spare change

December 24, 2013 8:47 AM , 2 Comments ,

 

3 coins

3 coins

I will always rummage round my change and look for pre-1962 quarters.  This was the last year that quarters were made from silver.  Apart from being ridiculously valuable right now ($19.42 per ounce today 12/23/13) these coins have seen a lot of history.

I look at these quarters and try to imagine what they’ve seen, what they’ve gone through to wind up in my pocket.  I think of all the owners through the years and the various transactions that they’ve taken part in.

Could you imagine the future that lay ahead of you when you were struck bright and shiny one day in 1944?

Did you get used by some G.I. to call his parents and tell them that he was on the way home from the war?

How many times did you lay in a coin drawer at some supermarket and were served up as change to some shopper that didn’t even take a second look at you?

Were you carried surreptitiously in the night by a parent and slipped under a pillow in exchange for a child’s tooth?

How many months did you lie in a dark piggy bank waiting to be released by a child for some special purchase?

Were you part of a day’s panhandling and get used to buy a bottle of cheap rotgut liquor by some beggar?

Who lost you in a snow bank one cold blustery December morning and didn’t bother to retrieve you?  Who picked you out of the gutter the next Spring?

Have you traveled the world and seen many distant lands or just been happy to travel the highways and byways of America?

Have you passed through my hands before and I just haven’t noticed?

Posted in: prose

The year in review

December 22, 2013 8:52 PM , 2 Comments ,

Facebook put out a “year in review” feature.  Anything to generate hits I suppose.

But it is appropriate given the time of year to reflect.  As I’m December born it’s one of the things I always do at this time of year anyways.

I would call the theme of this year “waking up”.  So many things that I’ve held in check for one reason or another have happened this year and are continuing to happen.  I think in some ways the year has forced me to step up and be more proactive.

My father had serious health problems in the Spring and that made me confront the fact that I really couldn’t put off life any longer.  Those plans, ideas, projects that I kept putting off for “one of these days” had to start happening now.

Despite my added responsibilities I have found time to explore the arts and some of my interests.  I’ve found that Houston has a lot to offer and that I can still enjoy it.  I have places and events that I am looking forward to this next year.

I planned and made some home improvements that were desperately needed.  I have others that I hope to execute this coming year and it excites me to think that I am crafting this space to suit my needs and tastes.

I took a vacation that was long overdue and for the most part it went off as planned.  I just don’t have any words as to how much it was needed after the stresses and strains of the last few years.  The time off has given me much-needed relaxation and a chance to reassess my life for the long-term.  I am fervently hoping for another vacation this year.

Of course it wasn’t all good news.  My father’s illness was troubling, I had some health and financial issues of my own.  But I have to take the long-term view about these things.  I can despair and not get anything done or I can meet these challenges head on and do my best.

I feel guardedly optimistic about this coming year.  Being proactive and not waiting for things to happen and instead orchestrating events feels good.  This is the person that I want to be.  This is how life should be.

Posted in: current events, life in general, motivation

sick

December 21, 2013 8:41 AM , 2 Comments ,

Who likes being sick?

Don’t answer that.  I don’t want to know.

In a sense I am fortunate that I don’t get sick that often.  I have escaped the flu season without taking shots for so long that I don’t even remember my last flu vaccination.  I can weather most colds at work and soldier on without a pause in my work rhythm.

But when some malady grabs hold of me, it really knocks me down.  I get listless and dull.  I get apathetic and nothing seems to matter much.  These last few days I’ve been down with some sort of food poisoning and haven’t wanted to do a thing.  Luckily most of our clients have the “Christmas disease” and I haven’t had much to do so it hasn’t affected my work performance that much.

Earlier this Summer though I came down with something much worse.  Triggered by insect bites, poison spray, and too much stress I came down with a case of hives.  This is a severe skin allergy with no specific cause.  The skin turns a bright red like a bad sunburn and It is itchy to the point of being painful.

I went to see my regular doctor and skin doctor and got conflicting medical advice.  One said I should cut down all my activities and avoid irritating the skin by overheating or sweating, the other said go on with my life as normal.  They both prescribed immune suppressant drugs and sedatives which forced me to go with the former advice rather than the latter.

This inactivity just raised my stress as I worried about my physical state more and more as I was laid up doing nothing.

Finally after almost 2 months, the tie was broken by a third doctor.  An allergy specialist said to go on with my physical activities and prescribed heavier sedatives.  Although I was groggy I returned to my physical activities.  In time the hives subsided.

But I have to admit the damage has been done.  Before the illness I was doing 6 to 7 days a week of running or exercise.  I had a good rhythm going.  My weight goals were progressing on schedule in a predictable manner.

Since the illness I regularly miss 1 or 2 days at a time.  This causes me a lot of worry.  I have been able to arrest any weight gain resulting from my inactivity and stabilized my condition but I have to admit I’m stuck.

The holidays haven’t helped things either.  My time isn’t always my own.  When I think I am getting into my routine again I suddenly have to do some holiday related chore and exercise time has to be put on hold for “another day”.

I am hoping that with this new year I can wipe the slate clean and really refocus my efforts.  I so need to do this for myself.  Apart from the physical benefit to be gained are the mental benefits or disciplining my mind and body to a regime of actions which will benefit me in many other fields.

I’ve made too much progress now to slip.  My goals are so damn close that I can taste them and that makes this endeavor that much more important.

Posted in: holidays, illness, life in general, motivation

Social network pluses and minuses

December 18, 2013 9:26 PM , 1 Comment ,

So there I am sitting in the Commons lobby at Texas A&M in 1989.  My friend Lynn, a computer major, says “come on bill, let’s go check out the new VAX terminals”.  They had just installed a new computing center in the commons lobby for students to use the shared VAX terminals on campus.

Being a freshman I had no clue what to do but Lynn set up my account and pointed me to the talk function.  Soon I was chatting away with strangers from other universities around the country and around the world.  This was my first exposure to the social side of the internet.

This was quickly followed up by the USENET newsgroups.  Basically forums on the early internet where people talked about particular subjects.  Over time I developed friends and enemies on these groups.  Discussions became quite heated and on more than one occasion I would get carried away.  These were the legendary flame wars of the 1990s.  The passion of youth I suppose.

Years passed and the World Wide Web arose.  Social media got more sophisticated with the advent of the chat room.  Dozens and sometimes hundreds of people chatting at once, making little cliques, building friendships, just hanging out together.  In time advertisers learned about these and over time began to infiltrate bots into the rooms.  These were automated programs posing as real humans meant to advertise and sell things.  These along with the ever-present cyber bullies spelled the end of the chat rooms.

Along came the MMO.  the Massively Multiplayer Online game.  Now you not only had a name tag you had a body as well and a shared activity.  We lived lifetimes online.  We also died together and we built up close bonds.  But over time people drifted off and my time on those came to an end.

And now comes social media fully matured and developed in the form of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

A few things I’ve noticed during all my travels online:

  • All of these communities have a beginning, middle, and end.
  • While we are in those communities we can’t fathom ever leaving
  • The end comes abruptly and almost unexpectedly
  • When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.

I don’t know if it’s time to leave these current communities.  I will be totally honest.  I don’t get Twitter.  I’ve tried for a year and it just doesn’t click with me.  To me it’s a technology that’s at least 5 years old and very limiting.  Facebook I understand and enjoy more.  It’s pretty well-developed and has many features.  Google+…..  I looked at once and left.  I don’t doubt it’s well done but it came too late to the party.  The others rule the social media roost.

Yet, more and more often I am coming down with social media fatigue and a feeling of deja vu as if I’m just repeating the same things over and over again.  I’ve explored all aspects of these sites and I don’t see anything new to capture my attention.

It’s gotten to the point that on a whim I looked up the steps for erasing my profiles on these social media sites.  So far I don’t have any plans to carry this out but I do think that it’s telling that I looked into this.

I don’t yet see the next big thing on the net, though I don’t doubt that it’s coming.  I will probably hop on when it does arrive.  Or maybe I will go totally offline and go back to living a life without the net.

I am part of the last generation that started life in the analog world and had to adapt to life in the digital age.  The Millennials that came after me have no clue about life without the video monitor or the computer.  This is their world and it’s the world of the generations to come.

Maybe it’s time to go back to the old analog world.  After all, I lived there once before and I can do it again.

Posted in: internet, pop culture, relationships, social networks

Omens and symbols

December 16, 2013 9:03 PM , Leave a Comment ,

I suppose that in some ways I am superstitious.  But only because these things really happen to me.

I’m a precog, someone who can see into the future, but like most precogs it’s a fairly useless power and not at all reliable.  I will get an image in my mind.  Something pops up for no reason at all.  No trigger mechanism, no casual mention by anyone, just appears in my head.  Within a week an event relating to that image will occur.

In the past this mostly this took the form of predicting TV show reruns.  I would see a scene or character from a TV show and sure enough within a week, there’s the episode.  Now that I have for the most part abandoned TV watching this type of precognition has for the most part faded.

Now it takes the form of omens in my life.  Good example, this week.  I thought about my car’s extended warranty less than a week ago.  No reason at all.  My car’s in the shop right now for transmission work.  Hopefully the warranty will cover it.

Not at all a useful power.  It’s hard to sift between the real omens and the random thoughts and it’s not something that can be accessed at will.  I’ve discussed this phenomena with some of my more philosophically and metaphysically minded friends and acquaintances.  Their thinking points mainly to the writings of Jung and his concept of synchronicity and meaningful causality.  That these are not just random events but an expression of some sort of deeper organized pattern.  I just try to ignore it as best as possible.

Symbols are another matter.  I suppose they’re an expression of those things in life that I’ve come to sort internally as good/bad, better/worse, positive/negative.  They can range from the rather inane and pedestrian to esoteric and deeply personal.

Take some of the more banal symbols out there.  Coca cola for instance, not the drink but the logo, the colors, the font.  Comparing that to the Pepsi symbol.  When I was growing up the Coke symbol was good and Pepsi was bad just based on the logos.  Bizarre I know but that’s how a kid thinks.  My universe was sorted along strict lines and things like coke and pepsi were well and truly separated by an unbridgeable gap.  Of course now that I am free from my cola and fructose addictions I see all of these as “bad” symbols.

Over time I have added and disregarded symbols as time passed and as situations changed.  As much as I try to disregard these symbols and keep an open mind about things I find that they do sneak in and flavor my thinking about some things.  All I can do is to try to remain vigilant and keep my mind as open as possible.

 

 

Posted in: ideas, life in general, myths, psychology, thought

The passage of time

December 15, 2013 8:22 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Pad, pad, pad, pad

It’s 4:45 on a Sunday.  I’m running along a dark street without a trace of traffic and I pretty much have the world to myself.  It’s bitterly cold and every bit of exposed skin is pleading to go back inside but I keep going anyways.

Nothing for my mind to do but engage in contemplation.

I turned 43 recently.  A fairly meaningless number really.  It’s not a significant age in our culture.  Just a place holder between 40 and 45 really.  I stopped caring about my age years ago.  But I do sometimes marvel at where time has gone.

I went to my brother’s place for Thanksgiving.  All the family was gathered and my nephew, just graduated from college, was there with his girlfriend.  They announced that they were expecting their first child.  How is that possible?  He was just playing with pogs and insisting I watch pokemon with him just the other day.

Oh right….  that was 15 years ago….

I look at my old man carefully shuffling along with his cane.  He’s wearing a coat indoors because despite the heater he still feels cold.  I still see him as the guy that would be taking long work assignments in Chile or Guatemala or a half-dozen other places.  Working from a field camp in the jungle or in the desert or in the mountains.  The guy who could fix anything round the house or on the car, the one who made all the important decisions for the family.

But that was ages ago.

I’ve done a couple of miles and I’m freely sweating and breathing hard.  Time for a short walking break.  My knee and my hip ache a bit.  A temporary thing, it will pass.

I reflect that not so long ago I would have been arriving home at this hour from a Saturday night out on the Richmond strip.  Sleep till 11 or so and then do little to nothing for the rest of Sunday but play video games and watch TV.  Just waiting for Monday to roll around to start the cycle all over again.

But that too was ages ago.

Normally I would bemoan all the time lost in the past but I know that all of that time has been spent and can’t be retrieved.  Instead I think of the coming year and think of each month and what I want to achieve in that time.

The last couple of years have been about atoning for past sins and beginning to correct the damage that neglect has caused.  43 will be about pushing forward with my life and plotting a new course for my life.

43 will not be just another number.

Posted in: aging, birthdays, life in general

She’s pretty but…

December 12, 2013 8:53 PM , Leave a Comment ,

I have a younger friend on a social network that sends me links of various pop culture stars and attractive women that he has contact with.

For a time I thought that he was trying to set me up with some of them but later on I think he just wanted to get my opinion on the various women that he liked.  Specially since later on he started sending me links to women in their twenties.

The thing is that yes these women were physically attractive and all but I guess over time I have learned the lesson that looks are not everything.  I have lived long enough to know that a pretty face can hide some ugly thoughts and that when it comes down to it that looks don’t last forever and really aren’t all that important when it comes to finding a mate.

Ideally you want to wake up to a partner that you can share your life with everyday and that you can be comfortable with.  Not necessarily someone who shares all your interests and points of view but someone who is similar to you in some respects but can still surprise you from time to time.

I’ve thought about sharing this bit of wisdom with my young friend but I have refrained for two reasons.  Firstly, I’ll be honest,  some of these women are very attractive.  But mostly I think that this is a lesson that he has to learn on his own.  Sure, I can relate this wisdom to him but I’m sure he will either not listen to me or he will feel that he’s still young and has a right to experience life on his own terms.  In that respect and as long as he understands the consequences, I fully support him.

Posted in: life in general, relationships

Withdrawing or engaging life

December 10, 2013 7:50 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It’s easy to get disheartened these days.  We hear so much bad news coming at us from every angle that I don’t wonder when people tell me that they’re distressed or depressed.

It seems that we can’t trust our government or big business.  They seem to be out to spy on you or “get you” and many of the institutions that we have come to rely upon seem to be turning against us in every conceivable way.  If they’re not turning against us they seem to be failing and disappointing us.

One solution is of course to pull into ourselves like turtles and try to block out the world as much as possible.  We can throw up our arms in despair and say that there’s nothing to be done and we have no choice in the matter.  We might as well just go along with whatever life has in store for us.  It’s a very seductive path in that you don’t have to expend any effort to follow this path and you get a moderate reward for following along dutifully.  Not everything that you want but at least enough or almost enough.

The other path is much harder of course.  You can choose to engage life and try to shape it in the ways that you want it to go.  You can look at the inequities of life and try to redress the balance in your favor.  You can plan and work towards that economic status that you want by seizing every opportunity and not squandering your resources on petty things.  You can affect change by supporting those causes that you believe in.  You can talk and try to persuade people to your point of view.

It’s a much tougher path to follow and it doesn’t always lead to success.  Indeed you stand a decent chance of failing if you follow that course.  But let me ask you, even if you fail don’t you think that this is going to be a more interesting path to follow?

Would you rather be bored out of your mind waiting for something to be handed to you, waiting for life to happen to you at its own pace or would you rather go out and make life happen?  Find out how things work, how those people who you read about in newspapers, magazines, and on websites make their lives into what they want them to be.

Which type of life would you rather have?

Posted in: future, ideas, life in general, motivation, thought

The giving season

December 8, 2013 8:35 PM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve never been too big a fan of the whole gift giving thing for Christmas.  Not that I’m Scrooge mind you but individual people are hard to shop for.  Or maybe I don’t have the sense for determining what I should get for an individual.  I don’t know but in most cases it’s a chore for me.  Plus honestly I get this feeling like I’m being manipulated to buy things for people just because the retailers tell me I have to.

What I enjoy more is giving to charity groups and organizations.  The Houston food bank, Ripley house, the Houston Area Women’s Center and the star of hope shelter are local groups that I know are making a difference for people.  I feel my money makes a greater impact here than in other ways.

I also keep in mind some of my online groups that aren’t exactly charities but they do a lot of good just the same.  Groups like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and NPR are things that I enjoy and support.

If you find that you don’t know where to put your money, charity navigator is a great place to start looking.

But really the first and best step is to decide to break the monotonous process of just going to the mall and loading up things for a small group of people.  Give to a greater pool of people this season.  You will feel so much better for it.

Posted in: charity, Christmas

Endearments and PDA

December 6, 2013 7:17 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’m walking in a mall (it happens) and there’s a couple out in front of me.  Holding hands, walking slowly, stopping every few feet to look at something or other in a shop window.  Generally just blocking my path.

I’d go round but I’m carrying a two bags full of gifts and the traffic both ways is ridiculous.  So I’m stuck.  I inadvertently hear some of their conversation and it’s laced with endearments.

“honey”

“babe”

“sweetie”

“pookie bear”

Then they stop and kiss.  Finally I catch a break and I can speed round.

I don’t know where you fall on the whole endearments issue, pro or con.  Generally I fall on the pro side of the issue though not to that level of public display of affection (PDA).  I mean PDA is fine but don’t go way overboard like this couple was.

I mean come on guys, a little perspective and situational awareness.  This is a crowded suburban mall in Houston, Texas.  Not the Pont des Arts in Paris.  I think there is a time and place and an acceptable level of PDA out there for everyone.  But some people forget all that and like to take it too far no matter where they are.

I’ve seen couples do….well.  Let’s just say it wasn’t appropriate for the situation and the situation that they were in.

As to endearments, while I generally fall on the pro side, I think we need to be aware that some words do have multiple connotations and that if you use the wrong word or over use a word then the other person may take offense to it.

“Babe” for example.  Some might feel that this term objectifies and/or belittles a partner.  Specially if it is repeated often and in public.  While the actual intent might be affectionate in nature it may not come off sounding that way to the other person.  The other person may in fact think you are belittling them.

I think it’s something that couples have to discuss at some point of their relationship and not in a confrontational manner but in a way that helps both parties know where they stand on such an issue.  Knowing these things helps couples get closer together rather than driving them apart.

 

Posted in: relationships