{"id":21209,"date":"2017-09-16T10:42:57","date_gmt":"2017-09-16T17:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=21209"},"modified":"2017-09-16T10:42:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-16T17:42:57","slug":"21st-century-hardships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=21209","title":{"rendered":"21st Century Hardships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_3671\"<\/a>We’re clearing out the\u00a0home office prior to repainting and reflooring it. Besides my desk, there’s\u00a0an\u00a0L-shaped wall unit consisting of desk, shelves, file drawers, and the Murphy bed we use for overflow guests.\u00a0It\u00a0needs to come out,\u00a0but we don’t have to do it\u00a0… our insurance is paying a contractor to disassemble and remove it, then put it back when the walls and floor are\u00a0done. The contractor comes Monday. Our router, wi-fi, and desktop computers are connected to\u00a0the internet by a cable routed through floor-level holes in the wall unit, which means I’ll have to disconnect everything\u00a0tomorrow. Ugh. I’m not looking forward to that.<\/p>\n

We’ve been in this house 19 years, and\u00a0there’s 19 years’ worth of stuff on the wall unit shelves. I’m packing what needs to be saved, but pitching a lot of stuff too. That’s always a problem with Donna, who has a hard time letting go of things (she may not be a hoarder, but she’s on the spectrum).<\/p>\n

When we put the office back together, I\u00a0plan to hang diplomas, flying squadron plaques, and other career mementos on the wall by my desk. Never had an I-Love-Me wall\u00a0before\u00a0… all that stuff has been gathering\u00a0dust in a closet, and it’s time I put at least some of it out where I can admire it. It may inspire me to work harder on my memoir. At minimum, it’ll help spice up my home selfies.\u00a0You’ve seen the office bookcase behind me in many a selfie; soon you’ll see\u00a0a different backdrop.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about<\/a>\u00a0the deplorables who sometimes show up on my tram tours at the air museum. One of the planes I tell visitors about hauled\u00a0cargo for a Mexican company\u00a0in the 1950s and 60s.\u00a0Sadly, the mere mention of a country named Mexico is enough to trigger anger in some of our American visitors, the ones\u00a0in red MAGA hats\u00a0(if you know who I mean and I know you do). Then again, we get visitors from Mexico, and they like hearing about the plane’s Mexican history. My solution? Ignore the bitter old racists and their AM talk radio\/Fox News attitudes toward our neighbors, and keep right on talking about the plane’s proud\u00a0history.<\/p>\n

So it was fun to see this comment, posted last Tuesday:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m not at the museum\u00a0on Fridays so Luis and I didn’t get to meet. I would have enjoyed that very much. Last year\u00a0two American readers came to meet me and take my tram tour, and last\u00a0week another reader looked me up at the museum, a man who has posted comments to some of my aviation posts in the past. That’s not all: as you know from my previous\u00a0blog post<\/a>, the publisher of an online aviation magazine recently discovered my blog and interviewed me via email.<\/p>\n

People are reading Paul’s Thing and the diaries I cross-post to Daily Kos,\u00a0and that’s another reason to dread\u00a0disconnecting the home office iMac: I do all my writing on it. Sure, I can stay in touch\u00a0for a few days via\u00a0iPhone and iPad, but blogging will have to wait for the home office\u00a0to be up and running again.\u00a0The thought of pecking out blog posts one letter at a time\u00a0on a cell phone or tablet keypad is too much to contemplate. If that’s not a 21st Century complaint, I don’t know what is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re clearing out the\u00a0home office prior to repainting and reflooring it. Besides my desk, there’s\u00a0an\u00a0L-shaped wall unit consisting of desk, shelves, file drawers, and the Murphy bed we use for overflow guests.\u00a0It\u00a0needs to come out,\u00a0but we don’t have to do it\u00a0… our insurance is paying a contractor to disassemble and remove it, then put it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,64,2,6],"tags":[2415,2414,2416,669],"class_list":["post-21209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrivia","category-history","category-personal","category-a-series-of-tubes","tag-home-office","tag-murphy-bed","tag-packing","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21209"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21219,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21209\/revisions\/21219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}