Sunday

[susandennis]

Yesterday, I went through my Fitbit app and requested 'friends' of random people in my contacts list. My contacts list - like many other people's? - is now a 15 year old mismash of people some of whom I no longer even remember.

But, one person on the list was a friend I met on LJ but who hasn't been back in ages. I actually met her in person once when she was on a Seattle visit. When last I heard she and her wife had had a little baby. This morning, I got an acceptance from her and the profile photo was her and a really cute little girl. So I popped her a note about the baby growing up. She responded right away with a new picture. The baby is off to first grade in the Fall! And.. she has twin 3 year old brothers. The picture was almost too much cute per pixel. Amazing and fun to get an update. Thank you, Fitbit!

My New Zealand friends went from Toronto to Chicago yesterday. A text this morning says they got to the Toronto airport 2.5 hours before their flight and after getting through all the border bruhaha they made it to their plane with two MINUTES to spare. What a mess. I, long ago, gave up on travel. I spent years going from place to place but after 9/11 it just became too much of a hassle for me - the getting there wasn't worth the being there. So the current travel issues don't affect my trips but it does affect me. Friends are cancelling trips right and left. That means far fewer trip reports and photographs and shared experiences for me. And, of course, it's all about me.

At lease Scott and Julie are now safely in the US. They come here from Chicago on Tuesday.

My brother's older son is visiting him in Texas this weekend. I just caught this on the webcam ... Father and Son bonding over tools. Iconic. Alex lives with his wife and two daughters outside Boston and the two of them get one on one time very rarely. This is a very special deal. Also Alex dwarfs his father which cracks me up.



I had a lovely swim. I stopped at the Cash and Carry on the way home and reinvigorated my Diet Dr. Pepper stash. Whew!



Today there will be a bit of sewing, some baseball, some left over kung pao beef and no telling what else.

Comments

[rock-dinosaur.livejournal.com]

Maybe I've failed to catch the drift of your post, but has Fitbit been on the go for fifteen years? I thought it was a fairly new thing.

I had one of their pedometers for a while, and I found it did help to motivate me to get a bit of exercise in. I had two issues with it, though. 1) There was no way to switch it off so it wouldn't count the bus going over pot-holes and speed-bumps as steps. And 2) The batteries kept running out after about a week. I couldn't afford to keep buying new ones, so I ended up just binning it.

[susandennis]

ha! no but i can see how you got there.... my gmail account (and so my contact list) is about 15 years old. I've been using a tracker for 4 years but Fitbit only for a couple of months.

I'm strangely addicted to tracking my lack of fitness. I write it off as Yet Another Old Lady Quirk.

[rock-dinosaur.livejournal.com]

There's absolutely no harm in it, I'm sure. Striding about has to be better than getting a chair-shaped arse!

[susandennis]

Done and great idea to pull out my dashboard URL. Thanks!

[laura davidson (from livejournal.com)]

How awesome to catch up with her after that time!

And oh, the travel hassles. I mean, I usually travel with two kiddos in tow, and that would've added stress before 9/11. But now? Oh good GRIEF. I had to coach Ian through several things (he didn't want to walk through the detector by himself, he didn't want to touch hands with a stranger to be tested for drug or explosives residue for which he was randomly selected, etc.). And we have TSA Pre-Check - we get the "easy" line that mostly works the old way. (You can keep your shoes on! Well, I can't, because I know my shoes will set it off because the lovely support I get from them is because of some nice rigid metal in the sole, but everyone ELSE in my group could which is hugely worth it. You don't have to pull all your crap out of your bag, etc. I <3 TSA Pre-Check, and it _still_ doesn't make it as easy as it used to be.)

And paying for even one checked bag. Sigh. If we had more time I'd take the train. Fewer hassles, prettier trip. But when you have a four-day weekend set aside to visit folks in Wisconsin from here....

[susandennis]

UGH! I cannot imagine. But, I'm guessing your Wisconsin folks were awfully grateful :)

[laura davidson (from livejournal.com)]

I think so - I hope so! We've gone every summer, sometimes for half a week, sometimes for just a long weekend. The aunts, uncles, and cousins are lovely to see - but really we're there because of the boys' Great Grandmothers (or, this year, alas, Great Grandmother). Their Grandma is there too, but she travels a lot and comes to visit us also; much as I love seeing her, I know we will see her one way or another. Great Grandma B cannot travel (although at 98, she's in startlingly good shape - it's only in the last few months that she had to go into a care home). She seemed very happy to see us. :)

(She also thought her mind was going when the boys tried to teach her the Minecraft card game, but that's because they were making up their own rules and changing them mid-game. We had a good laugh about that once we convinced her we really meant that's what they'd been doing.)

[shutterbug.livejournal.com]

(Ah, I have the answer to my previous question now. Damn for reading backwards.)