Something That Made Me Smile, June 15, 2017

So I’m at Walmart, getting the large staples like cat food, water softener, and charcoal (I’ll share the recipe with you sometime) and some smaller incidentals. When I get these big bags of things, I set them standing up in my cart, upside down so that the UPC codes are exposed for easy scanning.

I finish my trip at the doughnut case, as often happens, and I bag up a couple Walmart-quality pastries, and instead of putting them with the other stuff, I put them atop the bags. “You’re the captain of this ship,” I thought, and it made me smile.

And then: “I’m the king of the world!”

Of course, I realize in the film, they’re on the bow of the ship and not the bridge, but come on, it’s a bag of doughnuts. How realistic were you expecting.

Also, I realize these posts about the varied things that float into and out of my head disappoint you. You know I spend a lot of time reading heady things, and you would hope that my rich interior life would be spent comparing radical empiricism to the teachings of John Locke. To be honest, though, it’s more of this sort of thing. What should you have expected? I prefer doughnuts to Descartes.

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Something That Made Me Smile, June 14, 2017

I tend to walk around with a pretty stern look on my face. I’d say it was because of my taciturn New English upbringing, but I grew up in Wisconsin, which is not exactly Vermont. On a recent visit, though, I found that I was the only person greeting strangers with a “Good morning” or “Good afternoon,” and in many cases I got no response. So I’d like to think my taciturn, guarded nature is a product of my raising, although I spent almost as much time in Missouri as Wisconsin in those formative years (hence saying “product of my raising”).

“Are you smiling?” my beautiful wife asked. She has a much easier smile than I do. If I try to put on a smile, it’s a bit crooked and put me into a better mood like the Internet pop psychologist say it should.

So I’m going to try to start mentally marking one thing a day that makes me smile, and to think of that all day so I can say, “Good day,” with a genuine smile instead of a rictus grin.

So, yesterday. Wait: Let me go back a bit. On Tuesday night, I rented a couple of films: Parker and Riddick because apparently, I’m inspired by bald action heroes. Although, to be honest, so many of us are bald these days. Am I including myself in the list of bald action heroes? You bet I am.

So I said on Facebook:

My fitness goal: To life enough weights that people think I look like Jason Statham instead of Paul Bettany.

So, yesterday, I hit the gym for my first workout in two weeks? Three weeks? And there’s this guy there with the five o’clock shadow on his head and face at 9:00am (is there a name for the haircut which is the five o’clock shadow on the head?). He’s holding a twenty-five pound bar bell weight in front of him with both hands, arms extended, and he’s turning it like a steering wheel.

I thought maybe it as The Transporter workout.

You see, because Jason Statham was in that film, and he drove a car, and one should work those muscles in case the power steering goes out, and….

Well, all right, it’s less funny when I explain it, but it made me smile.

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