Anyway, we have been blessed with some really fine weather. When it's in the low 80s in the early afternoon, I want to be out on the shaded back patio with a good book or a radio and with the dog. The view to the back of me is the back wall of a public storage place that's on the other side of the wash, and that wash is gated off so the only foot traffic is that of javelinas and roadrunners. Well, some coyotes might get back there too but I won't know for sure unless I remember that I eventually want to get a motion-sensitive trail camera to see if anything really happens back there when I'm not looking.
As for Christmas, I'm sure that the family I married into will be gathering together for some quality time. Years ago I would usually be off to San Jose to visit my family and friends up there, but with each passing year I have less and less reason to go there as that a lot of the people I was close with have either moved out or are planning to. As I am tracking down the histories of the families I am researching that I am descended from, everyone scatters and that seems to be a common thread throughout most of human history.
Meanwhile, in the news, it's being reported that the Powerball jackpot is up to $1.7 billion. The drawing is tomorrow night, and maybe for grins I will pick out some numbers here and we'll see if I have "won", which I won't, because I'm not buying a ticket. When I had to go to Albertsons for some scrip I noticed a line of five customers itching to make a donation to the Powerball jackpot, and I overheard one of them getting $20 worth of tickets.
Well it's their money, and it really isn't a societal ill that needs addressing as long as the casual lottery players aren't robbing liquor stores to get money to buy the tickets. The lottery addicts, on the other hand, are spending much more of that on every drawing, and those are the lottery players that have the problem. The addicts really wouldn't be that much of an aggravation if they would stop insisting on holding up the line at the Circle K wanting to "go over" all the scratcher games................"are there a lot of winners with this game? How long will this game go on? How many winning tickets did you sell with this one? How often do you see a thousand dollar winner? What are the new games that are coming out next week?" And on and on and on.
As for the casual players, or maybe even the addicts, I'm sure many of them are saying to themselves, "if I win this jackpot, I'm going to do good things with this money. I'm going to donate some of it to charities. I'm going to give gifts to my friends and family members. I don't want to be like one of those rich people who I hate." The reality is, they're going to go into hiding first, and then face problems they never imagined.
All right. Enough of that. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.
I want to find time to send out some emails to some people I am close to, and hopefully the day won't get away from me like some of them have been. I have been spending a lot of time with ham radio and getting my logs caught up. I joined six other hams yesterday for an outing at Saguaro National Park, where a station was set up and we participated in the long running Parks on the Air program. I QSOed enough hams to be credited with my first activation, but I'm going to have to first register with POTA and get that credit.
There is also a Summits on the Air program, and an Islands on the Air program, which gets people with licenses on the airwaves and communicating. Yesterday's outdoor operation was a great deal of fun, and we'll be doing more of these in the near future. We're also talking about going over to New Mexico and operating from there.
In the meantime, Merry Christmas!
