Kris

I saw this view of the city last night through one of our shades. I thought it looked interesting.

Congratulations to Nemo for winning Eurovision 2024! We enjoyed the performances yesterday, and truly feel that Eurovision has united us by music. I was cheering for both Switzerland and Croatia, and both songs will be in my playlists this year.

Watching Eurovision is one of my favorite yearly activities. I cannot wait for the finals on Saturday.

We enjoyed watching Eurovision yesterday. I particularly liked Croatia and Sweden. But I find it odd the singers from Sweden were from Norway. And whoever is writing the jokes for the hosts is doing a great job!

Nothing makes you appreciate normal life more than getting a cold and not being able to breathe. I will never take being able to finish my entire sentences again for granted, especially since I need to take a breath halfway through now. And sitting in silence without coughing is golden!

I keep trying to make analog note taking happen. I realized today that it’s just not my style. Not only is my handwriting poor (although I’m from the cursive generation), but my pen is always out of ink. I thrive with typing and technology. I just need to settle for one app now.

This afternoon I had the chance to watch the inagural Minnesota professional women’s hockey team play their first game. It was soooo much fun! Totally different than watching men play, and in many ways it was much better! This was their first home game, and they won, 3-0 against Montreal.

Last night we used a new pizza stone for the first time. The instructions told us to preheat the oven to 500 degrees (F) with the stone in the oven. Then we used a peel (a new term for me) to slide our pizzas onto the stone. It was some of the best pizza we have ever made!

Because the new year will be starting soon, I have this undeniable urge to organize my life and do something to improve it. Any suggestions for apps, tools, or things I can use? I use Apple Calendar for my daily meetings, and Bear for notes. I also use Things for tasks. But I want more!

I completed an online course on making an iOS app. I now know where to put variables and how to insert my code. Swift is pretty nice, but different from python. If I can find the time, I’ll keep working on the app, with the hope to have something done after the holiday break.

I was finally able to get Core Location working in Xcode yesterday. I had the iOS simulator output latitute and longitude coordinates. Now I need to figure out how to do something with those coordinates. Oh, and design a nice user iterface. I don’t think I’ll quit my day job just yet.

Yesterday I began to learn how to create my first iOS app. It was simple, but everything worked perfectly. Of course, I dreamed about nothing else last night. Why does that always happen?

Today I get to move on to step two, and I’m really excited.

I enjoy knitting and talking. I had a good idea, and I wonder if anyone has done this? There should be a web site where you can connect to other people knitting and just sit and talk while you knit. It should be for small groups, not hundreds of people. You can just drop in. Has anyone done this?

Just finished our 7th MN State Park hiking club hike today - Interstate State Park. This was our first winter hike, and it was wonderful.

While running this morning, I listened to a Hidden Brain podcast on cognative dissonance. I learned to make a public statement so I’ll feel compelled to do something to match my statement.

I’m going to get my cholesterol and blood pressure into an ideal range. And if I can do it, so can you.

Our sixth Minnesota state park hike was completed yesterday. This time it was Afton State Park. Since the temperature was in the 50’s, the park was quite busy. Half of the hiking trail was paved, and the other half ran along the closed ski area, which will likely be filled in a month or so!

Our Pyrex baking dish completely exploded in our oven yesterday, without any warning. Needless to say, we did not eat that pork roast and ended up ordering pizza. It was quite disappointing.

In 1989, I purchased one of the first graphing calculators on the market - a Casio FX-7000GA for my math class. It used three CR2032 batteries, so when it died, you couldn’t use it for weeks until you could find new batteries. I even programmed it to factor numbers and calculate pi!

Yesterday we completed our fifth state park hike. This time it was Sakatah Lake State Park. The area is surrounded by farmland, so we were quite surprised to find a hiking trail with significant elevation changes. We squeezed this hike in before the snow this winter!

Last night I attended a talk by the author Jesmyn Ward, author of “Let Us Descend.” It was interesting hearing how she developed her characters and what motivated her to write the book. I can’t wait to read it!

I tried to set up a new Windows computer yesterday. One of the programs I installed would not open, and several lost their icons and reverted to a default icon. Then I found out I can’t enable memory integrity because some of the drivers used are conflicting. This is why I use a Mac.

We decided to visit our fourth Minnesota State Park yesterday - this time it was Nerstrand Big Woods near Northfield. It was crowded, but beautiful. There were some big hills, so I’m glad we brought out hiking poles.

Yesterday we completed the hiking club trail at Minneopa State Park. We only took one wrong path, which added another 1.4 miles to our hike, but it was enjoyable despite this wrong turn.

While on a walk yesterday evening, I came to the realization that those things we thought were going to make our lives more efficient are actually making our lives more complicated. Phone calls don’t need to be returned instantly. Take time to visit someone in person. And write a real letter instead of an email.

Yesterday I made the difficult decision to abandon Reddit. I used that site as a way to stay current on trends and topics of discussion. I’m no longer comfortable with the way some organizations are monitizing user’s data, so I’m open to suggestions where to go next.