Posted inHealth Home life

Deep thoughts on switching my breakfast to regular oats from quick oats

It's only been one day, but optimistic me is considering this to be a life-changing moment -- switching my breakfast cereal from microwaved quick oats to stovetop boiled regular oats.  Sure, I've meditated every morning since I was 20, and for most of those 49 years I figured that one day meditation would reveal, if not the Secret of the Universe, at least some mini-secrets of how my own mind works.  But with age comes a bit of realism. I've now lowered my sights on how deeply I'm going to be able to penetrate the mysteries that surround us. So…
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Posted inHome life Television

Another DirecTV year with no Pac 12 Networks. Curses!

Since 2012 I've been cursing DirecTV and the Pac 12 Networks for not working out a deal to offer us Pac 12 sports fans a way to see ALL of the football games and other events, not just the ones shown on ESPN, Fox, or other channels.  Every year around this time I Google "DirecTV Pac 12 Networks" to see if there's any hope that I'll be able to watch ALL of the Oregon and Oregon State football games this fall.  I put ALL in caps, because early on DirecTV had the annoying habit of telling me that I'd be…
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Posted inHome life Living with a catheter

I’m trying to cultivate my experiencing self, rather than my remembering self

There's nothing wrong with memories, nor with anticipations -- which basically are imaginings of future events which could become memories. If we couldn't remember the past or envision the future, we wouldn't be fully human. I've read about people who have a brain defect that leaves them almost totally in the present, and they can barely function. But as I wrote about yesterday on my Church of the Churchless blog, I'm trying to be more attuned to the present moment.  Partly this is because I've developed a chronic health problem that makes it tough for me to travel. So for…
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Posted inArcimoto Home life

I’ve got both Arcimoto anticipation and anxiety

I've been following the saga of Arcimoto, a three-wheeled electric FUV (Fun Utility Vehicle) for a long time. So long, I can't remember when I plunked down $100 for a pre-order reservation.  I must have been among the first to do this, since my reservation number is #129, and I believe they total more than 2,700 now. Over the years I've gotten numerous emails from Arcimoto headquarters in Eugene, Oregon, which is just fifty or so miles from where I live, Salem. It seems like production for retail customers like me is always just around the corner, but that corner…
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Posted inHome life Sports

Watching the Oregon State baseball team is better than reading a thriller

I've been hugely enjoying watching the Oregon State University (OSU) baseball team wend its way through the loser's bracket of the 2018 College World Series.  Now, I readily admit that I'm a "fair weather" OSU Beavers fan, since every year I only start watching them when the NCAA playoffs start. (I do have a good excuse, though, since I have DirecTV, and the super-irritating pissing match between DirecTV and the Pac 12 Networks shows no sign of being resolved. Thus it's only when OSU games show up on ESPN that I can record and watch them.) Back in high school,…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Fred Meyer, free those organic bananas!

Having been a vegetarian for 48 of my 69 years, I'm attuned to the suffering of sentient animals. But of late my compassion has been expanding to insentient fruits and vegetables, perhaps due to the intense 10 minutes of daily morning meditation I do via listening to the Daily Calm on my iPhone (some of which I actually stay awake for). So the sight of these organic bananas I bought today at the South Salem Fred Meyer filled me with such sorrow, I could hardly wait to get home and pour out my feelings via a blog post. Now, Fred…
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Posted inHome life Recreation

We say hello to Paulina Springs, and sort of goodbye to the Metolius

One of the great things about living in Salem, Oregon is how close it is to Portland (north), Eugene (south), the Coast (west), and the Cascades/Central Oregon (east). My wife and I hugely enjoyed the 20 years we were 1/4 owners of a Forest Service cabin on the banks of the Metolius in Camp Sherman, near Sisters in central Oregon. After selling our cabin share, we bought a 1/4 share in a Black Butte Ranch house not far away. We're finding it easier to say goodbye to the cabin on the Metolius by the house being close to beautiful Paulina…
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Posted inHealth Home life

Regence MedAdvantage planning to ditch Salem Health doctors

Irritated. Pissed-off. Disturbed.  That's how I feel after getting an un-cheery letter from Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon letting me know that as of July 1, 2018, Salem Health Professional Services will be leaving their provider network. So if this happens, I'd have to pay out-of-network rates for (1) the primary care doctor I've had for 13 years, Michelle Rasmussen; (2) a mental health nurse practitioner in Rasmussen's office, Melody Klug, who has been overseeing medication for depression that hit me after I acquired a chronic bladder condition, and (3) Thye Schuyler, a doctor at the Salem Health Sleep Center…
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Posted inHome life

We just leased our third Chevy Volt, avoiding the games car salespeople play

My wife, Laurel, should be hired by General Motors as a Chevy Volt spokeswoman. She absolutely loves the car. Me, not so much, which is why I drive a VW GTI. So Laurel and I don't always agree on what makes a car lovable. But we do agree on this: it is super annoying when car salespeople give you the runaround, playing ridiculous sales-games rather than being up front and open with us.  This is why we've leased all three of our Chevy Volts through Kelly Stewart of Salem's Capitol Auto Group, even though Kelly is with the Toyota side…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Why it’s so tough for older folks like us to leave their beloved country home

My wife and I moved to our house on five non-easy-care acres in rural south Salem way back in 1990. We were about forty then. The couple we bought the house from were in their mid-60's.  When we asked them why they were selling, they said "It just has gotten to be too much for us to maintain." Well, we're now pushing 70. (I'm pushing harder than my wife, but she's not far behind.) And a while back we bought the empty lot next door, so now we have ten acres to maintain. So why aren't we moving to a…
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Posted inHome life Living with a catheter

In my final hypnosis session I meet the V.P. in charge of my goals

My sessions with Emily Cahal of Salem Hypnosis Solutions have been delightfully varied. Today, my fourth session, and the last for a while, featured me meeting the Vice-President of my psyche in charge of achieving goals.  (I've described the three previous sessions here, here, and here.) Per usual, before the actual hypnosis session Emily and I talked about how things have been going with me since we last met. Naturally the focus was on how I've been dealing with my chronic health problem, a bladder condition, since that was my motivation for giving hypnosis a try. I told her that…
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Posted inHome life Living with a catheter

My third time is a purple charm with Emily Cahal of Salem Hypnosis Solutions

Today I had my third hypnosis session with Emily Cahal. I've blogged about the first two sessions here and here. It left me feeling good. Not that the first sessions had me feeling bad. Quite the opposite. I simply felt like today we went a bit deeper into my psyche, which might be a result of me becoming more familiar with Cahal's style and with hypnosis in general.  I like how Cahal blends traditional counseling with hypnotherapy. First we talked for about fifteen minutes about what's been going on with me during the past week. My focus, of course, was…
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Posted inHome life

Black ice story in New Yorker brings back some slippery memories

I'm hoping that a story in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, "Black Ice, Near-Death, and Transcendence on I-91," will make people more aware of the dangers of black ice, and also reassure people like me who live in areas that don't get a lot of snow, but do regularly get black ice, that we aren't winter weenies. (The title of the story in the print edition is "Six Skittles: the danger of black ice.") First, the story makes clear something that it took me a while to realize after I moved to Oregon from California in 1971…
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Posted inHome life

My 2017 VW GTI had a creaky sunroof. Here’s the tale of a 5 week repair.

I love my 2017 VW Golf GTI. It's a great car, the most enjoyable to drive I've ever owned. But about a year after I bought the GTI, the sunroof developed an annoying creaking sound, mixed in with some rattles. Here's a nighttime photo of the little devil. After the noises appeared, I did some Googling and found that sunroof problems appear to be fairly common with Golf/GTI models. The first time I took my car into the VW of Salem (Oregon) service department, the staff checked it out but couldn't determine what was causing the problem.  So I went…
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Posted inHome life

NAD+ is my new Fountain of Youth dream supplement

It's only been three days since I started taking NAD+, which grabbed the attention of my wife and me when we read about it in a TIME magazine piece, "Is an Anti-Aging pill on the Horizon?" Anti-aging products from skin creams to chemical peels are part of a $250 billion industry, but scientists have yet to discover a longevity elixir that stands up to medical scrutiny. A group of researchers believe they’re getting closer, however, thanks to a compound called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+ for short. “NAD+ is the closest we’ve gotten to a fountain of youth,” says David…
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Posted inHome life Marijuana

Cannabis cartridges are a long (good) way from rolling a joint

Well, it's been a couple of years since I last wrote about how to imbibe marijuana. Time for an update from this 69 year old baby boomer who is still learning new cannabis tricks in our happy new world of legal pot here in Oregon and elsewhere. As I said in "Tips for 'vaping' marijuana if you want to go first class," there's a lot to like about buying cannabis flower/buds, grinding it up, and vaporizing the weed rather than rolling a joint -- which was usually the only way we Flower Children smoked it way back in the late…
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Posted inHome life

Two ways (among many) our dog controls me

Some people worry about artificial intelligence becoming so powerful, devilishly smart computers will rule humanity. I've got a more pressing immediate problem: I'm under the control of our dog, and I'm powerless to do anything about it.  ZuZu looks innocent, doesn't she? Well, let me tell you, looks deceive. Particularly when it comes to canines. ZuZu is a master manipulator. My wife, Laurel, is a volunteer at the Willamette Humane Society here in Salem, Oregon. She's got the exalted rank of a "blue" walker, which means she can handle the most difficult dogs. If I volunteered there I can't imagine…
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Posted inHome life

For us, this is a fatal flaw of continuing care retirement communities

My wife and I are almost 70. We're still trying to figure out what we want to do in life. Or rather, the rest of our lives. I've written about our quandary in numerous blog posts, such as: I'm 65. Where's my "aging hippie" retirement community?Our retirement community conundrum continuesNew York Post features us in story about hippie retirement communitiesWhy it makes sense for seniors to postpone living in a retirement community At the moment we're still living in our non-easycare 3200 square foot, multi-level house on ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. We're thinking more seriously about moving…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Here’s another dark, twisted, and funny Christmas letter

If you like dark and twisted Christmas letters, and I sure do, you'll love this one that just came from one of my wife's friends. She has a great sense of humor. I changed the names to protect the innocent, aside from my wife's name, Laurel. A previous Christmas letter by the same person that's also darkly funny can be found here.  The Dreaded Christmas Newsletter So who wants to be a millionaire? I will soon be one, but I think I must die first. My liquid assets amount to $27 in the bank, but my house is fast approaching…
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Posted inHome life

Contacting Amazon via chat worked great for me

Maybe this isn't astonishing news, but in the past I've had difficulty contacting a human at Amazon who could help with a vexing problem. So I wanted to share what worked well for me this evening. I'd gotten an email from Amazon saying that I was being charged for some tire chains that I'd returned, but hadn't been received by Amazon.  Having checked on the return status several times, I kept seeing "In Transit." Amazon had already refunded me the cost of the chains after the return shipment had been logged in via UPS. But since the chains must have…
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