Dad! I got into grad school! Wait. Dad?
“I sensed a great disturbance….” (sitting unsteadily)
Dad?!?
“It was as if tens of thousands of dollars suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”
Category: Kitchen Sink
Just Older
Ugh. There’s more evidence – courtesy of the last 48 hours – that there’s a point at which growing older can no longer be graceful. My mother passed this point years ago. Although my father passed this point a couple of years ago, grace exists on a continuum – and it’s always possible to have less. This was on display earlier this week, at two different hospital emergency departments.
There will be no adult beverages for me this evening. I need to be able to drive to a hospital if I get another call.
COVID-19 in Florida
The other day I tried to pull up the (recent) history of COVID-19’s spread in Florida. I couldn’t find it – not easily anyway.
The current numbers are available… everywhere you look. Finding anything further back than the current day took a little more effort.
While I was searching… one day at a time… I threw the figures I found into a spreadsheet (mostly from the FL Department of Health, via the internet archive). Then I kept updating it in the days that followed.
I’d like to think I won’t be able to keep this up, because COVID-19 won’t be something that will remain long in our lives.
The way we’re going, I fear I’ll be adding many more – much larger numbers.
You’ll find it here.
I feel her pain
Let’s get one thing out of the way. All things being equal, it hurts way more when it’s my body doing the hurting – as opposed to someone else. My superpower is not empathy.
That said, sometimes I’d prefer to be the one in pain, rather than watching.
Chronic pain can feel mighty helpless but there are some ways to cope – and I’ve logged A LOT of hours in therapy and counseling over the last few years. I’ve been trying to overcome feelings helplessness in relation to MY pain. There can be a feedback loop to pain. You hurt, feel anxiety/stress because of the pain, which amplifies the pain. It’s much more complicated than that – and that’s only one component (of many) to pain, but breaking that loop helps.
And if you’ve ever heard me say something dismissive about meditation, you’ll never hear it from me again.
That’s not to say I don’t feel pain, but I rarely feel helpless anymore. I feel a certain amount of control. It’s not like I can flip a mental switch and make it go away, but I can do something about it – I can somewhat manage it. If nothing else, a bit of meditation helps take the stress/anxiety (at least partly) out of the equation, and the more tools you have to work on something, the more empowered you feel – and thus not so helpless.
I can’t say the same thing now, with Cheryl suffering some pretty severe, somewhat debilitating, back pain. Now I feel helpless again. Feeling helpless leads to stress. Feeling stressed triggers more of my own pain, which is always in the background… and garsh-darn-it-all, in a way I think I AM feeling a bit of her pain.
No más
I can’t take anymore Facebook. I’m out. I’ve been beaten.
My intention is not to pile on Facebook while it’s fashionable. Well, this post might be – but not my behavior leading up to it. I’ve poked my head in to check on a couple of folks I knew were going through a rough time. I’ve tossed in a few random thoughts I figured might amuse a few people. But all of my recent incursions have been surgical – in with a specific goal in mind, and quickly back out. I don’t linger. I don’t browse. The app no longer lives on the home screen of my iPhone.
There are two reasons for this. First, Facebook doesn’t make me happy. As in, EVER. And second, I don’t feel like I accomplish anything there. I’ll try to explain, but first…
“Who in their right mind goes to Facebook to accomplish something?”
Well, if you’re really asking, I’d ask if you’ve ever shared or reposted something from the news that was AT ALL political. If you have I’d ask you: why? Simply to express your support? Again, I ask – why? Did you expect to change someone’s mind, or even plant a seed of doubt? My hunch is one of three things happened. A bunch of friends gave you an amen chorus, friends who didn’t agree with you ignored you, or friends who didn’t agree with you didn’t ignore you… and you’re not friends anymore.
I don’t know about you but I don’t take a whole lot of pleasure from any of those possibilities. In fact, I find this self-segregating aspect of Facebook pretty depressing. So in November 2016, in a misguided attempt to deal with this depression head on (insert dramatic theme music here) – I decided to focus my commenting energies on Facebook posts I didn’t agree with or support. I figured the world didn’t need another amen in the chorus, so I went out with high minded thoughts of engaging neurons (both mine and others), and offered a voice of civil and reasonable dissent.
Ask your doctor if poking a bear is right for you!
Yeah, it went about as well as you’d expect. No wonder Facebook wasn’t making me happy – all I was doing was going around picking fights. Well, I didn’t mean to pick fights. I could try to ignoring or blocking certain posts, but does the world need another Facebook echo chamber?
A few common themes kept coming up, and beating my spirits down.
Some folks were quick to say they’re angry about the tone in politics. They polished their independent bonafides by decrying the behavior of “both sides,” then shared a string of inflammatory posts… from one side. Did they loose their sense of irony? Didn’t they see THEY WERE PART OF THE PROBLEM?
Some (of the same) folks decried a biased (and therefore corrupt) “mainstream media,” then shared stories from some of the most blatantly biased corners of the internet. I’ll be damned if I was gonna read another post linking back to Ben Shapiro, Breitbart, Right Side News, Allen West, Gateway Pundit, or… crap, I think I’m gonna throw-up (my apologies to everyone I left out).
“FOUL! John, you only named right-wing offenders! What about the left?”
If you’re really asking you’re not going to like my answer. “They were doing it too…” has got to be one of the all-time worst excuses for bad behavior. What would you say to your child if they told you this after getting caught throwing rocks into traffic?
So that’s it. I’m done. I was barely strong enough to raise my own children. I’m not strong enough for a world of them.
See you back there next week?
Go Bold or Go Home
Outside it’s gray, overcast, and gloomy.
The air feels damp, like it’s itching to shed some of its load.
And yet, my Wundermap says there’s a 0.00% chance of rain.
Now in rich, glorious HTTP over SSL!
You don’t have to check the date on the last post to know I haven’t been spending a lot of time writing for this site. It’s an off and on hobby that’s mostly been off, so I decided to cut back on my expenses and migrate to a cheaper host. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re asking yourself, “Wait? LESS EXPENSIVE? You mean to tell me you’ve been paying good money to maintain this site? You’re STILL paying good money to maintain this site?!?”
I’m nothing, if not dedicated.
… well, sometimes anyway.
Now picture me: sitting on a beach with a MacBook in my lap, happily clicking and typing away for hours on end, working on migrating this site to a new host. Now eliminate the beach and replace it with a cool, dark, and quiet upstairs bedroom. Now you know I how spent free time last week.
A few days ago, I got to thinking. I was waiting for some bargain-barrel, over-burdened, shared-hosting servers to upload another batch of files, and it hit me. “If I’m already migrating to slower servers, why not tax ’em a smidge more with some security?!?”
Check your browsers, friends! Look for that glorious lock that tells you you’re browsing a secure site! Ask yourself if you’ve EVER known me to use so many exclamation points! Know that whenever you want to do a deep dive into all things John, no middle-man will be snooping on you, revealing just how banal you tastes in reading can be!
Bending to my will
Listen up tubes! This tooth brusha ain’t playing!
That’s all I’m saying.
Keeping your yard work
Hi all! Your favorite Floridian here! Well, at least top 50, right? Maybe/definitely inside your good fortune 500 at least… right?
RIGHT?!?
It's hot here in sunny (-er than it has any right to be) Florida, and I've come across a bright side to selling our house.
OK, it’s been three years. No one said I was perfect.
Yesterday and today (Saturday and Sunday) I was riding through the neighborhood, past single family homes that surround our block of townhouses. I noticed a number of folks doing yard work. I know there are people who enjoy yard work. There’s decent chance you’re one of those (uh-hum… incomprehensible) people. But if you were one of the folks I rode past this weekend, you’d have a hard time convincing me. In the blurred moments that passed riding by, I saw a lot of sweat-soaked brow mopping, grimacing, and I’ll say it: despair.
One thing you’ll never read on my lips (unless I’m joking): “Man, do I miss mowing the yard.”
Our twentieth year online!
Alright.
Okay.
Let’s try this again. I hope this will be everything it would have been yesterday.
I’ve got some big, site related news! As of December 1st, 2016, our site has been in it’s twentieth year of operation! No, we’re not twenty yet. That doesn’t happen until December of this year, but by then I’d only get one magical month were the copyright notice said: 1997 – 2017… AND I got to hang that big 20 up for everyone to see on the homepage.
Don’t get me started on counting. I’m a self-starter, I can do it myself. NOTE: if you’re not up for a digression/rant on how we count years, skip to the end of the rant. You’ll know it when you see it.
Why does “I’m twenty” have to mean I’ve finished 20 years? Why do we have a quick shorthand for every age EXCEPT the year between the day we were born and the first anniversary of our birth?
“Weren’t you two back when that happened?”
Oh no. I was… let me see. What’s the best mathematical equation to represent my age? X < 1, where X = my age in completed years? I have no idea how many months it was. I think mom said I was crawling around that time, so maybe somewhere between 7 and 11 months? Infant doesn’t seem right, but toddler seems too old. Eff me! I give up.
“Umm, ok. Let me see if Cheryl needs any help in the kitchen.”
But we’re at a bar. What would Cheryl be doing in the kitchen here? She’s at home.
“Yeah, I know.”
See! You don’t need that kind of awkwardness in your life. I know I sure don’t. Why isn’t the day of your birth the first birthday? It’s only the reason you’re here, so I guess it’s ok not to count that one… AT ALL! Further, I think it’s high time we changed the language of age. Talking about how many years old you are stopped being cool at twenty-five. I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to give up a year if I could say: “it’s my 46th year,” rather than saying “I’m 45 years old.” Is it any wonder so many folks don’t want to talk about their age, when most of the time they’re asked the word “old” comes up, either in the question or in the answer?
HERE ENDETH THE RANT.
So, twenty. Right?!? It’s been cool, even if I haven’t done much posting on the blog the last few years. If I ever find my old back-ups (I have three spindles of CDs – somewhere) I may share the original site I created with Adobe PageMill, BBEdit, and Graphic Converter (on one of the original Bondi-Blue iMacs no less), which appeared on AOL’s servers for a time. The absolute best was when I hosted it from a server running at home, geeking out on home networks/security, Movable Type, and managing a few different flavors of databases. Running much of my current site from a hosting service with WordPress almost feels like cheating.
Before Facebook there was blogging, and many (if not most) of my Facebook/Twitter friends are holdovers from blogging, or folks I met through blogging. This site gave me an outlet, introduced me to people with backgrounds I never would have crossed paths without it, broadened my world-view, and made me a better person.
Because of this site, and one post in particular, I often win google. I’m purposely not naming it again – I already get too many hits from those search terms, but if you drop the “beware of” and do a search for the remaining words in that title, I’m almost always top five in a google search. I joke with friends that I’m the world’s fourth-foremost expert on the subject. Though, results of your searches may vary, due to location. Further, I don’t expect most of you to be impressed. Even with this lofty achievement (for a guy like me), I bet most of you would blow me away.
Anyhoo, I’d like to thank both of you for sticking around through the lean times.