Category: FWIW

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Well, It’s No “Instalaunch” But. . .

A comment I made on another forum got a “thumbs up” from The Puppy Blender–Glenn Reynolds.

Oh, the comment?

I rarely read or hear any critique of Trump’s policies that cannot be summed up as “Orangeman bad! Therefore, this (and everything else he does/has done) is bad!” Classic ad hominem fallacy: dismissing something because of the character or personal circumstances of the person who does/utters it. Or simply because of personal rancor. Oh, I have read/heard rationalizations that purport to be arguments against his policy decisions that attempt to throw enough manure over the ad hominem nature of the fundamental argument being made, but I have read few cogent, sound arguments against most of the things he has done.

To be clear, I voted for neither of the distasteful candidates in 2016, and I find Trump in many ways to be distasteful still (not someone I would, by personal preference, select to join me for a cuppa joe and conversation), but in November, I’ll most likely vote for him, because his actual policies are at least mostly mainstream, and some of them have been better than those of recent presidents–some much better.

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I Sometimes Wonder. . .

Whatever became of the lame man who was healed as recorded in Acts 3? He was 40 years old, and his entire livelihood had consisted of begging daily. Once his lameness was healed, what did he do for income?

Ah, he probably got a job with the First Church of Jerusalem. 🙂

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No More “Behinder I Get,” mmmK? ;-)

“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” ~ The White Rabbit, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

No “New Years Resolutions,” no. I’ve made a start on getting on top of my “to-do” lists, and maybe a bit ahead of the curve on somethings; just a start, but it feels good. First of year Bible readings, for example, were sadly neglected. within one day of catching up there, and seeing myself anew, as verses both affirm on the one hand and convict on the other. Appreciate that.

Daily (daily) cleanup chores dealing with the trimmed sycamore wood is feeding a sense of slowly conquering that mess, with the goal of turning every part of it into useful products. It’s not just a dream but a real, attainable goal.

Other daily tasks dealing with the minutiae of life are surrendering to a journal of daily work, and I am almost on top of taking my daily multi-vitamins. *heh*

2020 “big gigs” for me are mostly focused on our home:

  • The wood products from the sycamores — new fencing and building products (deck repairs, additions, too)
  • Kitchen rehab advanced — new “coffee shrine” area, finish new island (add fold up/down area), tile kitchen floor; little things
  • New paint for living room/upstairs hallway; new trim for both
  • Finish work on basement rooms
  • Add storage upstairs
  • Purge closets

Those are some of the major task/project areas for out home for 2020, and I can already see progress in most of them. My “exercise program” (cutting up, moving, stacking, etc., all the downed limbs, etc. outside *heh*), rehab exercises (for lower back pain, right rotator cuff, right knee, strained brachioradialis, cervical pain), diet, and sleep mods are already showing progress, and I am developing habits to make that ongoing. Pleased with that.

All-in-all, scheduling and record keeping seems to be helping me be less hurried and more accomplished. We’ll have to see how things are going forward, eh?

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“Oh the weather outside is frightful. . . “

Snow (actually, ice) day for schools in America’s Third World County™ (and surrounding areas, as well). While I admit I have submitted to the weather and not gotten on my wood waste cleanup project (yet) today, stew’s on and makin’ for tonight, and I’m-a fixin’ ta head out and work up a sweat, loosen up some of these aching muscles-n-joints. . . 😉

Meanwhile,

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Finally, an Exercise Program I Can Stick With

(Because I HAVE to? *heh*)

Oh, the joys of work. . . even if the pay is only the goal of satisfaction in doing a job well, to completion.

I have difficulty sticking to an exercise program, because such things are BORING. Nevertheless, I seem to have found an exercise program that I can really stick with for at least the next few months: cleaning up this mess and processing all the “waste” into useful things. Of course, at my age, and in my condition, I can only manage one to one-and-a-half hours at a time (with appropriate rest times between), and even then, only about three sessions a day.

And oh! do my muscles ache! (In a very good way, one with which I am quite pleased, in fact.) Right knee (my problematic ACL knee) started aching early, and I felt the thing start to collapse on me but caught it in time. Swollen. Aplied a knee brace and some OTC pain meds, and was back at it. Feels OK. Still sensitive to side pressure, but the brace really helps, and if I take care to carry things on my LEFT side, I am much more comfortable. Typical lower back pain a bit exacerbated, but I’ve put up with lower back pain and pain in my left hip since I was, oh, about eleven, so that’s pretty easily dealt with.

All-in-all, really having fun out there, and looking forward to the projects I have in store for this wood. Sure, most of it (by far) is sycamore–a very “soft” hardwood–but I believe I can get some fencing out of it, as long as I paint it well, and the little stuff will serve nicely as burn material to use in making charcoal out of the elm, maple, and even walnut trees and trimmings that I plan to also take down. Also have some furniture planned for a few of the uniquely-shaped pieces of sycamore. Gonna be fun there, too.

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Ah! The Old Made New

Some 40 years ago, when we were “young marrieds,” before our first child, we purchased a nice set of “waterless” cookware. And it was nice, with but one flaw that made itself known over the next 20+ years: the pseudo-bakelite handles were not really all that durable, and as the less-than-durable handles (including the pot lids) failed, replacements. . . weren’t. Available, that is. Still, some components remain useful.

Fast forward to today when I was looking for a way to “fry” eggs in my air pressure/fryer/sous vide/slow cooker (love these combo appliances, when they work). Ah! The lil cups for the steamer/egg poacher add-on to the waterless cookware set! Yep. All six of them fit very nicely in the cooker. I love it when past and present come together to make things work well.

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Yeh, Well, I Definitely Do These Sorts of Things So You Don’t Have To

Was at my fav “fell off the back of a truck store,” today, and passed through the “$1 salvage items” aisle. Saw a $1 box of 12 bottles of BSP (buffered sodium phosphate) solution–bottled and prepped for use as enemas–and thought to myself, “Self, since thou doest always gargle salt water (sodium chloride + h2o) and this BSP is sodium phosphate+sodium chloride+water, and ingestion of “gargle water” ain’t on the menu, why not? Yeh, if and or when I get a sore throat this winter, I’m-a giving my mouth an enema. (Small amounts of sodium phosphates via mouth–traces not spit out with “gargle water”–are not harmful, and. . . prepackaged!)

Continue reading “Yeh, Well, I Definitely Do These Sorts of Things So You Don’t Have To”

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Filed Under “Things I Do NOT Want to Do”

I don’t like to travel out of the county, much. Oh, if “out of the county” is no more than 30 miles or so (INCLUDING miles in-county), I can manage it, and have as chauffeur for Son&Heir’s recent back injury (compression fracture of T-12 vertebra), but I do not like it. I consider an arduous trek to WallyWorld (15 miles away from TWC Central) to be far enough, most times, now.

Some of the places I like to visit are as far away as the mid-20s in miles from TWC Central (A.K.A. “Ye Olde Homestead”), so there’s that. But. *profound sigh* My sisters are trying to promote a family get-together next fall in Branson for a “gospel music extravaganza” type thing. *sigh*

#1 I HUGELY dislike Branson, “The Vegas of the Ozarks.” Even w/o the gambling and the other “Sin City” activities (at least in the open; there’s plenty of sin anywhere one goes, even if it’s just to the kitchen and back *heh*), Branson is just. . . tacky, IMO.

#2. Crowds. For me a crowd is more than somewhere between 2-5 people (and my sisters and their spouses, let alone brother and his spouse, not to mention children and grandchildren) exceed my capacity by themselves, and that’s before Branson-level crowds. (Didn’t use to be like this; being in/performing for large crowds used to be enjoyable. Touchy old bear, now.)

#3. The activities they are touting are NOT my cuppa, not in any way, shape, fashion, or form. I like real gospel music well enough, but done for a performance? No. Just no.

#4. And then there’s all that travel to get there. Must be 80 miles or more! *heh* (Yeh, yeh: all of them would be coming from out of state, but they LIKE travel and do it a lot.)

*shrugs* Happy to offer a cookout for ’em on their way through, though. Limited crowd exposure (time and numbers); no glitz and faux “gospel” singing. If they wanna see me, they can look at my profile pic. Visit? Sure. Drop on by, one (or two)-on-one, or use email or phone. Mass get-togethers? Please, no. Last one was Mother’s funeral, and while the funeral service itself was a blessing (apart from being forced to lead the congregational singing–multiple reasons that was a bad idea at the time), the travel and “family meal” afterwards was not. I took my fellow travelers and di-di-maued as expeditiously as possible.

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Amusing Hook, but LOADS to Just Skip or Skim

No, I’ll not name or link to the series. I have made some comments over on Amazon, but this is a bit. . . more scathing, I suppose I should say, and so I’ll just leave that out for now.

I have now read a series of four books with an interesting sci-fi hook that speaks to me. . . and unfortunately says some things the writer probably didn’t intend to say. The hook: extraterrestrial aliens who are utterly captivated by music from Earth. Unfortunately, all the music referred to in the series is second- or third-rate pop crap. I suspect there are two reasons for this:

  • the writer’s target readership probably has no frame of reference for anything but pop crap
  • the writer probably doesn’t even have any familiarity with really good music at all

And it shows.

So, I just read the books (admission: skimming and skipping parts that seemed like utter crap) mostly just to get those moments of extraterrestrial reaction to music.

Interesting for that, but very glad I didn’t have to pay a dime for any of the books, and spent little time actually reading them.

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402 Pages of Not Quite Wasted Time

Every now and then, I pick up a John Sandford pseudo-mystery (OK, they fit the genre, but are just a bit too predictable, mmK?). Usually, it’s for a similar reason as the one I picked up yesterday. My Wonder Woman had a flat, and, to my eye, it looked like a full-on replacement, despite the massive amount of tread left on the thing (when I got there, it was sitting on the rim and looked like it had been driven on it–not something I can really fault her for, and it wasn’t but for a fairly short distance).

So, I took it on the spare to the closest place I could get a passable replacement tire. Goodyear at WallyWorld a couple of miles away. Didn’t want to drive it far on the spare, because the spare that came with the–used–car is directional, and in the position it was on the car, it was rotating backwards. Yeh, yeh, I know I could have switched it out with another tire, but no. Not a big deal for a short drive, but this is the second time it’s been used in that wheel position, and I just did not want to drive it far.

So, as I said, WallyWorld. I hadn’t prepared myself for the wait, so I picked up a book there. The absolute best on offer at WallyWorld was a John Sandford novel. OK. Read the thing (>i>read most of it while waiting). Not bad but not much of a mystery, really. A few quirky characters did liven the plot a bit, but it was still something of a slog. Just not that good, and filled with things that, had it been a Kindle ebook, I could have “report[ed] content error” on many, many occasions. Putnam really needs better quality editors, IMO. Literate ones, at the very least.

*sigh*

Oh, well, I’ll always have the quirky characters–oh, and the descriptive narrative about the geography, etc. There are those, at least.