Category: Life

So last week, we encountered a couple of snakes in a couple of different habitats.

When we went to Dogwood Canyon, we saw this snake sunning itself on one of the stone bridges. Not on the part we walked on, fortunately.

To me, it looks like a rat snake of some sort, but I’m not sure. To be honest, the snake flashcards I created don’t really nail a snake if it’s in a different position. I know that lined snakes are okay, but the venomous snakes around here have diamond patterns or jagged ring things. So we gave this guy plenty of room.

When we got home on Wednesday, we found this:

That’s easy to identify; that’s a prairie ring-necked snake. Bigger than the one we saw in April. And dead, so the cats got it. We did have someone tending to the cats, but it’s good to know they could hunt up something to eat in the family room if they needed to.

Although maybe “easy to identify” might be a misnomer; I had the boys look through the snake flashcards, and the oldest came up with Northern Red-Bellied Snake. So maybe the flashcards are pretty worthless.

Maybe I should have made up an acronym like Snake Out, Snake In (SOSI) to riff on like , but that seems like work.

So yesterday was the last day of my vacation, at least the weekday portion, so I took the boys on what has been our traditional outing: We go bowling, and then we go to the nature center.

We’ve done this summers when they’ve not been in “camps” (read: temporary, themed day care without the stigmatic name) or on holidays like MLK Day or Presidents’ Day. One summer, we did participated in the local “Kids Bowl Free” promotion which gives registered kids under 18 two free games of bowling as long as they’ve got a parent with them paying some freight. So we went, what, every week? Twice some weeks? A lot. But my boys didn’t get into bowling really because it requires skill and patience and taking advice for improvement. But we got to know Cathy and June at Sunshine Lanes a bit. But that was, what, four years ago? Our visits have tailed off to once a year to the bowling alley. And less to the nature center.

But yesterday, we rekindled the tradition. And, hopefully, started a new one.

I got a turkey. Which is three strikes in a row. To start the game.

Jeez, am I bragging again after showing off conspicuous consumption again? I never can tell how insufferable I might be to others, which is my blessing and my curse. But it’s my blog. So you hear about my turkey in.

I’ve never thrown three strikes in a row before. And I might not again. As a matter of face, I did not even pick up a spare the rest of the game until the tenth frame (and then threw a strike on the extra ball), so I ended up with a rather pedestrian 143 on a game where I had a perfect 300 game going through three frames.

At any rate, we went to the nature center next. The building with the animal and ecology exhibits was closed yet as were the bathrooms (which made me glad that I went at the bowling alley). We did the whole loop, a little over two and a half miles, and as we walked along the boardwalk above a glade, a bird crossed the path ahead of us and joined a friend right off the side of the boardwalk, and they stayed beside the boardwalk as we passed.

Wildlife at the nature center is very tame; the deer also are not afraid of people at all.

At any rate, all I wanted to say is that yesterday, I turkeyed in and I turkeyed out.

But, as you know, I also went to the antique mall, so it’s not factually accurate, but I did want to make the gag.

Sorry to make you feel old, old man, but here’s something you’d have to explain to kids these days, and it might not have occurred or arisen until after you were an adult.

Ready?

Roaming charges on a cellular phone.

This week, we took a little trip down to Branson

☑	Drive through a BLM protest We drove down Highway 76 and the protest on Sunday as we were looking for something to eat. Protesters did not outnumber counter-protesters by much, and the parade of pickups greatly favored those with stars-and-bars. Branson police kept it under control, though, and we drove through it again as it was ending.
☑	Go to Calvin’s Books. Which did not burn down on Sunday as part of the protest (it’s next door to the store being protested). As you might expect, you’ll see what I bought there in a later post.
☑	See a country and western singer in a cafe at 10am on a Monday while eating breakfast. One of our vacation “traditions” is that Daddy, now Dad (or sometimes “bro” and “dude”), takes the boys on a walk so that my beautiful wife has a little time to herself. This ramble took us “around the block,” which was not that far, actually (about a mile and a half out and back). But the out part of our route took us to a cafe. As the mistress d’ seated us, I heard loud country music. And then someone greeting us. A singer was on stage at 10am on a Monday. Uptown Cafe has live performers for every meal and a show in the evening. So we tipped Jackson and bought his CD. And we came back on Wednesday for the lunch performer. A number of the restaurants in Branson have performers who come in and work for tips, singing over background tracks on a computer. I respect their hustle and their belief in their art and tend to tip them and buy their CDs whenever possible. I’m also the guy who puts a couple bucks in a busker’s hat or guitar case no matter how good the performer is. But Jackson was pretty good.
☑	Start Christmas shopping. On the way back from breakfast on Monday, we stopped at a craft mall and bought a couple of Christmas gifts which I’ll wrap up and forget what they are by Christmas. Which gives me the same surprise and joy for the gifts I give that I get for the gifts I receive. Also, I bought the boys–a little peaked from their half mile walk from where we had breakfast–each a piece of beef jerky bigger than a page of legal-sized paper, which they consumed in the half mile walk back to our rooms.
☑	Hiked Dogwood Canyon. We went to Dogwood Canyon which is about an hour south of Branson. It’s a park of sorts, a valley with a stream running through it, a couple of springs, and several water falls that the owner of Bass Pro Shops bought and turned into a parkish experience. You pay to get in, and you can rent bikes or take Segway, horseback, or tram tours of it, or you can walk the length of the canyon which is three and a half miles or so and crosses the Arkansas state line. You know, when I was young, I dreamed of being so wealthy that I could buy 10,000 acres like this for a retreat. I don’t think I ever dreamed of being wealthy enough to buy it and open it to the public. I guess I’ll be content with being wealthy enough to buy all the used books I can carry at any one time. Also, “hike” is a bit of a misnomer as the path is paved the whole way. So it was a long walk more than a hike.
☑	Visit the cat cafe. By Wednesday, we were four days without cats, so we not only attended a show called Amazing Pets, but we also visited Branson’s Mocha and Meows cat cafe which was around the corner from the place we were staying–the boys and I passed it on our walk on Monday. And, like Chekov says, if you see a cat cafe on day one, you’ve got to go to it by day three. We did not come home with any extra cats.
☑	Read lots of books on a balcony with a different vista. We were on the first floor, so it really wasn’t much of a balcony, but the buildings are arrayed on the hillsides so that you have a view from any room. And I read three books in four nights which is not bad. Yes, you’ll hear about those later, too.
☑	Go for a hilly run. Branson is a little deeper into the Ozark Mountains than we are, so it’s much hillier–I am not sure that there are any flat spots that have not been made so to hold development of some sort or another. But I said I wanted to take a little run on the hills just to say I did, and Wednesday morning was going to be my last opportunity for it. So my youngest son and I did a little more than a mile around the block and up the hills (and down the hills). It wasn’t too bad. It would have been better if I were an athlete.
☑	Leave early. Branson is close enough that we’re occasionally tempted to decamp early. If we don’t have anything planned for the last evening in our resort, we might just sit in the resort room reading and whatnot, packing up and planning an early departure. When this happens, I’ll say, “Let’s just go home now,” and we’ll throw our gear in the bags/in the truck and get home an hour later. It gives us time to unpack, start some laundry, and relax a bit before sleeping in our own beds with our own cats (although having to explain to them why we smell like a cat cafe). Actually, the cats will emerge from hiding at different times when we get home–they hide from the cat sitter and get weirded out when we’re gone for any period of time. We can’t do that with flying destinations or longer drives, but we can do it when we’re in Branson–and we sometimes do.

Which leaves me with two days of vacation left. To fritter away on blog posts like this one, book reports, and wrapping the Christmas gifts we bought.

I’m A Stencil:

This is cute and clever. Kevin Parry made a stop-motion video with just a water hose sprayed at a wall -with him between them. Here’s a look at the process.

In the 1980s, we were always on the verge of a total nuclear war annihilation because we had a Republican president (the fear and promotion thereof died down when we got the second Republican president of the decade).

Although perhaps children of other earlier decades also would have thought the same. Ray Bradbury’s 1950 story “There Will Come Soft Rains”, collected in 1950’s The Martian Chronicles, includes this vivid passage:

Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titantic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hand raised to catch a ball which never came down. The five spots of paint- the man, the woman, the children, the ball – remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer. The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

Hey, the way 2020 is going, a nuclear exchange almost seems likely. Although I’d bet on India/China rather than anyone involving the U.S. But these are strange days indeed.

I had an idea for a similar story about the same sort of thing called “The Last Span Falls” about the last bit of a bridge falling sometime in the far future. I never got around to anything but the title and conceit, though, the bad habit of which leaves me with only three books in print-on-demand in 2020.

The entrance to Hy-Vee:

Reusable bags not allowed!

Inside the entrance:

Reusable bags for sale!

Just don’t use them here.

Today, Kim du Toit echoes sentiments I have expressed:

I’ve never been a fan of “Cloud”-based entertainment, whether literature or movies, because it’s always seemed too easy for the “Cloud” to remove stuff that you’ve paid for — Kindle books, Amazon movies, etc. — at their own discretion / whim. I don’t care that my well-filled bookcases take up a great deal of space in my apartment, or that they’d be a pain in the ass to move should I decide to live elsewhere; I bought them, they’re my property forever, and nobody can take them from me. Ditto movies. I have a large number of DVDs of the movies I love and can watch over and over again — not too many modern ones, because today’s movies largely suck — and like my bookcases, my DVDs are eternal. (I have a brand-new-in-the-box multi-format DVD player sitting in a closet in case the existing Philips gives up the ghost at some time in the future, and ALL my computers come with DVD players, just to be on the safe side.)

As you know, gentle reader, I still have videocassettes to watch, so I even have backup videocassette players.

Well, Brian J., did you do something radical in the fitness department this weekend? I mean, last weekend, you did a duathlon that kicked your butt.

Gentle reader, this week and weekend, I took it easy. It’s the first weekend in a month not dictated by a duathlon of any sort, so I took it easy. Next weekend, I have a 5K (that takes me past the Monte Crist subdivision). So perhaps I will take a run some morning or afternoon this week to remember I can do this sort of thing.

Today in the News-Leader, Steve Pokin talks to a local runner that I actually do recognize, and she says:

To race well, Laughlin tells me, it hurts. The body feels discomfort when demands are made on it mile after mile.

“I have a lot of determination,” she says. “I love competition. My goal every race is to see how much suffering I can endure and still maintain joy. Because if there isn’t any joy in it, I don’t want to do it.

“I think there is a lot of suffering in life — a lot of tough times. Can we find a way to maintain joy in the same space as suffering? If we can do that, life rocks.”

Yeah, I kind of think that’s why I run even though I hate it. At the end of last week’s duathlon, I was not that keen on riding a bike, either.

So what did you do this weekend, Brian J.? you might ask.

Well, I slept poorly, again, both nights. Which means I slept later than I would prefer on Saturday, and I got on the lawn mower at about ten o’clock, and….

(Event name suggested back in 2016.)

Let’s face it, if I don’t have a new certificate or t-shirt at the end of the weekend, I feel as though I’ve wasted my time. So I mowed the lawn for four hours and I went to the grocery and gas station, and then it was dinner time.

Sunday, we went to church for the first time in months, but instead of an 8:00 service, we went at 10:45. So before, I puttered and did light chores, and when we got home a little after 12, I ate, snoozed a bit, did a bit of yard work, wrote some blog posts, and then it was time for dinner and bed time again.

Perhaps I need to treat or think of every day as I do a vacation day: We have one great adventure or destination for the day, and the rest of it I have permission to relax, read, and whatnot. If that’s the case, I’m marking down two days of yard work as the pinnacle of the achievement and activity.

Meh, that probably won’t work long term unless I go about accomplishing actual things.

On Friday night, the oldest boy stayed at a friend’s house, so the younger, my movie-watching buddy, and I watched a film. He’s always more patient with films; the older boy fidgets, wanders in and out of the room, and offers his commentary track atop what’s happening–but often needing to ask what’s going on because he’s been in and out. The youngest, though, will watch the movie, so it’s a treat to watch a movie with him.

I selected George of the Jungle.

I don’t know when I picked this up at a garage sale; likely almost a decade ago when I was planning on watching movies with my children. Frequent movie nights have not materialized at Nogglestead; instead (no pun intended), we watch a movie every month or so. The last was Tron the end of last month. So I guess they’re picking up as we’ve also watched Ben-Hur and Clash of the Titans since the spring.

At any rate, I have a passel of kids’ movies that we never watched, and the boys are aging out of them. The youngest rankled at the trailers ahead of this film because they’re for Disney cartoons.

And not just any cartoons; this film was on a videocassette released in late 1997, so they’re trailers for Disney cartoons that Disney was only making available on video for a limited time. Do you remember that they did that in the late 90s? You could only get Peter Pan in stores during a 45-day window? They did that to really goose the sales. I’m not sure if it worked, but 23 years ago was a very long time.

When this movie came to video, I had been dating the woman who would become my wife for a matter of months. I surely wasn’t thinking about watching children’s movies from the era with my children in the world that is 2020.

As far as the movie itself goes, it has Brendan Fraser doing the Brendan Fraser thing. You know, like he did in Bio-Dome and Bedazzled which I just mentioned seeing in the theatres. I have a certain appreciation if not affection to the types of characters he played in those days. I don’t know how much I actually identify with them, but I had fun watching them. Although it looks as though he has been making movies this whole time, but nothing I’ve seen since, oh, The Mummy Returns.

George of the Jungle was originally a short-lived cartoon from 1967 that made mock of Tarzan (which had a network television series running concurrently with the George of the Jungle cartoon). I knew of the Tarzan television series because it was in syndication in St. Louis in the 1980s. But the George of the Jungle property has punched above its weight, as the theme song was covered by “Weird Al” Yankovic in the 1980s:

This was not used in the film, however, as the theme was done by The Presidents of the United States of America who apparently were not exclusively a Disney property named after the Hall of the Presidents at Disney World (which was my first guess).

George of the Jungle also had a direct-to-video sequel and was rebooted as a Canadian cartoon in 2006 with a second season in 2016. So it’s due for a reboot soon especially if Disney owns its rights or can get a hold of them.

I piped the video directly to my television from the VCR instead of going through out twenty-year-old receiver, and the video was very clear indeed. The receiver has been having some trouble handling sound from the video sources, so I’ve taken to routing them to the television directly. It will be a shame to replace this receiver, as it has old timey connections that can handle our VCRs and old computers. I fear replacing it as I don’t want to lose that connectivity. But I fear I shall have too, soon. But that’s unrelated to what I was talking about. Watching what my boys would call an “old” movie on an “old” media format, and musing on things other than the content of that movie.

So I saw this on my cousin’s feed the other day:

(Not that cousin but rather her sister, who often posts enlightened Buddhist- and Hindu-flavored posts but lately has given over to celebration of the current troubles and their themes.)

At any rate, I am no biblical scholar, but, come on. Let’s look at some whities in the Bible:

• The Persians, who originally migrated from the Caucasus. Does that sound like the word Causcasian to you? It should.
• The Galatians were a Celtic people.
• Pontius Pilate was likely from Central Italy.
• I would say Timothy, but he was of a Greek father but Jewish mother, but in the new old one-drop accounting, this means he was not white. Also note that in this ethnography, people of Jewish origin are no longer white, but I think in some accountings, they are still white or not POC. I get so very confused.
• Various and sundry Romans and roman soldiers.

I am not a Biblical historian, but I can certainly think of a number of instances I can come up with off the top of my head where the Bible might have included a white people put this twee claim (from a church no less!) into doubt.

I don’t know why this rankled me so much. Perhaps because this kind of “truth” is passed around by people who probably don’t believe in the Christian faith to rebuke those who do and disagree with the meme-passers on current thought.

You could argue that most of the “white” people in the Bible are bad guys, I suppose, but it’s pointedly from the time of Paul onward designed to be a religion for Gentiles who are sinners, so perhaps if you went down that road of argument, you wouldn’t really have a point.

Why do I argue with memes? Don’t I have anything better to do than get outraged on the Internet? To be honest, it’s hard to be on the Internet now and not get incensed. Even on Facebook. Even on LinkedIn, which used to be a professional Web site but which is also currently filled with political content. Eesh, pardon me whilst I close my browser again.

On weekends in May, I did a number of virtual duathlons through the local multisport club that I belong to.

I’ve also posted some glib things on social media in an attempt to win some Ozark Multisport Club swag.

That day, I did a 1 mile run, a 11.64 mile bike ride, and a 3.1 mile run (a 5k).

I mentioned that the four routes out of Nogglestead are:

• Hilly.
• Very hilly.
• Alpine.
• Autobahn. Also, hilly.

Which is true: If you leave Nogglestead to the south, you can cut over to the smaller state highway on a farm road, and it’s only hilly. If you continue south to where the farm road intersects with the state highway, it’s very hilly. And kind of like an M.C. Escher drawing. You go up a hill and around a corner and up another hill and up another hill. To be honest, I’m not sure where you actually go downhill in that route. The third route is north out of Nogglestead; in addition to starting out with a couple of rolling hills, they’re followed by a couple of really large hills with a small valley in between them. The valley is more like a gulch. And if you go west out of Nogglestead, you get the farm road leading to Republic, which is narrow, curvy, high-speed, and hilly.

I have mapped out a number of routes, landmarks, and distances for runs. If I run to the farm road to the south and back, it’s a mile; if I run south to the church and back, it’s a very hilly two miles; if I run to the pipeline pumping station in Battlefield and back, it’s two miles and less hilly; if I run to pizza joint in Battlefields and back and once around the yard, it’s a 5k (3.1 miles); if I run north but turn at the road in the bottom of the gulch and around, it’s an alpine 3.1 miles and a very bad idea; once around the block across the street is 4.2 miles; if I run south to the state highway and take it through Battlefield to the gas station and come back around and down the private lane just south of here and out to my driveway, it’s 6.2 miles (a 10k).

The bike routes are a little dicier. I can use any of these loops to add mileage, but I really don’t have any good routes to the farm roads and state highways out west. The alpine route plus a high-speed, little shoulder state highway or the aforementioned hilly autobahn route. So I’ve ridden into town for my routes. Which includes some torturous hills you don’t notice in a car.

At any rate, I did the last of the OMC duathlons the last weekend in May:

I don’t think I take multisport competitions as seriously as some people do, but apparently, I take them too seriously.

So that last weekend of May, I did a 5k on the hilly route, a ride into town and back, and the alpine 5k route listed above (a run/walk situation instead of a true run).

Both of those efforts were about the length of a sprint triathlon’s bike and run component, and the last was the run equivalent of a 10k. So I felt prepared for this past weekend’s activity: An Olympic-length duathlon.

Some of the people I work with put a new discussion group on the in-house collaboration software about running and biking and multisports. Apparently, a number of my co-workers are into it, too. A couple weeks back, a number of them did a 17 mile virtual duathlon. This time, though, it was a “Double Down” with about double the distance. A 6.2 mile run and a 24.8 mile bike ride. No sweat. I was ready, ainna?

Yeah, maybe not.

I didn’t sleep well on Friday night, partially concerned about the event. I didn’t eat well before hand, probably. I did hydrate pretty well, which is often a mistake I make, going a little dry because I don’t want to have to urinate during the race, and I cannot drink while running or biking–if I am breathing hard and swallow air while drinking, it’s a bad, bad thing.

My route out was the very hilly route, and it killed my mindset very early. I got right past the church, about a mile into the run, and I was already walking. And I walked a lot of it. Still, I ended up with a run/walk of about 1:15, which isn’t bad. Then I got on the bike, and I did the same route. It was less bad on the bike, but my route took me well into town, and then through a subdivision to add mileage, and then back. To make up the mileage, I went back down and around the very hilly route again to make my mileage. And I had to walk my bike up a hill.

I almost finished; it turns out, I did 24.73 miles instead of 24.8. I thought I had to do 24.2–I confused the tenths place with the 6.2.

I was one of the first three finishers of the event, and I was in last place for a long time. Watching the results come in on social media, I was an hour or more behind everyone on the bike. Because I went through town, because I’m on a crossover bike instead of a racing/road bike (and this gap will be exposed more with longer distances).

So I did not enjoy the event, and I did not do well. It took almost four hours out of Saturday–but I got an early start, so when I passed the pizza place, I could not stop in to place an order for delivery because it wasn’t even open yet.

Often, a triathlon will knock me out for the day, but this event really killed my energy and mindset for the whole weekend. I didn’t get anything else done but a bunch of reading.

So perhaps I should look back on the weekend and reflect fondly on all the reading I got to do. But reading does not feel like an accomplishment; reading is more akin to recreation and reward.

Ain’t that a pip? I completed an event that a lot of people cannot, but I’m not proud of it. As I’ve said before, I suffer from a mindset that says If I can do it/have done it, it’s easy; if I haven’t done it, it’s impossible.

At any rate with the completion of this event, I might be done with the road running for a while. Except I have a 5k coming up in a couple of weeks, so perhaps I and the boys should run a little before then. And my April triathlon is going to be rescheduled to some point in the near future along with four weeks of the training class ahead of it. And the Tiger Tri is coming up in August, and the boys and I don’t want to miss it.

As Shaman’s Harvest says, “I’m a glutton for punishment; yeah, it makes me feel alive.”

Although they probably didn’t include a semicolon in the actual lyrics.

I might have mentioned that the news lately has me on edge, and some personal changes on the horizon have me a little on edge, and, face it, I’m still not getting the exercise I need.

But one thing calms me: Cleaning my pool. It gives me a chance to get outside, and I can watch the clouds in the sky and the ripples in the water while listening to the sounds of brushing the precipitant chlorine crystals. I think I would do it every day if I could. The first part of the job is backwashing and rinsing the filter, and I empty the skimmer baskets while doing so.

Yesterday, the first one I emptied had the usual leaves, bugs, and a dead frog in it. I dumped it out of the fence and saw something I couldn’t immediately identify. It was kind of round, patterned, and a little bigger than a fifty cent piece (which might not be helpful to you damn kids, but it’s not very big). I studied it, wondering if it was one of the boys’ pool toys that I’d have to go out and retrieve. As I studied it, it rocked a bit and turned over. It was a baby turtle, and it beat tiny feet away from the pool area.

Then, at about five thirty, a doe whitetail dear brought her fawn across our back yard, and the fawn was smaller than a dog. I managed to get my wife to the back windows in time to see it running off into the neighbor’s pasture, which provided her with a bright spot for her day as well.

You know, I’m not an especially cuddly person, but a couple glimpses of the wildlife as well as the time outside serves me better than long days in front of the computer. Unfortunately, they don’t pay as well.

It’s a common question in the St. Louis area, and if you asked Bob Behnken, astronaut aboard the International Space Station, he would answer Pattonville.

That’s in Maryland Heights, about 1 mile walking from our home in Casinoport and where our children would have gone if we hadn’t moved to Old Trees and then Nogglestead. Of course, we moved about a month and a half before we had our first child, so they never lived in the school district. But still, he’s from the old neighborhood. Well, one of the many.

So I saw this in the grocery the other day:

And I thought, Firefly Star Wars? What is this, one of those scrambled science fiction memes?

I mean, everyone knows Firefly and Star Wars are different.

Or would know that if any of the damn kids remembered that television series which is seventeen years old now.

But I guess it’s not as funny as the mash-up as Firefly is a children’s electric toothbrush, and this set has Star Wars characters on it.

Never mind; it only amused me.

Well, not really. But my youngest was bored and came into my office whilst I was trying to work (and not just write twee things for this blog, gentle reader), so I told him to shred the papers that my beautiful wife had brought in for document destruction.

“Do you have to pay sometimes?” he asked.

The shredder has a little slot where you can put your old credit cards in for destruction, but I don’t tend to use it as I prefer to grind my old credit cards exceedingly fine.

But the lad had only seen that sort of iconography on places where you use a credit card to pay for things.

And in this world of interconnectedness of things and pay-as-you-go models, perhaps it would not be at all surprising to have to pay extra to use something you’ve already bought. As a matter of fact, in this third decade of the millennium, that’s the normal for technology.