Fire And Ice

There is the Robert Frost poem, of course. One of my favorite poems by Frost. Then there is the heat and the cold I use to manage the pain and discomfort of the pinched nerve.

Tonight I swam, then showered, shaved, headed home. Now I sit, ice on my shoulder. I am watching The Great Train Robbery, the Michael Crichton film of his novel about a train robbery in Victorian England. When one is as hopeless an Anglophile as I am, this is like a trip to Disneyworld for an eight year old.

The ice feels good. This natural satisfaction is a lovely feeling.

Cricket today, Sri Lanka vs. South Africa. I saw some of it. South Africa has had a disappointing series, but they played well today. It is tempting to assign a value to a team, based on its nation’s history. Never mind apartheid is a thing of the past. The team reflects all of the races, tribes, and creeds of the nation. And I have a story for every other nation in the mix.

Thursday at BJ’s I was talking cricket with Mohammed, the Bangladeshi clerk. He likes India. They are very good. I’m beginning to recognize good play now.

Cricket is fun.

Hope all of y’all are having fun,

Friday Feelings

Sorta half-asleep. Wishin’ I was some place else. A bed, perhaps.

The sky threatens rain. The clouds are beautiful.

The World is crazy. Or maybe just this country. It is going to take a century to undo the damage done by The Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in 1964 and the Leftists at Columbia in 1968. My latest e-mail from the University of Virginia indicates that the vultures of the Left are not through ripping the flesh from the carcass of academia. A National Collegiate Athletic Association Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championship might keep the grousers, critics and malcontents happy for a little while. And definitely keep them from looking too hard at the cultural Marxists who run Mr Jefferson’s University. The old shell game of bamboozling the rich continues.

Somebody has to do something about the size of government. It will collapse of its own weight.

Stop using terms like bureaucrat to describe government employees. People react to the term and lose sight of what it costs to pay for government. We can’t expect our Senators and Representatives in Virginia to downsize the Federal Government. The government employees and federal contractors keep these guys in office.

Unless that changes, we’re doomed.

The Day.

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Here it is, Thursday night. I dropped the car off for an inspection. E., my regular mechanic, is on vacation in Lebanon, visiting family. So the other mechanic in the shop is doing work for two. But he did get it done today.

We went to meet with the financial advisor. We still have a little money. Leave it at that.

Between dropping the car off and the sit down with the financial guy, I got a haircut. 💇. It had been two months and two months of pool chemical infusion meant that what was passing for hair was actually a strange collagen abnormality that looked as nasty as it felt.

Then lunch. I had shrimp. They were pretty good.

A trip to BJ’s Wholesale Club came next where we purchased what seemed to be an insane amount of stuff, the BIG jug of detergent, the Ginormous bundle of bath tissue, the snack multipack, 3 liters of mouthwash. Somehow, we managed to spend $250+. The kicker is, we will use it. All of it.

The swim came tonight at 8:24. It would have been sooner, but I left my towel and bathing suit at home, necessitating a trip home to retrieve them. But it all worked out. I had my fastest time for the distance in the whole month. There is hope, pinched nerve and all.

J’s lunch is ready. I pitted some cherries, sliced a nectarine, so She gets some fruit variety from the usual strawberries, She has to be at the store at 4:30 AM. I wanted it set up so I don’t have to fix lunch at 3:00 AM.

We did a lot of stuff together today. It was basic stuff that people do in the course of living, not a European river cruise, or bungee jumping in New Zealand, or trekking in Nepal. You know it felt pretty good, intimate in its own way. Shared experience.

Things I Did Today

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Got up. Turned on TV. Fixed J’s lunch. Watched Amtrak #98 Northbound Silver Meteor pass through Ashland on the way to New York. Turned to Cricket New Zealand vs Pakistan.

Decided to buy baked goods. Left home for store but went to Mass first. The priest is from Uganda, so understanding him in room with terrible acoustics is sketchy. But, hey, I went to Mass.

I did go to the store, bought lots of fruit. I came home, put the groceries away, then went to AA. I was getting sleepy. My friend Colette was there with her dog.* The dog is very sweet. He is an Italian hunting dog, a spinone. (Look breed up) He is gorgeous and sweet. He licked my face. 🌟. Went to another store to buy J the chocolate mini croissants she likes.

I came home, had a cat nap. The I went to the dentist. He told me teeth #31 and #18, far lower molars, need to come out, because keeping them clean has become increasingly difficult. We want to avoid risk of infection to jaw bone.

Made appointment for periodontist to extract them.

Went to dinner, had street tacos, carnitas. They were good.

Came home. Realizing I’d been struggling through day on 3-4 hours sleep, I fell asleep. I woke up after 2 hour nap. I am watching the British couple who trek around Britain looking for abandoned railway stations or the sites where they once stood. Very nice engaging couple.

Now I have to get sleepy again, real fast.

*Colette, who looks like Julia Roberts, has a penchant for finding off-the-wall dog breeds. Her last dog was a catahoula, a Cajun hound dog. New words today: spinone catahoula

Tuesday Night

I swam tonight, 2050 meters, a mile and a quarter. I showered, came home. As I sit here, with ice on my aching muscle, drinking a cup of hot tea, I contemplate what it means to be happy. All I can think is that the love of family and friends is of paramount importance. I love them. They love me.

After a longish workout, there is always that endorphin release. Losing time in the pool, means the endurance level is not quite where it needs to be, until tonight.

Sex is merely a remote thought.

Son’s Birthday

R.B.A. is my son. We gave him three names. He was born on 25 June 1976, the Bicentennial year. He is a good man today. I could say much, but I can’t and won’t because I’m just sitting here enjoying the morning sounds of what may be crickets and the rumble of the refrigerator compressor. Dawn is breaking. The sky is an incredible shade of blue, like cobalt almost.

I will text RBA’s mom in a short to let her know I’m thinking of her too.

True Love never ends. So I’ve heard.

3.2.1. Quote Me Challenge: Hope

kitten nominated me for this. I am honored. And confused. There are a lot of steps here.

Her website http:succulentsavagesays

The person behind the challenge: The thoughtful person behind the challenge is Rory.

His thoughts on this : Once a week I will post 2 quotes on a topic, pick 3 bloggers to post on a topic of my chooding. 1 Choose a topic of their own.

Her topic: Hope

My topic for the challenge: Desire

My blogger nominees

Jadescastle

Porngirl3

Olivia

My quotes for her topic:

Hope is upset waiting to happen. Werner Erhard.

Love hopes all things (1st Corinthians 13:7) Now these three things abide: faith, hope, love. But the greatest of these is love. (1st Corinthians 13:13). St Paul