Three Percent

My husband's laptop is perpetually in battery dead mode.   This is because he spends most of his time at his desktop machine so when he goes to use his laptop, the battery has discharged.   I have only one machine, my laptop, and even though sometimes it's plugged into my large monitor, external keyboard, and touchpad, making it feel like a desktop, I still only operate from one location.

I keep it charged with the exception for some reason of board calls.   I have a blind spot mentally that I need to bring the charger with me to the location I'm taking the board call from.   About two-thirds through the call, which of late has gone longer than our typical calls, I realize I'm not going to make it.   At this point I text my husband, asking him to bring me my charger from wherever I left it so I don't drop off before the meeting is over.

Excepting that, I keep on top of charging the laptop.   Today, early this morning, we got in the car and headed north to spend a week with family.   This was a much-debated decision we decided on going forward with a little over a week ago.   My plans were to work on emails (I am terribly behind) during the ride.   Instead, I fell asleep multiple times in the third row of the car and never opened the laptop up.

Something must have been running on it because I opened it up just now, after arriving and unpacking everyone, making beds and having dinner, to write this blog post to find the battery drained symbol on the laptop for a few seconds announcing there was only three percent battery left before it shut off.   So now I'm sitting on the floor with the laptop plugged in with the brightness at a very dim level so there will be enough power for me to write a post.

The ride up was without incident.   The dog did very well in the front seat.   The back of the car is hotter than the front and there wasn't much room for her to lie down.   Since I sit up and don't get overheated like she does it made sense for me to sit in the back.  Also, I can help out with all the "mommy" requests.

We had a slightly shorter trip than normal due to lower than typical traffic load on the roads.   We stopped to charge the car multiple times and at every location saw people masked with requirements to be masked to enter the building.  Where possible, people social distanced.   Passing in tight spots was done as distanced and respectful as possible.  People seemed to be taking things seriously from what I could tell.   I've heard stories about people not wearing masks but in this case, we saw far more compliance than I had expected.

We're here for a week.   The game playing has already started.   I hear Nicole playing Hoot Owl Hoot with my daughter in the next room as I write this.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got me playing a game I got him playing a long time ago.   I had stopped playing but he brought it up again today because he had no wifi access in the car.   The game had been updated and now he and I are talking about strategies and who's done what in the game.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I got my daughter playing an "audio game" today.   We're so used to the phrase, "video game" that we don't even notice the word 'video' in it.   In this case, the game is entirely based on sound.  It's an adventure game and is quite well done and reasonably large.   The premise is you're a blind knight, assisted by your sighted daughter.  You fight dragons and help the townspeople.  We're not that far into the game yet.  I'm playing it too so I can help her if she has questions.  I have to play on my own device because you need headphones to locate the directions sounds are coming from.  It's beautifully done sound-wise.   I hope she gets more interested and wants to keep playing it without me.