As far back as I can remember, I’ve been someone who tries to make the best with what I’ve got. The story I like to tell myself is “I didn’t have a choice” so I was forced to accept the cards that were dealt to me and figure out how to live with them. But…
I Can’t Outrun Bad Weather
When I was on my road trip adventure/fiasco. I had this plan that I would “follow the weather”. In the hot spring and summer months, I’d camp out in forests and mountains where it was cooler. In the winter, I’d reverse direction and migrate to the warm deserts and possibly back to Florida. My plan…
Tit For Tat and the High Road
I was listening to a podcast that discussed the Prisoner’s Dilemma and various strategies to maximize a player’s winnings. The prisoner’s dilemma is a situation in which two people can either cooperate for mutual benefit or betray the other person for individual gain. In simulations, the winning strategy was to cooperate on your first turn and then do…
Fact Checking Fallacy
There’s been some hand-wringing in the news since Zuckerberg announced this week that Meta would no longer do “fact-checking” and would re-enable news content in user feeds. MAGA fans love it – including Mr. MAGA himself, Donald Trump, who seems absolutely gleeful that Zuckerberg is bending the knee to Trump now. Democrats think it’s awful….
Hibernation
Every winter I go into hibernation mode during the coldest, bleakest weeks. I sleep longer. I eat more and gain a few extra pounds. My workouts, swimming and walking all drop in intensity and pace. Things takes longer to do. Every winter I try to fight this. This morning, as I was slogging through a…
Dropped The Pretense
This year, my sister and I forgot (or intentionally skipped) sending each other “Merry Christmas” texts. I realized this when my mother was recounting her Christmas dinner at my sister’s home and said to me, “We all missed you”. My first thought was “Yeah right. You missed me so much that nobody even bothered to…
Get Off The White House Lawn!
Lately, Trump has been sounding like a grumpy old man complaining about the kids running across his lawn. Whenever he decides he wants to grab attention, he blurts out some blather that’s sure to make the headlines. So I pay no attention to when others dissect his speeches, “Truths”, and tweets. What he says is…
“Dating Is Supposed To Be Fun”
Back when I tried dating again after my 29 year marriage and the death of my wife, I had several friends who regularly offered me dating advice and checked in to see how it was going. After a few months, a half-dozen mediocre dates and a lot of wasted time trying to find matches online,…
Gift Horse
My mother sent me a surprise Christmas gift. It is a device that emits high frequency sound to interrupt and (supposedly) stop your dog from barking. It’s called an “ultrasonic anti-bark device”. My dogs bark a lot. They especially bark when they see kids riding bikes, scooters and electric minibikes, which unfortunately for me, is…
The Day Christmas Died
My friend and I were talking about Christmas last month. He had explained to his girlfriend that that he had no Christmas spirit nor any desire to have one. It isn’t that he hates Christmas or begrudges anyone who celebrates it – it was never a special time for him due to his chaotic childhood…