{"id":1711,"date":"2014-10-27T01:07:43","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T01:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/?p=1711"},"modified":"2014-10-27T01:07:43","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T01:07:43","slug":"make-a-difference-day-short-escape-electronic-goodnight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/27\/make-a-difference-day-short-escape-electronic-goodnight\/","title":{"rendered":"make a difference day, short escape, electronic goodnight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Saturday, I was on campus for Make A Difference Day. The coordinator for the program had volunteered to help with our ornament creation project and we had a roomful of students busily working on arts and crafts. I did some origami, tried to keep the glitter glue under control &#8211; and did the heavy lifting when it was time to clean-up. It was a lot of work, but I&#8217;m glad we did it. My committee for work will be sending lots of ornaments to troops overseas and I&#8217;m glad we could contribute.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<br \/>\nSince it was such a nice day, I got outside and did some yardwork when I got home. \u00a0I was in and out of the house and Thunder(cat) decided to make his move. The screen door was just a little too slow to close and he darted out into the backyard. I was right there and went after him &#8211; swearing all the way. He stopped a few feet out into the yard &#8211; as though stunned that it had worked &#8211; and I caught him. He didn&#8217;t seem too upset, but did try a couple more times for the door.<\/p>\n<p>I dunno what I&#8217;d do without my little furry buddy, but I luckily didn&#8217;t have to find out. We&#8217;ve been keeping an extra eye on each other since then &#8211; him waiting for an opportunity for mischief and me waiting for the inevitable mischief. It&#8217;s kinda like the cold war. Except, you know, on a much smaller scale. \u00a0And with a cat.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>He kept me company for a bit this evening as I played a game on my phone. I&#8217;m not a heavy phone user and can sometimes go without charging it over-night. When this happens, I&#8217;ll run the battery all the way down to help condition it on the second day. I dunno if that&#8217;s still a thing &#8211; but it seems like a good idea.<\/p>\n<p>I did this one night last week and played a game for a bit. When I&#8217;d been warned a couple of times that my battery was almost gone, I switched over to youtube and watched videos until it was done. In the middle of a video, the battery finally gave out.<\/p>\n<p>The screen darkened. a light blinked, and with a final buzz the phone sang a little four note song and shut down.<\/p>\n<p>The CD player in the other room had finished up, the laundry was long done, and the furnace was quiet. I sat in the still and darkened house and reflected for a moment.<\/p>\n<p>When I manually put the phone to sleep, it does the same thing. And I could hold the button and start it right back up. When the battery dies, there&#8217;s no coming back until I&#8217;ve charged it again.<\/p>\n<p>So, when my time finally comes &#8211; hopefully many years down the road &#8211; I&#8217;m hoping I go out with as much dignity as my phone. A little shiver, the light fading from my eyes, and then a little song before my own battery dies.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know what put me in such a maudlin (vocab word!) mood &#8211; perhaps it was the quiet of the night and the peaceful silence.<\/p>\n<p>My phone tonight it at 58% and in an hour or so I&#8217;ll manually power it off to sleep on the charger. Tomorrow, we&#8217;ll wake up and face the day. And maybe we&#8217;ll sing a little song as we do so.<\/p>\n<p>Fitting, perhaps, that it sings the same song as it dies, sleeps, and wakes again. We humans should all be so lucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Saturday, I was on campus for Make A Difference Day. The coordinator for the program had volunteered to help with our ornament creation project and we had a roomful of students busily working on arts and crafts. I did some origami, tried to keep the glitter glue under control &#8211; and did the heavy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1712,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711\/revisions\/1712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}