Lost in Space: My Brain, Doing

Do this exercise every day.
On Mondays & Thursdays, do these exercises.
On Tuesdays & Fridays, do these exercises.
On Wednesdays & Saturdays, do these exercises.

Doesn’t seem too complicated, does it? Yet how impossible it proved to mentally add the “every day” exercise to the applicable daily list from the trainer. I’d stagger down to the basement, peer enthusiastically at the day’s delights, and launch. That exercise sitting quietly at the top of the page, unattached to any list, never got done.

I understood how to do the exercise; I even understood the rationale for doing it every day. In the immortal words of Alfred P. Doolittle, I was willing to do it, I was wanting to do it, I was waiting to do it. Yet day after day, I failed to do it. Continue reading

Posted in Language and Communication, Management and Work, Thinking Broadly | Tagged | 4 Comments

Peace that Passes Understanding

Couples: twenty-ish and forty-ish. Professional photographers with tripods and flashes on poles. Singletons on their own with phone cameras. Singletons walking dogs. Groups of young women. And one senior amateur photographer.

I expect there are sound psychological reasons — maybe even sound evolutionary reasons — to explain why people of all ages and types gravitate to the seaside, even or especially at sunrise and sunset. I don’t know what they are, nor do I need to. This is a case where I don’t need to understand the phenomenon/experience, except insofar as it might help to replicate it where there is no seaside.

4-photo collage of Surfside Beach at sunrise

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Feeling Clearly, Photos of Landscapes | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Begin the Boudin

Your destination is on the left.

Well, so she says, but it is not so. Booting our way across the southern USofA along Interstate 10, we pause for lunch every day, relying on our in-car GPS to direct us to fast places for foodlike substances. After all, every day we have miles to go before we sleep.

6-photo collage of GPSscreens from in-car navigation Continue reading

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Through Space | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Pelicans and Cormorants, Gilbert AZ

American pelicans: I’ve seen them many times at Lockport Dam. I’ve even featured them in a video.

But I had never seen them at the Gilbert Water Ranch. So although I have lots of photos of big white birds standing around and checking the undercarriage, I took a few more. Continue reading

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Fauna | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Never Say Never

You might not think that a package weighing less than 8 grams could cause much trouble. You’d be wrong.

I, on the other hand, would be right, having had the benefit of being wrong several times on this exact point many years ago. I speak, of course, of the verdin, as does Wikipedia, here. Continue reading

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Day-to-Day Encounters, Photos of Fauna, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Gadget Faces

This week a family member introduced me to the art and delight of captions on face photos, raising this pursuit to a new level. Here’s what that would do to a post from last week.

Accidental face on a space heater,made by two dials and an "On" light

I think I’m gonna throw up.

And here’s one from this week.

Face on top of salad spinner

Is it just me or is the room spinning?

 

Posted in Laughing Frequently, Photos of Faces | Tagged | 2 Comments

Ebony and Ivory

That title is just to avoid having to do “Black-necked Stilts #47.” Oh the shame.

On my last day in Gilbert for this snowbird season, I went for a farewell tour of the Water Ranch. Most of the birds had moved on, but there were still some stilts hanging about to remind me that I never tire of seeing them or of taking photos of them. The good things in life never get old. Continue reading

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Beep-Beep Magic

The pile of sand is about 25 feet high, 20 feet wide, and maybe a city block long. It’s been here for a while, as shown by the mature (not to say wizened) creosote bushes growing along one side/edge, and the 15-foot-high conifers along the other. Nothing in the desert grows quickly.

2-photo collage showing growth habit of creosote bush in desertOne side of the pile borders the walking path that runs through Queen Creek Wash; the other borders a farmer’s field — one of the many fields dotting Gilbert’s residential areas in defiance of any rational (i.e. Canadian-style) zoning. Continue reading

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The Next Step

If you’re coming late to this party, John Robson has an amusing recap here.

This week, the Prime Minister expelled Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus. As always, opinions vary on the import of that.

They knew what kind of party they wanted to be a part of from the moment they accepted their nominations; indeed, were they not the type of person that party attracts they would not have been recruited for it. It is the kind of party, and person, that unquestioningly puts loyalty to party before principle — and mercilessly punishes those who do not. – Andrew Coyne, National Post (writing before it was clear whether the decision was the Prime Minister’s or a caucus vote)

Jody Wilson-Raybould’s and Jane Philpott’s place in or out of the Liberal caucus matters less than most of the two-month SNC-Lavalin drama. A parliamentary caucus is not a rules organization, it’s a trust organization. Liberals no longer trusted the two former ministers, in part because clearly neither trusts the Prime Minister. So out they went. How other people organize their clubs is their concern. – Paul Wells, Macleans

Continue reading

Posted in Politics and Policy, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 6 Comments