Archive for March 2010
Segway Fun!
So far, so good, on the burn control. Did you notice the general lack of writing here recently on the topic of planning and packing for this trip to Florida? That is primarily because I didn’t do much in the way of planning or packing. Yesterday morning I realized that we didn’t bring any sunscreen. Oops.
That’s okay, Cyndie’s mom came through. I had a couple of choices, but went right for the hard stuff. Kids SPF 50. Worked like a charm, because I was out in the bright sunshine for hours on end and didn’t suffer any ill effects from exposure.
No matter what else the week may hold for us down here, the trip can be called a true vacation because of the fun we had today. Riding around on the Segway is awesome! Definitely addicting. I just want to get back on the darn thing and play some more.
The tour of Naples was secondary. Actually, our tour guide didn’t appear to be a big fan of talking about the noteworthy details of the area. I think his forte is the Segway. He was a great teacher and superb guide in navigation. For novices, our group of 7 people ranging in age from 12 to 73 did surprisingly well. After about 90 minutes of cruising around, we were all pretty comfortable and able to execute quite a variety of maneuvers. We were told that the route covered about 6 miles, but that may be exaggerated a bit. It was certainly farther than we could have walked in that amount of time, that’s for sure.
The four of us then had a nice lunch outside at a dockside restaurant, and on the drive back to our place, stopped for some out-of-this-world-delicious ice cream. Back at the house, there was some time to add detail to Cyndie’s side of the family tree I’ve been growing on ancestry.com, and then we did battle on the Cross Crib board game version of cribbage. After 2 days of competition of men against women, we are at a 1-1 draw.
I could head home today and be happy with the trip. But there’s more! Two of Cyndie’s brothers will be arriving this week to join us for more fun adventures in playing in the sun and eating more than we should, later than we should. Is this a vacation, or what?
Florida Sun
It’s a bit comical to me, witnessing the incredible number of people on sojourns to sunny climes this time of year. Most obvious are the family units. It starts with the family groups navigating the airport and flights. Parents and kids everywhere. Our destination, in Florida, revealed right away the similarities to our situation, as one car after another appeared to be a grandparent picking up families. The gated community we are visiting is all about seniors and golf and their families coming to visit.
Cyndie’s dad shared a funny tale of someone with a dog on a leash walking into their house the other day, shouting, “Mom! Mom!” He got up to check on them and the person exclaimed, “Oops, I must have the wrong house!” They’d only missed by one house, as he recognized the name they were looking for was the next door neighbor.
It wasn’t too hot here yesterday, but we did get some sun as clouds broke up before we attended a movie at the theater in the late afternoon. Today and the rest of the week are forecast to be warmer and warmer with lots of sun. I will be faced with the challenge of controlling the burn. We have a plan of trying out a tour on Segways later this morning. I’ve never been on one before, and I’d love to capture some photos of the adventure, but I think I’ll be hanging on for dear life. That, and trying to control my laughter watching Cyndie and her parents master balancing the vehicles. Sounds like just the kind of excitement for out-of-towners on vacation.
I successfully avoided peeking at work email until midnight last night. Only one message from the property management with an update on the NCAA basketball tournament pool. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll be able to go the whole day without thinking about work.
Florida Bound
About the time this entry is published I’ll be hoppin’ a plane for the Florida sunshine. Here is a peek at our destination:
For whatever reason (I haven’t bothered to analyze), my motivation to accomplish anything productive is diminished to the point of being nonexistent. I have one week to see if I can pull off accomplishing nothing. Right now, that would suit me just fine.
It is a little weird to be leaving Minnesota for Florida when the weather here is predicted to be just as nice as there. It would feel a whole lot more satisfying to be leaving just before a massive dump of snow is predicted.
You guys may have beautiful weather here, but you won’t have dolphins and alligators to frolic with. Not that I will be doing so. But at least I’ll be in a place where the possibility exists.
Calm and Quiet
It’s a quiet day in Relative Something today. I’m guessing it might be related to the fact that at the end of the busy work day on Friday, I had put things in order, I hope, to allow my absence for a week. I’m on vacation! There hasn’t been much in the way of packing anxiety, primarily because the trip planned is pretty low risk. Cyndie and I are headed to Florida to visit her parents. I’ve noticed some temps in the 80’s, so a couple of t-shirts and shorts, a swim suit, nice shirt for dining out, walking shoes, raincoat and I’m good to go.
Other than that, my mind is quiet in the inbetween of hustling to get work issues addressed and releasing into relaxation of taking a week off. We’ll see what a little travel and relaxation unleash in the days to come. Stay tuned…
And Now
How about an Andy Rooney ‘have you ever noticed’ moment? Have you ever noticed… that what really matters to you can vary wildly, depending on the setting? For the most part, if we don’t think about something, it doesn’t bother us. It aligns well with the, “out of sight, out of mind” concept.
I could mention a few examples, but then that would get you worked up about something that you were just fine with a moment ago, because you weren’t thinking about it. Maybe if I describe something related, it will serve just as well.
Yesterday morning, in the pre-dawn dullness, I awoke with a need to pee, only to discover that the electricity had gone out. This is a sure recipe for oversleeping in my world. So, I searched out my cell phone to check the time and, lo and behold, it was almost time to get up anyway. I crawled back under the blankets, but I knew not to let myself fall back into a deep sleep. Then the power came on. That gave me a chance to reset the clock and, with the alarm as safety, I could sack out for another 20 minutes.
Except the power went off right away again. As I lay there knowing I shouldn’t sleep, I considered my options, most of which had become non-options due to their requirements for electric power. At a moment like this, you become aware of how much our current lifestyle is dependent upon electricity. I wondered how widespread the outage might be. Would there be power at my workplace? What if the whole city, or the whole state, were without power. What a major news story that would be!
However, what if it was just my block? How much of a non-event is that? Well, it is completely a non-event to those of you who don’t even know it happened. I bet it didn’t bother you one bit.
I Can’t Explain
I don’t know why I do it. It’s like a bad habit. It doesn’t feel like stubbornness, but I’m probably not the one to judge. That trait is more easily seen from the other person’s perspective. I tend to adopt little pet problems that, by lack of any initiative on my part to take any action toward resolving the situation, I allow to negatively impact my activities over and over and over again.
I compare it to the plumber who works all day long fixing other people’s plumbing and then neglects to do anything about his own dripping faucet, except that my issues don’t all align with my day job activities.
Long ago, the battery for my laptop computer began to show signs of failing. When it reached the point of simply allowing the computer to shut down without warning, I responded by making sure to never use my computer when it isn’t plugged in. My son asked me why I don’t just buy another battery. Hmm. I don’t know why. That would sure take care of the problem.
He also tells me that it’s not efficient to keep many tabs open in my browser and may slow processes. Sometimes, when I’m waiting for the spinning beachball icon on my computer while it struggles to accomplish some invisible task, I think about what he said. For whatever strange reason, my attachment to navigating with multiple tabs open for days on end does not yield to such informed advice.
I’m inclined to wonder if growing up in a house where my father ripped out the kitchen cabinets and never replaced them, contributed to my ability to live with inconveniences. I didn’t know any better at the time. I liked the metal shelves that were put up to hold dishes and dry goods, like cereal and snacks. It was easy to see everything out in the open like that.
Using a vice grip pliers to turn on the water in the shower after the knob quit working never seemed that outlandish. Little did I know that such a skill of adapting to adversity would turn out to be a curse of tolerance for absurdity later in my life.
Political Intelligence (Inteligance?)
I’m a pretty apolitical guy. It isn’t something that inspires me. For the most part, issues political are more inclined to tire me. There is so much empty rhetoric and over-compensating for limitations and failings in solutions being spouted. Most annoying of all to me is the polarization of issues and of political parties. Nothing is as extremely exclusive as the combatants try to make it seem. Nothing is all red or all blue and it’s a damn shame that our system has evolved to make any intelligent progress toward cooperation between the two primary parties such a long shot possibility.
I have no problem understanding that there are people who do have interest in the process of politics. But I am suffering with how people who do not have interest in politics can suddenly become swept up by outlandish reactions of others to a congressional vote and soon begin voicing their own desire for retaliation. Nothing has even happened yet! Why would someone write a letter to the editor of the paper to reflect the United States was born on 4-July-1776 and died 22-March-2010. Really? Did our country just expire?
What happens to people, that they embrace the logic of throwing bricks through windows of Democratic offices because they did not approve of the bill that was passed? Some of them finding it a worthy enough endeavor that they actually carry it out, multiple people in multiple cities! Why would a person publish a twitter message that calls for the President to be shot? My goodness. They are certainly revealing a fear of something. Something that hasn’t even happened yet. Maybe people believe that there will now be death panels that will be killing grandparents. I thought that ridiculousness had already been dispatched for the political theater that it was. Maybe I was wrong. It is incredibly disappointing.
Wasn’t I just looking for a way to not be counted among the human race? I’m willing to bet that the trees don’t have any of this insane behavior among their kind.
What Happens
How many roles do we juggle in living our days? I have been grumbling a lot lately that rehabilitating a hamstring muscle injury could easily be a full time job. What I wish I had available to help me return to previous levels of athletic activity is entire days to stretch, exercise, stretch, strengthen, stretch, receive therapeutic sports massage and also appropriately rest; not only for my ailing leg, but the healthy one, too, ultimately hoping to recover with some semblance of balance. It ain’t gonna happen.
The other morning, while I was too-hurriedly trying to inhale my breakfast while standing, in order to make up for time spent sleeping-in a little bit to give my liver every possible chance to accomplish its overnight recovery (since I got to bed late after working long hours on overhauling my bicycle the day before) I gazed out at the landscape around our house. Just last week, everything was finally released from the grip of the long winter’s snow, and I was struck by the amount of attention it all now deserved. For the most part, our landscape gets left to fend for itself until one sunny weekend day when Cyndie and I will labor intensively to do what we can to influence some control toward appearances of order and intent. I mourn the fact that what we are able to accomplish is limited by having arrived at the tasks later than each chore deserved. Much of what we deal with could be refined by timely pruning or culling in advance, which would allow us to focus more on helping support the things we actually want growing and less on fighting back undesirables. It ain’t gonna happen.
The list of other areas of interest and/or responsibility that suffer similar limitations is long. The majority of them would be much better served given full-time attention.
As I was lingering (longer than the task realistically deserved) with cleaning the greasy sludge that persisted in sticking to my bicycle chain the other day, it occurred to me how this very situation reflects a common quandary I find myself facing. I have started in on the cleaning, and then believe it worthy to complete the task to the extreme, yet have not really prepared in advance to be as effective as my noble intentions now expect. I end up spending a lot of time toiling with improvised methods. The thing is, I enjoy that level of tedium. It becomes somewhat meditative. It has a component that I liken to my pleasure for assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
Unfortunately, one big problem with operating this way is that it runs right in the face of my inability to commit full-time to my projects. A lot more things linger unfinished than ever get entirely accomplished in my world.
There’s a thread in all that which is integrated with the depression I have experienced. My decisions and choices set up the situations and in that way I contribute to being my own worst enemy. My mental exercises to alter the dysfunctional process have revealed the power to change things for the better. But when I grow weary, and when I lose one of my supporting activities, it is surprising how quick I can revert to the sickly comfortable patterns of depressive feelings, behaviors, and when it really gets away from me, depressive thinking patterns.
Yesterday morning I heard the familiar lyrics of a song that John Prine wrote and Bonnie Raitt recorded for a hit, “Angel from Montgomery”
How the hell can a person
go to work in the morning
and come home in the evening
and have nothing to say
Unfortunately, I know all too well how.
A New Day
It doesn’t feel any different to me today. But it is Spring and they passed the Health Care bill. I won’t fret either of them for a while. Spring will taunt with warm days and then dump snow on us. The new Health Care laws will offer solutions to some, opportunities for others and provide plenty of angst for those who are in opposition of anything related to it. Mostly, I think it angers people who did not want to see the current President succeed at anything. In all things, there is both good and bad. For every rule, there will be an exception.
Just yesterday, my lovely wife was more than happy to point out one of my socks she found in the laundry that was rolled up in a ball. This being not long after I had clued her in that I was able to tell when she was stealing my socks for her own use because they turned up in the laundry all rolled up in a ball after she took them off. I don’t do that. I pull them off by the toe so they get a decent washing and drying. If there are rolled socks in the clean laundry, she has been wearing them. And how clean can they actually be at that point, anyway?
No sooner do I point out to her that I don’t do something a certain way, there appears evidence to the contrary. Maybe I should tell her that I don’t ever play hooky from work. It would be for the good of science, to test a theory. Of course, it might be best to wait until a time when I’m not about to take an entire week off for vacation. It will be best that I get an entire 5-days of work in since next week Cyndie and I will be in sunny (I hope) Florida to visit her parents. I’m sure we’ll find plenty of opportunities there to test my theory that for everything I can claim, there will quickly appear exceptions to humble me.
Just like opposites that attract, the more I learn, the less I know. You know?
Happy healthy Spring!
Relative Something 