Difficult question

Say you heard about a new disease that has cropped up in the U.S.  Only one person in 10,000 will get the disease but it is always fatal if you get it.  You are scheduled for a physical so you decide to include a test for the new disease.  The Doc tells you the test is 99% accurate.  When the results come back, you find you have tested positive for the disease.  Should you be devastated? Slightly worried or not too worried at all?

This is included in Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown.  It turns out you still have less than 1% chance of having the disease, so not to worry.  I am slowly working my way through the book.  It takes good concentration to stick with it.  Usually I don't have that quality of mind, especially when I'm reading just before going to bed.  It is more like reading a text book.  

I thought I'd find out something about vapeing.  If you haven't heard about it, it's a way of getting the benefits of marijuana without smoking it. There is also no strong smell.  Instead of burning the "medicine" you grind some up and put it into a vaporizer.  The vaporizer has some means of heating the herb to a temperature less than the combustion point but the cannibinoids are released as a vapor.  One inhales this and gets the benefits they seek.  I still haven't seen anything telling me that it definitely is not a health risk.  After almost 30 years of not smoking I thought I might try vaping.  The vaporizers can be pricy and I can't believe the price of pot.  It used to be $20 for an ounce of Mexican, $40 for pretty good stuff.  Now it's more like $300 for "medical grade".  I think I'm just going to stick to PBR, FiveOClock vodka and cheap wine.

I did learn that the human mind can produce it's own cannibinoids.  Maybe I can develop a hypnosis routine to increase this.  Just received some bad news so I'll see you later.

Bloggin at 5AM

It's late in the morning since I woke up at 2:30.  Once in a while I will wake up and lie in bed for an hour or so before I fall back asleep.  If it goes on much further than that I get up for a while and then go back to bed when I get sleepy.  It may be part of an unstated and unplanned strategy that Brooke and I have fallen into, where we give each other the floor, as it were.  We try to avoid being in the same place at the same time.  It just works better that way.  I'm sure it happens with a lot of couples.  I mentioned it to one of Brooke's cronies when she was visiting and she remarked it's like room mates.
 It's working for us right now.

I'm following college basketball.  The big ten is still up in the air with a lot of good teams.  Indiana beat MSU in East Lansing last week and last night Indiana went to lowly Minnesota and lost to the Golden Gophers.  One of my favorite team names.
Michigan has both MSU and Indiana to play, both at Ann Arbor.  It's fun to follow.  It gives me something to do this time of year.

I am engaged in home improvement, also.  I am painting the side bedroom.  The ceiling is being prepped and tools assembled.  Wallpaper must be removed and repairs made.  I may put in Wainscoating.  I'm sure there will be a couple of very hard days involved before it is completed.

We are members of Planet Fitness now.  That is working out well so far.  It makes one feel good to walk on the treadmill or elliptical for a while.  

That's all the boring stuff for now. The really exciting stuff will have to wait 'til next time.    

Life's Eddys

How did I end up with this title?  Well, I was thinking about where my life is now.  When you retire it's kinda like being out of the main stream.  When one goes over to the side of the stream one thing that is encountered is eddy currents.  They swirl and sometimes go back upstream for a ways.  Like reflecting on the past. Whatever,  I also have been reading Keith Richard's auto biography, "Life".   It is quite good, and so I suppose it goes along with my title.  Also there is a part in there where the newly forming Stones were referring to all the day-to-day people as Eddies. Based on people encountered in a restaurant they frequented, all seemed to be named Eddie.  I am only about a fifth of the way through the book, but I recommend it justfor that part.  

Keith Richards is about a year older than me.  He tells of his youth and what it was like in post WWII England.  What school was like.  It was similar to my youth.  When you're a young boy there is a lot of fighting and bullying on the playground etc.
After the war there were people living in this area near his house.  It was a swampy area I believe along a river.  Some homeless people lived there.  Left over from the war still thinking it was going on.  Some mental cases.  Must have been a strange place to be with people running and hiding.  Maybe like hobo areas here in the states.  As he said, "Some of them were mean. He was shot by someone with an air rifle there." I take back those quote marks- I'm paraphrasing.

I thought it was funny that The Rolling Stones had a gig playing at a party for Lady Lampson early in their carrier.  

The weather here is very cold these days.  I'm talking about Jan. 2013.  I've been putting up plastic film on the windows to save some heat.  It does help.  I'm still in the aftermath of the hypnosis seminar. Figuring out how to send Links to people so they can get the deepening audio file that I put in my Dropbox.  I'm pretty sure I got it, finally.

I want to make some progress with guitar now.  It's been going along slowly but steadily.  This time of year is the worst in Michigan.  Things start to pick up in March.  Groundhog Day is coming up soon.
Be of good cheer.  



  

Hypnosis Party in side bedroom

 I wrote this to Jake and Emma, thought I'd paste it here too.  The "party" was to allow me to practice giving a self-hypnosis talk.



Aunt Elizabeth(not her real name) and the next door neighbors
attended.  They learned a lot about hypnosis and were very interested
in the process.  Bob(fake) had done some reading on it and had some good
questions.  Elizabeth said her sister , Monica(fake name), uses a hypnosis tape
regularly.
  Tammy-Lynn(fake) has a problem with going along with the relaxation etc.  Even
though I said just pretend and play along.  She couldn't let herself
do it.  Maybe some trust issues. Who knows, but that kinda disrupted
things.  We didn't accomplish the goal of learning and practicing
giving yourself suggestions.  It was instructional for all though.
I will probably do it again.  I will make some changes and am sure it
will be much better.  I think Friday night is a bad choice of
time...people too tired.  Maybe serve Red Bull instead of wine.  The
mind should be alert for hypnosis.
All in all it was great from my perspective.  I learned about uses for
the tablet; speech to text, audio files and drop box.  I also reviewed
a lot of information on hypnosis.

So, the event was useful and fun.  I'm learning more about internet fakery though.  One thing that came up in our table talk, while drinking wine and eating snacks, people write blogs for other people just to keep their numbers up.  This keeps their google listing higher.  I wonder if we need two internets.  They'd probably both get corrupted.

I did give an example of giving yourself a suggestion and ever since I want to"Exercise every day and love it."

Written by Ken Lamson(real name) 

 

Christmas Eve 2012

Had a few minutes before I clean the bathrooms, so while I'm listening to classical Christmas tunes, thought I'd let you know what Christmas eve was like here.  Jake and Martyna took Gabe and Luke out to Seven Lakes State Park to romp around in the snow and maybe slide down a hill or two. Emma is finishing up some cookies that Brooke had started earlier.  Suhitha spent the night in Windsor partying with a friend.

The morning was spent playing with Omar and Gabe.  Brooke comes up with the most fun games that boys enjoy.  Brings back memories.  Toy cars were going over "Monkey-butt Hill" this morning.
Omar has a fever and I'm coming down with a little something.  My right ear is blocked and it makes sounds very different than normal.

Our nephew Ben was over last night and he had suggested jokingly that we could have the TV set to play a fireplace on Christmas.  I found a couple of them on Netflix and tried one out.  It was nice with christmas songs playing along.  Omar, being slowed down by  his cold, enjoyed sitting on my lap and watching the fire.

The tree is nice.  Jake, Martyna and I bought it at a farm and Jake cut it down with a saw.  We all trimmed it that night and it's so fresh and even.  It looks great with all the gifts underneath.  Gabe's big gift is a two-seater Jeep.  It is so big it is in the camper-van.  It is a beautiful blue with "chrome" accessories. Lots of decals make it very appealing to the very young group.  I wouldn't be surprised to find that Gabe buys a real Jeep one day.  

I gotta go.  We have a new toilet seat in the upstairs bath. The old one broke and I replaced it with a "no-slam" seat.  The occupants of the adjacent bedroom won't be awakened by the slam anymore.
Hope you are as blessed as we are this Christmas.   

How to Treat People

Once again I was reading last night before falling asleep.  That's almost as dangerous as thinking.  The author suggests asking someone how they would like to be remembered.  In their answer to this, they give hints as to how they would like to be treated by others.  I think the idea was to know what things they would like to hear in the form of feedback.  A person who wants to be remembered as generous would occasionally like to hear, "You're always so generous."  Or to be less obvious, caring, giving etc.

Some people like to receive gifts.  Flowers, jewelry etc.  Others just an occasional hug or maybe fixing them a favorite dish.  It would be good to know what your loved ones really appreciate.  There is a lot to be learned from the relationship between the father and mother in the Robertson family on Duck Dynasty.  The old man goes along with whatever his wife, Miss Kay, wants, it seems, as long as he gets some special dish or 20 minutes of rough sex in return. 

Just some thoughts on a Sunday morning.  Hope you are being treated well by your significant others and vice versa.  Perhaps some rough sex is in order or just a gentle wank.

  

Nation Lost

Hi all.  It is early morning on a Saturday.  I am up with the dog and cat.  I am going to break with an unstated "rule" and write about politics.  More to explain myself than to change any minds out there.

I was terribly disappointed in the results of the last election.  The choice of Mitt Romney over our President seemed abundantly clear, yet he lost.  

This has lead to many questions.  Mainly what are people voting for; or against.  Politicians use many techniques to get votes.  I don't know them all.  The parties do know them and will use them without shame.  To them it is just a game and all is fair.  If you can "paint" your opponent as mean, aloof, not one-of-us etc., and win with that strategy, then hooray, you won the game.  Never mind the lying and misrepresentation.

I didn't give politics and government too much thought until I was in my late thirties.  Most young people don't think about it too much.  The young are more idealistic and want "fairness" in the world. I was like that, too.  Robin Hood was cool, I thought, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.  I guess it turns out that it was really more about over taxation by bad Prince John.  For me it was Maid Marian and archery.  

We don't live in an idealistic world, however.  The real world is very competitive and tough.   It is probably even worse than I know.  I've had it pretty easy and lived a sheltered life.  But, like Chris Farly says in the role of a motivational speaker, "You'll find out that you don't amount to "Jack-Squat".  You'll find yourself eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a Van, down by the river!"

Back to what happened in my late thirties.  My oldest son, Curtis told me about Rush Limbaugh.  Rush was a wacko right-winger on the radio, I had been told. I started listening to see what my son found appealing.  Rush was entertaining, funny and smart. He is not a Republican, he is a conservative.  The Democratic Party was much more conservative especially with Kennedy, by the way.  The thing that really startled me with Rush was when he was talking about some recent occurrance and predicted how it would be reported in the news.  A couple of days later here was the story on the evening news and being portrayed exactly as Rush had predicted.

I was impressed and still listen.  I still have my own mind, with my own thoughts.  I am concerned for the future of the country.  The human mind is pliable when young. When it sets, it is more like concrete, you don't want to change it.  Peace out.