Category Archives: Life
I’m generally not one for traditions or custom. I tend to see these as the enemies of thought and imagination. (Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”) I have always craved the new, the roads I haven’t yet traveled. Trying a new restaurant is more fun than revisiting an old haunt.
That said, tradition and custom can act as an anchor, a reference point, or just a comfort. I do have a few customary comforts. For instance, my bottle of champagne on the Solstices (one for sorrow, one for joy). Also, for New Year’s and my blog anniversary.
On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, it’s watching as many versions of A Christmas Carol as I can.
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19 Comments | tags: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart, Scrooge | posted in Books, Life, Movies
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful…” Bad enough that it’s three degrees above zero as I write this (with the high today only four degrees). But there’s a winter storm warning in effect until 3:00 AM tomorrow morning. (Severity: Moderate; Possible threat to life or property.) We’ve had 2.3 inches of snow so far with another 7.2 inches expected.
But we’re Minnesotans, and we expect this stuff. Wouldn’t be a proper winter without a bunch of puffy frozen water covering everything. And people scraping various forms of it off their cars. The Minnesota Winter Ballet!
More importantly: Merry Winter Solstice! Less than two hours away as I write this…
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9 Comments | tags: snow, Solstice, Winter Solstice, winter storm | posted in Life
It started in January with a local PBS show. I was trying to figure out a really good gift for a really good friend with a birthday in March. I often feel I’m a poor gift giver. It’s not a lack of generosity but that I forget to allow the time necessary for proper gift selection. I find I need that time to find something that both appeals to me and (more importantly) is a great fit for the recipient.
Part of my gift giving philosophy is that the gift should be something I’d almost rather keep than give away. I figure if it appeals to me, it should appeal to my (generally like-minded) friends. I’m not sure that logic always follows, but c’est la vie.
Anyway, I was watching PBS…
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10 Comments | tags: Canada, Lake Thompson, Minnesota, Todd Ronning, wood carving | posted in Life, Wednesday Wow
One: OTOH, holy cheeseburger with onion rings, it’s this blog’s Eleven Year Anniversary. Not to mention, just last week, the nine-year anniversary of retiring from the rat race. Perhaps it’s because Summer Solstice has passed (and now the light is dying), or maybe that my mom would have been 98 (the day after Tau Day), but I find myself more reflective and thoughtful at this mid-year turning than I do, despite the influence of Janus, at New Year’s.
Other: OTOH, I’m steeped in ennui and have never felt less like writing a blog post. The question is whether the pressure of the anniversary overcomes the desire to putter, read, or nap. I’m writing this (and presumably you’re reading it), so it looks like the day won over the mood.
So… Happy Something day. Here’s a standard disgruntled anniversary ramble…
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27 Comments | tags: Anniversary, blog, blog blah, blogger, blogging, July 4 | posted in Life, Writing
For Sci-Fi Saturday I have to post about Farscape, a science fiction TV series from 1999-2003 that (on the advice of a friend) I just started watching. I’m only up to episode 18 of season one, but I’m enjoying the series so much I thought I’d post about it. There are four seasons comprising 88 episodes (22 per season), so my opinion could change, but so far, I’m totally loving it.
I also want to mention the third Ben Bova book I’ve read recently. Bottom line, I really enjoyed it. Definitely the best of the three. It restored my faith in Bova.
Lastly, this morning I had, what even for me was, a particularly weird dream experience. Our subconscious minds are quite surprising and just plain bizarre sometimes!
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20 Comments | tags: Ben Bova, dreaming, dreams, Farscape (TV series), liars, science fiction, science fiction TV, SF TV | posted in Life, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
Puppy vs Borg cube
I try hard to face forward and appreciate what joy, wonder, and beauty, life brings, but the world all too often makes that a challenge. The past few weeks have been especially hard mostly because I’m at the end of my rope with tech companies. I wish I understood why we put up with such awfulness. Factor in the spam, the robocalls, and the junk mail, and I’m ready to go live in the woods far away from any of it.
On the top of my list right now is Apple with Sprint-is-now-T-Mobile in close second place. The library app, Libby, that I’ve raved about before is in third place with WordPress bringing up the rear. Not mention all the little stuff, some corporate, some personal.
Warning: Turn back now. The road ahead is bumpy. Falling rocks.
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24 Comments | tags: Apple Corporation, Apple News, Libby, Sprint | posted in Life, Society
Drat! A day late and a dollar short, as the saying goes. I started off this morning writing a post to commemorate the 2/22/22 date but quickly realized I’d need a time machine to pull that off. Between yesterday’s blizzard and working on an upcoming post about Plato and geometry, I lost track of the date (a peril of being retired — dates don’t matter much anymore).
Not that I had anything date-specific to post about, and plenty of other bloggers did post, so no great loss. But having started, I may as well keep going.
Even if all I have are some very tiny treats.
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26 Comments | tags: Bentley, Netflix | posted in Life
That’s weird to me. I’m from the 1950s and can measure my life in scores of years (three-and-mumble). I was an avid science fiction reader by the 1960s, so recall an era where we wondered if the year 1984, let alone 2001, would be anything like the famous book.
As it turned out, in both cases: No. Respectively fortunate and unfortunate. The future turned out less extreme (but no less “interesting”). Both demonstrate the difficulty of prediction, a problem science fiction illustrates more often than not.
That said, the other face of Janus looks forward…
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58 Comments | tags: 2022, Alastair Reynolds, blog, blogger, blogging, James Webb Space Telescope, Janus, JWST, words | posted in Life, Writing
I hope everyone has been having a wonderful Chillaxmas. Yesterday was the last of the Twelve Days, so now it’s time to wash the dishes, take down the lights, and toss out the tree (or disassemble it, box it, and return it to the attic or basement, whichever applies).
Now it’s time to put on our two-way Janus hats to look backwards at Old Man 2021 as well as forwards at Infant 2022.
It’s also time to indulge (if not wallow) in my lust for data and charts.
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40 Comments | tags: 2021, 2022, blog, blogger, blogging, Happy New Year, Janus | posted in Life
Friends and regular readers (all three of you) know about my struggles with the Dell XPS 15 laptop I bought in 2019 to replace my Sony Vaio laptop. After access to work machines since the 1980s, that Sony was the first laptop I had to buy in retirement.
It had its issues, but was great compared to the Dell, which, in retrospect, was a lemon from the start. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how broken its wireless system was until after the warranty period. Twice I found a way to improve things to usable, but recently it returned to unusable. And then wouldn’t boot at all.
So I went and bought an HP Envy laptop.
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13 Comments | tags: Dell Computers, Dell XPS 15, HP Computers, SONY | posted in Life
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