Posted inHome life

Behold: the 2017 Laurel and Brian Hines Christmas letter

Yes, we're still writing a Christmas letter. This year, like most years, it is darkly humorous. Hey, depression can be fun! (Especially when you're not depressed.) We are offering it up in two formats.  PDF: 2017 Laurel and Brian Hines Holiday Letter Download 2017 Christmas Letter PDFJPEG: (below)                    
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Posted inHome life

A bone scan, my doctor’s lifestyle advice, a nighttime walk in the country

Somehow the three things in the title of this blog post fit together. I'm just not sure exactly how. Like a perfectly completed jigsaw puzzle? Like a random pile of old car parts in a junkyard? Like pants and a shirt that sort of match, and sort of don't? I had my third bone density scan last week. Osteopenia was the diagnosis after the first one some five years ago. Not as serious as osteoporosis, but a step in that direction. A few days ago someone from my doctor's office phoned to tell me the results. Well, not the real…
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Posted inHome life Retirement community

Our retirement community conundrum continues

Channelling Kermit the Frog a bit, "It's not that easy being green growing old." My wife and I are in our late sixties. We've been trying to figure out where we should live for quite a while, certainly since I wrote "I'm 65. Where's my 'Aging Hippie' retirement community?" back in 2013. (For all my posts on this subject, including this one, scroll through this blog's Retirement Community category,) We've toured five retirement or continuing care communities in the Northwest, four in Oregon, one in Washington: Hillside in McMinnville; Panorama in Lacey, Washington; Touchmark in Bend; Mary's Woods in Lake…
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Posted inHome life

I love my Allbirds shoes. They make my feet smile.

I'm a man who adores lightweight comfortable shoes. Being a 69 year old man, I also need my shoes to be supportive. Not in a psychological sense, but as in arch-support.  My newfound shoe love is called Allbirds.  They're made of wool. I'm unsure why they aren't called Allsheep. The "Our Story" page on the Allbirds website talks a lot about merino wool, and mentions sheep, but there's nothing about birds, except for this about the founders (isn't "bird" Australian slang for "woman"?: After careers in professional sport and biotech, our wives brought us together. We bonded over birds and…
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Posted inHome life

Why are there so many kinds of windshield wiper arms?

I'm an atheist, but after spending way too much time today trying to figure out how to put new wiper blades on our cars -- each of which has a different kind of wiper -- a prayer to the Automotive Gods seems in order: Please put this thought in the mind of every car manufacturer CEO -- we shall all agree on one type of wiper arm for every car we make. I recommend that this be the J-hook type. It sure seems to be the simplest. Our 2014 Toyota Highlander has that type of wiper arm. I have no…
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Posted inHome life Recreation

Photos of Black Butte Ranch by bike and dog walk

Laurel, my wife, and I are the happy recent buyers of a 1/4 share in a Black Butte Ranch house. (Scroll down for a video of what the house looks like.) Today we went on a mid-afternoon bike ride around part of the resort property, then took the dog on a walk that started in Black Butte Ranch and ended on land outside the development.  Here's photos of our excursions. The house is located in the part of Black Butte Ranch that was developed first. So it dates from the 1970s. It's been updated, as you can see from the…
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Posted inHealth Home life

Everybody is hurting in some way. My compassion lesson 101.

I'm not the most compassionate guy. But ever since I started having some semi-serious health problems, and the depression that accompanied them, I've become quite a bit more understanding of what other people are struggling with in their daily lives. The Buddha said that life is suffering. He was right on.  Almost invariably, when I talk with someone about my physical and mental problems, the person I'm conversing with will bring up their own problems that I wasn't aware of before. Or mention what a near and dear one is going through.  Now, I realize that this isn't exactly groundbreaking…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

My changeover from iPhone 6s to 8 plus went smoothly. Thanks, Apple.

It's always scary for me to switch to a new iPhone. I think I've got post-traumatic Windows disorder, given my memories of encountering the "blue screen of death" when I tried to install a new version of that operating system during a time of my life I'm now ashamed of -- a few years when I stopped using an Apple computer because I (wrongly) thought it would be better to be part of the much wider Windows world than the much smaller Cult of Apple. Actually, almost always the changeover to a new iPhone has gone glitch-free for me. But…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Apple wanted a credit check via Equifax. I paid cash for an iPhone 8 instead.

Screw you, Apple. I love you dearly for the beautiful devices you make. I've owned lots of Apple computers, tablets, printers, and phones ever since the Apple II+ with a floppy drive came into my life way back when. But when I got to the very end of the ordering process for an iPhone 8 plus today, wanting to purchase it through the Apple financing program that I used to buy my iPhone 6 plus, I got a message that there was a problem with my credit. I was pretty sure that I understood what the problem was. When this…
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Posted inHome life Living with a catheter

My wife says I shouldn’t tell you this, but I am anyway

I usually do what my wife, Laurel, says. But this morning, after we talked about my health problem, I went to my laptop and wrote just the title to this blog post.  It's taken me all day to decide whether to do what the title says. Since I'm typing this now (8 pm), that's a pretty good sign that while I recognize the truth of what Laurel told me -- there are nasty people out there in social media who will make fun of you for being honest about your urinary problem -- as a long-time writer and blogger I…
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Posted inHome life Living with a catheter

Given my peeing problem, be warned about asking “How are things going?”

Seems like it's time for me to come out of the closet. A medical problem closet. One that too many of us -- especially men -- keep ourselves in.  I've got a peeing problem. Now, this isn't unusual for men my age (I'm 68). I'd been taking several prostate medications that appeared to be working fairly well. But a few months ago a UTI, urinary tract infection, kicked me off into a state of hardly being able to pee at all rather than my previous state of having to pee too often. Urinary retention obviously isn't anything to ignore. I had…
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Posted inHome life

After several hours, I’m burnt out on socializing. Could be a “guy thing.”

Here's a scenario that used to play out fairly frequently in my first marriage. Sue, my wife, and I would go out to socialize with some other couples -- for dinner and drinks, say. At that time I didn't drink alcohol. So I used to think that my inability to stay in a chit-chatty frame of mind could have been the result of me being the only non-imbiber in a group of people who grew more and more boisterous as the evening wore on, while I grew more detached. Driving home, my wife would say to me, "Brian, you looked…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Men always will be second-class shopping citizens. Happily.

I'm married to a woman who likes to shop. This is, of course, a redundancy. If I had simply said I'm married to a woman,  the corollary who likes to shop is almost a logical necessity. By and large, men don't like to shop. There are exceptions, of course. Bob, my brother-in-law, would see a hardware store and make a bee-line to it with as much of a spring in his step as my wife, Laurel, does when she sees a "50% off everything" sign in the window of one of her favorite clothing stores. Me, I can happily spend hours…
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Posted inHome life

Hines home as seen by a drone

Recently we had Exos Aerial Imaging take some drone photos/videos of our rural south Salem property. I've shared the images in an Adobe Spark page. We realize that one day a city house likely is in our future. But if you look at these images, you'll realize why it's tough for us to imagine living anywhere but the place we've called home for 27 years. 
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

First day with Pictar iPhone camera grip: I’m impressed

I was a Kickstarter supporter of the Pictar camera grip for the iPhone, which isn't really an accurate name for the gadget, since in addition to being a grip it also offers an easy way to control the basic iPhone photo features while adding new ones through some software magic. Having recently gotten my Kickstarter reward, I tested it out on a dog walk here in rural south Salem, Oregon. Before sharing some of the photos I took and my first-impression review of the device, here's what the Pictar grip offers: Well, you don't get an iPhone with it, obviously.…
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Posted inHome life Retirement community

A big burn pile reminds me why we’re not in a retirement community

My wife are I are at an awkward age (which keeps getting awkwarder). I talked about this three years ago in "Too old for ten acres and a big house -- too young for retirement living." I guess you could call us tweeners. Senior citizen variety. At 65, my wife and I are beginning to find that the joy of maintaining our large 1970's era house on ten rural acres is beginning to wear thin. So we've started to think about where we'd like to move when and if we really want to. But only a year later in 2015…
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Posted inHome life

Our dog is spreading fake news about us. Ignore her ASPCA complaint!

I have no idea how it happened. Best I can figure, our dog ZuZu somehow hooked up with a pet psychic who was able to channel her obviously outrageous thoughts about us into a letter that was sent to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. So now my wife and I are on the receiving end of a serious-sounding complaint from the ASPCA. I'm going to respond to our dog's ridiculous accusations in this blog post, but I'm worried that the damage to our animal-loving reputation is beyond repair -- thanks to our oh-so-innocent looking family pet,…
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Posted inHome life

I hate it when my wife is right (also, I love it)

The roofing company guys took a look at our leaking roof while my wife, Laurel, was away. Then I took the dog for a walk. When I came home, Laurel had returned. She asked, "How did the roof inspection turn out?" I said, "I've got some disturbing news about that. Well, more accurately the news is disturbing for me. You were right." Now, I readily admit this is a common occurrence for me, as it is for all husbands. When we disagree about something, especially when it involves our home, my wife often is right. (She'd substitute usually for often,…
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Posted inHome life

WheelCheck iPhone app proved my new tires weren’t balanced correctly

I didn't really expect there would be an iPhone app that would tell me if my new set of winter tires/wheels were out of balance. But I searched anyway. And there was!  WheelCheck. It was produced by some German guys. They have a web site in English, and they responded promptly when I emailed them with some questions about my WheelCheck results. So I'm really happy that I spent a whole 99 cents to buy the app. Here's why I needed it. I bought a 2017 GTI last November, a great car that I'm super pleased with. It came with…
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