Weight Returns

Some change in shopping got my weight down 4 kg with little effort.  It's back after two years, and perhaps a little precipitous.  My exercise schedule has never been better since retirement so the villian must be what I eat, more than what goes in the grocery cart.  Consuming a little more bread and ice cream, the likely villains.  Maybe crackers too.  Spend upcoming month focusing and correcting the lapses.

Make Challah

Supply chain meltdowns must have caught up with the usual mini-challot that I buy as a six-pack every three weeks.  Shop-Rite had lots of whole challot but no minis.  It doesn't help that only one brand seems to make them for sale here.  That leaves me to make my own for shabbos dinner.  I like making challah but recipes call for too much and they are hard to apportion downwards.  My attempts at challah knots have not been very good and likely won't freeze as well as commercial Zomick's which hires or contracts with food scientists to determine additives for enhanced usable life.  Just scale back the loaf ingredients as best I can.  Challah recipes tend to be pretty flexible anyway. 

Breakfast Out Perhaps

Ideal morning to go out for breakfast.  Up on time.  No treadmill this morning.  No appointments until late morning.  Big project done yesterday with loose ends awaiting.  That's the why I should.

Reasons for shouldn't much simpler.  All the places I might go have deteriorated with covid except for one which I abandoned a few years ago when I sat at their counter and had to stare at a Gold Star with Trump in the middle.  And I have a frying pan and eggs at home plus the new box of what was once Aunt Jemima mix but has gone Woke to Pearl Milling Company was actually quite good and easy to make.  

So the real arbiter may be how badly I think I need to get away on a morning that I can.  There just aren't all that many of those mornings.

OLLI on Site

Only on Tuesdays do I need to drive to my class at the Osher instute, though Wednesday will be added after intercession, and even then it will be optional.  My class on Tuesday, an excellent introduction to Paleantology, does not begin until mid-morning giving me plenty of time for treadmill and other purposeful activity, though thus far I have opted to just leave the house early, maybe stop at a store, then arrive at OLLI with spare time to sip coffee if I brought any or wander the public areas to look at paintings by other students or read the bulletin board.  I need to be someplace other than My Space or even the car for a longer stretch than the 75 minutes of class time.  Even in public, though, I still feel pretty much as if I am by myself.  Whether I go to a store, or even the classroom, there isn't any banter of interpersonal connection.  It's still a step ahead of typing away on the laptop in My Space.

Indoor Seeds

Seed displays came out at the Christmas Tree Shop which discounts them by half.  I got a packet each of tomato, eggplant, and bell pepper.  From previous years I had cardboard starter containers, both little squares and truncated cones with flat bottoms.  And potting soil always sits in a plastic bag with torn open top outside my front door.  Thus started eight tomatoes and six each of eggplants and peppers with the intent of half of them making it to my backyard garden once outdoor planting season for Zone 7a arrives.

I've always found potting soil hard to work with, which may be why that Square Foot Gardening guy advocates vermiculite, though it is easier to transplant later with potting soil.  It's just a bit water repellant, leaving the position of the seeds in each compartment uncertain.  It  also dries out a bit, so I check it every few days.

Once planted, finding a place for them to sprout took some ingenuity.  For now, since they need no light yet but could use some warmth, they each got inserted into empty plastic bread loaf bags, sorted by type of vegetable, and placed on an isolated flat surface not intended for that purpose in the family room, just far enough off the path of the door to be easily retrievable but not likely to be knocked off.

Prior attempts at this have resulted in spindly shoots with internet advice not helpful on successful remedy.  That comes later.  I need germination first.  Keep checking.

Not Outraged

Perhaps my amygdala has malfunctioned.  Perhaps the FB designers have failed.  Now more than ten years into social media of various types the comments no matter the provacative intent do not get a rise from my inner self.  I was watching a TED talk not long ago by a psychologist trained at Stanford to study emotions and attention span.  That has great commercial value in a setting where maximizing eyes on the screen is the value to their commercial advertisers.  And like much physical and social science, the academics have greatly refined the process.  Outrage me and I will type a response.  Toxic content, of which I encounter much less than what is written about in public media, creates the visceral response that keeps the vision processing what is on the screen.

I recently subscribed to Bari Weiss' Common Sense postings, which have a higher level of analysis but again depend on creation of outrage to woke and other progressive intrusions that detract from a more sensible rational approach to addressing some very real problems of ethnic and economic exploitation.  The articles chosen to appear are selected to generate irate responses.  Alas, I am never irate when I read them.

My inner brain probably works just fine.  After decades in exam rooms, bedsides, and ER's in the grand pageant of medicine, there's probably very little I've not encountered before.  In my Jewish world I've been mistreated.  In my medical world I've been sued despite unyielding diligence to what I am supposed to be doing.  The stories of misplaced wokes or intimidation from the Oval Office just don't connect with me.  That's not to say they don't exist or are not worth opposing.  They are.  But not for the purpose of having my visual fields hijacked by them.  They aren't.  The tactic of provocation may have failed.

Different Approach

Devoted shabbos to a day in my recliner in My Space, pondering what I've done against what I might have done or could have done instead.  As I look over my semi-annual projects reaching the first third of that time allotment, it's a mixed report.  To complete My Space I've been going by region.  What I really need to do is go by a timer, putting things in a few categories as I go.  Gardens are going well.  Need to replenish fresh seeds when they issue at the home stores.  Wife approached with Anniversary trip.  She seemed indifferent.  Weekly wife time needs a firm schedule, maybe a weekly date-night.  Monthly expense log and financial review have hit a snag.  Just got to start this year's Excel program and dates and do it.  Something like an activation energy to overcome.

I finally have a coarse outline for the book that makes me famous.  Need to set timer for times to be at my keyboard.  OLLI in progress.  Courses proceeding well.  Not approached them about a committee.  Read three books per my semi-annual protocol.  I always finish this project quickly.

Not yet ready to have guests over.  Tidying to be completed.  Treadmill going well.  First trip to Maryland on schedule.  Writing articles.  Medium Digest not been a helpful place for submission.

A decent first third of the time block.  No big snags that cannot be overcome but may need to assign firm appointments with my self to bring more of these initiatives to their potential.

French Press Coffee

Don't know how well I slept. There was a storm overnight, lots of wind.  Would have been a problem snowstorm, not a problem limited torrential rain, except for sleep disturbance.  My iTouch watch conked out a few minutes before it's intended wake-up buzz, but let me know with a brief single buzz.  Up, dental care, watch to not very versatile charger via USB computer port, and I'm on my way for TGIF, not that Friday's matter a whole lot when you don't work a M-F schedule.  Some K-cup awakener, plan Friday and Shabbos, sip while checking email and seeing what Bari Weiss' Common Sense post can do to unsuccessfully generate my outrage.  Finish the audio Parsha commentary that I do each week, which often comes rather late Thursdays on yutorah.org.  And it's a treadmill recovery day.

Not really feeling like a dynamo of activity.  Not feeling groovy at all.  While finishing the milchig dishes, I boiled water, added some overly ground Lavazza coffee to my smallest French press, steeped it for four minutes timed with an electronic countdown timer, and pressed.  Add some left over heavy cream from when I made whipped cream, spritz of Pumpkin Pie Spice, then pour the coffee.  Tastes good.  Know in about an hour if it changes me in a favorable way.

Learning Watercolor

From grade school onward, I've avoided art class.  I just don't judge myself creative but admire people who are.  It's not that I don't appreciate the visual arts.  Museums often highlight visits to a new city, or even my own.  And I have all the equipment accumulated over the years.  Those complete art kits for $20, pastels, calligraphy ink, decent drawing pencils, appropriate paper.  They just stay on my desk or next to it.  The exception might be photography.  I enjoy taking pictures and learning about cameras but never at an expert level.

So this OLLI cycle I committed myself to a beginner's art course.  My first preference was drawing, as it needs little equipment.  However, its time slot coincided with a lecture course in paleontology that I really wanted to take.  Next best option, watercolor as I have those 99 cent tins from the back to school sales.  So I signed up for that.

I assumed art courses would be held on-site like other elements of performance from instrumental music to physics lab.  I suppose you can create a ripple tank by filling up the tub and tossing in some beans.  Chemistry would be harder, as gas lines, fireproof counters, and availability of deionized water would challenge Zoom instruction.  My alma maters have figured this out and prioritized performance classes, whether science lab or the arts, as the first to return to campus when pandemic safety becomes a more prudent risk.  And they did that.  To my surprise, OLLI has lectures but many of their arts instructors still have the heebie jeebies about being in a room with Medicare beneficiaries who harbor who knows what in their microbiomes drastically altered with antibiotic prescriptions written contrary to majority medical opinion.  We are zoonotic in that sense.

So watercolor would need to be introduced online.   Back to school tins of paint, or pigments as the real artists call them, are classified a little like greasy kids stuff that you should not use.  A trip to Michael's and a $30 Visa charge got me pretty close to the written supply list.

First class.  Personable instructor.  Only one on Zoom without a Medicare card.  She and I were the only ones in the class who never went through menopause.  Assembled newspapers to protect the dining room table, filled a saved cottage cheese cup tub with tap water, took out the supplies, and ready to go,  If I am not good at art, I am good at chemistry and proportions.  She went over brushes.  Mine were good enough, synthetic sable.  They come in squirrel too, though apparently not in moose.  Some hold water better than others.  Apparently the pigments are more of an afterthought.  Water coloring is really more about controlling water.  That means portioning with pigments, saturating the absorbent paper or skimping on the water as circumstances require, getting a spray bottle which was not on the supply list to moisten things with clean water instead of pigment tainted liquid in the cottage cheese tub.  

My Artist's Loft beginner watercolor spectrum has 24 12 ml tubes.  Since she took red, yellow, and blue, squeezing a dab into three wells of her white plastic pallet, I did the same, maybe about half the amount of Brylcream's a little dab'll do ya.  Then water.  She had an eye dropper.  I had either my fingers or a gentle pour from the tub.  Got close to 1:1 pigment to water ratio for red and yellow, more like 1:4 for blue pouring directly from water tub.  Apparently can compensate later.  Then strokes on dry paper, using flat brush with flat edge, corner of flat brush, then cylindrical pointy brush.  Each consistency flowed, but intensity varied with dilution.  

Next exercise, wet paper.  From that vary the intensity of the colors by either refilling the brush every two strokes or not refilling it at all, forcing paint to be used up by the final stroke, all done with a big flat brush.  Then she had us wet the paper, pick a color, paint it, and finally remove some of the paint, both with a paper towel and with a brush.  Gives the illusion of clouds.

Coming from a lineage of apartment painters, my father's brother-in-law who then hired my father out of high school until the Army offered other opportunities, I was taught basic interior painting.  Many of the walls of my home were done by me and still look good thirty years later.  Those were also water based paints, though not diluted and without much finesse.  Was mostly fun until cleanup.  Would not be fun today, which is why I now hire people to do this.

Watercolor was different.  It forgave errors, perhaps there really are no errors.  At this point nobody will critique my work, as my father z"l sometimes did when he visited and noticed the ceiling-wall junctions looked amateurish.  I could choose the colors without being locked into what I chose.  Watercolor gave me more control over the paint than I remember with any other attempts at art going back to early grade school, with the possible exception of finger painting.

Do I want to get proficient?  More so than I did when I signed up for the course.  Have to see what can be accomplished in the next four sessions.

Too Much Wine

Needed a bottle of wine for Valentine's Dinner.  I had been shopping for a few final items the day before but the distance between Shop-Rite and Total Whine was more than I wanted to drive for a basic bottle.  My state restricts alcohol sales to licensed stores, of which there are an abundance.  My route home from the supermarket took me to three.  I stopped at the one with the emptiest parking lot, a small store as these go.  There are some studies that people who choose from a few options, like at this store, tend to be more satisfied with their choice than people who choose among hundreds, as at Total Whine.  I only needed one.  Based on price and availability, I judged the best option to be a 1500 ml corked bottle, not the lowest price, but of the next tier in quality from a mass winery of good reputation.  For $13.99 I left satisfied, figuring I could have what I wanted for our dinner and gradually sip the rest over the week or maybe use some for cooking.

It really was a best buy.  Just right for seared tuna.  Mostly right the next supper for reheated lasagna I had made the week before.  Not at all right for Fish Market Apple Pie with home whipped whipped cream which made the aftertaste of the wine bitter.  But at least I know now that wine is not generic.  It really pairs better with some things than others.  The sommoliers that tried to emphasize this over the years remain snobs.

Not having anyplace to go after supper and needing to finish some of this stuff before it becomes only useful for cooking, I treated myself to one glass more than I would have ordered at a restaurant.  Went well the first night.  Less well the second, when I had also intended to do a major project while sipping the second glass and the desk timer ticks down to make sure I do it.  Didn't happen.  In its place, an early crawl into bed with a full agenda the next day, some e-reading from the cell phone, and an early drift off to the world of some stage of sleep.  And not very prolonged sleep at that.  Sleep Hygiene experts warn that evening alcohol makes falling asleep more predictably, but the piper gets paid in the later stages.  That's what happened.  

I never did my project.  Today for sure, earlier in the day.

Becoming Cheerful

Elevating my mood has been a struggle of late.  I'm not impaired, or haven't noticed if I am.  I can sit in my green burlap swivel chair, derive comfort, and think in front of my screen.  I do the dishes each morning and have been faithful to advancing my treadmill performance in small increments.  My reading stays on or ahead of schedule.  No, I'm not disabled from not feeling cheerful.  It would likely be better if circumstances put me more in circulation with other people but Covid limitations have had their impact, including, I think, less infusion of cheer.  Maybe the deficit is not cheer but pleasure.  There are things I enjoy:  driving around the area, drinking coffee in the morning, I've now allotted myself a single serving of an alcohol containing liquid each evening.  Choosing, pouring and sipping it generates some pleasure, though not really cheer.  Checking a task as earned and completed has a very transient satisfaction.  Cheer needs to be more enduring.  If it can be worked on, I'll continue to work on it. 

OLLI Semester

The Spring Term begins today.  First return to campus since the pandemic.  I have at least one class on site but not for another day.  Their computer also scheduled me for consecutive courses, on site followed by one online.  They will both need to be the same to attend both, so try to get the watercolor session on site if possible.  If not, the lecture that precedes it can be moved to online and I'll find a spot at home to paint.  Stopped art classes in junior high.  Didn't get all that much out of them when on site there either.

Definitely good to have a reason not to be in My Space, even if only once weekly.

Do Nothing Shabbos

A day of rest, but really set aside Biblically as a day to do different things without distraction from usual things.  No commerce but appointment for worship.  No writing but listening to Rabbi's sermon scribbling the misstatements with mental red ink.  Planned dinner and lunch.  Be with different people that day.

In part because Covid closed in-person worship, in part because having done that I've established a clear preference for lounging at home than sitting and rising for two hours for a reward of 15 ml of Jack Daniels at kiddush when it's over, I allocated the day to the creature comfort of sloth, supplemented with some time to expand my imagination which has taken a bit of a battering in retirement.  Good Coffee.  See what's on TV but not watch.  Look at what I have and haven't done since my last planning session the Sunday before.  Imagine what I might do with better accomplishment at the next week's review.  Look at the six-month project titles on the whiteboard in My Space.  Admire what went well, is making satisfactory progress, and what needs either change in direction or better commitment.

I took a shower, a restful one, setting out clean lounging clothing to wear after drying off.  And then came the day's snafu.  While retrieving a bar of soap that had fallen to the wet tile floor, on arising I struck the very top of my head on the built-in porcelain soap dish.  A quick stun, quick neurological checklist OK.  Finished the shower as the hematoma followed its physiological response to injury.

For the last few shabbos afternoons, my treat into twilight has come with chemical assistance.  After lunch, I chew a rather tasty, sweet tablet containing 1.5 mg of melatonin.  In about an hour or so, reclining on the lounge chair in My Space, oblivion sets in for the next few hours.  No hunger, no desire to get up.  Not sleep exactly, but a pleasant stare with my mind sorting out what it wants to sort out until suppertime arrives.  Feeling refreshed with this not quite nap but mental distancing, maybe even reset, it's off to some light nutrition, then more lounge chair until shabbos ends marking the resumption of  cell phone's FOMO.

Head injury preempted that weekly chemical drift.  The weekly news included a celebrity just a few years my junior who died suddenly, thought to be an acute MI until it was determined that he had a head injury not that different from mine.  A lethal intracranial hemorrhage did him in.  Not a good idea for me to alter my own mind from its natural state following my injury.  Melatonin twilight got postponed.

Early Daylight

Among my morning routine has been to retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway while my K-cup brews, then deposit it at the front door for my wife to begin reading.  It's been dark as I do this until this week, now about midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.  I don't remember if our automated front door light even turned on as I passed through it.  Still cold, though I do this activity in night clothing irrespective of weather.  All seemed quiet.  Just enough daylight though not fully beyond dawn.  Then inside for some coffee and to begin the day's purposeful activity.

Do It Today

It's a treadmill recovery day which automatically adds just over a half hour of time that would have been used walking to do something else.  What I've neglected most are the things I want to write, those means of expression that once out there in cyberspace remain out there.  I've not done great with maintaining my house.  Dishes to do but would have done that anyway.  Desks to tidy.  Stuff to clear.  Takes more than a half hour to do writing or have more visible floor surfaces, but I have that half hour today.  Decide which.  Turn on timer.

Avoiding Distractions

 One day, perhaps today, will be the day to set aside those screen distractions:  FB and Reddit primarily, where I am a contributor when I type, transiently engaged when I read, but when done have not produced anything important beyond a connection to an old friend from HS that was already there.  Email skirts that middle ground, containing significant communications amid the clutter.  But my Daily Task List will have a lot more completions and my Semi-Annual initiatives a lot better progress if I were more selective about what appears on my screen and how my typing skills respond.

Clogged Coffee Maker

My Keurig machine has gotten more temperamental.  I gave it an acid wash, confirmed full flow, then did two standard K-cups without incident.  But when I put more finely ground Lavazza good coffee into the plastic generic k-cup, it clogged again.  Only half the cup filled. with a puddle of coffee around the orange plastic cup when I removed it.  Most likely one of the pins malfunctioned with the finer grind.  I've cleaned them before with safety pins, much easier to do with the lower removable part than the sharp source that penetrates the K-cup from above.  I assume the problem is the lower holllow needle, as the upper pin never pierces the plastic cup, though it is still the source of its inflow and could clog as particles of coffee grounds float around it.  The lower pin receives the coffee water slurry and is more likely to clog if the size of the coffee particle is smaller than the pore that allows the water into the needle.  Give it another go at cleaning.  Lavazza now limited to Mellita cone.

Petty Annoyances

My new Camry's tire pressure warning came on.  With the ambient temperature entering a cold snap and no visual change in the appearance of the tires, I felt comfortable with a short hightly desired trip, assuming that we have the limitations of modern measuring technology to the immutability of the ideal gas laws.  But tires have some elasticity so are not entirely of fixed volume where pressure would decline linearly with temperature.  So I am obligated to check it out, though not urgently.

Somewhere I have a tire gauge.  Not sure where, or even if I've already put one in a compartment of the new car, but I own at least one electronic device and probably more than one pencil shaped gauge.  Or for a few dollars I can buy another one, probably electronic, if I cannot find one that I already have over the next day.  As it warms up, testing will get more comfortable so I'll wait until peak daily temperature.  And there may really be something subtle wrong with one of the tires that needs professional attention.  Unlikely though.  Suspect the latest irritation of our electronic age.

Kitchen Cleanup

Probably my least favorite edible would be mayonnaise, really a form of pulverized grease.  I never buy it but on occasion emulsions are essential to certain items.  I had everything i needed to make a wonderful supper highlighted by tuna melt, a frequently ordered item in a restaurant but troublesome to make at home.  I had a can of tuna lurking in the closet, just bought some celery, parsley on its last usable day or two, have onions but opted for powder. Have salt and pepper but no mayo to bind it.  So I made my own.  Recipes call for far more than I needed and difficult to halve due to an egg that could be portioned only with difficulty.  So tuna ingredients run through the minichopper, and on to homemade mayo. As much as I dislike the final result, no ingredients are objectionable, in fact, commonly used for other things.  An egg, an acid like tarragon vinegar, salt, pepper, splash of hot sauce, squeeze of Dijon, then whirl.  Cup of oil in pourable measuring cup with a lip and slowly pour through the liquid shoot on the lid of the chopper.  Whirl as I go.  Before long, fluffy off-white spread, at the intersection of liquid and solid.  Put some in a leftover milchig jar, spooned some onto the tuna and mixed.  Restaurant level tuna salad and enough mayo to spoil before I use it again.

Pulverized grease can be a challenge to clean.  Whole chopper acquired an off-white inner surface, and a slick one.  Cleaned blade first.  Generous supply of green Palmolive dish detergent, careful scrub as the  blade is sharp with multiple surfaces and interfaces with plastic, then a vigorous spray rinse.  Then bowl and two part lid.  Not that difficult.  Then tuna bowl.  Pan for tuna melt doesn't look that hard to clean, nor do the dishes but they need some dish detergent and rinse by the sink sprayer rather than the faucet.  Very good tuna melt on pumpernickel.  Worth some time at the sink the next morning.

An Ingredient Short

I did major grocery shopping.  Took my time.  Went through every Shop-Rite and Trader Joe's aisle.  At TJ I've largely settled into the things I get primarily at TJ, healthier bread, usually they have the best price on eggs, sliced Swiss cheese for quick sandwiches, fruit bars, and a bunch of three bananas sold per banana.  SR offers more leeway.  Menus for the week guided to some extent by the items for the week that they've chosen to discount, which typically includes some form of chicken, sometimes kosher beef for shabbos.  And I have my four portion dinners, often cheese based, like Macaroni & Cheese in the manner of Horny Hardart and spinach lasagna, with Fish Market Apple Walnut pie when apples go on sale.

Inflation and supply chain realities have reached the shelves, more at SR than TJ.  Chicken discounted for chicken cacciatore.  Peppers discounted. Mushrooms inflated.  For lasagna, frozen spinach at SR sold for more than I was willing to spend.  And I still have apples, but no bargain there.  Heading to TJ, mushrooms were less and they undercut SR by 50 cents on frozen spinach so lasagna next week.  Not sure about Apple Walnut Pie.

Art Supplies

My dedication has come to a test.  For years, I have had watercoloring on my Daily Task List but never did it, along with several other recreation initiatives that I never did.  I have ample tins of watercolor paint at about a dollar per tin from back to school sales.  Each comes with a brush. Bought a small pad of watercolor paper once, placed safely to the left of the desk in My Space.  But I never, or almost never, used them. 

To prod me along, and to expand my horizons, I enrolled in a beginning watercolor class at OLLI.  Five weeks in the Art Studio, further invigorated by a brisk walk through the coldest month of the year to get there from the main building.  They sent me a list of needed supplies.  Not one of those back to school tins and the brush that comes with it.  Costly paper, tubes of paint, synthetic sable brushes in three sizes, and a couple of items that I don't quite know what they are for.  Almost like taking swimming lessons from somebody serious about it when what you really want to do is splash around in the water and make ripples.

My FB advisors, all women, unanimously recommend that I spend the money and learn to paint properly.  Money is not nearly as much of an object as willingness to spend it that way, but that's what the sages of the Right Brain recommend.  And I can use a Right Brain adventure.

 

Recovered

Ready to resume my scheduled treadmill sessions after an intentional three-day respite.  Leg soreness largely recovered.  Not sure if the adherence to the schedule, which took its toll, resulted in better leg strength or stamina, which was its intent. Next session will tell.

Those days also included some light snow shoveling with enough soreness of my upper segment to warrant a naproxen.  But yesterday I felt some recovery, did well with sleep, more refreshed on arising than I've been.  Give today it's go.