Home life

Tai Chi, it works. After a month of once-a-week classes, and some episodic at-home practicing, a real test of Tai Chi’s efficacy came this evening. For at 5:10 pm I listened to the recorded message at the Marion County jury duty office. And at 5:11 pm I was seriously bummed out. “Those called for jury duty on Tuesday, October 26 with numbers from 1 to 315 are to report by 8:00 am.” My number is 75. Bummer! 8:00 am. Double bummer!! I’m usually not even out of bed by then, much less meditated, showered, fed, dressed, and drived (to downtown…

I spent about eight hours yesterday dumpster diving. Or, more accurately, dumpster loading. With a few other folks I helped a friend get rid of lots of unwanted stuff that was clogging up her carport and basement. My job ended up being the trash arranger. People would leave junk on the end of the industrial-sized dumpster, and I’d walk back and forth with loads of discards, carefully placing material for maximum space utilization. This is me and my dumpster early on in our relationship. We got to know each other much more intimately as the day wore on, which ended…

Into everyone’s life a long-standing large oak someday will fall, either literally or metaphorically. And likely, more than once. For whatever lives will die. What seems so strong, so dependable, so firmly rooted that we can count on it to be a lifelong faithful companion—at any moment it may topple over (hopefully when we’re not leaning on it). A few weeks ago one of our ancient oaks, perhaps several hundred years old, fell into the branches of a neighboring oak tree. Growing in a semi-wetland, its roots rotted. Several years ago we had cleared the area of blackberries. Who knows?…

I’m pleased to report that Harmony, my art purchase at the Sisters Harvest Faire, has found a home. Harmony has been migrating from outside to inside, from vertical to horizontal, and doesn’t seem to have minded all this instability. Of course, what else would you expect from Harmony? Laurel, though, hasn’t come home yet from an all-day workshop in Portland. Since she is the final arbiter of art placement both within and without the Hines household, an end to Harmony’s wanderings is not yet guaranteed. My plan is to remain silent and let Harmony herself gently announce her presence on…

I’ve got fifteen minutes to kill while our traditional Sunday whole wheat spaghetti dinner is cooking, so I’ll use it to assuage my motionless-with-MoveOn Pac guilt. Right now Laurel is on the phone fulfilling her volunteer duties, making phone call after phone call to registered voters in our precinct who have been identified through some mysterious computerized process as possibly leaning toward Kerry, but not particularly likely to vote. I hate to call strangers. I don’t even like to call friends all that much. I like communicating via weblog postings and email much better. So if you’re a voter in…

A Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD arrived in the mail from Microsoft a few days ago, but I had left it on the dining room table until this afternoon, fearful because of past malevolent Microsoft experiences that if I so much as touched it my computer would stop working. I kept my eye on the CD, looking for signs that it was possessed. But I didn’t see any green vomit dripping from the cardboard mailer, nor hear any guttural chanting in Latin when we were in bed and the house was quiet. I read the “Before installing SP2” guidelines…

I’d been dreading going for my first over-55 license renewal, since the notice said that an eye test was required. For though my optometrist had assured me that my contact lens-assisted vision was better than DMV requires, more and more I’ve been using the “go past it and turn around” approach to finding unfamiliar streets. “We’re supposed to turn right on Cranberry Street,” Laurel will say. “OK,” I reply, straining to read the letters of signs that used to be much larger twenty years ago. I can only assume that budget cuts have forced cities to put up smaller street…

Last night my dream became reality. Two beautiful blondes were all over me on the sofa. Yes, prayers do come true. The only problem is that I wasn’t specific enough in my plea to the cosmos to fulfill my fantasy. One of the blondes, who happens to be my wife, was absolutely perfect. The other blonde, however, left a lot to be desired. Not that Serena isn’t also perfect in her own right. But certain sorts of intimacy flow much better when everyone involved is a member of the same species. Nonetheless, Laurel and I had just watched a PBS…

I love those passing moments that stick in your mind. Hardly any moments do. Most moments are, by nature, momentary. But once in a while an instant in time seems to reflect a lasting truth, something to be grokked for its wisdom potential. For example… Last night, sitting around after my martial arts class, I hear someone say the word “curry” while I’m putting my sandals on. Instantly I have an uncontrollable urge for Indian food. Conveniently, there is an Indian restaurant just a few doors down from the Pacific Martial Arts dojo. I order a couple of dishes plus…

“Hai,” that’s “yes” in Japanese. And that’s just what I’ll say if you ask whether my new best friend, Hero, is a genuine Samurai canine. Yes, he is. So no, don’t call him a junkyard dog, even though this is what a sadly mistaken Internet site terms him. Plus, Laurel told me that even the box he came in had his pedigree mislabeled. I didn’t notice this when the good folks at Sisters Cascade of Gifts (where we adopted him today) brought out the original carrier that he came from China in. It was too large for us to take…

Yeah, baby! I may be fifty-five years old, but most days I still take to heart the rockin’ message of “Afternoon Delight” (click here if you’re too young to know the tune of this classic song): My motto’s always been ‘when it’s right, it’s right! Why wait until the middle of a cold dark night?... Looking forward to a little afternoon delight. Absolutely. If something feels good at midnight, it’s going to feel just as good at three in the afternoon. That’s why I’m an inveterate napper, and why I’m not ashamed to call the pillow in our extra bedroom…

Re: Have you ridden in economy class lately? Dear Mr. or Ms. CEO, forgive me for not addressing you by name, but in this open weblog posting I purposely have avoided learning anything about you—such as your sex, age, religion, body type—so that you will be more impressed if the following guesses about some of your personal characteristics turn out to be true. I am assuming that you do some flying on your own airline. Isn’t this what CEOs are supposed to do these days, get down in the trenches with their customers and employees, and learn about the company…

It’s a sign of the (aging) times. Laurel used to read Cosmopolitan, and I would enjoy taking the infamous Cosmo quizzes, though often a bit of gender-bending was needed: “The hunky guy sitting next to you at the bar brushes his hand against your thigh. You’re not sure if it was an accident or on purpose, but you liked it. Do you …(A) …(B) …(C) …(D).” Hmmmm. It would take me a while to get the picture of a hunky guy stroking my thigh out of my mind, but once I did, and reinserted an image of Angelina Jolie, say,…

Last night Laurel and I watched “Tigers of the Emerald Forest” on Animal Planet. I got to fantasize about being a big male tiger whose sole jobs are to (1) roam around the forest looking tough and oh-so-cool, (2) mate with every female tiger you can, and (3) kill a defenseless deer once in a while to keep up the energy to roam around and mate. Sounds pretty good to me. Well, except for (4) fight off the other male tigers that want to take over your roaming and mating grounds. But, hey, that comes with being the top tiger…

Lo, in the beginning there was but a single substance, One undivided, complete unto itself yet containing all within its grasp. In the fullness of time this One could not but be fruitful and multiply. For such was commanded by the holy scriptures. And the people gazed upon the Creation with wonder. Bounty piled upon bounty, filling all space, soaring heavenward. Yea, but the people were called to journey. And they couldst not leave the Fruit of the One behind. So the sacraments were placed in sacred vessels, and the people couldst worship wheresoever they found themselves. But the Garden…

It’s a pretty slow news day in the Hines home, but fortunately I have a pet-interest photo on my digital camera that is begging to be uploaded: Clancy, the cat, eating corn on the cob! If this was the State Fair you’d have to buy a ticket to see such a sight (though maybe Clancy would be bundled with the two-headed calf), but right here on this weblog we’ve got the photo for free. Clancy belongs to Paul and Kelly Wilson of Corvallis, who invited Laurel and me to dinner last night. They are cat people. Cats people, actually, to…

Global warming, terror alerts, stock market decline, rising oil prices, Bush/Kerry shenanigans. My friends, we can’t do much about these things, but we can act to solve a problem that, before yesterday, I blithely ignored. Certain synchronicities have convinced me that this is my calling: to urge each of you to make the world a better place by not—repeat, not—peeling down the husk when you’re considering buying an ear of corn. A passage from the last chapter of Thoreau’s “Walden” comes to mind: “Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom…

I am the designated grocery shopper in the Hines household. Laurel pretty much is the designated everything-else shopper, aside from such necessities of life as books, computers, and other techno gadgets. I take my duty seriously. I am not a creative grocery shopper. Hewing to our evolutionary designed sex roles, my mantra is: “Get everything on the list; do not get anything not on the list.” Using every available dwindling ounce of testosterone in my aging body, each Wednesday I dedicate myself to hunting down the assigned items on the list. If I fail to catch a quarry, I am…

Laurel and I consider that we’ve well-earned our self-appointed status of Yellow Jacket Hidey-Hole Special Forces Killers (plagiarized motto: “Death from Above”). The recent Oregonian article on these insect evil-doers lacked specifics as to how you send them to yellow jacket hell if you locate a ground nest. This article, “How to Kill Yellow Jackets,” is pretty good but doesn’t mention some of the battle-tested tips I’m about to share. [Update, August 2006: My wife has asked me to point out that yellow jackets aren't all evil. They are part of the balance of nature and do quite a bit…