Archives December 2015

During the day yesterday for some reason I got the idea in my head that it would be cool if we put mom’s Christmas tree up.  It has been sitting in my small shed since the last time it was put up in December of 13.  At several points since my mom passed away I had considered throwing out her old tree, figuring it would bring more emotional pain than pleasure.

I recall buying this tree with my mom years ago.  She was very excited that we scored a Black Friday deal on the tree that she saw posted in the K-mart flyer.  I remember when we set it up she was less than thrilled with the quality of the tree initially but once she got done decorating it looked much better, sort of a Charlie Brown Christmas scenario.

In 2013 mom did not want to even bother putting her tree up.  Cindy wound up helping her set it up back then to bolster mom’s Christmas spirit. Being the last one involved setting up the tree before mom passed away made it tough on Cindy emotionally as we got the tree in place.

It’s narrow profile allowed it to more or less fit in the corner next to the tv.  I really don’t have any ornaments for it so Cindy is going to go get some to really dress it up.  I have no doubt it will be stunning by the time she is finished.  Although I did/do feel some of the expected sadness as I see mom’s tree standing there I also feel some degree of comfort as well.

This weekend I continue my last streak of consecutive race weekends which doesn’t end until December 19th.  This race is not chip timed but is looking to have it’s own unique set of hurdles that will need to be cleared.  The rest of the weekend will have chores and Xmas related shopping and other duties to address.  With the NYC trip wedged right in front of Xmas I need to keep reminding myself that my normal timeline for things needs to be accelerated.

Last night I somehow managed to land on TLC while I was in bed, they had a compelling yet very disturbing show on, my 600 pound life.  The one and a half episodes I saw each had a 24 year old woman as the feature subject, each well over 600 pounds.  I found each situation a combination of frustrating, disgusting, and tragic.  I simply can not understand why anyone would even want to exist in this condition.

There did seem to be a common thread between these two cases, a HORRIBLE supporting cast around them.  The first woman’s husband who looked like he was right off the set of Deliverance admitted on camera several times that he really doesn’t want her to lose weight as he feared it would mean she wouldn’t need him anymore.  He happily would scoop nothing but horrible food into the cart at the grocery store to feed to his wife.  To me it is just another form of domestic abuse.  It was so pathetic.

The second girl lived at home with her family.  The stories of her mother, who was easily pushing 300 pounds herself, criticizing her daughter for being even heavier were amazingly hypocritical. Mom admitted she exerted no effort in trying to feed her daughter anything resembling a healthy diet growing up.  Even after getting the surgery there were scenes of the daughter around a family dinner table that was loaded down with fried chicken, mac n cheese, cookies, cake and other terrible choices.  Again to me, this family may as well be loading the gun and handing it to the daughter to pull the trigger.  They should be ashamed of themselves, truly.  Pass the mashed potatoes!

Yesterday marked yet another mass shooting in California where so far it seems like a worker went postal on a group of his former fellow employees.  Much like soldiers dying overseas for causes created by the defense industry juggernaut, shootings have been happening regularly enough that each subsequent incident numbs the public just a little further.  Yep for a few days there will be the normal, pointless, social media insults exchanged between the people that think that more guns are the solution to most problems in the world and those that don’t.  I used to mildly participate in these exchanges but realized it was pointless and accomplished nothing.

Do I have any answers to the gun controversy?  Nope, I am realistic enough to realize that any sort of gun control, no matter how logical will go nowhere in the end.  NRA lobbyists are very, very good at what they do and have plenty of money to keep doing it.  Lock your doors, the forecast is for fear.

Last night Cindy was out at a fitness networking event so I had some rare time home alone.  I used it to try some interactions with the “Impossible Box”.  I spent maybe 15 minutes trying to get anything resembling a response to questions but got nothing back but random bits and pieces of various Shoutcast audio streams.  It’s the result I expected but perhaps not what I hoped for.

I also was surprised to see my cell phone ringing last night with Randall’s name on the caller id.  I immediately feared that something terrible was wrong as Randall and I do not normally talk on the phone.  This is not a situation unique to Randall, I generally do not seek out phone conversations.  So anyway I answered, hoping he wasn’t in a ditch by the side of a road somewhere.

There was no emergency, Randall was just calling to say hi.  He has just started his new job which has a decent commute so he spent some of it catching up with me which was nice.  One of the reasons I am not a big fan of phone calls is I generally am not very good at them.  I have a hard enough time flowing between conversation topics most of the time.  The insertion of cell phone lag where you find one person talking over the other quite often just adds to my frustration.  Anyway we talked for a good 15-20 minutes and made loose plans for Randall to possibly come over for a visit in between Xmas and New Years.

At the tail end of my call with Randall I went out to the chicken coop to put the chickens to bed.  This process involves closing and locking the chicken run door and then going into the coop, making sure the chickens are settled in and all on the perch.

Well you may recall that we added a light on a timer to the coop a few weeks back.  The reason was the chickens were out roaming the yard until the very last speck of light was in the sky.  When they would eventually go into the coop it was very dark, making it difficult for the chickens to get onto the perch because of their poor night vision.  The addition of the light eliminated this issue but seemingly created another.

For whatever reason the chickens seem to not want to be near the light when it is turned on.  We have the light off to the left side and pointing towards the far wall but still they seem bothered by it.  The end result has been most of the chickens trying to crowd onto the right side of the perch.  There isn’t enough room so one of the hens, Stephie has taken it upon herself to find new sleeping arrangements which has been on the shelf where all of the electronics are set up which obviously is a problem.

So for the last week or two we have had to pick up Stephie and place her back on the perch.  We then immediately turn off the light which calms all the chickens down pretty much immediately.  After I placed Stephie back on the perch last night I had my left arm outstretched with the remote control to turn off the light.  The second before I could press the button Kristen, our all white hen jumps off the perch and onto my forearm, like a trained hawk or eagle would do to its handler.  She just stood there content, unwilling to go back on the perch even as I put my arm next to it.   I then petted her for a second before using my other hand to scoop her up and get her back on the perch.  The other night she jumped onto Cindy’s shoulder in a similar fashion.  I never expected chickens to have this many quirks but I do find them endearing and entertaining regardless.

Last week I was watching a video clip of one of my favorite YouTube entertainers, LA Beast.  He was at an abandoned mental health facility in New Jersey somewhere with some ghost hunter guys.  Evidently this place is famous for paranormal activity.

One of the tools they used while they were in the building was a “spirit box”, something I never heard of before.  It was basically a radio that was doing sweeps of various frequencies.  Supposedly it can be used to have some crude communication with whatever is on the other side of death.  During Beasts video there were some truly weird interactions with the box where the box seemed to be answering questions asked of it, albeit the sound quality is borderline terrible with lots of white noise.

Anyone that reads the blog has probably has picked up on the fact that I am not a religious person in the least.  My basic premise is once you die it is as simple as turning off a light.  Sure, I think it would be cool if there was something else afterward but nothing I have experienced or seen in my life have lead me to believe this is so.  I have always been a “show me” type person.  I also have always been a person that is open to reevaluating positions based on information presented to me.

So anyway, the Beast video lead me to the channel of Steve Huff, a pretty widely known paranormal guy.  He has hundreds of videos of him recording sessions where he is supposedly interacting with the dead.  Most of them feature him utilizing some sort of spirit box to do so.  I had no idea there were a number of these type of devices out there.  I was more surprised that there is also software only versions of a spirit box that utilizes Shoutcast instead of over the air frequencies.

As I watched a number of these videos I have to admit that I found it very interesting that some of the responses do seem specific and situation oriented which is hard to explain.  Steve has videos of similar results using both the hardware and software versions of the box.

I decided to take a flyer and downloaded one of the software versions of a spirit box to fire up for myself.  At this point my curiosity is overriding my strong sense of logic.  Do I expect anything significant to come from my experimentation? No.  However on the off chance that I would hear a specific and unmistakable response to a question it would certainly be an opportunity for me to do one of those reevaluations of my position on things.