My resolution for 2011 is to wear my wrist watch all day. I can then know Time immediately, even if only a whim. I've been doing this all morning and I kind of like it already. If it works out well the rest of the day, then I'm going to make it my New Year resolution for tomorrow.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Resolution
My resolution for 2011 is to wear my wrist watch all day. I can then know Time immediately, even if only a whim. I've been doing this all morning and I kind of like it already. If it works out well the rest of the day, then I'm going to make it my New Year resolution for tomorrow.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Father Christmas
Don is really a man for all seasons, but Christmas happens to be the last time I saw him. Eighty-Eight years old, he held the Christmas gathering at his house this year, as most years before. Some of his daughters (4) call him Gramps. Baffling reality. This year they got him a big screen TV for Christmas. While younger family members are attempting to set the set up and surprise him, a snag develops in the connection. Turns out, when he returns, the solution isn't a surprise for him. "Digital to digital" he explains. Pretty clear thinking here, problem solved. Later, in the shank of the evening, he needs to snag a two year old that believes derailing a bathroom door might be in order. "I can't let him do that", he explains to me, "I have to put it back on the rail". So practical too. Moving on to the kitchen, his conversation turns to the need for recycling. This greatest generation, World War II vet, hasn't grown more conservative with age as Freud would have predicted, but younger as years pass. I'm proud to know him!
Zen Wood
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Benton Harbor
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Vote of Confidence
The post office has some good things going for it and one of them is economy of measure. Last week, I used the UPS system to deliver one little envelope, as time was a factor. Formerly, I worked for UPS and one thing I know about them is that nobody leaves until the work is done, so things arrive on time. My response at the price, "Son of a Buck!". Almost $15 to mail one tiny package (4 cds). Choo Wow! It did arrive on time, UPS called, they hauled, so I got what I paid for on time.
Monday, December 12, 2011
"Only a Thing"
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Pass 'er Buy
For over twenty years, I have passed this house about once a week with the thought that I really want to live here. Once, it was for sale, but I didn't have the money to buy it. This is the mystery. Often it appears to be empty, but not for sale, which baffles me. Now it appears vacant again, but just out there by itself, patiently waiting for the next recycle.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Going Postal
The post office announced that it will soon run out of money. One cost cutting measure announced is shutting down half of of the distribution sites and laying off 100,000 employees. As a consequence of these moves, first class mail would then be slower. I like first class mail as it is now and thought of some other ways to save money. Americans in general are impatient, and it might be time to slow some things down. Why do we need Saturday mail? Anybody with a job should be able to make a living working five days a week anyway. First class mail is a bargain so good that it can subsidize junk mail. Why not have junk mail pay its own way? Perhaps a positive spin off of this movement would then be a cleaner environment, more trees, and less junk mail to boot!
Monday, December 05, 2011
Not Saturday
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Fire Jumper
Monday, November 28, 2011
Phantom Camping
Question
Attempting to determine the distance to Enterprise, I used two sources to satisfy my curiosity, a gps and a Google map application. The gps believes it is 912 miles and the G map decided it was 1100 miles. Those readings fall well beyond the pale of a +/- 3% standard deviation. Now, I'm even more curious! Which one of these authorities is correct?
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Rebounder
.. hurls through the darkness, parked. Yesterday, I took Mike for a ride in Bounder to see another rig I had my eye on. He was impressed. On the way back home, he said, "Take Bounder out on I-75." Right on, I think to myself, a system test! As we are motoring down the expressway, the next request I hear, "Take it up to 70". I'm proud, "Look Mike, the steering wheel isn't even shaking." It appears his mind is focused on other systems. He turns and says, "I'll buy it." The sweet harmony of numbers, I'm blown away, how fortuitous, Sold!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Flight Plans
Ruminating
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Kangaroo Footnote
Perchance yesterday, at Tammy's Used Books, I picked up a copy of Jimmy Buffett's, "A Pirate Looks at Fifty". I was absorbed past the midnight hour. Jimmy has a bag of great ideas of living life to its fullest. He buys seaplanes, sails ships, and sings for a living, amongst other things. When he went to Costa Rica with his family, a lot of time was spent at the mountain waterfall. Colleen sent me some up to date information on the Bounder's where a bouts. The juxtaposition of these two pieces of information was all I needed to take the plunge. Prometheus Bounder!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Party Line
During the middle of the last century in rural America, the major communication device was a telephone connected to a party line. Often when you picked up the receiver, you would be a party to a conversation already in mid stream. Instant eavesdropping if you will. The proper thing to do would be to quietly hang up and try your own call at a later time. Not very convenient for the communicant.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Kangaroo Slip
The contest was so close that I threw in the towel of logic to counter balance the full moon. Nip and tuck, so to speak. My secret plan of living in a truck might not make sense when fuel costs were about four times what they were in my twenties. It would make a perfect hunting cabin, but I don't hunt in my front yard.It appeared to me that it was time to ramp up my learning curve and demolish my aversion to staying in motels. True, it is a lot more conventional, but also leaves a smaller footprint on the budget, as well as the landscape. Propelling myself forward, the plan this week is to go to Taquammenon Falls in the Upper Peninsula, take some pictures, and spend the night in a motel.
Monday, November 07, 2011
Kanga...
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
The journey...
continues. Checked out an old road warrior today. When I asked Joe, the owner of this land shark, the year of the rig, he responded, "Quality doesn't age". This comment came after he let me know what he thought of the current generation. Joe's opening remark, " I'm 80 and have never been caught in a lie, yet" led us to further discussions. I couldn't let him know, it was love at first sight! Pressed, I employed the 25 hour rule to give myself time to think and rethink, and perhaps sleep on it.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Reality Distortion Field
I just finished reading a book about Steve Jobs. It was a pretty good read. I have always been fascinated by the Macintosh computer and this book provided a host of background information about its development. Steve Jobs is likewise fascinating, but for his quirks (i.e. he never bought license plates for his cars) as much as for his vision of quality. Another of his idiosyncratic behaviors was termed "The reality distortion field" when he seemed to discount reality and impose his own version of what he thought might be possible if he pushed hard enough. In some sense, this concept has the ring of truth to me because of the nature of humans to push the envelope of what is possible and accomplish what would have been thought impossible.I'm applying this "reality distortion field" thinking to my shopping for a motor home. One is for sale on my street (the Bounder). The price is $3,800. What a deal, dimes on the dollar! Most of my reality based family is telling me it is a mistake, and I know they are right. The snag is that the upside of irrationality tends to be more exciting than the downside of practicality. Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory, bears consideration here too. Well, of course I'm not in that league, but in the back of my mind rests the thought that, "Bounder" would be a lot of fun and fulfill T.S. Eliot's injunction that old men should be explorers.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
One Log Left
Week 43 ended in blazes with back to back days of burning brush and punk wood. The brush was the result of storm damage through the years, but the punk wood was pure procrastination on my part. It got dark a lot sooner than I planned, so I had to put the fires out before they could burn themselves away.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Quality of One
Not verbatim, but a conversation overheard this week, at a prison recycling program. Viewing computers being gleaned of valuable metals and toxins, the touring environmental scientists asks the warden, "Are there any Apples in there?" The warden responds, "Oh no, not a one! We put them in a special pile so they can be repaired and sold later." Steve Jobs would be proud.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Indian Summer
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Agrarian legend
I missed the movie, but from what little I know about it, decided that Urban Legends must be about cities. This made me wonder about a parallel universe that might exist in rural areas. One possibility popped into my mind immediately. When food was dropped on the ground, the obvious first thing the consumer did, before continuing, was to brush off the dirt. Makes sense. If one was a bit reluctant, then came the injunction with the strength a verbal tick. "You have to eat a bushel of dirt before you die!" To me this always implied, "Better get started"
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Situation Ethics
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Phone Booth
Adjusting to the cell phone society has taken me a long time. Generally, I have one about six months and then discontinue the service. Now that I have an iPhone the game has changed. I'm going to take this communication device as a serious candidate to build an organization tool for the cluttered life that I live.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Cognitive Dissonance
The title has a ring to it, but sounds more complicated then it is actually. I call it Mental Rule Four (MR4), "Don't let the left hand know what the right hand is doing." MR4 gives the mind time to occupy itself when it doesn't know how to solve a problem. Every problem doesn't have an immediate solution. TS's term might be "Distracted from distraction by distraction."
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
"Trees Pressed Thin"
The writer will die, the reader will die, and the mice will come for the papers they left in boxes. We will all be covered with a blank white sheet. But there will be a shelf somewhere where the book will survive. Someone will walk into the empty room, blow the gathered dust from it, sit, and begin reading in the light of a window. The book will change what they see outside. Then the reader will consider the placement of the book and the book will remain, again, where it is placed."
Monday, August 22, 2011
Woodward Avenue
Last week, I boiled a big pot of potatoes and bought a Glen's whole cooked chicken. In a smug little way, I believed I was on the top of the food pyramid for the whole next week, nutrition wise. After a week, I advanced a similar notion that doing dishes was wise. So I commenced to clean out the refrigerator, but the stash in the icebox had crashed, and with it my complacency. The dish of potatoes was half full of water and the bowl of chicken contained only skin. Another food mystery had developed in my life. No time to resolve these questions as there is food at Ted's and the opportunity to drive on Woodward Avenue.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Operating Systems
"Burn the ships," I exclaimed, echoing the Norman invaders of England, when I disconnected my internet last month. How was I to know entropy had me by the throat in my audio, video, internet hobby?
My disk drives were breaking down, and to replace them would be very expensive. This along with the knowledge that these would be new components integrated into an ancient system.
The sum of the parts added up to more than the whole. Economy of measure was leading me to a door that I did not want to open. The only handle on this situation was changing my bias of long standing, taking a sling shot ride on the learning curve, and keeping my mind open.
As a thirty year Mac enthusiast, I write this next line as though it were a whisper. To burn light scribe cd labels and collect music videos, I have added system seven to the tool kit. Foolish and effective are two additional feelings for this new method of operation.
Monday, August 01, 2011
Flashback
On the farm, in the attic, was a trunk filled with memories. As kids, we would search through it to find costumes for Halloween. Some fantastic treasures laid buried there. One item, which I never paid much attention too, was a three inch by eight inch, hard cover ledger.
This last, non-camping weekend, I picked the ledger up from my sister Shannon, and got the opportunity to look through it. The first entry was Port Sanilac, Michigan, 1869.
In that year, William T. Quinlan paid a daily rate of $2.50 for two men and a horse. Inflation has kicked the rates up a bit, but perhaps "Two Men and a Truck" have roots in the past.
Monday, July 25, 2011
One Day it Happened
In week 17, or as I am wont to say, Stardate 2011.17, the river rose and knocked out my water heater, but not my furnace. I was a lucky cat in more ways than one. One of the ways (let me count the ways, as Shakespeare would say) that fortune smiled on me was that I still had hot water in the cabin to take showers. No sweat!
Boiling water to do dishes was a pain (here I have to admit that I didn’t do them everyday), but they can pile up until nature forces your hand.
So today we do the reversal. Hot water in the main house, but no water in the cabin.
Not total victory, but today has me grinning from ear to ear!
Saturday, July 23, 2011
It Happened One Night
In 1934, It Happened One Night was filmed starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I chanced upon the movie late one night, years ago on television. The last half was all I was able to see, but it stayed in my mind since that time. The writers for this movie did a fantastic job of telling their story around the strict censorship of the time. In fact, they
did so well writing between the lines, that the challenge of censorship raised the movie to a new level. The two stars woke up in a haystack and the dialogue that followed was so funny that it stayed with me years.
I was fortunate enough to review the movie last week on a dvd. The humorous scenes, that were the core of the movie, were totally removed. The writing finesse that happened one night was clipped during the day, when censorship casts but a light shadow.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Calligraphy Day One
The next phase of my plan was to begin practicing the desired art by writing my daughters each a letter on this ancient paper. Right then and there, the plan fell apart. I couldn't figure out how to load the ink into this mighty fine pen! To save face, I took my fountain pen and attempted slow writing. I mailed the letters with the full knowledge that I have a lot to learn.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Summer Rhythm
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Time & Place
Lawn Mow Lightning
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Senior Moments
This week, for the first time, I was in close proximity to a senior "Coffee Clutch". I expected to hear tales of times lost, and missed opportunity. Instead, the group leader spoke of the wisdom of legalizing marijuana and taxing it.