2024 Life Logs, Day 45: Happy Valentine’s Day
Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Weather: Sunny, Windy, Cold; High Temp 33, Low 21 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA
Valentine’s Day here on the Cape was a beautiful sunny day, but it was cold and windy. The snow that fell yesterday and clunk to every tree branch making our world a winter wonderland was even more beautiful today as the sun sparkled on the ice crystals. All of the beauty of yesterday was simply frozen in place and enjoyed again today without the falling snow and the added bonus of plowed streets. Of course, the challenge with snow that lingers because the temperature is hovering around freezing is that it melts a little during the day and then freezes solid again at night. Today my driveway was plowed, but because everything froze solid during the night, some of the driveway is now clear, but other parts are almost solid ice. I moved my car as close to the house as I could get it so I won’t have to walk on those icy patches. And I will walk through the snowy yard to get out to the road to walk with Shadow until the driveway is clear. I certainly do not want to fall.
This morning early, I drove over to Heather and Jed’s to deliver my Valentine’s gifts and to take Shadow over so Jed could do double duty—walk Ollie to school and take Shadow along. While I was waiting inside, I was looking out onto their deck and I was very surprised at the amount of snow on their deck compared to mine. We are less than a mile from each other, but their deck had a good two inches more of snow. As I was talking to Heather about that, I mentioned how windy it was yesterday and how it blew much of the snow off the tree branches and maybe off my deck railing. Heather responded that they were surprised that they did not get the wind that was forecast for yesterday. I am not sure why, but even this morning when I got home, it was windy here. But when I was at Heather’s just minutes before it was totally calm. All I can figure is that I live on a major street that runs through town and they live in an enclosed neighborhood that is heavily wooded. Maybe the wind doesn’t get a chance to build speed like it does coming down my street. Bottom line is that they had at least 5½ to 6 inches of snow yesterday to my 3¾ inches.
Part of my afternoon was spent trying to figure out why I have such poor phone reception here even when my phone shows I have a strong signal. I checked with Sam, Heather, and Jed this afternoon after visiting the T-Mobile shop. The consensus is that it is time to buy a new (refurbished) phone, but I am going to make one more stop at the T-Mobile shop in Mashpee before ordering the phone. My friend Midge says that they have very knowledgeable staff that might be able to help. People can hear me just fine, but on my end, everything is garbled and every few minutes my calls drop. Today new things started happening. Incoming calls go directly to my voice mail when I hold the phone up to my ear, where my face touches the screen, the screen senses that touch and starts scrolling though various websites. Part of me wants to continue to troubleshoot to make sure it is not a wifi issue rather than a phone provider issue. But the other part of me just wants to order a new phone and move on. I have had this phone since September of 2019 which doesn’t seem that long ago, but the young man at the T-Mobile shop was like, “Lady, this is an old phone. It doesn’t even have 5G. It’s doing crazy things because it is old. You just need to order a new one.” Yikes. What does that attitude imply for those of us who are getting older?
