The Road Trip Begins

My Favorite People

Who are your current most favorite people
Daily writing prompt

Anyone who has spent five seconds on this page knows the answer to this question.

My favorite people are my wife Jen:

…and my step kids, Harry and Bellana:

They are the three people I care about the most. My three fav’s, by far.

That’s it. They are the sun my world revolves around. I love them all, more than I ever imagined I could love anyone. They make everything better.

The pics are from our trip to Disney World back in January. The two of Jen by herself are on film, the rest are digital. You know, just in case you were curious.

Monorail on Film

It took me a whole day to get a shot of the monorail, and it just had to have a family walking in front of it, right?

Can I call this street photography?

Anywhere in the World

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Daily writing prompt

There is a short, obvious answer to this question. There is also the day dream fantasy answer. I’ll give you both and maybe give a photo or two.

Home is where my wife, Jen is. Where ever she is, that is where I want to live. Right now that is a little ranch house in North Eastern Massachusetts, just a stone’s throw away from the New Hampshire state line.

That’s the honest, real answer. I want to be where she is. Now for the daydream fantasy answer. There are a lot of options. I sort of see myself as a city guy when I fantasize about moving to a new place. I would probably prefer to live in the suburbs close to a big city, but for discussion’s sake let’s say we’re moving to the city itself.

First on the list is San Diego. I went there for the first time on our honeymoon and fell in love with the place. We’ve been back a few times and each time we’ve gone it’s gotten harder and harder to leave.

2012-04-26 - Balboa and Seaport Village 375

The second daydream choice would probably be Manhattan. This is conflicting to me given that I am a Boston sports fan and absolutely loath all New York teams. It would be hard to live in enemy (Yankees) territory, but I think I could manage it.

The dark horse candidate comes from our honeymoon again. We visited a bunch of places on our honeymoon. One destination was Washington, DC. While we were there we explored Maryland a little and spent a little time in Annapolis. That is a city I think I could live in.

As far as the United States is concerned let’s just say that I am a New England guy first and foremost. I could live in the mountains of New Hampshire, the coast of Maine, the lake in Vermont, the Southern cost of Rhode Island, and… well… Connecticut… not so much. If I could pick anywhere in New England though, it would absolutely be Boston.

What about places outside of the US? As we watch in horror as fascism rises here, I often find myself wondering if the time to leave has arrived. I would need to go someplace where they speak English. Canada is cold so I probably would not want to go there, even though Toronto is beautiful.

Montreal is pretty wonderful too, but that has the same negative that New York has. Living among the enemy (Montreal Canadians fans) and all.

England would be a decent choice too, but Brexit makes me think that it wouldn’t be different enough from the US as far as the political climate is concerned. Scotland and Ireland would be better. Glasgow or Dublin maybe? I’ve never been so no pictures. Australia would be another option, but I really don’t know much about that country beyond the Monty Python Philosophers sktech.

So there you have it. The correct answer to where would I live is where ever Jen lives. The fantasy answers are San Diego, Manhattan, Annapolis, and maybe some English speaking place outside of the US.

Tuesday Morning

Wednesdays are my commute to the office days, but this week I have an in-person meeting on Tuesday as well. Here I sit, in the office.

The commute was okay, but a little exciting. My car told me my gas tank had about 97 miles worth of gas left in it. My GPS told me the office was 73 miles away (today’s meeting is not in my regular building, it’s much farther away). I did the complex math in my head and decided not to stop for gas.

All through the drive I kept updating that very complicated mathematical equation to make sure I was still going to get to the building without running out of gas, and hopefully also have enough gas left over to get me to a gas station when I leave. Everything worked out. My car was yelling at me to fill-‘er-up by the time I parked, but outside of that… success.

The only downside of the trip is that I gave myself a couple of errands to run before I left the house, and I got them all done… but I forgot it’s Tuesday and not Wednesday and I forgot to put the trash barrel out on the street. Ugh. It’s okay, there wasn’t much in it this week, but who knows how it will look next week. Wish me luck, folks.

Back Home

We’re back home. We were out for about five hours. The trip was a bit of a bust from the leaf peeping and photo taking point of view. From the perspective of Jen and me jumping in the car and road trippin’ for the hell of it, it was a total success.

We didn’t stop anywhere. As soon as we got North of Concord, NH the clouds moved in and everything looked gloomy and bad. We dipped our toes into the White Mountain region and then turned around and took the long way home.

I took exactly one photograph:

Leaf Peeping

The weather forecast was kinda crummy today but the reality isn’t too terrible. Jen and I are going to give leaf peeping a shot. That will let us go out in the world while still being paranoid about spreading any last vestiges of the Covid… even though that is literally not a thing.

I have my Nikons in the camera bag. The Z5 mirrorless with the new 28mm lens, and the FG-20 film camera with the 35-70mm zoom. I even turned on the SnapBridge app connection so that I can possibly post Z5 shots to the blog while we’re out. There was only one shot on the memory card and it crossed to my phone and it’s Robin, of course.

Lets see how it goes today. Fingers crossed for some cool views and decent shots.

When Can We Go Back

I only took a few digital pictures at our one day in Disney World last week. When can we go back so I can take some more?

Next time we go to Epcot I want to buy a t-shirt in every country in the World Showcase. You heard it here first.

What Comes Next

I was really hoping that Covid would be behind me by today. Nope. I’m still dealing with it. I do feel a lot better though. I feel well enough that I can start thinking of what comes next.

I haven’t exercised in over a week. I haven’t closed my calorie ring on the activity app once in over a week. Do I start tomorrow? I am planning to work a full day so maybe I should skip the exercising in the morning for a few more days. I don’t want to wear myself out before the work day even starts. That’s not ideal, but it is safe.

What about music? There are six days left in the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. There is no way I will finish 50 songs, but I could get myself a whole lot closer than I am. I was looking at my Trello board and I think I could get into the low 40s without killing myself. Do I want to record some guitar parts in the morning? I could probably manage that. I don’t want to do a car vocals until I test negative. I know I wouldn’t run into any human creatures, but why risk it? I will stay home until I test negative and then after that I will mask up if I do anything out of the house. That also means no photography fun outside of the house for at least a few more days.

As for tonight, my water goal is done, my vitamins are done, my protein goal is… almost done. Five grams or so still to go. I can get that easily. I am a bit full now but in 30 minutes or so I’ll be ready to finish that off. I am hoping I will catch the new episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon tonight before I go to sleep. If I can sneak in a little more Doctor Who before I sleep that would be nice too. I think I’ve blown through more than three seasons (or was it four?) during my quarantine. So very much Who.

Next weekend the plan is to clean the house from top to bottom. I want the house to be covid-residue free before we invite anyone over. Safety first, right? After that I want to push to travel again. Maybe just a road trip, or possibly an overnight somewhere. I don’t want us to lose our covid nerve. We’ve fallen off the horse and I want to make sure we get back on as soon as possible. Does that make sense? We locked down so hard that feeling up to leaving the house took a lot of effort. Then to have us catch the plague for the first time during a vacation? I don’t want us to be afraid to travel again. I want us to go somewhere as soon as possible. It’s Fall now, so maybe in a few weeks it will be time for leaf peeping. Maybe an overnight to Manhattan would be a good destination too. I also want us to rebook our long weekend in Disney World. The trip that went bust on us was an experiment to see if it was worth it to fly all the way there for a 3-4 day visit. The answer to that question is still up in the air and we definitely have to do the research. The question is, when? Maybe around Christmas? We’ll have to look into the options.

So there are a few things I am thinking about for the near future. The real question is, do I set my alarm clock for 5:00am tomorrow, or 6:00am. I won’t have an answer until I actually lay down to sleep. Until then…