2013

Living - and already savoring - the Adventures across the backroads of western Idaho and eastern Oregon!

17 February 2014

Word Match: Stents, Naked and Cold

(I challenge you to find the common thread I found among those items!)

A balmy G'd Day to you from sunny and clear western Idaho, where temperatures dropped only into the mid-30's.  Darn.  I've been bulking my pect's loading the pellet stove this winter, so there goes my exercise routine.

You can look at illness and hospitalization from so many angles, but color me amazed when my dad calls to say the stents insertion went very well and he's feeling 100% better.  Stents?  Ahhh, those things inserted into clogged arteries.  Or, as our pre-Med son says, open-heart surgery.  Umm, Jose says when I realized I hadn't a clue he even was a surgical candidate.  That's a man for you, not telling anyone about the problem until after the successful surgery!  I'm just a branch off that tough ol' tree but don't know that I pull the whole thing off as silently as he did ...

Did you know dreams about being naked in public actually can be positive and reinforce one's self-confidence?  Thank goodness; if one can believe websites, I apparently fit into that category of being self-aware and confident meeting life's challenges.  But, man, I just don't want another one of those silly dreams.  Can't I be catching endless fish in a tropical paradise while sipping coconut milk?

Lastly on President's Day, I applaud my fav prez:  Jimmy Carter.  He led us down a painful road toward the metric system and into greater energy conservation.  Which brings me to climate change.  What a fascinating multi-hued topic, where colder weather for us can scientifically be directly linked to warmer Arctic weather.  Whether you're a believer or nay-sayer, check out this tornado of meteorological reasoning:

07 February 2014

22 Things You Should Never Do Again After 50

Author Jacquelyn Mitchard considers her limits after a half-century of experiences

With fate and that rearview mirror in mind, here are a few things beyond ‘the Limbo’ I'm quite probably beyond doing. So, join me in just saying no to:

1.     Parkour.
2.     Jell-O shots.
3.     Karaoke after midnight.
4.     Karaoke after Jell-O shots.
5.     Trying to break a plank with your head.
6.     Mud wrestling (intentional).
7.     Crowd surfing to the mosh pit.
8.     Joining the circus. Joining the ashram.
9.     Drinking champagne from your son's girlfriend's shoe.
10.  Drinking champagne from your daughter's boyfriend's shoe.
11.  Drinking champagne from your own shoe.
12.  Xtreme bingo cruises.
13.  Collecting owls made of shells, frogs made of ceramic or lawn gnomes made of anything — really, really anything.
14.  Playing basketball in high heels.
15.  Throwing a wet T-shirt contest. Throwing a wet nightshirt contest.
16.  Getting publicly and verbally excited about the number of stamps in your passport, zeroes in your paycheck, capital letters before or after your name (unless they're H.R.H.), number of names on your phone-favorites list, number of people you could have married, the size of your acreage … or the size of your anything else.
17.  Explaining your personal role in the fact that your kids "never really got into any of that stuff …"
18.  Explaining your personal role in the fact that your kids got into an Ivy League college.
19.  Explaining your personal role in starting the rumor that Paul was dead.
20.  Single-spacing your Christmas letter.
21.  The Dougie.
22.  Giving up — ever.

Jacquelyn Mitchard, the best-selling author of 20 books, lives near Madison, Wis., with her family.

04 February 2014

In-between (and including) Love and Happiness

Do you ever get busy and not feel in the mood to do things you even enjoy?  Well, as long as it’s not personal hygiene, take a break!  I did but I think time's up.

Back to today’s blog:  after my absence, here’s what got me fired up:

85 richest people own 46% of world's wealth.  Conducted by Oxfam, one sentence screamed at me, “The top 1% have 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world's population.”  

Read that twice and maybe you'll derail like I did.  Even given the inherent error rates and judgment bias in most statistical sampling, this still is shocking.  I mean, how many millions of us are locked into those social ladders and angst I first learned in reading Jane Austen novels, and later in John Mellencamp’s caustic anti-war song, Love and Happiness?

Let’s flip that coin and be positive in a realistic kind of way.  Folks like you and I don’t have much in comparison of cash and ‘virtual wealth.’  But excluding those 1% from the pool might enable us to turn our thoughts to non-monetary fulfillment.  It’s clear they've schnarfed most of the wealth, and will continue to do so, with the result maybe being for us to stop chasing the money.  Yes, Mom, you’re right and it’s about being happy and not rich.  You just didn't know the being 46% right was so monumental!