We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Like many fans of 'NCIS', a big chuck of my interest in the show went out the window when Michael Weatherly left a season ago. It just wasn't going to be the same without our lovable ol' Tony.
Just to get us into that Tony mood, I'm going to include a couple of clips from his NCIS days, then we'll move on to his new show.
What's interesting is that Weatherly played a multi-faceted persona on the show, sometimes being sentimental, and sometimes comedic. Here's a short clip that puts both facets on display.
Gibbs has received (yet another) medal of achievement, doesn't even bother to attend the ceremony, so Tony accepts it in his stead, as usual.
An oral surgeon, technically. He likes to do implants, which I of course enjoy having done - and paying for (Mrs. BD asks me which will be first, a new roof, or your teeth? She should have married a guy with better tooth genes or, perhaps, a better guy in general but I used tricknology to fool her into overestimating my virtues and underestimating my flaws. It's what all guys do to acquire desirable gals, so their ultimate disappointment is inevitable.)
His political incorrectness would get him instantly fired anywhere but in his own office, but his female assistants just get a kick out of his bawdiness and Trumpism. We always talk about weight lifting and hiking and a little about sex. Conversation becomes a bit one-sided once my mouth is full of cold stainless steel tools of torture, but I am getting the hang of it over time. I wish he were a bit slower, because yanking a bad tooth before the novocaine has taken full effect is unnerving, but getting out of there faster is preferable for me. Why does it help so much when that sweet Filipino gal puts her hand on my shoulder when the going gets tough? Filipino Magic. Wonderful people - the best.
He recently completed his 6th muti-day hiking and camping trip in the Grand Canyon with his brother, a buddy, and uncle. No wives signed on. 45-lb packs. I suggested that it might be time to try a new place, and he said they would, having done all the basic GC trails including the worst one which scared the crap out of him. Maybe the Indian Trail. Like me, he is acrophobic but does it anyway. (Lots of people hate heights, so it's really normal. Even when I am snorkeling somewhere, and there is a steep drop-off on a ledge or reef, it gives me the creeps but I generally conceal my fears as much as I can. It's a guy thing.)
Isn't facing down your fears the thing that builds the "can-do" in a person, whether male, female, or gender-confused? One of my greatest fears is walking into a dental office, but I take the valium he gives me, then man-up and walk in with a flirt with the sweet gals and a fresh joke ready - ready to act cool...like a mass-murderer to the execution room.
I had never heard of it, but it's an international sport with a large following. One of our fellow hikers was on the Aussie national team until she had kids. Here's what it looks like:
Had to buy an emergency Gore-tex rain jacket in Inverness. The old one I brought with me had lost its Gore-tex effect (that happens over time), and it only took an hour of cool drizzle to realize it.
Crazy mixed-up Europeans put jacket zipper-pulls on the left side. I am not well-coordinated enough to manage that easily. It feels awkward and unnatural to put the thing in the slot with my right hand, taking too long fumbling with a darn jacket zipper when I could be falling off a cliff or sliding into mud instead. My Barbour is the same way. I know, First World Problems but guys learn their zipper routines very early in life and they become automatic.
Sorry, not sorry. A neologism which I hear young people use frequently, and now people my age are adopting. It's a great phrase. People want you to be sorry for something you did, you feel you're in the right. Sorry, not sorry.
Urban Dictionary has its first reference to this in 2012. It became a Twitter hashtag at about that same time, maybe 2011. This was predated by an alt-punk song from an obscure band, Amen, titled Sorry Not Sorry, but it seems to have come into common usage around 2011/2012. Today it's used primarily as a sarcastic comeback or response, usually for humorous purposes.
There is another aspect to this, though. It revolves around empathy. At least, that's where I see it coming from. Mainly because I tend to have so little empathy (and I'm told that's a problem). Sorry, not sorry for lacking that empathy.
Point is, I don't know why we have to be sorry for so many things. President Obama was on an "I'm Sorry" tour for 8 years and what did it get us? Not much. If the US did it, he was sorry about it. Why? Saying "sorry" doesn't change the past. It doesn't even change the future. Stuff happened, and I wasn't involved, so don't judge me on that.
Many things he was sorry for occurred long ago. I'm sorry Hiroshima happened, it was terrible. I'm sorry for all the death and damage and horrific after-effects, but it was war, so I'm not going to quibble whether Hiroshima or Nagasaki were worse than Tokyo or Dresden. Death happens in warfare. We don't have to be sorry for killing people in warfare.
On Wednesdays we usually focus on general conditioning (fitness for life) and rarely on training for specific athletic endeavors. That's for a reason.
However, tough hiking is just an extreme variant of walking. A question might be "If you had three months to prep for a ten-day backpacking hike in Denali, or the Bob Marshall, or the White Mountains, or, like us, mountains in the Highlands, what would you do?"
I should modify that a bit. "What would you do, assuming you had a day job and little free time on weekends?"
I asked an exercise expert friend, a competitive athlete who can do several reps of 300-lb deads, that question. She said, given just an hour daily, the emphasis should be on lower body endurance and intense cardio. She said she would do two days/week of the usual powerlifts, but replace her other exercise routines with an hour of stairmaster with a 20-lb weight vest, and an hour of calisthenics with a 5-10-lb weight vest. She correctly observed that hill/mountain hiking is not mostly about strength but is about stamina, agility, and endurance. A person can be very strong without good endurance (and vice-versa). She said an hour of intervals on the bike would be fine, but an hour walking on treadmill with a 20-30 -lb weight vest at a high incline would be better for the purpose.
She also said that, from her experience, daily 7-hour mountain hiking with packs over 10 days can not really be duplicated in normal life. Best approach, when actually doing the trip, would be two to three days on, alternating with one lighter day for recovery. In fact, that is roughly what our guide had planned for our mixed group - two days hard, then one day lighter, and so on. By day 6, I felt eager to tackle anything. Pumped up and ready to go. Too soon, it was time to go home.
Over the past few years the iCamera (aka iPhone, etc) has largely replaced regular cameras. People don't want to carry even small cameras around unless for special situations, and full-sized cameras are rapidly disappearing except for professional shoots.
If you are old-fashioned like me, you carry a pocket point and shoot when you go places. Smartphone cameras can be temperamental in cold weather, and do not like to be dropped on rocks or soaked in rain.
We took a surprise trip to the NJ/PA border to look at some apartments for a friend. She lives in Georgia and is thinking of relocating. We decided to use this as an opportunity to go bike riding along the Delaware Canal, and make a day of it.
Bike rides aren't all that interesting but are great exercise both physically and mentally (riding gives you tons of time to concentrate). I spent a great deal of the ride thinking about a person we'd met at one apartment. She said was a writer and a professor. A writer of anything I might attempt to read? Why yes, it turns out. She is a 'futurist' and writes about Artificial Intelligence. A topic which is changing my job on a daily basis. I told her I knew quite about AI, and look forward to the day it replaces me. She looked at me quizzically and said "Really? That's strange, most people would fear it. Besides, we have to hope it comes with a Universal Basic Income."
I simply looked at her and said "No, I don't fear it. I've studied history enough to realize change is good. The Industrial Revolution destroyed some jobs, it's true. But it created many more, and those jobs paid better. It also created new industries altogether. I see the same thing with AI. After all, AI is great, but it will probably always be better with humans working in tandem, rather than as a standalone, though some standalone items may exist. Overall I see more jobs coming from it, not fewer. Training is what needs to improve, not payoffs to those who don't want to learn."
I didn't get into a deeper discussion, since I wanted to ride my bike. She seemed amazed I was so nonplussed. Actually, I think she was surprised to meet anyone willing to discuss the topic but shocked at my indifference to her perceived negative consequences. My reasons are based on economics, but also her personal story, which made my ride a mental exercise.. She espoused a point of view which may seem to make sense, but her behaviors told a very different story.
"This is a book about how it happened," the author writes. "In particular how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since." What follows is a brick of a volume summarizing moments both great and curious in the history of science, covering already well-trod territory in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on. Bryson relies on some of the best material in the history of science to have come out in recent years. This is great for Bryson fans, who can encounter this material in its barest essence with the bonus of having it served up in Bryson's distinctive voice. But readers in the field will already have studied this information more in-depth in the originals and may find themselves questioning the point of a breakneck tour of the sciences that contributes nothing novel. Nevertheless, to read Bryson is to travel with a memoirist gifted with wry observation and keen insight that shed new light on things we mistake for commonplace. To accompany the author as he travels with the likes of Charles Darwin on the Beagle, Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton is a trip worth taking for most readers.
Like many other animals, humans are napping creatures. Our Western society doesn't really take that into account, nor should it because we demand a lot from people.
In my workday, I schedule in a 20-minute catnap after a chicken-salad lunch. It does me a lot of good, since I do my daily workouts at 6 am. After my catnap I am good for another 6 hours of work or a drive to NH.
Mediterranean-based societies have siestas - especially Spanish and Italian. Naptime, or sex + nap. In many cultures, lunch is their dinner and I do not know how they handle work after a large meal. I don't know about Asians or Africans.
I do believe that some of what we term "sleep disorders," and diagnose at great expense and often treat with amphetamines, are simply due to a need for a power nap. People vary.
Jimmy Buffet, multi-multi-millionaire, once mentioned how rewarding it can be to discover a $5 bill in the pocket of some old jeans. Funny how that works. When my Dad would visit me at college, he would slip me a $50 - "walking around money." Small gestures and unexpected small rewards can mean a lot.
Our early Spring Cleaning has resulted in small hills of those black leaf bags filled with old magazines, old books, old clothing, household clutter, obsolete paperwork, lots of shredded old financial records and tax records, etc etc. Some fairly heavy, some not, but far beyond the usual.
We are required, more or less, to separate bags of theoretically-recyclable garbage from other garbage, but I believe it all ends up in a dump in West Virginia. Regardless, when we have large piles I always scotch-tape a $10 or a $20 to the pile.
To the sorts of people who say "He gets paid to do it anyway," I say "Bullshit." The piles of snow and ice do not make the job any easier. My theory is to always tip people who do personal work for you unless they are the owner of the business. When you give a tip, you make life better for a little while and you feel better too. Even if it's only beer money.
For some very occasional household jobs like rug cleaners, window-washers, or annual barn-cleaning crews, I will tip before the job begins. Try it sometime. I make a point to always have some $5s, $10s, and $20s in my pocket to show gratitude and to create small moments of good cheer and more positive helpers.
Like many fans of 'NCIS', a big chuck of my interest in the show went out the window when Michael Weatherly left a season ago. It just wasn't going to be the same without our lovable ol' Tony.
Wine dating from the American Revolution era discovered at historic New Jersey house
People tell me
Sorry, not sorry. A neologism which I hear young people use frequently, and now people my age are adopting. It's a great phrase. People want you to be sorry for something you did, you feel you're in the right. Sorry, not sorry.
On Wednesdays we usually focus on general conditioning (fitness for life) and rarely on training for specific athletic endeavors. That's for a reason.
Over the past few years the iCamera (aka iPhone, etc) has largely replaced regular cameras. People don't want to carry even small cameras around unless for special situations, and full-sized cameras are rapidly disappearing except for professional shoots.
Darn Tough Socks.
American Houses: A Field Guide to the Architecture of the Home 