In a bit of a unique position, got up to Pontiac Lake State Recreation Area again today. Do a nice hike. I made it to a scenic outlook, which it's pretty nice. Nice place to chill, I haven't seen another person. I saw a good five, six individuals and groups, when I was entering the trail, but as you get deeper in you don't see anybody. I haven't seen anyone for at least half an hour I think and yeah, I've been sitting at the scenic outlook for like 10-20 minutes, haven't seen a soul swing by. So yeah, I'm not really sure why I chose to start recording. I guess it's been in my head a lot obviously with walking on trails it’s one of the things I like, cause the ability to think different thoughts. Oh how, speak of the devil I can hear someone talking. I think it's gonna be horses, I walked on the equestrian trail, which I don't know if you're not supposed to do but. I am going to miss the trails when winter comes, it occurred to me I can still walk on them and the winter when it's snowing or just cold.

How old was I when I got my first cell phone? I was probably, I would have to say about 40. Maybe. I had probably been only about -- about 40 years old somewhere around there 40-42. Do I remember a time before having a cellphone? Yes, very much so. I very much remember our phone at home in the farmhouse out in the township, was on the wall, it was a wall phone, hardwired of course. And that's where the phone in the house was and we had an 11 person party line, if you can believe that. Which a party line of course is, we all shared the same phone line, so everyone's phone rang in everyone's home. We all had a different phone ring, ours was a regular normal long ring, so that was kind of cool for us. But we had an 11-person party line. We thought we died and went to heaven when we were able to get a 20 foot cord on the thing so he could actually go all the way across the kitchen and stuff with it. And it was kind of cool in a way, when we would go out of town we just talked to one of the neighbors and asked them to answer our phone calls for us, so that was kind of nice. There was a lady up the street, an older lady up the road and she was always kind of on the phone and kind of cranky if you needed to use the phone, cause you had to pick the phone, interrupt their conversation and ask them if you could please use the telephone. And you could hear people listening in on your calls and that kind of stuff, it was kind of impossible for the kids nowadays to even believe, it was just crazy.

I want to talk to you about my driver's test and my experience with drivers ed. So when I was approaching 15 and 1/2 or whatever it is that you're supposed to start thinking about doing it -- doing driver education. I noticed everyone else is really psyched or at least it seemed like everyone -- everyone but I was not I was pretty nervous. I didn't really feel comfortable with the idea of like being responsible for the car moving around and going different speeds. It's funny looking back. I don't remember -- I mean nothing happened to me in a car, like I never gotten a serious car accident or anything. But for some reason I was just, terrifying to me especially idea of going like really really fast for some reason. So right away my instructor like the first day of class. We're going to to drive around and I say “I'm really scared of going fast”. And he was like, “well everybody else is going to be driving normally but we're taking you, specifically, to the highway right away”. So, you know that it's safe and you can do it and not you know, not die, not have a car accident. But then it came time for the actual test, and I'm you know breathing and I'm like everything's going to be fine to myself, I’m sure. We get into the car and we do the parking part, which was also nerve-wracking obviously. Parking part goes fine. Okay, now we're going to drive around. And I remember there's like a -- a -- I remember very distinctly him asking like “okay if you were going to crash” like as we're driving, “where would you, where would you aim for” and I was like, “oh for the for the tree over there” and he's like, “that's right don't -- like make sure you to pull away from traffic.” But the all, so that's literally -- I'm sure I did a lot of other things, but that's the only other part that I remember besides, can you guess where we're going with this, the part where I failed the test. So we're on the highway. We're going to turn I've taken an exit I've literally never taken in my life. I've never taken this exit before in the moment all I thought was okay now I'm going to…

I am currently reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. This book is gonna take some dedication to finish because it's seven hundred pages long. But it's a fascinating as well it won a Pulitzer Prize when it was published and it was recently made into a movie that was released in 2019 and Nicole Kidman stars as one of the leading female characters. Another way that I am dealing with the pandemic is I am not eating inside restaurants. Dr. Fauci said that indoor dining at public restaurants was a dangerous thing to do at the present time. So I have been cooking at home and to make this more fun and to keep me from getting bored with the same old recipes. I have been trying out new recipes and I have learned to use a kitchen device a steamer that somebody gave me several years ago, that I had never unpacked and learned to use. I'm also watching Netflix movies and find that as another way of remaining connected to the cultural world and I plan to watch the movie of The Goldfinch as soon as I finish the novel.