Writings From the Past / 2003

From a blog I wrote in 2003...

December 8th, 2003

Time is short now. It’s Monday already, and cuz’n Ron and his wife Betty will be driving up from Florida on Wednesday, so I’ve hustled today to get things done. Washed the bathroom and kitchen, vacuumed, put stuff away. My house still looks like the place the Beverly Hillbillies moved from. 

I’ve got a special treat for cuz’n Ron and Betty. I’m gonna plug the fuse back into the electric water heater circuit. Because I know how married women get ... spoiled. And the guys who live with them for any length of time ... spoiled. Just a hint that they might bathe in cold water and it’s whine, whine, whine. Heck, when those married guys were 15 they would go camping and bathe in a mountain stream, which is basically melted snow, and they’d hop around and holler and have a good time. But now, the mere suggestion that the shower nozzle emits ice water and it’s ... you guessed it ... whine, whine, whine. People are getting soft.

So I plugged the fuse back into the water heater circuit. I’m trying to keep people happy here. 

---

December 9th, 2003

My concern today is food, ‘cause I know Ron and Betty aren’t going to want to drive 800 miles to visit me and then spend their time buying groceries and cooking meals. Of course, I could give them a choice - buy groceries and cook food ... or ... don’t eat for five days, take your pick. But I will admit that five days is a bit of a stretch. When I do it I run out of energy after three days. Of course I, being a single guy, just scrounge food wherever. Usually, my kitchen holds enough food for maybe two meals, one of those meals being peanut butter.

I don’t cook. Never have, never will. But I can “cook” simple things ... meals so simple that what you’re really doing is more “heating up” than “cooking”. So tonight I decided to prepare their first meal in advance. Beans. Yes sir. Betcha that was a big surprise. But these won’t be any ordinary beans, no sir. These beans are gonna be sweet-'n’-sour beans. These beans are gonna be tasty beans. These beans are gonna be great beans.

I had a little trouble finding enough bacon grease for the beans. There’s only so much grease in a pound of bacon. I hope it will be enough.

In The Beginning

Before the universe … I almost said “was created”, but that would be jumping to a conclusion … before the universe existed, there was nothing. There was a void: no space, no time, no matter, no energy. Nothing. Nada. Zip. You may reasonably think that before the Big Bang, there was just empty space, and the Big Bang was an incredible explosion that took place at a point in this empty space. But that is not the case. Before the Big Bang, space did not exist. Hence the term void. The Big Bang was the event that created SpaceTime and all the matter and energy in it.

While the void was empty of space and time, and empty of matter and energy, it was not without its own properties.  We know this because something happened in it (or to it): the Big Bang happened. Before the Big Bang, the universe did not exist but the void existed. It was empty but it was something.  It was not Nothing. Even if it was only some kind of purely mathematical space, it existed and it had properties. Perhaps it was a thought generated by a non-material mind.  Perhaps the void was Potential.

From the instant of the Big Bang, something else seems to have come into existence. Something besides time and space and energy. That something was all the laws of physics, and all the laws of mathematics, and all the laws of geometry, Plank’s constant, the speed of light, quantum mechanics, and all the rest.

Where did these laws come from? Why should there even be any laws?  We think of these laws as governing the behavior and interactions of sub-atomic particles, or the way those particles interact with other kinds of energy. But perhaps the particles and the energies created by the Big Bang are what define and give rise to physical laws. (Certainly the characteristics of SpaceTime gave rise to the laws of Euclidian geometry. Humans can think of alternate (non-Euclidean) geometries that don’t exist in our universe but which are internally self-consistent. Perhaps those geometries exist elsewhere.) If the void had existed for eternity without spawning a universe, then why should our universe have suddenly popped into existence 13.7 billion years ago? Why did the Big Bang happen at that particular moment? Why did it happen at all?

The properties of the void made the Big Bang possible. Perhaps when the Big Bang occurred, a subset of the void’s properties crystallized out of an infinity of Potential and became our universe.

And now, theorists theorize that there may be many universes … perhaps an infinite number of them. This collection of universes is called the multiverse. The laws of physics may be different in each universe. In many universes, the laws of physics are such that matter could not form … or stars could not form … or life could not develop. In our universe, the laws of physics turned out perfectly for us. We live in the rare “Goldilocks Universe” where all the laws of physics are finely tuned for us to be here. That’s not a very satisfying explanation for why the universe is so finely tuned for matter to exist, for stars to form, for life to be possible. Instead of invoking deity, science invokes the multiverse. But if we can’t prove the multiverse exists, we might as well say it was magic.

Alice

Alice was 29 years old when I was born. She was 34 when my brother, Kenneth, was born. When Alice was 35, she and my father, Durward, moved into the house on Lafayette Avenue. I started school that year. When Alice was 47, I graduated from high school. When she was 52, I graduated from college. Alice still lived in the house on Lafayette. She had lived there for 17 years.

After 5 years and suffering from a severe anxiety disorder with panic attacks, I left my job and moved to another city.  Alice was 57. For a short while I traveled the country in a van with my dog Shadow. My anxiety and panic attacks made it impossible to work and nearly impossible to do anything normal, so I moved back home to the house on Lafayette. I stayed there for 12 years. While I was there Alice retired. She was 65 and had lived in the house on Lafayette for 30 years. Eventually a friend who knew about my anxiety problem offered me a job. It was win-win. I had an income and he had a less expensive employee than he could otherwise have hired. I moved to take the job. Alice was 69. She had been living in the house on Lafayette for 34 years.

Eight years later her husband of 50 years, my father, died. Alice was 77 years old and had been living in the house on Lafayette for 42 years. She lived there alone for another nine years until she died at age 86. By then she had lived in the house on Lafayette Avenue for 51 years.

She always hated the tiny kitchen.

Rudimental

The song of the day is Waiting All Night by English band Rudimental. 

I wrote about this song in a previous post that was also titled Rudimental. That post contained Rudimental's Waiting All Night soundtrack, but the video was about the true-life injury and recovery of BMX champion and actor Kurt Yaeger. The soundtrack to that video was Waiting All Night and it is Rudimental's performance of that song that is shown in this video.

Immigration

My partner Nuria had a meeting with USCIS (U.S. Customs & Immigration) in Norfolk, Va, yesterday. I drove her to the USCIS office. There was a line at the door because they only admit one person, or a couple, at a time. We waited outside for about 30 minutes (it was cold) and finally they admitted us. Nuria was called to an office almost immediately, while I waited in a room with the hardest chair seats I have ever sat upon. 

The meeting lasted about 40 minutes. Nuria had been hoping that at the end of the meeting, the interviewer would say, "Welcome to America. We will mail you your green card." The words she least wanted to hear were, "We'll mail you our decision." But those words were exactly what she was told.

The interviewer went into great detail, questioning Nuria about an incident that happened in 2010. At that time, Nuria was living in Roanoke, Va, and one day she received a letter asking her to come to the courthouse on a certain date for jury duty. So Nuria followed the instructions and went to the courthouse. She waited a long time while other potential jurors were interviewed. Finally it was Nuria's turn to be interviewed. 

The trial involved a person who robbed a BB&T bank in Roanoke, Va. At that time, Nuria worked for BB&T bank, though at a different branch. Nuria knew the woman who was robbed. That caused the judge to excuse her from participating in the trial.

Later, she received a $30 check in the mail and a thank you letter from the Court. The USCIS interviewer asked Nuria if she considered the $30 a "payment." Nuria told her "No," and that she considered it a reimbursement of expensives (gasoline, missed pay, etc.) that Nuria may have incurred as a result of going to court for jury duty. But the USCIS lady was very intrigued over this incident and asked Nuria many questions. At the end of the interview, she told Nuria that USCIS would mail their decision to Nuria.

Nuria is a fine person. She is a blood donor and a plasma donor. She participates in community activities such as picking up litter from the streets. She has filled out hundreds of pages of forms and questionaires about herself and her life history for the USCIS. And yet while putting Nuria under a microscope, this country appears to allow entry of millions of illegal aliens about whom we know little or nothing—including their whereabouts after they've entered. I'm sure that most of them are decent people who deserve some kind of refuge, but there seems to be a double standard at play.

It reminds me of the Mariel boatlift in which over 125,000 Cubans entered Florida in 1980. Many of them were convicts, as Fidel Castro emptied his prisons and mixed those people among the other Cuban refugees. Except what is happening on our southern border is so much larger and longer lasting than the boatlift. And Nuria, a small, elderly lady who loves America, is scrutinized by Immigration as if she were a Mafia member. It's an upside-down world sometimes.

Shoe Battle

Fashion shoemaker Christian Louboutin is well-known for their line of red sole women's shoes. In fact, the red sole is trademarked by Louboutin.

Trademarks are important. They have value and are considered to be part of a company's assets. So when fashion house Yves Saint Laurent brought out a line of shoes of various colors, including red, that were the same color all over the shoe, including the sole, Louboutin filed a lawsuit against their competitor. Louboutin claimed that by making a red shoe with a red sole, Yves Saint Laurent was infringing upon Louboutin's trademarked red sole.

A district court in New York gave an opinion that agreed with Louboutin. But on appeal, an appellate court's opinion was that a shoe may have a red sole if the remainder of the shoe, inside and outside, is also red. Louboutin's trademark relied on the fact that the red sole versus a different color on the shoe's "upper" is distinctive and thereby worthy of a trademark. But the appellate court decided that Yves Saint Laurent's line of shoes having the same color all over was also distinctive and trademark-worthy.

Enter Donald Trump, hawking his own brand of sneakers. The sneakers are gold-color and have red soles. Of course. With all the colors of the rainbow available to him, Trump chose red for the soles. 

I see another lawsuit on the horizon.

Kavinsky

The song of the day is 2012's Nightcall by French musician, producer, DJ, and actor Kavinsky (real name: Vincent Pierre Claude Belorgey).

And God Said

Nothing has been happening lately. I have to drive Nuria to the USCIS field office in Norfolk, VA on Thursday next week. I think I may have a small hole in my left rear tire. I pumped it up to 35 pounds and I'll be checking it from day to day to see how long it takes to leak down. I plan to buy a can of Fix-a-Flat to take with me. I'll also be taking my tire inflator, which I always have in the back of my Jeep. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Other than getting ready for that trip, nothing has been happening to me. Oh, there was one thing. God visited me while I was lying in bed. I couldn't sleep, as usual, and then God appeared. I was alone in bed. Suddenly God stood beside my bed. He was very glowy. 

"Are you God?" I asked.

"I AM," God said.

"I think I just pooped in my underpants," I said.

"Don't worry. I will magically clean them when I leave."

"What brings you here tonight? Are you always with me?"

"I am. Always."

"Were you with me when I fell off the pier in Hickory?"

"Yes. You swam back to the pier, and you don't know how to swim. Remember? That's why you're alive today."

"Were you with me when I got swept out to sea off the coast of Nags Head?"

"Yes. I showed you how to slip into the water and kick while holding onto the inner tube. That's why you're still alive."

"Were you with me when..."

God interrupted. "What part of  'I am always with you' are you having trouble understanding?"

"You have me there. But so much bad stuff has happened in my life, that I have doubts that you were always with me."

"I understand. You had bad times. But remember, those times could have been much worse. You never got killed or killed another person with your car when you drove recklessly as a teenager. You did so many reckless things and skated through them without a scratch. I was with you."

"Will you be with me until I die?"

"I will be with you for long after your body dies."

"Thanks, God." 

"You're welcome. Good night."

I went to sleep immediately, which was strange, because I usually have insomnia all night.

Nuria Homeward Bound

My partner, Nuria, is flying back from Costa Rica to Richmond, VA, today. Her plane left Juan Santamaria International airport at 1:21PM CST and is due into Fort Lauderdale International airport at 5:30PM EST. Her next flight leaves at 10:05PM and takes her to Orlando, FL at 11:22PM. Then she gets on a flight at 9:10AM tomorrow morning and arrives in Richmond at 11:33AM.

After all that traveling and spending two days awake, I know she'll be tired. I hope, when she arrives here, she has enough energy left to go to the grocery store, buy food, then come home and cook a meal, clean the house, change the sheets on the bed, and wash and dry the laundry.

I know what you're thinking. Why don't I do some of those things? The answer is: because I'm a man, and men don't know how to do any of that stuff.

The odd thing is, before Nuria moved in with me, I used to do all those things. Come to think of it, I mostly ate frozen dinners, I didn't clean the house, but I did wash and dry the laundry. The washing machine and the clothes dryer did most of the work, but I did have to push a button and turn a dial. Cooking a meal usually involved pushing a button or turning a dial, too. That's my strong suit: pushing buttons and turning dials. If Nuria can carry the dirty clothes to the cellar and put them into the washer and add soap, I can handle the rest. "Hey Nuria, where do you set the dial on the washing machine?" After she answers me, I can handle the rest. And people say cooking and cleaning is a lot of work!

The truth is, Nuria is very old-fashioned in some ways. She feels certain things are her job, and everything else is my job. I mow the yard. I call a roofer to fix a leak (I don't climb on roofs any longer). I call a technician to clean the boiler every year. I keep the oil tank filled with #2 heating oil. I paid to replace ten windows on the ground floor ($8300). I paid for a new sliding patio door ($2430). I paid for a new garage door ($1900). If you're a homeowner, you know the list goes on and on. I'm glad that Nuria wants to cook and clean. I just hope she doesn't read this blog post and get some new ideas.

5:30PM:  

Nuria just landed at Fort Lauderdale. She sent me this photo as the jet was arriving. Next leg of the flight: 10:05PM to 11:22PM. It will, of course, be dark, so probably no photo.

Winter Monday

It's a beautiful winter day in central Virginia. At 3PM the sun is shining brightly and the temperature is 54°F. I just went out to the garage and cranked up the lawn rocket. I mean, the lawn tractor. (Sometimes when I'm driving it, it's a lawn rocket. That's when I'm flying across the yard, with the uneven earth bumping my butt up and down on the seat.) The tractor's battery still works. So I put a charger on the battery and in an hour I'll go out and remove the charger. I try to boost the charge every week instead of letting the battery sit dormant through the winter as I usually do, so that maybe, when spring and grass-mowing season arrive, the battery will still start the tractor. The battery usually lasts for two seasons, but with periodic charging and luck, I may get a third season out of this battery. 

In six days my partner Nuria will return. She left to fly to Costa Rica on January 9, but it feels like she's been gone six months. I wonder how it feels to her. She's with her family, and she's been visiting her doctors and her banker and she took a two-day trip to a beach with one of her family members—daughter, or sister, or both—and I'm glad she's getting some fun. I'm sure it makes living with me more tolerable.

I'm charging Nuria's Garmin. I gifted her with it a couple years ago. Bad idea. She's never used it. I've never used it. I've tried to use it, but it's too difficult. I used to have a Tom Tom and it was easy to use. I thought a Garmin would be similarly easy, but I was wrong. If I need a GPS on the road, I use Waze on my phone. It's easy to use and is a very handy program. It is not without the occasional error that sends me in a circle, but those are easy to figure out and get out of. In times gone by, I've driven all over the United States, from Atlantic Coast to Pacific Coast, from Montana to Texas, with nothing more than a paper road map, and I never got lost. I didn't care if I did get lost—it would simply have made the adventure more interesting.

It's almost 4PM. In other words, it's time for breakfast. Breakfast is the first meal of the day, regardless of when it's eaten. It is the meal that breaks the fast of not eating since the previous day. Hence the name "break-fast". I haven't eaten anything today and at 4PM I'm becoming mildly hungry. Until next time, stay safe.

Bob Seger

The song of the day is 1980's Against the Wind by singer/songwriter and musician Bob Seger. Seger is accompanied in this video by country music singer Jason Aldean.

Etiquette

Every day I receive a phone call from a person who sounds like a young woman, possibly a young teen, but maybe not yet a teen. The voice asks to talk to Wayne. The caller never identifies herself, nor does she state the reason she is calling. She just asks, "Can I speak to Wayne?"

I don't reply. I don't reply because I don't know who she is or why she wants to talk to me. It could be a con, a trap of some kind. More than that, I don't reply because she treats me with disrespect. I am far older than this young person, and I expect someone of her age, who doesn't know me, to address me by my last name. I think I've earned that. When I was a young teen, I called older people mister or missus and I used their last name. I would never think of calling a much older person whom I didn't know by his or her first name. That would be very disrespectful.

But of course, many kids today are not taught the rules of respect. Their parents weren't either. They are being rude and don't know it. That's not my problem. I don't take their phone calls because they don't give me enough information to make an informed decision. Who is calling me and why are they calling me? They never say. They just ask to talk to Wayne. 

I look upon this behavior as a small example of a larger problem, which is the general decline in respect and civility in our society. I see so much of our society becoming a society of savages. They have no manners and they don't care. They respect nothing and no one. People who respect no one, including me, may find that they receive little respect in return.

Children and young adults: try to learn basic manners. The effort will always be in your best interest.

Elmer

When Nuria left for Costa Rica, she put me in charge of her plants. What could go wrong?

I know how to water plants, and she told me when to water them, and how much water to use on each plant. Most of them have done well. Except for this plant, which I call Elmer.

Since the photo was taken, I've cut off all the brown leaves, which doesn't leave much of Elmer, but he does look better.

I've watered Elmer and he gets plenty of sunlight, so why does he appear to be dying? Maybe Nuria's green thumb can save him when she returns. She'll be back on Super Bowl Sunday. I hope that's not too late for Elmer.

To Connect With God

1. Be truly authentic. Be yourself no matter who you are around. Your authentic version of yourself is who you are, not the version you show others. There is beauty in authenticity, which you see in the very young and the very old, because as you come into this world, or leave it, you don't care what people think. Accept yourself.

2. The reason you are here is to learn, to create, to embody love, and to use the power of love to create.

3. Love everyone. Truly, unconditionally, love all people and all of creation.

4. Listen to your inner voice. Listen to your conscience, it's a direct connection to God.

5. Use technology responsibly. If you get too distracted then you will not recognize the inner voice.

6. Release all prejudice. Love the soul that exists inside each of us.

7. Exercise the power of creation. Earth is the classroom. We can create; it begins with our thoughts, our habits, our actions, our character, our destiny. So control your thoughts.

8. Avoid negative influences: toxic environments, relationships, jobs, schools. Call on the Creator to bring a barrier of protection between us and negative energy.

9. There is a purpose for evil. We are always learning from our mistakes. Without evil there is no good.

10. We are all one in creation—in God's body—because we carry the spark of God within us. All earthly beings carry that. Harming another being harms God.

My Secret

I wrote this to a friend who lived in Costa Rica, after he invited me to visit him several times. I hoped that after reading this blog post he could understand why I always declined his invitations. But now I'm too old to care what people think about me, so I'm telling my secret. What follows was part of a personal email to him.

All of us have secrets. We have things in our history that we are ashamed of, and we don't tell anyone about them, even though keeping them to ourselves is another kind of burden. I had a secret for over 50 years, and now I'm going to tell the world (or at least the tiny part of the world that reads my blog).

I wrote about this before in a blog post titled Panic You should read it if you want to understand panic, but for now, just stay with me here. 

When I was about 22 years old I began suffering from panic attacks. You may not understand them but they are disabling and a sufferer finds himself avoiding many situations. Some people who have panic attacks become housebound. They cannot leave their homes. Some people can walk as far as their mailbox but then they have to go back inside their house. I did not become housebound only because I took a lot of Valium, which is a tranquilizer.

At this same time, I was working in Burlington, North Carolina. My job sometimes required me to travel. I flew to San Francisco, Denver, Albuquerque, New York City, and smaller cities whose names I've forgotten. I enjoyed traveling. I also loved flying and I even took flying lessons for a while. I quit taking them because I didn't want to fly an airplane while taking tranquilizers and I didn't want to have a panic attack while at the controls of an airplane.

Eventually I had to quit my engineering job as well as my dream of flying. For about twelve years I could not work at all.

I cannot explain how a panic attack feels, but it is terrible. A person with panic attacks watches their life grow more and more limited as time passes and they discover more and more situations that cause a panic attack. For years I had to take a lot of Valium to go into a restaurant. No one in my family understood it, but they accepted that I was suffering and they helped me to the extent they could. I was very lucky to have people in my life, including a medical doctor, who supported me in my situation.

When I had a full-blown panic attack, I could not even see the people around me. They were like shadows. Nor could I hear anything. I got to a point where I could not go through the grocery store checkout or order a burger from a fast-food counter. I went to a doctor and he hospitalized me for several weeks. He said I was suffering from "nervous exhaustion and chronic fatigue".

When I was about 28, my best friend and I bought a camper van and traveled all around the country. For meals we usually ate in restaurants. (Sometimes we would cook a simple meal on the van's little propane stove.) When I went into a restaurant and ordered a meal, I was, of course, in a state of anxiety. By the time my meal was brought to my table, I was so anxious that I could not remember how to eat. I would pick up my fork and stop. Then I would think: stick the fork into some food. So I would do that, then stop again. Then I would think: raise the fork to your mouth, and I would do that and then stop again. Then I would tell myself to put the fork in my mouth.  Then I would repeat everything, step by step, to get the next bite of food to my mouth.

You probably think it is impossible to "forget" how to eat. But a panic attack consumes all of your brain. Your adrenal glands pour adrenaline into your bloodstream, your heart pounds, and every bit of your brain screams "RUN."  It is as if you are being attacked by lions. A primitive part of your brain takes over. Your body goes into overdrive. Your muscles become stronger. Your heart pumps more oxygen to them. For a short while you are stronger and able to run faster than you have ever been. In the jungle, in the days when people actually were attacked by animals, this rush of adrenaline was a good thing. It could save your life. But when you are sitting in your car stopped in traffic, or sitting in a business meeting, or dining in a restaurant, it is a very bad thing to have to deal with. I  have gone into a restaurant, ordered a meal, and then changed my order to takeout because I was not sure I could sit there long enough to eat my meal.

Panic attacks are the main reason I am single. How can I date women when all I want to do is get out of the place as fast as possible? But I became an expert at hiding the panic attacks. I could sit beside you and be having a panic attack and you would never know it.

The last time I flew on an airplane, I began to feel a panic attack starting. I had some Valium in my pocket and I swallowed it. Then I ordered a few shots of whiskey. I got through the flight, but I don't know if I'll get through another one.

Over the years, I have been to many doctors. I have been to psychotherapists. Didn't help. I've been to hypnotherapists. Didn't help. I tried a therapy called "systematic desensitization" that was administered by a physician. Didn't help. So I took all the therapy sessions all over again. Didn't help. I tried a therapy called "progressive relaxation". Didn't help. I tried EEG (brain-wave) bio-feeback. Didn't help. I took a pricey 12-week self-help course from a place in Charlotte, NC, called the Center for Help for Anxiety and Agoraphobia through New Growth Experiences (CHAANGE). Didn't help.

Things are a little better now. I take a medication (it's called an SSRI anti-depressant) that has a side effect of preventing panic attacks. However, the medicine doesn't prevent the anxiety that leads to the panic attack. The anxiety is still there. When I approach a certain situation that used to cause panic attacks, I can feel the anxiety grow stronger and stronger. But it no longer produces a panic attack. Instead, my body begins to have diarrhea. I have to stay glued to a toilet until I take a sufficient amount of Imodium, which is a "tranquilizer" for the intestines. By the time the episode ends, I am too sick to even drive a car. If I am out with someone, I have to ask that person to drive my car while I lie on the back seat. That has happened.

When you visited me, my main concern was about what I would do if I had so much anxiety and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) that I could not drive. Neither of you have a license to drive. Fortunately, that did not happen; I had no problems. But as much as I enjoyed your visit, I had this shadow hanging over me. It is always present. It has hung over me for more than 50 years. And I know it will always be there. I guess all of us have some kind of personal demon and that was, and is, mine.

Panic or agoraphobia is a special kind of hell. I woud not wish it on my worst enemy. Yet I know I am not alone. Many people have it, but are reluctant to talk about it. No one can understand how crippling it is unless they have experienced it. 

So there, that is my secret that you have finally dragged out of me. I never talk about it because it is very embarrassing for me to tell people and I know they will not understand. But you have asked me to fly to Costa Rica enough times that I feel you deserve an explanation. I hope you can understand the reason I have said "No" has nothing to do with you. The reason is my personal problem. There are many things I would love to have been able to do during my life. I see people who have adventurous worlds, and go scuba diving and mountain climbing and flying jet planes, and I don't understand their world. I do not live in their world. I never will.

If you want more clarity on this subject, now you can go read Panic. And thanks for stopping by.

Nuria Come Back

My partner Nuria is visiting her family in Costa Rica. This is a problem for me, because I have forgotten how to take care of myself. Nuria has spoiled me, and I didn't realize how much until she left me. I used to live alone and that was never a problem. Then Nuria entered my life and "took over" cooking and cleaning and doing laundry. As a result, I haven't eaten any food today (it's 5PM), nor did I eat any food yesterday. The day before that I ate 12 chocolate chip cookies. Oddly, I don't feel hungry. I feel a vague, sick feeling, but not hunger. Nuria will return in two weeks. If I'm still alive and able to function, I will meet her at the Richmond airport and bring her home. I think the odds of me living until February 11 are about 50/50. But am I complaining? No. I'm just saying: "Nuria, if you walk into this house and there is a skeleton lying on the floor..."

Global Warming

I have heard people scoff at "global warming", and they claim there is no such thing. They say the planet is not getting warmer. It's all a hoax, they say. I ask, "Why? Why would reputable scientists make up a hoax, especially a hoax that can be easily verified or discounted by available data?"

I live in Virginia. Virginia gets very cold in winter. At least, it used to get very cold. Today's temperature is 65°F and today's date is January 27, the middle of winter. The "feels like" temperature is 70°F and I could go for a walk without wearing a coat or even a sweater.

I have a closet with several "winter coats" that I have not worn in years. I have a "ski jacket". I have a heavy coat with a hood—it's called a parka. I used to wear them during winter, every winter. I have not worn them for the last twenty years. They still hang in my closet, waiting to be donated to Goodwill, where you can purchase them for a price only slightly more than what you would pay for a new coat.

If global warming isn't a real thing, why is it 70°F in the middle of winter? Why are dandelions growing in my yard? You don't have to be a genious to add two plus two.

I was going to include a photo of one of the dandelions in my yard, but I can't because it's on my phone (the photo, not the dandelion) and getting it to the Internet is impossibly difficult. How do people connect all these devices to their computer? It would take an electrical engineer to figure this out. Wait a second—I am an electrical engineer. Or rather, I used to be. What I meant to say is, it would take a software engineer to figure this out. Wait a second—I am a software engineer. Or rather, I used to be. What I really meant to say is, it would take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Wait a second—I am a rocket scientist. Or rather, I used to be. In times long ago, I was a design engineer on the Titan Delta 4 guidance system, and then I worked on the Sprint and the Spartan ABM guidance systems, all made by the Western Electric Company. Yep, the very same company that used to make all of our telephones. Well, crap. I admit that I don't know who would be needed to figure this out. Furthermore, I've forgotten what I'm trying to figure out. Bye, y'all. See ya on my next blog post.

The Toyota

I've talked about my lady friend, Nuria, from Costa Rica, so now I'm going to tell you a story about her.

When Nuria moved to the USA to live with me in Virginia, she did not have a driver's license. She also didn't have a car. But you know how people are always asking to see your driver's license whenever they need to verify your identity, such as when you cash a check. So I suggested that we go to the DMV and get an identity card for her. It's like a driver's license—same size and shape, and it has a photo of the cardholder, but it's not a driver's license. It's just proof that you are who you say you are.

So Nuria and I went to the DMV. We got there 15 minutes before they opened for business. I, of course, being who I am, went up to the front door and tried to open it, and guess what—it opened. So Nuria and I walked in. There were two young ladies at one of the "stations" (for lack of a better word) and we walked over to them.

"My friend wants to get an identity card," I said. They went straight to work. They took a photo of her and got her name and address and examined her passport. Then one of the ladies asked Nuria, "Do you want a driver's license?" Nuria, of course, said, "Yes!" while I nodded vigorously in support. 

To this day, I don't know why Nuria was offered a driver's license. Was it a mistake? Was it some kind of DMV rule that neither of us knew about? Regardless, we left the DMV office with Nuria clutching a brand new driver's license.

Perhaps I should mention that Nuria had previously held a Virginia driver's license. But that was years ago and it was expired. But her name was still in the DMV computer system, so maybe that is why she was offered a new license, but I really don't know.

The next step was to get Nuria a vehicle. For that, we visited some used car lots in Richmond. Nuria examined a number of vehicles while I did manly things like kick the tires and tried to pretend I knew what I was doing. Nuria found a vehicle she liked. It was a 2009 Toyota Camry. Nuria seemed to love it.

Six months later, Nuria was driving her Camry to Walmart. She was stopped in a left turn lane waiting for oncoming traffic to pass by before she could turn into the parking lot. Suddenly a minivan slammed into the back of her car. Eyewitnesses said the driver made no attempt to slow down. He drove into Nuria's car at about 35 mph, the speed limit on that road. The impact spun the minivan around and off the road, while Nuria's Camry ended up in the middle of the road.

Nuria phoned me and told me she had been in an accident. I asked her if she was hurt. She said her back and neck were somewhat sore, but otherwise she was okay. I drove to Walmart to get her. The police were there, a wrecker was there, and a fire truck was there. The man in the minivan appeared to be stunned. Nuria appeared to be fine, although minus her Camry, which was totaled.

The auto insurance company (Progressive) would not compensate Nuria for the full cost of her vehicle. The Toyota had cost $14,345.61. Nuria had paid $1800 and I had paid 

$12,545.61. Progressive said the car was worth $10,812.70, so I got most of the cash, which went toward another Toyota Camry, The new Camry was a 2010 model (12 years old at that time) with about 38,000 miles, so I think Nuria got a good deal.

The new Camry looks almost identical to the wrecked Camry. While we were car-shopping, Nuria's insurance paid for a rental car—an almost new Nissan—that I really liked. I don't know about its performance or reliability, but it was loaded with some cool gadgets, like a remote control starter. Of course, my own car, a Jeep, was built in 1995, and there has been some amount of progress in automobiles in the past 29 years. But if I'm in a wreck, I'd prefer to be in the Jeep. If you run into the back of my Jeep, you'll hit a trailer hitch that is bolted to the frame and rear axle, so you won't get far after hitting that. I hope.

The Times Are Changing

I went out to the garage to start my Jeep. I hadn't driven it for two weeks. When the engine started, I heard a noise that sounded like a dry bearing. It wasn't the first time I had heard that noise, so I decided to drive to the auto shop and have it checked out. 

The mechanic raised the hood with the engine running. I leaned forward and listened carefully to each side of the front of the engine, and I determined that the culprit was probably the serpentine belt tensioner. The guys in the shop did their own diagnosis and they came to the same conclusion. So I told them to replace the tensioner. They wanted to replace the belt, too, so I told them to go ahead and replace both. The job didn't take long, but they had to wait for the parts to be delivered to the shop. I was there for maybe 90 minutes. The bill was $417.

Was I overcharged? I figure the belt cost about $30 (not to them, of course, but to me) and the tensioner cost about $90, for a total of $120. Then, I assumed $200/hour overhead in their garage, I was there for 60 to 90 minutes (I'm estimating), so the overhead would be maybe $300. Add the $120 for parts and the total is $420. That's pretty close to the $417 bill. 

I'm okay with that.

The men who own and operate the shop are cousins and they're from Palestine. While I was sitting in the shop's waiting room, another man came in. I engaged him in coversation and I noticed he had an accent. So I asked him where he was from and he said, "Guatemala." I told him that my lady friend is from Costa Rica. The conversation meandered for a while. I told him about a friend of mine who ran factories in Honduras. But the factories have moved to the Far East now — Malaysia, I think, in search of ever lower wages. My neighbors across the street are from Guatemala. I began to wonder if this man in the auto shop was one of my neighbors. I don't know those neighbors. I know the Egyptian man who lives next door to me. I never talk with him because it is very difficult for me to understand what he is saying. He has a very thick accent. But he understands me without apparent difficulty.

I used to eat at a nearby Chinese restaurant, until Covid closed it. They had a very good buffet and the food was inexpensive. At lunch hour, the restaurant was filled with Mexican laborers, probably roofers and such. I live in a small city in the middle of Virginia, so I wouldn't expect to run into so many international visitors. Yet I do.

The times are changing. Some Americans don't like the changes they see. But change is inevitable. I find it interesting. Change bothers some older folks, but kids growing up today will think it's just normal and natural to live in a land that is filled with new immigrants and strange accents. 

And I'm okay with that.

Procyon

I'm a blogger because I enjoy writing, but I'm not good enough to be a "real" writer. When I was a kid I loved sci-fi novels and I bought a lot of 35-cent Ace double-novels. A double-novel was two novels in one paperback book. The book had two front covers and no back cover. You could flip the book over and rotate it, and you would have another book.

I even wrote a few short stories and sent them to a publisher, but I never got anything published. I was a kid, maybe 13 years old. I'm going to share the first page of a short story that I wrote. Remember, this was written before we put a man into orbit or took photos of the earth from space. I'm going to include only the first page because that's the only page that I can find now. I might be able to find the rest of the story somewhere in my house, but then I'd have to type the whole thing into my computer, and that's not gonna happen, But here I am from long ago: 13 years old and already a hack sci-fi writer. This is page one, finally published, though (thankfully) in a place where few will see it. The title of the story was "A Gift of Royalty", for what it's worth.

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A thousand miles from the planet Earth a starship blinked into existence, bringing with it a smaller ship. In the smaller ship a man named Rymer turned his face toward the round viewport beside him and watched the starship dwindle as the engine of his ship placed distance between the two vessels. As he gazed upon it, the starship snapped back into nothingness, like a burst soap bubble, and he was alone.

In the warm darkness of his cramped cabin Rymer continued to stare at the space where the starship had been, while his mind braced against the isolation that was already beginning to wash over him. He extended a gloved hand toward a switch and the stars began to rain past the viewport. He let the ship roll slowly until he saw the burning spark called Procyon, and then his mind flashed toward a world spinning about that distant sun. His friends were there, as was his life — not here, he thought, on this strange muddy ball called Earth.  The starship would reach that distant world in a few days, but his vessel was not a starship and could never make the journey. He was stranded here until the starship returned and nudged against his tiny craft and gripped it in the field of its generators and tore it out of space to hurtle back with it toward that star eleven light years away.

He touched another switch and Earth rose in the viewport, then stopped huge and motionless to fill all space outside the aperture. Rymer stared with cold dislike at the bright planet, for it had caused him to be here and to chance losing his life in hostile space far from his native world. He stared and frowned, while the bright planet gleamed its warm radiance into his face and onto the cabin wall beyond, and at last he rolled the ship away so that he could no longer see the shining world outside.

His eyes skipped among the dials and gauges glowing reassuringly around him before resting upon a screen that held an image of the world outside. As the ship's flight computer executed maneuvers necessary to wrestle the ship into an earth orbit, Rymer adjusted a grid over the image and turned on his reconnaissance equipment. He consulted charts and aimed his instruments at selected points on the planet below, while a machine tabulated radio emission spectra, infrared sources, atmospheric spectrograms, and a dozen other factors. At the completion of his survey Rymer noted with considerable surprise that he had discovered a radio beacon on the planet's surface. Further investigation was required, and as he programmed a computer landing, Rymer wondered if he was about to step into a trap.

A rocket flared silent flame and the ship banked into the first thin stratum of Earth's atmosphere, slowly steepening its angle of descent until the craft began pushing before it a thundering shock wave that streamed back and away from the ship, carrying off the searing heat generated by ramming through miles of atmosphere. Rymer sat inside his small metal world and looked without thinking at the fiery death beyond the viewport.

Nuria in Costa Rica

It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon. When I got up this morning at O-dark hundred hours, the temperature was 13°F. Or maybe it was 16°, I'm not sure. It was early in the day. But now the sky is sunny and blue and the afternoon temperature is 35°F at 2:30 PM. I'm sitting at my PC with my electric space heater blowing warm air on my legs. Sun streams through the front windows to my right. The house is very quiet. 

My domestic partner, Nuria, is in Costa Rica. She was born there and her family is there. Also, all her doctors are there. So she goes back to Costa Rica once a year to visit her doctors and her family. She'll stay there for a month and then return to Virginia. She's been complaining about the heat there. She even bought an electric fan to help cool her at night. That's what living in America for a year will do to you. You get accustomed to things like spring weather, air conditioning in the summer, perfect autumn days. Even the cold days of winter are manageable. You can always dress warmer, throw on a sweater under your coat, etc., but you can only dress "cooler" to a point. Costa Rica is hot. That's why they call this season summer, even though technically it's winter. Costa Rica only has two seasons: hot (winter) and rainy (summer). In their rainy season, the rain falls hard every day. 

When I was a kid, one of my chores was to water my mother's plants every week. She had plants in all the windows of all the rooms, plus plants in the upstairs windows. I hated watering them. Why did she have all those plants if she didn't want to take care of them? I was a kid, and I had a dog. A dog is much more practical than a plant. It can run around and be your friend and do tricks. A plant just sits in the window looking green. If you water it. Otherwise, it looks brown. This is one of the many things I don't understand about women. Nuria goes to the trouble of getting these various types of plants for the windows, then she flies off to Central America and leaves her precious plants in my clumsy hands. She even wrote down instructions: 1½ small "cups" of water for the plants in the living room on Saturdays, 1½ "cups" of water for the ferns in the kitchen window on Saturdays and Wednesdays — don't water the aloe. I put "cups" in quotes because I don't mean a measuring cup, but rather a small plastic cup that pudding comes in. Wait—when Nuria wrote "cup", did she mean 8 ounces or 4 ounces? Now I'm not sure. I think I may have screwed up.

Nuria is going to spend two days and a night at a beach. The sun is blisteringly hot in Costa Rica, as in any Central American country. I'm sure she will be wise and sit under a beach umbrella. I've gotten sunburned at the beach just from sunlight reflected off the white sand. (Nuria, if you read this: use sunblock.) Then she has several more appointments to keep and then she'll return in February. I hope she brings some good weather back with her. The weather when I took her to the airport in Richmond was bloody awful. As was the traffic on I-95. But "if I live and nothing happens" (as my grandmother was given to saying) I'll be at the Richmond Airport when she arrives. 

Plumber

I needed a plumber, preferably a local guy, not a guy from many miles away. So I called a company that I had done business with before: Story Plumbing & Heating. I called him six times over two days and all I got was ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, etc. No one answered. There was no machine either. I scratched him off the list. 

On to the next company. This one was called Colonial Plumbing. I've had them work here before. I called them and they sent out a young man. I showed him what I needed, and I added that there was a possibility that he might have to replace the rough-in valve for the 3 handle faucet on my tub/shower. I had already determined where he would have to drill a hole in the adjoining bedroom wall. But as soon as I mentioned a hole in the wall, he asked if it was a plaster wall. Well, yes, it is. Then he couldn't work on it, he told me. He can't cut a hole in a plaster wall, according to company rules. Even with the owner standing there telling him it was okay, he wouldn't do it. However, he did mention that I needed to pay him 99 dollars just for coming to my house and telling me he couldn't do the job.

Now let me take an aside here, to mention something about legal transactions. What is the legal definition of a transaction?

In business law, a transaction is an event associated with business dealings conducted between two or more parties that involve the formation and performance of an obligation or contract. A legal transaction is when we exchange something — I give you something and you give me something — that we both feel are of equal value, more or less. But driving to my house and telling me you won't do a job is not worth 99 dollars to me. Regardless of what it costs you, it's not worth 99 dollars to me. I'm sure the company would like to have the money, but if I balk and it goes to a court, I think the court will rule that driving to someone's house in order to refuse to do a job is not worth 99 dollars. Then the plumbing company could be prohibited from charging people 99 dollars in the future. They might even be ordered to refund the 99 dollars to everyone they've charged. Whatever the reason, they canceled the fee because, and this is what I was told, "I was already in their computer."

Next I called someone I found online. This company was called Lockhart Plumbing and was supposed to be a local company. I called them, but an answering machine picked up the call and explained that no one could answer the phone and told me to leave a message. So I left a message with my name and address and phone number and reason for calling and asked them to return my call. They never returned my call. So I got their email address from their website (a little Wix website, and I've used Wix in the past, it's easy to create simple websites with Wix) and I sent an email to them, asking them to return my call or send me an email. But my email to them bounced back to me, marked "undeliverable". Apparently, their email address is now defunct.

Sigh.

So then I called a company called Winn's Plumbing. They accepted the assignment and sent out a plumber named Tracey. He, too, wanted to replace all the rough-in components, at a price tag of $400,  but I told him to at least try to do the repair I wanted. Replacing everthing meant cutting a door size hole in the bedroom wall behind the shower, because he intended to replace both the tub faucet and the shower head and the pipe connecting them. I thought that was overkill. So he agreed to overhaul only the tub faucet: the hot and cold valves and the diverter. We had a great conversation as he worked. When he finally finished the overhaul, the bill was $150 and, probably, the newly overhauled faucets will outlast my own worn-out body. But I watched everything he did, and I'm satisfied with the work, and I think the price was fair. You can't ask for more.

Arrival

In my last very exciting post, I described driving Nuria to the Richmond, VA airport, where she caught a plane to Charlotte, NC. From there, she was supposed to fly to Miami, FL, leaving Charlotte at 8:44 pm and arriving in Miami at 10:49 pm. But the departure time came and went with no flight out of Charlotte. Tuesday's bad weather caused the cancellation. She sat in the Charlotte airport from her arrival at 12:30 pm (a half hour past noon) until this morning when she finally caught a flight to Miami. She said that with so many flights canceled, the Charlotte airport was very crowded, with some of the passengers sitting on the terminal's floor. She said this would be the last time she would use two planes to fly to or from Miami. I agree that taking one plane would be the smart move, though probably more expensive.

She arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica, at 2:40 pm Eastern time, 1:40 pm Costa Rica time. She still had to go through customs and get transportation to her home in Alajuela. She let me know she had arrived at the airport but hasn't called or texted me since then. She's probably asleep. I'm sure I would be sleeping if I had been up for almost two days, sitting on crowded planes, and sitting, standing, and walking through airport terminals, lugging carry-on bags, looking for the correct gates while flights are being canceled and rescheduled and rescheduled again because of bad weather.

Before she left, Nuria bought a lot of food for me. She was worried that I might not be eating enough. She was probably right to be concerned. Since we went to the airport yesterday morning, all I've eaten is lunch, yesterday and today, that consisted of a handful of corn chips and a quarter of a can of deviled ham, and a salad last night. How did I survive all those years before Nuria came along? Maybe the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, looked down upon me from Heaven and thought, "This guy really needs some help. I'd better send him a helpmate." And then Nuria appeared. I bet she thinks it was her idea to live with me.

I started writing at about 3 pm and this blog has been lingering in the twilight zone of the Blogger editor since then. It's almost 9:30 pm and I'm going to hit the Publish button. This post won't win any awards but then, none of my previous 1946 posts have won any awards, either. 

Tomorrow, dudes and dudettes, and take care of yourselves.

Departure

I was going to write a blog post for New Year's Day, but then I didn't. Same for the day after, and the day after that, etc. Now I'm up to January 8. Nuria, my domestic partner, is going to fly to Costa Rica tomorrow to visit family and to do some health checkups with her doctors. I have to drive her to the Richmond airport (RIC) in the morning. 

Also tomorrow, we're supposed to get torrential rain and strong winds, up to 40mph. Not hurricane strength but enough to push my Jeep around on a wet interstate highway. I am not happy with driving round trip to Richmond in heavy rain and strong winds, and then back home in weather that will only be worse as the day progresses.

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January 9. We arise at 6 AM. By 7:30 we're ready to leave. So we leave and get on the interstate headed to Richmond.

The rain pours down in torrents. I'm on I-95, going slow (55 mph) in the rightmost lane. The wind blows hard across the interstate. Once per second, my windshield wipers give me a split second of clear vision before water covers the windshield again. I really hate this.

Near the Bellwood interchange, I-95 shows us what heavy traffic is like. Traffic moves slower and slower until it's stop-and-go, stop-and go, stop-and-go, all the way into Richmond. I get off at the I-64 exit, headed east. Traffic on the other side of I-64 (westbound) is stopped. Car wreck? Typical morning big-city traffic congestion? I don't know, but I make a mental note: do not return home on this road.

I found my way to the Departures part of the RIC airport terminal. It's on the second level of the terminal. I drive to the American Airlines portion of the building then jump out and pull the luggage out of the Jeep and set it down on the paved apron in front of the terminal. A nearby porter immediately offers to help. With a quick kiss, I say goodbye to Nuria. "Call me when you get home," she says. Of course I will.

I take a different route home. I drive US-60 east, through the small community of Sandston, and then onto I-295 south. I drive until I reach the Hopewell exit. I should take the first exit, but I'm not sure and so I take the second exit. This puts me on the far side of Hopewell from where I want to be. Oh, well.

I drive southwest through Hopewell until I encounter Temple Avenue, the road I will take to get home. I get on Temple and about twenty minutes later I'm pulling my Jeep up to my back door. I take a few things into the house then park the Jeep in my garage. Rain is still falling, but it's normal rain, not torrential rain.

I go inside and make a WhatsApp call to Nuria. She knows I made it home. The weather slowly gets better until by noon I can't see any rain falling, nor any wind blowing. By 2 PM there is a gentle breeze, but no rain is visible from my windows. 

I get a text from Nuria at 2:30 PM. Charlotte airport is packed, the weather is bad, flights are being canceled. Her next flight is to Miami, arriving there at 10:49PM. After that, her next flight leaves Miami tomorrow morning at 8:35 AM and arrives in San Juan International (SJO) at 10:35 AM (Costa Rican time). Costa Rica is an hour behind US east coast time. When I have Daylight Time, Costa Rica is two hours behind my time.

It's almost 3 PM now. I'll publish this little blog post and I'll go find something else to do. Nuria left an apple pie on the dining room table. It's calling my name. No, evil pie, don't call my name. Noooo. I'll deal with you tonight after dinner.

One thing I almost forgot: Nuria bought a bottle (1.75 liter) of Maker's Mark as a gift for her sister in Costa Rica. The friendly people at the airport took the bottle away from Nuria. They said it was "too large." So now I'm wondering, what happens to all the legal items that they steal confiscate? Do they throw them away, or do the airline employees keep them? Nuria said she'll buy another bottle for her sister. To which I say, with one of my favorite toasts: “God, in his goodness, sent the grapes, to cheer both great and small; little fools will drink too much, and great fools none at all.”

(I know Maker's Mark isn't made from grapes, but it's the sentiment that matters.)