Walking Sunday

Sandy Swetnick (who may have an additional last name, what with getting married decades ago and all) PM'd me a link to her salon Zoom meeting this morning. I logged in as soon as it was available and made another pot of coffee.

Last month,  the salon was mostly a series of monologues by a couple of people who like to talk, occasionally punctuated by a couple of people in the sciences who had inside knowledge on AI or epidemiology. Those latter few were very interesting but not pushy enough to overcome the noisy. I resigned myself to enjoying the company and multitasking.

This time I resolved to be more proactive. When Deb came on, I gave a shout-out to her embroidered pillow, which led her to briefly talking about her situation. Briefly, but it taught me. I feel that Sandy was being more proactive in encouraging the quieter people to speak and, unfortunately, one of the previously frequent talkers was out sick. Good health to him, but this time everyone was part of the party. I think it was Sandy who asked the question about the age we felt we were, as opposed to the age we looked - which was an excellent conversation starter. I also am learning to react broadly while people are talking, to gesture and smile broadly, not to merely passively stare at the screen like watching TV. I'm not sure why it's more engaging, but it is.

For my walk, I picked up some cables offered on "Buy Nothing". The location was just on the other side of Westcrest Park, so I figured it would be a straightforward stroll, but I underestimated the power of habit. I fed the ducks and then set out north, bypassing the park because I almost never go there. Once I got into the park, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Google Maps had the trails on file and gave directions that were probably accurate enough but sometimes waited until I was in the intersection. This is often a problem driving due to the dangers of abrupt maneuvers in traffic; you wouldn't think it a problem walking, but the problem was once in the intersection I was not clear what "turn right" meant. This may be a perceptual thing, it's hard to say.

I walked down to the bank to deposit Heather's check, passing through the Greenbridge development and looking at the retaining pond. I had to scramble a little to get to its southern shore but a little depression in the wire cage surrounding the rocks indicated that mine was not the first foot to climb up.