Stayin' Alive
10/12/20 07:10
Gotta start somewhere. right? I find that the longer I take to get started on a new page in this here journal the longer it takes me to get going. With each passing day I lose a little more steam and before long I'm gasping for air. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration. Anyway, putting my thoughts down on paper just becomes that much more difficult. I've had a good year so far so I can't complain too much.
I'm not sure there isn't much I haven't written about. So here we are, with Christmas and the year 2021 just around the corner, and I think wanting to end the year strong is as good an incentive as any to keep doing what I'm doing but with just a little more gusto for the next 23 days.
I'll deal with 2021 when it gets here. I have a nice collection of Christmas music to play while I write so that's a good thing. I'm listening to the Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles in case you're wondering what works and what doesn't. Well, for me anyway.
Nancy and I got off on a tangent before going off to sleep last night and I reminded her that filling your head with bad things before bedtime is never a good thing. No one likes to go to sleep with this or that unreconciled matter tumbling around in your brain.
Some people say that going off to sleep with a problem unsolved in your head can be a good thing. You leave the messy work of sorting out problems that your brain can't fix to the less cerebral parts of your brain that work just fine but not until you're fast asleep. Connecting the dots when you wake up is an altogether different art form.
On one hand, she was delighted to have a partner who is willing, but not always wanting, to listen to her tales of woe. I least want to listen to her problems just before bedtime so as not to relive her of her burdens only to carry them on my own shoulders into never-never land. That has never stopped her from saying what she wants to say so, short of pretending to be asleep when she goes off on her rants, I simply remind her that her sleeping hours will likely be more fruitful if she doesn't fill her head with these so-called negative thoughts before going off to sleep.
The fact that most of her issues these days are work-related tells us all we need to know. How she started off working two days a week and now works the better part of six days is a story for another day. Her job was meant to provide a bridge of sorts into retirement and instead has become that sucking sound south of the border that Ross Perot loved to whine about when he was running for president. Not a very good metaphor, I admit, but this journal entry is all about getting started so just try to work with me.
The morphing of her duties has been gradual and what she does day-to-day now is a far cry from what she was doing when she started her job. Maybe what I'm hearing night after night are growing pains. As hard as she works to get it all right, this is not what she signed up for. It was not a job that anyone expected her to take home with her night after night. Now that she's working from home in this pandemic world of ours, that might well be making matters worse rather than better.
We finally got the Ev man's car squared away so I feel good about that. The idiot lights on his dashboard have been popping up here and there over the last many months and I've been telling him to largely ignore them for lack of a better description. As I've said to him many a time, "I'll take it to the guy down the street and he'll pass the car for inspection when the time comes so that's all we need to care about." That all changed when one of his lights turned out to be related to the malfunctioning of his seat belts. That's a horse of an altogether different color.
I'm sanguine about a lot of things but, when it comes to putting the health and well being of my family members at risk, not so much. So when his SRS (Supplemental Restraint System) lights came on and stayed on I wanted no part of not doing the right thing. Besides, who puts their family members lives at risk just to save few bucks? Oh, and while you're under the hood, Mr. Mechanic man, can you take a look at these other things too?
I don't have a good sense of Evan's attachment to the vehicle that he drives other than to say that, if I had to guess, I think he would be lost without it. It's a good car and it's one that served our family well for many years before we handed it off to Evan. It's still solid as a rock but prone to the vicissitudes of old age as it approaches year ten. Ev took my comments about the risks associated with certain idiot lights in stride but may have run them through his own filters. Loosely translated, his take was probably as follows: Drive at your own risk.
Had I taken the time to consider, and I mean really consider, what having these lights on his dashboard as constant reminders that not all was well meant to him, I might have gotten things fixed sooner. Now that I've had everything fixed, I'm of the mind that Evan is maybe even more satisfied than I am. It's one, maybe more than one, less thing to have to worry about in a life where worry is a way of life. How could I have not seen that sooner? If I'm feeling better about it and it's not even a car that I drive then you can well imagine the relief he must be feeling. DOH!
My guitar lessons are going well. I think my fifteen minutes a day are getting the job done. My main focus has less to do with learning chords, and maybe more to do with learning certain fingering exercises. Exercises that are certain to toughen up my finger tips and give me a familiarity with the guitar that has heretofore not come into focus for me. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that I've been strumming a few chords here and there if only to break up the monotony of my fingering exercises. You'd be surprised to know how many popular songs you can play with just two chords.
I think the key is to do it every day. I'll be picking up the guitar and doing my exercises as I am want to do. I don't have a preferred time of the day for doing that, as yet, but I think I'll get there in time. Just as I prefer to write in this here journal in or around 7 a.m., I will likely settle on a time for picking up the guitar. I need to do the same with my reading. That may be more difficult since some books are more enjoyable than others. That makes picking up a book every day more of a chore than not. Maybe I need to start reading better books.
It looks like the question of who will become the 46th president is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. I hope the Justices, to a person, have the intestinal fortitude to make their decisions regardless of the threats that face our nation from the "mob" should Donald J Trump emerge the victor.
He did, after all, win the election if you strip out all the invalid and illegal ballots cast in the early morning hours for his opponent, Sleepy Joe Biden. The Supremes need to send a message to the populace, and more specifically the dems, that election fraud will not be tolerated in our Republic.
We'll see if the conservative Justices are up to the task. We'll see if the threats from the left are enough to dissuade a Court from doing their duty to uphold the laws of our nation. Conservatives have the majority so they need to exercise the power that goes along with having that majority. If not now, when?
Three of the five conservatives are Trump picks but are, as yet, somewhat untested. The remaining two Justices have solid bona fides when it comes to supporting conservative causes. Do your fucking jobs is what I say! Uphold our Constitution! Save our Republic!
Is it just me or are the only people in Government coming down with Covid these days part of, or associated with, the Trump Administration? Even within the Senatorial ranks, the only Senators coming down with Covid are Republicans. For example, just as Trump's legal team, headed up by Giuliani, is coming down the home stretch with his esteemed team of legal beagles, Rudy comes down with Covid. Go figure.
I think the dems have effectively weaponized the virus, perhaps even in concert with the Chinese, and are using it to wreak havoc upon their unsuspecting opponents across the aisle in and around Washington, DC. Talk about conspiracy theories. This one is a doozy.
It makes the Russian Hoax bullshit pulled off by the democrats in Trump's first term look like child's play. If we're to believe everything we see and hear these days, the Chinese have infiltrated out government and our educational institutions at every level. Politicians are so easily bought. Sad.
It looks like Pfizer's vaccine will be approved for emergency use for Covid-19 here in the U.S today. It was approved for same earlier in the week in the UK. I thought Trump just signed an America First policy when it comes to vaccines produced by American suppliers?
Let the UK fund and develop their own damn vaccine. In other words, get in line. Speaking of getting in line, it will be curious to see how this gets rolled out and, maybe more importantly, who in our population of 330 million gets the vaccine first.
Anybody want to bet their next paycheck that the politicians will rolling up their sleeves behind the scenes to get their doses ahead of the general public? Yes, we need to circle back to better understand why republicans are coming down with this virus in appreciably greater numbers than are the democrats. It seems more likely than not that the democrats are getting their vaccines way ahead of schedule. How else do you explain this disparity?
Where exactly are the democrats getting their doses? It helps to have friends in high places so maybe we're talking about Dr Fauci here. He's a died-in-the-wool democrat so why not? Maybe Pfizer, whose leadership leans liberal, did the dems a solid and rolled the vaccine out early for their "friends" on the left. Nothing would surprise me.
Anyway, let's hope that whatever they provide to the general public in the coming months isn't first siphoned off by the politicians for their families and friends. Let's get it to the people who really need it.
I'm not sure there isn't much I haven't written about. So here we are, with Christmas and the year 2021 just around the corner, and I think wanting to end the year strong is as good an incentive as any to keep doing what I'm doing but with just a little more gusto for the next 23 days.
I'll deal with 2021 when it gets here. I have a nice collection of Christmas music to play while I write so that's a good thing. I'm listening to the Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles in case you're wondering what works and what doesn't. Well, for me anyway.
Nancy and I got off on a tangent before going off to sleep last night and I reminded her that filling your head with bad things before bedtime is never a good thing. No one likes to go to sleep with this or that unreconciled matter tumbling around in your brain.
Some people say that going off to sleep with a problem unsolved in your head can be a good thing. You leave the messy work of sorting out problems that your brain can't fix to the less cerebral parts of your brain that work just fine but not until you're fast asleep. Connecting the dots when you wake up is an altogether different art form.
On one hand, she was delighted to have a partner who is willing, but not always wanting, to listen to her tales of woe. I least want to listen to her problems just before bedtime so as not to relive her of her burdens only to carry them on my own shoulders into never-never land. That has never stopped her from saying what she wants to say so, short of pretending to be asleep when she goes off on her rants, I simply remind her that her sleeping hours will likely be more fruitful if she doesn't fill her head with these so-called negative thoughts before going off to sleep.
The fact that most of her issues these days are work-related tells us all we need to know. How she started off working two days a week and now works the better part of six days is a story for another day. Her job was meant to provide a bridge of sorts into retirement and instead has become that sucking sound south of the border that Ross Perot loved to whine about when he was running for president. Not a very good metaphor, I admit, but this journal entry is all about getting started so just try to work with me.
The morphing of her duties has been gradual and what she does day-to-day now is a far cry from what she was doing when she started her job. Maybe what I'm hearing night after night are growing pains. As hard as she works to get it all right, this is not what she signed up for. It was not a job that anyone expected her to take home with her night after night. Now that she's working from home in this pandemic world of ours, that might well be making matters worse rather than better.
We finally got the Ev man's car squared away so I feel good about that. The idiot lights on his dashboard have been popping up here and there over the last many months and I've been telling him to largely ignore them for lack of a better description. As I've said to him many a time, "I'll take it to the guy down the street and he'll pass the car for inspection when the time comes so that's all we need to care about." That all changed when one of his lights turned out to be related to the malfunctioning of his seat belts. That's a horse of an altogether different color.
I'm sanguine about a lot of things but, when it comes to putting the health and well being of my family members at risk, not so much. So when his SRS (Supplemental Restraint System) lights came on and stayed on I wanted no part of not doing the right thing. Besides, who puts their family members lives at risk just to save few bucks? Oh, and while you're under the hood, Mr. Mechanic man, can you take a look at these other things too?
I don't have a good sense of Evan's attachment to the vehicle that he drives other than to say that, if I had to guess, I think he would be lost without it. It's a good car and it's one that served our family well for many years before we handed it off to Evan. It's still solid as a rock but prone to the vicissitudes of old age as it approaches year ten. Ev took my comments about the risks associated with certain idiot lights in stride but may have run them through his own filters. Loosely translated, his take was probably as follows: Drive at your own risk.
Had I taken the time to consider, and I mean really consider, what having these lights on his dashboard as constant reminders that not all was well meant to him, I might have gotten things fixed sooner. Now that I've had everything fixed, I'm of the mind that Evan is maybe even more satisfied than I am. It's one, maybe more than one, less thing to have to worry about in a life where worry is a way of life. How could I have not seen that sooner? If I'm feeling better about it and it's not even a car that I drive then you can well imagine the relief he must be feeling. DOH!
My guitar lessons are going well. I think my fifteen minutes a day are getting the job done. My main focus has less to do with learning chords, and maybe more to do with learning certain fingering exercises. Exercises that are certain to toughen up my finger tips and give me a familiarity with the guitar that has heretofore not come into focus for me. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that I've been strumming a few chords here and there if only to break up the monotony of my fingering exercises. You'd be surprised to know how many popular songs you can play with just two chords.
I think the key is to do it every day. I'll be picking up the guitar and doing my exercises as I am want to do. I don't have a preferred time of the day for doing that, as yet, but I think I'll get there in time. Just as I prefer to write in this here journal in or around 7 a.m., I will likely settle on a time for picking up the guitar. I need to do the same with my reading. That may be more difficult since some books are more enjoyable than others. That makes picking up a book every day more of a chore than not. Maybe I need to start reading better books.
It looks like the question of who will become the 46th president is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. I hope the Justices, to a person, have the intestinal fortitude to make their decisions regardless of the threats that face our nation from the "mob" should Donald J Trump emerge the victor.
He did, after all, win the election if you strip out all the invalid and illegal ballots cast in the early morning hours for his opponent, Sleepy Joe Biden. The Supremes need to send a message to the populace, and more specifically the dems, that election fraud will not be tolerated in our Republic.
We'll see if the conservative Justices are up to the task. We'll see if the threats from the left are enough to dissuade a Court from doing their duty to uphold the laws of our nation. Conservatives have the majority so they need to exercise the power that goes along with having that majority. If not now, when?
Three of the five conservatives are Trump picks but are, as yet, somewhat untested. The remaining two Justices have solid bona fides when it comes to supporting conservative causes. Do your fucking jobs is what I say! Uphold our Constitution! Save our Republic!
Is it just me or are the only people in Government coming down with Covid these days part of, or associated with, the Trump Administration? Even within the Senatorial ranks, the only Senators coming down with Covid are Republicans. For example, just as Trump's legal team, headed up by Giuliani, is coming down the home stretch with his esteemed team of legal beagles, Rudy comes down with Covid. Go figure.
I think the dems have effectively weaponized the virus, perhaps even in concert with the Chinese, and are using it to wreak havoc upon their unsuspecting opponents across the aisle in and around Washington, DC. Talk about conspiracy theories. This one is a doozy.
It makes the Russian Hoax bullshit pulled off by the democrats in Trump's first term look like child's play. If we're to believe everything we see and hear these days, the Chinese have infiltrated out government and our educational institutions at every level. Politicians are so easily bought. Sad.
It looks like Pfizer's vaccine will be approved for emergency use for Covid-19 here in the U.S today. It was approved for same earlier in the week in the UK. I thought Trump just signed an America First policy when it comes to vaccines produced by American suppliers?
Let the UK fund and develop their own damn vaccine. In other words, get in line. Speaking of getting in line, it will be curious to see how this gets rolled out and, maybe more importantly, who in our population of 330 million gets the vaccine first.
Anybody want to bet their next paycheck that the politicians will rolling up their sleeves behind the scenes to get their doses ahead of the general public? Yes, we need to circle back to better understand why republicans are coming down with this virus in appreciably greater numbers than are the democrats. It seems more likely than not that the democrats are getting their vaccines way ahead of schedule. How else do you explain this disparity?
Where exactly are the democrats getting their doses? It helps to have friends in high places so maybe we're talking about Dr Fauci here. He's a died-in-the-wool democrat so why not? Maybe Pfizer, whose leadership leans liberal, did the dems a solid and rolled the vaccine out early for their "friends" on the left. Nothing would surprise me.
Anyway, let's hope that whatever they provide to the general public in the coming months isn't first siphoned off by the politicians for their families and friends. Let's get it to the people who really need it.