Ignore the weather data, I took the marmot on the road with me, which is an interesting exercise I should try to do more often. Had to re-enter my Tinderbox license, which meant finding my TB license. Then had to log into the server, which always seems to entail resetting the password.

Then there's the matter of re-jiggering the view because I'm running TB on a 27" iMac at my desk, and a 13" MBP on the road. I'm writing this post in a separate Text window, which is a new experience.

I went to launch the marmot from the pop-up list of documents from the TB dock icon, only to discover that those aren't sync'ed with iCloud, so a July version opened. I quickly closed it, selecting "revert changes" out of desperation, worried that this old version would automatically be uploaded to iCloud and I'd lose the current version (again). Went to iCloud Documents and opened it from there and all appears well.

Yeesh, so many moving parts!

I'm up in Clifton Park, NY to visit with Mom who celebrated her 90th birthday yesterday. Record longevity among her 13 siblings was Aunt Gert who made it to 95. Mom's goal is to make it to 91, which I think is achievable. Parkinson's is slowly making things more challenging, but she's still independent for now. Her fraternal (sororial?) twin, Mary Ann is also still with us. She has low vision so she lives in assisted living in Colorado.

I'm writing this in Sonoma with the new predictive text model, and it's somewhat distracting. Some of its predictions are quite accurate, while others are nonsensical. Perhaps it will get better with time, or I'll become more accustomed to it.

It's been refreshingly cool here, to the point where I wish I'd brought a sweater or jacket. I'm not complaining though, it's nice. I came up a couple of days early and flew into Syracuse so I could visit with some old high school friends. I stayed with one who's looking after his wife who is profoundly disabled by early-onset Alzheimer's. He has in-home help, but I'm still impressed and amazed by his commitment and resilience. Renée was with us for most of the our activities in his home. I'm humbled by his compassion.

While the home health aid was present, we took a ride in his Miata with the top down around the area where we grew up. So many changes! It's remarkably beautiful though. That part of New York is far more rural than where I am in Clifton Park, so it was very nice to see the farms and trees and hills. Windmills have been part of that landscape for about 20 years or more, but it seems to me that the original ones may have been replaced by far larger versions. They were astonishingly huge.

Drove out here yesterday morning to be with Mom on her birthday. We're having a kind of family reunion on Saturday at my youngest sister's house. Two of my kids will be here, with my grandson, Mom's first great-grandchild. We're hopeful the weather will cooperate.

Set-up is later that afternoon. My brother texted last night that he may not be able to help out. He's a bigger Apple fan than I am, and his new iPhone is scheduled to be delivered today, but he must be present to sign for it and it may not be delivered until 7:00 PM.

Which is perhaps the right point to end this post, because I have some thoughts on Apple...