Posts in the “personal” category

I just ran across this photo of my shadow. I accidentally took this picture while walking on a cold day in Santa Fe earlier this year.

Dateline, 2015: I really like this quote about “paying attention as if your life depends on it.”

One night last spring I laid in bed, unable to move because of severe pain in my chest. Any time I tried to move the pain got worse, so I laid as still as possible. I was laying on my right side, looking at a bedside table, and all I could do was breathe and look at that table, what was on the table, and see the light coming in from outside and shining on the table.

I saw Ender’s Game at the movie theater and thought it was a good movie, but given its dark nature I never expected to watch it again. But after buying a new television — my previous tv was smaller than my iMac, and so old that it didn’t have any HDMI or USB connections — I saw the movie marked down to $5, and it now has the distinction of being the first movie I watched on the new tv. Kudos to Asa Butterfield (probably 15 years of age at the time the movie was made), he pretty much carries the entire movie, with a little help from Harrison Ford and a few others.

This is a favorite “gratitude” quote that I keep in my Just Be “mindfulness reminder” app.

Can you grow the size of your brain through meditation? This image comes from a story titled, “Mind of the Meditator,” in the latest issue of Scientific American.

“We talked because talking tells you things, like what you really are thinking about. But sometimes you can’t find what you’re feeling till all the words run out.”

~ Harry Chapin, Sequel

Back in the day I had a concussion, and for a year or two afterwards I was able to open my physical eyes while I was asleep. Sometimes I could just do that intentionally — I would plan to do it — and other times it happened by accident, as in the case shown in this image.

Maybe someday I’ll learn to paint, but until then, I’ll keep creating images like this one, made from Silas in The Da Vinci Code.

“Is that a dagger or a crucifix I see?” ~ Blood of Eden, by Peter Gabriel

As a brief note, I took a very long time — more than a year — before writing this blog post because I wanted to be sure about what I’ve experienced. But I believe it to be correct, so I’m now sharing it here.

Collagen and diverticula pain

In short, I believe that collagen products like these — which I have bought many times on Amazon, as shown below — help to significantly diverticula/diverticulosis pain:

• Collagen Peptides Powder
• Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides Powder

And when I say significantly, I mean like an 80% reduction in diverticula/diverticulosis pain.

The following paragraphs are a quote from Peter Gabriel, discussing a moment of “enlightenment” that reminds me of the movie V for Vendetta:

I was doing some gigs in Germany with Frank Zappa ... we were supporting Frank Zappa. And his audience in Berlin were very much old hardcore hippies, and they thought I was just cheap shit, and the boos was just ... this rain of stuff being thrown on the stage. It was very humbling.

Next night we’re in another German city and I thought, “Oh shit, here we go”, and we go out there again, and a similar sort of reaction, they hate it. But it wasn’t just the music, it was me, personally, you know, they meant it.

And suddenly I had one of those moments and I thought, “That’s it, I’m no longer afraid.”

You know the thing you’re most scared of when you get on stage is being rejected and booed off, and I suddenly realized I’d been booed off and I was still out there. They didn’t like it any more, but I was still doing it, and they couldn’t stop me.

And I just started giggling. And Tony Levin looked over like I’d gone crazy. But it was a fantastic moment of enlightenment.

One of my uncles was Mousey Alexander. I didn’t know him very well, only meeting him a few times that I can recall. The most I remember about him was (a) watching him play drums at a jazz club in Chicago one time when I was young, and also (b) spending a little time with him on a vacation in New York. (In particular I remember going fishing with him and my dad in New York. We caught something like 40 small fish in an hour or two. Every time we dropped a line in the water we caught a fish in a matter of moments.) I also remembered that he called a lot of people “cat” or a “cool cat.”

I was told that he played on the Johnny Carson show and also played at The White House. I think he’s most well known for playing with Benny Goodman and Clark Terry. If you’re interested you can read more about him at that Wikipedia link, and thanks to YouTube you can also find some of his performances there as well, including this Doc Severinsen “Airmail Special.”

January, 2017: I was laying in bed last night, waiting to fall asleep, and the power went out. As I laid there thinking about how cold it would get, a gray telephone we had many years ago began ringing in the closet. I wondered what it was doing in there.

Instantly the scenery changed and I flashed back to an event I didn’t know about twelve years ago. As I observed it, it made me sad.

Then I kept going back in time, first to one event and then another.

Many years ago I was traveling and stopped at a donut shop in a small town. A young woman was working behind the counter, and I noticed that she had a tattoo of words on her left arm, but the words were upside down to me.

There was nobody else there at the time, so I said something like, “May I ask about your tattoo? It looks interesting.” I’m always fascinated by tattoos, because I assume they’re an expression of a person’s personality.

She moved her arm around so I could see the words, and explained that she gets nervous and panics a bit at times, like when the store gets busy. So at the store she’ll take someone’s order, then turn around like she’s getting the donuts, but look at her arm and read the words to herself as a way to calm down (like reminding oneself of a mantra).

I always thought that was smart, and I think of it myself when my own life gets hectic.

In honor of Rare Disease Day (February 28th), here’s  a today.com story about a woman who has a more severe form of the illness/disease I have. A few quotes:

“Johanna Watkins, 30, is allergic to almost everything and everyone, including her husband Scott, 29. She’s been diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome, a rare and progressive immunological condition.”

“She has a list of 15 foods she can eat and that’s it. Even those foods make her feel ill, it’s just that they don’t kill her. She’s eaten the same two meals for two years.”

Update: In 2016 Johanna wrote this article, What I’ve learned being isolated and allergic to everything.

(The image is from the today.com story.)

A great Harley-Davidson motorycle ad: “If you didn’t have to answer to anyone, what would you do?”

Back in the days of my youth, the town I lived in used to hold Little League tryouts in the first floor of this old white building. In one of the exercises, one of the coaches — my dad — used to hit ground balls to us. All of us wannabe players would stand in a single-file line near the front door and front windows, with the line wrapping along the windows on the right side. My dad would stand at the back of the building with a bat and hit these rubber-coated baseballs at us. We had to field them and then throw them to another coach who stood at the back of the building.

From a very funny Doc Martin episode.

I went to the ER one day late last year with severe chest pain. I exercise a lot and had been eating well, so I didn’t think I was having a heart attack, but the pain just kept getting worse, so off I went.

(These are some notes that I originally wrote in May, 2014.)

The next step in the process of treating my papillary thyroid cancer is a radioactive iodine treatment. I’ll be going through this treatment process in a few weeks, and this is what I know about the process today.

The radioactive iodine treatment process

From what I’ve learned from my endocrinologist, the process goes like this:

I recently went into a Subaru dealership to buy a 2015 Subaru Forester. I currently live in Colorado, and may move back to Alaska, so it’s important to me to have an all-wheel drive vehicle for either winter experience. Although I went into the dealership to buy a Forester, I ended up buying an Outback. As a result of that experience I thought I’d share what I learned about the two Subarus.

Body style

The obvious difference between the two vehicles is that the Forester is a small SUV, while the Outback is more of a station wagon, though some people say it looks like a smaller SUV. I went into the dealership to buy a Forester because my current car is (was) a 2006 Toyota RAV4, and I wanted another SUV style vehicle. But, in my opinion, I think the Forester body design/style is dated. From a purely design standpoint, I think my RAV4 looks much nicer than the Forester. This became further apparent to me when I saw a Forester parked next to an Outback.

Interior

The Forester interior is very plain. My old RAV4 looks much more finished, and the Outback interior is much nicer than both of those vehicles. The Outback interior is nicer, more modern, and more finished than the Forester. I’m not sure, but it seems like Subaru has put a lot of design money into the Outback, and very little into the Forester.

Ride

I took two test drives of the Forester, and found the ride to be rough and bumpy, like I’d expect with a Jeep. By contrast, my RAV4 had a much smoother ride, and the Outback has a nicer ride than either the Forester or the RAV4. (I also took a test drive of a Honda CR-V, and the Outback ride is comparable to the CR-V.)

Interior size

I thought the Forester would be larger than the Outback, and it does indeed have more headroom than the Outback. But the numbers aren’t that different. The Outback has 108.1 cubic feet of passenger volume and 35.5 cubic feet of cargo volume, while the Forester comes in at 108.3 and 34.4 Despite the Forester being a taller vehicle with more headroom, I think the numbers work out this way because the Outback is a little wider and longer than the Forester.

Engine and gas mileage

The base engines in both vehicles are the same. Neither one is fast, but they get the job done. The Forester is estimated to get 32/24 mpg, and the Outback is estimated to get 33/25 mpg.

All wheel drive

My understanding is that both vehicles have the same all wheel drive (AWD) systems, but the Outback also has an additional XMODE that can be used for climbing and descending dirt/gravel roads. I think that’s an option on the Forester.

Weight and towing

The Outback feels like a much heaver vehicle, but a little research shows that the 2014 Outback had a weight of 3,423 pounds, which is only slightly greater than the 3,296 pounds of the Forester.

There is a huge difference in the towing capacity though: Edmunds shows the 2014 Outback has a towing capacity of 2,700 pounds, which is much higher than the 1,500 towing capacity of the Forester.

Price

The Outback is about $2,000 more expensive than the Forester for each model level. (Subaru refers to their model/pricing levels as Standard, Premium, and Limited.)

Summary

Since I had the RAV4 for eight years, I decided that it was worth an additional $2,000 to have what I thought was a nicer vehicle for hopefully the next 8+ years.

The biggest issues with the Forester for me was the significantly rougher ride. Several times a year I make very long road trips, and I think my bodily organs would all be arranged after a 10-15 hour drive in the Forester. The body styling/design was another significant drawback for me; I didn’t like the idea of buying a car whose design looked older than my 2006 RAV4.