I hope that by jumping around to all the different blogs, and then to Wordpress, that I didn't lose anybody. I remembered why I don't like wordpress, which is that at least in the free versions of their templates, you don't have enough control over them. Sure, there may have been some way to get around that, or there was something I didn't know about, but WP and I just don't click.
This is my blog and I'm sticking with it.
But, uhm, I have nothing to say at this time. Maybe later. -R
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Friday, January 5, 2018
So Far So Good
I would hesitate to brag that I made a New Year's resolution--how mundane--but I kind of did, which was to start writing more, in this blog, at least, and hopefully even more. But, gee, is it the 5th already? New Year's whut?? OK OK I'm here now. The trouble is mainly that my life has been pretty boring lately.
I've been wearing myself out recovering from "multiple illnesses," (a phrase I hope doesn't catch on,) and running in fear of the latest thing--a 24 hour stomach ailment that is so bad people are confusing it with food poisoning. Right at this moment I was tempted, for a few seconds, to recount all the gory details here. Boy that would give me something to write about. But it's a long story, and actually quite boring really, unless you're the one going through it, and, if you are, you'd probably rather forget it.
Changing doctors. I've moved, of course, and now both my primary care doc and my cardio doc are way too far away. I could live with that, but then my primary care doc got snippy with me when I told him I had googled the medication he was prescribing to me and it sounded kind of scary. He walked out of the room, in fact, so I didn't get to explain my concern to him--all I was really trying to do was elicit some sort of reassurance, maybe an explanation about the warnings. At any rate, all this made me feel like my doctor and I were not able to communicate effectively, and maybe it's time to move on.
And all this makes me realize I think about my health too much. Not that you shouldn't think about your health at all, but, you know, old people.
The loft is comfortable. I don't even mind hanging out in here when it's too cold to go outside. I'm binge-watching all five seasons of The Twilight Zone. The episodes are a mixture of dated cliches (some originating right there on the show) and some cutting edge stuff that still holds up. I've written three guitar pieces, but still nothing on the . . . er . . . literary front. Meanwhile, the trains go by, paralleling the river, back and forth--it's really kind of amazing to think of the amount of freight that rolls by every day--and the river is gradually getting more and more clogged up with ice floes. Intellectually, I know, I realize, the days are getting longer now, but I still wake up in the dark every morning.
I've been wearing myself out recovering from "multiple illnesses," (a phrase I hope doesn't catch on,) and running in fear of the latest thing--a 24 hour stomach ailment that is so bad people are confusing it with food poisoning. Right at this moment I was tempted, for a few seconds, to recount all the gory details here. Boy that would give me something to write about. But it's a long story, and actually quite boring really, unless you're the one going through it, and, if you are, you'd probably rather forget it.
Changing doctors. I've moved, of course, and now both my primary care doc and my cardio doc are way too far away. I could live with that, but then my primary care doc got snippy with me when I told him I had googled the medication he was prescribing to me and it sounded kind of scary. He walked out of the room, in fact, so I didn't get to explain my concern to him--all I was really trying to do was elicit some sort of reassurance, maybe an explanation about the warnings. At any rate, all this made me feel like my doctor and I were not able to communicate effectively, and maybe it's time to move on.
And all this makes me realize I think about my health too much. Not that you shouldn't think about your health at all, but, you know, old people.
The loft is comfortable. I don't even mind hanging out in here when it's too cold to go outside. I'm binge-watching all five seasons of The Twilight Zone. The episodes are a mixture of dated cliches (some originating right there on the show) and some cutting edge stuff that still holds up. I've written three guitar pieces, but still nothing on the . . . er . . . literary front. Meanwhile, the trains go by, paralleling the river, back and forth--it's really kind of amazing to think of the amount of freight that rolls by every day--and the river is gradually getting more and more clogged up with ice floes. Intellectually, I know, I realize, the days are getting longer now, but I still wake up in the dark every morning.
 |
| I woke up in time to see the moon setting. |
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Mainly Just My Writing Exercise
Again I looked back at my saved documents and read some of my old blog posts from 2005. By the way, I'm still fighting that tendency to regard any date that starts with 2,000 as "the future," due to many years of conditioning. But to get real, that, (2005,) was twelve years ago. Long time. Sure it's merely the span of time covering the end of my work career and then my retirement so far, but it's also the amount of time I spent between birth and junior high school. Long time.
Anyway, I recorded in one post that my wife, when asked by me when she was going to make breakfast one Saturday morning, replied, "probably not as early as you hoped, but sooner than you feared." I really miss her. Not to mention, she was a great cook, so whenever she did make breakfast, it was worth the wait.
When I moved out of my house, I found that I was the owner of tons of cooking utensils and decided I didn't want to have to move them with me. I donated anything whose purpose I didn't understand and kept the rest, but now, what I actually use is just the tip of a giant ceramic and copper and stainless steel iceberg. I am such a bad cook that I go beyond the bachelor archetype into the realm of the pathetic. I'm keeping all the stuff because I think that one day I'll get around to learning what to do with it.
I carefully go over my lab numbers when I get them back every three months to make sure I'm not depleting myself somehow, but I seem to be doing OK. Speaking of the future, where's that pill to replace eating? Just kidding. I kind of like eating.
Anyway, I recorded in one post that my wife, when asked by me when she was going to make breakfast one Saturday morning, replied, "probably not as early as you hoped, but sooner than you feared." I really miss her. Not to mention, she was a great cook, so whenever she did make breakfast, it was worth the wait.
When I moved out of my house, I found that I was the owner of tons of cooking utensils and decided I didn't want to have to move them with me. I donated anything whose purpose I didn't understand and kept the rest, but now, what I actually use is just the tip of a giant ceramic and copper and stainless steel iceberg. I am such a bad cook that I go beyond the bachelor archetype into the realm of the pathetic. I'm keeping all the stuff because I think that one day I'll get around to learning what to do with it.
I carefully go over my lab numbers when I get them back every three months to make sure I'm not depleting myself somehow, but I seem to be doing OK. Speaking of the future, where's that pill to replace eating? Just kidding. I kind of like eating.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Uhm, That Last Post . . .
I just read that last post, and my conclusion is that perhaps there is some sort of medication, or therapy, that can help. And yet, a very tenuous and sort of vulnerable thread of logic ran through it and down the page that the astute reader might cling to and slow their fall.
Moving on. Every year we talk about the same stuff regarding the beginning of a new year, no matter how we mark it, whether it be by a number on a calendar or by some fortuitous orientation of planetary bodies. Obviously the calendrical year starts at a point close to the Winter Solstice, as if it tried to represent the planetary alignment thing, but sort of failed at perfect precision and accuracy, so it makes sense to me to observe the planetary method and leave the calendrical methodology to the IRS.
And every year I make the same observation that time, and life, etc., is really more like a meandering path than a circle, and the movement of the planets through the universe backs me up on this, because as the Earth orbits around the Sun in a relatively consistant cycle, the entire solar system is also moving through space since the Milky Way Galaxy (in which we reside) is rotating even as it simultaneously shoots away from the center of creation, so you might imagine the Earth's actual path to be a sort of crazy smeary corkscrew motion, which also verifies another idea of mine that if you know too much, you'll go nuts.
Every year we try to change. The cyclical nature of the year lends itself to the idea that the "new" year is a clean slate, and therefore we have the opportunity to change ourselves (for the better, of course,) or maybe not just the opportunity, but the permission, you might say, maybe something like when you move to a new town where no one knows you and if you decide to totally change your haircut, who's to know?
Every year, we generally fail. I think it's because you can't change. I think a better strategy, if you're not happy with what's going on, is to stay yourself--you've been that way for awhile now and are probably getting pretty good at it--but change the way that you do it. That's something you have control over.
To sum up:
1.) Pay your taxes.
2.) Try to ignore the fact that the planet Earth is plummeting headlong into an icy oblivion.
3.) Be yourself.
4.) As always, as Mel Brooks said, live with the idea that being alive should be the exact opposite of being dead.
5.) Have a happy new year.
Moving on. Every year we talk about the same stuff regarding the beginning of a new year, no matter how we mark it, whether it be by a number on a calendar or by some fortuitous orientation of planetary bodies. Obviously the calendrical year starts at a point close to the Winter Solstice, as if it tried to represent the planetary alignment thing, but sort of failed at perfect precision and accuracy, so it makes sense to me to observe the planetary method and leave the calendrical methodology to the IRS.
And every year I make the same observation that time, and life, etc., is really more like a meandering path than a circle, and the movement of the planets through the universe backs me up on this, because as the Earth orbits around the Sun in a relatively consistant cycle, the entire solar system is also moving through space since the Milky Way Galaxy (in which we reside) is rotating even as it simultaneously shoots away from the center of creation, so you might imagine the Earth's actual path to be a sort of crazy smeary corkscrew motion, which also verifies another idea of mine that if you know too much, you'll go nuts.
Every year we try to change. The cyclical nature of the year lends itself to the idea that the "new" year is a clean slate, and therefore we have the opportunity to change ourselves (for the better, of course,) or maybe not just the opportunity, but the permission, you might say, maybe something like when you move to a new town where no one knows you and if you decide to totally change your haircut, who's to know?
Every year, we generally fail. I think it's because you can't change. I think a better strategy, if you're not happy with what's going on, is to stay yourself--you've been that way for awhile now and are probably getting pretty good at it--but change the way that you do it. That's something you have control over.
To sum up:
1.) Pay your taxes.
2.) Try to ignore the fact that the planet Earth is plummeting headlong into an icy oblivion.
3.) Be yourself.
4.) As always, as Mel Brooks said, live with the idea that being alive should be the exact opposite of being dead.
5.) Have a happy new year.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Fugitive Time
I was amazed to find that I still have, on my hard drive, a document full of posts I made in an old blog from about ten or twelve years ago. I'm glad I saved that stuff--I imagine I deleted the blog but didn't want to lose what I had written--but I confess there's a little of the Flowers for Algernon plot twist going on. I almost didn't recognize the writing. I only vaguely remembered writing each of the posts, but not at all the inspiration for some of the humor in them. I was quite good! This stuff was all written during the last good, productive years of my career, before the downward spiraling tail end, and, I read, I was starting to think about retiring, without a definite plan yet, but thinking it might be a good idea. Sometimes relishing an idea is better than the actual execution of it.
Now, if I may beat an idiomatic expression just a little deeper into the ground, fast forward to 2017. Here I am, totally without plan or direction, even eight years into my retirement. By the way, eight years?? It seems so much longer than that. Is that a good thing? Time flies when you're having fun, but at least the good news is that I am ageing faster and faster. The bad news is, that's not good news.
So. The passage of time. It's problematic. Not in the way climbing a mountain might be problematic, but in the way you fall off a log. You never forget how to pass the time. It's like riding a bicycle, or falling off a log.
I keep writing and writing, in this post, but I can't seem to climb out of this hole. What I'm getting at, I think, is that we are good at thinking about stuff that helps us survive. Our brains do some things really well without us ever having to try try very hard. Like recognizing faces, even though as we've all been told a zillion times it is such a data-dense operation that even supercomputers have a difficult time of it, or like remembering where objects are, We are so good at that that we invented a memory trick method where we pretend to place facts in a make-believe room in our minds.
But we are really bad at solving more than one problem at a time, or rather, figuring out a problem whose cause is more than one thing. That really throws us for a loop. Apparently in the evolutionary development of the hominid brain, that situation just didn't come up that often to require a special adaptation to get around it. Don't believe me? Look at this picture of my mirror, where you can see the mirror image of my watch in it. What time is it?
What does it all mean? Who knows. I'm just saying. And, in reality, deciphering the time here is actually the easiest when you figure out the single thing you need to think of when looking at it, rather than the two obvious things that are wrong. How is this like life? Gawd, I hope not at all.
Now, if I may beat an idiomatic expression just a little deeper into the ground, fast forward to 2017. Here I am, totally without plan or direction, even eight years into my retirement. By the way, eight years?? It seems so much longer than that. Is that a good thing? Time flies when you're having fun, but at least the good news is that I am ageing faster and faster. The bad news is, that's not good news.
So. The passage of time. It's problematic. Not in the way climbing a mountain might be problematic, but in the way you fall off a log. You never forget how to pass the time. It's like riding a bicycle, or falling off a log.
I keep writing and writing, in this post, but I can't seem to climb out of this hole. What I'm getting at, I think, is that we are good at thinking about stuff that helps us survive. Our brains do some things really well without us ever having to try try very hard. Like recognizing faces, even though as we've all been told a zillion times it is such a data-dense operation that even supercomputers have a difficult time of it, or like remembering where objects are, We are so good at that that we invented a memory trick method where we pretend to place facts in a make-believe room in our minds.
But we are really bad at solving more than one problem at a time, or rather, figuring out a problem whose cause is more than one thing. That really throws us for a loop. Apparently in the evolutionary development of the hominid brain, that situation just didn't come up that often to require a special adaptation to get around it. Don't believe me? Look at this picture of my mirror, where you can see the mirror image of my watch in it. What time is it?
What does it all mean? Who knows. I'm just saying. And, in reality, deciphering the time here is actually the easiest when you figure out the single thing you need to think of when looking at it, rather than the two obvious things that are wrong. How is this like life? Gawd, I hope not at all.
Monday, November 20, 2017
No TV Stations
As I once must have already said, I didn't keep the Google TV channels when I moved to the loft. It was because it cost $80 a month more and I didn't think it was worth that. I also didn't keep my old land-line number so my total Google bill went down, from $140 a month to $50. I hooked up an antenna the other day, but I only get, like, three channels. I don't know what you're supposed to do if you still think TV signals are just in the air, free for the taking, like they used to be. Nowadays, you have to PAY for your advertising to be beamed, no, pulsed--possibly pumped--into your livingroom.
Today I went out for breakfast, then went to my old apartment to load up some more of the remaining miscellaneous crap still left there, then went to the management office of the building I now live in to give them the list of things they need to fix--already--in the new place. Then I ate lunch, and then sat and talked with a friend at the coffee shop for about three hours, then went to find a grocery store. There is a Price Chopper four miles away. They have these ridiculously large, plastic grocery carts that make you feel like a little kid whose mom let him push the cart for her. I picked up a few things, and tried to make sure none of the things touched any of the other things, as they all were just swimming around in this huge grocery cart. I was successful. Except of course for the two bananas, which were connected at one end. While waiting in line, I remembered that I once read somewhere that grocery stores sometimes supply huge carts to encourage people to buy more stuff. I estimated that if I had filled this cart up to the brim, it would have cost me about four hundred dollars.
Right at the moment, I am beginning to binge-watch the seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix. I wonder if there are any episodes that I haven't seen at one time or another. Surely. Last night I watched S1 Ep.1 and 2. Hilarious to watch the actors plunge into these roles with, apparently, no idea what they're going to do with them yet. They were all like animated cardboard cutouts. So, episode 3 coming up.
Today I went out for breakfast, then went to my old apartment to load up some more of the remaining miscellaneous crap still left there, then went to the management office of the building I now live in to give them the list of things they need to fix--already--in the new place. Then I ate lunch, and then sat and talked with a friend at the coffee shop for about three hours, then went to find a grocery store. There is a Price Chopper four miles away. They have these ridiculously large, plastic grocery carts that make you feel like a little kid whose mom let him push the cart for her. I picked up a few things, and tried to make sure none of the things touched any of the other things, as they all were just swimming around in this huge grocery cart. I was successful. Except of course for the two bananas, which were connected at one end. While waiting in line, I remembered that I once read somewhere that grocery stores sometimes supply huge carts to encourage people to buy more stuff. I estimated that if I had filled this cart up to the brim, it would have cost me about four hundred dollars.
Right at the moment, I am beginning to binge-watch the seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix. I wonder if there are any episodes that I haven't seen at one time or another. Surely. Last night I watched S1 Ep.1 and 2. Hilarious to watch the actors plunge into these roles with, apparently, no idea what they're going to do with them yet. They were all like animated cardboard cutouts. So, episode 3 coming up.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
M-day + 4
I'd have to say that I am moved into the new place, mostly.
Still trying to decide where I'd like to sit when I write. At the moment, I have a Mac sitting on the little wood table just to the left of that upright beam. Not sure I like that. Probably stick with the Twilight Zone corner.
I have a growing list of things the building managers need to address in the new place. Just little stuff, though after all the glowing reports I've heard about these guys I'm a little surprised that they didn't go through the loft first and get everything up to snuff. It's as if they want to see what they can get away with.
The first day here I took my walk in the morning. I walked across the bridge that spans the Interstate (the "downtown loop") and went downtown. I walked to the Kansas City Public Library, near 10th and Main, and back. That was about two miles in total. Not bad. Yesterday I took a similar route but went to Cosentino's Grocery, a huge grocery store at 13th and Main. I did this as a test run. Maybe not something I would do if I needed to buy something at the last minute, but OK for a planned shopping excursion. If I bought too much, I could take the street car back. Or, I suppose I could take the street car both ways.
It's all kind of cool.
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