Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Perspectives
Everything is relative. Occasionally our perceptions may actually be accurate. Lately, I have found myself thinking, not so much about things that rarely happen, but about how amazing it is that they don’t happen more often. Does that make any sense?
It may actually be that they do happen often and that we don’t perceive it that way. Don’t you hate it when you accidentally swallow wrong and end up choking on your own saliva? Mention something like that and there is an immediate response of recognition. Everybody does that. Not all the time, but enough that we all relate to it with distinct familiarity. (And how often does it happen in a quiet place with a lot of people around? Why is that?) It amazes me that swallowing wrong doesn’t happen more often. Think of how many times you swallow everyday. There are so many possibilities for calamity everyday, yet we glide through the majority of our days successfully avoiding them. Even the extreme situation of death is a possibility that remains a constant reality.
I feel like I should be trying to sell insurance at this point, but I’m attuned to our differing perceptions. Like how often things happen. For the most part, we avoid death everyday and so do all the people we know. But have you ever seen a day when there were no names listed in the obituary of your local newspaper? Then consider that it holds true for every newspaper in cities across the nation and likely over the world. That’s a lot of deaths. Everyday. All the more amazing how often our days go by unscathed. That’s the other way to look at that same thing. How often some things don’t happen. Think about how often you drive or ride in a car and are not involved in a collision. But for the grace of God go I.
On Friday, Cyndie and I came upon a backup of traffic and soon discovered flashing lights of emergency vehicles and it became apparent they had closed the road to all southbound traffic and we were forced to turn. I glanced to see a small bicycle and a shoe by some clothes on the road. Sobering. Several hours later we passed through the intersection from the other direction to find that southbound lane still closed and state officials now engaged in reconstructing the incident. All signs pointed toward a fatality. For whatever reason, we have yet to learn from local news sources, any news of what had happened.
For those involved, this was a major drama; a life shattering disaster. The rest of the world doesn’t know anything occurred. If someone well-known dies, the shared grief can get so intense it is palpable. If you just happened to drive a different route in town on Friday night, you would be oblivious that anything of significance had transpired. If we were to feel equal grief for every situation of death in the world we would be incapacitated, so maybe it is a defense mechanism that we don’t.
And maybe when there is occasion where we do feel the grief, part of the intensity is our conscience taking advantage of the opportunity to release the emotion that has been held in reserve for all the others having passed when we paid no heed. A way of achieving some universal balance.
In the mean time, consider the perspective of seeing how many things function the way they are designed and how often things actually go right. Notice how many times you swallow correctly today. It is impressive how many things go right every day.
Speaking of Sleep
The very best moment of each day, especially when practicing being in the moment, has got to be when you lie down, stretch out, and relax to go to sleep. Since it is ever so hard for my mind to remain focused on the present moment, I lie down and enjoy the thought that I am on the front end of the whole rest of the night’s sleep. I’m thinking ahead, already.
Often times, when I know I have shorted myself sleep, I consider the nap as one of my remedies. But somewhere, I recently read about amounts of sleep and how it related to healing the liver. The guideline was 11:00 p.m. for the time to get to sleep to allow proper time for healing the liver. I did some crude internet searching to see a variety of descriptions of how many tasks the liver works to accomplish and how much time it takes to achieve, and it makes sense to me why someone came up with the 11:00 guideline. Cyndie and I have allowed that time to become a reference point and usually use it in a wisecrack that curiously combines both our doubt over the simplicity of the claim and reverence for the likely wisdom contained in the principle.
The thinking that led to the 11 p.m. milestone is that many different body functions accomplish their growth, healing and rejuvenating recovery when we sleep and not all of it happens simultaneously; there is a sequence. There needs to be enough time in our sleep cycle to allow a few things to shut down and processes to occur before the liver can begin the serious work it is tasked with and then a chunk of what appears to be agreed as around 3 hours allowed for that to get finished. If we give ourselves enough time for sleep, as in the oft said 8 hours, our physical body has time to do what it is designed to do. Imagine this: optimal health results.
As for that nap as a remedy to shorting myself sleep, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t allow time for my liver to heal.
Tired Report
OK folks, we didn’t hit a peak of traffic here yesterday, but those of you who did visit and participated in my little email scheme did GREAT! Remember, it’s not too late! Send Cyndie a belated birthday greeting and extend her celebration. We had a pretty good time last night. The restaurant of choice turned out to be The Melting Pot, downtown Minneapolis. That made it convenient for Elysa because she was working until 6:00 and already downtown. Cyndie, Julian and I went down in her convertible and we enjoyed a long meal together for the first time in a very long while. For those who are not familiar, that aptly named restaurant is a fondue place. I spent a lot of money to go out and cook my own food, but it was fun.
Got home too late to watch any of the 4th Stanley Cup game and also too late to see the season premier of “Burn Notice” that Cyndie was hoping for. But all was not lost, the network smartly replays it later in the evening, so she got to extend her day all the way to midnight and stay up to watch the program. I mostly was awake with her to the end. One of the hardest practices I struggle with is getting a full night’s sleep. I got up this morning for soccer and dragged myself to the game to find an uncharacteristic (of late) low turnout. I should have slept in. At about 1:30 or 2:00 this afternoon, I’ll REALLY be wishing I’d slept in. Got good exercise anyway.
Tomorrow was supposed to be a day of biking to get my body prepared for the big trip coming in a week, but I hear it might be cold and rainy. Just might have to try and catch up on some of that missing sleep…
Not Just a Thursday
Many of you in the invited audience for Relative Something are family and friends who know my wife. If you know us well enough to be aware that she spells her name with a “y” and “ie” and can solve the puzzle of placing a “dot” between her first name and our last name in an email address @ gmail”dot”com, today would be a great day to work collectively to flood her email inbox with specific birthday greetings, don’t you think? Yep, today is her day.
Even if you have stumbled upon today’s post a little late, I encourage you to send her a birthday greeting anyway, and we’ll extend her celebration extra long. It would be only fitting, since we started it plenty early. I had all sorts of plans to surprise her with the perfect gift, and then on our road trip to the lake for Memorial weekend in her convertible, she suddenly tells me she wants an Original Buff Multifunctional Headwear like the ones I have been wearing. Completely spoiled my surprise. What could I do but let her know it was a done deal? When we got home from the lake, I let her have an early present of the three patterns I bought just for her. That very same day, a couple of television series DVDs I bought for her arrived in the mail and since we were already in the mode of opening presents, I gave in to the moment and let her open that, too.
So, for a week and a half before her actual birthday arrived, we have been enjoying her presents. Tonight we watched episode 3 from season 1 of Burn Notice. We hope to have a dinner event with the kids tonight, and then on Saturday we’ve got big plans with her parents. If you all could join in the fun by sending her a surprise greeting of your own, it will add nicely to all the planned festivities.
You only get old once. A year. Or something like that. Might as well celebrate it in style. Me, I hope to sneak by entirely unnoticed when my actual birthday arrives, since my sister already gave me a present early. I got a nice visor hat, complete with a bushy crown of fake gray hair. Maybe it’s a good thing birthdays only come once a year.
It’s a good thing Cyndie doesn’t read my blog, huh? Hee hee. Send her a message! Just don’t tell her how you knew…
Happy June!
I’m trying to remember why the last thing that I can remember is still waiting to be remembered when it has already been remembered, in fact, being the last thing I remember, it should fall under the category of things remembered, but I don’t remember why. Don’t bother trying to understand that. It doesn’t have any value whatsoever toward contributing to the bettering of the world around us. It’s as if there is steam built up and suddenly it gets vented into the atmosphere, but with no appreciable work being done by the energy.
The boy is home safe and sound, the house is filled with young adults and there are shoes all over the place in the front hall. We have returned to the mode of not ever really knowing if the house is shut down for the night. Suddenly I won’t be turning out all the lights and shutting doors and windows before I head to bed for the night. And now we never really know if it is getting done by anyone else after we’ve gone to sleep. In the morning I usually find myself doing a lot of that chore, often just a short time after kids have finally dispersed. 5 a.m. becomes our crossing point as they give in and seek some sleep and I’m just getting up.
It has been a relatively productive weekend, especially if I get to count testing the hammock on Saturday afternoon. It works perfect. Garden is making progress and the pile of dirt in our driveway is down to a very manageable size. I guess it’s time to get back to work for a week. Oh joy. Happy Monday.
Happy June!
Almost Home
Yes, of course I’m watching the first game of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals. I was thinking about the team sports that I watch and it occurred to me that there is something that hockey, soccer, and basketball share that is not present in baseball or American football. In the latter two sports, the possession of the ball is well defined and therefore, in a way, the play lacks creativity. All the other sports share the aspect of spontaneity as the movement of the ball/puck is based on split-second decisions of the athletes and often determined by the position and movement of the defenders.
That’s a huge difference. It makes the creative sports a bit more difficult for broadcast television networks to package their barrage of advertising. You never know when the break in action will occur. Except for soccer. That one is easy because there is almost no break in action (except when the best actors/athletes display an extended anguish over their painful injuries) and they have to save their ads for halftime. Of course the advertisements are the whole reason they bother to televise the event in the first place. We’d like to think they just really, really want to show the world these sporting events and then decide to find some sponsors to finance it, but come on… Oops, is my inner skeptic showing?
I grew up under the influence of Minnesota Vikings football in my home and football easily became my favorite sport. Now that sport has become the least interesting to watch and I find myself torn because it remains the one with the most pleasant memories. There is a deep desire to reclaim all the experiences of autumn romanticized in my memory surrounding football. It just isn’t there for me anymore.
This all makes for convenient distraction from thinking about the fact that Julian’s flight home, from his study abroad semester in Stockholm, Sweden, that was supposed to arrive Saturday evening, was delayed and he is stranded overnight in Amsterdam. Not that big a deal, except for the fact he had intended to host a significant number of friends that he hasn’t seen for a long time, at our home to celebrate his return. The word did get out and we only had one visitor show up, confused to find himself the only guest.
Julian’s inherited passion for the Vikings and NFL football is the closest thing I have toward reliving my fond memories, and he’s almost home. I bet I can get him to watch some Stanley Cup games with me this week. Then, before you know it, the Vikings will be in training camp and we’ll get to share a dose of that passion of my youth.
Fun Facts
From the files of “more information than you asked for” comes a random lesson about Phillips screw heads… (Courtesy of aaronsscrewdrivers.com). I did not know this:
Ironically, Phillips screws were designed to cam out. They were invented to prevent unskilled industrial workers from overdriving fasteners. The tapered wings of Phillips drivers act as a clutch that forces drivers out of screw sockets after the screws are driven home. But the tradeoff is that workers have to lean hard on the drivers to prevent unwanted slippage.
If a Phillips bit “jumps out” of the fastener (often referred to as camout), the surrounding work piece area can be damaged. ACR bits reduce the risk of camout and permit higher applied torque. ACR insert bits’ special wing-face ribs grip screw recesses to reduce stripping and camout. Some ACR bits have these special wing-face ribs for driving screws, some have ribs for removing and yet ether have ribs for both driving and removal.
In case you didn’t know, ACR stands for the “anti-camout ribs” that are formed on Phillips driver tips and may also occur in screw sockets. The ribs mate drivers securely to screws to minimize camout while reducing worker fatigue. ACR drivers can reduce camout by 30% to 40%.
Designed to cam out. Go impress your friends with that tidbit.
I played Mr. Construction Guy Thursday after work and got out the circular saw and the drill and finished the chore Elysa started, building the second raised bed for a vegetable garden. I also ended up modifiying her first one to make it sit a bit more level on the slight incline where the garden is located. Toward the end of the little project, I was racing the fading daylight, concerned all the hammering and drilling might become annoying to nearby families trying to put young kids to bed as it got later and later. I was a bit surprised to see the police officer walking up, but figured maybe I had already made too much noise or something.
“Did someone call 9-1-1?” he asked.
He told us they had received a 911 hangup from this address. A complete shock to us, but Cyndie had been using the phone to try and reach Elysa to see about getting more nails for our project. In the end, we found the second box and didn’t need to buy more. But the whole time we were visiting with the officer, apologizing for the likely inadvertant dialing, while he called off the other patrols racing to save us and phoned the dispatcher to verify our phone was the one that called, I was watching my light fade and worrying about my noise now carrying on even later into the evening. It didn’t take too much longer to get the building part completed, so now all that is left is a lot of hauling dirt. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get to that until long after others have had better opportunities to take care of it first. I can hope.
Proud Parents
Let’s see if you can properly parse this: I love the areas of view on the way home that don’t have any billboards. Know what I’m sayin’?
I just gotta say that as parents, Cyndie and I try to contain ourselves with a modicum of restraint, but every so often let it all go and gush over our children’s accomplishments. I don’t know what others will think of Julian’s latest musical endeavor, I hope to let it speak for itself, but we are enjoying it maybe a little bit too much. Therefore, it is getting shared with others, maybe sometimes for no other reason than so we get to see it again. I hope you will have a moment to watch and listen to the video he and friend, Dave Marshall, have produced across the distance between Chicago and Stockholm, “fhmseotu” which you can find at this link: http://www.youtube.com/EpicerMusic (4:53 in length). Well done, I say.
At the same time that Cyndie and I were doing a few chores at the lake and then power lounging in the bright spring sunshine, daughter Elysa was home doing a little construction and then hauling dirt to create a wood-framed raised bed for a vegetable garden at our home. A great demonstration of getting into a project and making good progress on her own. I can think of enough obstacles to reaching the level of completion that she has, that I would likely have not been able to accomplish what she did. Maybe she hasn’t taken on all of my more difficult personality traits. I can tell you that it sure felt pleasant to arrive home from the weekend away and find things all tidied up from the work she did. Bravo!
After spending the weekend with a gaggle of nieces and nephews, plus all the many young children of the families of our lodge club, I’m left with plenty of hope for the future because these kids sure all seem to be strong, good looking, and above average! And as we grow toward optimal health, mind-body-soul, they will, too, and then go on to raise even healthier children of their own. The dysfunctions of the world are bound to decline when we focus on the healthy and the good and wrap it all with unconditional love, as opposed to the opposite. Know what I’m sayin’?
Rich in Many Ways
Sunday, I had few priorities pressuring me beyond making decisions, like where I would lounge next. Ah, the middle day of a three-day weekend. There is always tomorrow to face the things I can put off today. I made my laptop endure some intense spring sunshine and a passing shower of pine tree pollen. Check out the picture at the end of this post to see the image I captured of the pattern made by pollen bombs.
- “cabin”
It was an interesting mix of temperatures today, based on where you were. The inside of the cabin –oops… that should be “cabin” in quotes to differentiate it from what most people conjure up for that noun– felt a lot cooler than outside, and I found myself shivering in just a t-shirt. Outside was about perfect, but the breeze coming off the lake was still on the cool side. Then, late in the afternoon, I heard a radio report say 83° that I found hard to reconcile, except when I consider the number of kids who were actually playing in the lake water down at the beach. The speed boat was out today with happy screaming coming from the tube being pulled behind it.
I took advantage of time to work on memorizing song lyrics and building stronger calluses on my fingers. I played for long blocks of time, the last of which turned out to be a fun sing-along around the fire at the lodge as the dusk of evening morphed into chilly, dark night. I accomplished a nap in the hammock in the afternoon that was probably the most sound sleep I’ve ever had amidst the daylight bustle of speedboats and shouting people having fun.
I am blessed with riches beyond anything I’ve earned and the most precious richness is in the people I know and with whom I share activities. The people of Wildwood Lodge Club are more valuable than the place itself, and the place is my paradise. This year, the wildlife appears to have changed a bit and instead of the family of foxes that we saw so much of last summer, it is bears that are making the most visits. The woodpeckers have grown so bold that they go about their activities as if we didn’t exist, granting us incredible views from surprisingly short distance. In the evening, two loons floated by pretty close to our shoreline and when somebody pointed them out, an argument occurred over whether it was a loon or a beaver/turtle/small dog because it looked HUGE. When the one that had drawn all the attention finally turned to reveal the classic profile, the argument abruptly ended as the answer was obvious. Biggest appearing loon any of us had ever witnessed.
For a change of pace this year, the first generation owners chose to go out to a restaurant and the second generation families brought their own food to grill at the lodge and appetizers to share for the group dinner of the holiday weekend. It seemed a more leisurely pace. The kids mixed as they always do and appear well on their way to making connections that mirror the sort of relationships all of their parents share with each other. It is an impressive thing to witness, especially as one who has married into the opportunity. This community is something I wouldn’t have believed existed in real life, before I had the chance to witness it myself. It helps me to keep a perspective of the many different ways do define “rich”.
Pine pollen "bombs" leaving trails on Cyndie's once shiny black Mustang.
Images of the Day
I played with my camera a little today. I think I got some nice prospects for use in my “Words on Images” series. Here are some samples of what I saw and what the lens collected:
Looking west along the shoreline
I think I like this one better.
The Trillium are in bloom!
Some were turning purple.
Cousins havin' a little picnic on the deck.
New growth!
More new growth.
