Addendum: 2007 Letter

Oversharing 2007

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” In particular, if you will forgive my sending 5 pages of self indulgent blather, I will totally forgive your not reading them.

Events

Meredith and Paulie got married. Other than that nothing happened in our lives this year unless you count one of the following.

We each stubbed a toe. Still tender many weeks later.

Tore rotator cuff. Doc said the tissue was TOO OLD to repair.

Attended the Starbucks corporate meeting. Howard Schultz is a remarkable presenter.

Coyote den in the woods behind the house. Pups played in the yard. Very cute.

Lost two chickens. One to coyotes, one to raccoons we think. Saved two others from the jaws of the same predators. Coyotes leave feathers at scene of crime. Raccoons do not.

Beth did not renew her OT license. I guess she really is through working.

Drove with Mere to D.C. Great trip. It’s a big country we live in.

Passed a week in February near Lake Tahoe, some skiing, lots of lying about talking.

Attended Miss America pageant

Bought Honda Civic

Lost my warts. They just went away.

Ran Green Lake in 28 minutes in spring. (10 min miles) By fall hardly able to run 3 miles. Felt like I aged perceptively this year.

Rode bike in the Fremont Summer Solstice parade. No Clothes. Ugly, but not the ugliest.

Painted south side of 1722.

Paid for new roof for 1722. Felt queer having some hired guys doing my work.

Disposed of the ’81 Tercell

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Clean(ing) Thoughts

Reasons To Put Off Cleaning

1. In order to get anything clean you must get at least one other thing dirty

2. A bunch of friends are expected. They’re just going to make things dirty.

3. A bunch of friends are expected. It would be hypocritical to create a false impression of how one truly lives.

4. Once the worst looking space has been cleaned, it just makes what had been second worst, first worst and now something of an eyesore, so where’s the benefit?

5. A. The dirtier any particular place is, the greater the psychological payoff of cleaning it. B. Doing anything a lot robs it of pleasure. For both these reasons frequent cleaning is the enemy of happy cleaning.

Reasons to Go Ahead and Clean

1. In order to put off doing something even more onerous
2. Vacuuming is actually a failsafe way of fending off Common Household Chill
3. Eating off dirty dishes actually is sort of nasty
4. There are potential relationship benefits

Rules for Operating a Vacuum Cleaner

1. Insure the bag is not full

2. Start at the wall socket and work away from there so that the cord is behind you and not in your way

3. There are no more rules for vacuuming









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Headaches By Type

1. Tension headache
2. Hangover headache
3. Migraine headache
4. Falling off your bike without a helmet headache

And our most common headache this year:
5. The Electronic headache. A metaphorical headache, also known as a royal pain in the ass, in my case caused by attempting to go places where it was never intended for me to go, such as the world wide web, and wireless hot spots.


The Purpose of Life
(A Speculation)

Suppose there is a divine intelligence that created the universe and suppose it is not indifferent to how we carry on here. Suppose there is an afterlife with a good place and a bad place to which we will go according to how well we behave. But suppose what the deity desires from us is not recognition of his divinity and humble devotion, but that we eat as much ice cream as possible. Suppose that the actual purpose for which we were placed on Earth is to eat ice cream. In this case how would one go about getting to heaven? Surely a strategy of eating only ice cream is not best as your early demise from some obesity related cause would keep you from maximizing your long term consumption. Clearly the maximum possible short run intake would not be optimum until, that is, you’ve come near to the end. In your last days, perhaps your last weeks or even months, a diet exclusively of ice cream is just what you should choose. And, of course, that is just what people do. Check it out at your local nursing home.

Another Inconvenient Truth

Smugness is its own reward.

Definition

The Right to Life Theory of Writing: 1. The belief that for a sentence life begins at conception. To snuff it out is wrong. It may be added to, or moved around, but it must never be edited out. 2. A theory of writing practiced by your author. Counter indication: Brevity is the soul of wit.






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Aerobics

I did a class this year. In my mind’s eye I was Nureyev vaulting across the stage. Alas what I saw in the mirror was Don Quixote flailing gangly limbs at invisible windmills.





Age

Beth received a birthday card with this interesting idea. If you didn’t know your age, how old would you be? (These days I think of my age and mortality, probably a dozen times a day.)


Cognitive Dissonance
(Or is it just ordinary hypocrisy?)

Reading Waldon Pond while lying in a bed between 400 thread count sheets

On Living Well

Embrace the mundane. There’s so much of it.

Introspection
(Recall the Overall Title)

I wonder how much time people spend thinking about themselves and when they are doing so, what are the things they think of? Having quite a bit of idle mind time, and also perhaps some degree of inclination, I think I am probably well toward the high end of the self reflection spectrum. When I think about myself common thoughts include: my age and possible or likely longevity, my health and physical capabilities or lack thereof, the rate of change in these, our net asset position, and given the famous unfairness of life, how lucky I have been. I no longer spend the time I once did thinking about my children, my personal charm, my career. (Now is when you are supposed to laugh.)











Appendix One

Thinking About Thrift

It should be remembered that private, individual thrift is in many cases also social, collective thrift. If I salvage 10 inches of duct tape from some first use and wrap it back on the role then society has a reduced need to produce 10 inches of duct tape. (Of course, as explained elsewhere, the alert cyclist never has any need to buy tape of any kind. All one could possibly need, be it masking, electrical, adhesive, cellophane or what you will, is there in the street waiting for you to pick it up.)

Thrift manifests itself in a variety of ways. There is miserliness, the simple disinclination to spend money, the predilection to do without rather than part with any cash. This is only slightly different from wanting and seeking the best possible price once a decision to buy is reluctantly made.

Thrift may also be said to lie behind a compulsive need to accept whatever goods might come one’s way. There are people all around who have stuff they don’t want. Sometimes these people try to give some of it away. The thrifty person has a hard time saying no to such offers. Whatever the stuff, potential uses spring to mind like August sweat bursts on a New York brow. Once a person becomes known as an accepter of other people’s castoffs the opportunities multiply. The obverse of this is the inability of a thrifty person to give away or otherwise discard the meagerest of possessions. The accumulation and retention of stuff for merely speculative purposes mark the truly thrifty individual. Your humble scribe is so thrifty that he cannot bear to throw away something as ephemeral as a sentence, which goes far to explain the length of these yearly letters. (See above: definition)

There is also an intergenerational aspect to thrift. What parent ever thought a kid too miserly? Quite the contrary. But the perception often runs the other way. Despite years of resolution to be different, of late I’ve felt my tipping practices beginning to tip toward the range that would embarrass Nat or Mere.














Appendix Two

Why Soccer Is A Low Scoring Game
In which it is explained why hitting a baseball is not necessarily the hardest task in sports

Those who think hitting a baseball is the toughest act in sports should consider kicking a soccer ball. The roundness of a bat has a lot to do with the difficulty of getting hits in baseball. In cricket where the bats are flatish the scores go into the hundreds and the games go on over night. The foot however is not only roundish, as a baseball bat, but also irregular in its roundness. The surface is concave behind the toes, but convex at the arch. If you swing your foot at a soccer ball there are several things that can happen and only one of them is good. You might catch it on the center of your instep, right on the laces and drive it exactly where you want, but hit it a little to the left or right of center and the ball goes careening off in some unintended direction. Or your foot can arrive at the ball a little early so you hit it with your toe or an instant too late so it hits your shin. Again off it goes in a crazy direction. About one time in twenty I miss the thing altogether and end up staring dumbly at my feet wondering what went wrong. You can get underneath the ball so it shoots too high in the air, flying over the goal or an open teammate. You can hit it too hard making it impossible to be played by your guys or too softly making it an easy play for the other guys. The face of a soccer goal is big, but not as big as an outfield. And goal keepers are also big and agile and tend to be fearless. Kicking the ball where they are not, usually requires a split second evaluation of the situation just to decide where to try to place your shot. Furthermore soccer balls, especially shots on goal, are often kicked while running at full speed, possibly with an opponent running along side doing his best to interfere. No standing with feet solidly planted, fully concentrating on a pitch that must be delivered within a specified space. And finally in soccer the player’s most dexterous and developed anatomical part, his hands, are taken completely out of the game, for all, that is, except the goal keeper. You gotta do it with your feet.

It is little wonder that ninety minutes of continuous action rarely generates as many as four goals total. A four hit baseball game is a pitching duel.