Meat run ~

I recently went on a meat run to Walmart. It's funny to go into the chest freezer out in the garage and find it almost empty. We don't eat as much meat as we used to, but we do like to buy it and cook it.



In summertime I like to grill chicken and pork. We don't get steak very much, but we enjoy ground beef in the form of hamburgers quite often. Although we have been enjoying ground turkey and turkey burgers more often than beef.



But I went out to the chest freezer this week and found that we were almost out of stuff. So I made a Walmart run. I went in the morning. My hope was to find some discounted things with the yellow tags on them. And I saw quite a few of those. Steak is still outrageous and so I didn't buy any of that. But I bought a bunch of other things.



I remember growing up when we would have the very occasional time of going and eating dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house next door.



Grandpa would brag about how he had pulled steaks out of the freezer. I always wondered about that freezer and how he had so many steaks in there. And the steak always tasted good!



But I like keeping meat in the freezer so that when we want to have something we just go to the garage, open up the chest freezer, and pull some meat out and defrost it, and have at it.



Good stuff.



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Fake eyelashes ~

One of the sad trends that I am watching is the way young ladies use fake eyelashes.



I understand the desire for the beauty of the flashing eyes. But I see so many young ladies with eyelashes that are just outlandish. They don't even enhance the beauty, they just look outrageous.



I see ads for magnetic eyelashes. They show how you can superglue a magnet to your eyelid and then connect eyelashes to it so that you have this beauty enhancement easily accessible to you.



That just seems wrong. And then when I encounter someone with obviously fake eyelashes, all I can think is how sad, you're beautiful without them.



To me, it's akin to shaving your eyebrows and then using a tattoo or a pencil to draw in clown eyelashes or eyebrows. It just doesn't seem right. And that's the thing, we're so balkanized and split up that people are doing things that just really don't seem right.





Weird.



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Custom mobile phone mount ~

Before mobile phone mounts became cool to have in your car and everybody just kinda used them willy-nilly and all that I actually rigged up my own mobile phone mount.



I bought a mobile phone mount that the phone could sit in. It clamped onto the phone. Then I bought a metal strap, cut it, and curved it so that it would velcro to the dash sticking into the crease between the dash and the windshield. Then I bent the end of the strap so that I could velcro the phone clamping device to this piece of metal sticking up.



It was funny because people thought it was ridiculous that i wanted to look at my phone while i was driving. I did it because i had a gps thing that i was capturing waypoints with and I enjoyed watching the waypoints that i had captured before scroll by as i drove.



I had a couple of older friends that rode with me and said, "You know, that looks a lot like a sword sitting on your dash and if you're in an accident that could impale you and kill you." I just laughed and said "yes i know, just like the steering column could do that and just like the engine could do".



I now have nice supposedly military-grade suction cup devices that stick to windshields and discs that you glue to your dash. They do okay and it's nice to be able to move it around and put it where i want. But i tend to find a spot and just leave it there.



Fun to think about and remember...



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Social media thoughts ~

I recently saw a headline that said that Gen X and Gen Z feel like social media is damaging them. I paused after I read it and then I skimmed the article and decided it was silly because social media is optional.



I know, I know, you would argue that social media is required in today's day and age. But it's not.



I used social media for quite a while. I used it to expand my church's reach. I offered online groups and encouraged community through that venue.



I did that for several years and it was quite successful. But as I watched each different social media platform come online and get invested with marketers and then watched the users that were infected with the idea of earning money off of their friends and people that they didn't know start marketing themselves, I just had to shake my head.



It's so sad to watch. People say you have to be on social media in order to be connected. And I disagree If you work the phone and you work your text messages and you reach out to people outside of your circle you can connect with lots of people just fine. Social media makes it convenient, and then In that convenience the marketers have your attention.



Oh, by the way, here's an ad for a product that you may not necessarily support nor be interested in but we're gonna show it anyways. And in amongst your posts. Anybody looking at your stuff gets distracted and off we go.



They've won the attention game.



Anyways, I'm not against social media. I still use it on a very limited basis. I try not to post about products or anything. I just share. me. And that's what I feel like social media was all about until the marketers got involved and everybody felt like they had to emulate the marketers and all that.



Oh, well.



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Second guessed and left out ~

I spent a long career adhering to rules and being second-guessed on every one of my decisions. The last half of my career I was in management and I was second-guessed even more and left out over and over and over.



Now that that career is over, I'm sensitive to these things. The stress and the trauma of always being told that I was wrong and being told that I made a wrong decision and put lives in jeopardy and caused people problems makes me get very defensive very quickly.



Over and over, I was proven right in almost all of my decisions at work, even the ones that I didn't like and nobody else liked, I was right for what I did. My delivery wasn't always great, but I was right.



Now I'm finding that I slow down and I don't really share my decisions the way I did. I just kind of let things go and smile when they turn out the way I thought they would.



It seems that many people are intimidated by someone who can make quick decisions and be right. It's not fun and it's not a great way to live, but I sure enjoyed it. And I'm really good at it. And I like who I am and what I do.



When I get second-guessed and left out nowadays I don't put up with it. I move on to something else and put that behind me. Just like my career.



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I Enjoy Thomas Sowell ~

I have read a couple of books by Thomas Sowell. He's an economist that also comments on things. Over the years he's written a lot of really good stuff and has a lot of really good quotes out there. Many of the quotes are memes that float by in my streams.



The books that I've read by him were usually compilations of columns that he wrote for newspapers. I enjoyed them and I got a lot out of them. My favorite chapters were the columns that he titled Thoughts on the Passing Scene.



In those, he would just shoot off one-liners for an entire column or, in my case, chapter in a book. Those comments were inspirations for me and my style of writing. I'm not as erudite as he is, and I'm not the best raconteur.



But I learned a lot from him. And even though the way I passed economics classes in college was to find the biggest guy and then sleep on the desk behind him during lectures, Thomas Sowell's ideas on economic policy are sound and he explains them well.



Check out "Barbarians Inside The Gates" by Thomas Sowell:

https://a.co/d/16Nr8CX



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Purposefully slowing down ~

I have been doing is purposefully slowing down lately.



For most of my life I lived on a hair trigger. Everything would send me into a really fast reaction. Good, bad or indifferent, I was going to react.



A question would be asked and I gave an answer. Something was talked about and I had something to say about it. As I got older I tried to slow down, but my work was such that I still had to keep a sharp edge. So I did.



Now, as I am getting older I'm pausing a lot more. I'm thinking a lot more. I'm trying not to say negative things or even comment on things that I really don't agree with. It's challenging because many of the people around me are talkers, and there is no gap in the conversation for me to process what's been said and respond in a calm and decent way.



It's hard to get a word in edgewise. So I stick with being quiet.



I've also found that when I try to make decisions and people disagree with my decisions conflict arises. I've faced conflict a lot and I've handled it a lot. Good, bad, or indifferent, I got a resolution. Now I just kind of back off and let things go the way they're going. If I think they're headed for disaster I may say something, but sometimes I think "you know, they are adults and they're making good decisions I don't really think they're going to like where they end up" and let it go at that.



It's led to friction. Where I used to be the one snapping and quickly commenting now others do that. Sometimes it's fun to watch them get angry where that used to be what I did. I smile and I shake my head and I go and do my thing.



But I find it fascinating slowing down and contemplating my responses. Before I would just shoot from the hip. Often times there's no response to be given because none was requested. I'm even trying to develop the habit of asking, do you want me to listen or do you want me to suggest things?



I like this new pace. Very challenging.



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