Better Life Through Cleansing

It's that time of the decade again, time to let the doctor take his magic trip through the pipes to make sure there's nothing amiss.  One of the consequences of living in a family with a tendency to generate unnecessary cellular mutations.  Not a big deal, really.  Seems like a good time to restart the ol' body chemistry anyway, take things down a bit, simplify the intake, take stock of what's going in so that it doesn't create any issues on its way through.

It was supposed to be a routine prep, no different than the last time.  Maybe my memory is off, or perhaps the chemistry has changed more than I had previously detected.   But it felt different this time.  Easier than I was expecting.  Almost ... too easy.  I took the pills they said to take, I drank the stuff they said to drink, and then sat back and waited for the discomfort and inconvenience to come to an end so that I could move on.

Hmm.  That went far too easily.  And quickly.  Not nearly as long as last time.  And then it was time to head off to the doctor's, where things moved rapidly along - again, much faster than they did last time - and, before I quite knew what happened, I was wheeled into the prep room, hooked up to an IV, and then -

Well, I don't remember much of anything after that.  The nurse asked, "Are you ready to go to sleep?" and I said, "Yes", and then I started to drift off into la-la land.

One thing I do remember from the prep, though, was their comments about the blood pressure.  It was too high.  "We don't usually like the blood pressure this high," they said.  One-fifty over one-hundred, or something very close to that.  That's definitely not normal for me.  I'm usually spot-on with the one-twenty-over-eighty rule.

Must've been an anomaly, I thought. Indeed, they asked me during the prep: Are you nervous?  I didn't feel nervous.  In fact, I'd kinda been looking forward to this.  A day off work when I'd have a perfect excuse to sleep for a while.

I felt fine.

Just ... worried.

I know what this usually means.  Arteries starting to get clogged up. Diet restrictions.  Low sodium. Cholesterol meds. Watching weight.  Getting more exercise.

My main concern was more to the point of - Why did this start up all of a sudden?  What has changed recently in my life that could explain this?  I got a new job.  Am I getting stressed out because of the job?

I've resolved to take measure of my blood pressure every day now.  They have the machine in the lunch room at work. I've used it a few times before, off and on.  Now it's time to make more systematic use of it.

Guess we'll see what comes of it.

---

Post Script: The Pipe Exam was clean.  No sign of cellular naughtiness going on.  All is well.

My Lovely Valentine

She's a lovely lady, yes she is, and she deserves better than the half-hearted attention I'm able to give at this point in our lives.  I keep waiting for things to slow down long enough for me to catch my breath, but it doesn't happen. That's the way it is, I suppose, when there's kids to be raised and jobs to be worked and overflowing schedules of activities.

But I can't stop thinking about her.  About us.  She has made my life so cozy and comfortable, and though it's important to dwell in the here and now, sometimes I dream about how things will be in the future.  My future with my lovely Valentine.

Old Man's Valentine

The Digital Age

 

It feels like we're entering the Digital Age.

 

Actually, it feels like everyone else entered the Digital Age several years ago, and we're just catching up.  MP3 players have been around for years, and the kids have been using them for a long time, but we don't have one set up on our home entertainment system.  We still use this old-fashioned thing called "commercial radio" and these round discs called "CDs" and "DVDs".  Now there's this thing called "digital streaming" which also has been around a long time, and we're just getting to the point of utilizing it.

 

It's certainly addictive.

 

And convenient.

 

Too convenient.

 

There's a serious issue related to this convenience. Have you seen the number of movies that are available on these streaming services?  Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Hulu Plus, and all the myriad host of others contain thousands upon thousands of hours of entertainment, far more than the number of hours left in a person's lifetime.  How does one choose how to spend one's time?  Watching the Classics?  Watching old television shows from one's youth?  Watching the new movies and television shows so as to catch up with the culture?

 

Back in the "old" days, it was easy because the pace of transmission was only slightly higher than the pace of one's ability to keep up.  Back in the days when there were three or at most four channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS), one could watch one or two hours of television per night and feel that one had done one's duty to keep pace with the nation.  Then came cable, then satellite, and now digital streaming.   Hundreds if not thousands of choices to make every moment of every day.

 

America is a wonderful country.  It provides opportunities for people to create wonderful things, devices, entertainments.  But after a while, the number of choices becomes overwhelming.  Have you taken stock lately of the incredible number of choices available on the grocery store shelves? Have you tried to shop for light bulbs lately?  How does one decide which to choose among the vast array of possibilities?

 

It is bewildering.

 

It is terrifying.

 

It is the kind of thing that makes me want to curl up next to my little garden and focus on nothing more complicated than feeding and watering the plants.

 

It is the kind of thing that makes me want to go out into my shop and spend hours cutting and sanding and shaping and polishing a block of wood into a useful item of furniture that will withstand years of use.

 

It is the kind of thing that makes me want to sit at my little electronics bench and spend hours wiring up a circuit that will perform some useful function.

 

It is the kind of thing that makes me want to retreat to my little downstairs writing desk and work on my forthcoming novel.

 

And I'm going to do all those things.

 

Right after I finish watching this episode of Star Trek.

 

Mysterious Books

We were moving this family, some good friends of ours, from a tiny little rental house to a much larger rental house up north, kind of north-west, nearer to the place of business where the very nice lady works, and it was one of those cold, miserable, snowy kind of days where you just bundle up and hope for the best, trying not to track snow into the new place, knowing that it's going to need to be cleaned all over again after you're done, even though the landlord has worked his tail-bones off getting the place clean in the first place.

And we probably tracked a lot of snow into the house, surprised that the heat from our bodies didn't boil it out of the air with all the huffing and puffing we were doing.  Lots of heavy boxes, heavy furniture, up the stairs, down the stairs, lifting, hefting, turning, twisting, watching your feet as you try not to trip or slip or dip or smack into a wall that snuck up on you.

It was a long, hard day of work, but it felt good to get it all done, knowing that the very nice family was going to enjoy their very nice new-to-them rental house, feeling all warm and snug and cozy inside from the sheer joy of sharing the experience.  The kind of thing that makes you look around for some more joy.

And there it was, just down the street - a little, teeny-tiny used bookshop nearly hidden away in a roadside micro-strip mall.  The perfect place to relax for a few minutes, peruse the stacks of paperbacks, breathe in the familiar woodsy, slightly mildewed aroma of cheap books and old shelves, find some old Classics to take home and enjoy.

So I did.

Super Bowl But Not for Me

I'll make no excuses. There's just been no time to update the website lately.  In fact, there's no time right now.

There were so many things to get done in January, and none of them were accomplished.  There's still a car engine sitting out in the shop waiting to be fixed.  There's still numerous projects around the house waiting to be completed.  There's an incredible number of projects at work that need managing, and it's a struggle to keep up with them.

There's FIRST Robotics, which is entering the final two weeks of panic-time.  We have to finish our design and test it and then seal up the robot by the 19th.  And there's an incredible amount of work left to do.  Followed by a few weeks of competition (ick).

There's a pile of writing which was supposed to be done and submitted by the end of January.  A story a month is what I committed to, submitted.  But with all the things that have come up this past month, that schedule kind of slipped.  The story is only half-written.  And, so far, it's on the fifth draft with no end in sight.

The new job (I still think of it as "new" though it started way back in November) is stressing me out because there's so much to learn and so much to keep track of, and it still isn't one of those ideal jobs where my talents (??) are being applied in right measure, but it pays a lot better than straight engineering and, at this point, the money is more important than the satisfaction because there are kids to get through college.

The car thing is stressing me a bit, too, because there's no time to do anything about it; it feels like we're just slapping band-aids on things to keep the cars running, hoping they don't fall apart in the middle of winter, leaving us stranded.

There's a million other little things happening day to day that simply add to the feeling of being overwhelmed; hairballs from cats, broken windshield wipers, tousles with the kids over homework and dinner and chores, an inability to keep track of the priorities on all the little fix-it jobs around the house.

And let's not even get started on the finances.  I am the luckiest man in the world to have a woman like Cheryl who is willing to handle that aspect of our life.  And though things don't always go the way she'd like, she does such a superior job to the one I would do, I thank God every day for her.  If that was on my head along with all the other things, they'd have to carry me off in a padded paddy-wagon!

But it's tax season, and you know how stressful that can be.  I'll be glad when it's all over.

Like the Super Bowl.  Which I've been trying to ignore.


I've never been one to get into the spirit of national sports events, especially something as completely overblown as the Super Bowl. Even in the days of my youth when the Dallas Cowboys were "the team" and I had one of those bizarre electronic football games (the kind where the field vibrated and the players moved across the field following some random pattern set by the thin plastic feelers which extended from beneath them) and I spent hours and hours drawing up plays and dreaming the results in my head, the televised game meant nothing to me.

Playing it was the point.  Who'd want to sit around watching it?

We played it during recess at school.  We played it in our backyards after school.  We played it in the parks.  We played it in the streets.  We kicked, we threw, we caught passes, we ran, we blocked, we tackled.  It was so incredibly fun.

But watching it?  Could there possibly be anything more inane than that?

Well, yes, actually there is.  Pretending that you, as an observer, have anything to do with a particular team.

(Here I must define a caveat: those involved in high school sports, as boosters, sponsors, volunteers, parents, and (possibly) alumni are involved. You have a vested interest in the outcome of a game.  You have spent time and money supporting it.  You have an obvious connection.  Your obsession is justified.  Mostly.)

As an excuse to get together with friends and family, have fun, eat snacks, build the bonds of relationship, the televised game is a wonderful opportunity.   That doesn't bother me at all.

What bothers me is the people who talk about the game as if they are actually part of the one of the teams when they are obviously not. Who talk of the players as if they know them personally.  Who act as if the team's performance on the field has some effect on their lives.  As if they were
going to suffer physical or psychological trauma if their team doesn't win.
 My mind cannot comprehend this.

In truth, it infuriates me.  Because it puts a barrier between myself and most other men of my acquaintance. Especially at church.  The one place where there is the most pressure to develop strong relationships with other men in order to strengthen one another (as iron sharpens iron). The one place where it is most obvious that I'm not like them.

We had a Men's Seminar (although that's not what they call them nowadays) at the church just yesterday, and although there were other reasons I couldn't attend (i.e. FIRST Robotics), my strong inclination was to disregard it because most of the advertisements (posters, trailers, etc.) were aimed at men to whom sports is a major part of their lives.

Sometimes I'm having a wonderful conversation with one of the guys from church, talking about deep spiritual subjects and real life experiences, and someone walks by and casually makes a comment about some sports event or team -- and suddenly it's like the IQ level in the room drops to the floor.  Names, scores, stats, plays, gaffes all come tumbling out in a torrential rush of testosterone, and all hope for intelligent conversation vanishes.  Generally, I'll abandon them to their fate.  There's no point in competing with that.

Competition.  My antithesis. My opposite.  The one thing that will cause me to flee a room at top speed. I.  Don't. Compete.