An Inside Place To Be With A Friend Of Short Acquaintance

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It's raining, but since it's not so cold, and we do need the rain according to the TV weatherman, I am is not complaining. Any excuse to sit around in an inside place to be and amuse myself will do. My mathematical brother seems happy enough to stay inside also, we haven't done our walking routine for a couple of days now. Sunday and Monday nights were downright cold, but we only got a minimal frost on Monday night.

Since the forecast was for it to warm back up to some more comfortable degree, it only seemed logical to wait for that to happen. Now, it's supposed to rain all day and all night, so we'll probably miss out again tonight. Guess I'll have to get on my exercise machine and act like I'm rowing down the river for a while. That's probably a good thing. It forces me to use my upper torso more than just walking does.

The machine is called a Cardio Glide. I did lots of research on what might work best for me. Several reviews including Consumer Reports recommended it. Since Sears sold it under their own label it was fairly easy to find one to buy.

One of the reasons it was so highly recommended was it's durability. I'll testify to that. I've had it for probably ten years, and it's working without any apparent flaws to date. Not using it as much as I probably should have has helped, but it's well-made and very useful.

My newest gadget, the Bose noise-canceling headphones, are working out just fine too. The military helicopters have come around again, but not as regularly as they were for weeks on end. Maybe they sent them to Libya to kill people. Better them than me. When the helicopters have shown up the noise-canceling aspects of the headphones really make a difference.

For the last couple of days I've been using them to listen to the binaural beat generator for a while. This stuff works as advertised, and it's free. The free (as in beer) part of it is particularly satisfying. I paid extragant amounts of money to buy Hemi-Sync audio tapes from Monroe Institute, and the Hemi-Sync tapes never used Focus levels beyond 12. I felt cheated by them nickel and dime-ing me to death. I'd go back for more if I could afford it, but only because the I Ching thought it would be advantageous. I enjoy my disgusting habit of being a miser.

The services offered by the Monroe Institute are very good, and has proved worth it for me if for no other reason than to introduce me to another method for entering the deep other than finding the time to meditate for hours on end. I get the sa-me results without having to be so damn disciplined about it.

I've considered employing the Gnaural software program while using psychedelics of some one sort or the other, but I've reached an impasse with power for a while. Besides, I've done more than my share in the past. I always seem to overdo things like that. At least I've had enough sense not to get into the addictive stuff any more than experimentally.

My drug of choice now is cheap red wine. I wouldn't be cheap about it if I could afford the good stuff. Not that I really know what "the good stuff" is. My sister-in-law's brother and his wife do. They travel all over to exclusive wine tastings. He seems to enjoy my company enough to stop by with a bottle or so of some very tasty stuff.

He brought a bottle of pinot noir that made me hate the grocery store variety. Damned Scorpio, he probably did it to ruin my low-caste tastes. Still, he did it, so there is something to be respected about that. As much as I enjoy being filled to the brim with avarice, it's nice to have friends who ain't. Why they don't scream "Turn about is fair play!" and shun me is a mystery wrapped up in an enigma. Well, some actually do just that. No blame.

Currently, I am is enjoying exchanging posts with several people who seem interesting. One woman sent me a link to a brief synopsis of a writing she admires. It told of a fascinating experience the author had of taking a Bedouin from the sands of the Sahara desert to some place in Europe where they visited a waterfall.

When he was ready to leave the place they didn't wanna go. He asked why, and they told him they were waiting for the waterfall to stop. They couldn't believe there was that much fresh water in the world. They expected it to run out at any time, and they were waiting to see that happen. It made me wish I'd been there to witness that.

I've traveled considerably for a po' boy. I literally joined the Navy to "see the world". The notion of serving my country to be patriotic never crossed my mind. It's probably true that if I hadn't gone to the countries around the Pacific rim during my first enlistment in the Navy I might never have gotten there. Certainly not to Hawaii the six times I briefly passed through that paradise.

Being a bookworm as a kid didn't prepare me for Japan and the other Oriental places I visited aboard Navy ships. I'd seen pictures of venerable old men with their cute little goatees before I first visited. I was surprised, even sort of shocked, to actually see the first one face-to-face. He was scraping left-over food from our trash barrels and seemed very happy to get it. I had a lot to learn about real poverty.

It was only 10-12 years after the end of World War Two, and Japan was still recuperating from the total devastation the war brought right to their door. The people there had to make do as they could to merely survive back then. I assumed their recovery would be more or less permanent until the tsunami and the ongoing nuclear power plant problems.

If I wasn't so inured to personal heartbreak I might feel sorrier for them than I do. I still wish them hope. Granted, hope is the only product anyone has for sell, but it's also all I got to give, and I feel properly guilty about that too. Not so much that I'd sell all my worldly goods and send them the money, but at least I empathize with the horror they're enveloped by without experiencing fiendish delight.

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