Photos: Fall 2022 - Winter 2023

When the calendar flips to March, spring is here in my mind -- even if Mother Nature doesn't yet agree. Here are some photos from last fall and this winter that may or may not have made it onto the blog. In no particular order ...

Wearing my coat!

Too sad.

To be clear, she was aiming for a group, not a bullseye!

President Books!

Another Presidents Day, another presidential biography! And I actually made a mistake last year. I had said Ford was our next biography, but I had forgotten that we had read a book about him the previous June. So there was a long dry spell between that tome and our most recent book, on Carter. I just finished it a few days ago, knowing that the holiday was coming up.

Now we’re in our lifetimes! Well, not mine yet — Carter left office a few months before I was born — but Paul’s at least. Reagan is next.

Pinewood Derby

Last year Atticus joined Cub Scouts, but we were still in the midst of the pandemic and events were rather scarce. The annual Pinewood Derby was even over Zoom. 

But this year things are mostly back to normal, and the derby was held this weekend in person. Good mom that I am, I took no photos. But Atticus had fun and was more successful than last year, when he decorated his car with markers and put no thought into the engineering.

This year he and Paul watched YouTube videos and designed a slick black vehicle that came in first on several heats. He ended up second fastest among the second graders. A great finish!

Tech Changes Over the Years

January and February have long been my least favorite months -- the weather is lousy, we're mostly stuck inside, and there isn't much to do except plan summer vacations. (I'm working on it.) So instead of DOING anything, I end up sitting inside THINKING about stuff. Sometimes too much.

Last week a Facebook memory popped up from exactly 10 years ago -- I was appalled that we had received a delivery menu from our local Burger King, just a few blocks away from our apartment in Brooklyn. Delivery from a fast food restaurant?! The horror! Of course now that kind of thing is commonplace. (Although I'm not sure we've ordered meal delivery for anything besides the odd pizza -- but even that we normally pickup.)

That got me thinking. When we moved to New York in 2007, we purchased a GPS system for the car. We still had flip phones, so no maps there! We got our first iPhones in 2009, and social media was introduced to me shortly after. (Myspace from back in the day barely counts, does it?) Even when we moved back to Ohio in 2013 I was still paying per text -- my unlimited text plan came sometime after. And we ditched cable or Dish -- who can even remember what we had back then? -- during the move to Columbus and switched to streaming services full time.

It all makes me wonder what's coming up in the years ahead. What's just starting out now that will be ho-hum in a decade? What will I be using then that I don't have even the slightest inkling of now? Time will tell.