Wednesday, March 26…Dinner with Friends (Kacey Musgrave)

 

   Peeked my head out at about 7:30…another warm morning but since there were thin clouds to temper the sun’s intensity, we decided a walk would be doable.

   Out the door at 8:25. Kim was still trying for that elusive quail picture, so we walked down to the far end of the pecan grove, then quietly walked back through the grove.  I could see them up ahead on the grove side of the bushes. I held back and let Kim do his thing as I didn’t want to accidentally cause them to fly.  By the time he got up to where the quail gather, they were nowhere to be seen or heard. Since they hadn’t flown, they must have scurried across the road. Neither of us would have seen that because we didn’t have a sightline to the road…too many bushes obscuring the view.  Oh, well, we can always try again tomorrow.

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   There are ground squirrels eating the potatoes at Nutt Rd…caught ‘em on camera. If the camera had been aimed too high to catch the movement of the squirrels, it’s no wonder that this little animal, about the size of a chipmunk, could slip in unnoticed. But not anymore.

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   Today was a slight bit cooler than yesterday…didn’t get into the triple digits but did creep into the 90’s.  It wasn’t much of a temperature difference, but the air didn’t feel as thick; maybe the thin cloud cover helped with that.

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   The bulk of the day was spent in the air-conditioned camper. I finished a lady gnome this morning.  Isla was next up in the Name a Gnome game, so I sent her a text.  She responded with “Winifred…Winnie, for short.”  Winnie is up on the shelf with the rest of the crew.  Next in line to name gnomes are the Tennessee WonderKids but I have to get moving on that front. Need three gnomes and my time here is dwindling.  Already got one started.

   Made a run to Coolidge to do errands, then returned to the coolness of the camper. Not sure I could live in a place where air-conditioning isn’t a luxury but a necessity.   

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   Yesterday, my computer informed me that it reset the time to that of Saskatchewan since it appeared I had changed time zones.  Say what?!  Today when I turned the computer on, it gave me the weather and traffic report for Stanley Mission. Twenty-seven degrees with light traffic.  What the hell?! Where is Stanley Mission?  Had a dickens of a time trying to locate it on the map, but eventually found it in the middle of nowhere, Saskatchewan. Of course it is.  In case anyone’s interested, the temperature has dropped to 12o, it’s snowing and the time is aligned with our Mountain Time Zone, making it an hour ahead of us.

   I’ve never been to Stanley Mission nor has my computer. Finally figured out how to get the computer to realize that I’m sitting in Picacho, AZ, where the temperature is in the 70’s and traffic is never light out on I-10. 

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   I knew from Tammy that Felicia and Ryan were taking their employees out for supper tonight…sort of an appreciation thing. Joe leaves on Monday and Tammy’s last day of work will be on April 4th.  On Monday, when I got home from a bike ride, Kim informed me that we had been invited also.  Not sure why, because we certainly don’t work here, but we gladly accepted the invite.  Went the Hideout, a steakhouse in Casa Grande.  Had a good time with our ‘Arizona Family’.  Haven’t seen too much of Felicia this year so it was an opportunity to catch up with her.

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   Listened to This American Life on my walk today. Topic today was “That’s a Weird Thing to Lie About”…unnecessary and outrageous lies that make you wonder---why lie about that in the first place?  On the first segment I heard a phrase that was new to me: Polite fiction, which to me sounded similar to ‘a little white lie’. I thought it was a phrase that Kasey, the guest on the segment, made up. But I looked it up when I got to the camper.  It’s a real thing with a real definition: Polite fiction is a social scenario in which all participants are aware of a truth but pretend to believe in some alternative version of events to avoid conflict or embarrassment.  So, we say things that aren’t true but do it to make others feel good or perhaps less bad.  Examples: ‘I really like your haircut’ or ‘This has really been fun’ or ‘We must do this again some time’.  The intent isn’t to deliberately mislead or lie; the intent is to be polite, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.  

   The concept isn’t new to me, but the phrase ‘polite fiction’ was.

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   Kim was able to get a few images in after we returned from supper. Slowly adding to the total images needed for stacking and comparing with the previous attempt.

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