Tag: coot-proofing
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Nulling the balance
After midnight last Thursday I was in the living room screwing around with courseware. Suddenly I heard a scary noise CLOSE to the window, something like sliding and squeaking. It lasted for two minutes. It couldn’t have been an animal, but it didn’t make sense. After daylight I went out to look, and found that…
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Real hoops, fake hoops
Sometimes the Pharma route, drugs for anxiety and pain, seems attractive. But I’ve managed 75 years without such helps, and probably can continue. I prefer the drug of Little Victories. This old dog knows how to take the Victory drug! When a real hoop like a sudden jury call pops into my path I get…
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Universal facts
One of the AFL-CIO booster films sympathizes with unionized postal workers. Carriers got up routinely at 4AM to start their sorting before walking the route. The narrator said “Nobody wants to get up at 4AM!” That was the official universal FACT for many decades as seen on TV and books and movies. People got up…
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Brief fashion, random memory
Noticed this article in an old appliance dealer mag. Central vacuum systems were trendy in the 60s, but never widespread. When we lived at the top of the hill in Manhattan, a rich prof built a new house next to ours. He had Euro connections and owned the first Squareback I’d ever seen, brought directly…
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Was it time or space?
Thinking again about trust. A definite change happened in the early 80s. I don’t have enough ‘control variables’ to determine if this was a matter of national culture change or location. It could easily be culture by location, not culture by time. With that giant disclaimer, here’s the observation. In the ’70s, employers trusted me…
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Happy Blogday 20!
This month is the 20th anniversary of Polistra’s Mill. In the earlier years I marked each anniversary. The first entry was dated March 1, 2005. I started writing at Blogspot on March 14, and imported the previous two weeks from a brief attempt at blogging on LiveJournal. The tenth year seems to be the last…
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Nice to know
This year I’m trying to move back into pre-2020 condition as far as possible given aging. Trying to be more open and trusting with real people, pulling out of anxiety and constipation and inertia, getting projects underway again. After finishing federal and state tax, decided to update some internal records that I was skipping during…
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Silly
Headline at Bloomberg: Constitutional test of Elon’s authority You don’t need a constitution to figure this out, which is fortunate since we haven’t had a constitution since 1803. A government, like a corporation, is a structured organization. Employees must take orders from the chief executive, or from managers appointed by or through the executive. Chain…
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Self-check for cash codgers
For many years I made grocery trips as early as possible given bus schedule and daylight. Two years ago Safeway limited the hours of real checkout, so I switched to a later storetrip to stay in the real checkout. The later schedule was inconvenient in several ways: more traffic, more crowding on bus, more delays…
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No need to interpret this dream.
Unlike the previous one, this morning’s dream was explicit and positive. I was at some kind of party. An older Jewish professor started haranguing me, trying to persuade me to attend Yom Kippur in Virginia Beach (?????) so I would meet a nice Jewish girl and become normal. He got clumsily violent, pushing and prodding…
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Year-end shit
Guess I should do the year-end thing since it’s a habit. Mostly I’m just glad this year is over. It was an unusually hard year for internal reasons. External factors were positive: a new and fascinating courseware project and no reprise of 2020 (yet!) from the state and federal monsters. Part of the internal trouble…
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I shouldn’t try…
I shouldn’t try to get fancy in a language that I don’t know well! I wanted to slip in ecouter les bourgeoisie in the previous item. It didn’t seem right, so I googled. Nothing at all. Finally, after rolling the phrase around in my mind, the right phrase came in. Epater les bourgeoisie. Looking it…
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Ease and comfort
This picture is a bit old but represents my current mood. After a HARD and STRESSFUL summer, I’m gradually pulling out of the various troubles. Relaxing as much as possible while getting some work done on courseware. Basking in comfort without any guilt. Taking the taxi instead of the bus now that I’ve finally found…
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Indirect salute
Old folks have trouble with a slow-moving gut. Normally I can keep things going well enough with good diet and walks. The long hot summer messed with the diet and walks, and then a series of closely spaced difficult dental appointments built up tension to the point of definite constipation. I tried lots of different…
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Hello again, Full Circle
During the LONG hot weather I got twitchy and ‘snappy’, making premature decisions to cancel things. On July 27 I canceled the Full Circle food box service because I was wasting it. In hot weather I couldn’t spend much time in the kitchen and didn’t feel like eating much. Now I’m feeling the shortage of…
Polistra's Mill 