Monthly Archives: February 2014

Health

You Can’t Take It For Granted

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Imbolc                                                           Valentine Moon

This quote is from a Star-Tribune article about Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s recent death from an apparent heroin overdose:

“You can’t take your sobriety for granted,” said Dr. Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer at Hazelden. “This is a lifelong illness. People have got to stay wary for the rest of their lives.”

From the outside this seems like it shouldn’t be true.  You get sobriety under your belt, you have experience and knowledge, why should you get into trouble?  Because the thing that alcoholics do normally is drink.  The thing heroin users do normally is use.  Not to use, once you’ve passed over into addiction, is the abnormal condition.  That means that sobriety is a lifelong commitment to an abnormal standard.

It can be done.  I’ve done it.  So far.  At times, the farther away from 1976 that I get, a thought wanders through: is it really true?  That’s a slippery thought and treatment teaches us to stay out of slippery places.  But the point is that it has to be countered even now, 38 years sober.

 

Great Wheel
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Imbolc                                                                 Valentine Moon

Not feeling down exactly, but restless, a bit aimless.  I imagine it’s a mild cabin fever, with the delightful elements of Latin, writing and taking classes losing some of their joy.  Leaves me without the push I need to finish things.

P90X helps.  It provides a new body work routine, mixing up that regular portion of my day, but it can’t replace the garden chores and work with the bees.  I’ve not got outside much at all during the time of the polar vortex and in the past during such cold snaps I have.

This will lift.

Cinema and Television, Family, Sport

Guy Cred Lost

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Imbolc                                                                         Valentine Moon

So much for solidarity with the grandkids.  The Broncos got broke by the Seahawks.  I missed it all.  May be slipping away from guy cred, I know. That’s Peyton Manning there on the ground next to that nasty hoss.

Instead, Kate and I finished the 10th episode of the 9th season of the British cold case series, the Waking Dead, the finish of the series. It took dedication, perseverance and stamina to watch them all, but we did it.  We’ll always have Waking the Dead.  But not Superbowl 48.

Sport

Feeling Like A Heretic

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Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

We cut the cord some time ago.  No more cable tv.  We use Roku and through it Netflix and Hulu Plus to get all the television we want.  Movies round out our visual entertainment.

That means we no longer have cable television channels carrying the rites of America’s high holy day, the Super Bowl.  So, on this Sunday of Sundays, I’ve been reading a Kay Scarpetta mystery, took a nap and generally indulged on my rest day.  No workouts on Sundays.

It does leave me feeling faintly like a heretic.  I pretend I’ve given up the old religion completely, have no use for it, but of course what I really mean is until the Vikings get a team.  I’ve never been a church goer, my attendance more like the evangelicals who get all their preachin’ over the television.  But, I never send’em money.  I draw the line at making contributions to billionaires and the millionaires who work for them.

Kate’s a big fan of the opening and closing events of the various Olympic games.  I’m not. She will find a way to watch them.  We watched the Indianapolis 500 at Tanner’s Sports Bar.  Maybe we’ll do something like that.  These are the particular, the unique events that it does not make sense to load up onto Hulu or Netflix for their flavor is in their immediacy, the unknown.

I’m not feeling deprived.  Not at all.  But I am aware of that holiday feeling in the air and not being part of it.

N.B.  Go Broncos!  Have to maintain solidarity with the grandkids.

Aging, GeekWorld, Third Phase

39 Billion Miles + On This Older Body

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Imbolc                                                             Valentine Moon

Realized the other day that our age in years is actually shorthand for an odometer of sorts. This odometer measures our lifespan in miles, miles around the sun.  585,000,000 miles or so a trip.  At 67 that comes to 39,195,000,000 miles on this old body.

Looked at that way the 32,000 miles we have on our Rav4 doesn’t amount to much, does it?  That’s roughly 1,600,000 miles–a day.  Or, we may as well keep going, I have the calculator warmed up, 66,700 miles an hour.  Better speed than I get out of my Rav4, too. But, what the heck, lets do a minute: 1,100.  And, for a complete picture.  A second: 18 miles.  Each second.

That means, when I count off 6 seconds for my first infusion of Master Han’s 2013 pu’er, I’ve traveled 108 miles while I waited.  That’s a different perspective on how long it takes to make a cup of tea.

All of this is a convoluted way of saying that my 67th birthday is only 12 days away.  It has me thinking about that annual pilgrimage waypoint we all celebrate as our birthday.  It’s really a cairn stuck beside the imaginary line we travel as our home planet rockets its way around the nearest star.  It is a reminder of the cyclical, rather than the linear nature of time. Yes, we count the trips, but in fact each trip is the same as the last one. (sort of.  astronomical realities may vary.)

 

 

Great Wheel, Writing

Ancientrailsgreatwheel.com

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Imbolc                                                             Valentine Moon

Ancientrailsgreatwheel.com is officially open today.  All Great Wheel postings, formerly posted here at ancientrails.com, will now be found at Great Wheel.  The first, the Imbolc entry, is on there now.

I’ve been posting to Great Wheel for some time, but decided to open it on Imbolc, the closest Great Wheel holiday to when Bill Schmidt helped me launch the website itself.