Category Archives: Paul

Ballpark Impulse Buys

At Angels Stadium this last weekend I ended up in one of the team stores to get something. At the cash register, the evil monsters had the ultimate impulse buy for the twelve-year-old Paul trapped (screaming, I suspect) inside this 69-year-old carcass.

I haven’t bought baseball cards in YEARS! But there they were, and unlike fifty-seven years ago, I didn’t have to go mow lawns, shovel snow, or scrounge through the bushes along a busy highway for discarded Coke bottles with a $0.02 refund on each in order to get a couple of packs. I had a credit card, and I wasn’t afraid to use it!

Today’s cards are a far stretch from the cards of the early 1960’s in terms of color, design, and quality. Nonetheless, what I wouldn’t give to have my original set of cards back (long ago sold off by my mother at a garage sale).

I was pleasantly surprised to get a Mike Trout card right off the bat. Perhaps that’s a good sign!

They’re great to look at and read through, takes me right back to my pre-teen days and some of my fondest memories of those days. I’m not sharing too many details about the world of 2025 with 12-year-old Paul – he was fresh out of Catholic school and hadn’t even learned to swear yet (a story for another day) and would be tragically ill-prepared to deal with all that we’re hip deep in.

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Filed under Paul, Photography, Sports

No Context For You – April 02nd

Stormy and dangerous times are indeed upon us, and I’m not talking about the weather. When we started celebrating stupidity and worshiping cult leaders who lie to us with every breath, we set ourselves on a road to destruction. When we turned our back on science, medicine, and knowledge in a time when we desperately need expertise and experience, we put ourselves in an untenable situation.

I fear not just for our nation, but for our society, our civilization, and our long-term existence as a species.

Those storms on the horizon may be upon us sooner than anyone expects, and they may be far more violent and deadly than we can believe.

I hope that I’m wrong. I fear that I’m still underestimating the danger.

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Filed under Paul, Photography, Politics

Looking For Inspiration

One of those days where I feel like I’ve been ridden hard and put away wet. Down. A bit depressed. Thinking I should go out and buy a pinata cause I really need to beat the shit out of something and then eat chocolate until I puke…

The “inspirational” and “motivational” corner of my office magnetic white board wasn’t quite doing it.

Thank goodness for those last two functional brain cells who forced me out into the garage to spend a couple hours starting to clean up the horrendous mess that’s still out there from the Great Pi Day Water Heater Explosion & Flood of 2025. Some tunes, some cleaning, some order out of chaos, some mindless, physical exertion, ending in at least a small spot of a clean floor and things in stacks and no longer all over the floor.

It may not have been the first row, but at least I moved up from the third row to the second for the time being.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

Sixty-Nine

On the way home from the gym & an intense training session tonight, stopping at the store accompanied by a great sunset, grinning through the pain, another year older.

It’s not pretty, but nothing’s killed me yet. Let’s hope I can still say that in another 365 days.

Happy Birthday to me!

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Filed under Paul, Photography, Sunsets

Proof Of Life – March 16th

You know those memes you see on Sunday afternoon/evening pointing out that you can’t enjoy the latter half of Sunday quite as much as you should because you know that Monday is looming just over the horizon? Insert ALL of those memes *HERE*.

 

And have I mentiond lately how much I hate earthquake aftershocks?

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Filed under Paul, Photography

How Was YOUR Pi Day?

We had pizza (pie). I had apple pie.

And our water heater went nuts, cracked open, and sprayed thousands of gallons of water all over the garage, soaking and ruing a ton of shit that I had to take out onto the back porch to try to dry out (while it was raining).

Our landlord got that fixed, we have water, hot and cold again tonight.

But the house is farting every time we turn on the water as the air in the pipes gets pushed out.

 

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Filed under Castle Willett, Paul, Video

Selfie With Orion

I had a thought for a picture, wasn’t sure how well it would work…

Not bad! Close to what I was hoping it would look like – tough to get both me and something dozens and hundreds and thousands of light years away in focus together, especially in low light with the lens wide open and a minimal depth of field. Perhaps I can lock the focus on the stars next time and I’ll just show up fuzzy.

Which, truth be told, is not an inaccurate representation of reality in multiple dimensions!

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Filed under Astronomy, Paul, Photography

Proof Of Life – February 20th

I don’t know if it’s just a side effect of getting old, some “Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness” from my workouts with my trainer, something related to the antibiotics I was taking for that infection and fever a couple weeks ago, or some combination of it all. But today has been sent in some considerable discomfort, particularly in my lower back.

I don’t do well with ongoing pain, so let’s hope it never becomes chronic or longer term. Assuming that the gym workouts are at least part of the problem, this will be gone in 48 to 72 hours. If it was like this 24/7/365/forever, I might not be the “brave little soldier” that I might hope to be.

But who knows?

In the meantime, I’m cranky and not as functional as I would like.

So which view/look is the “real” me right now?

Yes.

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Filed under Health, Paul, Photography

Back To The Gym

The good thing about having a trainer, especially one that you’ve paid in advance, is that you have motivation and some pressure to return to training if something (i.e., “LIFE”) has derailed your training program.

The bad thing is having pressure to return to training.

Between the holidays, me getting a bad cold, me having kidney stones and then getting a bad infection, and then me taking some industrial strength antibiotics that have serious restrictions on exercise, it had been about six weeks.

Being a responsible, intelligent adult (which, for the record, often SUCKS!) my head was actually looking forward to getting back to the gym. Having slacked off for a month and a half, my body wanted to scream and run the other way.

My trainer is excellent and knew just how far to back off due to the six week layoff, and how far to push to see how much I had slipped. (It’s not that bad.) But by the time the hours was done, I did feel a lot like I had been beaten from head to toe by a squad of goons with baseball bats.

Yeah??!! Whoopie??!!

The part I’m still curious about but probably never going to figure out (I am not a doctor nor do I have a “medical” or “biological” brain – physics I can soak up like a sponge, biology and physiology and the like just bounce harmlessly off of my ears and never reach my brain) is how antibiotics can require such stringent restrictions on exercise due to the fact that they can cause tendon damage, particularly to the Achilles tendon.

Say what?

A drug I’m taking to kill an infection in my urinary tract (caused by kidney stone damage) can cause my Achilles or hamstring to rupture if I exercise while taking it? HOW? What’s the mechanism? How are the two connected?

Some things are just mysteries, I guess.

Meanwhile, how many Extra Strength Excedrin can I take before something “bad” happens? Not asking for a friend…

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Filed under Health, Paul

Proof Of Life – January 20th

What a depressing day. And it’s just Day One.

I didn’t have to go anywhere today (working from home) so I deliberately picked my comfiest sweatshirt so that I would be warm and snuggly, even though it is old and ratty and worn. I’m old and ratty and worn too, so we’re kindred spirits.

I wish that I had answers, but days like this I’m not even sure that I know the questions.

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Filed under Critters, Paul, Photography