Commit ~

Recently my wife and I went to a church service at a church that is not our normal church. We've been there before and enjoy the production value and always enjoy the messages.



This church is in the city so it's somewhat challenging to get to. And parking is always a challenge. The people at that church seem to be upper-class. There are always a lot of very expensive cars in the parking lot.



The people seem genuinely happy and like they're having a really good time. But as we were leaving this church service my wife commented on how she felt so lonely there. She hardly ever talks about being lonely, and so it was a surprising comment from her.



I understood it because I felt it too, but that's just part of my deal. But I've thought about her comment, and I even told her that day that I think it's because we're not committed here. We don't have a smaller group of people that we can look for in the crowd. And we can't say we contribute to this church.



That boils down in my world to we're not committed to them. And commitment is a lot! It's something that's lacking in what I'm seeing around me.



When we set up gatherings or parties and ask people to RSVP to let us know that they're coming very few responses ever come. At the church we normally go to, things are put out there and very few people commit until the last minute, if at all, because they're trying to keep their options open.



Maybe something better will come along and so I don't have to do this. I've watched that in members of my own family, where they don't say yes or no until... the day of, and maybe two hours beforehand.



That's not the way I operate. If I commit to something, or if I decide that I want to do something, I go ahead and commit, and I let people know I'm coming, and it's happening. And then I turn other things down, and fight to keep that spot on my calendar. And I do my best to be five minutes early, because early is on time.



But I think that more commitment would help a lot of things happening around me. And it would help us all not feel as lonely.



+++

The Color Inside ~

Almost 30 years ago my wife and I went to Europe on a tour with a group. It was a motor coach tour. We flew into London and spent a couple of days there, then rode a motor coach down to Dover, took a ferry across the channel to Belgium, and then picked up another motor coach and rode all throughout Western Europe for ten days.



It was a great trip. We were with a group of hearing impaired people, so my wife interpreted most of the time. I sat and messed with my gadgets that I had brought. One of the main gadgets that I had brought was a digital Walkman with AM/FM radio.



I had my audio tapes and I was ready to listen to some music. And I was so excited to get to listen to European radio. Sadly, my digital tuner only went in two tenths steps of frequencies and was tuned to the odd tenths so that it could tune in 94.1, 95.5, 104.7 and the like. I learned when we got over there that European FM radio is set to the even tenths of frequencies, and so everything I listened to was fuzzy if I could actually listen to it at all.



Through the static, yeah, that song FM, no static at all was not true. But through the static I did get to listen to some songs and some different things. One of the songs that I heard over there was the song The Color Inside.



I had not heard the song in America before we left, and I didn't really hear it after we got back from the trip, but it was hot in Europe. It was all over every radio frequency that I could almost listen to, and it was a good dance tune.



I really enjoyed it. I captured it on my eight millimeter camcorder to try and find later.



25 or so years later I did find it online and found two or three different versions of it. It's a really good song that says that we all have a color that we live inside. I still enjoy listening to it.



You can check it out here:

https://youtu.be/nRULkAGIOd8?si=84am0cF-yUU6RDZW



+++

Social media issues ~

Recently, one of the gurus that I've kept up with for several years now had an email about how social media has changed. He started his email by talking about how more and more we interact with people through the glass of our screens.



And with the advent of artificial intelligence that interaction is calling into question whether we are interacting with real people or just machines.



It's a good premise. He started it out by talking about obsessing about ghosts. He even joked about how he could be an AI and we wouldn't know it. Which I found hilarious.



But I think that's why a lot of people just feel hollow and empty when they look at social media. They have to wade through all the commercial junk and then, even worse, they have to wade through their friends commercial junk because often people are posting about what they're selling or trying to do to make money and setting up parties to sell stuff.



He lamented about how so many social media platforms started out great but devolved into the marketing machines that they are. And how he wanted to have an app that he could either develop or get somebody to develop that would be like the dating apps but for different subjects. But that didn't devolve into the commercialized baloney that we have so much of today.



I enjoyed his email and I've thought a lot about it.



I think because we're so transient now and so able to skip interacting with our neighbors and even the people at our church, if we go to church, that we feel lonely even when surrounded by a mob.



Opinions are so inflamed right now that people are scared to even react to things, let alone express an opinion. There's genuine fear in the air and that fear is being used to herd people in directions.



Oftentimes it's down the sales funnel to part you from your money or down the election funnel to part you from your vote. I just wish that we could interact differently, and like he said, come together.



And I do that in my own life, in my small little ways. I hope you're doing that too.



Because together we can save the world.



+++

Fanny packs ~

I've used fanny packs for years, even before children. I carried a lot of stuff in my pockets. I was taught that there were pickpockets everywhere and so I carried my wallet in my front pocket.





One time I got locked out of my car and had to break in through the sunroof. It leaked after that so I carried around two sets of keys. A fanny pack relieved me of some of the load in my pockets so that I didn't look like I had rocks in my pants.





When my wife and I had children, we had our first two children within 18 months of each other. As they got to toddler years and older I felt a need to carry snacks and drinks with me.





There weren't very many easy ways to do that, but I found a fanny pack with two holster holes for bottles or drinks on either side. I loved it! It always drew comments. from people around us, and I had drinks and snacks and belongings and sometimes even toys in that thing.





It was very handy to just spin it around and walk around with it actually behind me and then spin it around to the front when I needed something then spin it back around. But I really looked like a doofus and I didn't care.





As the kids got older, I got away from using the double bottle fanny pack. I bought a leather fanny pack and used it, whick always drew comments when I traveled. It made me feel safer because the pickpockets that I had been warned about by my parents couldn't get my stuff without feeling around on the front of me.





But I never had anybody pick my pocket. At least not that I know of. Although, there was one time at Disney World when I looked down and a woman had her hand in my coat vest pocket, but there wasn't anything in there.





Once the kids got older I got away from using a fanny pack. I also stopped carrying around two sets of keys, and I made them start carrying some stuff. For a while I didn't use a fanny pack at all.





I still had a lot of stuff in my pockets and I still carried my wallet in my front right pocket, but I didn't use a fanny pack the way I did.



In the past year or two, I bought a new small fanny pack made of buffalo skin. It's nice, soft supple leather, and I really like it. I've started using it instead of carrying my stuff in my pockets the way I did for so long. One, because I'm not working anymore and so I don't have to worry about people laughing and making fun of me and having to explain to each type a personality that I worked with why I had a fanny pack on. And I find that it's just easier to pick up my keys, my pocket knife, and put on my fanny pack when it's time to go somewhere. I keep my mints and my notebook and my wallet and my other things that I may need along with money and drink packs. It doesn't have holsters for drinks but I use those singles drink packs to make a bottle of water into green tea.





I enjoy using a fanny pack. I do tend to wear it in the front instead of in the back where many other people do. I don't carry a gun in my fanny pack. It's got a pocket for that purpose, but that's where I keep my notebook and pen and my index cards.





I enjoy using a fanny pack.

Handled bullies ~

When I was growing up I remember going to a neighbor's trailer to try to take care of something.



I rode the bus to middle school and high school. I had to walk down our long driveway and then half a mile down the road to the corner to get the bus.



There were other kids that did similar things and we all met at that corner. Two of the kids were bullies and would regularly call me names and beat up on one of the little kids. One day I had had enough.



That afternoon they had the little kid over on the side of the road. One of them was holding his arms behind his back. The other one picked up rocks in his fists and then punched the little kid in the gut repeatedly.



The kid couldn't even defend himself. So I was outraged. I sat at home and thought about it for a little while and then I went out to the garage after are talking to my mother about it. I went out to the garage and got a walking stick. I walked down my driveway and then down a little ways and then into the trailer park to go back to these two bullies' parents' place.





The parents had the nicest trailer in the trailer park. I think they were the managers and oversaw things, making sure rent was paid and all that. They did not own the place though. I knocked on the door but before I got there the two boys were pestering me as I walked up the driveway wanting to know what I was doing and why I had that stick.



And what was I going to do? The reason I brought the stick was I was going to beat them up if they made a move on me, but they didn't. I knocked on the door of the trailer and the elderly man came to the door.



He was their father and I explained to him what had been happening and how concerned I was. I asked him if he could do anything about it. I was a teenager that couldn't drive yet. I can't imagine what the guy was thinking.



But I do know that if I were approached that way, I'd probably laugh it off and then tell my boys to cut it out. My boys weren't anything like that. So I didn't have that concern.



He said he'd talk to his boys and it got better for a little while. They called me more names, but they never got very close to me.



They never got close.



+++

Learned something new again ~

I learned something about tuberculosis this past weekend. I was told about a book that said tuberculosis had shaped a lot of things in our society and in the world. The person telling me about that book said that it was fascinating because when the United States was settling the west, western towns that were in the arid desert areas like Arizona and New Mexico actually advertised themselves as health getaways for people with tuberculosis because the dry air and heat was supposed to ease the symptoms of the disease.





It's funny because Doc Holliday, the guy that was part of Wyatt Earp's circle of law enforcement friends at the O.K. Corral, had tuberculosis, and part of his deal was coughing and spitting up and all that stuff.





The town where he's from has a Doc Holiday Festival and I was hoping to go to it this year but we didn't make it. But it would have been interesting to learn a where he came from and whether or not they know that he moved out west because those towns advertised relief for tuberculosis sufferers.





So many cool things to learn.



Book "Everything Is Tuberculosis"

https://a.co/d/gi3clDl



+++

Different adventures ~

It's fun how my wife and I are going on adventures together now They tend to be more thrill -seeking than some Recently we went ziplining in Tennessee and that was a blast she ziplined upside down part of the time because she started out scared and they convinced her that it was perfectly safe and that she could even zip line upside down. So she did. I did not.



I went skydiving with my two youngest sons. That was a blast and it felt like my whole body was infused with adrenaline afterwards.



Before that we went parasailing at the beach on the Carolina coast. That was a lot of fun too and it was something that I had always wanted to do but it so cost prohibitive to it.



I finally realized why we're doing more of those things that are more expensive and it's because we are older but it is also because our kids are grown.





My wife and I have four children and whenever we would go on trips it was expensive. It cost a lot to move six people around the country to fun sites and do fun things. So when we would go somewhere and one of the adventure/thrill seeking things cost a hundred bucks each we wouldn't do it because of the cost. We drove and we took peanut butter and bread and had picnic lunches and enjoyed the scenery and sometimes just sat and watched people. It was a blast!



But now that it's just my wife and I more often than not we're tending to want to go and do things that you pay for and we budget accordingly. It's a lot of fun and it's funny listening to our adult children wonder why we're so adventurous. Part of the reason is because we can afford it now.





That sense of adventure was always there. In fact, they were our big adventure while they were growing up. And I'm so proud of how well they're all doing. What a blast!



+++

Changing light ~

It's always so interesting watching the play of light as the sun comes up. I remember when we went to the Monet thing and how they had made a full size model of his lily pond yard and they talked about how he drew the lily pad scene, he painted it over and over and over because of the changing light.



And I get that because as I watch the sun come up the light is so different and I have this urge to capture it in photography pictures. So I take more pictures even though I already have pictures of that I take more pictures because the light is different or it's brighter or it's highlighting something off in the distance instead of the stuff up front.



The added depth of things in shadow close and things in bright direct sunlight off in the distance is amazing and then the heavy wetness of a dewy morning combined with the call of the birds and the roar of the traffic.



It's an amazing experience.

Proud to be an American ~

What if I told about a place to go to think of would be available to you? Where there would be food to live and stay and air conditioning and roofs that don't leak.



What if I told you this place had methods of transporting you back and forth to wherever you wanted to go? You could go and see loved ones just because you wanted to. And then you could return back to where you live and no one would charge you any money or give you any hassle



If I told you that your children in that place could get an education that was better than anything you ever had in your life? Be taught by people who cared for them and made sure that they were good for them. Then after school colleges would line up and pay for them to go to their classes and then your children would have an opportunity to become rich and successful.



I would warn you that the police would require things from you. Requires some work to get some of the things that you want when you get there. A lot of things would just be laying around waiting for you to come up and use them and take them. Some of them would require you to work and do things for other people while you were there. What if I told you that this place allowed you to send you that you earned back to your family where you're at now so that you could help support them and improve their lives. And give them a chance at something better or at coming to be with you in the new world.



What if I told you that you live in that place right now? That there is a whole continent south of our country that has people doing whatever they can do to get to where you live right now. And to do the things you take for granted it even complain about.



What if you embraced that way of thinking and approached life here in the United States of America as if it was the greatest thing that ever happened to you and that you had something that so many other people wanted you should feel exceptional? You should feel blessed to be enabled to be and do whatever you want to be and do.



So often we turn things sideways and we look at them as if those people are just coming here to steal from us and take things that my children won't get to have. But instead of doing that we should embrace it and say this is the spirit of America. And while we should enforce the laws on the ones that do get through we need to embrace and put them to work and help them to make our country better. Show them the legal way to do things, teach them how to be responsible members of our communities. And how to be a good citizen of a country that has so much for them and is a beacon of light and hope to the world.?



+++

Negative references ~

It's always bothered me how people use words and references that were once horrifying as commonplace and even to be bragged about nowadays.



I remember when mental illness was something people just didn't joke about, then people started joking about it. Then people would refer to somebody as being "anal retentive" or having obsessive compulsive disorder because they wanted to check the stove before they left the house. It even became a put-down to be called OCD.



Autism terms started to catch on a little bit but because they became a protected class that kind of slid back into the background.



Anorexia is a mental illness that people suffer from but people will joke about somebody looking anorexic when a food dish is made that people just can't get enough.



And those foods are called "crack" like the drug that's based on cocaine or heroin or whatever but I don't hear a lot of people joking about how that food was like heroin.



Binging on things has become something that people joked about more and more over the past few years. It's become almost something people brag about, to binge watch something on a streaming platform because it's so good that you just can't resist it. But I remember when the Harry Potter books were coming out and kids that I knew would stay up all night the night that they got the book just so they could read it all in one night and brag about it the next day. They would also complain about how tired they were but how good the book was.





It's funny how nobody markets their stuff as being as addictive as meth, isn't it? And I wonder when it will become a joke to call something as deadly as fentanyl. Or maybe they do that already, I don't know.

Lower people stories ~

One of the themes in my life is always looking for the lower person's story. I usually shy away from biographies because I don't really want to know what famous people did or big world leaders did. And as I've gotten older, I've started reading a couple of them, but not a lot.



But when I can find a book about a person that went and did life with people where they were instead of in the halls of leadership and power, I really enjoy it. I remember listening to an audiobook by a reporter who went to China and rented a car and drove all around China in the big cities and villages.



He learned about how people in China adhere to the rules, but also bend them to whatever they're doing or want to do. I've read about people in small towns. I love homespun stories. I don't really get into what that president was deciding when he looked at and jumped at an opportunity or how a cutthroat leader got ahead by screwing his buddy and his buddy's wife.



But when I can learn about real people, I really enjoy it. You can check "Country Driving: A Road Trip Across China" at https://a.co/d/bPCtY0o

Proverbs and fire ~

In achapter of Proverbs there's something interesting in there. Lower down in the chapter, there's a sentence says:



Can you build a fire in your lap and not burn your pants?



Can you walk barefoot on hot coals and not get blisters?



And just like with other chapters in Proverbs I've listened to this over and over and over I get something out of it every time I hear the chapter.



I know somebody who has walked across hot coals and not gotten blisters. A friend of mine has an aunt that was into that. She went to a camp and meditated and got her mind so set that she actually walked across a long bed of hot coals and did the mind-over-matter thing and did not get any burns or blisters. She was fine.



I only saw this woman one time at a family gathering in Ocala. What I remember of her is that she had a completely different vibe from everybody else in the room. It's like that whole vibration tone thing that the New Agers talk about.



I always feel like my vibe is different from everybody around me, but in a bad way. Hers was different, but in a weird way. The only thing that I can compare it to is when we went to Spain to visit with Paula's family, our exchange student's family.



We went to Northern Spain to visit her grandmother and grandfather in Sardina. And I remember when we went to their apartment, even though we didn't speak Spanish, we could understand her grandmother perfectly as she went on and on about telling the boys they needed to eat more food and that they were too skinny and she was handing them pudding and cookies and making them eat while they were showing us the apartment and showing us some of the things that they had and were proud of.



And I remember that they had this old cat. Paula told us it was mean and not to mess with it because it would scratch you. And this old cat was sitting there and it was staring at us as if it was just pissed off and ready to do something just totally terrible.



And I remember getting close to it and Paula said, don't touch it, don't get closer and it turned its head just a little toward me and all I could feel was this vibe off of this cat like it was in another world and I was not going to disturb it.



That's what this woman felt like. She was in another world and nobody around her was going to disturb her. It was weird. It was also something that I admire because it was cool.



And so as I meditate and stretch and do my lessons and all that. I'm not trying to be weird and get to where I'm totally vibing differently from the world around me



But I am trying to do that because I am different. I'm God's child and I shouldn't fit into everything around me. People Will be uncomfortable around me when I look at them and see through the Holy Spirit things that a regular human would not normally see.



So it's weird just thinking about that and thinking about the vibe and then having my memory jogged by Proverbs chapter 6 today You can read Proverbs 6 at



https://bible.com/bible/97/pro.6.24-35.MSG





+++

I am Santa Claus ~

As my four children grew up we enjoyed the Christmas holidays. The decorations, the lights, the stories, the legends. 

Each of my four children believed in Santa Claus in their early days. As they grew older they would ask me and their mother if Santa Claus was real. My wife would tell them that Santa Claus was real and he was at the mall waiting to take a picture with them. When they came to me and asked me about Santa Claus I would smile and say I am Santa Claus.

I told them I was Batman and the Easter Bunny. That I was the tooth fairy. That I was all the mystical creations. And they smiled and laughed and told me know when that I couldn't be all that. And they didn't believe me.

Until they got older. And they discovered that I really was the one that replace the tooth with the dollar. I was the one that filled their Easter baskets with their mother. I was the one that filled their stockings on Christmas Eve after I encourage them to go upstairs and stay in their bedrooms with the door closed so they didn't spoil the surprise. I was the one that got them the surprise that they needed.

I love being that person. Part of me is sad that I was so honest with them, but one of my core values is that I don't online the people. Including my family. So I never lied to my children about Santa Claus. Or any of the other characters that we grew up with. 

Now on Christmas morning when they get a gift from the Grinch they know that it's socks or underwear. When they have a gift labeled from the president they know that is probably going to cost them money. Recently with the stupid virus reactions when they get a gift from Dr. Fauchi or the CDC they know that it's probably a mask or something silly like hand sanitizer.

I love being honest with my family. Especially my children. I hope they appreciate it.

Holly leaf spikes ~

Over the years, I've loved looking at and taking pictures of holly bushes and trees. Since my last name is Holly, I love to see those things and celebrate them and use them in pictures and postcards and other things, wallpaper on my computer.





I don't do it all the time, but when I do, especially during Christmas season, I really enjoy it. One of the things that I read about holly trees and the leaves is that normally holly leaves are smooth around the edges.





I know that most of the pictures that I've seen show spiky leaves and I've always associated my gruff side with those spikes, but holly trees, when you look at them as they get taller, have smooth leaves.





The article went on to explain that when a holly tree or bush is being nibbled on by critters all the time, it reacts in a defensive way by putting spikes on the leaves. It's almost as if the plant senses what's going on and reacts to its environment, which ought to give vegans pause because that means plants are conscious of what's happening and react to defend themselves.





As I thought about that article, I realized I'm a lot like that too. When I'm in an environment where I'm not being nibbled on or attacked all the time, I tend to be smooth and easy to get along with and not as volatile as people think I am.





But when I start getting attacked or put down or ignored and left out, I become defensive and the spikes start showing up. I tend to be a little bit faster than a holly tree or a holly bush, but it's still there and it's still what I do.





It was an interesting article. You can check one out at https://earthlymission.com/holly-trees-ilex-aquifolium-leaves-nibbled-by-deer-makes-lower-ones-spiky-regrow/



+++

Making email more useful ~

I have used email for a long time. I remember when email started to grow and become used by more people. It was good to have an email address.



I made sure my wife and I had separate email addresses because we live separate lives and we are separate people with different interests. I remember others being frustrated because they would send an email to my wife and then wonder why I didn't know about it. They just seemed boggled by the idea that we would have separate email addresses. AND not read each other's emails.



Fast forward to today where email is clogged with spam. I subscribe to several different newsletters and I also have a bot that goes and gathers things for me and emails those things to me. I find email very useful for passing information around to others in a form that almost everybody can access now.



But I always keep in mind that email is like sending a postcard. It is something that passes through several different servers and is wide open for whoever owns that server to read it and save it. So I'm careful about what I send. Sending account numbers, ID numbers, passwords, and that sort of thing is a no-no for email. Unless you zip it up in an encrypted file and password protect the file or send encrypted email. And even then I'm kind of thinking it's risky so I don't do that if I can avoid it.



But that's not what I wanted to talk about. One of the issues that I kept running into is it all running together. Especially at work. As I would scan through the emails that I got I couldn't really tell when I was on a different day and how long it had been since this email had come to me. I tried tagging things. I tried setting up rules to tag things automatically. It all seemed to run together in one big blur.



One day I had a thought about divider lines. When you look at posters or letters or anything printed there's usually a line or a boundary between sections. It makes that section stand out a little bit and know that you're looking at something that's different than the rest of it. Especially in a one-page thing a header line or divider line between the sections helps a lot.



So my big idea was getting a divider line into my email inbox. I thought about that for a couple of days and then came up with an idea of having my bot send me an email every night in the middle of the night with a bunch of dashes as the subject.



A bunch of dashes. It sounds silly when I talk about it but it's been revolutionary for me. I added the date to the front of the line of dashes. Now has I scan down through my email I can distinctly see where each day of email starts and ends. It's amazing! It's so silly and sounds stupid but it's amazing.



It's helped me scan through things and find stuff a lot faster. When I go to search for specific days or or try to focus on one or two days of emails that I'm trying to dig something out of instead of having to search using their between two dates functions I just type in the date space ��� and it comes right to that day and I can quickly scan that these emails and find what I'm looking for.



Here's what it looks like



Today's date---------



Such a simple idea. And it's been so helpful to me.



Just thought I'd share!



+++

#email #idea

Changing the game ~

A recent post/email from an online guru that I've read for years started with the line:



Don't play games you can't win.



That has been a theme of mine since I was a kid. I learned early on that others were better than me, so I had to change things up. Star Trek reinforced that idea with Captain Kirk and the crew changing the game so they could get to a better outcome for everyone involved, even their opponents.



For a long time in my career I kept bringing new things in because I knew I would never be "as good as" the old guys that didn't want to change. I remember when I developed a web-based log system for my workplace some of the old guys were still saying "nobody uses that" as I implemented it's 24/7 use. Instead of fighting against their bias and opposition I went with the people that actually wanted me to do it and succeeded. It was an amazing feeling!



I've had to do that in relationships, too. People have made assumptions about me that were wrong and pushed me away for years. Instead of continuing to wish things were different I've learned to accept things as they are and go in my own direction. I don't like the feeling of loss but have learned to accept and live with it.



The article by Seth Godin was good. You can check it out at

https://seths.blog/2025/09/system-architect-system-victim/



+++

Picky about outcomes ~

One of the things that I have learned about myself is that I am picky about outcomes. It's not that I'm picky about brands, it's about how they're going to act or what kind of effect they're going to have on me and my family.



When I was a kid, my mother told me that Skippy peanut butter was the best peanut butter, that the others just weren't the same, and Skippy was the best. I carried that into my adult life until late in my 50s.



If we didn't have Skippy peanut butter, I didn't eat peanut butter sandwiches or peanut butter and crackers. My wife tried over and over, she would buy the cheap stuff, the store brand stuff. I would taste it and think it tasted bad, and I would go and buy my own peanut butter.



Same thing with canned vegetables. My mother taught me that canned vegetables by Del Monte or one of the other brands were the best. The no-name store brand generic canned vegetables usually had bad stuff in them, or they weren't the same thing, they were lower quality.



I got over that one pretty quick. Green beans are green beans.



When my wife and I would travel and we had all four kids, or just three, or just two, we would always pack a cooler with ice and drinks and cups and snacks in the vehicle. Because when you stop at a convenience store to fill up with gas and four kids and your wife go into the store, you end up spending 50 bucks in the store on top of the gas that you bought. Money was tight at times because kids are expensive and the cooler worked out great in the car.



Now that my children are adults and they don't travel with us, I really prefer not to do the ice in the cooler deal and prefer to just stop and grab a bag of peanuts and keep rolling.



I like my green tea and because it's green tea, I can drink it either at room temperature or in the car temperature or cold or even hot.



When I go somewhere and the forecast calls for rain, I tend to take my umbrella. It's not because I'm scared of getting wet, it's because typically when we go out to do things a one-hour jaunt turns into a five or six hour ordeal that just goes on and on. And if I get wet I'm going to be unhappy! My hair will be damp my clothes will stay damp. I will be grumpy and irritable more than I usually am.



And so I carry an umbrella just in case it rains I Prefer the outcome of being dry over taking the chance and being wet.



Because I retired from a job where I was a highly trained pattern matcher I can sometimes predict what's going to happen. Sometimes way further in advance than my wife or others around me. I Just pick up on things. I've been around a while And I like the outcomes that I like.



I'm picky about the outcomes of my endeavors. I don't like to fail. I fail a lot and I really don't like it.



I don't like to look foolish even though I'd look foolish often So I do things to influence the outcomes so that none of those things happen to me. Or I minimize the possibilities of it happening to me. I'm not picky about brands I'm picky about outcomes.



Shirts have been a fascinating thing. For so long cotton shirts were the way to go and I would sweat in them and the sweat would stay and I would look foolish. So I wouldn't go anywhere or I would have to change shirts.



I discovered that quick dry Under Armor shirts don't show the sweat that I have pouring out of my body. At least not as much as cotton shirts do. And they are lighter and feel better on my skin. So I like to wear Under Armor shirts.



I prefer shirts with a button-down collar if I'm wearing a dress shirt. When I wear a shirt with an open collar it just feels like I'm in the 70s in a disco outfit and look like one of those advertising executives out on a Friday lunch. I don't like looking like that so I'm picky about the outcome when I wear clothes. I even found shirts that I really liked but a lot of them were sold as open collar shirts. So I bought a quick button attacher and I turned them into button-down collar shirts myself. It worked out great!



I don't see anything wrong with being picky about outcomes. If other people see it as a mental illness or as something that you're just hard to get along with that's their issue not yours.



I'm just trying to protect myself from what might happen if the outcome is bad.



+++

Guyana Trip Thoughts ~

I recently visited the country of Guyana. My wife and went with some friends who grew up in Guyana and some other people doing missionary work there.



Guyana is a beautiful country that is 500 miles north of the equator in South America. Georgetown, the capital city, is on the coast beside the Demerara river. The city is actually below sea level so they have a sea wall that protects the city from major flooding.



We had lots of fun there! The food was delicious, with a lot of mild curry and jerk seasonings. The people were nice, especially in the open markets. We got to ride all the way to New Amsterdam and back one day, enjoying the floating bridges they used to cross the rivers. And we got to ride all the way to Parika, known as the "end of the road". We even went on an adventure and flew to see Kaieteur Falls, the tallest drop waterfall in the world - the tannic acid filled water was beautiful, giving the waterfall a brownish hue as it flowed and fell.



I learned some things that I didn't know while we were in Guyana: :



- Some people put necklaces and bracelets on their children to ward off evil spirits.



- Almost every tree in a home's yard is some kind of fruit tree.



- Several fruits and teas from Guyana have cancer fighting properties.



- "Take it from she" is a valid sentence meaning take it from her.



- The kids call you "Uncle" instead of "sir" after getting some time with you. Nice.



- Time is relative. My five minutes is usually not the same as their five minutes.



- Many of the homes are also businesses.



- Houses are built on stilts. Then the lower level is filled in to expand living space. Not always closed in.





Because Guyana was a British colony they mostly speak English, just sometimes with a strong Caribbean accent that makes you pay attention. And they drive on the left side of the road with a lot less space between cars, motorcycles, scooters, big trucks, and horse-drawn carts than I am used to.



Guyana is a beautiful country. If you ever get a chance to visit I highly recommend it!



Map:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/GvcTYxkWmu1yHgqy6



Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana?wprov=sfla1



+++

Coding by hand ~

I recently read an article working through the claim that AI is writing 90% of all programming code now. The article explained the claims and then talked about how programmers end spending too much time checking and fixing the code generated by whatever artificial intelligence was used. The conclusion was that the human coders are more creative and adaptive and do things "by hand" rather than rely on the machines.



I'm not sure if I believe all of that but the story reminded me of something.



During my career as an air traffic control specialist I did a lot of things to support the operation. I earned a degree in Computer Information Systems and used it to develop small applications to "automate" some tedious things. It was a lot of fun!



A job in headquarters for controllers with programming experience opened up in headquarters. They were assembling a team from the "front lines" to develop business knowledge applications that made sense to the field facilities. A co-worker that was not a programmer applied for the job.. His justification was that they were using Visual Basic to develop the programs and he had learned how to click options in the VB menu and then auto-generate an "application". He couldn't do anything with the code after it was generated but still wanted the job.



He was selected for the job. As he prepared to go to headquarters things changed in his life and he had to back out of the offer to work headquarters. They chose me to go in his place. And I got to help develop applications that we used in feeders l facilities nationwide.



I never used the auto-generate function in VB. Because it was too much work to wade through all the junk the program generated so I could adapt it to what we were trying to do.



So I tend to agree with the conclusions in the article..



+++

Foreign radio ~

I grew up listening to radio. My grandmother gave me a white electric clock radio that was straight out of the 70s. It had the funny looking lines for numbers on the Art Deco clock that was tall and narrow with short hands.



I'm pretty sure it only did AM radio. And when I was seven years old I would sit in my bedroom and listen after school to Paul Harvey and Chicken Man and then play while they talked about the news and all the other stuff that the adults like to listen to.



I enjoyed hearing about the weather and I continued listening as I got older. As a teenager I listened to the pop music radio stations. I wasn't in the Future Farmers of America (FFA) and so I didn't listen to country music hardly at all.



I shied away from the heavy rock radio stations because that was supposedly satanic music that I didn't want to let in my head, even though I really enjoyed some of it. I didn't really listen to news radio. When I started driving, I got tired of commercials and so I enjoyed my cassette tapes a little bit more, but I still listened to a lot of radio.



When a good song would come on, I'd pump it up. When the news or commercials or weather forecast came on, I'd switch to a different station or turn it down. This continued on in college and as I started working.



I live in the metro Atlanta area and so traffic reporting became very important to me for a while. The route that I took from home to work and back was such that there usually wasn't any traffic and so I kind of started tuning out the traffic reporting unless I was going downtown or around on the perimeter and I avoided doing that because of the traffic.



I remember listening to Christian radio stations on AM when I was working in my 20s. I especially enjoyed Jay Vernon McGee and would listen to him whenever I could. I got into talk radio in my 40s.



I listened to some of the earlier talk radio people in the Atlanta area. Glenn Beck and his hesitation between words in odd places drove me crazy so I didn't listen to him very much. I enjoyed Neil Bortz but he was on in the mornings and so I usually only listened when I had an evening shift. Sometimes he was over the top and so I would have to turn him off. I listened to Rush Limbaugh and had a lot of friends who listened to Rush Limbaugh and they made a point of taking their lunch break every day at noon so that they could listen.



My job was such that I couldn't do that but if I could get out I'd try to tune in although it didn't work out very often. I didn't really get into Rush Limbaugh until I could download the recordings and listen to them on a device at my own choice of time and then i thoroughly enjoyed it but i missed the whole radio experience i remember when we were going to travel to europe the first time in the early 1990s i was so excited to be able to listen to radio all in europe i had my walkman and i was all set to go it was a digital walkman and i made sure i had extra batteries we got there and this was before the internet was really anything for us to use and i learned when i got on the ground in england and in continental europe that their fm frequencies are even numbered my digital tuner and my walkman was odd numbered and would not do the even numbers and so if the radio station over there was 94.2 on the fm dial i could only get 94.1 or 94.3 and had to listen to a static key signal the entire time if i listened at all disappointing but i still did it once the internet grew and became easy enough i enjoyed listening to radio over the internet streaming i would listen to french dance music and British news reports sometimes I'd tune in and stream Italian radio but not very often.



I still do that when we're getting ready to travel internationally. I'll try to find a streaming radio station or two in the area that we're going and I'll listen for a little bit just to get a feel for the speech and the language and the feel for what they're advertising.



Now I really don't like commercials and so I really enjoy streaming music with no ads. I pay subscription fees to a couple of services to make sure i don't get any ads. I enjoyed XM satellite radio for many years but I got tired of them claiming to be "commercial free" and then between almost every song that I listened to on most of the stations that i listened to I had to listen to them talk about how great XM radio was and how everyone should subscribe and check out the other channels available on XM radio. This is the first year that i'm actually going to be free of XM radio and just go streaming completely or over the air.



My wife and I are gearing up for another international trip, so I searched the internet for a couple of radio stations in South America, and I started listening again, just to get a feel for the accent and what they're advertising.



Fun!

No three-legged race ~

For a long time I felt like I was in a three-legged race in several things. Family things. With things. Church things.



Then I would find out that the people I thought I was doing these things with didn't see it that way and had left me out. In many cases they had no idea how my commitment worked and just didn't even think about me. In some cases it was a very purposeful thing.



In all of these cases I'm being vague about it hurt me deeply..I felt betrayed..I felt left out. I felt like I wasn't even thought of let alone considered.



I was often encouraged to express my feelings, but when I did and explained why I felt them things usually got worse.



I've learned through those experiences to just keep my feelings and explanations to myself when I can. Life is easier this way. And I know that God saw it and will take care of me.



Still challenging, though. After a life of living under the gun and on the edge easing back from expressing myself is challenging. But I'm trying...



+++

Tried jackfruit ~

I tried jackfruit for the first time recently. I've seen it in stores over the years. Usually one of the farmers markets where Oriental people tend to run the place. Although a lot of them were run by Mexicans and Central Americans too.



And it's funny there's one store called Nam Dae Mon. And it's got everybody in there. Africans, Mexicans, Dominicans, people from all of the Asian countries. It's amazing. I really like going there but I don't go there a lot.



I saw some jackfruit that was already cut up and wrapped in plastic and I bought a quarter of a jackfruit. A lot less messy from what I read because apparently the goo inside the jackfruit is very sticky and hard to remove. They even suggest that people doing that either coat their hands in coconut oil and coat whatever they're putting it in and cutting it on in coconut oil or even wear gloves. But buying it already cut up into a quarter of it all that stuff was gone.



Four bucks. I got enough jackfruit to make probably one meal for two people. I roasted the seeds and several of them exploded in the air fryer when I was trying to roast them. But they had a decent flavor when I tasted them.



The jackfruit itself, the petals of the flower, actually had a mildly sweet taste. From what I read, the lady described it as a cross between pineapple, papaya, cucumber, and a couple other sweet, tangy fruits.



And she was right on. It tasted really good. I tasted it raw. I cooked it in olive oil with some Everglades seasoning and some of my "David's mix" seasoning. And then after cooking it, tossing it in the oil and making sure it softened up a little bit because I wasn't real clear if it was ripe or not.



I tasted it and it actually had that mildly sweet taste. I put some barbecue sauce in a small dish and dipped it. That was amazing! All of a sudden it was the sweet tangy barbecue sauce and the sweet tangy of the fruit. I could see where vegetarians would enjoy having that as a barbecue sandwich.



I only ate a little bit because I want to see what it does to my stomach but this may be a new adventure to take my wife on or maybe even one of my adult children when they come to visit.



Fun!



+++

Hanging a track light ~

I completed a project recently where I made a track light for my living room. I had Hue Bloom lights on the fireplace mantle and every time my wife would swap out the decorations and pictures we would talk about how nice it would be to have a track light on the ceiling instead of the Bloom lights on the mantle.



But I didn't want to give up the color and control the Hue Blooms gave us. I shopped for track lights and didn't find any that would take a full-sized Hue light bulb, so I decided to make one myself.



I hade never done anything like this! I've made a couple of things with wood, but they usually turned out looking like an amateur made them. I didn't want that for my living room so I tried some new things.



I got a 4-foot board and some can lights, cut a groove down the middle of the board for the wires, and then spray-painted the board black. I got an electric box and spray-painted it black, too, and then mounted it on the end of the board to hold the plugs going into an extension cord.



Everything came together ove the course of a month. I thought it looked pretty good, so I showed my wife and we agreed that we could hang this in the living room.



As usual my brain kicked into overdrive trying to convince me that I was messing up. The chant in my head went on and on about how the ceiling was going to fall out, about how the lights would burn up, and how this was all going to fail. When I got the track light up against the ceiling and was ready to put the screws in to hold it up there my pestering inner voice was at full volume trying to stop me.



But I didn't stop. I hung the track light, then ran the extension cord the way I wanted to run it. Everything turned out like I envisioned, and nothing caved in at this point.



I'm glad I've learned to press through the noise in my head and get things done.

Quoting the freaks ~

One of the fascinating aspects as I get older that I've learned is that we quote a lot of people that just up and disappeared and went into private. People that became hermits, people that isolated themselves from others, people that kept their distance from the hoi polloi.



I remember when I went to the Van Gogh experience, it was amazing to see his art and to learn about how he did it, but he did it mostly while he was in a sanitarium. And he cut off his ear, his own ear!



I remember looking at my mother and my wife and asking, "Why do we celebrate these people? Why do we look up to these people that are crazy?" It's similar with quotes, so many of the memes that we see are nice little sayings and quotes from speeches and people's writings, but a lot of those people went into the woods and didn't come out for a long time, or they were in jail and they wrote these things from jail, kind of like the Bible, but not exactly.



I just find it fascinating how we celebrate these people that isolate themselves and then pronounce their judgments on everybody. But then people look down on somebody like me who doesn't want to be around people that often. They warn to make sure to socialize and be with people.



Well, I socialize just fine. I think these people socialized just fine, but I also think that their quiet contemplation helped clarify some things in their minds and they were able to capture it. And that's why we like to quote and read and enjoy them and what they did.



Interesting thing to think about.



+++

Fill in the space ~

One of the things that drives me crazy is to be in a group where when the group is going into a building or room the first person in the group stops as soon as they get in the door and everyone else has to go around them to get into the room.



I run into this a lot! People will walk in the door and start talking to someone else in the room while I'm coming in behind them. I'm left hanging out in the hallway or worse right in the middle of the door where all the other people in the area want to get through. It's embarrassing and it's frustrating so I make a dash around the person that I'm with to go around them to get into the room or building and then find somewhere unobtrusive to stand or sit while I wait.



I guess it's part of my desire to not get in other people's way. That's the driver. But it gets painful sometimes because often there's nowhere to go and I'm stuck in the doorway and people behind me are saying excuse me and can I get through here and the person in front of me is absorbed in whatever they're looking for or trying to find a seat or something.



I ran into this a lot when we went on a recent trip overseas. We went with a group of 20+ people. And over half of them were hearing-impaired or deaf. And so there were interpreters on the trip. When we would go into a room the interpreters would set up at the front and then the deaf people would all find a place to stand right where they could see the interpreter. Being one of the hearing people I brought up the rear and usually got left behind everybody. To the point that halfway into the trip everybody would pile into the room that we were in for a guide to tell us about something and there would be nowhere for me to get in to the room. Or if I could get into the room I couldn't see what everybody else was seeing because they had all taken central seats so that they could see the interpreter. I could see the empty seats beyond them where they could have seen everything just fine. But because they walked into the room and stopped because they had a good view where they were and everybody else filtered around him I didn't have anywhere to go. It became quite frustrating toward the end of the trip.



I ran into this with my kids. I tried to teach them as they were growing up not to do that walk in a doorway and just stop if you're with the group. I don't know how successful I was but all they lived in my house they got out of the way. And they made room for others.



I guess it's the conscientiousness thing. I know that when I'm in a group I'm not alone and so I try to look out for the rest of the group and I try to make room for the rest of the group even if that means I get the crappy seat. It's all about that being satisfied with second-best. It's a hard lesson in our society and not a lot of people accept it but it's in the Bible and it's in one of my favorite verses. The verse goes on to say and above all wear love, It's your all-purpose garment!



So while I get frustrated and my face shows it I still love. And I'm still thankful. Just think about the people behind you and make room.

Do You Love Me ~

One of the challenging things that I've had to deal with over the past few years and recently is a question that my mother asked me. She was in the midst of a challenging situation and apparently wasn't getting her desired response and so she asked me bluntly, "Do you even love me?"



The question hurt me deeply. It's been asked a couple of times and it hurt deeply each time. But as I get some distance from it I have a couple of thoughts.



I can't control the way anybody else feels. I can influence and I can set the stage but they choose to feel however they feel.



This was a hard lesson I had to learn because I was taught growing up that things were good or bad and you felt good or bad based on what you were doing and what kind of day it was and whether or not the weather was good or bad.



If your horoscope for your zodiac sign said that you were going to have a bad day, then you tended to have a bad day because you were already programmed for it. It's funny they never say that, but in the negative environment I grew up in, it felt like that's what they said.



I chose to feel like that when it didn't say I was going to go out and conquer the world. The question "do you even love me" was said in a tone that communicated doubt. And that's what hurt me the most.



I was in the middle of giving time, money, leave and effort, gifts and touch, and my love was being questioned. When she asked me that question the first time I was very upset. It was a very calm situation and it felt like a punch in the gut.



The most recent time she asked that question and expressed doubt in my love for her, I was angry at being left out of something. It still felt like a punch in the gut. Like a stab to my heart. I love my mother, but as an adult, I've learned that she wasn't right about a lot of things and a lot of my negative tendencies were taught to me. I will continue to love my mother, and the love hasn't changed.



Sadly, I fear that anything that I do will be viewed as a reduction in love. And that's on her, not on me.



Thinking about it, I'm in good company. Jesus asked Peter, "Do you love me?"



He asked the question three times and the lesson that I get from preachers and articles and books is that it was a focusing question and that it hurt Peter deeply but he went on to do what he needed to do without Jesus around.



Jesus asked the question of God, why have you forsaken me? It's not quite the same but it's similar. God had not, but it felt that way. Jesus went through the anguish of not feeling loved for us.



I'm not Jesus, I'm not Peter, and I'm not God. But I take heart in their examples and will go through this anguish doing what I need to do. Challenging!



+++

GOAT symbolism ~

It's fascinating to think about symbols, especially as a Christian. One of the symbols that I've been thinking about lately is the "greatest of all time" symbol.



More and more I'm seeing that broken down into the word GOAT, like an acronym. I'm starting to see the goats head symbol more and more on things that I didn't really expect to see them.



Not a satanic thing, it's just marketers and businesses trying to get your attention by saying that they're celebrating the greatest of all time or they're encouraging the greatest of all time or whatever.



Sometimes it is the Satanic symbol. In today's woke societal efforts, it's become fashionable to go against Christian thinking and morals. And the ultimate way to do that is to go with Satan. At least that's what some people believe.



And so they put up Satanic symbols or get a tattoo that reminds you of something that a Satanic cult might have. What they don't seem to understand is the actual opposite of faith in Jesus would be unbelief. I've long thought that the devil has been using symbols and marketing to to corrupt them and turn them into things of his own to bring glory to him instead of glory to God.



And the whole "greatest of all time" thing is one of them. Sports was pure and just focused on the game and then it became all about the individual and that individual's performance and then remixing individuals into ultra high performing teams that never existed.



But they exist on paper, in private, online leagues. And of course, everybody argues about who the greatest of all time is, and businesses pump out that the greatest of all time is here, and news organizations report on somebody possibly becoming the greatest of all time. And let's all be goats!



But Jesus taught something different. Christianity believes in the Lamb of God and his teaching: Humble and put yourself second and put others before you. One of my favorite verses even talks about how Christians should be happy with second place.



So the goat versus the lamb. The lamb symbol is soft and weak and stupid and now after many years, in some circles, considered a sexual preference, which is vulgar but people joke about it and making fun of others that they don't consider the greatest of all time.



But the goat versus the lamb. Maybe that's why I'm not into competition and sports and comparing performance notes and arguing about who's better at what.



But I am. I prefer the lamb. I'm not very good at it, but that's the team I choose. I'm glad I was chosen to be on that team! I don't have to beat anybody else to be on that team, I just want everybody to join me on the Lamb's team.



+++

M is for mister ~

I remember a time at work where I was required to send a thank-you letter to the French consulate from my federal government office. I was a junior guy and I had no idea what I was doing. I was in the quality assurance office and was working to review incidents that happened in the system.



I had gotten involved with the printing of a newsletter using the printing office that our agency had. That was an experience in and of itself, but I learned that not all offices worked the same and they all had different budgets.



As I worked to come up with a thank-you letter for these French people that had come and toured our facility, I had no idea what to say in the letter. I worked with my boss and got some wording down for the letter.



Then I actually had to look up how to refer to a French person with the concept of Mr. and Mrs. I learned that in French, M stood for Mr. or Mrs. You could then go from there. I used that in my letter and in the stuff that I included in the package that we sent to the air traffic people that were involved in the tour that they had taken with us.



It's funny now when I get emails from a French speaking company that is either spamming me or sending me emails that I legitimately signed up for and it has M Holly on it. I think of what I learned back in the early 1990s and how M. stands for Monsieur or mister in English.



Fun stuff!

Riding bikes ~

I remember when my family moved from the Air Force Base that we lived on to a place out in the woods when my dad retired from the military. It was a big move because he had offers for two good positions, but because he didn't want to be separated from his family or didn't want to raise us in a big metropolitan city he chose to retire.



I've always appreciated that but I do remember being very sad because I went from being able to ride my bicycle everywhere on sidewalks to having to ride in our dirt driveway and very short concrete driveway where the car was parked.



I went from riding my bicycle with baskets on either side of the rear wheel to school to having to walk down our long dirt driveway to the two-lane road and then walk down the two-lane road a ways to the corner of it and another two lane road and wait for the bus early in the morning and walk all that distance back when it dropped me off in the afternoons, rain or shine.



I went from being able to ride my bicycle to the Jiffy store at the back end of the base to get comic books and cokes and bubblegum with my friends to playing with my brother all the time. Dad put up a basketball goal out in our dirt driveway we would go out there and get filthy with the sandy, dirty sand on the basketball. It was wobbly so it didn't work really well. And my brother was younger than me and so he would always cry when I beat him or yell that I cheated or something. Which I usually did, but that's beside the point.



I remember as I got older my parents allowed us to start riding our bicycles out on the two-lane road, but not very far. The closest Jiffy store was five miles away and my mom said we would not be able to ride that far and then ride back. I was ready to try but I also knew that sounded like a really long distance.



But we did get to where we would ride our bicycles up and down the two-lane road and pick up beer cans for the aluminum. We would crush them and save them in garbage bags. Every few months mom and dad would take us to the recycling place and we'd get a couple of dollars for our aluminum cans.



One time I think I got $10 which was amazing. We'd save our money for the toy store so we could buy something the next time we were taken to the toy store.



I love where I grew up but that transition from living on base as a kid to having my wings clipped and having to worry about snakes and trucks and crazy people was a hard transition.



But I survived it.



+++

Enjoying our convertable ~

I recently bought a two seat vehicle. It's a convertible and it's a lot of fun. One of the challenges in it is the stereo system. My stereo experience in my vehicles has always been important to me since my teenage driving years.



I always enjoyed the surround sound experience from being able to move the fader to the back and crank the music up so that I could really experience the sound. In this two seater, there are only front speakers and so there is no fader.



My experience has been different in this car. I love the music and I still crank it up, even with the top down. But it feels different because the sound isn't behind me, pushing me forward. It's weird in a good way.



But it's also different and something I'm adjusting to. Silly, I know, but it's something that's different about having a two seater. I imagine if I had a pickup truck with no back seat, I'd experience the same thing, although from what I've seen, they put speakers in the back of those, too.



And it's fun putting the top down and being able to hear everything around me, including the birds and the motor sounds and the other sounds happening around me.



Fun!



+++

Washing my own clothes ~

I remember when I had to start washing my own clothes. My mom loved me and did what she could to raise me right. My dad loved me and did what he could to raise me right. But I heard a lot of negativity growing up, a lot of griping and complaining, and I learned how to do it myself.



When I was a child, my mother would joke and say that I was the Emperor of the National Federation of Gripers because I would gripe about everything. I was just mimicking what I heard them doing and what I heard on TV and I thought that's how you found your place in the world. What I had been taught was that if you had plenty of things to gripe about you were somebody.



I've learned since then that's not such a great way to live. But one day when I was standing at the kitchen counter talking to my mom, she had washed my clothes again, I was 15, maybe 16. She was folding my clothes on the counter and I complained about how the shirts were wrinkled and how I looked bad when I wore them when I went to school. I asked her if there was some way that I could look better and it hit her the wrong way and she shoved the laundry basket at me and said, "you can wash your own damn clothes." And she showed me how, she showed me how to run it through and how to sort it by colors and how much soap to put in and run the dryer.



We didn't have to hang clothes in the back, but we did have a clothesline that we used for a long time until we bought a dryer. But yeah, that was the time that I griped one time too many and had to start washing my own clothes.



I guess it was time though. And now that I no longer work, I wash the clothes for me and my wife, usually, and I enjoy it.

They still draw attention ~

I find it so fascinating how people are drawn to stories of Nazi Germany and the Jewish Holocaust. So many movies have been done about this and so many stories have been told about it and I just can't fathom how bad it must have been but I also don't want to dwell on it.



It was horrible but I don't want to sit for two hours and be dragged through the muck of emotions associated with Nazis and Germany and delusions and horrific violence and treatment of people. I just don't like to watch it and I don't like to see it.



While visiting family they wanted to watch a movie and chose "The Boy in the Red Stripe Pajamas". I gave it a try for the first 30 minutes or so. It's about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and the treatment of Jews. It's all done through the story of a little boy and it's just heart-wrenching and I didn't even see the bad parts.



I don't like that stuff and I don't like to think about it and I don't like to dwell on it. I really don't want to see it because hyper-accurate depictions of people being starved and treated like animals is not my type of entertainment.



So I stepped out of the room and read on my mobile device. But the images I saw haunt me still...



+++

Writing with left hand ~

Recently I was talking with someone who is a counselor, and he noted that I was writing with my left hand. He was surprised and said that a very small percentage of the population actually is left handed, and that it takes a different kind of thinking to be left handed.



They've done studies on the brain, and how writing left-handed changes the brain. He was even more astounded when I told him that I was right-handed but about 20 years ago I decided to learn to write with my left hand, and got to a point to where I use my left hand to write most of the time now.



I was brought up and spent most of my adult life right handed. I always got gigged on my handwriting because it was messy. My print was called "chicken scratch" by my father, who didn't have much better handwriting than me, but still.



My teachers lowered my grade on my English papers because my handwriting was so bad. I remember papers being given back to me and being told by the teacher that they couldn't read them. And so I would rewrite it and really take my time and do it as neat as I could with my right hand.



Writing fast was necessary because there was so much information to capture in school. When I got to college I scribbled notes all over the place and tried to keep them orderly, but even I when I went back and reviewed them had trouble reading them.



In my professional life handwriting was necessary and so I would consciously slow myself down when I would write on flight strips, when I filled out forms, they were legible but it was hard. In my 40s I got an office job and got off of shift work and had some extra office time on my hands.



I was very analytical and very locked into certain ways of thinking and I was exploring ways of changing the way that I thought so that I could become more creative and maybe less negative and improve in other ways.



I locked in on left-handedness being a complete change of the brain to where the brain would have to remap a lot of different things to make it happen and then to maintain being left-handed I would have to think different.



So I picked up the pen in my left hand and as uncomfortable as it was I started writing.



I was so slow at first but it was so neat and legible. It was amazingly clear because I had slowed down and because I couldn't go fast. It was also so important to me.



It just was easy to read. I did notice that as I got used to it over a couple of years if I sped up it would start to look sloppy but not as bad as my right hand did. Then I'd pick up the pen with my right hand and scribble something and chuckle and start writing with my left hand again.



Once I was proficient with writing with my left hand, I would switch back and forth on purpose just to see what they looked like. I thought about changing my signature but decided that was going to be too much administrative hassle in banking institutions and other places.



I would go in and I would fill everything out with my left hand and put the pen in my right hand and sign it. People would look at me in shock. It was fun. I tried other things with my left hand once I got used to it.



I played ping pong with my left hand and found that I was really good, better than I was right handed. I tried to throw a football and found that that went a lot better. I don't do that very often anyways. I threw a Frisbee left handed and it went wild off course and I was like, that's one thing that's not any better.



It's an interesting experience because I don't get confused about which hand to use, I just do it. I do try to change things up and use my left hand to wash myself and do clothes on the washer and try to use my left hand primarily and that feels weird.



I do live in a right handed world, but I feel I accomplished my objective. I'm a lot more creative and I come up with a lot of different ideas that I don't think I would have ever come up with before.



So being left handed on purpose can be done and I didn't even have to lose a finger or hand to do it.



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Gnarled old tree ~

One of the things that I and many other people find beautiful and interesting to look at is a gnarled old tree. You see a tree that's over a hundred years old and it has the rough bark that's been aged and sun and rain and wind and cold and hot.



If it's had some damage it has holes where branches used to be, sometimes even splits where the trunk was torn asunder and yet the tree kept living. The windblown gnarly trees on the coasts are also so fascinating.



Continuous wind coming in off the ocean or off the edge of a mountain causes all the branches to go in the opposite direction because they can't grow into the wind very well. When you find one on a rock jutting out of a river and it defiantly is holding on and growing they're just so beautiful and you wonder what the story is and how long they've been there living it.



But when people see the branch dangling from a few more strands of cellulose or whatever the substance is that makes up their sinewy branch material. Most people just think it's time to cut that off.



Some people just want to rub paint or some sort of sealant on it so the tree maybe will continue but they think it's ugly because it's white or black paint and it's not beautiful to look at when it's been damaged.



If it's gnarled by the twisting winds the trunk is looked at as a thing that is struggling and maybe shouldn't even be there. Picked the wrong place to live, didn't you? Very few people are interested in the process of becoming gnarly, aged with weather and experience.



Fascinating, isn't it?

Not a door mat ~

I was recently reading Proverbs chapter 29. Each month when I get to the 29th I hear this and I always think about it.



In verse 21 it says "if you let people treat you like a doormat you will be quite forgotten in the end."



It always gives me pause when I hear that. I wonder if my kindness is getting me treated like a doormat.



It is getting me left out when others get to go and and do things. It bothers me because I've been left out of a lot of different things. I understand that I can't be included in everything, but cannot even be thought of for some of these things. And then to be circumvented in purposefully left out at times. It hurts!



At work I had situations where people from out of state that came in to our facility under the flag of a powerful sponsor from upon high get preferential treatment, got promoted after having the plum assignment while being assigned to a different position so that they can get credit for both positions in not less than a year. I've watched others benefit when they really didn't know what they were doing, they just had strong sponsorship.



I've had some of that in my life. There been two or three times where I got a position because a group of people felt that they needed my skills in that position. I've also competed for positions and gotten them. And it's interesting that the higher I go and the more experience that I have the more I understand that there is very little based on merit unless you're in the free market. Different subject, sorry.



I went through that in high school. I was way outside at high school. Nerd, science fiction reader, in the band, super shy so that if I went to events I would find somewhere with a plate of snacks and a drink and I just park there most of the night. On the wall or in a chair, that was about it.



But I've never directly felt like I was being treated like a doormat. Over the years I've transformed from the quiet shy nerd that wouldn't say anything even if you were standing on my big toe to a sometimes brash and forward manager who calls things out politely but directly. And I ask a lot of direct questions, which makes people very uncomfortable at times. Especially Chinese exchange students.



I don't know. I don't think I'm treated like a doormat, but then sometimes I think that I am not even thought of. And I wonder if not even being thought of is being treated like a doormat. I guess not, because you have to think of a doormat to put it there and rub your feet on it. If you don't even think of someone than you're less than a doormat.



Just a thought. I get a lot of reading Proverbs each day. I read whatever chapter corresponds to the day of the month that it is. I encourage you to do the same thing. Hopefully you'll be able to figure out what it's like to be treated like a doormat and explain it to me!



Let me know...



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Fascinating word - ingenue ~

I was listening to an episode of an old-time radio show when I heard them describe a woman in the show as an "ingenue".



It was interesting because it was just quickly said in passing as if this word would be easily understood. The show was from the 1940s.



The only other time I've ever heard or seen was in a song. It was Styx on the Paradise theater album. The song was named "Homewrecker". It's a rocker! You can listen to the song at

https://youtu.be/whzzANKrPos



Ingenue is defined as being "a naive girl or young woman" or "the stage role of a naive girl or young woman".



Fun stuff!



Definition

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ingenue

Bread and butter ~

One of the things I remember from growing up is that we always had to have bread and butter with dinner. It didn't matter what we were having. Chicken. Beef. Turkey. Fish. None of the above. We had to have bread on the table. We had to have butter on the table.



And the butter was always spread on the bread thickly and eaten with the meal. When I say butter, I mean that in a loose sense because of weight and diet concerns.



My mother and father purchased margarine and the "I can't believe it's not butter" spread that was not butter. Because of the advertising and the articles they avoided actual milk based churned butter because of the salt content and the fat content and the impact on our bodies that had been advertised.



Sadly that advertising was just to sell the artificial stuff that was really bad for you. With the vegetable oils that were inflammatory and the hydrogenated whatevers that created more inflammation and irritation in our bodies than we could ever imagine.



If we lost weight eating this stuff, it was probably because our bodies were rejecting what we were ingesting.



Grammy, my grandmother on my mother's side, lived with us for many years. She would literally go into panic mode if we got down to less than a loaf or two of bread in the freezer.



This was almost always white bread. It was not Wonder Bread because that was too expensive. We didn't have a lot of money, so we bought the inexpensive kind. And as I got older, my mother splurged and bought the white wheat bread in an effort to be healthier. I don't think it worked very well.



We always had to have the artificial butter. The crock plastic bin of spread was prominent in our refrigerator. Sometimes there would be a splurge on the "I can't believe it's not butter" spread.



I don't remember ever seeing Land of Lakes butter in our refrigerator growing up. And I really don't remember seeing any of the actual churned milk butter in our refrigerator. Even for recipes when my mother was going to bake something.



I didn't think anything of it. But as an adult, in my 40s and 50s, I started noticing just how artificial the artificial butter was. And I switched over to regular "real" butter. I do remember a friend at work showing me what his father showed him about the Land of Lakes butter, how he had taken the logo from the package and overlaid it with another logo from another Land of Lakes butter package to show the nipples of the Indian on the package. I thought it was hilarious but also embarrassing.



Now when I consume butter it's typically real milk churned butter with olive oil in it or just sticks of milk churned butter.



No salt added is better for me but I'll even do it with the salt. I try to avoid the hydrogenated mess oils and spreads. And I feel healthier!



I guess today's marketing is working on me.



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Grilling in Alaska ~

I remember going on a trip to Alaska with my parents and my family. One of the highlights of that trip was grilling chicken legs at a cabin in the base where we stayed. My dad was in the Air Force and so as a retiree he had access to military bases and places that were set up as vacation spots for military and veterans.



My parents had arranged for us to be able to stay in Seward, Alaska, at the southern tip of the biggest part of Alaska up there. Not the one that extends down to Juneau but the one that is still part of the main part of Alaska.



It was beautiful! We enjoyed the trip though getting there with all four of our children and my parents who were getting older was challenging.



Everybody wanted to have grilled chicken legs. I thought was a silly idea, but my wife really liked the idea, and the kids did too.



So me and dad got out there with charcoal, turning over chicken legs with forks, and talking about how it was still so bright at 9pm in the evening. It never really did get completely dark while we were in Alaska. We didn't see the aurora borealis, but it would have been a capping event.



But I enjoyed being with my dad. I don't even remember what we talked about, or any of that, I just remember he time with him.

Good memory!



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Grocery store midnight shift ~

When I was in college I worked the midnight shift at a grocery store for a summer. It was a tough schedule because I kept my job at Sears and would work there during the day.



Then the summer brought seven straight midnight shifts at the grocery store and then seven nights off from the grocery store. During the week that I was on during the midnight shift, I was a zombie. I would sleep whenever I could.



I would fall asleep in the car at school even more easily than I did before I started that job. And I was just soooo tired.



I also saw a lot of things in the middle of the night that a lot of people don't hardly ever see.



They may hear about them and nowadays they would joke that that's what they do at Walmart, but this was a grocery store.



I remember this guy came in with two women and they were all pretty far up there on the imbibing of alcohol range. It was after midnight or after two if I remember right. So I wasn't legally allowed to sell them wine or beer, but they convinced me to do it anyways and I got in trouble the next day. Another time police officers came in and they just made a little pass through the store walking around looking for people and seen what was going on.



I remember there was a Miss Pac -Man game in the front of the store, and I would play Miss Pac-Man a couple of times, a shift just trying to keep myself awake.



The cleaning crew would come in in the middle of the night and they would polish the floors and sweep and do all the things that they had to do.



One of them was this short, really muscular guy that really was ripped, but he couldn't make sense when you talked to him. The other worker was a metalhead that loved to talk about Sledge and who the original rock artist was that did all the songs that Quiet Riot did, and he would argue with me about music that I really didn't care about. But it was fun. And then the boss would get them started and then he'd disappear for two hours and then he'd show back up and They'd clean up and put everything away.



That was a tough summer, but I did learn to dislike midnight shifts so that when I was in my career, I really hated working midnight shifts the way I had to.



But then it was only one midnight shift a week and only every two or three weeks and so it wasn't too bad.



Now I don't do shift work at all and I am very pleased with that.



What an adventure!



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No scaffolding ~

I worked in a facility with a gate and fence and security guards. One morning, when I was going in for an overtime shift at 5:55 in the morning, I was hit by a car.



One of the janitorial ladies was speeding through the parking lot and she wore really thick coke bottle glasses and swore that I was hiding behind a tree that was about 3 inches wide at the widest part of its trunk.



That was a really bad experience for me because I got to share my displeasure very loudly with her to the point that a friend of mine at work told me later that he didn't know that I had been in the Navy. I told him that I had never been in the military, especially not the Navy. He laughed and said, you sure sounded like you had been in the Navy that morning when you got hit by the car.



Later that year when I was walking in the room where our operation did its thing I was walking on the raised floor portion of the room and I was observing some new equipment that had been put in for the other line of business in the building and admiring their handiwork.



As I walked along on the raised floor I didn't realize that part of the raised floor had been opened and there was a guy down inside the floor working. I stepped on his hand and fell down on top of him because I was busy looking over a short wall to admire the new equipment. He cushioned my fall and had to wear an arm brace for a little while but otherwise it was no big deal. But it was embarrassing because now instead of just people revving their engines at me in the parking lot I had to have people warning me about falling into holes in the floor the rest of that year.



So I started telling my people if they ever put up scaffolding in or around this building I'm probably not going to come in because I know it's going to collapse on me. Everybody would shake their head and laugh because they knew it was probably true.



I had a good time where I worked but those were some challenging moments.



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Your best life ~

I love how marketers twist things so they can get you to buy their products that they're chilling. One of the latest phrases being used by more and more people marketing their wares is "your best life".





If you do this you'll be living your best life. If you take this supplement or if you drive this car or if you wear this style of clothing or this brand of clothing you're going to live your best life.





The implication that fires off in my brain is that if I don't then I'm living less than my best life or more of a mediocre life compared to people who wear those things and do those things and take those things.



I'm sensitive to this because my inner voice beats me up all the time. I've had to work hard to quiet it down to where it is but it's still there and it still chews me out every day. It still tries to convince me that I'm worthless and useless and can't do very much right at all.



So when the marketers come by with their "you can be better with this" and "you can be the best you can ever be with this" it's very compelling.



I've learned to use that phrase "your best life" as a trigger for me to turn whatever it is that I'm listening to or watching off or reorient my attention to something else. I also remind myself that I'm living my life and that's the best thing that I could ever do.



So many people are tied to their screens and they don't really live, they just watch and see what everybody else's best life is and then they hope and go buy lottery tickets in an effort to maybe get a chance to live their best life. It's almost a twist on the Bible. But I buy what Jesus says a lot more than other stuff.





Jesus said that he brings life and more abundantly. I don't recall anywhere in the Bible Jesus saying, "you'll be the best" or "you'll be living your best life". That seems to evoke a comparison to others that Jesus just didn't teach.



He did compare, but it was more of an us versus them thing rather than you being able to brag about how great you are because you take that supplement or because you went to that prayer meeting. you I'm going through something where I'm learning about cognitive biases.



It's very fascinating and I'm familiar with some of it but to go a little bit deeper is interesting to me. "Your best life" seems to evoke a certain bias in the human brain where we automatically doubt and question where we are and ask "do I fit into that picture that they're painting and portraying and if I don't what do I need to do to get there?"



And that's the ultimate trigger that marketers can bring. What do I need to do to get there?



Marketers ruin everything. Just live your life.

Not a skip-scanner ~

As time goes by I read more and more articles about people gaming the self-service scanning lanes and stores. Recently I read an article about a school principal that used foam plates to hide more expensive items as he ran them through the scanner.



He would hold the plates up and then push bacon and fish and other things across as if he was scanning them but the foam plates were the ones blocking the scanner. Then he put everything in the bag and he got arrested for shoplifting for $37 worth of stuff.



This is a grown man stealing very basic items from a store but the attitude that seems more and more pervasive is if nobody's watching me I can do this.



I remember watching a video on YouTube a few years ago in that video they had a guy go and pretend to be taking a nap on a park bench in a major city. The guy had his mobile phone poking up out of a pocket on his backpack in front of him. The backpack was near his head and the gag was to see if anybody was so tempted that they would grab the mobile phone and try to just walk off with it. It was equipped with a shocker so that if the person got a certain distance away it would zap them and the people making the video had multiple people around to stop the person from walking off.



In the video they showed many people stopping and pausing and grabbing the phone and getting zapped. It's as if all they could think was "nobody's watching me so I should be able to get away with this". And they were going to steal a five hundred dollar device from a man that's not homeless and not dressed as a bum just napping.



I've read other articles about values in other countries. The Danish are Very trusting of each other to the point that they supposedly leave their children Sleeping in strollers parked outside of a restaurant while they are inside not in view eating. In America that would be a crime!

The whole skip scanning thing is sad though. It's one of the reasons that I shy away from using those self-service lanes. Especially when I have a lot of stuff to scan. If I have a very small order in the grocery store, I'll go ahead and go through that lane sometimes. But I've read about and heard about so many people just taking advantage of a moment where nobody's watching (or at least they think nobody's watching). And they get zapped with a criminal charge on their record with possible jail time and fines and a limit on what they can apply for job-wise in the future because now they're a branded criminal.



The thing people have to remember is we're so untrustworthy that they have cameras everywhere and now artificial intelligence is watching the video and pointing out what looks to the large language model things as a crime.



Just be honest and don't steal. And don't skip-scan.



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