What if Will Smith had done an adaptation of Helen Reddy’s 1970s hit song, when he starred in the movie adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel…
I am legend, hear them roar
Too many mutants to ignore
I’m immune and hope the antidote’s in my blood
Hunting deer in broad daylight
My dog Sam was bit in a fight
I sure hope this time the cure is not a dud.
OK, maybe not. How about Al Yankovic?
Today I discovered it is National Procrastination Week 2013. It started yesterday, so it is appropriate that it notified me sometime after it started.
Also appropriate is that I didn’t manage to finish my February post on Time, on time. I admit it, I kept putting it off until it was too late to post while it was still February. Nothing like a little virtual time travel to put the post back in its place in time.
To make up for my tardiness, I am celebrating National Procrastination Week right now.
Time and I have an interesting relationship. Some would find it perplexing, but I find it perfectly reasonable and normal. This is most evident by the myriad of clocks I encounter on any given day. Take, for example, my typical work day.
My alarm goes off at 4:00 AM. That would be local time, as in local to my bedroom. I usually hit snooze twice before silencing the alarm for good on the third ring at 4:14. (Most alarm clocks seem to have a nine-minute snooze interval, but mine is seven.) If I’m extra tired, I go for an extra snooze, giving me until 4:21.
Dragging myself out of bed, I put the bows of my glasses in my mouth and grab my phone. The glasses go in my mouth because it’s faster and easier than putting them on. Besides, at 4:something in the morning it is so dark that whether my vision is corrected is irrelevant. That’s where my trusty HTC HD7 comes in. Its 4.3-inch capacitive touch display lights my path well enough for my uncorrected eyes to see any obstacles that may lay in my path. (It does have a flashlight app, but the light is bright enough to rival the sun. More than a bit much for 4:something in the morning.)
The shower is a dangerous place, time-wise. Especially when my sleep deprivation is a little on the high side. A quick check of my phone drags me kicking and screaming into “real time.” If it reads before 4:30, I am doing OK. 4:35 or later means I probably visited la-la land while standing motionless in the spraying water, and I need to move with a purpose.
Fully dressed, next stop is the kitchen, a trichronal wonderland. The microwave and stove are close in time to each other and real time. The clock over the sink is somewhere between five and ten minutes ahead of the appliances. Yet, somehow I manage to know what time it is by looking at any one of them.
Then there is my car, the inside of which I am convinced exists a bubble of time that is always about 15 minutes into the future. No matter how you set the clock, it creeps until it settles on 15 minutes ahead of real time. And then it stays that much ahead. I am grateful that my car’s clock behaves this way. If I am running a few minutes late, by car time, I will still arrive at my destination early.
During the day my watch keeps me enveloped in a tiny bubble of time about eight minutes in the future. The offset from real time varies gradually farther and closer to real time. I tend to look at it as math practice. I am now really good at subtracting eight from another number.
All other clocks I regularly use are computers, all synced to real time by an internet time beacon. My phone, mentioned above. My laptop in the guise of a tablet. My workstation and assorted servers at work. These all temporarily bring me back in sync with real time.
I prefer to be a little out of sync, a few minutes ahead, so I can see what’s coming before most everyone else.
I can hardly believe another year is about to wrap itself up in a matter of minutes. I am amazed at how much I have accomplished, yet regret what I could have done but did not.
So, my one resolution for 2013 shall be to have fewer such regrets 365 days from now. All other resolutions and goals will follow from that. Cliché or not, barring some kind of time travel scenario, we only get to do 2013 once.
The ability to fly like Superman would be wasted on acrophobics.
It is hard to believe that already seven years have passed since my friend Mark died suddenly. While my family was out celebrating our wedding anniversary at a Caribou and the attached Great Harvest Bakery, his family watched his life slip quickly away in their kitchen.
Mark lived his life prepared to leave unexpectedly early. A lesson he learned from his father’s early death in similar circumstances.
I cannot say that I have yet learned the lesson from Mark. But I am working on it.
You haven’t lived until you’ve use a bus toilet whilst said bus is speeding down a less than smooth road in a less than smooth manner.
Double points for failing to notice the “no standing while urinating” sign until the process is nearly complete. Triple points for not spilling. Much. (I cleaned it up. I’m not a filthy slob.)
My family and I met friends at Whitewater State Park in Minnesota for a weekend of outdoor fun. Our campsite was on the fringe of the hub of activity. We traveled in and out of the hub much like comets going around the sun.
One of the park’s evening programs featured an amateur astronomer. As the sun began its evening descent, he set up his telescope in an open area near the ranger’s station in the park valley. First one star, then another appeared in the sky. That was enough the calibrate the telescope, so that it could accurately locate any item in its electronic catalog.
More and more stars appeared in the darkening sky. Soon there were far more than are visible in the metro sky at home. A starlit sky is one of my favorite things about camping. Adding to the show was a hidden moon, allowing for much better viewing.
One of the first stars making its presence known isn’t a star at all. Saturn. We lined up for our chance to look in the telescope. I have never seen Saturn and its rings with my own eye before. Beautiful. One of our sun’s satellites quietly drifting along its orbit, tilted just right to show off those iconic rings. Had timing been just right, we would have been able to see tiny black dots in front of the planet. Saturn’s moons, quietly drifting along their own orbits.
We looked at a pair of suns, one orange-red, the other blue. I think one of them is labeled M57, and has an Arabic name. They are many light years away from us, but only one light year away from each other. Relatively close, astronomically. Each following their own orbits around some distant center somewhere in the heavens.
While looking up we saw the International Space Station glide across the sky. First brilliantly bright, then quickly fading away as it moved out of the sun’s rays. We saw a few other satellites cross the sky, each following its own path around our planet.
Occasionally, a firefly would fly overhead, showing off its tiny light, mimicking a satellite miles above it. First visible, then hidden from sight.
So much to see in a dark, brilliantly starlit sky, on a satellite quietly drifting along on its orbit.
Yesterday, I said I was going to share the work of someone I have never shared before. I also said this deserved a post of its own…
One day a tweet caught my eye. It was different from the usual in my Twitter feed. I traced its source back to its owner’s web site. I am still at a loss for words to describe how I feel whenever I visit the site. Stunned? Outraged? Saddened? Awestruck? Thankful?
Learning to Hope is the story of a couple’s lives turned upside down and inside out by terminal brain cancer.
I found a news story about Kevin and Tashi. A bit of a prequel to the blog.
I have been thinking about Wash and Tashi a lot lately. From the little bit I gather from the blog, I am pretty sure that philosophically, theologically, politically, whateverally, they and I are probably on opposite sides of most fences. But that doesn’t matter. They need help. A postcard, some cookies, even a few bucks would make their day.
I need to send something before he’s gone. I need to pass on their story before he’s gone.
There isn’t much time left.
I am visiting ChooseMyPlate.gov in search of current nutritional guidelines. I am immediately drawn to the list of people classifications. But there is a glaring problem with the list: none of the available choices fit a person like me.
That’s it, nothing for a typical (or not) middle-aged human male. Now I could try clicking every link on the page, but I am going to do what a typical middle-aged Internet user would do with a web site like this: leave the site and see what my favored search engine turns up.
