stock photo of old computer monitor When I was 10 or 11, I remember sitting next to my dad in our living room and reading computer code to him as he entered it into an Apple computer. We would finish the exercise and he would hit enter (or was it "run"?) and wait expectantly for the green type to appear on the screen. If we were lucky, the whole conversation would occur. Most often, there would be an error either in my dictation of the code, or in the typing of the code. We would then go painstakingly back through the lines, character by character, to find and correct the error. After what seemed like hours (and might have been), we would succeed and the computer would finally run the entire program. It was magical! My dad designed and built an earth-sheltered, passive solar home decades before solar panels were commonplace. He also was on a 9-month waiting list for a Prius, when hybrids were not seen on every street. While my dad is definitely on the cutting edge of technol...
Visitor Center sign in Zion National Park My husband recently re-retired, and we are front-loading travel. My #AtoZChallenge posts this year will explore our adventures--some pre-retirement, some post. Today's location: Zion National Park in Utah. Zion is a bit of a shibboleth. People from outside of Utah (or those who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) tend to pronounce Zion as "ZIE-on." Locals (or tourists who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) use more of a schwa sound, pronouncing Zion to rhyme with lion. However you choose to pronounce it, it is an amazing, beautiful national park and has some amazing hikes. The last time my husband and I visited Zion National Park, we entered from the east, and traveled through the mile-long Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel. It is an engineering marvel, completed in the 1920s. Before we passed through the tunnel, though, we spotted a group of bighorn sheep, including some babies...