I have been a member of the YMCA for a bit...

  Originally, I went to work out, jotted my times, weights and exercises down on scrap papers and was content. Did a lot more talking to old men and looking at people, But it was good. Then they introduced me to ActivTrax and I was able to add stuff and log in and see progress and the computer monitored and encouraged me to different exercises and improvements. There was a coach looking through another screen periodically to tweak my performance, ha, ha.
  It didn't do everything, and was clunky and getting behind the folks with handheld Digital Distraction Devices (personal links to Chinese Communists and American NSA and FBI). Don't believe me, ask Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Anyway, the users of such devices looked for an app to link the potential of the YMCA program to the modern folks that never look around, and found something with eGym , and I was encouraged to get the app, log on and work out. I would be modern enlightened and in the best shape ever. Well, maybe it wasn't going to be that great. Under the old system they posted a big hanging board and listed the top twenty members in five different categories, it was prideful to want to be one of the top five in every category, so they dropped that from the ActivTrax days. No one needs public humiliation to motivate performance, you just can't do that to this fool.
  Not being iSmart phone smart, I have an Android by Samsung, I was only using the Calculator and the new eGym app, but it didn't work well, consistantly nor was it helpful. So after three days of frustration I quit. I did send them a support request, but I am done. I can go to the YMCA with my small clip board leave my device on the desk at home and not worry about it. Never thought being part of a herd was a good thing, still don't.
   Liberty with the LORD, I don't need an app to be there and be square.   When you start to realize that the entertainment and news productions on our devices (TV, Cable and such) are improved when one takes out the advertisement showers that interrupt us constantly, it become clear that a steady stream of music for background and a good book will win our hearts and minds before the silly folks.
   See, I am happy again. Take care out there, God and I love y'all... not sure about the rest of 'em.
 

Earl's View, focus on the front sight: New Challenges... another medical adventure... don...

Earl's View, focus on the front sight: New Challenges... another medical adventure... don...:   Just that my last body scan showed NO cancer anywhere (GOOD!) so being a great medical tech the man looking at the scan noted that I have ...

New Challenges... another medical adventure... don't worry nothing wrong yet.

  Just that my last body scan showed NO cancer anywhere (GOOD!) so being a great medical tech the man looking at the scan noted that I have cirrhosis of the liver. Okay, off to see a new doctor about the new information. A consult. Being an old man, I didn't have the doctor's name, nor the address beyond the block it was on, so three building and all three floors of the last building, I was at the correct place on time.
   Fill out paperwork, meet doctor, discuss the potential problem and what tests I should do to keep ahead of my end. No cure, I understand. But also, none of the potential problems with my liver as it is now. So I am scheduled for some tests, a lot of new blood tests looking for any irregularity caused by a failing liver and a fat old man. Lucky me, the tech didn't close until four, so I went over and she got all the tubes and equipment for the draw.
   I sat down, took my sleeves up on both arms, she went for the veins on the left arm after asking which hand I used normally. She got the vein, and started the draw - filling three large, two half size and one tiny one third one. The conversation started getting weird, I was almost sure she was practicing her charms on me, flirting to distract me or something. Now I am so old, I am almost certain there is no way she was flirting, we aren't in the South where it is a duty for young ladies to charm harmless old gentlemen. No we are in the Great NorthWest and women aren't that crazy up here. And I wouldn't know flirting if it hit me... it would have to knock me over and that isn't going to happen.
    I am old and she had finished and she said I looked pretty tough with my sleeves rolled up (???) and then some other stuff that I am sure I didn't hear correctly. But I said good-bye, and went out to see the clerk and get my stuff for my next visit mid March. I guess if I have to do a biography I should just refer the writer to my medical records. I was advised by a YMCA member to check with VA if there is damage, seems Agent Orange is easier if your organs are coming apart since you didn't spend a long time drinking your life away.
   Well, I did twenty miles on a bike ride today, 3.1 miles of rowing and half a mile of walking without a limp and no pain nor tightening in my hip. See, I think I am fine, still smiling that I would think a young woman would flirt with me. Good night, off to soak my feet.

Ah, you wonder why we as a moral people, Americans should support lawful conduct?

  The Wall, TRUMP's WALL, or whatever is only a barrier. Most government actions are barriers, to limit actions of the folks listening. You have noticed that few are obeying? Just check the speed limit and red light runners on the roadways. The drunks and the drugged folks driving, the few that steal property and sell illegal substances or will do strange, intimate or immoral acts for money. One would think that the government could take care of all that without building a wall. And I hold that the government could try, but mostly they just make barriers. Now, I do think the government should stop killings. But then I think that abortion is just medical murder of unloved babies - a high price to pay for failing to stop having sex until you grow up and partner up to raise children. And no one is building a wall to keep those that love babies and children from the murderers of the innocent. Government in all it lack of goodness strikes again. That term or phrase - 'strikes fear into the hearts and minds' - that is probably a tactic of bad rulers or wanna-be rulers, lacking logic or leadership or even salesmanship.
 
     Immigration is needed in Europe and America, because the government's policies are mainly about maintaining power and taxation of subject populations, and not about sound growth of citizens by solid family with a strong moral core and love of their nation and neighbors. Really, a lot of government and professional politicians would like the subject populations to live in fear of neighbors, it gives them authority to build TSA, Homeland (when did we start this 'homeland' reference stuff, sounds like German Fatherland, or Russia's Motherland) Security Agency. More government workers owing professional politicians and posers = POWER.

   Anyway, as long as the immigration system is broken (brought to you by elected representatives, purchased by corrupt capitalists, supplying a population to exploit for their benefit) it will remain broken. Both political parties are exactly the same in the outcome of their share of the legislation, and the lack of enforcement for the laws that exist. They want little good law for enforcement, they are only looking for their own power and have little love of immigrants. They have little love for the really bad people hiding among those immigrant populations, often taking advantage of the criminal enterprises and the rewards in drug running and neoslavery of humans caused by their current broken immigration systems.

    Not good enough to stop the illegal drug running, with full automatic or evil semiautomatic weapons, murders and robberies happening from bad hombres in sanctuary cities and states, the government in its fear of lawful civil and mostly moral persuasion must be dis-armed for their own safety, they might commit suicide or murder innocents like Planned Parenthood, or school children like they were a terrorist in Africa. Now the politicians don't really believe they are targets of shooters, check with those that play softball before sessions and the rascally Democrat that sneaked up to assassinate them in mass, with an evil semiautomatic weapon which he learned about by watching a  Harvey Wienstein Production that wasn't about sex.

   The original purpose of the Constitution was to improve the Federal government but limit it, and it started well, but has been changed - the history has been changed and rewritten, mostly for power, gold and greed. Mostly never for God, the godly nor the good. That is how it is we have come to a souless government, populated by people without honor, all working for the evil darkside of their nature. We can never find our way by following the lust and the lost. The correct directions are written and need to be studied. God bless all our best, we have been forgiven all the rest.

Big day today.... pray for little blessings.. nothing important here, really.

  I get to see my cancer doctor, have more blood drawn then hear his fine medical opinion about my chances of survival. He and I have agreed I will die, in some ways like Samuel Whittemore - maybe eighteen years later, so that is just for knowledge. Then in the afternoon I go to court to see American Justice, not on television, which really isn't as cool as Perry Mason and Judge Judy. In both I am working with professionals to get through a problem and I am not confident they are going to be perfect, hope the LORD makes them competent.

Too cool and so proud

  My sister mentioned wanting to contact me on Skype, so I had to get a new password and sure enough, she didn't answer when I rang...  it is okay, just something I wanted knocked off the procrastination pile.  Alexa really works, except she doesn't live where I dwell, so my son calls to alert me, thinking of which, I need to put skype and Alexa where I will have an attractive background and I can sit alert and interested and participate like the television folks all do...We have the most beautiful orchid and the wrong background for taking its picture. Like smartphone videos and selfies, they just don't get the editing of the professionals and we keep trying. Take my word for it, the flowers are just lovely and on the second or third blooming since I was given them to help my recovery from the cancer surgery so long ago. Nero Wolfe and I appreciate them deeply. God has created more wonders than I can ever encompass.

    Great news that you won't understand, I found a way to muffle and control my hammer toe that caused me so much pain, that I was willing to cut it off with a cold chisel and sear it with a hot iron. Anyway, I could do my exercises and walk with less of a limp, hip is working but squeaking a bit in protest, it likes reclining rather than use - will work on it. The piles of things I haven't gotten to continue to grow, just don't move fast enough, or I can't be bothered... hmm, will have to think about that. Y'all have a wonderful day and do your very best for the glory and the honour.

New Year, and the start of another struggle against the evils of living large...

  I seem to have become a member of a new evil class - fat old white men, you can add all the stuff I have been responsible for throughout History. I have been told I can fix the fat part, and If I paid any attention to the commercials, I can have pills and surgery to fix most of the appearance of OLD...

   Knowing I can control only me, I am working on the weight.. so 3500 calories in a pound of fat, I have about fifty of those in excess, and doing a pound a week will make me leaner by next Christmas. Breakfast is fine, the oatmeal, raisins, sliced almonds, with milk and peach yogurt and coffee. A fine start for every day, and easy to clean up after. Lunch is now a slice of meat, slice of cheese and lettuce or spinach or kale/seaweed on dark bread. one apple and two pickles. For harmony I will allow my wife to decide my evening meal - and I will try to leave food on the plate every dinner... but I will have to struggle against 'starving children in China, and clean your plate, we don't waste food around here'. I waist all my food intake, and that is a waste. It is also life shortening. Share more with others, especially those candy bars that my wife brought home. Get them off the table, or just leave them there as temptation resisted (I did quit smoking all by myself after eight years and being up to three packs a day in RVN and two a day in 1972). So I can establish control of excess, then work on better choices of what my exercising old fat man body needs.

    I expect the better portion of my fight against fat will be in exercise, boring repetitious machine exercises. If my feet got fit, I might increase the walking, but will do what I can now, and that little is really helping, not with the weight loss, but with the stepping out without a pronounced limp.

   The wind knocked the power out here for a few hours, the clocks are blinking at us in the bedroom, another early start for the day ahead, but my wife's alarm is off the grid so we would have awoken on time. I get up to turn off the cable and the lights inside, and to quickly put another 24hour shield up in the game, if they catch me without a shield they will attack to steal my resources - which will cost them dearly, but the big guys always do it, pretending it is protecting everyone else. Just like politicians everywhere. Lies and more lies.

   I have been attempting to use the new app for the YMCA, to record my calorie burn and what I did to produce it. I have started to put a weight training program for upper and lower body, helps make me older but does burn calories also. I found out today, that I cannot enter data from home, so I went back to the YMCA and entered today's efforts, and then I submitted them into my history, and although the date was my grand daughter's birthday, it recorded them on the fourth. Talking to the staff about the new app, they were impressed with my efforts, since theirs haven't been as smooth, and they talk about glitches. I put my phone down too much to be impressed.

   

What happens to the people without children at Christmas...

   Wall to Wall or lack there of news about silly things.... kids are more fun.

   For sure, we were lucky, we have Alexa to contact the kids and grandkiddos, if we only knew what we were doing with it. Then we were off to church and there were many children there, and the Pastor spent much time trying to keep the parents from silencing their children, or at least not worried about it. I wouldn't have mentioned it at all.

  I just don't fit in the box, I know, I must check one or they will check it for me...  truth is very relative, and hardly objective in the end. There were about seventy men and boys facing the light infantry at Lexington April morning. They were not all the same, but they were all standing there because Captain Parker had asked them to. You shouldn't make assumptions, find out who and why.

  The YMCA is running in the red it is reported, the goodness of their hearts and programs mean that many are served and encouraged to come, but many of the staff have their hours cut, or are just volunteers - and there is nothing wrong with volunteers but why does it seem there are so many back office managers when they could all come out to help?

   The YMCA keeping modern, decided that the ActivTrax program wasn't delivering - I was happy, but I am only one. So they went for an app on the smart phone. Well. I put the app on my phone and started dragging it to the YMCA with me, I get five points for using my phone and the barcode on screen to check in! Wow! Now the app hasn't helped me record my workouts, seems I can't touch it correctly, it isn't easy to scroll, to save, to figure out what it isn't telling you, and how to ignore what it is telling you (are you sure you don't want to do that exercise?) Ugh! But today! For whatever reason, when I finished my light workout, I had four exercises to record, and somehow I got them into the machine, saved and they are showing on my history. I have been trained, why do I feel like a pet that isn't getting a treat for my performance?

   Getting ready to switch calendars, except that my wife has her new ones up and using them already - probably miss New Years that way. Don't know. Nah, will sleep through it. I can catch the early fireworks from the other side of the Pacific, the ones over Germany and get a great night's sleep missing the Space Needle shooting off - should be raining here, right?