This morning is starting out like most mornings around here. Being retired has its advantages, but sleeping long into the morning isn’t one of them for me. I’m always up before the Sun no matter the season. I set the coffee maker up the night before and hit the brew button as I’m walking out the door for the morning walk. Two miles most days, weather permitting. A little rain won’t put me off schedule but a deluge will. Simple rule for facing the environment. Back home I grab the first of several cups of coffee and feed the dog. He goes back to bed after a stroll around the backyard and I head for the radio.

I usually take a look at the POTA spots to see who might be in the field so early. There’s always someone and this morning it’s Dave KQ4CW operating from the James River National Wildlife Refuge (K-0567) in Virginia. Morse makes quick work of our 40 meter contact and once logged, my attention turns back to the coffee. Five minutes of listening to the bands while sipping the hot brew tells me all I need to know about band conditions. And that saves me reading the 300,000 words that will be written and widely distributed predicting today’s HF propagation. It’s a little bit funny…

There will be plenty of chores to do later this day. I haven’t mowed in a couple weeks and though the grass doesn’t really need the attention, there are now fallen leaves to be considered. Fall colors aren’t quite at their peak here just yet, but the impending changes are quite noticeable on the tree lined road where we now live. Speaking of, the moving process is long and arduous. Especially the way we have executed it and while things have slowed a bit, there’s always something that boils to the top and requires urgent attention. This week it’s new carpet installation plus the DMV is giving me hell for not having updated my drivers license along with the automobile titles and registrations with our new address.

It’s always something and it’s usually urgent. Meh.

I plan to play in the NCCC FT4 Sprint again tonight and hope for a better finish than bottom of the barrel or I’m going to give up on this one. I’m not terribly competitive and don’t care about “winning” so much, but it’s a little sad to be a perpetual cellar dweller in this ham radio event.

According to something I read it was a year ago today that the great migration from Twitter to Mastodon got underway. That’s become something of a flop though. I think history will one day show that Elon Musk killed social media and paid billions to be able to say that. My use of the social networks has plummeted to almost zero yet my heart continues to beat.

“How did we live before Twitter?” someone asked me once.

I’ve been much more curious about how we used to find places before we had mobile phones and GPS? I haven’t seen a map in a gas station for decades and I’m too old to remember exactly how we used to do that…