One More Thing

Well, here we are in the final hours of 2002, the last palindromic year for 110 years. If that matters.

No list like last night's would ever be complete. I just wanted to turn my attention to things I recalled fondly, things that were, in my view, good things.

But the problem with both posts is that they reinforce the notion of duality. "These things are good, those things are bad." In reality, neither is good or bad. While I appreciate and am grateful for all of the things in the latter list, most of them don't really challenge me in the ways I need to be challenged to address those things within myself that require my attention. The first list does that, and that is a good thing.

Everything is connected. Whatever it is we're looking for, we're offered; although often not in ways we expect or initially recognize. That's something worth recalling from time to time.

Time to go.

So, Was There Anything You Did Like in 2002?

I woke up placing my attention on negative things. I prefer to go to bed placing it on the positive ones. So here's a partial list of things I did like about 2002:

My kids

Maria

My family back home - and in Alabama (Eric)

Employment

Dad underwent bypass surgery and did very well

I got to be there

My friend Chris survived a bout with cancer, I only wish I had known earlier. Not much of a friend, am I? I'm working on that.

Two Sandys

My correspondence with Dave Golding, regarding the themes in Cast Away

Groundhog Day on DVD - and Harold Ramis' audio commentary that the five stages of grief were the basis for some of the film.

Lots of great books I've read

Meeting Pascale Soleil (well, virtually anyway)

Tinderbox

Jaguar (Mac OS 10.2.x)

802.11b at Casa Mia

The West Wing

The George Foreman Grill

Firefly

The Fellowship of the Ring (the extended version)

The beach (even though I haven't been there nearly enough since I started working)

Sunny days

Carol and Maggie at Subway

Old shipmates

Al's Pizza, Jennifer and Mia

Handspring Visor Neo

Youpi Key

Springsteen's The Rising (not his best album by any means, but just about right)

Books-a-Million

The Book Mark

Nuts are good for you!

Beer is good for you! (In moderation)

Taekwondo and my great instructors

The roof got fixed, and the fence was replaced

The folks over there in the list o'links

The critters: Mandy, Jaguar, Karma and Squeaky

Not burning my toes or slipping on hot grease while holding a >20lb turkey fresh out of the oven

Pillsbury cinnamon rolls (hopefully we won't be seeing them in 2003)

My plucky little iMac which keeps computing along for me

My intrepid little iBook that comes along with me

Well, that's about enough.

I didn't accomplish everything I expected to achieve in 2002. There's still some significant unfinished business I have to conclude. Some things didn't turn out the way I'd planned, but I'm familiar with that now. Some disappointments were greater than others. Some even hurt for a while. I don't tell you everything. What else is new? But a lot of things were better. I think I'm better, although I know I still have a lot to work on. We keep on going.

Some Things I Would Not Miss in 2003

Herewith being a rather spare reflection on some of the things I found irritating in 2002, and therefore would feel no pangs of regret if they were not to appear in 2003.

I'm not getting my hopes up.

Anything with the word "pundit" in it.

Trent Lott

Small Pox

Terrorism

Warbloggers

The word "idiotarian"

"Clash of civilizations" enthusiasts

Extremists of any stripe

John Ashcroft

"Moral clarity"

Digital identity

Al Gore

"Steven" the Dell "dude"

Dell

Iraq

al Qaeda

Sharon

Arafat

Basically, anything east of 30 degrees east longitude

"Victims" of "isms" - I guess I would call this "victimism"

American Idol

Michael Jackson

Jackass

Microsoft

Macintouch

garret vreeland's friendly reminders of how many shopping days there are until Christmas

Catholic Priests in Trouble

The word "evil"

Memes

The "blogosphere"

Pi (the world has enough irrational things) ((I'm being funny here.))

Cable news channels (All Fear All the Time!)

Bob Novak

NASA

Basically, all of the elected government of the United States

The electorate

Bill Gates

Tablet computers

The Department of Homeland Security

The word "homeland"

Poindexter

Kissinger

West Nile Virus

"Conservatives" and "Liberals" I can take - it's these "neo-con" ex-liberals who are now dittoheads that I can't stand.

Libertarians

Gun nuts

Anti-gun nuts

Did I mention Microsoft?

Income tax. I don't mind paying, it's the paperwork I can't stand.

Unemployment. (I suppose I ought to get used to that one.)

While I expect most of these things, if not all, will be back in 2003, I have learned how to ignore many of them. The others I endure as much as I have to, but no more.

Meaningless Drivel

I'm a little disappointed at the dearth of rumors regarding the MacWorld Expo. Either Apple has gotten a lot better on its already-tight security, or maybe there's nothing new in the pipe. That would be a bummer. Yes, I have heard about the premium 1Gig 19" iMacs, but I'll believe it when I see it.

It was nice having a few days off. I managed to tick off several items on my to-do list. What was even nicer was having a little time when I didn't have to be paying attention to the to-do list.

I think I'm going to pass on the Canon Powershot A40. By most accounts it's a pretty good camera, but I think I can wait a while longer and there will be better cameras for about the same amount of money. I haven't been taking many pictures lately anyway.

I do want to get a new computer. We'll see what does come out of MacWorld, there should be a deal or two to be had in the model transition.

My mind has been turning to tools lately. The physical kind, that is. Several years ago, I bought a bunch of those Black&Decker cordless tools that use interchangable, rechargable NiCads. They're not heavy-duty tools by any means, but they were handy for the odd jobs around the house when you didn't want to futz with an extension cord. I haven't used them in years; and the last time I tried, I couldn't get any of the batteries to hold a charge. I went to Target yesterday to spend my giftcard, and I ended up buying two new sets of batteries. This morning I cleaned the contacts on the chargers and all the tools and they're all working again.

Thinking about those tools got me thinking about my scroll saw. It's a Christmas gift from six or seven years ago. I haven't used it in a long time either, but I'm thinking about it firing it up and trying to make something. Of course, that means I'm going to have to clean off the workbench, which is another region of exceptionally high entropy. I went looking around on Google for some Celtic scroll saw patterns. I found lots of books for sale, but no patterns. You'd think that'd be the kind of thing you could find for free on the internet. Maybe I didn't look hard enough. I suppose I could try to make some of my own, and the public library probably has one or two books I could borrow. And then there's finding my blades or buying new ones. Who knows where they went off to? We'll see. It's the best time of the year for working in the garage, so maybe I'll do that until the days get long enough to work in the yard after supper.

Washed the car today. The exterior, anyway. I'll probably hit the interior on New Year's day. I like washing the car, although I could do without discovering all the new dings in it. I've added several items to my recurring to-dos for the car so I remember to take better care of it. This one is going to have to last me a while, I think. I did something I'd been meaning to do ever since I bought it, just over a year ago. The dealer attached the license plate with one of those frames with the dealer's name on it. Well, the bottom of the frame has no holes to secure it to the rear hatch, so whenever you shut the hatch or went over a bump, you'd hear the frame and plate banging against the hatch. It was a nuisance, but I only remembered it when it happened, and it was never convenient to take a screwdriver and remove the frame and install the two missing screws. I finally did that this weekend. It's amazing how much difference that makes in how the car sounds. I'm glad I finally got around to doing that.

Well, that's probably enough trivia for one night. There are some things percolating in the back of my mind that may or may not make it here before the end of the year. I mean, it's not going to always be cheese sandwich around here. I think.

With that, I'm going to bed. Good night.

Intermission

Well, we're hangin' in there.

Christmas Eve went pretty well. Maria was driving up from Melbourne and as luck would have it, her supervisor didn't let them go until much later than she had planned, and a severe weather front was rolling through north Florida at the same time she was trying to make her way up here. It was obvious she was not going to be here early enough to provide as much assistance as I had expected, so I did what any sensible person would do, I called for help!

I asked Melissa if she would come over an hour or so early and help get things set up and she graciously agreed to do so. She's such a good daughter.

Maria arrived about 3:00 PM and she took over the decorating while I continued cleaning and straightening up. Melissa showed up at 5:00 and helped put out all the food and by the time the first guests showed up at 6:00 we were ready to go. Chris even pitched in frying up some battered shrimp.

We had far fewer people than usual, but it was still a good time and it wrapped up about an hour earlier than usual, so I was wrapping presents by 2200 and in bed a little after midnight. Maria went to midnight mass.

We opened presents about 8:00 a.m. after Melissa came over. Everyone had a very nice Christmas. I got a bottle opener with a digital recording of Homer Simpson expressing his feelings for beer. I'll try and sample it and put it up later, but it cracks me up. I got a couple of Enya CDs and a Tina Turner CD, which I'm listening to right now; and three DVDs - The Great Escape, Escape From New York, and Contact. I won't bore you all with the rest of the list, except to say I got some very nice gifts this year.

I think I mentioned I got the video game Animal Crossing for Caitlin, and she just stuck that into the GameCube this afternoon and she's been playing it for about three hours now. It's kind of like The Sims with little cartoon critters for people and she seems to be having a ball. Chris got a Hot Wheels game for the Cube which is actually quite fun to play. Chris did well with a CD-RW, a new sound card, a new keyboard and mouse and a "competition mousepad," who knew they made such things? He also got one of those tiny radio-controlled cars that Caitlin and I have been playing with quite a bit.

We had a wonderful Christmas dinner at Melissa's with Pat's family and one of Melissa's friends and her fiance and her mother. I didn't eat too much, but it was a near thing, everything was so good. I did fall asleep on the couch briefly. The combined effects of exhaustion, turkey and beer I think.

Yesterday was spent trying to pick up all the debris and getting some semblance of order restored. We took Maria's car to the dealer for routine maintenance, and I went out and got my eyes examined and ordered a new pair of glasses to take advantage of my insurance coverage. Now, there's weblog material I tell you!

I got a massage today as kind of a gift to myself. It was very nice. I expected it to be kind of painful, but it didn't hurt at all. Only had two "knots" that got kind of kneaded a bit. I might have to do that every couple of months or so. If I give up drinking Diet Pepsi, I could probably afford to do it every month!

Tonight we're going to see The Two Towers, hopefully it won't be too crowded. Melissa and her whole crew saw it Monday night and thought it was outstanding. None of them had read any of the books, but Melissa got them for Christmas.

I went ahead and took advantage of Corel's upgrade offer and ordered Graphics Suite 11 this afternoon. The Exchange is offering Canon's A40 digital camera for $218 on New Year's Day, regularly $289.00. Haven't priced it on the web, but that looks attractive. I like my Kodak DC280, but it's slow and doesn't do well in a dim environment, the A40 looks like it would address those issues and I'll still use the DC280 for other photos where I want TIFF files, or to set it to do timelapse photography. I'll have to scrub the budget, but I'm thinking this might be a go. We'll see.

Well, that's probably enough cheese sandwich for one day. Maybe I'll have time to share some of my reflections and introspection a little later on tonight or tomorrow. Tomorrow definitely includes trips to Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, those gift cards are burning a hole in my pocket!

Merry Christmas!

Is It Christmas Yet?

Okay, I've done three loads of laundry, taken out the trash, cleaned the half-bath (the one company gets to use), made a loaf of banana bread (from a mix - I'm no chef), baked a bunch of cookies (from my grocer's dairy case), bought cold cuts, cheese, dip, chips, beer, wine, soda, crackers, salsa, more cheese, plastic cups, plastic plates (in holiday colors), plastic utensils, paper napkins and scented candles.

I still need to buy egg nog and rolls, more Diet Pepsi (I consumed most of it doing all this stuff), clean the computer room and the dining room, bake some more cookies, finish clearing off the counters, fold some more laundry, do a load of dishes and get them put a way, and if I have time, run out to Books-a-Million for a gift card. After the party I'll wrap presents and go to bed.

Think I'll make it?

Oh ye of little faith.

Mom sent me my Christmas present and I opened it - a new quilt! I'll take a picture of it and post it sometime soon. It's beautiful. Thanks Mom! She's a hard-core quilter and she makes beautiful quilts. I've had my other one for more than 20 years, it even went to sea with me, and it's still in pretty good shape.

How do you mop the kitchen floor? Here's how I do it, maybe I'm a little over the top. First, I remove all the large pieces of furniture that are easily relocated. These include the kitchen table, chairs, stools, decorative things I don't understand, Caitie's doll furniture and the like. Then I pick up all the video games, VHS tapes, dog toys, pencils, pens, magazines, spent batteries, subscription cards, coupons, TV guides, and stuff like that. Then I sweep. And sweep. I get all the big stuff up, but the cat hair tends to float away from the broom. So next I get out that swiffer-thingy. I bought one that is a non-standard size, so I can never find those landfillable cloths that fit right. I make it work. I then run it all over the floor and pick up all the cat hair, dust, dander and crap that the broom leaves behind. I used to vacuum, but the beater bar on the bare floor setting just shoots the dirt out the back where it strikes my toes without ever getting sucked into the cannister. Pointless.

This leaves a floor with dirt that is truly adhering to the floor, and therefore worthy of being mopped. I mop in square sections going over each section three times. I'm not totally anal about this, rectangles work too, but I like to make sure I get the corners. The TV room is attached to the kitchen and it's all vinyl so that gets mopped at the same time (which explains the VHS tapes and all). That room gives me the most trouble because there is simply too much stuff along the walls to move, so the corners tend to be neglected and then collect crap. I'll hit them with the hose from the vacuum later.

For all that it only takes me a little over an hour, including drying time.

Well, the floor should be dry. I guess I'll put all the furniture back on it. Then it's back to the grindstone.

I've scheduled myself for a massage on Friday morning. I've never had one before, so this should be interesting. I think I'll need it by then too.

If It's a Holiday, Why Am I Working So Hard?

This is a time a year when, even if there weren't so many things going on in the world, there would still be plenty of things to write about or comment on.

Unfortunately, it's also a time of year when time is the most precious commodity. Hopefully, I'll remember a few of the things I want to write about when I have more time to write.

I've been cleaning the house in preparation for having a few people over for Christmas Eve. Not our usual event, but still something you have to prepare for. Plus, I still haven't finished shopping. I wanted to buy some books for the kids. I give them books every year, although they never seem to compete with the video games I give them. Yeah, I know, "Stop doing that!"

The room where my computer is located is in the front of the house, and there's a small bench on the front porch that usually holds some plants. There's enough room on it for Jaguar to sit on it and look in the window. When I'm on the computer and he's outside wanting to come in, he sits up there and meows at me until I notice him and let him in. Not exactly a concentration aid.

I guess it's probably a good thing there isn't a lot of time to write, because I'm afraid a good deal of it would be despairing. But that's my problem, not yours. Everything really is exactly the way it is supposed to be.

I had a busy weekend. I drove down to Melbourne and back on Saturday morning. Encountered several accidents on the return trip. Typical stupidity, everyone following too closely (me too) at high speeds. An accident occurred further up the line, the inevitable compression wave travelled back south and somebody not paying attention, rear-ends another driver - which starts another compression wave and it goes on. Fortunately, it only added 45 minutes to the drive, but still, it was nearly six hours in a car on Saturday. Yuck.

Took my test for my Purple belt on Friday. Passed, but I've never seen anyone fail. ATA uses their own belt color system, so there's a lot more of them than traditional karate or TKD. One could be cynical and observe that it offers more opportunities to collect a testing fee; but there is something to be said for frequent positive feedback. I suppose you could make the case that this school is a kind of "black belt factory," but I think that's mitigated to some extent by the level of effort the student puts in. I think I put in significant effort, but I think I need to do more. I'm enjoying it and, slowly, I am beginning to get a little better. I took a joint-lock seminar again on Saturday after I got back from Melbourne and that was a lot of fun. We also were given a video at that this one, so we can practice at home. So far, Chris hasn't seemed too eager to be my practice partner.

Spent some time at the stores on Saturday afternoon. They were packed. I didn't stress out as much as I have in the past in that kind of environment. Further evidence of progress I think. I didn't find everything on my list, but that's the way life goes. Hopefully the list-makers will understand.

The Great Race and Earth Versus the Flying Saucers came in on Saturday, so I had to watch them. I split TGR over Saturday night and Sunday morning, it's a two hour and forty minute movie, complete with intermission. The quality of the DVD was excellent.

Well, it's time to get ready for work. I don't have to drop kids off this morning, and traffic shouldn't be very heavy because a lot of people will be on holiday leave. I'm working today and taking the rest of the week off.

If I don't get back here before Christmas, please accept my warmest wishes for a happy and safe holiday to all of you.

Oh yeah, I started doing this blogging thing three years ago yesterday.

The Boss!

Supposedly, the Boss will be here in Jacksonville on 4 March...where he'll be performing is undetermined.

If this is true, then this is one of the only times I will probably take off work to make sure I get in line to get tickets early enough to actually have a shot at getting them. If that makes any sense. I should probably ask my daughter Melissa what the best way to get tickets would be, as she probably has more recent experience than I do, or friends who do.

I saw Springsteen perform twice at the Naval Academy and I haven't seen him live since. It's overdue.

I'm not sure it's going to happen though, as I can't find it mentioned anywhere at the tour site.

Better Living Through Chemistry

One of my numerous tasks that had gone too long forgotten was getting Squeaky her annual shots. I was able to get her an appointment today, and as she was getting stuck, I spoke to the vet about Jaguar and his spraying.

It turns out it is unlikely he has a bladder infection, given the nature of the behavior. Rather, it is very likely he's upset about the other cats in the house and he's marking everything to claim it as "his."

Well, there's a pheromone you can buy that is claimed to alleviate this behavior. I'm going to check it out.

The other morning, Jag jumped into bed with me. I started petting him and he was purring away when he stood up, turned around and sprayed the wall right next to my head.

Didn't think cats could fly, did you?

The vet's going to look into it some more and she said if it looked like it might be effective, she would order some for me. The kids would never let me get rid of Jag, and to be honest, I wouldn't have the heart to get rid of him either. But I've got to do something.

Without Warning

Here's a tip for those of you trying to play along at home in the War With Iraq Game: Don't pay any attention to any mention of dates by the U.S. We'll go when we think we need to and we think we're ready to, and we're sure as hell not going to share a timetable with anyone. It's as likely as not that any mention of dates is disinformation. Believe me, the Bad Guys know this, I'm not tipping our hand here. It's all about creating doubt, uncertainty and anxiety in the mind of your opponent - something Microsoft is pretty good at, come to think of it.

If you really do want to play along at home, and feel like you're "in the know" - pay attention to the phase of the moon. The Bad Guys know that too.

Crazed and Confused

This is the time of year when we need to take advantage of all the tools at our disposal to keep chaos and madness at arm's length. The main tool I turn to when the crunch is on is Life Balance by Llamagraphics and my trusty Handspring Visor.

If this sounds like a product endorsement, it is.

Most of the time, I can keep track of all the crap I have to do in my head. I used to be able to keep track of a lot more than I seem to be able to now, maybe that's age or just fatigue setting in. In any case, there are times, like the holidays, when there are more things I need to take care of than I can keep in my head. When I start forgetting things, and tasks go unaccomplished, I start getting unhappy, and that turns into a negative feedback loop that can turn into depression pretty fast.

I've been sliding down that slope for the past couple of weeks now, even though I know how to avert it. Finally, on Monday, I turned to Life Balance and started making an outline of all the stuff I had to do. It may not stop entropy from increasing, but it can slow it down.

I don't really use the "balance" part of the application. To be honest, I have never quite grokked that feature, and I've been a Life Balance user for nearly three years. Maybe one day I'll value it, but for now I pretty much ignore the pie charts.

Life Balance is one of the most intelligent to-do managers I've ever encountered. It takes effort on the user's part to set it up that way, but it's well worthwhile. One of the key features, I find, is the assignment of "places" to specific tasks, and each "place" can be linked to other places. For example, I have a place called Work and all the tasks that I need to do for work are assigned to that place. But I've also linked Work to other places, like Telephone, Internet, iBook, and all the services and facilities located near my worksite. When I go to the To-do list portion of the application, I tell it I'm at Work, and it lists all the tasks that have their place assigned to Work, as well as all the tasks that I can do on the phone, on the internet, or at one of the facilities close to my worksite.

My To-do list is enormous this time of year. I need some way to filter it to the most appropriate tasks I can do right that minute, and doing so by place is a logical and powerful filter.

I had a pretty productive day today, and it really does make a positive difference in my attitude when I can check off several items on my to-do list. If I had a working phone at my desk, or internet access, I could have checked off a couple more; but as it is, I'm still quite pleased.

I might actually make it through Christmas.

Trivial Notations

Can you tell the holidays are getting to me? My inner Scrooge is coming to the fore.

Yesterday morning the microwave decided to fail in that rather unambiguous way microwaves sometimes fail - a magnetron failure. Press "Cook" and instead of a hot item, you get a loud BUZZZZZZ.

I guess I should say I'm fortunate, because it's still under warranty and the repair person will be here on Friday to fix it, so it should be a full-up round for the holidays.

I finally got around to replacing the washing machine hoses last night. When Maria was here last weekend, she undertook an archeological expedition to Chris's room. She returned with an enormous quantity of clothing artifacts, all of which required laundering before they could be properly sorted, classified and cataloged. Doing five loads of laundry on Sunday, I kept noticing the corrosion on the hot water hose connection. I went to bed wondering if I'd step into a house-wide puddle of water in the morning. So I got up and shut off the water to the washing machine. Last night I ran up to Home Depot, which is a national asset in my opinion, and bought two stainless steel clad flex hoses. Should be good to go for several years.

Caitie went around the neighborhood caroling with some of the other neighbors on Monday night. It was pretty sweet. Me, I was field-stripping the vacuum cleaner again. Mandy's fur is short, but parts of it are very wiry and stiff, so they tend to collect in the hose and form a large clot of hair which impedes the flow of air and kind of defeats the purpose of the vacuum cleaner. The dog is a source of an enormous quantity of fur that gets shed everywhere. Bathing and brushing don't seem to help, we just have to live with it we're told.

I hope I don't have to live with the holes she's digging in the backyard. I don't mind them back in the corners, but lately she's taken to digging them right off the back porch, throwing all kinds of dirt onto the porch and tracking it into the house on her paws. That problem awaits a moment when I have a little more time to do some research on how to get dogs to dig where you want them to dig. Supposedly, we don't want them not to dig, because it's good for their mental health or something.

Chris gets his stitches out this morning and he's done with school till after the new year. I've got a list of chores for him to accomplish the next couple of days. I'm taking Caitie down to Melbourne on Saturday when I go to collect the table. She'll stay with Maria until Christmas Eve, which should allow me to get a little ahead on the housekeeping for the remainder of the weekend.

My youngest brother, the rocket scientist, was picked by his company to attend a shuttle launch in March. He works on the hydraulic controls in the solid rocket boosters. He's pretty jazzed since it's a free trip and he hasn't been to see a launch yet. We'll have to see if we can't hook up while he's down here.

I'm changing offices at work, moving to a new location. At the moment, I'm without phone or network connection. The good news is, I don't have to look at the Red LED of Despair. The bad news is, if anyone should have to contact me, they might have a hard time figuring out how to go about it. My employer tells me they're going to pay for me to get a cell phone. I really don't want one, but I'm being told it's not optional, so I guess I get to play with one of those things now.

One nice thing is the weather is better. Now it's perhaps a little warmer than usual, highs are supposed to be in the mid-seventies, lows in the fifties. If only I had a couple of hours more daylight at the end of the day, I'd be golden. Oh well.

Well, I've probably frittered away enough time here. I can go do forty five minutes worth of housekeeping before I have to hold revieille on the kids. I'm sure there's a small mountain of dirt and fur I can sweep up in the TV room where Mandy enters and exits the house. Sorry about being so cranky last night.

Nothing Special

Today Shelley writes about blogrolls and the implications of changes thereto; how people try to use the presence of other people on their blogroll as some kind of statement about something or other. She even quotes some guy called Photo Dude:

Now, this is pretty funny, if you ask me (which nobody did, but it's my weblog so I can rhetorically ask myself - I think). Here's a guy who's saying that his little link to anyone is but a snowflake in a blizzard, no impact at all; yet in the preceding paragraph, he says he thinks the "point" of blogs is to experience the diversity of people, thoughts and philosophies around the world, and all these "links" of no impact must still have some meaning. Then he asks, if that's not the case, what is the point?

The point is there is no point. Talk about inflated self-importance! Who cares who anyone links to? I don't care. I don't care when people publicly make a big show about de-linking to someone, any more than I care when they go on a tear about some other bug that has crawled up their ass. Who cares? This is no big deal, it's nothing special. If anything, it's high school all over again. While I'm flattered anytime I find someone has placed a link to this mess in their blogroll, I'm also vaguely uneasy that now I have another obligation to live up to some expectation that I'm going to be uniformly interesting or something. I am simply not that interesting, with the vain exception of to myself.

Oh yeah, I know webloggers are going to be congratulating themselves for what happened to Trent Lott. I'm not so sure it means anything. If he resigns or gets fired, what's new about that? That "the web" was responsible for it? Yawn. Do something new, I'll be interested.

You know why I have a blogroll, or "list o'links?" It's a convenience to me. When I'm at work, or at the library or some other place where I have to use someone else's computer, I can click on the links to the places I like to visit without having to remember their URLs. I can remember www.scripting.com, or www.macsurfer.com, but most weblogger's URLs are a little less memorable than that.

These are the people I've come to be interested in. I don't link to them because I want to challenge my worldview - I get plenty of that just driving down the road listening to the radio. I don't link to them to show that I have exquisite linking taste, or to look blog-trendy. I just want to see what they're up to, or what they've found interesting. I don't care if anyone else cares. If I get tired of somebody, or if they're not very interesting, or if they've stopped updating for a loooong period of time (James? Are you listening?) I may drop them just to make it easier for me to go through the list every day. There are a few of them that are there kind of out of courtesy or tradition or something because I really don't drop by anymore, but that's something weird within me.

I know, somehow there's some kind of metadata about how many people link to certain sites and we're all very fascinated to see who links to whom, and how many everybody has, and are they "diverse" enough? Hypertext links weren't "meant to bring us together!" They were "meant" to allow someone to create documents that allowed the reader to read or explore related documents with relative ease. Somehow we've burdened a fairly benign technological innovation with some sort of responsibility to "bring us together."

It's enough to make you want to puke.

This is not some societal burden I've undertaken here. This is a wall I can mark up all I want from the convenience of my own home, mostly without the police or the homeowners' association telling me I can't do it, nothing more. There are some people who want to form a community association to police what I and people like me do, but we're not quite there yet. Maybe 25 people read what I write on a regular basis, and probably a third or more are related to me. For all I know, I'm talking to myself here, and I don't care. (I do know I'm not talking only to myself, because I'm human enough to put that SiteMeter thing on this page to see how many people come by to see what I've scribbled lately.) I'm not trying to change the world or make it a better place. To my knowledge, I have not changed one single person's mind about anything, and I'm pretty much done with trying. I write what scratches my itch, I read what interests me, that's all. It's no big deal. It's a little bit more than shooting the shit at lunch, but not by much. Sometimes someone will write something extraordinary, and that's great - but Sturgeon's Law scales well with the web, 90% of everything, including the stuff I write - and the stuff the "stars" write, is crap.

We should all just get over ourselves on this whole thing. It's no big deal.

I'm Sorry

What do Cardinal Law and Senator Lott have in common?

Does Cardinal Law have some special tolerance for pedophilia? Is Senator Lott a racist? If you asked them, I'm pretty sure they'd say no; but they made choices that belie those answers. What's going on?

I would say it's an example of how our behavior is affected when we're acting in a role as a member of a group. It's hard, perhaps too hard, to separate our behaviors from the roles we play in groups. Even now, after these errors have been revealed, both the Cardinal's and the Senator's behaviors are driven by their roles. The Cardinal has resigned from his position as the Archbishop of Boston, but he has indicated that he had hoped to retain his position in order to use his authority to correct his mistakes. Senator Lott hasn't resigned, yet, but he's making a similar claim - that he will use his authority to behave in a way that corrects his error.

I think most of that intent stems from a desire to preserve an image each man hopes most accurately reflects his true character, both to himself and to the public. But I think it is too late for each of them, at least in the roles that got them into trouble anyway.

There is no such thing as power, there is only authority. Each of these men are legitimate authorities. That is to say, they rely on external agencies to maintain their authority, as opposed to natural authority, which they would have earned and exhibited independent of nearly all external agencies. One of the essential components of authority of any kind, is faith. Cardinal Law had, for the most part, lost the faith of his diocese and, one suspects, the Pope. Members of the Senate are grappling with their faith in Senator Lott. Part of that struggle involves a calculation of how their faith will affect the faith of the electorate toward the Republican party.

Why did each of these men make the mistakes they did? First, I think Cardinal Law's was, by far, more egregious than Senator Lott's. The fact that it has taken this long for him to step down is, I think, a reflection of the nature of ecclesiastical authority; and not a good one at that. I think Cardinal Law is probably a good man who is repelled by pedophilia and who has compassion for its victims; but I think he was trying to protect the church, and, to some extent, himself. When we identify ourselves with a group, then we tend to believe that the things other members of the group do reflect on ourselves, as indeed they do. So our natural inclination is to try to hide those actions, to preserve our public image and our self-image. But while the actions of others are only a reflection on ourselves, our own actions are a direct projection of our character and this is where the greatest mistakes are made. "It's never the crime, it's always the cover-up."

Senator Lott's mistake was just stupid. I think it's possible to have a legislative record, and to have embraced the positions Senator Lott has embraced over the years and still not be a racist, but you certainly couldn't say the case is self-evident. I don't know if Senator Lott is a racist or not. He says he's not; but then there's an issue of how much faith we have in him, which is called into doubt when he makes asinine remarks at birthday parties.

Why did he make such a stupid comment? I think it's because he was acting as a member of a group and trying to exhibit his credentials as a member of that group. First, he's a Republican, celebrating a Republican's birthday. Both men are from the south and there's this "thing" that goes on with the south. Much of that "thing" is ugly, but a lot of it is harmless. Finally, the Republicans had recently come off their big election victory, so they probably felt pretty good about themselves, the American people seemed to like them and all that. So I'm guessing he's at this party where Strom Thurmond is kind of basking in this glow of affection or something, presumably for his longevity if for no other reason, and Senator Lott wants to be a part of it all. So he ties himself and his state to Strom Thurmond through the vehicle of the 1948 election (when Lott was seven, and he didn't even remember who the Republican candidate was) in which he somehow recasts Thurmond's candidacy as a good thing and something to be proud of, utterly oblivious to the central hideousness of that whole platform. I think it was just plain stupidity, being a little too relaxed, a little too confident and wanting to be a little too closely associated with the subject of the event.

On the other hand, maybe he's just a racist and he was speaking in crypto-code for all the other southern Republican racists. I don't know. But then you see why Senator Lott suddenly has a career problem.

Frankly, as much as I would enjoy having Senator Lott as the poster boy for what's wrong with the Republican party the next time around, I'd much prefer to have a Senate that reflected better sense than to keep this guy in a leadership position.

In any case, I think each man serves as an example of the kinds of errors that occur when we act too much out of our roles and what we believe our roles to be, instead of our principles, if indeed we know what they are. Presumably, if the groups we are affiliated with are worthwhile, then our principles will be reasonably closely aligned with the beliefs of the group and our affiliation won't be jeopardized by acting on principle. If our principles are not closely aligned with the group, then perhaps we should reconsider our affiliation.

In the end, an apology does little to restore faith. Once it's lost, it has to be earned back, and sometimes that's too much to do in one lifetime.

Firefly, We Hardly Knew Ye

Fox cancelled Firefly.

Bummer.

Entropy, My Enemy

This is a weekend for inhaling and exhaling. The chaos index is up significantly and there's little to do but wait for it to pass. At least it's quiet for a bit right now.

I volunteered (yes, I did learn never to volunteer) to help out at the black belt testing today. It's more or less the graduation exercise along with an elaborate demonstration and an awards ceremony. My usual class partner, Mrs. D, was formally receiving her black belt and I wanted to be there. They wanted me to help hold boards, and then I helped hold the targets for the littlest kids testing. Each of their partners was to hold the others' target for them, but the small fry don't have enough mass, so they end up being kicked and punched all over the floor and the one being tested has to chase them. I was added mass.

But that evolution ate about a third of the day. The most productive third, too. I got back to the house about 6:30 PM, just after Maria and Caitlin got back from shopping. Chris has discovered the Tony Hawk 3 Game Cube game has a sound track he really likes, so he'd been blasting that through the stereo until I told him I'd had enough of it. I started making something for dinner and he asked me to take him to a LAN party that was underway somewhere. We had discussed it earlier, and the plan was for me to drop him off on my way the the black belt testing, and then pick him up on my way back. He didn't roll out of the rack until noon, so he wasn't ready to go when I was. I told him I had just gotten home and I wasn't about to jump back into the car to take him someplace just because it was convenient for him, so he asked Maria and she took him. Now, I'm waiting for him to call and ask for a ride home. We'll see how this works out.

Saturday is the day I normally get caught up on housekeeping, but that didn't happen. For a variety of reasons, it's even more of a mess than usual. I've really got to get a handle on this problem soon before I start reaching a level of frustration that makes everyone unhappy. The trouble is, they're going to be unhappy anyway; because the solution is me not doing everything, which is what the current state of affairs is.

Next weekend I have to drive down to Melbourne and back to retrieve a dining room table Maria moved down there in August. This does not thrill me. That's a six hour evolution including travel time, which is six hours I won't have to get caught up with the mess two kids, three cats and a large dog create. So that means everything has to get done during the week, which means I'll need to get help from the kids. They "help," but it's often just as much work as doing it myself since they seldom do the job right or well, and usually have to be reminded multiple times to get the job done, so I wind up having to be the bad guy, and re-doing most of it anyway.

Notice that my mood is a reflection of my attention placed on a future projection of my fears. This is habituated thinking, something I struggle with. I have to remind myself to focus on this moment - and just breathe. Been doing that a lot today.

It's 11:00 PM and I'm guessing Chris will be spending the night since he hasn't called. This did not go according to plan and we'll have to revisit this whole episode because I'm not pleased.

Well, that's enough pissing, moaning and complaining for one evening. I think I'm going to hit the rack. I've got a lot of work to do tomorrow and I'll need an early start if I'm to have a prayer of getting most of it done.

Hopelessness

I'm enjoying reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön. Not because things are particularly falling apart right now, they're not; but because I find it helpful to remind myself of these ideas and read how other people interpret them.

Chapter seven is called Hopelessness and Death, which is probably a pretty depressing title, and you probably wouldn't find what she's written there very comforting, but it's worthwhile anyway. I don't agree with her on everything though.

She portrays hope and fear as two sides of the same coin, wherever you find hope, you find fear. I'm not sure that's a particularly apt simile, but I understand what she's saying. In a way, hope binds us to fear. As long as we may say we have hope, we are at the same time addressing a particular fear. When one hopes, one is acting out of fear.

She contrasts the coin of hope and fear with the coin of hopelessness and confidence. Again, I'm not thrilled with the coin thing, but I think she really missed the mark by focusing on confidence. While I agree that wherever you find hope, you'll find a fear it is bound to, wherever you find hopelessness you will not necessarily find confidence. I know we're talking about two different kinds of hopelessness here, but it isn't terribly clear if you haven't thought about it a bit before.

What I think she's talking about are faith and fear. I think she's reluctant to use the word faith because it often connotes a particular faith in a theistic entity which she spends part of the chapter suggesting is merely another kind of hope.

I think the point is, the duality we all must confront is the duality of faith and fear. Hopelessness is an aspect of faith. By choosing hope, we act out of our fear and seek to alleviate it by placing our attention in an imaginary future outcome that may or may not occur. There is a major problem with this. It denies the value of the present by rejecting it and projecting our wishes onto the future. Our wishes have no power to alter the future, so hope is effectively a powerless act. It robs of our our ability to use our attention in the present, where we have some capacity to effect a change.

Mindfulness tells us that the past and the future have no existence that we can effect, the present is all that there is. Fear rejects the present, and hope in response to fear makes us powerless. This is not the right thing to do, because it is, in effect, doing nothing.

Faith embraces the present, as awful as it may appear to be, because this is where the action is, this is where we may play a role. It is in this sense that hopelessness is an affirmative trait, an expression of faith. By accepting and embracing the present, not giving in to our fear, we have some chance of determining what the right action is. I don't know that we'll always choose the right action, but I know that we have no chance of doing so if we place our attention in hope.

Bummer

I was thinking about whether or not to go for the Corel Graphics Suite update, and had pretty much decided to go ahead and get it. When I went to Amazon.com, I noticed the total in my shopping cart was about $37.00 more than it was the first time. Sure enough, the price of the upgrade went up to $226! Ouch.

"He who hesitates is lost."

Well, it just means I'll have to take Corel up on their promotion and get it for $200.00.

In somewhat better news, the movie The Great Race is available on DVD. I loved this movie as a kid, especially Jack Lemmon's character, Professor Fate.

"Up Max! Up Max! I said, up Max!"

"Push the button Max."

"But you have stimulants!"

"When the water gets up to my mustache, I'm going to mention it to somebody!"

Max is played by Peter Falk. You'd have to see the movie.

Dad's Pounding the Keyboard Again

I've got to add Dad to the list o'links this weekend. He came out of retirement as Santa again. He's an amazing guy.

Memory

A couple of interesting articles on the nature of human memory. A long one on the unreliability of memory in Issues in Science and Technology; and a brief report on some new research in how memories are fashioned in the brain at ScienceDaily Magazine.

So, What Did You Learn?

I think I've mentioned before that my phone seldom rings, and when it does it is usually something about the kids at school.

I had been out of the office for the first couple of hours of the morning, and when I got in I noticed the little red LED of Despair was lit. Trying not to anticipate bad news (expect nothing, be ready for anything), I dialed all the digits it takes to retrieve a message and was unsurprised but disappointed to hear the voice of Christopher's principal asking me to call the school because Chris had been in a fight and he'd been hurt.

This is not the kind of thing a parent likes to hear. Unfortunately, it's not something I'm unfamiliar with either. Be that as it may, it was the first time anyone ever told me Chris had been hurt.

I dialed the school's number but kept getting a busy signal. I decided to listen to the next message in case there was something else I needed to learn while I was waiting. It turns out that was a good thing to do. It was my daughter Melissa, and she had been contacted by the school and had left work to collect Chris and take him to the local emergency room.

So, no ambulance. That's a good thing, I'm thinking.

I hopped into the car and headed over to the hospital. By the time I got there, they had already gotten out of treatment and were waiting for me in the waiting area. Seven stitches in his chin.

It was a familiar story. Starts out with someone teasing Chris, he mouths off back. The words escalate, Chris usually makes some powerless display of power, usually by throwing a chair - never at someone, just one of those monkey-brain things we do to try and look intimidating, "Don't mess with me!"

The other guy figures he's making progress pushing all Chris's buttons, so he's going to push some more. He gets up in Chris's face and makes those half-lunges that are intended to provoke you by making you believe you're about to get hit, and Chris shoved him.

In the weird rules of engagement governing adolescent male altercations, Chris had now met the criteria to receive an ass-whoopin' ("He touched me first!"), which he promptly received.

All of this was taking place in a classroom with a male teacher who was doing precisely nothing.

What I haven't mentioned is that the guy Chris got into a fight with is almost twice his size, according to all the accounts, I never saw him. Chris is not small by any means, so the guy was big. He knocked Chris down and proceeded to kick him. It was the kick to his face that laid open his chin.

Fortunately, the commotion drew the attention of Ms. D, the secretary/receptionist/admin person in the front of the building. I liked Ms. D the instant I met her at the beginning of the school year. She's unflappable, and projects an aura of competence and authority. She takes no crap from anyone. She got the other kid off of Chris, had the male teacher call 911, and got a dressing on Chris's chin. She reminds me alot of Nurse Christine Hunt who was the only person in the hospital who gave me any confidence when I donated a kidney to my brother five years ago.

So much for gender stereotypes in this case.

The cops came and took the other kid away, I learned. They had taken pictures of Chris's chin at the ER before I arrived.

Once I was satisfied that Chris was okay, and found out as much as I was likely to learn from his side of the story, I asked him, "So, what did you learn?"

His answer didn't exactly fill me with confidence: "Never get in a fight with a guy twice my size."

So we had one of those one-way conversations that Sandy always insists my kids stop listening to after about three minutes (actually, I think she says it's more like 30 seconds). I tried to be brief. I never raised my voice, and I wasn't angry.

Still, I think I detected something different in him. I think he did learn something important about consequences and choices today. He's not angry or humiliated; but he said he did feel embarrassed, and I think that's appropriate and good. Who knows? Chris's behavior is one of those things I used to try to control and often took too much ownership of it. Now I let Chris own his behavior. It's easier to be a dad when I don't have to try to do both jobs.

I stopped by the school on the way home and thanked Ms. D for stepping in and being the adult, likely saving Chris from more serious harm. The principal was there and I spoke to her as well. I told them I didn't understand why the male teacher did nothing to interrupt that whole process. I think they know they have a problem there. They both really like Chris, but he has been difficult from time to time this year.

I don't know what's going to happen to the other kid. I know he has to learn about consequences as well, but I'm not sure I really want him involved in the criminal justice system. It's a tough call and I have conflicting feelings on it. The principal told me it's likely he wouldn't be charged. I spoke to Maria tonight and she thinks it's likely he will be charged. I have no idea who's right. If the other kid is back in school tomorrow, the principal is going to take them both aside and make sure this issue is resolved. Chris says he's not angry at the other guy, and I think he's being honest. Hopefully it's mutual.

Just another exciting day in the life of a parent. My problems are insignificant compared to those some other parents face, so I'm not complaining; but parenting is never easy.

I'm Sorry, David

War Predictions

At least one high-attention warblogger has been predicting war before the end of December. I've never had to predict when a war would begin so I'm not sure how good I am at it, but I think starting a war around the "season of peace" would probably be considered bad form, even for the most bellicose chicken-, um, defenders of liberty. Fortunately, we've got 12,000 pages of stuff to wade through, that should buy us enough time to not appear hasty.

Aircraft Carriers

This is just kind of irritating. It's just my opinion, but I think someone ought to be deceased before they get an aircraft carrier named after them.

I'm Sorry Dave, I Can't Do That

This is interesting. I'm wondering when we'll see the day when we need to do a firmware update to treat our PDAs for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Stereotypes

The title of this article in the NY Times could be better, "With Video Games, Researchers Link Guns to Stereotypes." I thought it was about video games contributing to stereotypes, which I almost skipped. Instead, it's about how researchers used an interactive computer simulation (the "video game") to discover how stereotyped thinking affects decisions regarding the use of force.

Interesting article.

Whole Lott of Love

This guy is an idiot.

Interestingly, embarrassed conservatives in the weblog world are criticizing him for his idiotic comment, but then also criticizing liberal democrats for not criticizing him as well. Of course, one wonders if liberal democrats would not be criticized by conservatives whatever they did. I'd be happy to see him go nevertheless. John McCain would be an interesting Majority Leader. Never going to happen, but it'd be an interesting couple of years.

For the record, I'm a registered independent and I vote. I embrace no other label.

Natural Causes

I heard on NPR that as many as 600,000 people are still without power following last week's ice storm. I wonder what the news stories and political rhetoric would be, if those power outages were caused by terrorism?

Different, I'm sure.

That Was Zen, This is Tao

That was the title of a book given to Bobby Hill in last weekend's episode of King of the Hill. I thought it was pretty funny. Um, the title and the episode.

Noise Too

Well, there wasn't much problem refinancing the car. It only took about fifteen minutes. Go figure. I didn't get their best interest rate, but they did finance the full purchase price, so they essentially treated it as a new purchase. It does improve my cash flow for the time being.

The weather has been 180 out from yesterday. Gray, leaden skies and rain, temps in the high 50s; which is better than the 40s, I'll give you that. It's been a cold fall this year. I'm trying not to read any omens into that.

Noise

It's a much nicer day today than we've had in the last week or so. I ran the three-mile loop this morning. The scale tells me I've gained back everything I had lost, so I've got several things to work on. One is not beating myself up. That's an ongoing thing. Another is avoiding self-sabotage. That one is kind of insidious. I baked a cake last night. I never bake cakes. I have no idea why I felt the urge to bake a cake, but I did. Now I have to try and not eat it. Imagine how successful I'll be at that. But the run felt good and I actually beat my two previous times. So, lots to work on.

Played with the Wacom Graphire in iChat with Pascale last night. She figured out you could probably get a chat going with a number of people and play Pictionary. It's pretty cool. You just draw on the graphpaper, make sure the cursor is blinking in the chat window, hit Send on the pad, and then hit Return on the keyboard. The picture shows up in the chat window. Very cool. Pascale can draw, we've established that I cannot.

Started going through all the clutter on my desk. Hopefully, just in the nick of time. I can refinance the Montero as a new car if I do so within a year of purchase. It'll be a year tomorrow. Am I too late? Stay tuned sports fans... (If I am, this will be another opportunity not to beat myself up. I wouldn't mind a few less of those opportunities. Yes, I know I could have been paying more attention.)

Corel quite courteously sent me a CD with Corel Graphics Suite Version 11 on it as a 30 day trial. It's pretty neat. They even lowered the upgrade price to $200.00, but I can get it at Amazon for $189.00. The question is, do I want to spend that much money on it? Well, maybe that's not the question, because I know the answer is yes. Can I afford it? That's the question. Probably not, I just bought that TV and I've still got Christmas shopping to do. If I can't refinance the Montero, then cash flow is about to take a major hit and we probably ought to save what we can. It's unlikely I'll get a pay raise anytime soon, so we're kind of stuck for the moment. Plus, I don't use it very often anyway.

The grocery shopping is done. I've got one more load of laundry to do. Finishing clearing off my desk (Calling it a "desk" is probably giving it more credit than it's due - it's really just a large folding table that holds up my iMac, the monitor for the 6500, telephone, router, scanner, printer and pencil sharpener.) is the priority for today. I need to dig out an old dentist bill I paid before I learned the dental coverage I got for the kids will, in fact, pay a dentist not on their list. I won't get it all back, but it might be enough to pay for Corel v. 11! I've got to service the water softener, put away dishes, and my bedroom really needs to be picked up. I could spend all of my time every day just doing housework. To the extent that I don't, I have to live with clutter. Unfortunately, I didn't win the Florida Lottery, so hiring a cleaning service is kind of out of the question. I've really got to get better at putting the kids to work, or at least getting them to pick up after themselves. Who said the whining lamp was lighted? Care for some cheese?

Well, that used up some of my finite time resources. I'd better start putting it to a better use so I don't have to write another one of these next week. Till the next time...

Caitie 'n Santa

Caitie and Santa and an unidentified elf.

Friday Night

Ah, you gotta love Florida. It was fun listening to all the parents bitch about how cold it was. I was right there with them. I hate bitching alone. Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it.

The kids were great. They were loud, too! The local high school choir was on after Caitie's school, but first they had a soloist perform who was astonishingly good. She could bring tears to your eyes, just amazing.

Then, Santa came. Actually, in what is typical for these sorts of small-town endeavors, he arrived on a fire truck with a police escort with all sirens wailing about halfway through the high school choir's program.

Oh well, it was cold anyway.

Of course, Caitlin wanted to see Santa. Not so much because she had to tell him everything she wanted for Christmas, as much as she suspected they might be giving stuff away. At least, that's what she told me. So while she stood in line for over 40 minutes, I walked laps of the park to keep warm. Did I mention it was cold?

Did I say, "Frigging cold?"

It was frigging cold.

Anyway, she got to see the jolly old elf and then we headed back to the house. I got in about 8:15, so I missed the first part of Firefly, but it was otherwise a pretty good episode again tonight. A little more of the bang-bang shoot-em-up, (there's the Joni Mitchell influence) than usual, but still about the most entertaining hour of sf on television, I think.

Friday Evening

Caitie has a Christmas recital in an hour, but she's feeling a little under the weather. It's not far from here, so we'll see how she's feeling a little later on.

It's been too darn cold today. The forecast called for a high of 61, but I don't think we broke 50 all day. The forecast is one of those things you don't really notice except when it's wrong. I seem to believe it's been wrong this year more than any other year in recent memory, usually calling for better weather than we actually experienced. Of course, I wonder how likely it would be for me to recall those days when the weather turned out better than the forecast? Who knows.

iTunes is hitting Joni Mitchell pretty heavily today. The Last Time I Saw Richard is playing right now.

"All good dreamers pass this way someday"

Anybody seen McCusker lately? Maybe he's busy working on Chandler.

Pascale's still struggling with bad Mac karma. Bummer.

I wasn't the only guy at TKD this afternoon. Mr. C, the young man who's being home-schooled was there, along with a new student, Ms. C. It was a lighter workout than yesterday. I got there a little early and practiced my form several times. I've learned you're supposed to be able to do it without thinking about it, and I'm always thinking about what comes next. Often that results in confusion and I wind up getting all mixed up. I gather it may have something to do with a left brain/right brain thing. I'm trying not to think about it, buy I don't know how you remember what to do next if you don't. It'll be interesting.

Well, I've got to get ready to go stand out in the cold and appreciate my lovely little girl as she and her class sing Christmas carols at a tree-lighting ceremony. I'm wearing my heavy jacket.

Friday Morning

The kitchen floor is mopped. The laundry is folded (getting it put away is the next challenge). Most of the clutter has been put away. There's still more to do, but there always is. Tonight I'll get to some more of it.

I did buy that television yesterday. It's pretty cool. The kids like it, it does have a nicer picture than the 8+ year-old Mitsubishi. It doesn't have a lot of frills, no picture-in-picture (which I never really used after I got used to the novelty of having it), and such but it does look good. I haven't bought component video cables yet, strangely the Exchange doesn't carry them. Maybe this weekend.

Chris slipped and bumped his noggin against a door frame at school. The resulting blood seemed to draw a great deal of attention. I had to leave work and go collect him. The cut in his scalp was tiny, and he had a nice bump on his head, but otherwise looked okay. I took him home and told him to lay down and keep ice on it. Dr. Dad, practicing medicine without a license again.

I went to TKD yesterday for the first time in over a week. On Tuesday I had some gastro-intestinal thing going on that sort of made discretion the better part of valor. It was just myself and Mrs. D yesterday. She's getting ready for her black belt testing, so we went through some of her requirements. During stretches she told me to go easy on her because she was old. I told her I was older than she was, and she said she doubted it. She must have a poor memory because we'd had this conversation before. I told her I was forty-five and she said, "Oh, then you are older than me." I'm guessing she's in her latter thirties. She runs three to five miles a day and she's got four little kids. I'm guessing the running is stress relief as much as anything else, I've seen them all in the store together. In any case, I really don't look that young, but it's always fun to make believe I do.

Anyway, it was a pretty good workout. I cannot do a butterfly kick yet. Any kick that involves jumping and turning at the same time sort of exceeds my ability to coordinate. I can handle pretty much one movement at a time, and can get several strung together in sequence if I practice, but a few of these are like two things at once. The butterfly is like three. You're turning, lifting your left leg, then jumping while you're still turning and your leg is presumably lifted, then kicking. I suck. Plus, everybody knows white men can't jump.

I have another class today. Mrs. D usually doesn't come on Fridays, so I'm not sure who will be there. Sometimes it's young Mr. C, a kid who is home-schooled. Sometimes it's a sailor who works nights. Sometimes it's just me. I hate that. I like when there are other people there so at least some of my mistakes may pass unnoticed.

Brand X

Al took issue with an article in Wired yesterday, regarding why Apple customers are seemingly so loyal to the platform. The author of the article attributes it to Apple's marketing, Al says it's Apple's record of innovation. I'd say it was neither. Or both, but something else too.

Apple got its start in the first wave of personal computing following the fingertip-bleeding hobbyist wave. Those early-adopters (I was a little late to the party, I didn't buy my ][+ until 1981), were, in the main, technically adroit, motivated, and mobile. User groups sprang up everywhere. To this day, the most enjoyable social organization I have ever participated in was in the early days of the Tidewater Apple Worms (the name still kind of makes me shudder). There was just so much excitement in discovering new things and sharing them - and a lot of disk copying too - that made every meeting something to look forward to; and back in 81 and 82, they'd meet twice a week!

So you had this core of enthusiastic users who formed social networks, later expanded and linked through the same technology that formed the basis for their affiliation. That had nothing to do with marketing, it had everything to do with Apple being at the right place at the right time, and being open about sharing information about the platform. To the extent that Apple survived while the TRS-80, Commodore PET, Atari, CP/M and other platforms did not, perhaps that was marketing, perhaps that was the Apple being perceived as a better product. But I think it was also this social network influencing those around them who were making purchasing decisions.

When IBM entered the marketplace, we all kind of held our breath. I recall reading Apple's "Welcome" message to IBM in the Wall Street Journal. Big Blue was moving into our neighborhood, what was going to happen now? To a certain extent, IBM was regarded as something of a threat. A huge, faceless corporation, trying to join our party. Would our platform die as IBM sucked all the oxygen out of the pond? I think the effect was to actually strengthen the bonds between many of the most vigorous Apple users.

Later, it became clear that it wasn't IBM that threatened to use up all the oxygen, but Microsoft. The enemy changed, but the threat didn't. So Apple users have always had this kind of resistance mentality, which has fed into the whole counter-culture or "Think Different" marketing schtick.

I still prefer using Apple computers to any other platform (and there really is only one other platform - Linux is like the fingertop-bleeding hobbyist group all over again. I've never compiled a kernel and I really don't think I intend to ever start). I form social networks with fellow Apple users to mutually assist one another, and to try to help preserve the value of my investment, both in terms of hardware and software dollars and knowledge of the platform. I don't think Apple is ever going to seriously challenge Microsoft's dominance of the marketplace. I just hope Apple and I are still around the day Microsoft fails, because they will fail one day. It may not be in my lifetime, but it would be a satisfying thing, about as satisfying as the fall of the Soviet Union, maybe more.

So it hasn't always been Apple's marketing or technical innovation, they've been blessed with good enemies.

A Day

Well, it's been a fairly typical Wednesday. I made meat loaf for supper, turned out okay. I did the dishes, but I've still not managed to mop the floor. I've got a load of laundry going, and enough sitting in the laundry room for another load, so I'll probably get that underway before I hit the rack. The stuff already in the dryer will just get added to the pile on top of the dryer because I haven't gotten around to folding it yet.

On the parenting side, I've been enforcing consequences for Chris, since he neglected to go to school yesterday. Said he fell asleep after breakfast. I usually check with him before I leave to make sure he's still conscious and ambulatory, but it didn't work yesterday. So, he's without internet access for the rest of the week, with restricted access on the weekend. Of course he tried to renegotiate and I had to be the hard-ass, but there you go.

I was supposed to go through the budget tonight. I did a cursory review the other day to see if I can afford a new TV that's on sale at the Navy Exchange. It's $60.00 cheaper than I can find it anyplace online, and that's not including the shipping charges. Plus I've got a 5% off promotional coupon (the kind that you have to scratch off to use - I just shine the Mag Lite from behind the thing and read what the amount is), and no sales tax at the Exchange, so my total cost is like $380.00 for a 27" JVC flat screen. It's a luxury, and we could do without a flat screen, but I think I can swing it. Melissa called the other night and she needs $700.00 to go back to school. She'll pay me back after her employer reimburses her, but that won't be until the semester is over. I've got to pay off my furniture I bought for my apartment on one of those "no payments till January 03" deals, and that looks doable. But tonight was supposed to be the dot the i's and cross the t's review to avoid any surprises. Didn't do it. Too tired. Shouldn't be doing this but I'm waiting for the washing machine.

The house is a mess (what else is new?). I figure tomorrow I'll enlist the rugrats in a cleanup effort coincident with the installation of the new TV. I'll probably get the kitchen floor done tomorrow too. Then it's Christmas decorating time.

I could have managed my time a little more efficiently vis-a-vis getting the chores done, had I not given so much of my attention to following, and participating, in this discussion on issues of gender equality or sexism or whatever the issue is. In my case, it's an example of a poor use of my limited time and attention resources. I can't change anyone's mind, and I can't make anyone feel any better. Net, my participation accomplishes nothing, save to cause me to neglect more immediate domestic responsibilities and to give some the impression that I am an arrogant and patronizing man who doesn't "get" that women aren't "victims" of sexism, they're "survivors."

So, in hindsight, had I devoted my attention and time to attending to my household chores, I would at least be able to enjoy neater surroundings and a less compressed work schedule for the remainder of the week. Choices - consequences. Next time, I'll make a different choice.

Well, the second load is underway, I'll stick it in the dryer when I get up tomorrow morning. I really have to write down that I need to replace the washing machine hoses. Eight years ago, a washing machine hose ruptured while nobody was home. It flooded half of the downstairs and it was an enormous pain getting it cleaned up and repaired. With all these wooden floors Maria had installed, it would be a much bigger nightmare this time.

Well anyway, today's object lesson is once again to pay no attention to things you can't control.

Happy Blog Anniversary to Al!

I hestitate to get into these anniversary notices, because I'm terrible at this sort of thing. The only reason I know it's Al's is because he said so!

It was around this time three years ago that Dave Winer and Userland released Manila on an unsuspecting public. There was the guy, an MD, who did Carpe Diem, and there was the Curmudgeon Who Taught Statistics, and of course Susan, who was the first blogger to welcome me when I launched Time's Shadow at ETP nearly three years ago. Susan's still with us, along with Hal, and Mira and garret and John and James. I'm not sure when Synergy got started, I linked to her later; likewise I'm not sure when Cecil got started at We're Hosed, either.

So for all of you in that initial class of '99, happy anniversary!

Loss of Control

Dorthea comments on yesterday's post, writing, "Dave has a locus of control that is very strongly internal. I control my world, says Dave, and when I don't I can at least control my perception of it, and isn't that in itself controlling the world, since my world is entirely filtered through my perception?"

I can see here that I'm not being clear. Let me see if I can be a little clearer.

I control almost nothing in my world. Very nearly nothing. I have a little, tiny thing I can control, and I have to work very hard to do that. I have some small, fractional ability to inhabit the space between stimulus and response. That's it. One of my favorite scenes in the movie Cast Away is near the end where Tom Hanks is describing his suicide attempt and he says, "Then a feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I had power over nothing. And I knew what I had to do. I just had to keep breathing." That's probably not an exact quotation, but it's close. It was one of those gut-punch moments I get in some movies. People like to call that resonance, my stomach is a great resonating cavity for some things.

I don't control my emotions, my emotions run riot over me nearly all of the time. I try to manage my attention, and I try to manage my choices and I try to manage my beliefs such that they do not do so all of the time; such that I am permitted to be the person I might wish to be, at least some of the time. I try to be still enough to learn who that person I wish to be really is. It's a very tiny difference, but it makes all the difference in the world. Or at least in my life. And I don't do any of those things terribly well, I'm no Zen master, but at least I make the effort and it has made a difference. I am getting better as time goes by, but it takes practice.

I'm a much different person than I was three years ago, but only in very small, important ways. One of the ways I'm different is that I've stopped trying to control everything and to be responsible for everything. I make choices - the consequences work out the way the consequences work out, that's not up to me. Sometimes I'm happy with the consequences, sometimes I'm not. When I'm not, I try to remember not to beat myself up over it. I still do beat myself up, but I do it less often, and most of the time when I do, I remember to stop.

Dorthea writes, "Insisting that what I don't have control over can't actually hurt or help me, however, feels too much like sticking my fingers in my ears and resolutely denying that the world makes noise. I can't do it. And since I can't, I fear I will still engage the worldÑeven still fight it sometimes."

It does hurt, it does make noise, but you get to choose how that hurt will inform your next choice - like how you choose to deal with it. When it hurts, choose to ask yourself why it's hurting? Chances are it's something that isn't true. If it is true, then it's just information - what can you do with it? How can you use it to change the situation so that it won't hurt or hurts less the next time? That's the little tiny bit of control that you have that you can use to change your life.

If you want to fight the world, go ahead, but do it with a mission, not out of some reaction based in anger and fear. Be a happy warrior, if this is what is in you to be. But if it's not, then figure out what it is in you to be, and go do that. Try not to let all the other crap get in your way. I'm still trying to figure out what is in me to be. I'm in less of a hurry now, I have faith I'll know when it's time to know. You can't be responsible for the world, you'll never have that much authority. You are only responsible for yourself, and apart from the groups we're in, that's all the authority you get. It gets kind of gray with kids, but believe me, you learn pretty quickly where you leave off and they begin, or both you and your kids wind up pretty unhappy.

There is no idyllic existence of perpetual bliss, I'm pretty sure. We're in the field of time, therefore this moment is always compared to the previous and the next is always imagined to be better than the present one, or feared to be worse. There's suffering right there. It comes with the territory, but it offers us something all the same. It helps reveal you to yourself, if you're willing to accept it. If you fight it, if you resist, I think you just get more. That's what seemed to happen to me anyway.

Know Thyself

In an unfair universe, how does one find happiness and satisfaction? Tough question, people have been trying to answer it forever.

There probably is no one answer that applies to everyone universally, but there are some things that are common in most of the ones that are widely regarded as being useful.

The place to begin is probably with Thales' admonition to know thyself. This is more difficult, perhaps, than it sounds. The effort required involves introspection and reflection and a focus on the self that a lot of people confuse with narcissism. And there are traps as well. One of the biggest traps is focusing on oneself in relation to externalities one doesn't control. As I tried to point out yesterday, those externalities don't define you, but many people allow them to.

So, how does one do this? Part of it involves being still. Meditation is one of the most popular ways of being still, but it makes some people uncomfortable. However one does it, the intent is to slow or stop all the ego-chatter going on in your head. When you start, you discover it's seemingly impossible to do, and so another line of ego-chatter starts up that sort of criticizes yourself for not being able to be still. That's the one you begin with - stop that one. There are a number of other strategies and some good books that can help, but at some point you have to get the monkey brain to be quiet so whatever your true self is can get a word in edgewise. And here's a tip - it won't be a word. And don't get too distracted if you read about things like "no-self," I still don't get that one, though I have a feeling I'm getting closer.

The point is, you get some time to simply be yourself, not be something in relation to other things. That is where we get trapped into all the comparisons and worries about fairness and all the other crap that gets thrown up into our faces to distract us and keep us engaged in the field of time which is where all the other monkey-brains want us to be all of the time - being part of the group.

The next thing one can do is begin to examine all the things one believes. How do you know where to start? That's easy. Whenever you're feeling upset is an easy place to begin. We seek relief from upset, usually by demanding that someone else do something for us; but this is probably a little more productive and will help you begin to discover the things you believe that probably aren't true. You'll be surprised.

1. What am I feeling?

2. What am I believing?

3. Is this true?

4. If so, what can I do about it?

5. If not, let it go.

Like damn near everything, it looks easier than it really is. Sometimes it's hard for some people, especially men (women will be happy to note), to identify exactly what they are feeling. So stay with the question a while until you have a sense that you've got the best answer, not just the first one that came to mind. Step two is hard for everyone. Feelings are the results of thoughts, and those thoughts are usually the expression of a belief. It's not impossible to figure out, but it might take a few moments. Oddly enough, I found step three was hard as well. Sometimes we like the things we believe and we'll give them truth value, even though we know they aren't true. This one sometimes requires some assistance from another party. At least until you become comfortable with the notion that you really are the product of some mistaken beliefs and you can refashion yourself and your view of yourself by discarding them. It's hard.

The next two steps are pretty straightforward, although letting old beliefs go is a life-long endeavor. They are deeply wired into your thought patterns, and you'll have to pay attention as you go on in life, or you wind up back in them. But you can get back out, and it's easier the next time. Expect to go backwards from time to time, just don't give up trying to go forward when you do.

Now, here's a trick: You can do the same routine when you're feeling especially good and find things you believe that aren't true as well. That's the deal with especially good feelings and especially bad ones. Don't worry to much about bad feelings or value too much the good ones - they are both often based on things that aren't true.

Or, you can continue to focus on the -ism of your choice, and powerlessly point out how it's keeping you from achieving your full potential and how unfair it all is, and how unhappy it makes you that everyone doesn't share your particular point of view about how unfair it is.

Your call.

Doctor, It Hurts When I Go Like This

Here's the deal: Life is unfair.

The unfairness of it all even extends to the likelihood that it probably isn't fairly unfair to everyone. It's less unfair to some than it is to others.

But it is unfair to everyone, and everyone suffers.

Here's the other part of the deal: You get your life to live. That's all. Just your life. No guarantees of anything else. Your life, and your choices. Everything outside of your own skin is not up to you, you'd better find a way to deal with it. Even most of the things inside your own skin aren't up to you, life's unfair like that too.

You get this tiny amount of stuff to work with between your ears and most of that isn't up to you either. Try changing your behavior sometime, you'll find out how much control you have. Some, but not much. You can grow that ability, like you can strengthen a muscle, but it takes work and it takes focusing attention inward, not outward. Your choice.

You have a finite amount of time. You have a finite amount of attention. You have a finite ability to manipulate the thoughts and ideas inside your head. How you choose to use those finite resources is your choice, your responsibility.

All choices have consequences. Sometimes those consequences are unfair. That's life.

Your happiness is your responsiblity, not society's, not your partner's, not your government's, not the other gender's. You're not happy - you fix it. Nobody else can.

People can help. But you have to want help. And help isn't just validation. Sometimes help is a hard kick in the shins. That's not fair either, sometimes we really have to hurt before we learn something.

In the end, whatever the meaning of your life is, it will be defined by the choices you have made and their consequences. It won't be defined by your society, your gender, your culture or your demographic. It won't be defined by the injustice your suffered, rather how you chose to respond to it. It won't be defined by the obstacles in your path, but how you chose to overcome them. It won't be defined by the attention you earned, but by the things you chose to give attention to. It won't be defined by the authorities you served, but by the authority you asserted over your own life.

It is just that frigging simple. Figure it out.

Sympathy

This is fascinating.

It's an article on the results of some research into patterns of brain activity related to sympathy. Check this out:

When the story content and expression were congruent, neural activity increased in emotional processing areas of the brain Ð the amygdala and the adjacent orbitofrontal cortex and the insula. In addition, increased activation also was noted in what neuroscientists call the "shared representational" network which includes the right inferior parietal cortex and premotor cortex. This network refers to brain areas that are activated when a person has a mental image of performing an action, actually performs that action or observes someone else performing it.

Sounds a lot like "mirror neurons" to me. But it gets better! Check out the next paragraph:

However, these emotional processing areas were suppressed when the story content and expression were mismatched, such as by having a person smile while telling about his mother's death. Instead, activation was centered in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and superior frontal gyrus, regions that deal with social conflict.

If the expression of emotion wasn't congruent with the story being told, then those people were viewed unsympathetically! Another mechanism underlying conformity enforcement in groups?

Interesting stuff. Read the article.

The Way of the Weasel

Interview with Scott Adams.

Jack is Back!

I don't know if he's the oldest blogger in the blogosphere, but it's probably close.

My old man, Sailor Jack of Jack's Sea Cabin is back online.

Welcome back, Dad.

DEVONthink?

I think I'm going to give this a try. It looks interesting.

Ned Beach, Dead at 84

Author of Run Silent, Run Deep. I guess that's why the obit appears in Showbiz. Weird.

...and so it goes.

It's so difficult to be a human being some of the time. We have these two divergent, and to some extent mutually exclusive drives to contend with all the time. The first is our perception of ourselves as individuals, the second is our need to be a part of a group.

Part of our perception of ourselves seems to depend on our success at being part of a group. Some groups we have have no choice in belonging to. Your gender places you in a group, as does your race, your age and your family, there are probably others. Some are kind of involuntary, like what school you attend if you're a child, your economic status, your body type, your citizenship and religion. Others are strictly voluntary, like your circle of friends, civic organizations and other affiliations, whether or not your smoke, your profession, your hobbies. We would like to be accepted in our groups, feel valued and as though we have some worth; and we compete within our groups for positions of authority, so that we may influence the choices of the group. Part of our view of ourselves hinges on how well we feel accepted or valued, and how much authority we have.

We also form opinions or judgements about various groups, and we often call these stereotypes. We do this all the time, even though we seem to acknowledge it has its limitations and can often be unfair to individuals. I think every single person does it, even the most enlightened individual. Any distinct collection of individuals able to be identified as a "group," will be be the subject of some subjective judgement of some kind. To the extent we may be said to be "sensitive" to some groups, we may consciously seek to inhibit the expression or manifestation of those judgements; but they exist nevertheless and their expression, even if consciously suppressed, can find unexpected and unconscious ways to manifest themselves.

Where it gets all very complicated is that not only do individuals compete within groups, groups can compete with other groups. So in any competition between individuals, there's the role the individual plays as an individual, and there's the role they play as a member of a group.

For instance, let's say there are two groups we'll call Red and Green. Historically, the Red group has held the dominant economic position with larger numbers of Reds in the positions of authority and earning the largest fraction the total income, often by using their authority and economic advantage to deliberately disadvantage members of the Green group.

Through a period of social reform, the governing institutions have reduced the advantages of the Red group by barring some of the overt forms of discrimination that have given unfair advantage to the Reds. As a result, larger numbers of Green members are now in groups that are organized for particular purposes, usually economic though not exclusively; I'm going to call these groups companies, though we could be talking about the fire department, the police department, the armed forces, etc.

Within any group, I think it's safe to say, we seek acceptance. We want to feel as though we belong. I suppose this goes back to how we evolved, we paid attention to our acceptance within the group, because if we weren't accepted we might have to face the lions and tigers and bears all by ourselves, and that wasn't a comforting thought. Folks who could do without feeling as though they belonged probably got kicked out with some regularity and their genes went to making a nice meal for some predator or scavenger, rather than more people who didn't care what others thought of them.

To gain acceptance, we usually seek to conform. We adhere to the norms of the group, we try to look like the other members of the group, we try not to "rock the boat," at least until we've established our own authority. Until we achieve acceptance, we're uncomfortable and wary. We're very sensitive to the responses of others to our presence and we monitor our behavior closely to ensure we're not placing ourselves at risk by not belonging.

But I think our sense of acceptance can be a fragile thing, especially if one was formerly in a group that wasn't accepted. Once we feel we've achieved a certain level of acceptance, that people acknowledge us as a member of the group and hopefully value our presence, then we try to increase our authority.

By authority, I don't mean we try to become the boss. I mean we try to establish within the group that what we think has some value, that we may influence the choices of the company. Acceptance usually only requires adhering to norms, observing relevant social protocols, and not rocking the boat. Authority means taking risks, and those risks can jeopardize acceptance, because authority plays into the hierarchy and dominance structure of the group. Achieving "too much" authority alters the hierarchy of the group. This may or may not be a problem, depending on the nature of the personalities within the group. If everyone feels particularly secure in their own authority and acceptance, then it's likely there won't be a problem. But if one or more individuals are insecure about their own acceptance or authority, then the competition may become brutal.

So a Green may be hired into a company where Greens formerly weren't widely represented. The Green will work through the initial acceptance period and then begin to take risks and seek authority. One of two things will happen: Either the Green will earn increased authority, and strengthen its position within the company, or the Green will not earn increased authority, and its position, as perceived by the Green, will remain the same or weaken.

The Green knows it's taking a risk when seeking greater authority, and so a negative outcome is troubling. The Green will seek to explain why the effort failed. Here's where it gets complicated. The Green must believe it has a certain level of competence before it is willing to risk the effort to achieve greater authority. Most of us are unwilling to reassess ourselves following a failure. Typically, we instead seek to explain, excuse or blame. It's normal, because it is uncomfortable to reassess. There's a double failure when we fail to achieve increased authority, first we failed to have the requisite knowledge or skill to earn the increased authority, and second, perhaps equally painful, we made an incorrect assessment of our ability when assessing the risk. The inclination to look elsewhere for responsibility must be especially strong.

Because Green is a member of a group that has been historically disadvantaged, there is another possibility. It may be that Red may be denying it the increased authority in order to preserve the hierarchy of the group. This may or may not be so, it's difficult to say. Even if a Red were doing so, it's possible that they may be doing it unconsciously. If it were possible to demonstrate unequivocally that Red was discriminating against Green, then there are institutional authorities that Green can call upon to alter the hierarchy within the company. Because of that, it is typically very difficult to demonstrate unequivocally that there was discrimination in a particular instance. Usually we rely on patterns displayed over time, which is of little comfort to the individuals who make up the pieces of the pattern.

But because Green is a member of a disadvantaged group, it is understandable that they would focus on that explanation for two reasons. First, it avoids the painful requirement to reassess; and second, because it is frightening. While reassessing is sometimes painful, it suggests that with further work a change can be made that would result in a different outcome the next time the effort was made. But there is nothing Green can do about being a Green, and that is being powerless, a feeling nobody enjoys or welcomes.

So, what is Green to do? There are several alternatives. Green could simply be cowed and never seek increased authority again, living with some level of anxiety that it lacked sufficient authority to influence its future within the company. Green could undertake a reassessment, and try again at some point in the future, though there is no guarantee the outcome would be more favorable. Green could leave the company, which is another high-risk choice, and look for a more favorable environment elsewhere. What is possible, though, is that Green will nurture a lingering resentment and mistrust of Red, never certain that its failure wasn't due to simply being a Green. It's likely that Green will rail against Red in other venues, and draw attention to the unfairness of its situation and the burden Greens bear for simply being Greens.

This is intended, in part, to effect some change in Reds. It is also intended to increase Green's authority within all Greens. At least Green would have some authority within that group and might be able to influence the choices of the other members of that group.

Nothing that Green can do with respect to groups will have an effect in making Green's life a better one. No one ever has enough authority to make everything to their own liking, and there will always be something to dislike, if one chooses to pay attention to the things they dislike.

All Greens and Reds might be better served to simply be aware of how these processes work, recognize that we are all going to be parts of these processes whether we want to or not, and what part we have isn't always up to us. Almost never is, in fact.

What is up to us is what we choose to give our attention to. If there is some work we would like to do, something for which we have a passion, then we should do that work as best we can wherever we are. As Joseph Campbell says, "Follow your bliss." Forget about the groups and authority and power, and simply do what you love to do, as best you can wherever you are. Authority will follow naturally.

It's not easy, we're hardwired to want to belong to a group and be an authority in it, but that's a hard road and chances are that's not where your bliss really is. Life is unfair. We try to make it less unfair, but if we always focus exclusively on that, then we're going to find precious little time to feel joy in what we do.

Sorry that went on so long.

Hello December

First of December already. My how time flies.

I got up a little late, Mars was already invisible in the sky but Venus and the Moon looked pretty.

Yesterday's shopping yielded no new lawn ornamentation. Target offered very little and Ace Hardware's prices were astronomical so I think Home Depot will be my next effort. I bought a couple of Christmas presents though and spent a little time at Books-a-Million.

When I got home I spent some time in the backyard clearing the little landmines Mandy leaves for me. I also cleaned all the debris that falls from the trees off of the patio and built a little fire in this nice-sized ceramic fire pot we have. I enjoyed watching the fire and listening to the crickets chirp as the sun went down. It even got windy enough to cause the wind chimes to ring every now and then.

After that it was time to make supper. I made a salad and added leftover turkey and ham, and heated a couple of cans of soup. Maria and Caitie got back from their shopping sojourn and we all ate. I was kicking myself because I had planned to bake a loaf of bread and it had slipped my mind.

Today is the usual trip to the commissary, along with some interior housework, laundry and bringing some of the boxes of Christmas decorations out. That's probably enough for one day.

Well, let's see if I remembered how to make this monthly transition.