New Toy

I've turned off everything I can think of, lowered the brightness of the screen and deleted a few apps. None of that seems to have had any effect on how quickly my battery is going down, but it has also brought to my attention how much I use am addicted to my phone. Considering how many bluetooth devices I have (including my car...) it shouldn't surprise me that the poor thing gets tired easily.

Putting off the decision to disturb the delicate balance in the love/hate relationship I have with all things Apple by buying a new phone, I bought a new bluetooth device...a wireless portable speaker, which of course will run down my battery even more, since all my music is on my phone. It was as easy to set up as plugging it in, turning it on and tuning in the music on my phone, which is why it amuses to me that the instructions in 21 languages, four different kinds of kanji, and Cyrillic , Sanskrit , Arabic and Thai scripts ran to eight pages....

We went to the metal fabricator's shop in the industrial section of Santa Rosa today to finalize the design of a handrail for our front steps. It took us thirty eight years to get one for our front steps in Berkeley and then only because we had to rebuild the whole front porch. The front steps here are easier to negotiate as they are quite wide and shallow, but the increasing age and infirmity some of our friends, not to mention the fact that we don't have thirty eight more years to wait,  moved us to move on it a little more quickly this time around. We decided not to let ourselves be deterred by the fact that a very simple handrail on only one side of our seven front steps will cost almost as much as the front door....