I like Wednesdays. On Wednesdays, Wonder Woman usually gets to work from home, so I get to spend the day with her, even if we don't get a chance to interact all that much. I just like to be able look across the room to see her sitting with her laptop on the couch. When I make tea, I get to make two cups, instead of just one. In all the years before the pandemic, except a snowy day or two, I don't remember her ever working from our home. Like many jobs, hers recognized that today's technology, coupled with the work ethic of modern employees meant that people could indeed, get things done without sitting in a cubicle all day.

Thinking about that got me to consider how many things are different now than they were in the past. Change happens slowly, but when you look back over time, you realize how weird it would be if things you once took for granted became commonplace again. Take smoking, for example. So many people used to smoke and they did it everywhere. My high school had a smoking area outside the cafeteria for students to light up. You could practically see the smoke billowing from the teacher's lounge between classes as the staff went in for a nicotine fix. You could smoke everywhere - in the library, airplanes, restaurants. Hell, you could get an ashtray brought to your hospital bed. At the prison where I worked in the 80s, if an inmate could not afford cigarettes, they cost 45 cents a pack, the state would give them loose tobacco and rolling papers.

Grocery shopping was a different experience too. You used to have to wait for fruits and vegetables to come into season. There were no refrigerated containers bringing you fresh blueberries from South America in December. There was much less variety, too. I don't think I ever had anything but iceberg lettuce until I was well into adulthood. There were two kinds of apples available, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. Eventually Granny Smith made her way in, but forget having the choice of a half dozen different types like we have today.

Before the gas crisis of the early 70s, most people went to full-service stations where you didn't have to get out of the car. The attendant would check your oil and wash your windshield while you got a fill-up of that sweet 50 cents a gallon leaded gasoline. Other than the time I had to get gas in New Jersey, where the law forbids you from pumping your own, I don't think I have ever had someone gas up my car but me. By the time I was able to drive, we were well into the era of expensive gas. In fact, in terms of real purchasing power, has never cost more than it did when I was in high school, driving my family's 1975 Impala.

Even my kids can wax nostalgically about how things used to be in tech. They remember when they had to beg to use our landline in the evenings because I kept it tied up with my dial-up Internet. My daughter used to wait until after 9pm to talk to her boyfriend because that's when her free cell phone minutes started. She dated a guy once whose cell phone number was long distance, and she racked up a giant bill talking to him, even though in reality, he was just a few miles away. She even had to ration her text messages because her plan only let her have a small number for free.

Some things have gotten worse instead of better. At my high school, the student government, all the clubs and sports teams were racially diverse. All of us Gen X kids had started school a couple of years into the integration era, escaping the last remnants of Jim Crow by a couple of years. I've been disappointed to see self-segregation become the norm in many areas. My younger cousin went to the same high school I did. By the time he got there, white kids had just about stopped playing on the football team. He was one of only three to even try out. I worked in education for 20 years and saw too many mono-cultured events take place. It's depressing.

There are so many little things too:

• Paying for everything with plastic. People used to scoff at you if you had a credit card purchase for only a dollar or two.
• Standard transmission cars used to be the cheap model, not the special order that they are today.
• Only upper middle-class people could afford a $700 VCR and the steep membership and deposits at the first video stores.
• Actors either made movies or they made TV show. The thought of Robert De Niro starring in a TV series was laughable. Now here we are.
• There used to be liberal Republicans (Nelson Rockefeller) and conservative Democrats (most of the southern ones). Today the GOP is batshit crazy and any Democrat who thinks people ought to have food, shelter, and medical care gets called a Commie.

What are your favorite examples of how things are different today?

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One of the unfortunate stories being written and rewritten lately is about how (wait for it), liberals/progressives/"the left" are in an information bubble because they've forsaken Twitter and canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post. Supposedly, people like me are out of touch with the majority of voters in the country because I choose not to consume news that's controlled by people with a vested interest in the success of MAGA — meaning Elon Musk, the Murdoch family, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and their billionaire cohort. Many of the ostensibly centrist journalists who fret about the poor misinformed leftists are actually just peeved that the social media following they labored to build on Twitter over the past decade has deserted them. It's just not fair. Besides, it would be a lot of work to start over somewhere else.

Needless to say, I think these people are full of shit. MAGA has been running the country for less than 100 days and already ABC, CBS, and Meta have settled frivolous lawsuits initiated by the US president rather than stand their ground in the face of his threats. A good part of my upbringing occurred while my step-father worked as a journalist. I have long supported and admired the underpaid and overworked people who bring us the news, but that feeling is ebbing in the modern era. The industry hasn't handled the way the country has been reshaped. It's still in the habit of framing arguments as if both sides have merit, even when one of those sides is batshit crazy, racist, misogynistic and incoherent. The word "sanewashing" had to be invented to describe what once respected outlets like the New York Times does to present Donald Trump as if he weren't a crazy person. Even Fox News cuts away from his live speeches to keep from showing the nonsensical, incoherent imbecile that he truly is.

Until lately, most Americans were in agreement that the Civil Rights Movement was a well managed and courageous era in American history. A non-violent crusade of moral righteousness prevailed over hatred and bigotry and racial hatred, murder, and bombings. What's not often discussed is how much disapproval people like MLK faced in their time. When Kind was killed, he was among the most-disliked men in the country. The majority of white people did not agree with the tactics of the Freedom Riders and those conducting sit-ins at lunch counters. In hindsight, we can see that the majority were wrong. The minority were right. The same holds true today. The hateful MAGA policies of 2025 are wrong. The belief of the minority in justice, a social safety net and equal rights is as morally righteous as it has always been.

I do not need to understand in great detail why straight conservatives want to turn back the clock on the LGBT community. I don't need an explanation or justification for mean-spirited immigration enforcement that now includes deportation and incarceration without a hearing, straight into a third world prison cell. I do not need some fancy-pants journo to explain the country I've lived in for the last six decades to me FFS.

What people who accuse the left of being in a bubble fail to consider is that we live in the same damn country they do. We see the same things they see. We pay the same prices at the grocery store. We fill out applications for the same jobs. I live in a purple state with a Democratic governor and attorney general who I admire as they try to protect me from the fire hose of WTF in Washington. There are millions and millions of us, and we know exactly what is happening without having to watch Fox News or have the paid employees of the billionaires break it down for us. We know how our neighbors feel. We hear them. We just think they're wrong.

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This is the 52nd week of this blog's life. It doesn't seem like I've been doing this for almost 365 days, but I have. I think I may have missed a day in there somewhere, but i made up for it the next. In fact, I've posted 377 times since March 28, 2024. It's a good thing I'm not as talkative in real life as I once was, because evidently I can't shut up on the Internet. But, you know what? I think I'd rather write that many original blog posts than I would engage in some unfulfilling back and forth on social media arguing with someone who is never going to change their mind. That kind of exchange is like a Kabuki play where every line is predictable, as is the outcome. Somebody gets called a Nazi. Someone gets called a Commie. End of.

What I appreciate about blogging is the opportunity to be my consistently authentic self to the people interested enough to check in a regular or semi-regular basis. It makes me extremely happy when other people casually refer to Wonder Woman the same way that I do, or even better, when they are casual enough to shorten it to just WW. I dig getting teased that I outsource my blog to one of my many grandkids as the likely explanation for my proclivity to post so often. When I left mt job, the support and congratulations meant a lot to me. It felt personal.

I try to be the same kind of supportive reader for my blogging friends. It's just a matter of being interested and paying attention. That's always been my nature. I knew the names of my co-workers kids and whether their parents were still alive, what kind of dog they had and what their favorite TV show was. I with one guy for 20 years and I could answer every one of those questions about him and I doubt that he could have answered a single one of them about me or any of the other people on our team. He was a nice person, just uninterested in other people. Trust me, if you share pieces of your life on your blog, I am paying attention. I know who loves dachshunds, who has kids in college, whose partners have health issues and what kind of software you like the best.

I have a special tag in my email so that I can easily find letters from the people who have written me about the things I've posted, even the people who just have technical questions. I like providing technical help. It does not make me feel taken advantage of. I've had people write to me about some deeply personal topics, about quitting drinking and dealing with depression, about struggles at work and in their relationships. I consider it a real privilege to get a letter like that.

I have no idea how many people read Living Out Loud. Sure there are analytics and I look at those but I have a hard time translating those numbers into human beings. My favorite part of analytics is seeing that someone has posted a link back to something I've written. That's the best feeling. I try to repay the favor and promote my favorites in return. It's all part of being am IndieWeb blogger and member of a community of creative people who have chosen the same medium to share themselves with the world. It takes what it takes to get us all to where we are today. Hindsight is 20/20. I just wish I'd wasted a lot less energy on Facebook all those years when I could have beeb doing this instead. Of well.

If you've read enough posts on this blog to know me a little, I appreciate you. I'm a fortunate man.

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The years 2009-2012 were the peak of my endurance cycling career. I've ridden since then, but never with the same laser focused dedication to absolutely piling the miles on. During those years, I seldom missed dedicating both weekend days to riding solo or with my cycling club, or both. From mid-February until the first week of November, I also rode three or four days after work in progressively longer distances as the days grew longer. In 2011, I averaged 30 miles a day for the entire year, accumulating nearly 11K miles on my bike. It was loads of fun, although a bit obsessive and selfish. Balance is better, but that is a lecture for another time.

On Veterans Day (November 11th in the US), It was my habit to organize a 100-mile ride since many members of the local cycling community are military connected and most folks get the day off. I'd make announcements at group rides for a couple of weeks, post it to our website and make a flier to hang at the local bike shop.. The typical attendance at one of these rides would be about 20 people. There was no fee. Riders were expected to bring their supplies and money to refuel at convenience stores. We didn't have any organized support. If someone's bike broke down, or if they were unable to continue due to fatigue or injury, we'd figure something out. Someone's spouse would get a phone call and some vague directions is what I'm saying. That rarely happened, though. People were pretty good at not overestimating their abilities and if someone started having a bad day, usually someone would volunteer to ride with them at a slower pace so they could finish the ride. It wasn't a race or a competition.

Although there's always a rotating cast of characters in a transient community like ours, I generally knew everyone in the club. We also had plenty of people who were in the local triathlon club who rode and trained with us. Some of them I only knew by reputation. One of them I'd seen on social media. My online observations informed me that she was a partner in big accounting firm, took European vacations and had been a young parent like me. She was one of the founders of the triathlon club and a current officer. She'd been one of the first people in the area to complete a competitive Ironman triathlon, meaning that she went to race, not just to finish. Likewise, she had a reputation for being supremely fit and very competitive.

1. Swim: 2.4 miles (3.86 kilometers)
2. Bike: 112 miles (180.25 kilometers)
3. Run: 26.2 miles (42.20 kilometers, a full marathon)

As was my habit, I was early to the ride. When I got there, a car I didn't recognize was in the parking lot and a diminutive lady in cycling kit was pumping up the tires on her carbon fiber road bike. It was her, the triathlon woman. I went over and introduced myself, Johnny Cask style—"Hello, I'm Lou Plummer." Although there were no other men in the community named Lou, most people called me by my full name for some reason, so that's what I used when I met new folks. I asked her if her name was Carol, mentioning offhandedly that I'd seen her on social media. I did not want to give off stalker vibes.

I'll be honest. She fascinated me. How could someone that small and compact be so damn powerful? Plus she, like me, had several grandchildren. With all the pit stops and a mid-ride meal, the riders made a full day of it. I spent a good portion of the time chatting with my new friend, riding beside her in a double pace line and taking my turns at the front of the group at her side. Since I was also the ride organizer and thus the de facto leader, I also had to shout out directions for every turn and keep tabs on all the riders, especially the ones attempting the 100-mile distance for the first time.

I'd picked out a well-know local burger joint as our lunch stop. She and I sat together. It was only later that I discovered that she didn't eat bread or cookies because of dietary restrictions. After all was said and done at the end of the day, I knew that I wanted to be friends with this lady. She and I felt the same way about training and health. We had similar priorities, and we liked riding our bikes for really, really long distances. Over the next four months, we rode together every chance we had, including one epic holiday weekend where we accumulated almost 300 miles together along with an Army friend of ours.

I was a very social, very talkative, outwardly enthusiastic guy. She was generally quiet, reserved and tended to look at me oddly whenever I'd crack one too many jokes. That would cause me to shut up for about 30 seconds — her plan, I guess. A lot of endurance sports can involve what is known as type two fun. That's an activity that is only enjoyable after the fact. While participating in type two fun, people tend to suffer. We had some of that, riding in winds that were so brutal that neither of us could go faster than 10mph, when under ideal conditions we could maintain 20mph for hours on end. I was a large guy for a cyclist. I outweighed the heaviest professionals by a good 30 pounds. I do not like to climb hills, not on a bike, not on foot, not in any fashion. As I have mentioned, she is small and in possession of phenomenal athletic ability. She got to be excellent at patiently waiting for me whenever we faced elevation changes.

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase. One hundred and twelve days after our first ride, I confessed to her that my feelings for her had grown into something more than just those one has for a riding buddy. Well, come to find out, she felt the same way. Within a week, we became partners and have been together ever since. I still hate to climb hills.

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I think I have reached the stage where i no longer have to do anything to relax. It's become status quo for me. I rarely have to deal with anyone who brings tension to my life these days. If someone starts to do that, I can easily elect to find an alternative source of humanity. Luckily, I'm not related to anyone who stresses me out. I generally wake up in a good mood and wait for the day to get even better.

The pre-dawn hours are some of the best of any day. It's quiet. Coffee tastes better than than it does at any other time. I can spend a leisurely amount of time going through the ritual I've developed. The first thing I do is open my journal and do a quick once-over of the stuff that gets automatically imported there. Then I review "on this day." I've been using the same app, Day One, for 11 years, so I have plenty to look back over. Today's interesting entries were from 2020 when I wrote quite a bot about how weird it was during the early days of the pandemic, when grocery store shelves were empty and people were panic buying. After my journal, I move on to do the same thing with my photographs, which are liberally sprinkled with photos of my grandkids at all different ages. Only after doing all that, do I take a look at the daily fire hose of WTF, also known as the headlines. As horrible as things are, I am doing a good job of depersonalizing it.

I'm a believer in creating happy spaces. My little home office is pleasantly lit. Everything is suitably comfortable. I can listen to music if I feel like it or watch something, which I rarely do, but can if it suits me. I always have a tasty beverage on hand. I may have to work on making my workspace a little less relaxing because taking a nap with my laptop has become a new pastime. How delightful to be able to just surrender to every urge to get 40 winks. I keep meaning to start using an essential oil diffuser that I used to keep running all the time for just a little more feng shui.

I have a great view from my window. I'll be moving my bird feeders to where I can see them better. My house borders on a stretch of woodlands. My neighborhood was built in the 60s, and we have many established, mature trees around. I see all kinds of wildlife, from squirrels, to rabbits, raccoons, and opossums, as well as a long list of birds: cardinals, wrens, house finches, titmice, blue jays, catbirds, chickadees, goldfinches, owls, red tail hawks, crows, sparrows, robins, orioles and more.

During my earlier years, I didn't always have the money to have a smoothly working climate control system. I spent too may years relying on expensive space heaters and window units. Not now buddy. I can adjust the temperature to whatever I want right from my phone or computer. It's such a luxury. My high school years were spent in a 100-year-old farmhouse with no air conditioning and heat from a wood stove. I survived just fine, but, man, I love these new fangled devices.

My days are spent now working on projects that interest me. I read what I want to read. My biggest energy consumption is finding ways to be creative, not trying to calm people frustrated by technology that isn't acting as it should. I haven't had to reset anyone's password in over a month. A professional lifetime where every day was a confrontation with things that didn't work has been supplanted by my lovingly tended little home tech environment where just about everything that happens to predictable and expected. That's the life for me.

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