This Is Not News

If this study gets further verified, I’m bringing a pillow to my office. I often like to say that mentally I don’t feel like I’m older or see the world very differently than I did when I was 21. I know I am and I do, but it doesn’t feel that way, especially when I start singing along with my 90s playlists. But I think lack of sleep hits me earlier and harder than it ever did back then, and I really gotta train myself to accept that I just need to go to bed earlier. (Like, say, now, instead of blogging.) Now if the world would just agree to shut itself down for a couple of hours in the middle of the day, think of how much more we could get done.

Very interesting article at The New Republic about the possibility that air travel – and air freight – might be getting a whole lot more expensive over the next several years. The basic thrust (hah!) is that air flight requires enormous amounts of fuel, and there’s no equivalent of the Prius or the electric car coming down the pike any time soon. So rising oil costs are really throwing the aviation industry for a loop. The article’s a worthwhile read for the thoughts about the future, but also as a reminder of what our current lifestyle requires to sustain it. For example:

Air freight now plays a huge role globally, carrying, for instance, one-third of the value of all U.S. imports. And the system relies heavily on cheap fuel: Every night, FedEx keeps a number of empty planes up in the air, to better respond to requests at a moment’s notice.

There is something hugely scary to me about the idea that we would just leave a bunch of planes up in the air, burning fuel, for the sake of convenience. And I’m sure I make a host of similar decisions on a much smaller scale every day, like when I leave my PC on during the day or fire up a charcoal grill or order something from Amazon that’s gonna wind up getting split into who knows how many shipments. I’m trying to make as many little changes as I can to be less wasteful . . . but I still feel like the world’s getting ready to force us to make some big changes.

A brief aside here – I’ve been bemoaning the lack of lemonade in my fridge this summer, in part because I don’t like the taste of a lot of store-bought juice, in part because I’ve been trying to cut down on the high fructose corn syrup, and in part because the price of lemons has gotten so ridiculous that a pitcher of lemonade would cost me something like fifteen bucks. But over the last week or so, I’ve become quite fond of Simply Lemonade, made by the Simply Orange Juice Company. It’s a little on the strong and sweet side, but there’s no aftertaste and it is quite refreshing on a hot day. I can also say from followup testing that their Orange and Grapefruit varieties are very nice as well.

As he picked up his hammer and saw . . .

(No, I do not get tired of that joke. Yes, I know it’s not particularly funny.)

Had an eye exam today. Got off to a good start when the doctor took a look at my glasses and said “I had forgotten how nearsighted you are.” Went downhill from there, as my prescription had to get stronger – again – as my vision had deteriorated to 20/50 with my old glasses. Walked home in the sunlight, and even though I had the protective shades, I am stunned I did not walk right into a moving car. When I could keep my eyes open, I saw the whole world through a haze.

Then my first attempt to get new glasses failed when the closest LensCrafters’ machines were broken. So we drove to another one and discovered that my current health insurance doesn’t cover glasses. Unfortunately, I had already donated blood earlier in the day, so trading plasma for the glasses was impossible. Visa is very happy with me tonight, lemme tell ya.

On the other hand, when I finally did get the glasses, I was amazed by how much clearer things seemed, and by how light the glasses were – lenses have apparently gotten even thinner in the last few years, which is great. I hope that lens-thinning technology manages to at least keep pace with my deteriorating vision for years to come.

So, long story short, if you haven’t replaced your glasses in a few years, and have a spare kidney, check out what’s available.

Oh, and if you can at all persuade your optometrist not to have Rachael Ray’s talk show on in the waiting room, go for it.

I was up at 5:30 this morning and went around the corner to pick up some milk. I’ve managed to avoid any kind of nap since then. I got up pretty early on Monday, and did the same on Tuesday before falling back to sleep for a nap. Still, it has me thinking that maybe my body clock has shifted and I’m not so nocturnal any more. So now I need to find my new optimal working hours. And then I need to find some way to convince my daughter to let me take advantage of them. I don’t see that last one happening in a hurry.

Still, this does give me hope that I can function in this crazy daytime world I’ve heard so much about.

Back when I was in college, I sometimes lost track of projects or deadlines. I decided to get more organized and follow the example of my boss and picked up a planner with refillable calendar pages. Making To Do lists with the planner was helpful, although I sometimes dropped the habit for lengthy periods of time, which reduced several months of dated pages to scrap paper. Recently, I’ve been reluctant to even carry the thing in my backpack, because it adds a surprising amount of weight and bulk to the package. So I decided to pick up a simple notebook and make my To Do lists there. So far it’s been fairly successful, so I may be saving a bundle by not having to buy those dated pages anymore. Now there’s some smart planning.

My mother has a crate of old LPs that has she has dutifully kept organized and taken with her as she’s moved. Every so often at a family gathering she asks if anyone wants any of the vinyl albums. I admit I have picked out a couple of records I listened to as a kid, purely for sentimental pack rat value. But few, if any of us, have working turntables. (I have one in my garage, waiting for me to have something to hook it up to.) So that crate just sits there.

We’re getting to a similar point here with VHS tapes. Thanks to DVR and DVD, we rarely if ever tape shows for our own use anymore, and we don’t have time to dig out old tapes to watch the handful of stuff we haven’t replaced on disc yet. If it weren’t for the fact that we’re using the VCR to route the cable into our older TV, I think we would have disconnected it. And I don’t want to just fill a landfill with all this plastic, so these things are gonna sit around until I can get ’em recycled. Ah, format obsolescence . . .

I’m back from my educational psychology class, and there have been a couple of things running through my head since the summer session started:

1. I can not believe that this is an elective within the education program and not a mandatory introduction class. Maybe it’s just the bookworm in me, but getting this kind of background on how kids develop and how they learn is doing a lot to help me make sense of the various techniques and practices I’ve learned about in some of my other classes. I just don’t get how you can learn how to teach without learning how kids – and adults – learn.

2. It ain’t half bad material to have on hand as a parent, either. Although I imagine hospitals would start getting funny looks if they gave out educational psychology textbooks shortly after the delivery.

Couple of points learned during today’s errand-running:

1. Clothespins are much harder to find than I thought they would be. I’ve looked in department stores, drug stores, and a Bed Bath and Beyond, and no luck. From the Amazon searches I did when I got home tonight, it looks like hardware stores might be my best bet. So off to the store tomorrow, it seems. I mean, if the sun’s gonna be beating down anyway, may as well put some of that energy to work. Doing more than the whole sustaining life as we know it thing, anyway.

2. I’m looking for beverages that don’t have high fructose corn syrup, and boy howdee that ain’t easy either. But Whole Foods does stock single serving bottles of several varieties of Kristall fruit sodas. I wasn’t crazy about their Orange, but the Lemon Lime Twist was quite refreshing. Nantucket Nectars look like a good option, too.

We went to an unfinished furniture store today and ordered a new oak TV stand for our living room. Pattie will stain this to match the other furniture, in between dancing jigs about the demise of our existing entertainment center, which she has wanted to obliterate for the last four years.

The trick now is to see how long we go before I convince myself that we need a new TV to go with the new TV stand.