Friday Wisdom – Procrastination

Posted on 12/11/2020 by Andrew Reynolds

Never put off till tomorrow what can be avoided altogether.

The next meeting of the National Procrastination Society will be held tomorrow.

I have a lot to share about procrastination – someday I’ll post it.

Work fascinates me – I can look at it for hours.

The greatest labor saving device for today is tomorrow.

My father said I wouldn’t amount to anything because I procrastinate.  I said, “Just you wait.”

It’s said that the early bird always gets the worm, but from the worm’s perspective, being late is a life saver.

If the boss wanted it today, he should have asked for it today.

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Christmas Lights

Posted on 12/05/2020 by Andrew Reynolds

I’d like to say that I just sit down at the keyboard and bang these posts out in 20 minutes.  I don’t, but I’d like to be able to say that the words just flow from my brain to my fingers and presto, you get something interesting to read.  Writing doesn’t work that way.  In fact most creative things don’t work that way.

It takes … oh I don’t really know … practice, time, a gift, an insight or just plain luck.  

Sometimes it just takes turning off your brain and just doing something.  Kind of like how a child decorates a Christmas tree – they just take stuff and stick it everywhere.  At least that’s how I did it as a kid.  If I’m honest, it’s still kind of the way I do Christmas decorating.  First I look for all the lights, controls and extension cords I have, and then I just put them up on the house.  When I’m out of lights, I’m done.

Creative or mindless?  Kind of hard to tell.  I don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out if the lights are balanced, pleasing, or conform to a theme.  Now, we do have three lit up deers (two does and a buck) and those were set to grazing on the lawn in a somewhat realistic way.  The lights on the outside trees, just kind of got stuck up there.

Actually, we just bought this long adjustable light placing stick from the store and I was spending more thought on how to move the light strings using an 11 foot pole than figuring out if I’d covered the tree properly.

I’m just hoping when it gets dark that the lights don’t look wacky.

The whole time I was shoving lights on trees and roof gutters, I was thinking about what I wanted to write about tonight.  That’s where my brain started to overload.  There are so many things that could make a great post.  This week, Heather and I, took a long walk at a park we’re starting to like as it has great views of Reno.  There is a lot more I could say about getting my Nevada driver’s license or perhaps I could do an amusing piece about going to the eye doctor for a new pair of glasses on Tuesday.

I did briefly consider writing a long piece on why I’ve not been writing much lately, but I think I’ve written that essay a lot in the past.  Maybe I could bring something fresh to that or perhaps my readers don’t remember those.

Then there is that poem that’s been going through my mind.  You know, the one I haven’t written.  The one that I see outside my room, on the desert hills above the house as the sun starts to rise and warm the frozen lawn.  Words that would make you feel what it is like to leave a familiar place and arrive where you can breath.  A place where a cold sun can warm your heart.

Just outside the backdoor of our house is a junk pile.  It’s the result of me demolishing a dog run, a play structure and things.  It’s a jumble that I’ve reached into and pulled out material for planter boxes and soon a lumber rack for my woodshed.

Words are in my brain like that right now – a big jumble.  Fragments of ideas, glances of images, a scent of something that might be whole.

But it’s not complete.  Unlike the light strings, nothing holds the words together.

Sometimes the act of creativity is just collecting bits of junk and looking to see how they might come together as something new, something meaningful.

And it often takes longer than twenty minutes.

The last image of the day in my desert home just passed in front of my window – sunset and the glow of the hills turning to black.  Except for the lights on my lawn.  Now it’s time to see how the lights on the trees really look.

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Friday Wisdom – At the DMV

Posted on 12/04/2020 by Andrew Reynolds

Yesterday Heather and I finally had our appointment with the Nevada DMV to register our cars and get our driver’s licenses.  We found the lines short, the staff courteous, helpful,  efficient and easy to work with.  It was a very strange experience …

Other more normal DMV jokes:

They asked me if I wanted to be an organ donor.  I said, “I don’t even own an organ, but I know where I can get a piano cheap.”

What do mathematicians get at the DMV?  A deriver’s license.

Never get stuck behind The Devil in line at the DMV, for The Devil can take many forms …

I’d tell you a joke about the DMV line, but it’s kinda long.

What is the number one spring break destination for 16 year olds? The DMV office.

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Hand Cream

Posted on 11/28/2020 by Andrew Reynolds

When I first started thinking about a post for this week I immediately thought of hand cream.  I’m not an expert on hand cream and haven’t used it that much in the past, so naturally I thought I could pound out five hundred words on the subject. Not really sure there’s that’s much to say about it.

I also considered writing about humidifiers and the old trick of leaving a pan of water on the old wood stove.  There isn’t an old wood stove in the house and I don’t have a humidifier so I took those off the list.  The subject of alligators also crossed my mind for two reasons one was a funny my daughter-in-law posted on Facebook that said, “Dude saves his puppy from a gator. Rest of the world: Oh my God! Floridians: It was only about a 4 footer.”

She’s from Florida – makes it funnier to me as I could picture her taking down a 4 foot gator.

Second reason is that my hands are slowly turning into the texture of alligator skin – rough.  The back of my hands look like they’ve be sanded with 60 git sandpaper with bits starting to flake off.  Actually I think I could use my hands as 60 git paper. Well, maybe 120 … still, it’s starting to look weird.  In the past this kind of skin condition on me is usually traceable to the use of certain chemicals that I’ve used incorrectly.  You know, like denatured alcohol or acetone.  Yes, you’re suppose to wear gloves when pour the stuff but … safety who does that?

Anyway, I don’t have either in the house right now as during the move I wasn’t allowed to transport it and I haven’t been to the big box store to replace it so I asked Heather about it and she replied, “It’s dry skin, use hand cream.”

At first this puzzled me, but slowly, over time, I remembered that I now live in the desert.  Deserts are dry.  I mean we’re talking humidity hovering around 15 to 25 percent.  You don’t really worry much about how to dry things here – just leave a wet towel on the rack for five minutes and poof, wetness gone.  This is even worse in the winter when it’s cold.

Strange, but the desert is cold in winter.  No running the A/C year round here.  I’m told that’s because it’s high desert.  My grandson tried to explain it to me.  I don’t know – something about the word desert meaning lack of water and not a temperature.  Maybe I should have actually listened.  One thing I do remember is that he mentioned that forced air heating removes even more humidity from the air, making the cold dry air warm and drier. We have a force air heater …  He’s studying for a PHD so I just accept what he says.  Well, it’s easier than arguing or actually trying to understand.

My son-in-law simply suggested buying hand cream by the gallon, while Heather suggested that actually using hand cream would reverse the alligator properties my hands where taking on.

Normally I’d run screaming from the room if you suggested I use the stuff.  Mostly I don’t like it as it makes your hands feel greasy.  See that’s why I used to keep things like denatured alcohol and acetone in the shop: They’re degreasing agents – gets rid of grease …

Well, soap is also a degreaser and I use plenty of that when I wash the dishes, making my hands even worse.  Heather has also said that’s why she wears gloves while she washes dishes (I think there’s some message in that statement).

One other thing I dislike about hand cream is the scent. I’m not just talking about the ones with lavender or flowery things, but even the unscented ones have a “hand cream” like smell that bothers the cats.  And me.  And then there’s the “do manly men use hand cream?”  Not that I’m all that manly, but one does need one’s delusions.

Even with those objections I’ve been using the stuff daily for about four days.  Amazingly it seems to work and except for a small rough patch on my right thumb, my hands are returning to a softer, less sand paper like quality.

So I’ve been thinking about how to make hand cream more tolerable.  I guess it could be scented to smell like saw dust, motor oil or gasoline.  Maybe it could be formulated to leave little dark grease marks like you’ve just been replacing the valves in your car’s engine.  Some day I’d like to learn how to replace valves in a car …

Anyway, just wanted to say that I was thinking about writing about hand cream this week, but not sure I really have much to say on the subject.  If you have something you’d like me to write about, leave a note in the comments and I’ll try to get a real post out next week.

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