Ponderings and Musings

My energy level this week has been surprisingly high, despite the fact that we haven’t gotten much sleep the past couple of nights due to constant thunderstorms, pounding rain, a scared cat and weather warnings come over the EAS radio in the kitchen.

Honestly, I love this stuff. This is my kind of weather.

I’m sorry to read about the storm related deaths elsewhere in the country, though. Very sad This is where social media like Twitter and Facebook can be handy; follow the right folks on your Twitter feed and you have storm notifications long before the National Weather Service releases them.

Mother Nature has had a lot of energy this week and for the most part her displays have been fantastic. Just be prepared for when she gets overly cranky. Know the safest place in your house and keep your eyes and ears open.

The healthy eating bit is moving along fairly well this week. I am maintaining am building new eating habits again. They don’t really stick unless you’ve done them for at least 30 days in a row, and it’s only day 10. Ock. The only issue I’m having right now is I have a constant urge to gnaw on the side of my desk or something because I am always hungry. For lunch I had a beautiful sandwich made by the husbear and a little granola square chocolate thing that I ate in two bites. I have an apple waiting at my desk for when I get back to the office, despite the fact that I am not a teacher. Nevertheless, I am hungry right now, have been hungry for the past 20 minutes (since the completion of said granola square consumption) and I am eyeing the myriad of drive thrus that currently surround me. I am reciting the venomous chant of “saturated fat, saturated fat” to keep me motivated.

I added fruit back into the diet yesterday: a banana at breakfast and an apple at lunch. First of all, I am discovering that I’m not really an apple fan unless it’s in a pie or in a crisp. Raw apples do very little for me. I blame the fruit for making me feel hungry; I always feel hungrier after I eat the fruit versus prior to eating it. I do okay with bananas but the thing that bothers me about a banana is the “banana stomach” that comes about 30 minutes after consumption. Plus, I’ve heard that bananas might not be the best fruit for one to snack on. It’s got to be better than durian.

I’m trying to decide if the oncoming headache is related to being hungry or instead to the fact that the outside temperature yo-yos between 30 and 70 depending on the hour. Today I’m wearing a winter coat, tomorrow I’ll probably be want to be wearing my shorts to work.

I think I need to go through the DD drive thru and get an iced tea or something. I don’t want to be surly.

As we entered the office a week ago last Friday, we found one of our third shift co-workers holding the door open and watching for an ambulance. One of the technicians on the floor was experiencing chest pains, numbness and shortness of breath. The ambulance arrived just after we did, in the meantime I went int my stash of aspirin and offered the technician two of them, because I heard that’s what you should do when you’re having those kinds of symptoms. The ambulance came and the technicians did their thing before taking him away on a stretcher. They took him to a hospital in Albany.

I had spoken with this person only a couple of times since our shifts didn’t really allow us to cross paths, but he seemed nice enough and appeared to have a pleasant disposition. He probably would have been considered a ‘straight bear’. He had thanked me for the aspirin.

He passed on this past Friday evening. He had been in the ICU since arriving at the hospital. We had taken a collection for his family to help with the cost of staying in a hotel near the hospital. This morning one of his sons was given the money to help with the cost of the funeral arrangements. Services will be out of state near Chicago.

The cycle of life.

The kitchen is starting to look like a kitchen again and Earl and I are both thrilled.

Friday evening we received word that the dishwasher and refrigerator had arrived, so on Saturday morning we headed out to Syracuse and picked them up at the warehouse.

Saturday afternoon it was all about teamwork as Earl and I disassembled, moved and then reassembled the refrigerator in the the kitchen. The installation only took an hour or so once we had it in the general vicinity of where it needed to go. After that was done, it was onto the dishwasher where we installed that like the home improvements experts that we strive to be. No leaks on the first try on both the refrigerator and the dishwasher, so we were pleased.

Today we’ve spent most of the day getting the kitchen back into shape and finding new gadgets and doo-dads to populate the countertops.

The observant viewer will notice in the picture above that we are still without a stove. That’s coming from Lowe’s and it will be here within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime it’ll be about the panini grill and the crockpot when it comes to supper assembly.

I just had two pieces of pizza for lunch. This isn’t very healthy, but it was for one of the charity organizations at work and I always support these groups at work when I can. Today’s charity was suicide awareness and prevention. I should get more involved.

For five dollars we got two pieces of pizza of our choosing, a tossed salad with dressing, a beverage and a dessert. I opted for the cheese and broccoli pizza (called white pizza in these parts because of the lack of sauce), balsamic vinegar on my tossed salad and a diet pop. I also selected the smallest cookie I could find. I feel I made healthy choices given the circumstances and will adjust my supper choices accordingly, probably by sucking on a breath mint and inhaling the vapor given off by an African violet. I jest, I’ll have a small veggie sub from Subway since I’m in bachelor mode tonight and we have no appliances in the kitchen. So basically I’m swapping lunch and supper. A crude deal-a-meal approach, without the sequins, glitter and bad Afro.

When spring finally began to show it’s face I found myself motivated to be healthy again and I was pleased to see that I have lost five pounds in the past two weeks. If you follow along with my Twitter feed you’ll see that I do quite a bit of walking during my breaks at work and I am getting back into cycling again. The guys at work have asked me to join them on some rides this summer and I’m considering it. I miss riding my bike. The five pounds feel noticeable to me. The walking, along with my morning exercises feels good. I think my mood is lighter too, which is always a good thing.

When I mentioned my delight in trying to be healthier to Earl, he remarked that he was happy that in was being sensible about it; no fad or crash diets, no Slim Fast, no protein powders or no declarations of vegetarianism. This new tendency to stay away from speaking in absolutes is slowly taking root. I feel like I’m progressing again. This makes me smile.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The other day I was driving along my commute route later in the morning than normal. This is not remarkable in itself. My commute takes me through a pretty substantial Amish community. I think it might be multiple Amish communities, because there is more than one school house along the route. Two of them are separated by a mile or so. Both are single room buildings, one of them looks like the schoolhouse seen in Walnut Grove in “Little House On The Prairie”. I sometimes look for Miss Beadle but she’s never around.

As I passed by I could see in the windows; there were several desks with children sitting at them. Smoke emanated from the chimney and the curtains on the windows were plainly pulled to one side. I imagine that the teaching and learning going on there is fairly simple in that there’s no computer, overhead project or probably even a dry-erase marker. That is kind of cool to me.

Though the philosophies differ, I admire the Amish for their adherence in what they believe in and how they choose to live their life. I have mentioned before that I really like their pies (it’s almost pie season!). Among the pies they would have had drawn coloring books for sale. No need for an Xbox, just color in the lines.

As a person that lives amongst a lot of technology and all the complications it can bring with it’s wonders, I think it’s important that one be able to also live simply. I believe that the person that is going to truly thrive in their existence is the one who could still live happily without the gadgets and by only the candlelight of the night and the wood fired stove heating the homemade soup. These skills reside in me somewhere, and I could call upon them if ever put in that situation. It would be a heck of an adjustment, but it is definitely doable.

I think it’s important to keep that perspective.

I recently heard of a young girl that was very upset that she couldn’t get in her car because the battery in her “clicker” had gone dead. She couldn’t unlock the door without it. She had no idea that she could put her in the slot and manually unlock the door.

Someone missed the basics along the way.

I think for us to truly thrive we must start with the same basics as a foundation and then build whatever more we want on top of that. But we mist never be afraid or ignorant of the basics.

Sometimes it works better to just keep it simple.

It’s a beautiful day today. There’s a bit of a chill in the air, but that just keeps it interesting.

I had a brainstorm at work about 15 minutes before I left for lunch and that is kind of lingering on my mind. For the past six weeks I have been working on a project that has involved completely rebuilding an internal website. The site is huge and has a ton of information stored in various ways. The old software they used to create the site a long time ago converted most of the text to images, so I am having to type everything over again and build the pages in the process. I think I’m going to take my favorite blogging software, WordPress, and turn it into a content management system. That’s probably a little bit of a heavy discussion for this blog, so instead I’ll just say one thing.

My iPad is really shiny.

One of the things I admire about my father is his sense of discipline. He has always amazed me in that way; if there’s a job to be done, he does it. If he feels a sense of procrastination I don’t know that he would ever say anything out loud about the subject, but I suspect that he wouldn’t procrastinate about it in the first place. This sense of discipline is something that I have always aspired to but rarely found. I still aspire to it. I hope I’m getting closer to that goal.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was going to calm down on absolute terms: I will always do this or I will never do that. Today is the second day in a row that I have refrained from picking up an iced tea at the drive thru at lunch time. Let’s see if tomorrow will be the third day in a row. I suspect it will be. This “one day at a time” approach is my attempt at being disciplined at something. On day two it’s working. I will strive to make it continue.

I have dreams about being a self-employed web developer, contracting my services to those that need them. This is a ways off in my future, after all, I have a really good gig right now, but I can’t see working for someone and earning a paycheck from someone else for the rest of my life. I want to live under my own steam; it is my hard work and my hard work alone (with the support of the husbear and my family, of course) that will determine whether I make it or not. I don’t want to share an annual pay raise budget with others on a team. I can do the teamwork thing, and I think I do it quite well, but ultimately I want to be the one calling the shots over my own success. I already know I have control issues. A disciplined approach will help keep them in check.

The disciplined aspect of my father’s personality afforded him the opportunity, along with his siblings, to have a successful business for many years. I learned a lot from his experiences with the business and I feel that using what I observed there, coupling it with my own talents and then just taking it one day at a time, will give me the opportunity to someday make a serious go of having my own business.

I will get there. With a sure and steady step, one day at a time.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I am sitting in the Jeep enjoying a lovely early lunch hour on this beautiful Monday morning. Though Mother Nature appears to be feeling rather soggy today, I am feeling quite good. I think it’s because I worked out this morning. It’s amazing what can happen when you take time to move your body.

I am skipping the Dunkin’ Donuts iced tea today. I would like to think that this is the beginning of a trend, but I can only make this determination one day at a time. I have an unfortunate habit of expressing myself in absolute terms: “I will never drink iced tea again.”. This sets me up for failure. By declaring that intend to cut back on iced tea and then making a concerted effort of doing do, I have a broader sense of accomplishment and a smaller sense of drama. I hate drama. I don’t know why I’m so dramatic.

Earl has made me an egg salad sandwich today, which is another step in my constant quest form self improvement; I rarely eat egg salad and I never eat eggs, but it’s time to step out of the box and live a lit, especially if there is the promise of an olive.

I am situated in the Jeep in a different parking lot today because I was in the mood for different scenery. I am parked next to what used to be an Ames but is now a Dollar General. There is a Burger King about 2000 feet away but I can still hear the drive thru speaker. This is unfortunate because I can’t imagine how loud it must be for the driver that is sitting in of the thing. I just heard the classic “ya want fries with that?” over the sound of the rain. I don’t know how the driver responded.

On my way to this parking spot I heard the weather forecast and there was a mention of thunderstorms tonight. Since I no longer have that awful on call gig, I can rejoice once again because thunderstorms, tornadoes and other wild weather phenomenon is wicked cool, as long as you play it smart.

And last, but not least, the geek in me rearranged some of my web services this weekend. I now have a more cost affordable and simpler way of managing photos, music and the like. I will probably lose a point or two, but I opted out of Apple’s MobileMe because after all these years I still find it unreliable and slower than it should be. Dropbox, and apps that use Dropbox for storage, are on my radar now and I’m quite pleased. For example, I can take a photo on my iPhone and have it nearly instantly appear on my iPad. Prior to Dropbox I would have to sync with iTunes and drag things around. Now it’s point and click. This eliminates a few things in my tech costs, including the need to buy an iPad with a camera.

I’m happy with the toys in my toy box right now.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad