Posted inHome life

Here’s what a 71 year old guy does on his birthday

I have an easy answer to the title of this blog post: almost exactly what I do on any other day. After all, I'm 71,  not seven. A birthday party of any sort was the farthest thing from my mind. I enjoy my usual Monday routine. So I followed it, with a few exceptions. Reading and meditation in the morning -- check. Grocery shopping in early afternoon-- check. Tai Chi class in late afternoon -- check. Dog walk in early evening -- check. The big surprise of my birthday came when I unlocked our mailbox. There it was, a birthday…
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Posted inHome life

Wanted: Giant Mutant Squirrels to eat acorns (lots of them!)

In case the audio on my "Wanted" video isn't clearly recognizable by Giant Mutant Squirrels, and they're reading this blog post, I'm hoping they will pay a visit to our home to deal with the amazingly high number of acorns in our yard -- as documented in the video. More than we've ever seen. A bit of Googling taught me that oak trees go through regular cycles of many/few acorns, seemingly as an evolutionary adaptation. When there are lots of acorns, animals like squirrels can't eat them all, which leaves many acorns to become new oak trees. That's great for…
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Posted inBooks Home life

My book is a worst-seller. I’m fine with that.

I've written four books. My advice to people who want to ask an author, "How are your book sales going?," is the same advice I'd give to someone who wants to ask a woman how much she weighs. Don't do it! Unless the author is Stephen King. Or the woman is Claudia Schiffer. Five weeks ago I self-published my most recent book, Break Free of Dogma. (Amazon delicately calls it "Independently published," which does have a nicer ring to it.) Currently my book ranks #2,098,091 on the Amazon best-seller list.  At first glance that struck me as pretty damn low.…
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Posted inHome life

VW’s ID4 Crozz could be my next (electric) car

I've been car window-shopping recently. OK, not via a window, really, but through the Internet. Just when I thought I'd hold onto my 2017 VW GTI for a while, until the next-generation Mk8 Golf/GTI comes to the United States in 2020 as a 2021 model, today I decided to take a closer look at VW's electric vehicles that will be introduced at the Frankfurt Auto Show this month. My new idea is that I could keep my GTI for longer trips, such as when I go to our co-owned Black Butte Ranch house in central Oregon. Then my wife and…
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Posted inHome life

Loving my 2017 VW GTI, I’m willing to wait for the eighth generation

A few weeks ago I wondered if I could find car love with a Hyundai Kona after dating a VW GTI. That question may have been answered by today's drive from Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, across the Cascades, to our home in Salem. Driving on the often twisty and steep mountain roads reminded me how freaking fun the GTI is. Now, I readily admit that after a test drive with a 2019 Hyundai Kona, I can agree with this guy that the Kona arguably is a hot hatchback -- especially in comparison with its competitors, such as the…
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Posted inBlack Butte Ranch Family Home life

My first Pickleball experience was frustratingly fun

My daughter, Celeste, and I had overly optimistic expectations of how great we'd be at Pickleball. Since this racquet sport is sort of a cross between tennis and ping pong, both of which each of us has played a lot of, we figured that Pickleball would be a breeze for us. Well, we were partly correct.  It was a breezy day at the Pickleball courts at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where Celeste, me, my granddaughter Evelyn, and Laurel, my wife, tried the sport for the first time. That enabled me to blame some of my many mistakes on…
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Posted inHome life

Our 2018 Chevy Volt lost half its value in 16 months

Today we said goodbye to our third, and last, Chevy Volt. My wife has loved the car so much, we've leased three Volts: in 2012, 2015, and 2018.  It seemed like a good idea to lease, rather than buy, given the steady improvements in battery performance. (The Volt is a plug-in hybrid vehicle that switches over to a gas engine/generator after about 45-50 miles of all-electric driving.) But we didn't anticipate that we'd buy a 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid to replace our 2014 Highlander -- which came to seem like too large a car for our tastes. Plus it had…
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Posted inBooks Home life

I’ve written a new book: “Break Free of Dogma”

It feels great to have my new book go live on Amazon. My views about life, spirituality, God, and other Big Ideas have changed a lot since I wrote my previous three books.  I still agree with much of what I said in them, but some parts make me sort of cringe. Break Free of Dogma is much closer to my current atheist philosophical perspective.  It consists of 93 posts that I selected from the early years of my Church of the Churchless blog, 2004-06. So it was pretty easy to fashion, since I'd already written most of the content. Just…
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Posted inEntertainment Home life

I hate DirecTV even more than I hate Trump

Let me explain the title of this blog post. Trump isn't sitting under our television, controlling what my wife and I are able to watch in our rural south Salem (Oregon) home where the only TV choices are crappy DirecTV and crappy Dish Network. So DirecTV has a much larger direct impact on my life than Donald Trump does. That's why I'm complaining about DirecTV rather than Trump, even though both are hugely irritating. There's always something to hate about DirecTV. Let me count three of the ways, starting with the most recent -- which is the biggest current reason…
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Posted inHome life

Can I find car-love with a Hyundai Kona after dating a VW GTI?

It feels like it could be time to break up with my 2017 VW GTI. We've had close to three years together. I love her a lot. Our only rough spot came when her moonroof started to rattle, and it took a really long time for a dealer to figure out what the problem was, and to fix it. Still, all of my car relationships come to an end. And I've been watching a lot of videos about what could be my next car-love, a 2020 Hyundai Kona. The 2019 model is fine, but there's a few features on my…
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Posted inHome life

Here’s praise for Abiqua Irrigation and Dan’s Leak Detection

When you live on ten acres in rural south Salem, there's always something going wrong. I am that "you," along with my wife, so I know what I'm talking about. OK, not always, because that would be 24/7. But definitely things go wrong often. Which happened a couple of weeks ago when we noticed that two of our sprinklers were mysteriously running longer than they should have.  In fact, they wouldn't shut off at all. So I had to turn off the water to the entire sprinkler system while we figured out what the problem was. A control valve, obviously,…
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Posted inDogs Home life

CBD drops seem to be helping our dog’s liver disease

About six weeks ago my wife and I were told by our vet that our nine year old Shepherd mix (ZuZu) was in the late stages of her chronic liver disease and likely only had a few days or at most, weeks, to live. Her belly was filling up with fluid. Her eyes were yellowish. She was lethargic and didn't want to eat.  Along with having the fluid aspirated twice, putting her on milk thistle drops, diuretic, antibiotic, and a cortisone medication, I decided it wouldn't hurt to get some dog CBD -- the non-psychoactive component of marijuana.  Twice a…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Photos and comments on 2019 Salem Tour of Homes

Every year my wife and I enjoy going to the Tour of Homes here in Salem for a couple of reasons. First, it's fun to see cool features in expensive homes that our 1970's era home lacks, like walk-in closets. Second, we like to criticize design choices that strike us as abhorrent, hopefully out of the earshot of the builder. Here's photos I took last Saturday at the 2019 Tour of Homes kickoff weekend. I've added some commentary that ranges from complimentary to snarky. We only went to four of the 21 homes. The Tour continues through June 23rd: weekends…
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Posted inHome life

Buy our 2018 Chevy Volt Premier, just $25,000

Here's a great opportunity for someone who wants a deal on a top-of-the-line 2018 Chevy Volt with just 8,230 miles that had a sticker price of $40,865.  My wife and I are leasing this Volt, which is the Premier model. This is our third 3-year lease on a Volt, having leased 2012 and 2015 Volts previously. We like the car a lot, but want to sell it after buying a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid recently, since we don't need three cars (also have a VW GTI). So a buyer of this car would need to wait a bit for us to…
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Posted inHome life Humor

I wore socks with sandals and…survived!

As the saying goes, I felt the fear and did it anyway. No, I didn't climb Everest. Nor did I surf a 50 foot wave. My action was way more courageous.  Two days in a row, I wore socks with sandals out in public.  And not just any old socks and any old sandals. I went for the gusto, the full enchilada, the maximum shock. I paired the colorful limited edition version of Teva's Hurricane sandal that's a collaboration with Outdoor Voices, and equally colorful Darn Tough socks that I found at the Salem Summit Company. Voila! Socks with sandals. …
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Posted inHome life

Sirius XM on Toyota’s Entune 3.0 disappoints

I'm a big fan of Sirius XM. That's all I listen to when I'm driving around in my 2017 VW GTI, even though my car offers Apple CarPlay.  Here's how Sirius XM looks on my GTI's screen. In short, beautiful. My Sirius XM favorites show up as large icons with the names of the stations clearly visible. I can easily reach out and touch an icon to change channels, which I do frequently since I abhor advertisements. News and political junkie that I am, I'll listen to MSNBC until an ad comes on, then shift to CNN until an ad…
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Posted inDogs Home life

2019 WillaMutt Strut photos

Today's WillaMutt Strut at Salem's Riverfront Park (put on by the Willamette Humane Society) was a poignant dog event for me. Our dog, ZuZu, is in the late stages of chronic liver disease. Her vet has told us that likely she will live weeks or months, not years. So this probably was ZuZu's last Mutt Strut -- which she and I have gone to quite a few times. We had a good time, though. I was grateful for that. I'm also grateful that while we humans can grasp impending death, dogs can't.
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Posted inHome life Salem

Why we sold our Highlander to Carmax rather than Capitol Toyota

Buying and selling cars isn't my favorite thing to do. Usually there's some degree of frustration involved. Yesterday was no exception. My wife and I did our best to trade-in our low mileage 2014 Highlander XLE as part of our purchase of a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid, but Capitol Toyota engaged in some tactics that were irritating enough to cause us to decline the purchase offer and head to Beaverton's Carmax instead -- where today we sold our Highlander for $600 more than Capitol Toyota offered, and with much less aggravation. Our Highlander in the final stage of the CarMax process…
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Posted inHome life Marijuana

Why SelectCBD.com isn’t accepting VISA

I'm a believer in CBD, the non-psychoactive component of cannabis/hemp. I've read enough about CBD to decide that taking it for general health promotion makes sense, since I take quite a few supplements for the same reason.  SelectCBD.com has been my main source for CBD drops, which I take twice a day. But around ten days ago I saw that the site wasn't accepting VISA, just MasterCard, due to "technical issues" with their payment processor. ------------------------------NEXT DAY UPDATE: This is either a bit of synchronicity, or this blog post has magical powers (my favored explanation!), since today I got this…
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Posted inHome life

My (not so) secret shame: car lust

They, whoever they are, say that confession is good for the soul. Even though I'm an atheist who doesn't believe I have a soul, I like the idea of confessing -- perhaps because I was Catholic for a short while as a child, and found the idea of being forgiven your sins for the small price of saying a few Our Father's and Hail Mary's to be way cool. So here's my confession: I spend a lot of time on the Internet lusting after hot models... of cars. Yet I'm happily married to my 2017 VW GTI, who I love…
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