Daily Archives: February 2, 2014

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.)