Light posting life is moving too quickly...

   I should not blame Face book for my lack of blogging, but admit when I am thinking away from the computer nothing sticks and I don't have an interesting point of view. If I have nothing to say I should just sit in the corner and keep quiet.

   But family has come to visit the Seattle Tacoma area and us'ns (grandma and papa) and they all move faster than the speed of elders.  Which is wonderful, imagine not having to sit quietly absorbing all the fears of monetary collapse and buy gold and silver now. Or the really critical stuff like which dress designers are going to be making a statement at the inaugural-ball, or the giant list of all those really important folks that are boycotting the event so they can hold up the economy and get the cows milked and horses harnessed and keep the coalfires burning.  There just isn't room for 300 million plus and media coverage is going to be spotty.

Trip to the zoo was great. Saw three tigers, two snow fox, one polar bear, two musk oxen, one reindeer, lots of fish and sharks, four red wolves and a peacock. And finally a rest area to slow down in.

I don't know that the problem is gun violence or immediate communications...

  So, a human male flies to a city, takes his legally carried firearm and ammunition out of his checked baggage loads the magazines and then the weapon and then goes hunting victims. The victims have been conditioned to cower or flee confrontation with killers, the stone age types that would throw stuff beat their chest roar and actually attack the Towering Goliath have been civilized into prey-upon-us targets, or as I said victims.

   There is communication, the public employees are called to handle the ripple in the national fabric of watchers not doers. The killer is disarmed and taken into custody, everyone gets to carry on, unless they don't want to pay the extra fee for carrying on... sorry, that was a poor joke. But as I understand it, the national news and the higher up the reactionary command chain are just getting the news while the wounded are being carted off --- someone says (it is reported) that gun shots are happening somewhere else we must go to lock down... But I don't think they should ever go to lock down. That means the terrorists won, they make the national media and the really important stuff of building a strong nation and community values is shoved off to the side because there is a story here, they have dead in the port.

  That whole story and background have been shelved until someone wants to change the law about transportation of firearms - not realizing that the arms aren't the problem, that killer (what ever his reason) is the problem. Highly educated and highly paid Senators were asking a job applicant about universal background checks today -- again like the government in its great efficiency could really decide in its wisdom which citizens are safe and sane enough to carry a weapon. Having studied History and noted the number of assassinations completed by the professional dedicated body guards and security forces, it isn't the weapon that is the problem. It is the human in every case.

   The message from immediate communications is that someone far away can make the best decision, and if the human isn't on the ground where all is happening, that human can't. They can make their best decision, but Monday morning quarterbacks have never won a Sunday game.

   I begin to believe that communications are driving the need to broadcast and make things happen, and it had better be fast as light, cause that is how fast we can accept the response. I have been many places that I wish the response had happened long before I was in it up to my butt in alligators. There are prophecies that come true, but they always come from God, our problem remains the same - humans will act for or against them, we often pretend that government is our local representative of God in all His Goodness... and that has never been true.

    Now all the people that aren't quivering in fear of terrorists or hidden assassins just waiting for a camera crew or a local with a smart phone with connections to record his killing blow - are having the best life they can, including traveling to destinations they have purchased tickets for, unless some fool government official's best answer is they must be run across the taxi way waving their hands in the air to show they aren't shooting anyone. Sigh, have you seen what is happening? The effect of the terrorist is magnified by the communications and the inept government response. Thank your first responders and medial evacuation teams - they got the victims to medical aid. That was something the government got right.

Birthday, again?

   Not having a school year, nor other timeline for time's passing it seems to come up quicker.

    I decided to pretend I am seventy, when only sixty-nine, because it is my seventieth year upon the planet.  There is too large a cake upon our table with a package underneath I only need the love that comes with the thought of giving me something in celebration, but because I don't need the food nor the gift - I will be happy I was so well thought of and treated, and I will pay the price in my future for their kindness. A hug and a smile always go farther for making my world better, cultural norms based on economic values are easy to measure - but a real hug and a real smile will always be beyond price.

   I am going to shift gears, when will that phrase be gone from conversation? Straighten up the desks and the bookcase in the Computer cave. Just so I have area to set more stuff down until I get it out to be boxed for future consideration. It has to start moving, being a perfection that wants more, the best and don't ever throw away the rest.  I have stuff, too much stuff.  Did I trade love for stuff? I have so much, stuff.   Pile it, catalog it, pack it up and out - to be considered another day, in another world.

    I have been promised a steak dinner, might even sneak a movie in - just because the memory is going to be so much better than more stuff. Happy birthday world, another year with Earl in your history.

   

Now where is that stufff...

  I was looking for something, and couldn't find it, asked for help and didn't find it. Then this morning, early, as I made coffee I found it, put on my reading glasses and read it. As I was shuffling papers I found the Porcupine Patrol patch, amazing, finding one thing after another.

  Went to Facebook and didn't find anything worth noting, seems that the fake news has over taken the national media, the political media, and Facebook is constantly generating fool stuff to check your level out against...

   So, breakfast, pack for YMCA and depart at 0758 because I have stuff to do and it just isn't getting done.

Coffee and contemplation... the final day of my 2016

  So I wake early, old man stuff, and go to putter around. It is cold outside, two bunnies on my walk, I post the bills from last night. And sit down to run through the future and the past, just me and my mind. Then I look at my home owners insurance that I didn't get a bill for, and I call 'Jake' from State Farm - it wasn't Jake it was Nadia and some other company - she has just a hint of an accent from New York metro, street level.  Very cool, professional and helpful, she worked with me and now we are correspondents, can I say I'm in a relationship?

  So much to be thankful for this past year, so much to look forward to in the next year. Having said that I can go to bed now instead of pretending what ever happens at midnight anywhere on the globe makes any kind of difference. But you all may party, celebrate, hug your loved ones and pray for peace - some of us have never stopped since the last New Year.

  Did write out the first two checks of the New Year, post dating them to the 1st of January, 2017. The most difficult task is to not write 2016 tomorrow, unless I am doing a biography.

   There has been a list of resolutions on my wall for the last several years - I was smart enough not to date it.  The three items with specific goals (in health, strength and speed) should be generalized to: good, able to lift body from recliner, and walk away without aid.

   The others are fine:

                 Go with God
                 Husband wife
                 Gentleman warrior
                 Be one that people look forward to meeting not hiding from
                 Cause more happiness than concerns
                 Love more, and more and more... practice making perfect

Pretty good, hope your list isn't too much longer, memory is in short supply. Take care out there and I will see you on the other
side, God willing and the creek don't rise.

Keeping busy, rebuilding the dwelling without touching the foundations...

Nothing is actually being rebuilt; just shuffling dust, cleaning corners, and moving more to a longer term relationship... it has been twenty-one years for some things.

   One of my projects today was to recover an undershelf light so it would work, first a bulb, then a starter, and then rebuild (I had to take it all apart), then take apart again because I got a bit out of order, put it all back together and now it is done and working. Looked like I was on a roll, so my wife tells me to take curtains down for cleaning (when ever I had some time), and I then decided that to really learn anything about my latest computer and Microsofts goodwill, I would have to collapses the laptop and store it...  All part of the reorganization of the dwelling.

   I have the older kindle, and now a kindle paperwhite - please remind me not to ever upgrade, especially as I never learnt all the things I could do on the earlier model, and now have a newer version with more to learn that I don't bother about - because for me it is the reading not the advantages. Sigh, kind of like getting new tools, firearms, automobiles and sexual partners -- just not worth the effort if you remember what you expect from the item.

  Rest time for today, still not finished but I can get those curtains down.
  

The clock glows 3:12, there are two of them...

   Allow me to make some coffee and get back.Okay, that didn't take long, about forty-five minutes, because I had a lamp to fix, the coffee to make, the weight to take, recording, blood pressure, a mask to make, some recycle to move, and many errant thoughts to gather as I grabbed the last piece of pie to share with coffee and the eight medicines and placebos.  I move the mouse mat to exactly where it should be for proper control of the mouse.

    There are two of them, electric radio alarm clocks on top of my chest of drawers. Two different alarms for two different working schedules - serving only one master - TIME. And I keep thinking as I wander the house, full of stuff that has served its purpose but remains exactly where we placed it almost twenty years ago, some change would be good.

   I thank the LORD for a very fine day yesterday, my wife slept a majority of it, between bouts of medicine inhaling and fussing. I spent it finding the top of  my desk and some other stuff that had been buried beneath my better ideas as I procrastinated, or I fooled around over a long past ignoring what I should do for all that I wanted to do. That wouldn't be a problem except that want to do list is like a bubbling volcano of more to come - ready or not - here it is!

   Stop! drink some coffee, lovely stuff, in the evening I switch to hot water in a black mug, because it is the symbolism not the coffee and the pot was emptied long ago. Microwaves, how was life before everyone had them? Oh, we spent time preparing breakfast, tea water, mixing pancakes from scratch, didn't know how much time we were using up. We took different parts of the day to make it better, sharing chores as the nation went instant and prepackaged.  Little craft, art nor love left in the common things - like sharpening knives.  I cleaned my newest pistol, which in current time, isn't new.  Everything you need is on the internet, documented in YouTube.  I am again, armed and so much less than dangerous. The pistol is to always be treated as dangerous. Springs and rods will always fly at the first failure to pay attention to them during maintenance. My machine gun comes to mind immediately. And there are springs behind stuff in many tool rooms.

   I note that time, which we measure and try to save for some reason, dribbles away. And family and love and life isn't hiding when you find that pile of daylight saved, you think it should be but it isn't. What was that phrase? Carpe Dium?  Don't you wish I learned Latin or how to spell? Carpe diem. Seize the Day! Make the most of what you have, at least love the memory more than the dream.

  Well, two hours to write five minutes of thoughts, about how I should have but didn't. There are plans, see the bubbling of more to come, for our near and farther future. But you would be bored listening as they keep coming and we aren't centering well, kind of like standing up and waiting patiently for your mind to move and catch up with the brain at the top of  the tottering fool.

   I wonder as I reread that last line, did I forget to put an r at the end of you to make it your, or did the computer decide I didn't need to say it the way I thought it?  You know I can never be alone in my thoughts, seems like there are four or five programs trying to improve my computer, my life and my loves.  They really don't know me, but they keep trying.  Be good out there, and I will do my best to be so here.  Love