Category Archives: Paul

We Voted – Your Turn Next!

While occasionally I’ll drop some snarky political comment on this site, for the most part I deliberately keep the political rants to a minimum. This is large part because once I get started, I’m not sure there’s any bottom any more to that toxic subject. Over on social media it’s a different story. Anyone who used to follow me when I was on Twitter, or follows me now on Facebook, Mastodon, Spoutible, Bluesky, Threads, or Tribel knows that I’m pretty far to the left (blue/Democratic/liberal) end of the political spectrum, and unapoligetically so. So it’s no surprise that I voted a liberal, Democratic line up and down the ballot. I will never, EVER vote again for a Republican, from President to assistant junior dog catcher, not even if there’s a gun to my head. And if TFG inexplicably gets back into the White House, that’s where I expect to be in four years. Our elections will be about as fair and honest as those in Russia or North Korea.

While California has extremely pro-voter policies and practices (everyone gets an absentee, vote-by-mail ballot, you can drop them off in any one of thousands of secure locations or mail it back and there’s a whole system of text messages, emails, and voice mails that keep you in the loop on whether or not your ballot has been mailed, received, or counted) other places might be less friendly to making it easy for folks to vote. Yes, that really, really is because the GOP-controlled government in those states is actively working to prevent folks from voting because almost universally these days, when folks are free to vote they’re not fond of the fascist and totalitarian policies being pushed by the Republicans and the billionaires supporting them. Reality’s a bitch. If you’re in one of those areas, even if it’s hard, please do what you need to do to vote and get your vote counted. Nothing’s ever going to change if you don’t.

The next twenty days will be excrutiating for me and a good chunk of the world I suspect. I don’t expect unicorns and rainbows if Harris & Walz get elected, but I’m quite certain that the tenth level of Hell and economic nightmares will be on the menu if TFG and Vance (who is worse somehow) are allowed access to power.

Let’s all make good decisions.

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Filed under Paul, Politics

Fumbly Fingers

I’m not as dexterous at 68 as I was at 18 (not news, not a surprise) and when I’m getting out of my Functional Strength Training session and just trying to walk and breathe at the same time (my trainer made me HURT today, which I guess is what I pay him for…), my fingers can get a bit more fumbly than usual.

Given the time stamp, I believe this is the back of the driver’s seat in the Volvo C70. Given the size and dimensions, I think it might have been taken with my watch, not my phone. (Can the Apple Watch take pictures? Maybe it just triggered the iPhone to take a picture?) Given everything, I would have been trying to stop the Workout app on my phone, but God alone knows what button or icon or combination I hit.

The good news is that I now have a suggestion for a new Olympic event, sort of an Ultra Modern Pentathalon! Combine a half hour of shoulder work, a half hour of leg work, fifteen minutes of push ups, a 5K race, finishing with solving a Rubic’s Cube. Strength, endurance, and dexterity when you’re ready to drop. What’s not to love?

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Filed under Health, Paul, Photography

Proof Of Life – October 01st

Truer words…

I am lost in spacetime, unable to remember what day of the week it is for most of today, but my brain has been CONVINCED that it was Friday.

And then I would see something that would remind me that it was only Tuesday, and Tuesday this week wasn’t my favorite day, and Wednesday isn’t looking a lot better, so you do the math.

Remember “Time Tunnel,” that cheesy, cheap 1960’s sci-fi, Irwin Allen show? And when they would push the button to pull our brave time travellers off of the deck of the Titanic as it started to tilt up out of the water or out of Pompeii as the mountain was smoking, they would spin around and around with that humongous black & white spiral thing behind them, until they plunked down at the Little Big Horn or somewhere? That’s my brain today.

Not physically dizzy, not like I’m going to fall down, but unmoored a bit, not quite fully attached to the time stream.

If we could move past this and get back to that whole “normal” thing again I would really appreciate it.

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Filed under Memes, Paul

Spoiler Alert!

Not the best joke, and not original, but some days you just have to go with what you have.

Related, how do you make a Cybertruck even uglier? You put a spoiler on it! I’ve seen one, very near here, about two weeks ago. Believe me, as butt ugly as those wannabe dumpsters are to begin with, putting a HUGE spoiler on the back makes it worse. No pictures, it flashed by in crossing traffic while I was waiting at a red light, so you’re going to have to trust me on this one.

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Filed under Paul, Photography, Silly Shit

Running A Tiny Little Bit Warm

Which is unusual, normally I tend to be a half degree F or so on the cool side.

Whatever.

You may safely assume that I met my absolutely drop dead deadline even if I failed miserably to meet my desired deadlines, I’m upright and taking nourishment, and celebrating the Chiefs’ win bringing them to 3-0 for the season.

*makes that little pop noise with my little finger in my mouth and spins my index finger about in a celebratory manner*

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Filed under KC Chiefs, Paul, Photography

Proof Of Life – September 21st

Whoever designed the day did a lousy job of it – not enough hours in it.

We were originally supposed to kick off the next season at the Ahmanson/Taper (they’ve combined their series) last Saturday, but I was in KC. We moved it to tonight, but I’m underwater with deadlines and couldn’t reasonably justify the time.

Adulting sucks – but the red-shouldered hawk was back and screaming in the back yard today and the red-tailed hawks were back and circling overhead for the first time in many months, so it can’t all be bad.

It’s no Eye of Sauron, but it still more or less works. Reminds me more of a whale’s eye, like you would see if you were swimming in the ocean and got lucky enough to have one come up and give you a gander.

Happy Solstice! Fall’s here! Astronomically speaking.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

The All-Natural SoCal Alarm Clock

It’s a total bitch to set, it’s wildly inaccurate, goes off whenever it wants to, and in general is about 99.99999% useless.

But boy, let me tell you… When it DOES decide to go off, it’s effective as all get out.

This morning’s epicenter was only about 13 miles from our house, so we got a pretty good jolt.

What’s really bizarre is that I heard it coming before I felt it and before the alarms went off on the phone and Apple watches. (Being so close to the epicenter, the emergency alert and the shaking arrived pretty much simultaneously, leading to the inevitable “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!” screams of terror.) It sounded to me a lot like a very low flying helicopter. We get helicopters screaminging over all the time (we’re at the very top of a decent-sized hill) and it sounded like a police or fire/rescue helicopter going like a bat out of Hell. A local brush fire starting up and there’s a water drop incoming? Someone fall and break their leg (again?!) over on Castle Peak? Another police chase on the freeway and the news helicopters are racing to intercept?

Nope. About three seconds later the first jolt hit, the windows rattled, the dresser drawers threatened to dump their content, and the local electronics started wailing their warnings.

That’s okay, I wasn’t going to sleep in later anyway.

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Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Paul

What??!! No Mini-Oreos!!??

It’s been eight weeks and change (okay, nine weeks and a day or two, it’s tough getting the calendars to sync) but we were back at the Red Cross for our next whole blood donations tonight.

All’s well, easy peasy. But to my shock and horror, when I got to the waiting/recovery/snack area I couldn’t find any of the mini-Oreo cookies!

They had a nice selection of boxed juices, and I managed to get the straw in without squeezing the box and spraying high-velocity grape punch or apple juice all over myself. Winner! The Blueberry & Pomegranate Granola Bar was excellent, but it wasn’t mini-Oreos.

Finally the guy in the pink T-shirt left and we checked his table – that’s where the mini-Oreos were all hidden, so the day was saved.

It’s the little victories that keep you going.

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Filed under Health, Paul, Photography, Silly Shit

Box Canyon

It’s dangerous and quite possible lethal to fly into a box canyon. The terrain rises and the canyon narrows and the altitude climbs so your plane’s performance suffers and suddenly you find that you can’t turn around, you can’t climb over the top, and your only choice is where you want to slam into the mountain.

So when you see the box canyon coming and you turn away, it’s the right decision. You’ll know that. But if you had reasons for going in there and had put in a ton of work to make it happen, it’s a mixed blessing, at best. Disappointing. What could I have done better?

Yeah, lots of allegories here, and no details, sorry. Have a meme…

"Have a panic attack. You've earned it."

This too shall pass. Even if it is just like a kidney stone does. I’ve had those multiple times over the last 40+ years and they haven’t killed me yet.

One step in front of another.

The juxtoposition! Damn!!

 

 

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Memes, Paul

Glitch Day #15

Payroll preperation was the cause. In my job there aren’t many priorities higher than that, not too many deadlines that are more important. We take care of our employees and that means that we get paid on time. Those deadlines are solid – miss them by 3 seconds and folks get paid on Monday instead of Friday and that’s a major failure mode.

So it was about 01:15 on Thursday AM when I hit the “send” button and wrapped it up, and about 01:16 when my brain unfocused from payroll processing enough to go, “Oh, crap!” For the 15th time in over ten years of daily posts on this site, there was no daily post. “C’est la vie,”  as the sophisticated French say, or “Shit happens!” as the somewhat more vulgar Americans would say.

A quick check shows it had been about 1586 days since the last time that happened, back on April 10, 2020. Oddly, while I do get anal about my “atta boy!” posts showing how many days in a row I’ve posted, and I didn’t get one of course on Thursday and am now starting over, I did get one at random from WordPress saying that (coincidentally!) someone looked at something on the site that day and it was the 100,000th “view” of one of my website pages.

Cool! If just a bit odd that it happened to occur on the day I broke that 1,586 day posting streak. Weird little Universe we got going here, but anyone watching politics for the past few years probably had noticed that.

Perspective is important. Not just the relative priority of keeping my little daily posting streak going vs getting everyone in the company paid on time, I was thinking more globally or cosmically as in the terrible news we got on Friday and everything going on with COVID and politics in the big, bad world and more personally the pain levels from my teeth and knee. (Both are getting better, but are very annoying.)

On so many different levels of our existance and life experiences, the common thread is that we’re going to get knocked down (or trip on a treadmill) and the only real option is to laugh, get up, and start over. Here’s to Day Three of the current streak.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul, Politics, Writing