Tag Behavior

Perfectly perfect

Michael 10 Comments

It’s Thursday so that means I should put out a (fabulous) post (cleverly) tying in yesterday’s insightful ROAMcare Uplift post. But I can’t think of one so I’ll say goodbye to Brian Wilson, last of the Wilson brothers who with Mike Love and Al Jardine remind us of summer’s good times as soon as we hear any Beach Boys tune. Among the images conjured are surf, sand, and transistor radios on the corner of the beach blanket.

It is interesting that the musical genius behind thighs harmonies was partially deaf. It didn’t seem to hold him back. Proof, I suppose, that difficulties become major or minor according to the severity we assign them. Good, bad, and whatever is in between are a function of us being positive, negative, or apathetic.

Earlier this year I shared a BBC Music video of God Only Knows, which so, so many consider the perfect song. If that is so, this video is the perfect representation of it. Enjoy and celebrate Brian’s genius.

it might not be a great tie-in, but after you listen to God Only Knows, click here and read yesterday’s post, Sailing the Same Sea. It sort of pairs up okay. It’s a nautical theme and is about positivity.

7 Highly Successful Habits

Michael 12 Comments

I have always hated the seeming simplicity of the seventies self-help series. Truth be told, they were mostly from the 80s but I don’t get to use alteration often, so I fudged it. You know the ones I mean. The One Minute Manager, Seven Habits off Highly Effective Name Your Interest Group, The Four Hour Work Week. Mind you, they were transformative and had, and still have great insights, but taken literally you will be a lousy manager, rather ineffective, and likely out of work.

But I found a simplistic approach to life that really can be done in 7 steps, in a matter of minutes, and have oodles of hours leftover for balancing all the life you want. And I found it on the Internet. On social media even! The seven things one must master to become an adult. It was actually one of those cutesy images and its title was ‘7 Habits Every Child Needs to Learn Before They Move Out.’

I have a feeling that the person who posted it might have been holding tongue somewhat tightly to the inside of check, yet still it is the best expression of satisfied human needs since Mazlov drew his pyramid. It is truly to road map and/or GPS directions to a fully fulfilled human type person, stupendous in its simplicity. Unfortunately, I estimate 99.7% of the people out there never mastered, mayhaps never attempted, Habit #7.

What are these magical machinations fledgling humans should be attempting?

1.        Do your laundry. Okay, this was written as what young adults need to learn before moving out of Mommy’s house, but I tell you I know people who do not do their laundry. Grown up people of both sexes and/or genders still transporting bags of laundry from their apartment to parents’ laundry room. And others who use laundry services. This isn’t New York City I live where apartments may or may not have adequate laundering facilities. This is the ‘burbs where washer/dryer combinations are status symbols. Learn to wash you own clothes.

2.        Cook simple meals. I think most semi-adults can pull this off. It might be three different kinds of eggs but I’m willing to go out in a limb and say we got this one. Frozen pizza does not count.

3.        Manage a budget. I’m quite convinced there are too many folks to count who cannot balance a budget. I’d say balance a checkbook but I’m not sure how many people still use a checkbook. If people were good at managing money, why would we be so concerned about needing an account without overdraft fees? I firmly believe banks have gone way the frack overboard with fees of all sorts, but “As long as the machine still takes my debit card, I still have money,” is not a financial plan.

4.        Keep your place clean. I’m not at all against cleaning services. If you can afford a maid, have at it, but know how to handle the basics.

5.        Know how to make appointments. Again, I think most of us can do this. You gotta have one or two gimmes.

6.        Basic maintenance. Yes, the “Check Engine” light means something. Yes, you too might need to work a plunger, and those lightbulbs are not lifetime regardless of what the package says. I’d say this is another gimme.

But now, here we hit the one thing that I think too many adults who have been on their own for decades still cannot figure out, especially those with part time jobs in Washington, DC.

7.        Take responsibility. Need I say more?

Have a happy week!

Summertime in the city

Michael 5 Comments

Greetings buddy bloggers, blogging buddies, responsible readers, and children of all ages. I missed yesterday. The last two days have been whirlwind days for me with more than the usual appointments, commitments, and after dinner mints. But not to fear, I am alive a well. Wonders truly do never cease.

Over in the ROAMcare site, this weekly uplift took a swipe at bad behavior and defending oneself against it. Summer heat seems to bring out the worst in the worst of us. The best of us have to be on guard. Check it out.

The big news is ROAMcare’s Flashback Friday brings back an old favorite, here and there… in fact it is the most widely read Uplift post… Middle Seat Hump Syndrome. Flashback Friday is a ROAMcare subscriber “exclusive” but this is just too good not to share with everybody.  

The post was first published in June of 2021. We were just rounding the corner from the pandemic back to normal. If you can forgive the couple lines that address the Covid years, we think you will find a lot still right with the thoughts that gave rise to the Middle Seat Hump Syndrome.

And don’t forget, it’s National Donut Day. Make it an especially sticky one! 

See a penny, pick it up

Michael 8 Comments

Last week I was called a friend just to chat and the opening line I used was, “HI, what’s new.” “I’m sorting pennies while I still can. I haven’t found any good ones yet.” This was actually the second time in a few months our conversation started thus. Thusly? Started like that.

Last weeks news that the US Mint is officially out of the penny minting business has people across the country breaking into piggy banks looking for elusive billion dollar pennies.

Way way way back, I wrote a post about a someone who paid $1.38 million dollars for a penny. People complain when scalpers ticket brokers charge more than face value for tickets. Nobody said anything about the guy who paid $1,379,999.99 over face for a penny. Okay, so it was minted in 1793, but it’s still just a penny, right?

The chance of you pulling another 1793 penny from your safe deposit piglet is so rare it ain’t gonna happen. The chance off pulling an illusive 1943 or 1943-D penny worth a paltry $1.00 million is close too it ain’t gonna happen either. But digging up a pre-1982 penny is possible. Not probable but possible. In theory, a pre-1982 penny, thanks to its near (95%) all copper makeup, is worth at least three cents.

But is it? Copper is currently trading at about $.01 per gram, those older pennies weigh 3 grams, so they contain about three times their face value in copper metal. Except they aren’t worth 3 cents because as legal tender, it is illegal to melt down coins for their metal weight value.

It has been said the value of any object is how much somebody is willing to pay for it, yet its worth is how much somebody wants for it. Rarely are worth and value equal. If our collections actually cost what we feel they are worth, they would far exceed most people’s ability to pay for them, thus lowering their value. But it is because we place such worth on these objects that give us so much joy that they are so valuable to us. Even pennies.

Was my friend searching for that million dollar treasure or a handful of three penny pennies? Turns out neither was to be found so it didn’t really matter other than it made for a pleasant conversation and a not so worthless blog post. Or maybe that would be a priceless post.

Choose wisely

Michael 9 Comments

I was reading the local paper on line this morning and did something I rarely do. I glanced at the reader comments section. The assumption is the comments are made by readers of the article but at least a quarter of them, as many as a third of them had little to do with the article they accompanied. It got me thinking a couple things.

My first thought was who made the decision to allow comments on newspaper articles. I routinely read two local papers, a national news service daily report, and at least one of the local TV/radio conglomerates’ news briefs. Only one allows comments on an article. The others all host “letters to the editor” sections so there is an outlet for concerned readers to voice (type) their views. The comments added to the articles rarely add anything thoughtful and routinely devolve into the sort of online bashing more at home at the site formerly known as Twitter. But someone made the choice to open the pixels to anyone with access to a keyboard, physical or virtual.

My second thought was, “Just because some bozo at the paper caved to the pressure of his backward hat wearing after work drinking buddies to allow backward hat wearing examples of threatened masculinity to put their canned beliefs in the modern equivalent of crayon on the paper, who thought it was a good idea to accept the challenge and put to rest any idea that the backward hat wearing contingent is just misunderstood and might actually be at least as smart as a gibbon.” Yes, it was a long thought. Short version: who thought it was a good idea to accept the choice to add their comments.

My third thought was why did I even bother glancing at the comments knowing they were probably as full of waste as a doggie poop bag after a long walk. It was a choice I regretted. Unfortunately it is sort of like watching a 300 pound man do a belly flop from the high dive. You know it’s going to be messy and someone undoubtedly will get hurt, but you can’t look away.

The decision to allow or not allow comments, to make intelligent observations or spew nonsense, to read or not to read, or to climb the ladder to the high dive in the first place are all pretty easy either/or choices.  It’s good to have choices. Choices are what make us different from the parts of the world that do not have some of the freedoms we’ve been used to enjoying. And choices are a fact of life. Every day you will face some (or many) decision making conundrum (conundra) [For those who might be wondering what I’ve been doing now for the last 40 minutes, I had fallen down a rabbit hole looking for the proper plural of conundrum. I can now say that “conundrums” seems to be the preferred plural but “conundra” is not wrong. Given that I’ve already gone out on a limb with my initial spelling, I’ve made the choice to leave it at conundrum.]

Although many are simple either/or choices, just as many may be complex multiple choice decisions (and in life “all off the above” is rarely the correct answer).

We took the challenge and chose to address difficult choices along with their inherent choice fatigue and potential for choice paralysis in yesterday’s Uplift post, The choice is yours. We would appreciate it if you’d read it and if you choose to comment on it. The choice is yours.

Memorial Day 2025

Michael 10 Comments

Today should be a day of celebration. It will be a day of picnics and parades where it is not raining, and one of gripes and grievances where it is. There will be sales on paints and home fixer uppers as well as watermelons and water guns as we welcome ‘the unofficial start of summer.” As close to noon as possible, at the end of a parade or in front of a town war memorial, someone will play taps, and as close to as soon as possible, the revelry can begin, and the memory portion of Memorial Day will conclude.

There are three holidays that celebrate members of the United States military. Armed Forces Day (the third Saturday of May) honors those wearing the uniform, Veterans Day (every year on November 11) honors those who have hung up their uniform, and Memorial Day remembers those who never made it out of their uniform. Over 1.1 million Americans perished in wars since the American Revolution. Many of those we celebrate on Armed Forces Day and Veterans Day believe those 1.1 million are the only members of the armed forces truly worthy of celebration. The rest are “merely doing our job.”

For the most part, those we remember today chose to be Americans, either themselves or by birth. Few of them outside those who served other than those who served in the 18th Century can trace their ancestry back to those earliest Americans. Very few of them can trace their roots to the natives of this land. What is probably an understatement is that the U. S. military is made of members who hail (or hailed) from over 20 countries, bringing their language, customs, celebrations, and memories onto the fields of battle and training along with their boots and gear and weapons. When I was serving, there were in my company those who were born in America soldiers, birthright soldiers, immigrant soldiers, and one Native American soldier. The common denominator was soldier. To the best of my knowledge, all are either still in their uniforms or have taken them off by choice. None of us will be celebrated this weekend and that’s okay.

What isn’t okay is if the 1.1 million who never had the chance to decide if they wanted a life out of their uniforms to be forgotten, or worse, to be remembered in passing, or only as a means to sponsor a sale or take advantage of a photo opportunity.

The history of this nation and the future fate of this nation is rooted in those 1.1 million individuals. Enjoy the parades, the first day at the pool, the 2 for 1 watermelon. Before you do any of that, thank God for sending people with the courage to have defended your privilege to do those things, and pray we won’t soon need more of them.

Lucky chances

Michael 5 Comments

I don’t think they still do it but about 10 years ago, the people at BRAVO, put on a show called “Last Chance Kitchen,” that was a second chance for contestants knocked out of their Top Chef competition.

About that same time, Netflix was premiering a series called “Last Chance U” that followed the football programs at very small, community, and junior colleges, attempting to give the athletes there the chance at the exposure those at the major colleges receive.

A last chance saloon (in the wide west, not to be confused with the myriad cleverly named Last Chance Saloons scattered throughout the US and Canada, and the one in England (did you know myriad literally means a thousand?)) was supposed to be the saloon sitting in the border separating a “wet” territory from a “dry” one so folks could get that one more chance at a drink before it was too late.

All these last chances. You’d think Americans live by the “luck of the draw” system. I suppose many do, and even those who don’t, there is no mistaking the contribution luck or chance might have on our lives. That would be luck or chances. Nobody gets just one chance at anything. Really. Stop and think about it. I’m sure you can find a time in your life when you passed on an opportunity and then saw it come back around and sometimes even come back around again.

We looked at the chance of having a decided chance at things in this week’s Uplift, Try Try Again. As we said, “We cannot undo something already done, but we often get a chance to do something that was left undone.”

It’s a sign

Michael 11 Comments

There is an account on Instagram, Ian the Sign Guy (ianthesignguy), who posts short videos of himself cleaning road signs in England. (He is also on YouTube.) There is no background music, you rarely see him. The videos are just his brush scrubbing away the filth that accumulates in roadside traffic signs. Here is an example. I think it’s one of the greatest things on the internet today. Sort of a new go at cat videos.

Do I want to explain that? Sure. Why not? There is nobody screaming at you. No UNHINGED USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS, or ridiculously obvious lies to wade through. It’s not an innocent looking post trying to get you to buy something, agree with something, or watch and re-watch over and over to find the hidden meaning. It’s just a guy scrubbing away the dirt and grime of your basic traffic control signage.

I don’t recall ever seeing signs here as filthy as he finds there. Some of his pre-cleaned signs are barely legible, yet they seem to be on some major roadways. I suppose we haven’t yet stripped the Department of Transportation’s personnel budget of the sign scrubbers. It’s quite satisfying to watch the dirt melt away, to see the brush go scrub scrub scrub over the sign surface, and to hear the faint drone of whatever equipment he uses to get the water flowing through the brush head. I could watch video after video and be quite content with it and nothing more. A cat video for the 2020’s.

We need more of these. Yes, it is an unexpected joy to have a random Muppets video show up in your feed, and a daily dose or three of old Peanuts cartoons will surely turn surfing snarls into smiles. But no, they aren’t the sign guy, a real-life person out to make his part of his country a little cleaner so his fellow motorists can tell where they are going or how fast they should be going while getting there. It’s a new twist on “love your neighbor.”

Or perhaps he is the new superhero. Not a Superman dumped on our planet to avoid complete annihilation on his. Not a Spider-Man or a Hulk who happened to be around the wrong radioactive insect or experiment. Not like Aquaman getting the best genes from a human father and an Atlantilean mother. More like Batman, just a normal guy who happens to be incredibly wealthy and has a cool costume. I don’t know if Ian is incredibly wealthy, but on the rare occasion you get to see his work clothes, they seem to be top shelf.

It’s worth it to spend a few minutes or hours watching Ian tirelessly make England’s Motorways Glow Again. And no stupid red hat either.

Wordsmithing and the common man

Michael 4 Comments

Yesterday’s Uplift post at ROAMcare revolved around the word “common.” A comment had us thinking about how the meanings of words change. I thought about that a little more on my own and I was amazed at the number of words that once meant one thing now have little and sometimes no resemblance to their original meanings. I was also somewhat aghast at the temerity of humans to play willy nilly with established norms – although, at least with words, the norm established was established by humans so I guess humans can do what they want with them. It’s not like anybody is trying to change science. (People holding high government offices in Washington notwithstanding, given that I’m not so sure they are actually human anyway.)

Some words haven’t quite yet made that complete flip, or flop if you prefer, and carry two meanings opposite each other. Oversight can mean examining for inconsistencies from expectations or the inconsistency itself. These are called contranyms. My favorite contranym is Handicap. – An advantage provided to ensure equality (think golf), or a disadvantage that prevents equal achievement. (Why is this my favorite? Because I am. I have a handicap. Because of reasons too abstruse to go into here, I walk with a cane. It may look cool and all swaggerish, but every time I need to carry or hold something I am limited to only one-half of my carrying and/or holding appendages. People want to call all those with handicaps disabled but we are just as able as anyone else, perhaps more so due to our handicaps, whihch might make that a contranym within a contranym.)

Other common contranyms are model (an exemplary original or a scaled copy), puzzle (a problem or to solve one), and for out baseball fans, strike (to hit or to miss).

And then there are the antagonyms, words that have completely changed meanings over time. Awful is a classic example of a word today meaning the opposite of what it was meant to be. Five hundred years ago a bully was more of a heartthrob, one of outstanding physical prowess. Now it means fake president of a used to be major power. Prestigious, as in renown, has only been a positive example for the last hundred years or so. Before that, a prestigious someone was an imposter who gained wealth by way of trickery (sort of like…oh, never mind).

But back to “common.” I’m not sure where that fits in. everyone’s first definition is something generally met with and of nothing special. But its root is the same as community and it is used to described things shared, like a common border. Or as we wrote in that post, a common good, and even common sense, which most people want to ascribe to individuals but really is knowledge derived from shared experiences. Take a look at it. We think it is uncommonly good.

Not so famous last words

Michael 11 Comments

There are entire books of famous last words. Most of them are famous solely because they were said by famous people rather than being famous because they were profound. There are some that are a little of both. Benjamin Franklin’s last words were, “A dying man can do nothing easy.” The back story – that was in response to his daughter telling him to turn over in bed so he can breathe more easily. Sort of profound on its own. Now that you know the story behind it, it sounds like something I’d say!

Anyway, most last words will never be remembered by someone other than to whom they were spoken, except for last words you see and hear every day.

An exceptionally famous set of last words seldom seen today, was de rigueur in a different century, early in a different century, was “the end,” seen on the last page of every book and last card of every movie.

Other last words often more memorable are the last words you see when that car passes you on the highway and you get a look at their license plate, license plate frame, or bumper sticker. There are some pretty clever examples of two of the above specifies at the links noted. I’ve not yet succumbed to a vanity license plate although the frame I have around the classic plate on Rosemary the Little Red Car reads, “Aged to Perfection. Old Guys Rule!”

I saw an interesting sight just yesterday that I had heard of but never had seen in the wild with my own eyes. A Tesla car with its stylized “T” removed and replaced with a lightning bolt. Not quite a last word but a lasting impression.

A particular type of last word I have a difficult time with is the one to end a text message conversation. Not a quick message like “on my way.” That doesn’t even require an answer. But the conversations that go back and forth for a while, the things that have taken the place of phone calls. Phone calls were easy to end. The last word typically was a simple “bye” plus or minus a dear, hon, or second bye. An e-mail’s last words are like any other correspondence. But a text message. No good way out of that and when you usually decide on a last word, it’s more likely an emoji.

Now I’m not sure what kind of last words would be best to tack on the end of these words. I think I’ll steal Michael Landon’s last words. On his deathbed, his son said to him, “I think it’s time to move on.” Landon’s reply – “You’re right. It’s time. I love you all.” Actually, it’s his last, last words that mean the most. I love you all.