Sunflower disabilities ~

I was a support manager over an office that did a lot of different things. Our office interfaced with the facility grounds management line of business. And we told them what parking spaces we needed and when we needed extra handicapped parking spaces and that sort of thing.



My people would always get wound up when some of the employees would park in handicapped spaces and they had no business parking there. They could walk around just fine. They weren't in a wheelchair or on crutches.



They had no business apparently parking in the handicapped parking spaces. And I had to explain to them over and over that those employees had handicapped stickers and handicapped license tags and those authorized them to park in the handicapped parking spaces.



I even got complaints from people that worked around us. They would complain that so-and-so shouldn't be parking there. It got so bad at one point that I got tired of explaining it. So I came up with a phrase that captured my sentiment about the whole matter without crossing any of the EEO lines or any of the outrage-prone woke people that work there.



I would tell these people that were complaining about others getting to park close when they couldn't park close that "Not all disabilities are visible". And they would look at me and then they'd kind of laugh in a real hushed chuckle because they thought I was being funny and insulting somebody because they had a mental handicap.



What they didn't realize, because nobody ever listened when I told them, was that my wife is a nationally certified sign language interpreter. She's been doing that as a vocation for over 30 years. And a lot of the deaf and hard of hearing people that she has worked with over the years look just like everybody else.



You can't tell that they're hearing impaired at all. Not very many of them take advantage of the whole handicapped parking thing, but some do and even in the deaf community, people will tisk tisk and say they shouldn't be doing that because they're able-bodied and they can walk.



So after using that phrase."not all disabilities are visible" for several years, I finally saw something on an airport monitor recently. It called them "sunflower disabilities". And the phrase that they had underneath it was "not all disabilities are visible".



I busted out laughing when I saw it. I was just astounded that somebody had actually come up with a name for that and was putting a positive spin on it.



Pretty funny.



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The Answerman ~

It's so fascinating listening to old time radio as part of my podcast that I make. Yesterday I was listening to a Thanksgiving show by the radio Answerman and it was actually very fascinating. He answered questions about Thanksgiving and one of them was about a food about cranberry in their Pemekin.



And that's the thing that's so fascinating about old time radio is I've only read about Pemekin, a long lasting food that preppers now create in case the end of the world comes and they can't get any supplies.



But otherwise I've never heard that word used. But I heard it on that radio show and it seemed like it was just a regular word that people knew and understood. So many of the things that we just assume because we hear them every day or deal with them online every day, we just think that that's the way it was.



But so much has changed. I listened to those radio broadcasts from the 1940s and they talked about wartime, eastern wartime and Pemekin and had commercials for floor wax and cigarettes. I even ran across one that was advertising beer but it wasn't really specifically beer it was more just the brewery.



We have a lot of that now but it's just different. And everyone seems so uptight now for all of our freedom. We're just uptight.



Fascinating.



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Distasteful phrase ~

I don't like the phrase "on the right side of the grass".



I'm in my 60s now and a lot of times I still fall into the trap of after saying hello to somebody asking "how are you?" it's such a shallow question and I'm trying to break the habit but it's so hard because it's so prevalent. But when somebody says "I'm on the right side of the grass" it just freaks me out! All I can think is that the person is so focused on death that I need to get away from them.



It just seems so negative, and after having so much doom thinking and negativity in my brain for so long because I lived under the gun for most of my life, I just don't like it.



I remember when I was leaving the training class in Oklahoma City after making it through air traffic controller training and the follow-on training. And this big redneck dude told me as I was headed out to my car to drive home, "keep it between the hedges". The rest of the trip that I drove for 16 hours on, I was so focused on those lines on the highway that it was amazing.



I don't know if that's my suggestibility or if that's a flaw in my thinking, but I fell for that big time. And so when others around me focus on the turd in whatever we're doing or talking about, my lasers get focused. And then my comments become very clear about the shape and the smell and the irritating position of and all the other things associated with the turd.



I'm slowly learning to focus on the other things like gratitude, thankfulness, availability, presence, possibility of these from where we are instead of negative outcomes. But it's a challenge when surrounded by so much negativity.



Thank you God for my freedom!



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AI echo chamber ~

I have been reading a lot of articles about artificial intelligence and how people are using AI to enhance their productivity. Also articles on how people are using AI to confide in and journal with, and to gain insights into their own lives with.



I've read articles about people losing their minds and going into psychosis because they put all of their belief in a computer-based artificial intelligence. Come on! just like with any tool it comes with good and bad effects. People who overuse it or use it for improper things or put unfulfilled beliefs in it usually get different and odd results. Like the people that are outliers that are ending up in psycho wards and that sort of thing.



But there's a lot of hype about AI these large language models that have soaked up all the data that their creators can feed them, whether it was legal or not, spit out really cool responses that seem very realistic and very useful.



I use AI in a information tidbits so that I can have my phone whisper things in my ear to help me learn stuff. For a long time I had to go and search for individual websites, capture what was on the website into a text file, edit it so that it was in the right format, and then feed it to my system. Now with AI I ask for a list of facts and it spits out a list of facts very easily in a format that I can easily adapt to what I'm doing.



I did give in and subscribe to one of the voice recording systems that has an AI with it. They offer the ability to get insights from your notes and the ability to quickly summarize transcriptions into action items and emails and the like. I've been using that for about six months. Recording my thoughts about trips and feelings and other things happening in my life.



So I went to the AI in that system and asked it what the overall vibe was of my notes. I figured I would put it to work and let it give me some feedback on what I sound like to the machine. The response was pretty positive.



The AI said that my notes reflect a balance of excitement for new experiences and a thoughtful navigation of personal and practical improvements. It also pointed out that I am learning to value a softening approach, pausing rather than constantly pushing, and this indicates to the AI a maturing perspective towards self-compassion and incremental growth.



I really liked its response! But this response reminded me of another article or two that I've read about the dangers of using AI to analyze journals and feelings and possibly as a therapist thing.



The articles warned that The AI is seeking to give you an answer that you want and can quickly turn into an echo chamber of whatever you're thinking about and desiring to hear others say. So I chuckled at the response of the AI to my notes, filed it away, and moved on.



I don't really get into echo chambers, but I do like it inside my bubble.



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My kaleidoscope ~

I remember having a kaleidoscope when I was growing up. I loved to take it to a bright window and put it up to my eye and spin it to make the designs change inside of it. So many colors and so many changes.



I always wondered how it worked but then I just enjoyed looking at it and then I'd put it away and move on to something else just like kids do. Over the years I've enjoyed putting screensavers on my computers.



Sometimes I'd put a kaleidoscope but it would be too much for the people around me so I would turn it into something else. Now, I enjoy playing a kaleidoscope video on YouTube on my living room TV.



Relaxing and trippy all at the same time.



Fun!



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Tinting my own windows ~

I remember when I was a teenager, or maybe 20, tinting my own car windows. It was a four-cylinder Subaru hatchback and my father and grandfather had convinced me when I bought it that a four -cylinder engine couldn't support an air conditioner because the air conditioner would cause the engine to burn up.



So I drove around central Florida in a hatchback with no air conditioning. Every time I drove to work I prayed for green lights.



One summer I really wanted to have tinted windows but I really didn't want to pay somebody to do it because that was expensive. I saw in the Sears catalog where I could order window tinting. The write-up made it seem like it was a pretty easy process even though I had no idea what I was doing. I ordered the window tinting and anxiously waited.



When it came in I backed the car into the driveway of my mom and dad's house. I spread everything out on the dirty garage floor because I didn't think that I needed to sweep in order to do this. There were no surfaces to lay the window tinting on to work with it.



And so I of course laid it on the floor of the dirty garage. And while I was going back and forth to the directions and the window tinting and cleaning my car windows, getting them ready, once I peeled the window tinting backing off of the sheet that was going to go in my back window, I had to go over and get something off of the freezer that was in the garage.



And I didn't think about it, I just kind of stepped over the window film and my foot sprinkled granules of sand all over the sticky side of the window tinting. I put it in the window and went to smooth all the bubbles out and could not smooth them out very well because of the sand.



There was no extra window tinting to use to do it again and so I ran with it and just put it in with the sand and the bubbles. The side windows I did better on and didn't get any sand in them and I got most of the bubbles out of them.



In Florida you could do the front windows so I did the front windows too and that turned out okay. But I had to ride around with the windows up and it was hot and that was a rough few days while I waited for the window tinting to dry.



But I did it! I was successful in tinting my own windows. I looked through bubbles every time I looked in the rear view mirror and most of the time I'd be upset with myself. But sometimes I actually laughed about it and just kind of shook my head.



Even today after so many years I'll go to do something and I'll think, "Hmm I need to think through this one more time so I don't mess it up like I did that window tinting." And by mess it up I mean make it not look as cool as it could have.



It worked and it looked awesome to me. I like bubbles :-)



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Cashew nuts ~

I remember when I was growing up that getting cocktail peanuts during the holidays was a special treat. It was always fun because they were salted and they tasted so good.



As we got older my brother and I would demolish a can of them! My mother actually had to restrict us and say you can only have a few at a time. My mother liked cashew nuts but because they were more expensive she didn't really get them very often. Sometimes she would receive them as a gift at Christmas. Sometimes she would buy a can and tell us that we could only have one or two cashew nuts because she had bought them for herself as a treat. She said they were her favorite. And we respected that and would go through the Spanish peanuts or the cocktail peanuts fast like we did.



But I never knew what the difference was between all of those different kinds of nuts.



As I've gotten older I've learned to enjoy Brazil nuts where I didn't really like them very much growing up. They were so dry! But they're actually quite good and make an enjoyable snack in the afternoon. I never liked pistachio nuts. I still don't like to have them in the shells but if I spend the money and get them already out of the shell they're actually really good.



But I didn't know that cashew nuts were so different from other nuts. I learned just before a trip to Guyana about how cashew nuts are actually part of an apple and that they stick outside of the bottom of this small apple.



And I was amazed after learning that at the age of 60 to meet someone on a trip less than a month after learning about how cashew nuts are actually grown who had a tree that he grew cashew nuts and apples on. We talked about how different that was with the nut poking out of the bottom of the apple.



It's amazing all the fun things you can learn through reading and scanning through different things on the internet.



I enjoyed learning about cashew nuts.



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