A missing service from USPS

USPS are generally fairly great. Among other things, I can set up for them to hold my mail for a while instead of delivering it, and to redirect it elsewhere, without the significant fees that Royal Mail in the UK might charge. However, in setting up my return to Europe, I discover that USPS offer no facility for, don't even try to deliver my mail, just return it to the sender. I don't want them conveying my bank statements and suchlike here then putting them in the new homeowner's mailbox. With luck, there won't be much, and address changes or paperless settings may take effect promptly.

Stranger meals

As my move comes closer, my meals get stranger as I try to use up what remains in the house. For example, breakfast today was Kashmir spinach (with paneer) and wedding soup (which I'll miss).

Picking up fast food

I do not eat much fast food but I do enjoy it. In my last days here, I sometime eat at places that do not have locations in Scotland. Today's choice was Hardee's, I've not visited for years and I like their mushroom swiss burger. It turned out that they have a location in Oliver Springs so I headed there this lunchtime. For not being busy, they were rather slow, they omitted the sauces/dips I'd ordered, and the burger was … not something that would create in me the ability to miss it, not that I can put my finger on the disappointment. Their slowness was doubly surprising given that I had placed the order from home for pick-up ASAP. Still, they were apologetic enough about the delay that they assured me that my apple pie was the best of the batch, though I'd expect a small variance among them.

While waiting for Hardee's to complete my order, I sat in the warm sunshine, in my rented Chevy Malibu, watching the traffic on state route 62, and reflected on how very at home I feel in the less-populated areas of the US. I really enjoy living here, that's why I returned, and why I'd hoped to be able to share it with my children now that they are adults. Still, at least I got to spend some more time here, we all have alternative lives that we might have lived, I just wish that I'd had more warning that my stay would be greatly truncated. On the way back home, I saw four deer in somebody's back yard.

It is strange to be driving an automatic, I keep wanting to control the gears. East Tennessee can get hilly and I like to use low gear downhill. The automatic has an L which seems to be a lower gear but too mildly so. I was surprised to observe that the cruise control seems to shift into a higher gear when going rather faster than the target speed but, again, insufficiently aggressively. I give it marks for effort, though.

COVID-19 lives under the rug

I experience ongoing dissonance. On the one hand, I read of abundant SARS-CoV-2 infection, reinfection, mutation, increasing clear incidence of long COVID, etc. On the other hand, nobody's wearing a mask and life continues as if it were the Before Times. It's unusual for me to have the sense of joining the Cassandras.