Ways to furlough your way through Life

Editor's Note:  I send a shout-out to those folks on this email distro whose phone calls recently brought A Distant Light into my furloughed Somnelence (apoligies to those I've not listed):  Arkansawyer, James 'The Neil-some Biker' T, Andrea P for Pizzazz, Joni 'Positive Vibes' K, Mizz K, The Czarina and Overcooked Valerie C!  To my most lovely wife, Smurfy M, a powerful shout-out of love for putting up with me these 2+ weeks of home-dom ...

 

Since my friends in DC are having Shutdown Parties to lighten the mood, I’ll contribute country-style. 

 

Things to do while furloughed:

·         Scroll through your cell phone directory and find names listed you’d entirely forgotten while speed-dialing all your usual suspects.  Proof in the pudding is calling those whose friendship you value after a year away.

·         Think of your boss and co-workers as people with feelings, not those pains in the *** that you interact with each weekday.  A humbling and gratifying activity, especially while playing darts.

·         Winterize.  I mean, we had low last night of 41 (yeah, baby, 4-chilly-1 on Oct. 2!), so time to drain and roll up those hoses.  In brisk winds with 40-mph gusts I later heard.  I’m tired…

·         Memorize those country music songs you always hear.  Dress up and sing along loud and proud!

·         Clean those things that never get cleaned.  Crawl around the floor with your dogs.  Talk to the hamsters. 

·         Wrap the water heater with insulation ($20 @ Home Depot).  Will it save a fortune?  Probably not.  Do you feel frugal afterward, a guardian of your family's money?  Yep!

·         Wash the windows, outside first w/soapy water.  Rinse screens.  Better have some furloughed free hours:   our 4,000 sq. ft. home took me a cumulative nine hours.

·         Go online and troll through your health plan's website to learn its nuances.  And I'm supposed to then be able to understand the roll-out/eyes rolling in my head of the Affordable Care Act (which I DO support)?  I'm so outta luck after finding my son's medication, dispensed for a year by Express Scripts, being displayed as 'Cannot Price.'  I am mentally soft, weak, not ready for ACA ...

·         Lastly:  devour your cookbooks (figuratively).  Do a recipe you never found time for while making excuses in our too busy lives.  Why are they so busy - necessity or choice?  Hmm, it makes me wonder as I see the furloughed free hours stretch into wandering days and pointless weeks. 

  

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  The Golden Arches of McModernism

Yellowstone, Day 4-Last: Craters of our own Moons

A cloudy night but not as cool.  Pack ‘er up for a calm last day toward the northeastern corner of Yellowstone.  Open up your eyes, and see the lower end of the Yellowstone River. After a picturesque journey, framed by a mind-boggling wide Lamar Valley, we parked and took a two-hour hike along the Rim Trail, one of my favorites in the park.  Nope, no griz but we did see, and were kinda followed by, a solitary pronghorn antelope who was shadowing us. 

 

Time’s up, let’s get homeward bound on our local roads, non-Interstate, toward Craters of the Moon NP. Past the town of Mud Flats, and skirt a mondo thunderstorm.  Surreal cooled magma and black cinders, over hundreds of square miles, surround us and we know we’re human fireflies touching on the immensity of the geological charts of time.  Did I mention more pronghorn antelope grazing on the nearby praririe?  Welcome to Idaho.

 

After peering around, we zoom-zoom through nicely named towns like Shoshone and Bliss and hit the Interstate.  God kisses the skies with a sunset worthy of a Greek myth, and we get home late.  Dazed, tired and overwhelmed, as befits the trip of the year across sceneries your imagination can barely absorb.  Yellowstone, an angel of our mind’s eye, we’ll be back in June to find those springtime awakening grizzlies…

 

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  The Insane and Exciting Future of the Bionic Body

Yellowstone, Day 3: Elephants, Woozles, Oh My!

Editor's Note:  Fortunately for us, my office got considered 'mission essential' at the last minute, so I get a one week's reprieve from any government shutdown.  My thoughts go out to my Federal service brethren who toil in DC and might get financially abused by our irresponsible Congress.  This light-hearted post is for you...

 

We awoke to a 37-degree’ish morning.  As planned, a cold breakfast and then out of the comforting green of Indian Springs campground, and into the immense greens of central Yellowstone!  That should be the blog’s title but it’s too long, right?  So hey, hey, my my – get into your seat and tool along as we drive down captivating Virginia Cascades drive with its small canyon view of the world, along with neat smaller falls and tall facing cliffsides.

 

There are sights, and other sights, and then the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.  Immensity beyond this writer’s expertise.  Odd to say that with Misty’s unknowing encouragement, I broke a 15-year freaked-out impasse and walked down the 328-step metal stairway to heaven, a platform not far from the lower falls that plunge a splashifying 308 feet into the riverbed.  A quiet interlude after a canyon rim-side hike that sucks out your courage and keeps you humble.  I made it back up to the rim without a heart attack, and savored every return step as we surveyed the layers of that canyon.

 

Why stop at 3 PM?!  Zoom-zoom southward toward Yellowstone Lake.  Go figure, God again pointed out the difference between men and women:  shoes.  Just why do women of any age have to pull off shoes to wade in the chilly waters of a lake at 8,000 ft elevation?!  Madness, but the giggling girls and flying ‘seaweed’ made me realize I might be missing something.  Nawh, it wasn’t the Overlook of the lake, but the subsequent pay shower - $3.65 well spent.

 

You’re getting bored now, so let’s not dwell on the animals carousing along Hayden Valley.  Along with the interesting bison, we saw many elk in the distance taking advantage of the late summer.  No grizzly but my polite traveling partners said No Worries.  Good, since rain again fell on our way ‘back home’ and we stood around for an hour waiting to cook dinner.

 

Dinner:  Tri-tip steaks right above the firewood.  Easy and tasty.  Get out in the Back 40 and try it!

 

Smithsonian Article du Jour: 

These Patterns Move, But It’s All an Illusion

Yellowstone NP Day 2: Bubble, Bubble, Toil & Boil

What better way to start Day 2 than friend Misty’s Choice:  The Southwest Quadrant.  We toured the Old Faithful/Geysers section of the park.  Lots of bubbly things and you’re saying, “Yeah, that’s nice.  I’ve read this over and over, la-di-da…”  I gotcha there, and match your ace with a jack, as we tooled up the hillside several hundred feet above the Old Faithful basin to the Overlook – of the entire flippin’ valley! The OF geyser is magnificent from a distance, topped by our downhill trip’s sojurn toward Solitary Geyser and into the basin of several colorful geyers.  All without moving the van, topped by lunch in the shade of cool ponderosa pines.  Yep, I was right for once – touristing takes a long time, so don’t crunch your schedule and miss huckleberry ice cream and hot apple cider at the lodge!

 

“Northward, hoooo!”  The van zooms off as we make endless tourista-bashing observations, ones intended to make us uppity and better than those silly folks around us.  Color us abashed and silly when we take a driving loop toward Firehole Lake and a greyish wolf saunters across the lane.  “Silly people, you gawk like tourista!”  No matter, we kept getting out of the van and seeing sights like the surreal misty Grand Prismatic Geyser and bison snacking near those geysers.  Colors beyond imagination, smells beyond bearing and the sounds beyond silence:  hissing, bubbling, and bison moo’ing.

 

Then an evening under the stars, when on my third trip I finally hear it – elk bugling.  Eerily touching and a startling 10 PM reminder that you and I, without electricity, firearms and other modernities, are so hosed if we spent a few days in THEIR backyard.  Nature, beautiful and disarming, but at one’s one possible peril.

 

Dinner:  Australian beer-something Wings and Brats.  Wings marinated two days.  A succulent evening.

 

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  This 1,600-Year-Old Goblet Shows that the Romans Were Nanotechnology Pioneers

Yellowstone NP Day 1: Fly-bys that touch the Stars

Last week, we went off on a four-day jaunt to Yellowstone NP, my third trip to one of the most majestictableaus onto which I’ve painted some eye-popping adventures over the last fifteen years.  Sparkling weather, running down my windshield, an inauspicious beginning to our six-hour drive.  Pit stop #1: Idaho State University, where my daughter, Allison, and the daughter of our friends, Misty, took a zoom-zoom eyes-wide-open tour of the campus.  We now have two ISU die-hards – and all because I threw them a curve ball that they couldn’t refuse, so try that tactic yourself.

 

Yellowstone is what it was and always should be – vast, unsullied and superbly layered with more than the five senses can absorb.  Just driving into the park, we gleaned views of pine forests grandly regrowing after the fires of ’88 that laid low fully one-third of it.  Fires – devastating but necessary for a healthy forest.  So we saw thousands of acres of carpeted hillsides and dreamt of what was tooling around unseen.

 

Ever “wing it” on a campsite, deciding not to reserve it?  Just say No if that’s at a busy national park. My good luck carried the day at our second campsite try, though, and we got a nice spot with just three first-come slots left.  And, we squeezed in a leisurely stroll through half of Norris Geyser Basin to kick off the weekend.  Sweet…

 

Dinner:  Sandwiches.  We’re too pooped to care what goes into the gullet…

 

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  Zombie Pigeons Are Invading Moscow

All One, with You and with Me

A long time ago in middle English, the word “alone” was actually two words: all one.  All one within ourselves, complete and whole, not needing anything from anyone for any reason to be OK.  But it also meant something like ‘all one with each other.’  We humans are one, all connected, in a perpetually symbiotic relationship.  I mean, did you see the ultimate compassion shown by that school office worker in Atlanta, talking down the bipolar shooter and saving countless lives far beyond her own?  In the midst of crisis, she knew those kids would sink or swim based just on how well she could relate to a man with an assault rifle right in her face.

So, it’s time we peek underneath the surface of what is going on in our own lives, at work and in our relationships.  You hopefully will see a world unfolding magic, joyful possibilities, and some individual and collective spiritual wellness that awaits all of us.

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  Legendary Human-eating Bird was real, probably could have eaten People

Jose’s Log, Star Date 072713.21

I’ve figured something out – why keep gauging the Good Days by what I just got done or am about to do?  How about slowing down this gravy train and focus on a Good Week?  Then it’s about the sum of the score, a biorhythmic ebb and flow of just how well I stayed in the game for a few days in a row.  If that’s the matrix of how I should measure success, then I guess most weeks are pretty good.  Oh no, I’m getting too relaxed – maybe country living has gone to my head!

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  Once in a Blue Moon and Other Idioms That Don’t Make Scientific Sense

A Time to Ask, A Time to Do

I was inspired by a recent church men’s group morning coffee gathering to write this post.  Though Pastor Bill offered the post’s title spiritually, I see it spanning my life – and maybe giving you ideas for yours?  Man, I’m so sorry that your friend Jose is such a nagging optimist...

• Ask:  I asked God recently what to do with my sons.  Can’t say I heard any clear answer but felt shutting up was the right thing – stop offering ill-fitting advice cloaked as wisdom.  Sure enough, the older one bought a screaming deal Jeep and the younger son moved out, with Leg 3 of his Great Adventure being an Amtrak ride to the next place to put his pillow – Bedford, Indiana.  And they're now living some great adventures.

• Do:  Listen to God and my wife.  Between them, I get nearly all the guidance, wisdom and comfort a guy needs.  Tack this one onto the first item – I constantly need to re-focus on listen and shut down the inner monologue that’s brain-spawned.  Intuition and feeling my way through life works, at least for  me, so much better.

• Ask:  “Jose, stop being a bull in the project office.  Ask questions.  Figure out, by listening, how to be a better leader.  Drop your presumptions at the door.  Ahh, isn’t that easier, now?”

• Do:  We’re in our new homeland, one I so want to be a long-term fit.  Why keep planning big things that take too much time, effort and/or money.  Do the small things.  Volunteer to lead things at church.  Spend casual time with my daughter without making such a production out of the planning.  Find out what jazzes Michele up and get on-board.  It’s about the relationships, as my mood and outlook transform me into someone better than I was before.

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  On Venus, It snows Metal

The Pentameter of Emotions (a poem)

What we sense, and what we feel, are so colored by our life experiences.  We handle the chaos, the day’s drudgery and all that through our own lenses.  What if we click-changed them to something entirely new?  Oh, how reckless and New that would be…

Familiar faces,

that means I know

where I am.

The sounds of rock and roll

that means I feel

in the moment.

Dum da dum dum -

that means I hum

in life’s tune.

Sharing whispers

that mean so much,

to so many,

as the road is seen

anew.

Sight Unseen

There are so many oddities and quirks in our world that people can publish and remark on all sorts of silliness.  My observations aren't worth raw beans, but here are the unseen and inexplicable things in my daily life:

• Gas pump card readers:  why do some people, with driver’s licenses, look at them befuddled, like they’re about to be eaten by them?
• Self-checkout at stores:  there ought’a be a license to use them.  I’ve seen some doozies as folks pretend they’re back in high school chemistry class when they sneak up to the reader and touch the picture pad.
•  The downtrodden and despairing ones, all around us in plain sight.  I’m clueless on how I could help other than one thing at a time, but a 5-spot won’t solve world hunger.
• What's underneath many of our car hoods.  Unseen as long as Herbie starts and there aren't any red lights on the dash.  Don't shake your head - you know I'm right!
• Sadly, race relations.  I see a void, an abyss of expectations between some major groups in our society.  The Trayvon Martin tragedy further shows how perceptions silently shape us into who we are.  I know I see it but do I see it ‘correctly?’  Is there a ‘correct’ view?  Nope, so it will remain sight unseen except within each of our hearts.

10 books from the 21st century every man should read:

http://shopping.yahoo.com/news/10-books-from-the-21st-century-every-man-should-read-213232125.html

Weird and Wacky Festivals around the World:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2013/07/21/weird-and-wacky-festivals-around-the-world/2570467/

I think the World Wife-carrying Competition (Finland) and the World Body-painting Competition (Austria) are the choicest ones!