The things I expected to do and see,
were not the things I saw and did,
so what’ll become of the things I expect to see and do now?
Did you ever…?
Just wondering, did you ever break all the rules and play all the fools?
Have you been…thunderstruck?
Snowball
D’yer ever go into the grocery store with a plan to buy two or three things, and then say, “Oh, and we need this, too, and we’re almost out of that,” and exit half an hour later seventy dollars lighter, carrying two full shopping bags?
It just kind of snowballs sometimes, doesn’t it?
The Chances
You ever step on a floof’s dinglberry that’s a quarter inch in diameter, and the only one in the room, and wonder, what are the chances of that happening in a two-hundred eighty square foot room at four in the morning?
As Sheldon would say, “We could do the math.”
The Insights
Don’t you love it when you’re writing or working on a problem, and you stop because you’re uncertain about what to do next, and then, as you’re doing something else, it hits you, *bam*, and you get so excited about the insights that you want to immediately get back to it?
Yes, it’s a great feeling, but all too rare.
Mash
Mash is the nickname I’ve given the mail the United States Postal Service delivers to my post box. It’s a truncating and combining of two words, as I’m wont to do. In this instance, the two words are mail trash. By my estimate, my mail is ninety percent mash. Two percent is personal, and eight percent is bills.
Sunshine and Rain
Have you ever been walking through the rain but in sunshine, wearing sunglasses and looking for a rainbow, and think, this could be the perfect metaphor for my life?
Yes, once in a while, like today.
The Best & Worst
Several good results emerge from being able (and maybe allowing myself) to stream music in my brain.
- A power supply is always available. Don’t need to worry about AC/DC, plugging in anywhere, or recharging anything.
- No headphones, speakers, or ear buds required.
- They’re already paid for, so financial expenditures are limited to acquiring new materials, if and when I’m required to pay for them.
- A lot of my favorites are played.
Some negatives do exist.
- It’s hard to turn some songs off.
- The mental streaming algorithms seem to favor repetition.
- It’s a limited library of songs.
And of course, free will is often derailed. For instance, right now I’m streaming this.
The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybody’s out on the run tonight
but there’s no place left to hide
Together Wendy we can live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Oh-oh, someday girl I don’t know when
we’re gonna get to that place
Where we really wanna go
and we’ll walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us
baby we were born to run
h/t AZLyrics.com
It’s not by choice, and it’s been running about thirty minutes. Stream along with me, if you know the tune.
Eighty-five
She was eighty-five, and didn’t want it announced. “I don’t tell people my age. Most people look at you differently when they find out you’re eighty. They assess you with a completely different approach, amazed how well you are, or sympathetic because you’re growing old.”
I understood. I’d felt the same about being sixty.
Novel Day
Ever think about how novel this day is? Similar to other days, it’s influenced by where you’re at on the planet.
The planet is stable but dynamic. Its core is changing, and cooling, affecting the mantle, crust and atmosphere.
The Earth is spinning, and the spin slows every day. Days are longer by 1.7 millisecond over last century. Innit that somethin’?
North of the Equator, the length of our daylight is increasing for the middle latitudes, like these “temperate” areas of Europe and North America where people are freezing their asses off. Sunrise is earlier, and sunset comes later.
While I know that we’re continuing a revolution around the sun, and the change in light is affected by the revolution, rotation, and earth’s axis, I think of the planet as being attached to a rubber band. The planet reached winter solstice. That’s as far as the rubber band stretches, with the rubber band’s stored energy. Then, snap, we head back the other way.
Oh, yeah, and did I mention that our planet’s orbit is decaying, and we’re a little closer to the sun, and the sun is cooling, and will eventually do us in?
Put all these things together, and you see how unique this day is. That’s why you should make it special. There will never be another day exactly like today.
Michael Seidel, writer 