The place I go for my allergy desensitization shots closes on Mondays from noon to 2. That’s never been a problem for me – I usually go after they reopen, but today I wanted a bigger block of time to work on my speech for tonight’s Storytellers meeting, so Diane and I hurried through lunch so I could get there before they took their break. I was in the car at 11:41, and Google told me that I should arrive a couple of minutes before noon.

Google was wrong. I pulled into the parking lot right at 12, and by the time I walked up to the door, it was locked. I could see a nurse sitting at the desk and looked imploringly at her; she opened the door and said that I’d have to come back after 2. I thought about claiming that my watch was running slow and asking for leniency, but I didn’t think that argument would work anymore – especially since she could see I was wearing an Apple watch.
The drive home was a lot faster, of course.

The Fitness app on my phone offers a monthly challenge. I didn’t realize it was there until about a year ago, but now I make a point of looking at it and trying to win. This month’s challenge is to walk 196.7 miles during the month (an average of 6.35 miles per day), so I’ve been extra diligent about taking long walks instead of just burning calories at the gym. So far, I have 171.1 miles logged.

On Sunday, we normally take a 3-mile walk as part of our trip to the Farmers’ Market, and we usually try for at least one more long walk during the day. Today was no exception, and it was a great day to be outside.

Our second walk was in search of light miso paste. Our usual supermarket hasn’t had any for several weeks, so we tried Nob Hill, a little over a mile from home. I was unsurprised to discover that they didn’t have it either. As we walked home empty-handed, Diane suddenly pointed at something off to my right – she’d seen a monarch butterfly crossing the street. That got me to stop looking at my phone, but not for long.

I switched to the Camera app and started hunting – I took lots of useless photos, but eventually I caught the butterfly with its wings open.

And then it flew away.