Laura's Reading

My morning started off okay even though I was awake well before my alarm went off and ended up getting up early. It was a pleasantly mild morning (about 19°C/67°F) and I was very much enjoying my walk, stopping to take photos every so often for the photo challenge, until I dropped my phone getting it out of my pocket, and the screen smashed. The phone still works but there are cracks all over the screen. I'm really annoyed with myself. I do actually have a couple of other phones I could use. One is a very old cheap RCA phone I bought to try out using a smartphone, and the other is what used to be S's phone, a Samsung Galalxy-something. The RCA phone is lighter and smaller than any phone I've had since but the camera quality isn't great. The Samsung seems to be good quality but is horribly hard to use. S used to really struggle with it because the on-screen keyboard was very cramped, and I have the same problem. I don't understand how two phones which are about the same size (my now-damaged Pixel phone and the Samsung) could give such different keyboard experiences. Yes, the Pixel keyboard is small because it's on a phone, but it's definitely not as fiddly to use as the one on the Samsung. I'll probably keep using the broken Pixel until the end of the month (i.e. until the end of the current photo challenge, because everything is set up on that phone to take photos and easily share them to Signal) and then put the SIM card into one of the other phones. (Unless pieces of screen start falling out…)

I walked home past the post office and stopped to look at the sign up sheets for the Fourth of July Fun Run just because, not because I was planning to run in it. I was glad I'd made that decision, because unlike previous years when they've had a category for women over 60, this year the highest level was "Masters - Women 40+, and there's no way I want to be in a category with women more than 30 years younger than me. It's not a race, but they do note who comes first in each category and make an announcement at the lunchtime gathering. Looking at the categories, I was impressed that there was one for "Non-binary", although no age was given for that and at the time I was there, nobody had put their name in that group.

This feels like the most pleasant weather we've ever had for this holiday. Usually it's at least 90°F/30°+C; right now it's still only about 78°F/25°C. In spite of the weather, I chose not to attend the festivities this year. It's not *my* holiday.