That's hard

Really trying to blog again. More frequently than the GRBs so popular with NGT, if you'll forgive being sprayed by acronyms.

Learning interesting things about my iPhone. 4, I think, maybe... Anyway, leave it connected via Bluetooth to this delightful (in every other way) speaker but ****not**** sending sound through the speaker, or using the phone in any way besides leaving it lying alone doing nothing other than lying there, and the battery level just drops.

Connect it to the SC supply via the cute little square house-current-to-USB adapter that Apple itself provides, leave the phone completely alone (whether or not still connected to the bluetooth device) and the battery-level just drops. Not as fast, yet it still drops. Turn off the bluetooth, and the level still drops.

Connect same phone with no other changes to an Apple device, a computer of some kind. Battery level rises. Very quickly, too!

My conclusion: Like all things digital, phone and its battery like clean power. Computer's power provided by its USB jacks, nice and clean! Everything else... not so much. And bluetooth sucks power, whether it's being used to carry heavy data (like audio with video) or just maintaining the connection. Haven't tested yet whether bluetooth on plus computer powered USB still drains power, but as Alton Brown has said frequently, that's another show.

Spent some enjoyable time with a friend yesterday. We didn't go further than the back yard, but I managed. I was definitely out of juice, but I kept plugging away, just because I thought I needed to. If for no other reason, just to practice.

We've madereservations at a favorite restaurant for Thanksgiving. Since Food-Channel-style Thanksgiving is all about dairy, we're just going vegan. But odd as that may sound, Shojin is always quite amazing, and it's so good, you'd never know it was so good for you!

Been wandering down memory lane, remembering the Goode Olde Days back at Yale with its marching band, and performing in that band at The Game, which is what us Yalies call the Yale-Harvard game. In my day with them, it was hellishly cold, but this year portends much gentler weather. The Game is always played the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and for us Yalies, no other game matters.

Well, they have been doing it since (oh my) 1875. You do the math about "how many times."

And here we go. I've hit the wall... can't deal with this "operating the machine" stuff any longer.

That, right there, is one of the many things I have a hard time really facing & dealing with. It's one thing to have been working for an hour, or hours, and then taking a break. This is different... this is running out of so much, so suddenly, that it's "hitting the wall" not just needing a break. I had imagined looking into poking at doing music!

But no.

And that's hard too... that's very hard.

You gotta know...

Things are still going. As I often tell people, things are the same every day, different every day. Just like... life.

Had a good acupuncturing and dharma talk yesterday. One topic was "Hm... This has been bothering you for years." Neither of us has any idea about what exactly is stuck, but boy is it ever stuck. As Ram Dass says all the time, that's where the work needs to be done. Exactly what work... well, figuring that out is part of the work. Although "figuring" may not be the right approach... may be precisely the wrong approach...can't think your way out of a box made of "thought," after all.

Simple quotidian "life" is extremely illuminating, calling light to shine upon the unnoticed and the assumed. The floor that seems level isn't; just sit there in the wheelchair and it starts to drift gently "downhill." Eyes that cooperate with each other makes simply selecting before reaching for something and then actually grasping it a vastly, vastly, simpler task than things get when each eye seems to have its own agenda thus direction.

Using the hands, especially the fingers, with the precision one has always had and is thus used to having... and don't have any more, or so it seems. Fine hand control fades with age, but please, I'm only 44 & a few months, I suppose technically that counts as "age" but my 70+-year-old father is still using a scroll saw, so "age" ain't what it's all about. Duh.

Time to get "morning" tea going for my wife.

And I was called away by a "go to the bathroom nownownow" which did not take moments -- it happened, but an hour, and then quite a while to recover, which alas haven't happened yet.

So, I'll make a cup of tea for myself, then back to bed. I may have a friend come over 1:00-ish... or bail out. Which I am very, very very, close to doing.

But as was said on Steven Universe, in the show Space Race, we are told, several times:

You gotta know when to bail.

So...

I am so out of the "blogging habit." Well, I'm definitely still here... "Still around," at least.

Not much to share. Weather here in Pasadena is definitely fall, knocking on the door of winter. Reminds me very much of my Yale Days, perhaps just hanging out in Beinecke Plaza, or roving around the outside of Book and Snake, quite an interesting place in itself.

They used to have a refrigerator in the basement with a beer keg inside, nozzle & pull handle outside the refrigerator, mounted within/to the door. 'Course, that was when Connecticut was an 18-to-drink state... I wonder whether the keg is "of course gone," or "of course still there."

Well, I accomplished "something," sitting here at my computer, maybe I'll send another note or so, but I think I'm done, for the moment. Bed is seeming very attractive...

Certainly more attractive as a "comfortable resting place" than what sits outside the front door of Book and Snake

The Grove Street Cemetery, of course.

Not my planned destination, though. For now. So, don't worry!

Second step promises ...

I have been very remiss in my blogging tasks, it seems. Well, here's how things are going...

It's beautiful in the back yard, during the day, definitely worthy of at least a veranda visit. We may very well have some satsumas in a week or so, pretty much the only plant not totally burned out by the weather.

Saw my herbalist yesterday, we had some very good and necessary words; new herbs definitely are in the mix, too.

Dealing with the computer is a ... challenge. When your eyes aren't working in harmony, it provides a challenge when one is accustomed to using one's eyes in concert with each other and with one's hands... which likewise aren't working as well as one is accustomed to their heretofore quite good work.

And I think I just hit the wall. Time to stop and move to the next "fun" operation, which will itself be followed by lying down.

The step after the "fun" medical one... promises enjoyment; the simple pleasure of just lying down, and listening to some cartoons. Maybe some music.

Off we go......