Confessions from a Lazy Man

I sure haven't posted here in a long while. Writing, like anything else, is an endeavor in overcoming inertia. It's very nice to have free time to write. That doesn't mean I will write. We all spend our lives seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Now I am retired. This raises the bar a little as far as the pleasure and pain ratio. I could just hang out all day doing nothing. And I do plenty of that. Yes it's great. But everything is relative. If I had just worked real hard for two weeks and had a few days off to just lay around, that activity would be more pleasurable and valuable to me than if I could do it any ole day. If I come to expect every day to be pleasure and leisure, the bar is indeed raised. I worked all my life until four years ago. I thought having "free time" would be the ultimate happiness. Not having to do someone else's bidding. I had already learned that money and fame would not bring happiness. But I had to actually own the "time" to realize that it would not mean happiness. Happiness is a state of mind. It comes from within. Not from money or time. I don't think one can be happy twenty four seven three sixty five. Happiness is a relative thing. It comes along every now and then in the ebb and flow of life. I think the best one can do is be receptive to happiness and bask in it when it comes around. If I set the bar too high, I want to be happy all the time. It doesn't work. I will then avoid all activity for fear it will cause me pain along with pleasure. For the new year let me itemize a few life priorities that can help me have a reason to get out of bed every day:

think about others, especially my wife and son.

enjoy the animals in my life, they are egoless

keep learning, it's very fun.

dwell in the wonder of things (right now it's the geese, unbelievable)

fall in love with things, ideas, projects, dreams

embrace the mundane

pick up the damn guitar once in a friggin' blue moon

be thankful for my health, such as it is

let disagreeable things go, without trying to right them or get a last word

enjoy the now

remember that now that I am retired..... every day is Friday night.

LLITTY :::::+:::::

Classic Christmas

I've always liked the old VW Beetles. Just about everybody likes them. They are kind of cartoon-like. Even the two generations of kids behind me know what they are and like them. The "Herbie" movie keeps getting updated as in Lindsey Lohan a few years back. I've been wanting one for a long time. It seems to me to be the perfect car for a retired guy like me to have to just play around with and maybe take to the drive in diner like sonic or tastee freeze. Not as a daily driver. Just an extra car. Fun to drive. Easy to maintain. Inexpensive, yet eye-catching. I already have a hobby car. A little British Triumph, but it is a work in progress. In the last few years I have really been considering a "bug".

A couple months ago I saw a VW for sale at the curb in the little town near me. I passed it every day. Of course I took note. But it wasn't really the kind I wanted. There is a classic "look" that fades away after about 1967. The look of the old "faired in" headlights. They looked like Porsche headlights. "Herbie the lovebug" of course has this look. I always figured I didn't want the big seats, the newer bumpers, newer headlights. I wanted a Herbie. So I ignored this bug for sale because it lacked the classic look. The car went away and reappeared after a few weeks on the other side of the road with the same for sale sign and a lowered price. So I stopped and looked at it and took down the guy's number. We used to have to find pencil and paper to write the guys number. Of course now I just typed it into my cell phone. The car looked OK to me. The style wasn't exactly right, but it was a stock 1970 VW and just might suit me if it runs. My wife was out of town so there was no voice of reason to prevent an impulse buy. I pulled up VW's on the computer and they were going for a lot more than they were the last time I had checked. It turned out the guy had this car in his family for 30 years. We drove it around the block and I bought it. I told my wife it could be my Christmas and birthday present from her for the next couple years.

With historic tags and no Maryland inspection needed, I started driving this goofy poorly repainted metallic blue bug every day. I would just go to Federalsburg. Only five miles away. And get a hamburger. I had to open the door to order at the McDonalds drive in because the driver's window wouldn't roll down. Each day I drove it the car worked better. It was literally coming back alive from sitting. I was spending happy hours in my shed with a portable heater and Christmas carols on the radio just cleaning the 42 year old car. Just puttering by myself. It was to me exactly what a retired guy should do. I ordered about $100 worth of little parts it needed. When they came UPS in a cardboard box it was like a Christmas present, and I was a child with toys. This little car has grown on me and now I like it's style fine. It seems to have a personality.

I'm not the kind of guy who would "name" his car. But this car has done things like fix itself. And it collects baseball caps in the back seat. Not tools or jackets. Just baseball caps. And a wheel came flying off and it was my fault and it could have really damaged the car, but somehow it didn't. And the low beams didn't work. So I put in brand new sealed bulbs. They still would not work. Then they just started working. I replaced all ten fuses in it's little fuse box. The flashers never worked but I would cycle the switch every day just for the heck of it. One day the flashers started working perfectly and it made me laugh.

My buddy Dempsey found a hundred things wrong with the engine. A seriously long laundry list. So I asked him if it was still OK to drive the car. He just said "yea".

I don't have a name for the car yet. I was thinking "Bluey". The movie car "Herbie" had a nickname "ocho" which means eight in Spanish. Because Herbie's racing number "53" added up to eight. Some of my VW parts were made in Mexico where the Beetles got manufactured after Germany stopped making them in the seventies. The box would say on it Heche en Mexico. So I was thinking of the name "Hecho". Pronounced H.O. like the cute little model trains.

So if you had any doubts as to whether LloydLou has time on his hands, well....

See you this Spring at the Dairy Queen.

LLITTY :::::+:::::

Christmas Now Past

Happy Holidays every one. In this season I often complain about the gift exchange custom. It is mostly because I am selfish and lazy and lousy at giving gifts. Even when the process goes well I still feel a bit or a lot embarassed by the whole thing. The thing I hate worst about it is seeing year after year and time after time, middle class people running around in a frenzied deadline to get eachother gifts they don't need, and don't want. They waste time on this when they could be enjoying the moments of the holiday. The day off work. Time spent with family. Watching the snowflakes and relaxing from their stressed lives. The gift apparently is very important because it is for xmas day. The day after, not so much.

My wife and I decided to buy our own gifts for ourselves. Boy did I make a haul. It turns out I'm really good at buying things for myself. I don't have to worry about whether the gift is suitable. It is automatically perfect. Wife and I agreed that we would not give eachother gifts on xmas day especially. But I wound up getting about three little gifts from my wife wrapped beautifully on xmas morning. I had nothing wrapped for her as per our agreement. She just couldn't help herself. That's fine. I liked the little gifts very much. And the night before on xmas eve we had dined in a very fancy dining room in an elegant b and b in Easton. The decor was exquisite. And the food delecate and pleasing. In a clumsy toast I tried to tell my wife that she gives me a Christmas gift every single day by being who she is, and what she is to me. It was trite, but I really meant it.

I'm a Christmas Libertarian. I don't want Xmas rules and customs forced upon me. It's the exchange of gifts I don't like. The giving is fine. Let's do more of it all year long. I just don't like the quid pro quo aspect of it. And I don't like the deadline. Do you ever find yourself looking forward to Xmas and dreading it at the same time? Remember the three wise men, (or were they kings) gave gifts to the baby Jesus. Nobody gave them gifts back. Mary didn't give them a tie they didn't really want or something.

I tried hard this year not to stress over Christmas. Keep the good part of it and throw out the rat race bathwater. (That's my xmas mixed metephor). On xmas day I put 215 miles on wife's car. I went to four xmas's and missed the last one. I got home at 2AM. It all went well until I was only ten miles from home. Then I got pulled over by a trooper. I was on a road called "Black Dog Alley". He was looking for DUI's and I wasn't one. He let me off for speeding with a warning. And it wasn't even Xmas anymore as it was after midnight. I hadn't gone a half mile when I came quickly upon a deer. A doe who stood frozen in my lane. It was a standoff. My heart was still pounding from the cop. The doe finally walked away and I shook my head and drove on home in the wee hour. Now I was wide awake. A christmas carol, that my brother had beautifully sang with his guitar at the family gathering ealier, was repeating over and over in my mind: "The rising of the sun, and the running of the deer"

LLITTY :::::+:::::

Drill Baby Drill

Here at LloydLou I tend to talk politics and religion. But of course I'm not qualified to do that. Most people are not. We "most people" are really just airing our wishes and opinions. Rarely do we change any listeners opinion. I follow the Republican primary contest much as I would a new sitcom or a sports playoff. It's interesting because it is now and somebody's gonna get thrashed. The mighty will fall and the boring normal will become funny.

I think we all make a huge mistake in the way we think about politics. We tend to expect there to be a "right way" to deal with other countries, our economy, our legal system, our moral responsibilities. We choose between our two parties every two years. Expecting to finally have one of the parties "get it right". But they will never get it right. Of course. We all know this. But knowing and wishing are two different things. We continue to hope. And most of all, we hope that we as individuals will be "right".

The government/political system that would approach utopia for one individual/tribe/country would never, ever, ever, approach utopia for another.

Also: The government/political system that would approach utopia in one era of time would never approach utopia in another era of time.

So here is my advice to politicians and voters alike:

1. The most important thing to learn from history is that man is inhumane and we can and should strive to do better.

2. Make decisions that will help now and be a stepping stone to more help in the future.

3. There are no permanent solutions.

4. Remember everything is changing every day.

5. An economy can not be considered successful if there are people who are starving and/or without health care.

6. Keep marriage, sex, drugs, and religion out of national politics.

7. Let's try to fix our political system so that it is never about someone getting re-elected.

Okay... that's a general rant. enough.

Now I have a way to fix a couple problems quick. World strife is mostly about oil and religion. We actually could get by without oil and religion. Then only land and other natural resources would we go to war over.

I have a solution to the oil problem. We build that pipeline in ANWR. We build the Canadian pipeline being talked about. We drill baby drill (oh how fun, I get to agree with Sarah Palin!) we go offshore, on shore and everywhere. Now hold on environmentalists, let me finish. We make so damn much oil right here in North America that it is astounding. Think of the jobs it will create. At the same time we expand our conservation of oil, by using more efficient systems that don't need as much or any oil. We almost immediately stop importing oil from the Middle east. We get out of Middle East politics. We are already getting out of Middle East wars. Our expanded oil system can be slowly scaled back as we convert to other energy. Renewable energy. So I am calling for a "surge" in oil production for peace, And then lets see what happens with the new tech for energy. We lost 4500 young brave wonderful citizens in a war over oil and religion. We can eliminate the cause for that kind of war. Eventually the old oil pipelines can rot where they sit. Empty they do no harm to the environment. They become a monument to a choice we made. If this sounds like an only temporary solution, that is correct. All solutions are only temporary. If some rich powerful person stands to lose money because he profited from Middle East oil, that's too bad. We need to sever that oil tie now. It will bring peace and prosperity.

To the West Shore Again?

After "The Chunk" I started to hide out again. After all, I'd been to a place with lots of people. So I should be good for a while. But I wound up going to Fredrock Saturday to a hangar party where I could sing a bit at an "open mike". That always gets me out of my cave. Can it be about me?
And it looks like tomorrow I'm going to a pickin party out towards Fredrock again. I am going to be on the Western Shore anyway, as I am driving wife to the airport for a flight. I like to drive her and drop her off so she doesn't have to fool with parking or vans or anything. And of course I will pick her up and chauffeur her when she comes home, and take her to dinner. This is what we call in the airline industry "Princess Parking".

So it seems I'm out of my shell. Today I actually worked around the place. Perhaps Punkin Chunkin and folksinging energize me. I got my International tractor started. It required oil, gear oil, grease, hydraulic fluid, anti-freeze, charging, airing up, a change of implements, a battery hold down, fueling, stabilizer for the fuel. I actually bush hogged an overgrown pasture and got it done. And got the tractor put away and on charge.

After that, I had enough energy to visit with wife. She went to bed and here I am writing to you. I must have had too much caffeine today. I actually did more than one thing. So after I chauffeur wife and attend the pickin party, I expect I'll crawl back under that insulating rock crutch I have and not come out until Thanksgiving.

Bridgeville, Delaware. It's on the Map

Last weekend I went to Punkin Chunkin. It's an Eastern Shore thing. The locals call it "The Chunk". I had never been to it in it's 26 years of operation. So it was all new to me. It's very big now. Discovery Channel covers it. It's a bunch of people gathering to see another bunch of people toss pumpkins. There are alcohol, tobacco and firearms too. I didn't know there was an "open carry" law in Delaware. This refers to guns, not alcohol containers. It is an outdoor gathering, so you can drink, carry a gun, and smoke. I did none of those things. But I do not disapprove of those things. I paid ten bucks to get in. Here's what I saw and did. I got up close to the fence. The fence is a snow fence type deal which keeps you back from danger, but you can see over it. (The fence was stolen, by the way, this year. A new fence arrived just in time for the event.) There's a pun in there somewhere about "fencing" a fence, but I can't set it up. Anyway I got up close to the fence and spent a nice time watching the catapults. Some were man powered. There were flywheels and springs, and windlasses, trebuchets, and all kinds of clever devices. They would chuck a pumpkin about five hundred to two thousand feet. Crazy crews in crazy costumes. Sometimes the pumpkins fragmented during the launch. People cheered for this more than for distance. Hence "Punkin Chunkin"

Then I wandered away from the range and into the midway. There were games and rides for the kids, and for adults who wanted to act like kids. A mechanical bull. A rock climb. Pumpkin toss. Pumpkin eating. Carnival rides. A food court full of tent booths. I had chocolate covered bacon for the first time. It was pretty good. Later I had candy coated almonds which were great. There were displays. There were two live bands. I watched and enjoyed them both. But I soon learned that it was all about the "cannons" which they save till the end of the day. I had picked up some of the culture and when I spoke to the venders for some reason I pretended I had been there for previous years. I would say things like "so when are they going to fire the cannons?" Or "will they start with 'old glory' down on the end?" I talked to a vender selling wood stoves. I looked at the wares of a vender selling solar panels. I looked at t shirts, ball caps, etc. but I didn't want a souvenir really. I was afraid the carnival food I had eaten might be enough of a memory to take home with me. I found a bale of straw to sit on for a while. I noticed the film crews and infield folks all moving in one direction and it was toward the line of gigantic air cannons that were to be the stars of the show. They did not disappoint. their barrels looked to be 40 feet and more. Their air tanks great giant cylinders. When they fired you could barely see the pumpkin it moved so fast. Often I missed it. But when I saw it, it would fade from my sight while it was still climbing. Several cannons shot their pumpkins over four thousand feet. It was a good time. After twenty one years on the Eastern Shore I may be starting to blend in. Maybe I shoulda got a ball cap.

eleven eleven eleven

My dear friends I have to write something today. I have to, in some way, print, publish, or record something. Because of the date. 11-11-11. The picket fence, corduroy, railroad tracks. Lucky or unlucky in dice. 11. I wrote some checks today for some bills that weren't quite due because it was fun to write the date.

I didn't forget Veterans Day. I'd like to thank all of our veterans who have served through history for their sacrifices. I and my countrymen owe our freedom to you. I salute you.
I said the other day I just don't like the flag waving Republicans who think the USA should rule the world and make the rules and use up the most of the resources and not be questioned. But they have their say too, under freedom. I have an urge to quote the last line of the last verse of our anthem "In triumph shall wave. O're the land of the free, and the home of the brave."

LLITTY :::::+:::::