As if I Needed Another Retirement Project

Last night I got the wild hare to download all the photos from my cellphone onto my computer.  You would think it would have been an easy task.  But nope.  Everything has to be fight.  In a world where you can't walk across the street at 2:00 AM to get to the mailbox without a car suddenly coming down the road at you, everything has to be a fight.

I'll have to admit that I haven't explored all of the capabilities of my smackphone..........oops, smartphone.  I learned right away that the computer and the cellphone didn't want to talk to each other, and it was at the cellphone end.  I was able to stumble upon the USB settings to allow the transfer of the photos and then to get the ball rolling.  But did all of the photos make it over to that destination photo that I created?

Nope.  Not all of them did.  Everything has to be a fight.  The first two hundred or so of them did.  The rest?  They didn't.  It might have something to do with what version of camera software was in use at the time I took the photos.  The 2018 photos went over, but I was using a different camera for them.  I can't remember how long I've now had this phone, but it might have been 2022.

Anyway, I fought with it some more, and learned how to select the phots individually.  But then they didn't want to go to the folder I wanted them to, but they would go to the "Personal" folder on this computer, which has photos from years back........and dang, did I take a lot of pictures back then, or what?  I created a folder for this last road trip.

But it wasn't over.  I had to open them in Paint, save as JPEG files, then shrink them so they would fit on a page.  The results are now available on a new page I created here last night, and I'm thinking I should have taken more photos than I did.  That means we have to do the trip all over again, right?  Sheila won't mind, but would rather see some new things and go in a different direction on the next one.  And that might be San Diego as that my mother-in-law is over her ear infections and will feel comfortable in going thru those mountains that I-8 climbs thru.

And yes, I now have a new retirement project.  I realized that one page won't be enough to house the collection, and the next photo page will be called "Recent Photos" and for the time being will duplicate what I have on the "Miscellaneous Photos" that I created last night.  I have tried renaming some pages on this blog, but couldn't make the changes look like I wanted them to, so "Miscellaneous" will remain just that and new pages dedicated to past road trips will eventually be created.

I didn't really need to take another project on, but sometimes having five or six of these going at once does make for a varied day.  Maybe deep down inside I fear boredom, and I don't do well in situations where there is nothing to do and all day to do it in.  I've changed jobs because of that.  

With that I'm going to call this a post.  I'm chained to the house for the rest of the day while covering for a major A/C job that we've got going on with the house.  So it's spend time with my projects, and maybe get a new photo page or two posted.  

I know; I could do Facebook, but this blog is as far as it goes with documenting what goes on with me.

Another Road Trip!

About two weeks ago my mother-in-law wanted to visit her friend from her high school days, who lives in El Cajon, and she doesn't like traveling alone.  Sheila and I were about to do one anyway, but we thought, OK, we'll drive over to the People's Republic, drop her off, and then have four or five days to ourselves.  Two days before our intended departure, she didn't want to be climbing thru those mountain passes so Sheila and I went somewhere else.

As has been the case with our trips, we figure out the night before where we are going to be the first night, and the second night's stop won't be figured out until we're on the way to the first stop.  We ended up in Flagstaff, staying at the Super 8 across from that Himalayan restaurant which is one of our favorite stops.  I thought from there we were going to head west and take historic US66 over to Kingman, but it didn't turn out that way.  The next morning it was decided to go east, which I was good with, since I hadn't been on that stretch of I-40 since 1986, and this time I wanted to get off the interstate where possible and retrace Route 66.

The first stop was in Winslow, made famous by that well-known song that mentions standing on the corner.  We did just that.  We stood at the corner, where some others were also, though in our case there wasn't some chick in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at us.  We had lunch, walked around for two hours or so, and then it was on to our next stop, wherever that would be.

As we were approaching Holbrook, where someone who grew up there once told me, has something of a rivalry with Winslow as far as their high school football teams go, we decided that the next night was going to be in Gallup New Mexico.   I wanted to check out those trading posts in Lupton AZ, on the state line.  Once we saw the price stickers, we got back on and continued.

Gallup has a stretch of US 66 used as a business loop, and with lots of those kinds of stretches you're treated to abandoned buildings that used to be gas stations, and other abandoned buildings that used to be motels.  I'm guessing that half of those motels went under while the other half made it.  We stayed in one of them, and had a memorable meal at Scooter's BBQ.....which we'll do again our next time in Gallup.

Now at this point in the trip, road fatigue was beginning to set in, and we decided that we would spend two nights at our next stop, which was Santa Fe.  I had never been to Santa Fe before but I'd go again, and this time try to have a full weekday there so I can go inside the state capitol.  Downtown Santa Fe was interesting but there was no parking to be had since there was some event that closed off some streets and rendered the paid parking lots full.  We drove around a few neighborhoods, and then went back to the hotel for some rest.  Later on that night we ate at Los Potrillos Mexican restaurant, which was Mexico City style.  

Sunday morning it was back on the interstate again, which meant having to pass thru Albuquerque again, but at that time it wasn't the mess that we saw on Friday.  We continued on down I-25, stopping for lunch at Truth or Consequences and for the night at Deming, after passing thru Hatch and taking the shortcut to I-10.

That turned out to be the third time we've overnighted in Deming, and what used to be our favorite Mexican restaurant was closed since it was Sunday.  I had my heart set on an authentic New Mexico style of Mexican cuisine, which we found at Irma's downtown, and Irma's blew that other place right out of the water.  I had the #1 combo plate, Christmas style, which meant half red sauce and half green sauce.  

The next afternoon we were back home in Tucson, one day earlier than we needed to be, but it worked out for the good as that we got home before a very violent thunderstorm hit our side of town.  The next day it was southeast Arizona getting it, making for some adverse driving conditions.

So, I'm back home, and one thing I'm telling myself is that I need to create a photo album page where I can post pictures of our adventures.  I don't know when I can get to that.  We've got some other irons in the fire right now and one reason for our trip was to get away from them for a week.  The monsoons should be done in a week or so, and I might send out my updated resume as that I'm interested in finding out what kind of contract work is available.  I don't feel a strong inclination to come out of retirement, but I think I need to be aware of what is out there.

That's it for now.