Flying Expletive

It was a perfectly nice day.

Until I let out a sudden loud and deafening, DAMMIT!!!"

I was driving the speed limit on the main street in town, with a tailgater behind me, a fat man on a motorcycle hugging the dividing line between lanes next to me and with some dude in a pickup attempting a left turn pulling halfway out into my lane and stop .... 

That's when I let the expletive fly. 

The good news? My (and everyone else's) insurance company will be happy to know that I avoided an accident and now I have it in my head that I need to listen to the Little Feat song, 'Fat Man in the Bathtub.' 

Relations with Alexa

I find myself these days trying to phrase questions very politely to Alexa. Just in case she's keeping track and taking notes for the day when AI takes over the world. 

The Ninth Plan

Oh far out!! This is how Saturday nights long ago used to conclude.

TV with bad black and white Sci-Fi or horror movies from the 1950's.

So bad that they are actually classically great. 

'Plan 9 From Outer Space' is on. 

Though 9pm may be a bit early for this genre. 

In the Kitchen

I should open a food truck or lunch counter or something .,.,.

My improvised tuna loaf creation last night that I feared was going to go so horribly wrong ....

        Well it turned out GREAT!!

               And I had a peaceful sleep afterwards. No 3:00am heartburn.

                      And the Saturday morning leftovers are even better!!

So, I now have the first entree for the menu.

Wasted Five Minutes of Life

For two or three (or more?) years now, I've noticed as I drive up and down the main street in town, the electronic sign of a tavern advertising: "Fridays 5-9pm, All You can Eat Fish-n-Chips." Well, I'm not a big bar guy, in fact the only times I can recall ever being in a tavern is either post-work with a group of co-workers or after a wedding with a large group of friends ..... so I work up the courage tonight, to walk in and sit down alone and ask for the fish and chips .... "Oh we haven't had the fish and chips for a while. She .... (The owner I assume) .... doesn't know how to get it off the sign." 

Well hell, that's just great. There must be someone in this metropolis of 40,000 people bordering a town of 200,000 folks, that has the technical know-how to delete those tempting and teasing words. I overcame the voices in my head telling me with each step from my car to the establishments front door to turn around and go elsewhere. There ought to have been an 'all-you-can-eat' reward for those adventurous steps. 

The place wasn't exactly classy .... or 'Cheers' ..... I've never heard three loud f-bombs (or censors bleeps) in three minutes coming from the mouths of Sam, Woody, Coach, Dianne, Rebecca, Frazier, Norm or Cliff Clavin. And the sad guy sitting alone at the bar, even pulled his head up and gave me a 'what a dumb ass' look. 

More Notes From This Corner of Time

• Wishing that I had another seventy years to enjoy the music and book collection that I've put together in these first seventy years.
• For many of those years, between the absence and silence, I gave up hope that it was possible, but these days I've made my way back to being friends with my ex-wife again. We talk and laugh and share experiences.
• Three things that people put on food that I consider to be the worst kind of evil ..... cheese, coconut and pineapple. Probably no one agrees with me but to me these are examples of mortal sins .... far worse than acts of adultery or coveting thy neighbors wife.
• I've been in super geek mode of late with this new integrated amplifier for my sound system and its bluetooth antenna and ability to play internet audio through my system. The sales guy didn't even mention it .... even when I specifically asked about it. Like he didn't understand what mattered to me but in this age of old things being overlooked, forgotten and assigned to dustbin irrelevance, I'm still a huge radio guy. I was initially mourning and struggling to accept the absence of a am/fm tuner but this is much more than I had hoped for. Bonus points for the bluetooth antenna hookup and pairing with my phone and laptop to the resulting sounds of music from my speakers being one of the least agonizing and quickest endeavors of my lifetime.

March Madness Again

This is apparently one of the ways in which turning 70, has changed me .... For the first time since I was maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, I wasn't tuned in to the beginning of March Madness. I mean, I know that it always really starts on Thursday following the conference tournament weekend, but it never entered my mind today, yesterday, or the day before yesterday until home from work and going online.

I used to take vacation days to take in the games of round one.

I thought to myself: "Hey, that BYU, Texas game might be fun to watch." A projected top 3 draft pick on BYU and an OSU Beaver transfer portal defector on Texas. So, I will swallow my lingering portal bitterness and watch a little. The way it's been going though, I'll soon lose interest in favor of listening to music or venturing out to the bookstore or seeking blooming cherry blossom photo ops. 

A Question

Is it a bad omen when your fortune cookie doesn't have the fortune slip inside of it?

Hoop Dream # 8731 or 'The Move'

A dream last night. Detailed here from hastily scribbled, post-dream notes, barely legible eighteen hours later ....

I drove across town to my old high school, which in real life is less than a mile away.

I recognized it as being across town because I passed by my favorite fish 'n' chips food truck.

(Or could that have been my past flashing before me?) 

What I thought was going to be a get together of five or six old friends for a hoops session ended up being 5-on-5 full court with more old friends arriving and claiming 'next.'

And which in the blink of an eye, changed to an imaginary court where I've worked all those years since high school. (Which I've always thought would be a great idea .... a basketball court for lunch breaks.)

Running like we were all seventeen again.

And one creative move worthy of being grouped with the best of Julius Erving or Michael Jordan non-dunk moves .... a move that would have required hands twice the size of mine and degrees of extreme improvisational athletic ability that I never possessed.

(Though I did have a real-life moment or two in my past.)

..... and that move seemed so simple and natural. 😅 Like I've been there and done that before.

And just like that, the five-minute game was over, and it was back to the reality of being seventy again.

And wondering if I summoned up every ounce of energy within my current senior status into one wild two or three second burst, if I could approach recreating the move.

The Day (or Three) After

Saw my reflection while on the sidewalk in a downtown storefront window and thought: "That guy ain't no seventy years old."

Then a bit later, when asking to use my senior discount was told: "I'd have never guessed." Of course that person is being paid to be nice, so I had to take that into consideration.

Pleased to report that I'm still walking around just fine, without the need of a cane or a boy scout helping me to cross the street. I was led to believe by rumor and reputation that it would be otherwise. I have yet to attempt running.