Posts in the “personal” category

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

~ Socrates

This is definitely not my thing, but if you’re interested in eating squirrel meat, head over to Bentonville, Arkansas for the World Championship Squirrel Cook Off (which I learned about while sitting at the Subaru dealership in Boulder a few days ago).

I doubt that most people know it, but authors always enjoy receiving letters of “thanks” like this one. Writing is often a lonely, solitary business, and to hear that your work has helped other people is always satisfying. If there’s a book you’ve read that you really enjoyed, I encourage you to write the author a brief letter of thanks. They’ll appreciate it more than you’ll know.

I drove back from Kentucky to Colorado today following the death of my brother-in-law, and got to enjoy a beautiful view of a full moon for much of the day, including a stop at a rest area in Indiana this morning.

Since my brother-in-law passed away on Monday I haven’t felt like working — and I haven’t had any time to work — but on the rare occasions I’ve thought about work, I’ve thought that Scala is a beautiful programming language, and I’m fortunate to be able to work with it.

After a long illness, my brother-in-law passed away this morning, August 20, 2018. Godspeed, Kenny.

If you’re interested in a simple, pretty, instrumental song, Rain, by Simply Three might fit the bill. I especially like the little bicycle rider guy in the taxi cabi window.

The first time I started to go back to work after moving to Colorado, I ended up with thyroid cancer. Then I went unconscious seven times, had two fake heart attacks, and eventually learned I have a rare blood disease that caused those problems and more. Then I had diverticulitis twice, possibly epiploic appendagitis several times more, and ended up having to have part of my colon removed. Come September I’m not going to look for work, I’m just going to be like Kramer and show up at someone’s office.

As I’ve come to learn over the last ten days, the hard part about diverticulitis isn’t necessarily the first “attack” (for lack of a better term), but trying to figure out what you can and can’t eat after this happens. This image from the Mayo Clinic website shows what you should eat initially. In theory you’re supposed to transition back to a high-fiber diet after a few days, and that’s the part I’m struggling with as I write this on April 16, 2015.

This is a quote from The Mastocytosis Society on their Facebook page. The interesting part for me is that I had almost all of these symptoms for many years, but my doctors and I didn’t know there was a disease/illness known as MCAS:

“We agree that some patients, in the early stages, manage their disease by avoiding triggers. An example would be someone who figures out that they cannot use a hand mixer because their hand and arm itches, so they use a stand mixer instead. They may not realize that this is a symptom of mast cell activation in response to vibration, but may simply avoid hand mixers. There are probably lots of people who do this for a long time until they develop multiple symptoms that affect many organ systems, such as chronic itching, dermatographism, diarrhea, abdominal bloating, reflux, headaches, lightheadedness, brain fog, skin rashes, intolerance to heat, cold, or temperature change, shortness of breath, severe reactions to bee/wasp/other venom stings, sensitivity to odors or chemical smells, reactions to medications, especially antibiotics and opioids, anxiety/depression and inability to tolerate alcohol.”

Yes college football fans, it’s that time of year again: Key & Peele have released their list of names for the East-West Bowl 3, Pro Edition. Once again this year I jotted down the list of names from the Key/Peele video, and included them below.

Key & Peele East/West College Bowl Game #3

But first, the video for their third college bowl game:

If you open your mind for me
You won’t rely on open eyes to see
The walls you built within
Come tumbling down, and a new world will begin
Living twice at once you learn

You’re safe from pain in the dream domain
A soul set free to fly
A round trip journey in your head
Master of illusion, can you realize
Your dream’s alive, you can be the guide but

I will be watching over you
I am gonna help you see it through
I will protect you in the night
I am smiling next to you
(in Silent Lucidity)

(I’ve been having a crazy amount of lucid dreams lately, and as a result I can’t listen to this song loud enough.)

Maybe the sun’s light will be dim
And it won’t matter anyhow
If morning’s echo says we’ve sinned
It was what I wanted now
And if we’re victims of the night
I won’t be blinded by the light.

~ Judy Kay “Juice” Newton, “Angel of the Morning”

Six weeks after colectomy surgery I’m able to eat some solid foods for the first time since October, 2017. I also hope to start practicing yoga again in a few weeks.

For an adult with memory problems (dementia) we’re trying these “You Paint It” kits. The one shown is a collection of forest animals, and they also have dogs and cats, some sort of horse-like characters, and emoji figurines.

If you’re into puzzles and games of math and logic, The Riddler looks like it will be a good book when it comes out.

Apparently 3M, which many people think of as a nice company, has known about the dangers of PFOA and PFOS — which is used to make Teflon and other products — for a long time. Per this story, “Internal studies and other documents show that 3M knew by the 1970s that PFOA and PFOS were toxic and accumulating in people's blood.”

I can’t do most of these yoga poses right now (because of the whole colectomy surgery thing), but here’s a nice list of 12 yin yoga poses to awaken dormant energy and stuff.

Straight out of high school in Illinois I made the decision to go to a college in Kentucky. In high school I had never known anyone with a southern accent, so it was really neat to hear everyone talk. (I had also never seen a revival tent, but that’s a story for another time.)

One guy at school — I think his name was Joe — came from Tennessee. He would later become famous for loudly chasing his roommate down our dorm hallway with a baseball bat at 2am because he thought the roommate was too loud when he came back in after a night out.

Joe’s accent was so thick I could barely understand what he was saying, and one day in something of a Seinfeld skit I ended up going to the shopping mall with him just because I would nod my head “yes” and say things like “uh-huh” when I didn’t understand him. Fortunately this was before he attacked his roommate with the bat, and his roommate had a sweet 1950s car that we borrowed, so it was a fun ride, even if I didn’t understand most of it.

Now I think there’s at least a slight chance that Joe might be my new neighbor. He looks like him, and I can’t understand a word he says. But this time I’m being careful not to agree to anything.

espn.com has a good article about Josh McCown and ‘brain training’. (It’s a good article, I only wish it was a little more specific.)