I'm Moving!

 

I'm moving! I am either moving out of here (blogspot) or moving into here (SubStack). If you are reading this, please update your link to go to the SubStack. I will try and publish both places for a bit. If you are reading this on SubStack, welcome to the new abode! I was looking for a new neighborhood for this blog for a little while. I have been using blogger/blogspot since before I met Jen. So, it's been something like twenty years. (I am SO OLD!) In that time the platform has made very few updates. It's a blog platform, right? Just how many improvements can one expect? In that time WordPress came along, and it looked like a pretty good platform until it tried to be everything to everyone and got overly complex for the average Mommy blogger. Maybe that's why blogger held steady. They had a minimal product that seemed to work (I've been using it this long!), and didn't see the need to mess with it and mess it up.

From the other end, the web hosts like GoDaddy and Wix made their site creation, no-code interfaces better to accommodate your average Mommy blogger and many others. I, though, still wasn't finding the right mix of a true blogging platform with the additional functionality that blogger now seems to stubbornly refuse to do. Blogger is like one of those really old GitHub projects that you stumble upon that still has some utility, but when you email the developer of it, they hardly recall even what you are talking about. (I realize only a fraction of my audience will get that reference.)

Then last night, like around two or three a.m. I was scrolling through things, per usual, ... Actually, I am determined to write the truth here (and in a bit of irony, I am listening to Jesus Christ Superstar and Carl Anderson just sang the line, "And they'll hurt you if they think you've lied."), the truth was I had been on pornhub and in the few moments of lucid thought that I had after was wondering just how much these women and couples are getting for creating content for pornhub. Not much it turns out. Seven cents (What ever happened to the cents sign on a keyboard?) per thousand views. Hey! Let these thousand strange men watch you have sex for two minutes, and we'll give you a nickel and two pennies!

Well, I had my white rabbit in my sights and had to follow him into the hole of just how much content creators make. I read how content creators keep 90% of their subscriptions on this thing called Substack. I had heard of Substack but didn't know anything about it really. I hadn't really looked into it -- "Substack" sounds too much like a site we use in software development called "Stack Overflow", and like a cola drinker loyal to my brand I really didn't even want to taste the competition. But the article also said that these content creators were mostly newsletter writers. Do people read newsletters still? In fact, Substack is a platform for blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and newsletters.

So I'm moving.

I'm also changing addresses. This truly isn't a way to avoid my upcoming jury duty, though if I can get things done before June (Update: It’s all taken care of, and I am officially a Floridian now!), that will be an added bonus. I'm "moving" to Cape Canaveral. First of all, the state of Colorado stole a ridiculous amount of money from me last year. (Taxation is theft!) Florida doesn't have state income tax. And guess what. They still have roads and schools and libraries down here.

Please don't email your arguments about why taxation isn't theft (except that it is almost exactly like theft in every meaningful way).

Second, my mental health is much better here than in Colorado. There are several reasons why I think this is the case, but one of them is that I simply “feel better” down here. Perhaps that is because it brings me back to my childhood and visiting my grandparents in Ft. Lauderdale. That was a time before bills and appointments and work!

“What about Jen?” I’ve been asked. Her father and boys and work, particularly the seniority, are all in Colorado yet. I don’t intend on seeing any less of her, though it may involve a little more back and forth travel. That is, if I even spend less time in Colorado when it really comes down to it. Personally, when we got the place down here, I had hoped for about a 60-40 split between Colorado and Florida. In reality, it was more like 80-20. I am hoping that I can do about 60-40 between Florida and Colorado, but it definitely won’t be 80-20 – Certainly not during the summer months! We’ll see how much our blood thins out! Maybe it ends up 60-40 in favor of Colorado anyway, because being away from Jen over the past couple months has been difficult. That said, I have certainly gotten a lot written! Look for more.

Night

Just past the witching hour, and I am dragging the trash bin out to the curb at 61 S. 5th Avenue for tomorrow's pickup. The plastic wheels of the bin rumble along the pavement. My shoes make a combination of a clicking and scuffing sound. There is a train horn sounding somewhere between here and Denver to the south. It will get louder with each successive crossing as it comes north to rumble through town as well.

It is cold as it is only early March. It would be colder, but a blanket of clouds hangs over the metro area as evidenced by the lack of stars in the blue-black sky. I have on a leather jacket perfect for this time of year, but even my bare hands and face are not bothered by the brisk air. I hardly notice the cold at all. 

The cold night air carries the warm smell of a far-off wood fire. It seems as if the darkness is a better conductor of both sound and smell. As I walk back up the walk, I ponder for a moment just how much that could be true, how much of it owes to there being few smog-belching, growling, clanging cars on the road, and how much is my imagination. 

Once back inside it isn't that I so much notice the warmth of the house as it is that I now notice the absence of the chill on my face and hands. I scramble out of the jacket and find its hanger in the front closet. It's just cool enough in the house now that I leave the rest of my clothes on, including the soft, warm cashmere cardigan I am wearing. There is something about the night that already makes me feel unfettered anyway. A certain freedom comes over me that is not there during the day. With the whole rest of the world in bed, I have the feeling that I could completely disrobe if the notion overtook me. I could pick my nose or rob the bank down the street or rob the bank in the nude while picking my nose were I so inclined. I am not, but the feeling of it remains even while my clothes stay on.

I come back to the nest I have built for myself on the couch, throwing an afghan across my lap. My books and journals are piled around me, not so much as a fortress wall, but as the lint and papers and feathers that a bird uses to line its nest. Next to me a book on fiction. At my feet a book on writing software. In front of me several journals, a fountain pen, a mechanical pencil that is a pleasure to hold, a highlighter, an eraser. Other detritus of the night clutters the end table: my wallet, another highlighter, a used one of those plastic flossers for your teeth, the ubiquitous USB cord. The lamp on the end table at its peak brightness.

The only sound in the world is the clock ticking on the mantel. If my wife existed I might even be able to listen closely to hear her soft breathing in bed, She was gone though before the mantel's clock showed ten though, the only evidence of her now another throw crumpled in the place she had dozed on the couch.

I am completely alone in the world, but it feels okay to be alone at night. There is no loneliness because there is no one to miss. No one to share my thoughts and ideas with except for this page, and that is all that is required. 

Daytime, my nemesis, will come and I will be alone, alone, and exposed. The people and the cars and the clouds will all reincorporate. The worry and stress and confusion of the light will re-emerge. And if I am lucky, I will get a free hour to pull close the black-out curtains and slide my nude body into the sheets, close my eyes and dream that it is night once again.

Appropriated Culture

I can't remember why or when I got the gift of the afghan from my grandmother. We all received one eventually, all of us grandchildren, I mean. Jessica, my first wife, got one too. I am not sure now if all the spouses of grandchildren also received one or if Jessica had commented on how much she liked mine. That kind of narrows the time frame for when I got mine as I do not think I had it in college when it would have been nice to wrap up in to read with, as, being an English literature major, I averaged reading two novels a week. Some years after we had divorced and Jessica already had children with her new husband, she found her afghan hidden away in some closet and called me to see if I wanted it. I told her to keep it and give it to her little girl someday. Jessica passed away from cancer several years ago. I hope now that her daughter wraps up in it at night reading one of Jessica's favorite books.

I think now that I must have received my afghan as a birthday gift. My birthday is in August and I vaguely remember there was some slight incongruence on opening up a gift on a sweltering summer day to find a crocheted wool blanket. Looking back on the use I have gotten out of it and how important this blanket has become to me, my face should have been one of delirious happiness. Instead at the time it probably said that I thought my grandmother delirious with heat to be gifting such a thing. Thinking back, it might have been that I received it while I was in college yet, but that it got put up in a closet since it was of no immediate use and did not get pulled back down until sometime when I was at home at Christmas thinking about how between home in Chicago and my former home in Michigan finding as many warm layers to pile onto myself would be smart.

An afghan, if one hasn't heard the term before, is simply a throw, usually knitted or crocheted and usually in bright colors. The term entered the English lexicon after wealthy travelers and soldiers brought back colorful, hand-woven blankets from their travels to Afghanistan in the 10th century. American women began making their own versions as alternatives to quilted blankets. I had to go look it up to ensure that I was not just using some esoteric term that only my grandmother seemed to keep around from days of yore. (Like "snot rag". I swear that the Kleenex people got to Grandma when they became afraid they would lose their trademark to the common use of their name for their facial tissue and convinced her that she should keep using "snot rag" to refer to their product.)

Mine, having been created by a little woman in Saginaw, Michigan, who understood my own sensibilities and not by some Pashtun woman thousands of miles away, is not brightly colored. I think one would say it is of a natural wool color or something like cafe au lait, heavy on the lait. It is done in a pattern of alternating two inch by two inch squares, one where the pattern seems to go up and down and the other where it appears to go left to right, giving the entire thing a sort of basket weave appearance. Over the many years of use it has become pilled and some of the crochets have slipped out and developed holes like runs in a woman's nylons. But it has also become softer, and, though I am certainly biased, has an appearance more of being well-loved than ratty.

Grandma was constantly knitting or crocheting while we watched Barney Miller or Wheel of Fortune together. Like I said, each of us grandchildren got one, and I am sure that many other people have one as well. Of course, it took time to make one and probably more and more time as she got older and her eyes got worse and her hands became arthritic. I honestly couldn't say how long it took Grandma to make one, Some ballpark of several weeks to several months, but it was why you just got your afghan when you got it. She couldn't churn out a couple dozen like some sort of Nike factory worker to hand out all at once at Christmas. If yours was coming up on her list and your birthday was coming up in August, she was going to do it and not worry about the weather. She had other orders to be filled.

I said it is well-loved and it is. In today's world of the commercial fleece blanket and (ugh) the Snuggie, the hand-made afghan is worth its weight in gold. (Okay, perhaps not literally because gold is like $2000 per ounce, and every man has his price. Sorry, Grandma.) I wrap up in it every night as I leisurely read or watch "The Last of Us". It doesn't even need to be cold out. Now that we have central air here and Jen has the occasional hot flash, I am more than certain I've used it even on hot August nights. Jen says she knows when I am sick when I drag my well-loved security blanket off behind me like Linus as I head to bed. Then there are those days when one feels alone and is alone. Those days when even those of us who are non-huggers could really use one, but no one else is around. On that kind of day, I can still wrap myself in love. 

You Make My Heart Go Pew, Pew, Pew!

Happy Valentines Day!

I used to live just a couple blocks from 2122 Clark St., the site of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. I'm not sure why my mind always goes to that event when Valentines Day rolls around. I'm sure living in the vicinity has something to do with it, since I don't remember having the sort of fascination with it previous to living there. Part of my interest is probably the same that caused such an outcry from the public back in 1929 when it occurred. This wasn't some singular drive-by in the middle of the night in Cicero. This was a brazen execution of seven men in the late morning hours on the North Side of Chicago. Two of the killers were dressed as police officers. I'm not sure how busy Clark Street was at the time, but it certainly is busy now. It's hard to believe that such a crime could be pulled off in such a busy area, showing the power and brazenness of the Mob in Chicago at that time.

I'm not sure how the massacre is related to my lack of sentimentality for Valentines Day. It isn't that I'm not a romantic person; I suppose I just don't like the romance to be foisted upon me. A hint of mystery, a bit of surprise. Not $40 for a dozen roses that would cost $10 any other time of the year. Still, it's nice to have at least the one day set aside for a bit of love and romance. Maybe all Al Capone needed was a
hug.

Go, 'Lopes!

I decided that I didn't have enough sports teams to root for, so I decided I would adopt the Antelopes of Grand Canyon University as my representative team to root for in the WAC. Just to show how much I support the 'Lopes, I decided I would enroll in GCU. Rather than go for a third bachelor's degree in some other field that has nothing to do with the actual work I do, I decided I would change things up and go for a master's in something that I can actually use, Information Assurance and Cybersecurity.  Having done voting machines, then credit cards and now securing government systems, I somehow fell ass-backwards into a career where information assurance and cybersecurity has played a large part of my job the last fifteen years.

When I went to Northwestern I never could have imagined that my career would have turned out like this. The Internet was something that existed only so much as it connected the Department of Defense and universities and Matthew Broderick when he wanted to play a nice game of chess. The World Wide Web as we know it now didn't exist at all. I was going to be a journalist, and in my freshman year the TA scoffed at my essay that asserted that relatively soon people would be getting their news on their computers. "No one's going to want to carry their computer on the El." Boy, did I show him!

I like computers, I like solving problems, and I like solving problems with computers. As much as I wish now that I had become an astronaut, I fell into a career that has suited me. I also feel now like my career path has opened back up. At Nordstrom, particularly in the last year, I felt like my career path had closed up tighter than an earthworm's butthole in January. I am an ambitious person and not used to sitting in the same role for four years. I love feeling now like I have the chance to build on myself while helping to build a new organization at RVCM. I love feeling like I have the chance to advance in that organization without someone having to die first.

As I write this, I am watching GCU men's basketball team on their way to their fifteenth victory of the season. With Northwestern's basketball also having fifteen wins, will this be the year that I actually get to see not just one, but two of my schools in the Big Dance? March madness indeed!

Making a Habit of It

I'm having a difficult time lately. It is difficult to admit, and I have been trying to hide it because I don't want people to worry. I am battling through with the skills I know I have and leaning on outside support more than I have in the past. I switched medications because I was recently diagnosed with having a mood disorder. That is that not only do I struggle with the chronic depression, I also have manic episodes mixed in. I've suspected this for a while, so it comes as no big surprise. I suspected that I have cyclothymia - think of it as a lesser form of bipolar disease. But you treat it differently than depression. In fact, the depression medication really just exacerbates the mood disorder. So I suspect that changing up the drugs plays a big part in how I've been feeling. I will say, though, that I am sleeping much better. I had horrible insomnia before, and was averaging three or four hours of sleep a night. Now I'm getting six or seven, so that makes a good deal of difference.

I just returned back from Florida, though. Back to Colorado and some frigid temperatures! I experienced going from eighty degrees to minus 10 in the matter of less than twelve hours! I was getting outside and getting sunshine in Florida. When I got breaks in my schedule, I'd take a short walk around the block. I am still recovering from bunion surgery, so had only worked up to about 5000 steps per day while in Cape Canaveral. Still, I was getting out. The sun is shining nice and bright here in Denver, but I have no inclination to get out in the cold and snow. That rat bastard Punxsutawney Phil did not improve my mood any on that front this morning! So, the weather along with the constant nose bleeds certainly has something to do with my mood.

It's more than that, though, being back in Colorado. In Florida the possessions that surround me are fairly sparse. We live in a small space, so there is not a lot of room for having extra "stuff" just lying around. There is less to distract my attention from what the ambitious side of me wants to be doing. My fat, lazy self is perfectly content with finding distractions here in Colorado, not to mention sitting and watching television or scrolling through social media. Those last two are in no short supply in Florida, so I have to think it is just not the "stuff" that distracts me. There is even more to it.

Some, I suspect, is Covid-related. Something about getting into bad habits at the outset of Covid that I haven't really broken. I didn't need to shower and get dressed if I didn't want to. I could go to the fridge and snack any time I wanted to. I could make my workspace as messy as I wanted without annoying any coworkers other than Buck who I annoy by not having a space on the futon in my office for him to lay down on.I suspect some of you had a similar experience.

Those bad habits have been tough to shake, but I made new habits in Florida. Healthier habits, like taking a little walk when I had a break in work. Or like sitting down with a book rather than flipping on the television. Our habits definitely have a contextual element to them. Our surroundings play a big part of the habits we create. I need to shake off some of those bad habits that I created here in Colorado. It's tough to do!

I have gotten very interested in habits in the past couple years. Habits are mental shortcuts we make. Without them, our brains would be overloaded with what action to take next. Can you imagine how your drive home from somewhere else would be without habit? Not only would you need to be thinking about which direction to go and which turns to make, but you would have to consciously think about turning the key to even start the car and think about buckling up. 

I was reminded of this being back down in Florida and driving the Ford Fusion again, a car we keep down there now, but one that I was driving to and from work every day pre-pandemic. To connect to my phone's bluetooth and start an audio book requires a series of button pushes on the audio system. I could literally do this in my sleep previously. Last week I had to remind myself of which menu items I needed to find in order to keep listening to American Dirt. We carve paths through the jungles of our minds with habit. It makes our drives home so simple that we often can't even remember details of the drive at all. It also makes it easier to scoop a bowl of ice cream or pour a glass of wine in order to make ourselves feel better as opposed to going to the gym or taking a run.

Anyway, I need to work on better habits here in Colorado. If you are interested in better habits, this is a great video on them. I also highly recommend the books that got me interested in them in the first place: The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits. Let me know if you have other recommendations!

Ireland, Rewind to the Fecking Beginning

FUDGE! Only I don't mean fudge. I mean THE Word. The queen mother of dirty words... That's not really a bad way to start a post on Ireland as it is a fairly common word in the Irish vocabulary -- The real dirty word I mean, not "fudge". However, I didn't intend on scaring away those with sensitive ears right off the bat. The thing is, though, I lost my little notebook that I carried around hundreds  of miles around the Emerald Isle taking notes of the things we did that day and little observations. That's part of the reason that I am so late in getting around to finally writing more about Ireland than just the adventure that we had in getting back. Procrastination due to anxiety, stress, and depression play into it too. I'm clawing my way back to some normalcy just by starting on this. A friend sent me a quote about just getting started and then everything falls into place or some such thing. The quote's around here somewhere; I just can't find it at the moment.

Anyway, I figure I can piece together what we actually did each day based on the photos that I have and that my mom and Jen took. (My mother was a photo taking MACHINE... which i guess would make her a camera. Hm.) I will probably lose some of the little observations that I had written down, though what is going to stick with me are the little memories that I still have stuck with me. Maybe those will do. Or maybe the photos will evoke some little thoughts as well. I'm not sure. There were just little things, like thinking it was sort of funny how Trinity College had sweatshirts the sort that fans would wear to a football game. Maybe fans do stop in the university bookstore to buy some apparel before rugby matches or quidditch tournaments or whatever they play on a Saturday afternoon.

So I know that we landed in Dublin. Yeah, that much I am certain of.. but I need to rewind. Our flight from Orlando to Washington Dulles was delayed by almost an hour. We ate dinner at MCO. I had a hazy IPA, which was my first alcoholic drink in 171 days. I need to write a completely separate post on drinking during this vacation. It's a complicated feeling, even now after we are done and back home. Then I had a Sam Adams Hazy IPA NA (non-alcoholic), which was really pretty good. Less hoppy than the IPA I had just had (sorry, I didn't take notes on what brewery that first one was from).

Okay, so the flight from Orlando to Dulles was fairly uneventful. I don't remember what I did on the flight and don't have my scuzzy little notebook. Do people still use the word "scuzzy"? The plane got  to the gate in Dulles, though just as the flight from Dulles to Dublin was supposed to be taking off. They held that flight, though, as there were apparently enough of us trying to make that connection. Besides myself, Jen, Mom, and Mike, there was another couple that was in our group coming from Cape Canaveral. Plus I think there were three or four others. Also, I had Usain Bolt's brother pushing my wheelchair. I've never gotten through an airport so quickly. So thankfully we all made the flight to Ireland, plus Jen had worked it that we had a ton of extra leg room, you know, for my booted leg and all. (If you are just joining us, I made either the courageous or insane decision to have lapiplasty done to correct the bunion on my right foot a couple months before leaving for Ireland. The initial surgery got pushed out due to me getting Covid over the holidays, so at this point I was just six weeks out from surgery and had just been put into a walking boot rather than a full cast. I was still on crutches, though.)

I do remember what I did on the flight from the U.S. to Ireland. I slept. However, I really didn't even sleep all that much because the in-air entertainment had the show "What We Do in the Shadows". I honestly don't know what prompted me to decide to watch it. I think the one beer in Orlando must have gone to my head because I was laughing out loud at this ridiculous vampire comedy. Laughing out loud with headphones in on a full plane. I believe I binged the full season. And haven't watched another episode since.

I really thought that being away from work and doing a lot of travelling from place to place would afford me a lot of time to get caught up on all the reading that I've been meaning to do. If you plan on following my series of blog posts regarding this trip, notice just how often I mention reading a book. Compare this with the number of times I mention watching rugby or playing video games on my tablet or staring vacantly out a window. Compare the number of books I mention finishing to the number of bookstores I stop in and number of books I mention buying!

Anyway, we made it to Dublin without the plane crashing or even losing an engine. All the way across the Atlantic Ocean with zero engine failures. Tied a record.

Ireland, Arseways

This is going to be my first blog post of probably a number of them about our Ireland trip. I am doing this in a backwards fashion I suppose because I am starting off with how we got back home, which was its own adventure. It isn't exactly an adventure in the Robert Louis Stevenson novel kind of way, so this comes with no warranty on just how adventurous or entertaining you, dear reader, might find it. As always, I write these blog posts primarily to remind myself of what occurred in the past as my memory begins to play tricks on me and secondarily to amuse my mother and my wife. Hopefully there are enough little tidbits of information or amusement to satisfy the rest of you.

I should also add that I began this post on March 21st and then wrote the rest over the next week or so. It hasn't really been edited for consistency. You'll have to put up with that as well, but I believe in you, reader; you'll manage.

We got back from Ireland late last night. I have a lot of catching up to do, and not just with my writing here. There is so much to catch up on at work! I got through last week's emails just now. Honestly I can barely keep my eyes open at the moment. I think I may need to continue this tomorrow. Maybe I can see just how much of yesterday's travels I can get down here.

We started off by waking up at like 4:45 AM Dublin time. That is UTC time. Here in Florida we are on UTC -4 right now. So, that would have been 12:45AM here. Got the bus in front of the hotel at 5:30 AM and were at the airport just before 6. We were trying to make the same flight as Mom and Mike that was leaving around 9:30 AM I think. That one was through Newark. We were banking on people not making because of Covid, and I think that some people didn't but the flight was way oversold and there was a long standby list. So, we didn't make the flight. The thing is, there is a US Customs pre-approval in Dublin. You go through regular airport security, and then you wait to go through another security line to go through U.S. Customs on that side. That way you don't need to go through customs once you land in the U.S. Sounds great in theory

The problem occurs when you don't make the flight on standby. Then you are no longer cleared to be what is considered under U.S. control. Practically like being on U.S. soil once you've cleared Customs. You're only cleared for that one flight, though. Once you miss that flight you need to leave and go all the way back out to ticketing. Then you get new security documents to go back through regular security, back through double-secret security, and back through Customs again.

The interesting thing is Jen had "SSSS" on her document the first time through but not the second time through. Apparently 4 S's means you are flagged for extra security measures. So she got an extra pat down and had her luggage searched the first time going through security but not the second time. I don't know what she did to get the flag, but there is now probably an FBI file in Washington on my wife.

I am still in the walking boot and on crutches from my foot surgery. (Honestly, i really feel like at this point I could just lose the crutches, but it wasn't like I was going to leave them in Ireland anyway.) So I also had a wheelchair through the airport. That probably saved us, because by the time we went back out, the regular airport security was tremendously long, and security to Customs had at least doubled. I don't think we would have made the Aer Lingus flight we ended up taking to Boston.

Why Boston, you ask? Simply because it got us back into the States. There is still a Covid mandate that to return to the U.S. you need a negative Covid test administered no longer than a day before your flight. You could possibly do one the day of the flight because results are guaranteed inside an hour (Mine took a good 40 minutes.), but when you are getting the first flight out in the morning it really isn't possible. Plus you need to schedule the appointment ahead of time. It isn't something you can really leave to the last minute. Not to mention, what do you do if you test positive? And this is what happened to 4 of those 15 other people travelling with Jen and I on this tour. A fifth had tested positive earlier in the week, unbeknownst to the rest of us. That's an entirely different story. Anyway, Mom, Mike, Jen and I were all negative and getting the Hell out of Dodge.

That whole mandate is yet another thing working against travelling standby you see. There was a direct Aer Lingus flight to Orlando on Tuesday, but that would have meant having to retest on Monday. Even being bumped to a flight on Monday would have meant having to reschedule a test for that same day on Sunday. Then there was the fact that 5 of 17 of the group had tested positive meaning the rest of us probably had at least some of the virus swimming around, and Jen and I did NOT want to run the risk of coming up positive and being caught in Dublin for another week.

I would definitely fly Aer Lingus again. They, like everyone else in Ireland, were extremely friendly. We also bribed the crew with $5 Starbucks cards. I cannot recommend this approach enough. You do have to know just how many flight attendants are working a flight or just make sure that you have plenty of cards onhand. This will usually get you free drinks if you want them. It will at least get you the full can of Coke rather than the little glass of it. Anyway...

So we land in Boston in terminal C. There is a Southwest flight going to Baltimore in roughly an hour from when we landed. Why Baltimore, you ask? From Baltimore there is a Southwest flight to Orlando with seats available. You can't go from terminal C to terminals A or B in Boston's Logan Airport without going out of the secure zone. I again had a wheelchair pusher available when we deplaned, so that was fortunate again. This walking boot definitely proved to be a wise investment!

Let me say that while we definitely took as much advantage of me being in the wheelchair as possible, it wasn't like I could have easily managed getting through the airport without it. I can't go very far in the boot without crutches, and with the crutches I can't manage hauling my rollerbag. I was relying on Jen pulling both our bags when we couldn't put those on the wheelchair. And there were some very long distances through some of these airports including through Logan.

I'm trying to think of when and how we got cleared in Boston. We DID need to go back through security once we got to the B terminal. There was only a few seats open for the flight to Baltimore. I sat in my wheelchair for a bit, so that must have been when Jen got us cleared as well as saying we needed the extra leg room for my leg, so we got the bulkhead for the flight from Boston to Baltimore.

Well, at least we have made it to Baltimore now! But there are no seats available on this next flight. So we waited like you do when you are on standby like this.

A few minutes before the door was supposed to close on the flight, someone asked the operations agent (that person who scans your ticket as you board the flight) if she was set, as in were there any more to come. She said no she still was missing some people. (YAY) Just then two guys come running up. (BOO) One guy got on but the other got turned away, as it looks like he was sent over from a flight he missed, but didn't have a boarding pass yet. (YAY) Then 3 college-aged girls who had been sitting in the boarding area all along I think finally realize they are about to miss their plan and come hustling over in their sweats and bedroom slippers still looking at their phones (BOO) Then they start telling the ops agent that their friend is still coming and yelling, "Alicia, they're going to close the door!" Alicia comes shuffling over in her slippers with her backpack and pillow and enormous cup of what used to be Dunkin coffee before she dumped a pint of milk and six sugars into it. (BOOO!)

The ops agent closed the doors to the jet bridge with two open seats (YAY!) So I was cleared to get on. Jen had taken "fourth" for the flight (with the provision that I got on). Fourth means that she would fly in the jump seat and could act as needed as a fourth flight attendant on the flight. That also means no alcohol for her (not that we were having drinks coming back at this point) and no watching movies for her. There were only two seats open on the flight. One was in the first row at the bulkhead again. A middle seat, of course, wedged between a slightly larger than average woman in the aisle and a much larger than average man in the window seat. Jen informed me later that of the two seats, I got the better deal as the other was way at the back wedged next to an even larger man. One other man, well a boy really because he looked to be in his 20s and possibly could have been the young man who was originally turned back by the ops agent, boarded behind me. I guess he got that back seat.

I'm pretty much fine at this point being wedged into a middle seat. Hey, I'm flying for free! Anyway, it got me where I needed to be.

It was nice being back in Florida. It is really always nice being back in Florida. The weather in Ireland had been quintessentially Irish. In the upper 40s and lower 50s with wind and rain most days. So Orlando at 11 pm in the upper 60s felt fantastic.

I feel like that's about all that anyone cares to hear about and then some! So I've finally wrapped up getting back from Ireland. Now it's time to go back and actually get to the fun details of the trip itself. As they say in Ireland - I'm doing things arseways.

Unpacking, series 1 episode 4, Odds N Ends

The Domo-kun plush is a travelling companion that I picked up at the Japan pavilion at EPCOT. He brings me joy. Domo kind of serves as my emotional support, an emotional support monster, if you will, when Jen or Buck isn't with me. I have needed that support, frankly, in the past particularly when travelling for work. Just having that snarling yet joyful face to spark a tiny bit of happiness in me when I need it.

I had pulled a big handful of scraps of paper from my bulletin board in my office. There are a few post-its with inspirational or otherwise meaningful sayings on them. There are a few addresses of people that I like to write to once in a while, well very infrequently. I like hand-writing little notes, especially postcards, and I want to do that more often. There are a couple other little mementos that I keep on my bulletin board. For example, I have the ticket stub from the baseball game that I drove home drunk from and got my DUI. A reminder of where I was and to not go backwards.

There is a post-it with the ten Buddhist perfections, virtues (https://www.learnreligions.com/paramitas-the-ten-perfections-of-mahayana-buddhism-4590166) that I strive to work on, as well as the Buddhist Noble 8-fold Path (https://tricycle.org/magazine/noble-eightfold-path/). I don't talk or write about Buddhism, religion, or spirituality very much. I know my own practice it is something that I really want to work on more. I want to work on taking time out of my day to meditate as well as putting into practice these values I keep posted right above me.

I grabbed a stack of photographs. Not a stack really, but a flip-book thing as well as some that I keep framed around the office. Grabbing the photos I did in a relatively short time, not taking the entire weekend to go through every individual photo I have, shows me that I really need to digitize all my photos, as well as put together an album of important photos if I ever really needed to leave quickly. The flip-book thing has some photos important to me from over the years, but should probably be updated and would work better put into an album or one of those Shutterfly books.

I packed my diplomas from both high school and college. I packed my athletic letters from high school as well as some academic achievements and letters of recommendation. There are a couple of my running medals, finisher medals from my marathons and a couple from races where I placed in my age group. There are various reminders I keep of achievements over the years both from mental and physical pursuits.

(It is a little strange for me to just be listing off these souvenirs that are important to me but probably aren't so important to anyone else or all that interesting to read about. Again though, this is for myself to look back on, so I'll carry on detailing things.)

There are some little love notes that Jen wrote me and then hid along with these little hearts that she made and hid. There are a couple little pictures the boys made me when they were little.

There are a few things that I've written over the years. There was sort of this underground magazine in high school. I also started writing my own little newsletter when I was in high school in France and carried that over to college - typed and photocopied and snail-mailed in the days before the internet. A blog before blogs. I was presumptuous then to think that anyone would want to read what I wrote, and I've just never stopped presuming that.

I wish that I had kept more of the things I had written in the past. I have some of the decent things I have written, a few of the things that weren't terrible. One of the things about writing is that I never really think that anything that I've written is very good. Some of it is just less terrible than some of the other stuff. There is always room for improvement even in the best of the things that I have done. Maybe that is why I don't organize my writing better -- It is never really completed. There is almost nothing that I would stick in a frame and hang on my wall. I don't know how I would ever come up with more than a handful of pages that I thought was complete let alone being able to publish an entire novel.

All-in-all putting this bag together has demonstrated that I really need to work on organizing these souvenirs and then digitizing them. I really need to pare down on the things that I hold onto including the souvenirs. Did I really need to keep that European Civ final from college that I got a B- on? I may have wanted to remind myself that I once took European Civ. but haven't looked at any of those papers since college. 

Now I am just finishing up with some odds and ends. I packed this red metallic Cross pen that I just absolutely love. I have a matte black one as well, but really love the red. It has sort of a stylus end on the top, which is handy. I really enjoy how it writes. I have a couple basic fountain pens and while I enjoy using them, they are more trouble than they are worth.

And I brought about half a dozen journals. Did I mention those when I mentioned the other books? I have maybe another dozen journals that I either haven't started writing in or just have a bit written in. One of the ones I am bringing is sort of this diary that I make a short entry into every three months or so just to show the passing of time. One is a soft-cover one with The Wave design on it that I keep like a personal journal. There is more personal stuff in there, but also I save that one for when I am high and have some incredible idea, which the next day morphs into just sort of a good, half-baked idea. I used to write in it when I was drunk as well. That really taught me that despite what I might think, my creativity was not improved by whiskey. Then I packed a leather bound one given to me my Jen long ago that I never really put to use yet. Once the Wave journal is filled up, I think that will be the one I probably use most. It is one of those that is almost too nice to foul up with silly writings.

I think I left behind the one where I had started some other story ideas. I also left behind my work "bullet journal", which I can hardly get by without. These different journals each with their little starts here and there at different times - They show me that I really need to be more organized about my writing. I need to compile it into one place. This is good for just the morning pages style journaling, but I need to do better really putting ideas together and sitting down and writing, writing. BY that I mean writing and not typing. Typing is much faster for me, and once I'm on a roll, it makes sense. Writing brings out the creative juices though. I need to organize them into a place and then digitize my writing as well. I have lost so many not-terrible things I have written in the past.

Unpacking series 1, episode 3, Regarding Fish on a Plane

So let's speak of books. First, one of my possessions I've come to prize most is my Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. I have pared down my library significantly. I still have boxes full of books and a couple bookshelves full, but only about a third of what I had. While I love the feel of a real book and being able to mark up pages, being able to have a library at hand is really incredible. It is especially useful if one is packing a bag of their prized possessions and loves books as much as I. Asking me what books I would save and what I would leave to burn is like, well... I'm not talented enough to work a Sophie's Choice joke in here. Let's just say it would be no simple decision.

I decided to include my old edition of Great Expectations as a representation of all the old books I have. It is in two volumes published by the New York Book Company in 1909. Not the oldest books I have, but Great Expectations is one of my favorite books.

I chose my Men's Devotional Bible, New International version from amongst the variety of Bibles I have. It is a good version and probable the most portable Bible I have. I have several Bibles that have more sentimental meaning and are definitely less portable including one that belonged to my grandfather. I have A LOT of Bibles. I'd do well to just use one of them. The Bible will always make my list of desert island books and not because I'm religious. It's just a really good read. There are plenty of the boring this-guy-begat-this-guy-who-begat-this-guy parts, but then there are really interesting parts like Samson just wiping out the Philistines or Daniel and the lions, Jesus and his parables, angels playing trumpets causing hail and fire mixed with blood to rain down upon earth, and the entire book of Leviticus with its craziness. The entire bibliography of Stephen King doesn't have so much imagination.

What the Buddha Taught is honestly a little closer to teaching what I consider my religion. Really, the lessons I've come to through it were probably the same as what Jesus was trying to teach me as a child. It's a straightforward look at Buddhism and its core teachings.

My final book is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's a marvelous book, not about Zen (and not so much about motorcycle maintenance either.) I can't say enough about it. Someday I will devote an entire blog, not just a blog entry, to it. My edition is underlined and highlighted and has tons of those post-it flags, and that is just from reading it through twice. That's the reason I can't leave it behind - all the work I've put into it -- But then the next time I read it will be like the first and I'll rediscover it all over anyway.

I could go on for a while explaining the books that I didn't pack, but as I said, I think I'll leave what got left behind for another entry. I should mention Phaedrus here. I mention Phaedrus because that is the name the narrator of Zen gives his old self. It is also the name I gave my betta fish. All my pets get literary names. Well, not the chickens. Chickens don't get named. I've had Phaedrus since August of 2020, making him the longest lived betta I've had. If you get a betta, don't put them in a tiny, tiny bowl. Yes, they can live in a puddle, but they aren't meant to. Also, get a heater. I have a good heater now to keep his tank at a nice temperature and he gets regular water changes with distilled water. I think this makes a difference. Anyway, enough of my soapbox about betta fish. Still, I guess I would have to leave Phaedrus behind. I am rather tempted to put him in a big ziplock bag and try and carry him onto a flight just to see if I can do it. Supposedly TSA will let you bring a liquid onboard so long as there is a living fish in it. Who knew? Still, I think he'd rather just battle it out in his little warm fish tank until hopefully I returned.

I have enough space here too to add that I also packed my Kindle Fire. It is a little superfluous I think packing the Paperwhite AND the Fire. The paperwhite is just way better for reading with. I like using the Fire when I get in the habit of using it. It is also kind of redundant with my phone though as well. I think if I didn't have access to a laptop, though, I would probably appreciate having the Fire with me. Anyway, it makes me want to get into the habit of using it more often.

Unpacking - Series 1, Episode 2 The Sportsball Edition

 The next little portion of my pile is sportsball related. I included my Champ Bailey Broncos jersey. The Payton Manning jersey I have is definitely nicer, but Champ is my favorite Bronco. I like wearing jerseys. They're tough, good for layering things underneath, and easy to wash. I had to include a Cubs jersey in the bag as well. The home white one I have is really nice, so that one got the nod.

I might as well talk about the baseball caps here as well. I included a Cubs hat, of course. I selected kind of a grubby one that I wear quite a bit. It annoyed me to no end when people claimed I was a fair-weather Cubs fan during the World Series run and the year after. Yes, there were a lot of people who jumped back on the Cubs bandwagon that year, and I was happy to have them climb aboard. I had suffered plenty for many, many years leading up to that point, though. This hat has the sweat if not the blood and tears.

The other hat I chose is my Boise Hawks hat. The Hawks are now an independent minor league team after having been affiliated with the Rockies and then the Cubs. They don't make this particular hat anymore, which is why I chose it as opposed to one of my other minor league hats. I love collecting the minor league hats. They have great logos and sometimes cool stories behind the team names. If I had to reseed a new collection, I'd start it with this Hawks hat.

My Northwestern sweatshirt is in the mix here as well. I have to have a sweatshirt, and going with my alma mater seems the right way to go here. The Champion sweatshirts are always nice. My last Northwestern one lasted over twenty years. Granted, by the end it wasn't something I would really wear out of the house, but I got my use out of it and then some.

The other Northwestern article I included is my Northwestern scarf. (I should add here that I'm really kind of glad that purple is Northwestern's main color. I like purple in the wardrobe.) I don't know why scarves aren't bigger in the U.S. outside of where and when it gets very cold. Of course they are great for freezing weather, but they are useful too in merely chilly conditions. You can wrap or unwrap a scarf to regulate temperatures as needed. Chic Europeans understand this. I'd probably prefer a slightly lighter weight one for regular use, but this one does the trick, and is purple!

I'm bringing four pairs of socks. Now, should I wind up in Florida I probably won't wear socks at all, as I spend all my time in flip-flops. If I only have my bag of stuff, I'll have to pick up some flip-flops as well, because I didn't pack any! I think these four pairs of socks will cover me for whatever I need, though. I am wearing my shark socks. I actually have several pairs of shark socks. These ones are blue and remind me that some days you need to be a shark, just like some days you need to be Flash Gordon. They didn't work all that great today in that regard, to be honest, but they did keep my feet relatively warm. I did pack a warmer pair - SmartWool ski socks. SmartWool socks are pricey but worth it. I've had this pair many, many years and while they've worn pretty thin in places, there are no little holes for my toes to peek out and embarrass me in the airport after going through TSA. (Who am I kidding? I don't take off my shoes like some sort of pleb. I have TSA-Pre!) Those socks are black, though it'd probably be better if I packed a pair of black dress socks as well. Anyway, I needed a brown pair to fill out the triumverate of men's solid sock colors. I chose a brown pair with flamingos on them. Flamingos remind me of Florida.

I chose a couple pairs of non-descript boxer-briefs since going commando for an extended period is kind of eh... stinky. The only thing to say generally is that they are boxer-briefs. I prefer those, particularly to run in. I do have to mention the shark underwear though. Sense there is a theme here? Yeah these ones have some pretty ferocious great whites on them. Also, they have this kind of front packet that is supposed to give the jewels some support. It's a little gimicky. The important thing is that there are sharks.

I put one dress shirt in. Well, it's long-sleeved and has buttons, so sort of dress shirt ish. It's a genuine Rockmount shirt, brown with hops leaves and flowers embroidered in green along with the mother-of-pearl snaps. If you visit Denver, you need to visit the Rockmount shop downtown near the train station. The shirts are awesome and true originals. They are not cheap and with the embroidery, you really have to have them professionally cleaned. But if you ever have an issue with one, you can just take it in to them and they will fix it while you wait. I love them. They create an exceptional product and then back it with great customer service. I have a couple other shirts from them. One is a similar western shirt, but more traditional with swallows in red and white on a black shirt. That one doesn't fit as well as this one and isn't quite as unusual.

I'll finish out unpacking my clothing by talking about the jeans. I packed a pair of plain navy-blue Levi's 501's. For the past couple years, I've only bought 501s, though in different colors, cuts, and sizes. The main reason is that 501s are built to last. I've had Lucky brand jeans. They are expensive and super-comfortable and wear out inside two years. I have 501s that I'm not even super fond of the color anymore, but they will never, ever, ever wear out, so I feel kind of stuck with them. Plus 501s are just cool, and some day I plan on being cool.

That isn't a whole lot of clothing. I should have thrown in a pair of shorts, but nothing was really bringing me joy. No swimsuit because the good swimsuits are down in FL and anyway, I'd rather have an excuse to go naked. (I'd be a nudist if I could.) I should probably throw in another pair of 501s. I also have a ton of dress shirts that I really do like, but they are all still hanging in dry cleaning bags from 2019. I really am hoping that we will have more opportunities to "dress up" again in 2022 and that my nice clothes and shoes can make a reappearance. For now though, I gave the space over to books.

To be continued

Pack a Bag

I'm not a big fan of the Holidays. It isn't that I dislike them, but that I really haven't looked forward to them much since I was a kid. One of the reasons for that, I believe, is that I've really never established some of those holiday traditions that many people look forward to. I do not mean to get into the reasons for that here; it's just to set the context for what I was thinking last week when an idea sprung to mind.

I had an idea last week that something that might be a good exercise at the end of the year would be to pack a bag. I've gotten relatively good over this past year of packing everything I think I will need for a week or two into one carry-on and one "personal item" (a laptop case). I say "relatively good" because that is in relation to how terrible I used to be at it. I've generally learned to follow the "less-is-more" and "you aren't going to need it (YAGNI)" maxims. If I discover I forgot to pack something I might need (this past year that included t-shirts and underwear) it's simple enough to just run out and get it. It's been much better, I've found, to run out and get what I may have forgotten as opposed to packing way too much as I used to.

(I should add the small caveat that there are a few things like eyeglasses and medicines that it's much better to not forget. Also for me, forgetting some piece of apparel is much easier to swallow if there is a Nordstrom or Nordstrom Rack nearby. I can make do with a J.C. Penny's or Target as well. If I really have to, I'll take my chances by paying a hobo to go into a Kohl's or Walmart to purchase something for me if I'm seriously desperate.)

Back to this genius thought of mine - So what if I had to pack a bag of all the personal possessions I wanted to keep? I like the idea of condensing down everything I own to what I can personally carry. Living part-time in the condo gives both Jen and I this desire to want to pare down. In a small space, you find you can get by with less. I also am a bit nostalgic for the days when I did minimalist camping, packing everything into a backpack. It simply struck me that it might be an interesting exercise to pack a bag of anything I wanted to keep on New Year's Eve each year and see how maybe that changed year to year.

There are a few assumptions:

First, Jen and Buck both have legs and can carry their own bags, so I can already assume they are coming with and I don't need to find a really big bag. For Bucky we've already determined that would be little saddlebags that fit over his back. One side would have a big chicken breast in it and the other would be stuffed with mini tennis balls.

Second, I'm assuming I have enough cash/credit and that the destination will have a Target for whatever necessities might get left behind (I'm still taking eyeglasses and medications enough for the short-term.)

Third, I'm assuming that I don't know my ultimate destination, but also that I can wear somewhat appropriate clothes to at least get me there. That is, I won't simply assume that I will just end up in Cape Canaveral and so don't need to pack anything I may want but already have there. I similarly won't assume I will end up in Antarctica and need to plan for that kind of voyage. Assuming a destination could change year to year, which would affect what I'd pack and kind of defeat the exercise. I'm assuming I'll have on appropriate clothes for travelling in including probably a non-distinct sweater or sweatshirt and jacket. If there is some special one that I want to ensure to take, I will put that into the bag. I'm also assuming that my wallet and passport will be on my person.

Fourth, I'm going to assume for right now that I am going to pack my standard rolling carry-on. Just the one bag. I'm assuming it need to be something that I can carry or at least roll down the street and that I can get onto most forms of public transportation. There are larger things that I might want to take. I am thinking specifically of my bike. I love my bike and would really hate leaving it behind. However, if I REALLY loved my bike enough I might forgo everything else and get one of those bags you can put a disassembled bike into so long as that were the only thing I took. That's not the case here, at least this year. (If I were getting more complex, I'd probably plan on making my escape on bike and packing that with all my possessions, but I want to keep this simple.)

Fifth, I'm going to assume I have an appropriate amount of time to get these things together and also assume that they are things I already possess. No placing orders on Amazon to get some wireless earbuds I always wanted or something. In light of the fires that swept through Superior and Louisville, this seems a particularly good year to try this exercise, but I don't want to equate this with the tragedy those people are facing. The flames yesterday moved astoundingly fast giving people no time to even grab bags in some cases, let alone go through some thought exercise of what they would or wouldn't keep. And it isn't like these are things that I would pack a bag for just in case I faced something as horrible as what those people faced and are facing. Yes, this is an exercise in appreciating what one has, even little things. The fires last night, instead of being some admonishment for putting value in things like having a nice home and comfortable bed, should be a reminder to us of how quickly possessions can be taken away. It's useful to think, "What would I save if the house were on fire," in doing this exercise, but I really want to stress that I realize that people in that situation weren't actually given much choice. 

With that, I am going to wrap up this entry and work on packing my bag. I'll let you know what I came up with in my next entry.

You, Super Hero

 A couple weeks ago, I had the thought that I hadn't really followed up with just how I was doing after my last blog post. I had heard from a good number of people, particularly co-workers expressing sympathy, empathy, and a surprising amount of gratitude for having spoke out about my troubles with depression and alcohol. I thought then that I should give an update saying I am doing well and that everything was going marvelously. It seemingly was, but after 78 days sober I fell off the wagon. Fell off the wagon and hit every branch on the way down, if I may mix metaphors.

Humbling. "That isn't going to be me! I've got this thing licked! I'm not like other people who inevitably go back to drinking." I'm sure all those people tell themselves the same thing. There is a lot of shame, A LOT, not only when you can't keep a promise to yourself, but can't keep one to people who love you and people who believe in you. And you wake up the next morning with your head pounding and sweating out whatever water still remains in your body and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.

So you start a new streak. 

Every day we are afforded new opportunities. We can wake up with that hangover and we can choose to pour ourselves a screwdriver, a little hair of the dog, to make it through, or we can steel ourselves, make ourselves better and fight on. We can choose to procrastinate that task we just don't want to do one more day, or we can roll up our sleeves, get up on that ladder, and finally get those Christmas lights put away. (Am I getting too specific here?) 

They called my grandparents' generation the Greatest Generation. Why was that? They lived through one if not two world wars, a Great Depression, a bunch of other depressions or recessions that weren't so great, and a Cold War. They weren't great for not making mistakes, but man, they sure owned up to them. (As a generation, I mean. Individual results may vary.)

There are still a lot of people hurting from this pandemic. A lot of people I know feel pretty isolated. A lot of people who are angry and a lot of people who are sad. Keep reaching out to people. Your super power might be as simple as texting someone that you are thinking about them. Something so simple can save a life.

Someone Will Make a Political Post of This

There's something just very liberating about riding a bike. I'm sure that's not the first time someone has started off a missive with that initial sentence. I'm re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and he explains the same thing about a motorcycle, a different kind of bike than what I am referring to. But unlike a car, either "bike" makes you a part of the scene. In a car, you just see the scene through a frame. A motorcycle is probably a better comparison against a car. You travel the same distance more or less and go more or less along the same routes. With a bicycle you are maybe more in the scene but travelling slower and going places a gasoline powered engine can't take you, which was my experience tonight. There really is no wonder that learning to ride a bike is one of those key moments in most people's childhood.

I'm really in love with my bike and wish I rode more. Today was really the first day I've had it out all year thus far. Bicycles, like motorcycles, take a certain amount of maintenance. Bike maintenance takes a certain amount of patience. Something was wrong or is wrong with the way they seated my tubeless tire on the rim when I bought it. It has a slow leak. I was taken back to trying to replace the tubes on my previous road bike and going through three or four tubes, pinching the sidewall each time, before I gave up. Over the winter the tubeless tires on my new bike went flat (You shouldn't allow that to happen.) and I was afraid to really touch them. Plus, I've gotten back into running.

I like running. I mean, I don't really like the act of running. I like how it makes me feel afterwards. The release of endorphins and serotonin makes me feel as I imagine normal people who don't suffer from chronic depression feel. I HATE getting started running, though. Frankly, after two or three miles I start to feel a lot better. It makes it rough getting started, though, and rough getting motivated to even put on running shoes.Once I'm going, I usually like being out seeing the neighborhood. Really, though, that's about as much as you are going to see - the neighborhood. Unless you are marathon training, a run isn't going to take you much beyond what a run to the grocery store would do. A bike, on the other hand...

And getting going on a bike is actually fun! I kind of race to get out of town. Automobile drivers in Brighton aren't super keen with sharing the road with bicyclists I've found. From where we live smack in the center of town, however, one must make one's escape along the main streets. Tonight it was out Bridge St for me, which turns into Highway 7 as you leave town. Just beyond the outskirts of town, though, is Veteran's Park where you can pick up a trail that goes down along the South Platte.

This trail used to go down through Brighton along the river and then into one of those subdivisions that was new when someone thought that having biking/walking trails MIGHT be a good idea. I'm thinking 1990's. And MIGHT be a good idea was as far as anyone got with the idea, so the trail ended after about two miles.

For the past couple years, the City of Brighton has been working on extending that trail down out of town, to where the Adams County Fairgrounds, now the Adams County Regional Park, is and hooks up with another system of trails that runs all the way up the Platte to Denver and beyond. I watched the progress on that seemingly inch along until all of a sudden it was done!

It's worth the wait. Like I said, it goes along the South Platte, but also runs around these man-made lakes that are used for water retention.If you don't know Brighton you may not realize it is a very agricultural community that was essentially built on the high desert. Water is very important here. It would not surprise me if half the laws on the local books related to water rights. So there are these important little reservoirs built to feed water into a series of ditches for the surrounding farms. The new path runs along a series of these that are privately owned. However, Brighton has negotiated either to buy or work out rights to allow public access to some of these. That opens up fishing along at least one. We have A LOT of people in the area who like to fish and not a lot of area to do it, so this is really welcome. 

Also there are some nice gravel paths. I have a gravel bike. I didn't even know they made gravel bikes until a couple of years ago. I really like riding a road bike. Yes, sometimes I like imagining I'm in the Tour de France, but really I just like going from point A to point B without any fetters and doing it rather quickly. Also, for me, there isn't usually a mountain standing between point A and point B, at least not without some road winding up it. So mountain bikes are fun, but we are out here on the plains. I mean, when I go out on runs, sometimes the max elevation change is twelve feet. It is very flat out here.

So the gravel bike... you just get this feeling you can go almost anywhere. Almost anywhere. Maybe not quite up the sides of mountains. I actually found that when you try to get down to the river, the sand gets too soft for the tires I have on. However, when you are in a park and can just zoomdle diagonally across the grass, it's pretty liberating. I mean, I could fly right through a frisbee golf course, interrupting the Jack Nicklaus of frisbee golf, "Frolf" if you will, and no one would be able to catch me.

I did an easy ten miles, about five down and five back. I say "easy" though the wind blew a couple of times that I may not have really thought it was so easy. I will need to work up to the twenty-something miles it will take to get down into Denver for some Little Man Ice Cream. (UGH! Not to mention the twenty-something miles back!) And if we ever get back into the Nordstrom office again, I think conceptually I could make it down there. Starting my commute at 5 am may not be PRACTICAL however. We'll see.

Of Redskins and Irishmen

I never understood how people backed the Redskins name. It's so obviously racist. I've heard the argument that it isn't necessarily derogatory. Certainly it isn't "nigger" or "kike", and not even "wop" or "mick". But we don't have the "Cincinnati Darkies" nor the "Atlanta Whiteys". Why should we ever lump an entire group of people all in by skin color? You can do your own research on the etymology of the name, but it boils down to making a mascot out of an entire race of people by their skin color. I never understood that. It's (past) time for it to go.

I have mixed feelings about using Native American iconography at all. For example, I understand that Florida State has a very good relationship and open dialog with the Seminole tribe in using their name. I know that the University of North Dakota abandoned the Sioux name after it could not get approval from all neighboring Sioux tribes. ( I have to note here that 'Dakota' is literally one of the linguistic divisions of the Greater Sioux nation, so one of the suggestions in their entire naming controversy was to just call the teams 'North Dakota' as 'North Dakota Sioux' was simply redundant.) I can understand arguments both for and against the Blackhawks, the Braves, the Indians. Those aren't blatantly racist and contemptuous. I could even attempt to hear an argument for the "Tomahawk Chop" cheer of Braves fans. (I dunno. I'd listen, but I'm pretty close-minded to those particular shenanigans. "The Indians" kind of too - I wouldn't really understand the argument behind that mascot. I'd try. [No, I wouldn't.] I like that "Caucasians" t-shirt one can buy that mocks the Cleveland Indians.) Redskins, though, is a racist, pejorative term. It may not have started that way (again, feel free to do your own research) but it has been used that way for over a hundred years. Has to go.

In a Facebook post I brought up the fact that everyone seems to completely ignore "The Fighting Irish". It broke down into a thread about the merits or lack thereof of the Redskins moniker. I should know better. (I should know better than to say anything slightly political in a Facebook post. Though how this is even a political issue is absolutely stunning to me. [I should say, it WAS stunning until I thought about it more and realized I shouldn't be so surprised.] I should also know better than to say anything that goes a slight bit against the tide of the social discourse of the day, which has turned into more tide than actual discourse. Don't say anything against it nor even something tangential to today's topic - you'll just be trying to swim across an overwhelming current. Just nod your head and go with it.) The Rice name is Orange Irish. I'm pretty sure our family went over to the Emerald Isle and beat (and worse) the Catholic into servitude. So I'm not going to feign any sort of indignation at the name "Fighting Irish". What perplexes me is that I don't understand why people ignore the mascot of Notre Dame but are incensed that North Dakota would use "The Fighting Sioux".

The Fighting Irish is no less a pejorative than the Fighting Sioux (though both, to me, are much less so than Redskins). One of the stories of how Notre Dame athletes gained the moniker is that Northwestern students taunted their team with "Kill the Fighting Irish" during a game in 1899. (There have been many proud days in Northwestern history, but that doesn't sound like one of them.) Another is that Notre Dame's own coach used the stereotype when he said to his team during a game in 1909, this time against Michigan, "What’s the matter with you guys? You’re all Irish and you’re not fighting worth a lick.” In 2005 the NCAA went forward with sanctions on just about anyone with a Native American mascot including the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota, but said nothing about Notre Dame.

Anytime the NCAA does something about anything I first assume it's about money. Why doesn't anyone else take notice of it, however? What doesn't anyone, Irish or otherwise say, "Hey, why are you holding onto that old stereotype anyway?" (I have my personal suspicions.) You will notice that the media hardly ever adds the "Fighting" part in anymore, particularly NBC, simply calling them "The Irish" more often than not. But Notre Dame's athletics web page is titled "Notre Dame Athletics | The Fighting Irish". I realize that I've written a lot about Notre Dame now on the day the Washington Redskins gave up their mascot, but here's the reason - It makes doing something that is completely right, like standing against the Redskins name, look hypocritical. It smacks of political correctness instead of simply what it is - Correctness. I'm not suggesting that we change every athletics mascot name that might offend someone in someway. I'm saying that if we are going to have a conversation about removing racially or ethnically disparaging names and The Fighting Irish doesn't even enter the conversation, people need to ask themselves why.

Juneteenth

I am reminded today, June 19th --Juneteenth, Freedom Day -- of the visit that Jen and I made to the Whitney Plantation when we went to New Orleans. It is a trip I would recommend anyone visiting New Orleans should make. In fact, I'd recommend it as the focus of a trip that every American should make. 

It isn't a trip to be made lightly. National Geographic compares it to making a trip to Auschwitz . I would imagine that the contemplation of any human being treated as less than human is going to evoke similar emotions in anyone with a shred of empathy. For as much reading and learning of slavery we have had in schools, it doesn't prepare you for the gut punch of seeing a price list of people.

There is, I think, this myth that we white Americans like to hold onto that slave owners actually treated their slaves relatively humanely, and that it was really only some particularly cruel owners that treated them badly. After all, a dead slave was no good to the owner, right? The truth that one learns at Whitney is that in almost every case, slave owners simply treated slaves as a commodity, cogs in a wheel of a machine that, in Louisiana, was used to turn sugar cane into sugar, a grueling and particularly dangerous process. Yes, while plantation owners did not want their machinery to wear out early, they were horribly practical in the life-expectancy of those cogs. People did not live long while working the cane fields, a handful of years maybe, ten to twelve at most. The phrase "being sold down the river" came from the slave experience of being sold down into the cane fields of Louisiana from cotton plantations further north. 

I compared the entire explanation of slave ownership by our guide at Whitney to my experience owning a car: I don't want to treat my car poorly. I'm really pretty fond of my 2012 Ford Fusion. It was a pretty dear investment. At eight years old, though, I know it's getting to the end of its lifespan. I know I'll move on and get something else in a couple years. To think, even now, that this is how plantation owners felt about people, and that I could conjure up such a comparison now, quite literally nauseates me.

I was very impressed with our guide at Whitney. A young black man, he gave us what I believe was really the unvarnished truth and a horrible sense of what it was like to live at Whitney. There was no need to embellish the awful facts. They were laid out before you like the price list I mentioned or the tiny slave quarters or the "hot box" chamber mentioned in the National Geographic article. Stands of the sugar cane with its razor-like leaves were right there, and the treeline past the fields that led away into the swamps that would beckon slaves to freedom or death, either way escape from their condition, still stands out there. 

This is the story of my slave benefactor at Whitney, Chris Franklin. I say benefactor because Mr. Franklin paid a very costly price in order to provide me a single afternoon of education. I am very grateful. Reading that story, one might say, "It wasn't all THAT bad. They even got extra potatoes and egg nog at Christmas." Then you compare that to Mr. Franklin's impression of how well he felt the master kept his hounds. Slaves were treated no better than dogs. The master was fine to marry off a couple because he knew it meant additional litters of slaves for him.

None of us are free until all of us are free. That is a great sentiment to carry forth today. In a literal sense I'm sure we are all appalled at the idea of a man, woman, or child being manacled in an iron box on a hundred degree day. We have a ways to go to stamp out ignorance and injustice still, however. The focus, of late, has been on the police profession. The police do have the ability to use force that is immediately apparent. However, discrimination still pervades every industry in America. It is still apparent in the retail industry, for example. For, as progressive a company as Nordstrom is, I am still reminded that only two years ago black teens looking to buy clothes for prom were racially profiled by Rack employees. Even so, I believe that the discrimination in the legal, medical, and especially the media is as damaging, if not more so, than by police.

So we need to look at ourselves and our own sense of humanity. My religion is built on empathy and loving-kindness. In just writing that I am reminded also that I am a sinner. I need to practice.

Divided We Die of Typhus

I woke up this morning needing a pep talk. With no Knute Rockne there nor drill sergeant, I turned to myself for some inspiration. I didn't exactly find a Rockne speech in me. I was able to remind myself that our current situation is not normal, nor is it the "new normal". The current situation is not normal, yet we try as try might to seek "normal". For work, even though people are all working remotely, even though they are all dealing with their personal issues regarding dealing with the virus, we are still asking teams to deliver as if things are normal.

So I reminded myself that this is not the new normal and thought I'd pass on that message to my team at work. I also thought I'd try and enhance my inspirational message with some historical inspiration. Where in time, besides the oft-cited Spanish Flue Pandemic, were people cooped up for months at a time. Valley Forge came to mind. They were cooped up there for an entire winter, right? That must have been like three whole months, right? 

So, like I do, I looked up what I could about Valley Forge. They weren't there three months. The Continental Army was camped out there for six months! Dec. 19, 1777 - June 19, 1778. Okay, granted, they could leave their huts -- And it's a good thing they could since an entire squad of twelve enlisted soldiers typically shared a stone hut, sometimes with wives and children as well. Also, the winter wasn't as bad then as we were made to believe in elementary school. (Apparently the winter encampment two years later in Jockey Hollow was much worse and was the root for the myth of the horrible Valley Forge winter.) Still they suffered typhus, typhoid fever, dysentery, influenza, pneumonia, and smallpox (because a group of the soldiers had not been inoculated the year before when General Washington ordered it), not to mention the starvation. (Yesterday, I ordered DoorDash from one of the local Mexican restaurants.) About 1000 of the 12,000 soldiers encamped there did not survive the winter. About 8% mortality.

Anyway, it could be worse... I guess. It wasn't exactly the inspirational message that I was looking for, so I decided to play it. Plus, what did those men have to look forward to? America lost almost every major battle for the next several years until Nathanael Greene took the fight to the Southern theater. 

There is a battle to come for us, probably many. For Nordstrom there is going to be a much smaller pool of higher-end retail shoppers. We're going to be battling other retailers for those customers. For us as a nation there is going to be a battle of words over how and when to come out of this mess and get the economy going again. For many of us individually it is going to be a struggle just trying to get back to normal, to find jobs again, to restart some semblance of a social life, to just get back to a routine. One thing that I think this pandemic has shown us is that we accomplish much more when we can work together rather than apart. The phrase, "United we stand; divided we fall," comes to mind -- something to keep in mind.

Happiness and Community

I'm listening to The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World. It's the third in a series, which started with The Art of Happiness, a Handbook for Living, that a psychiatrist, Howard Cutler, has written along with the Dalai Lama. Confession: I had started the first book several years back, and when I checked this audio book out of the library, that was the one I thought I was getting. This book actually seems more appropriate for the current time, though, in the wake of the Vegas and Parkland shootings.

Obviously Cutler and HHDL (that's His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the unintiated) have a good rapport if they are working together on their third book together, and that rapport does come through. The Dalai Lama is a funny dude. When Cutler asks him the simple question of how do we get humans to better see the humanity in each other, HHDL suggests that if Martians invaded Earth we'd all ban together pretty quickly. "Okay, well apart from that..," continues Cutler.

Im only a short way into the book, but it seems that the main premise is an important one, and I wanted to share. The Dalai Lama suggests that a good deal of the trouble that occurs amongst humans today is because we have lost our sense of community. Tibetans are shocked when they hear that Westerners can live for years alongside neighbors that they do not know. Cutler admits that he doesn't know his neighbors, and I admit that I don't know mine at all. And it isn't just our immediate neighbors that we've lost touch with. We don't socialize in the ways we once did. Television and the internet has removed a lot of the personal interaction we once used to have. Church attendence is down. Socializing with coworkers has been eaten into by longer and longer commute times.  Many of us live in different cities or even states from where we grew up in numbers that are unprecedented. We've become a lonely society. The average number of intimate friends that Americans said they had has decreased from three ten or twenty years ago to two now. Twenty-five percent of us say that we have no real intimate friends at all.

That loneliness is literally killing us. Sometimes it's showing up at the door to the school armed with an AR-15. Sometimes it shows in a suicide rate that is the highest it has been in thirty years (Is it just coincidence that the three states with the lowest population densities, Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana, have the three highest suicide rates amongst U.S. states?) . More often it shows in heart disease and cancer rates in lonely people. One health study showed that lonely, disconnected people are four times more likely to catch a cold than someone who isn't.

I struggle with making human connections. It's a lack of self-confidence and really a bit of cowardice generally that keeps me in my little bubble. For years I tried to overcome that with alcohol. Finally I've come to the harsh truth that breaking down my reserve with alcohol doesn't work for me. I've been struggling again for about the past five months of feeling disconnected once again. So listneing to this book has come at a good time. It came as a revelation that what I really need is to connect within a community. It's almost absurd that it comes as a revelation to me, since Jen has been saying as much for at least the past half-dozen years, though not in the same words.

As I sat and thought last night, I realized I am part of a great many communities. I'm a Rockies fan and last night we had our season ticket draft. Sure we only meet once a year, but that has been for the last dozen or so years. In a broader sense I connect with other Rockies fans online and connect with sports fans generally. Sports fandom is a community that is overlooked as a meaningful one to many people. There is a community of people I work with here at Nordstrom and beyond in a general sense of technical people in the Denver area. I'm a member of Mensa and the Triple Nine Society, not that that in itself is meaningful, as we have much less in common amongst ourselves beyond a high IQ. But within those groups I identify with subgroups. It gives me a group to sound off about running or books or politics. In quitting drinking I attended a handful of AA meetings. That is a community, and an important one for some people. It can be very lonely when you quit drinking and for the past number of years the only new friends you made were people at the bar.

Being a part of those communities is not the same as being connected to them, however, just as living next to people doesn't make you connected to your neighbors. I'm working on that. Just identifying all the opportunities I really have was an unexpected step for me. Maybe I'll actually make a Mensa meeting in the next 6 months.

I didn't start this intending to write so much about myself. I meant it more to get people thinking more about community and what they can do to be more connected. For those of you who struggle with it like I do, keep trying. Do little things to reach out. Be brave. Don't let rejection deter you.Think of the communities you are a part of and what you can do to be connected within them. For those of you who don't struggle, reach out to those of us who do. We'll likely reject you using crucifixes and garlic as if you've walked out of a monster movie. Don't let rejection deter you either. Eventually we'll run out of garlic.