What do you wish you could do more every day?
A tough question to answer because there are things I would prefer doing on any given day.
Two hobbies I have that I don’t get to do enough of are, to most people, a bit unusual. One of them is working with software defined radios, mainly to use them as receivers for a couple of different applications. One is tracking aircraft traffic at our local regional airport. The other is as a shortwave and HAM radio receiver. As it turns out, with some of the weird New England weather we’ve had my mast took damage. Enough, in fact, that I’m planning to replace the existing mast with a J-style so that I can attach and secure the four antennas that I am currently using. I’m also considering moving everything I have set up to a slightly different location in my house to optimize reception. We’ll see if that works.
The other is music. I am a vocal performer with an area choral organization near where I live. I’m also a long-standing trumpet player. I’ve been playing off and on since I was a kid, and for a while as a young man I was a professional musician. I still love it, but I don’t get to play nearly as often as I’d like (or as I should). I own two B-flat trumpets, both excellent instruments, neither used as often as they could or should be. Maybe I can work on that.
One thing that isn’t really a hobby but is an important chore is yard work. Because the house my wife and I own is part of a homeowner’s association (HOA), we pay for certain services, like trash collection, snow removal, and landscaping. However, we will not allow landscapers to work on our back yard because of our dogs and the amount of time they spend back there. We don’t want them to get hurt in the event they were to ingest fertilizer, so we take care of the back ourselves, for the most part. The only things we won’t do are to remove leaves in the fall and mulch the property line in the spring. That said, it’s coming into the time of year to do outdoor spring cleaning. That will be happening soon.
This is where I am. It is a thought-provoking question, and I’m sure I will continue to find activities that I wish I could do more often. Maybe I’ll write about those as well.
Qui Interrogat 