Out of the Shoebox: Pink Butterfly for Mayor

For better or for worse, my computer's back. I know I blamed my woes on Big Sur, but a couple of things are clear. There was a problem with the battery, and I'm not credible when it comes to tech issues. I'm not absolving Apple - Big Sur was a buggy rollout. But I don't think it was Big Sur with the candlestick in the conservatory that did in my battery. (Apple, if you read this - the University Village (Seattle) Apple store staff was efficient, fast, friendly, and informative. They are taking COVID safety measures very seriously. You've hired some good folks.)

Ouch, that Clue reference hurt a little. It made me think about how much I'd love to be playing board games with people in a cabin in the mountains. I hate to brag, but I probably could have gone pro in Connect Four and Stratego. We're closing in on a year of social distancing. Yikes. Double Yikes.

I walked around Capitol Hill tonight, and it was 1 part joy, 3 parts oh no. Places are open. It was weird. If you'd come out of a year-long coma today and walked around, you wouldn't have known immediately that there was a global pandemic. You'd have wondered why masks are required on buses, why are a lot of people wearing masks on the street, and why is it so quiet for a Friday? But you'd also have walked by people eating and drinking in bars, and you would have felt reassured that you weren't walking out of the hospital in 28 Days Later.

I was happy to see people leading normal lives again. It's understandable. Seattle's numbers are falling and vaccines are rising. I worry about the mutations and variants, though. In a perfect world with perfect support mechanisms, we'd have stretched things another month. It's not a perfect world. Businesses that are hanging on by a fraying thread have to jump on those chances for serving customers. Knock on wood.

I used to be fairly proficient with tech. Those days are long gone. I backed up my hard drive before I took it in. I thought that my troubleshooting and Apple's fixes would wipe my hard drive. I was a little confused when I got the computer back. My hard drive's data was still on the laptop, and I had a clone of it (I hope) on an external drive. I think now it's mainly a matter of re-introducing the apps I used.  I think everything is ok, but there's that lingering fear of getting a step wrong.

I'm still in June 2017 in the archives. That's a good month to be in. Pride day/week/month in Seattle is a good place to be.

I was downtown taking photos during a march and started snapping away at the Michael Harris for Mayor entourage. He was carrying a butterfly. I do not know how parents carry kids like that, especially parents who don't put in 3 hours a day at the gym. It's as if overnight they gain a carrying kids superpower. The butterfly lost a shoe. I was glad to have been there to get this series of photos. I don't know anything about Harris, but I very much appreciated his first instincts - something is wrong, this little person is not happy, we need to fix this.