive. I will use DALL-E for pieces with which to practice art.

(A note about reproducing images. Art that copies a photograph isn’t considered original unless one artist produces the original image as well as reproduces it. I’ll argue that DALL-E would produce my own original art, for I must describe in detail what’s desired before DALL-E can pull together millions of pieces needed from worldwide sources to produce my desired outcome.)

Dear Friends: All that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Diana

Tuesday, January 03, 2022

That’s my deck very early today appearing warm and inviting. In twenty-something degrees weather, my best option was photographing through a glass door, which captured some reflected background noise. Overall, however, a pleasing scene. Some neighbors have clicked off their Christmas lights, but mine will remain on until around the end of this month; in other words, when I feel like doing it.

Here’s a little treat, yesterday’s capture of busy Miss Mitzvah.

I adopted her while working in a pet store. A woman came in with her, said she’d rescued the pup from an abusive home, and would be finding her a new home. And, there I was!

Mitzvah has received short shrift this year because of Chase, another puppy I adopted. Through his early puppy stages, Chase has consumed much time and energy. When he came to us, Mitzvah’s twelve pounds towered over him. Now he’s approaching one year old, weighs fifty pounds, and they’re still best buddies.

He has helped Mitzvah get over some issues from her previous person. A problem when she began living with me was that she refused to go through any doorway. It was difficult, getting her outside or back inside, and maybe someone had abused her.

My response was to lift and set her down, outside or inside, as appropriate. While little Chase was growing, they ran around together and she easily followed him through doorways. Problem solved!

This little Jack Russell and Poodle mix knows exactly how to work a person. My lucky find.

Dear Friends: Have a wonderful day. Diana

Monday, January 02, 2022

Well, we’re off to the next twelve months. And with a clean start or wishing that could be so. Today’s news is full of ideas we can incorporate for happiness, sociability, and productivity. We can improve our ways of eating, can start exercising happily, can employ more useful better and good habits. That’s only the beginning. There are books to read, movies to see, music not-to-miss, and travel experiences for world-broadening and sightseeing.

Here at home in Central Oregon, I welcome the new year. My first notion of this year’s clean slate is wrapped to this winter’s ending: more sunshine, longer daylights, less muck for wading through to care for outside animals, and lighter outerwear easing physical movements.

My second notion is that tabula rasa evokes a mood relevant to this time of year. Longer daylights let us lengthen our sightings and we can imagine a future that’s fresh and more meaningful. Actually, that’s true, because we’re twelve months older with more experience in living. These will make the twelve months ahead different in meaningful ways. Our task as a new year begins is to reflect back, think ahead, and consider the added value of more understanding and potential.

By reflecting, assessing, and recognizing, we are preparing for action. We really never face a blank life slate, but by pausing periodically, like at the year-end, and evaluating past life experiences, we might find some areas that offer new opportunities. Most will be small with maybe a few large, but changes will add to our experience and wisdom.

Ah, we’ll replay all this next December 31st, and next January 01.

Dear Friends: Central Oregon, cold and sunshiny, invites today as a good starting point. Diana

Sunday, January 01, 2023

Here’s a typical guideline for a goal-setting road map:

Look ahead and make a plan for the future. Identify key goals and key steps for achieving them. Break down major steps into necessary earlier steps. Identify resources needed. Create a timeline, for periodically reviewing and adjusting the plan, and for completing it.

I did all that way back in my corporate career days. Almost everyone who works still must create that map. It’s a worker’s guideline, and used for coaching individuals, and measuring, evaluating their productivity, or lack thereof, over time.

Through the last days of 2022, I tried looking ahead and setting a few goals, but resisted. I’m a victim of corporate training and the road map puts me in a bad mood. It had too much presence in my working years. I recall meetings with supervisors about my performance, and how our views merged or diverged depended on how individually we each attended to details.

I could be loose about writing details, although they’re always embedded in my thought processes. What often has saved my bacon have been well-organized and detail-oriented support folks.

These days, I’m my own planner and evaluator and without outside prompting for specifics and details. I’m still too lose on details to create an effective road map. If I could, and did, it would need monitoring and attending. I still prefer to create plans on scraps of paper and have details in my head.

So as usual, this year, I’ve no written resolutions, road maps, timelines. I have resolutions in my head: Stay healthy, Take care of property and animals, Be certain to get out and among people, Play creatively with my usual interests, and above all, Keep Learning.

Dear Friends: I hope you’ve successfully planned for ’23, and will achieve your wishes. Diana

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Saying, a few hours early, “Happy New Year!”

By this year’s last day, I was planning on having created a top-level list of “happenings” over the past twelve months. I would have tried ranking them into categories like good or not-so-much. After thinking about the complexities involved in ranking and labeling, I reconsidered, wondering about what’s different that might capture my attention in 2023. Well, besides the always-important attention to caring for my property, and animals, and sustaining ordinary interests.

Daily in the past year, events roaring into our headlines have stayed as big news. Likely, all is intensified after a couple of years of a focus on avoiding covid and self-isolating. This year’s news has stretched beyond one nation’s social, political, and economic conditions. Worldwide events equally invading international headlines are ongoing concerns.

I’m a news junkie. The year’s headlines and my personal reading interests make me think deeply about current situations involving technology, population, health, and wealth. Technologies informing the world’s population contribute to ever-growing human wants and restlessness. Medical advances that sustain human lives are increasing populations. Wealth centered among a few has created the now powerful few, with many either threatening or creating chaos.

In the new year, I will begin a learning process for enlightenment about why and how our social, political, and economic worlds are evolving as they are today. I will read five classic books representing the history and development of science, the force that has created our modern world. These books were recommended by a science writer for The Economist, a widely respected news magazine:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

A Short History of Nearly Everything

The Origin of Species

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Periodic Table

I’ll spend most of the next twelve months wading through those books. In the process, they might help me understand better what’s happening and why things are so.

Dear Friends: Have a wonderful New Year’s Eve, and with optimism ahead. Diana

Friday, December 30, 2022

Welcome to the penultimate day. Tomorrow is when this year ends. I’m thinking about what might have been good and what might not have. I’m cautiously doing so after having considered many previous twelve-month stretches. All seem to have lasted for about the blink of an eye. I recognize that assessing a period for true values, versus little or none, is like wild guessing. More time needs to pass and with longer reflection.

Off the top of my head, seemingly good occurrences, and those less so, fall into distinctive columns. Those are squishy, however, for upon reflection every happening combines pros and cons. Fairly assessing most items in either column requires both plenty of time and skillful thoughtfulness.

This is a special time of year and with traditions. This distinctive period of stopping and restarting is an opportunity to reflect and evaluate. It’s worthwhile today and tomorrow to imagine the past year’s reasonable goods versus its less-so. That would provide a renewal basis for self-guidance in 2023.

Dear Friends: These years, so very different from the past, mightily challenge our personal visions. Diana