Working for 15 Minutes

 
Two-Minute Rule. A staple of productivity.  If a small task can be done in two minutes or slightly more, just do it. Despite my assorted annoyances with my current low-end smartwatch, it has an easily accessible two-minute countdown timer.  In that time, I can wash all four of the coffee mugs that fit on the outer holders of my dish rack.  If I want to wash utensils, I can do about two place settings before my wrist buzzes.  Watering my aerogarden takes less time than that, even if I have to fill up the two-liter harvested juice jug with fresh water.  Refreshing the potted herbs outside my front door takes a little longer.

Indeed, I can time most any task.  Not how long it takes to do, but how long I am willing to work on it.  My semi-annual projects for this cycle include things that have a lot of steps.  Slow and steady wins the ketchup race, the commercial from my childhood taught me.  Repurposing my adult son's bedroom will take many hours.  Boxes everywhere.  Paper dating back to grade school. Crammed dresser and nightstand drawers.  A desk that he rarely used but was my pride to provide it for him.  Electronics long gone obsolete.  That gets fifteen minutes per session on my timer.  I shoot for two sessions per week, but if only fifteen minutes at a time, I could do more without feeling overwhelmed.  And with the ability to sort things that he may treasure, his awards, birthday cards, special clothing.  Fifteen minutes of sorting or washing or discarding at a time gets it done over about three months.

My own bedroom gets only ten minutes at a time, two or three sessions a week.  I've already been able to vacuum my half.  Surfaces have started to appear functional, sorting just a few sections at a time while discarding very little.

My Space only gets six minutes at a time.  Not that I am unwilling to allocate more of my attention, but after six minutes something stymies additional progress.  But I can see more than an end point.  I recently recaptured my beloved Lands End Canvas Attaché, an indulgence purchase early in my career.  The Eddie Bauer cloth attache sits next to my desk chair.  It holds recreational items, mostly art.  And next to that I store a leather briefcase, purchased for $60 with the intent of looking upscale professional.  It's rarely been toted anywhere.  The cloth ones with neck straps captured the market due to better utility.  The leather one with its dual handles lets me see what I once aspired to have.  Six minutes at a time will bring My Space to what I had envisioned as what I would really do with a personalized part of my house, right down to my display of collegiate coffee mugs from the many campuses I've visited.  My many diplomas sit wrapped and in storage.  My Space has no reason to morph into a monument to myself.

My projects also include expressing myself in various ways as I move into the years of limited anticipated longevity.  Can I write a 90K word book?  If I set my timer for 90 minutes and write 750 words, it will add up.  

Other goals, or really systems to reach those goals, do not adapt as easily to a timer.  My treadmill sessions have a count-up timer, 30 minutes.  I set the intensity.  Stretching has a program of 8 minutes spread over 16 half-minute exercises.  I plan to host three dinners to challenge my creativity, social skills, and kitchen expertise.  Pulling this off requires steps, some like stove or oven times dictated by recipes.  I guess I could surf or read cookbooks for soup or dessert options using a timer, but this type of task I tend to work until the step has been completed.  I like going on day trips, having done one of the three intended for this cycle.  The timer does not aid in completing this.  Rather, I pick a day, destination, starting time, and return time, then do it as a unified effort.  Once every November, I deal with my IRA.  This includes allocation to charities working with my financial advisor, then a few weeks later, depositing the rest of my mandatory withdrawal in my checking account or a different investment account.  The timer doesn't properly segment everything.

But a third of the way through this semi-annual cycle, I've done rather well, even on my manuscript.  The short bursts seem productive, not at all stressful. Visible progress appears.  It makes for a good system to bring difficult initiatives to completion, something that has chronically challenged me.

Weekly Circular Store Shelf Mismatch

 

Grocery shopping did not go well.  As a kosher consumer, Rabbi of my shul, the Orthodox one, two Rabbis ago, now some 25 years ago, cashed in some friendship favors with the head of a local supermarket chain.  One store in the Jewish population center would create a kosher meat department, deli, and bakery.  As a result, those of us who once schlepped 45 minutes to independent Kosher butchers in our magnet city's Orthodox neighborhood, filling our freezers to capacity every couple of months, could now buy what we needed mostly for supper in a much more convenient way.  Supermarket business is notoriously competitive and at low profit margins. Having all the people with kosher homes shopping there to the exclusion of other grocers, made the friendship pay off for everyone. Well, not exactly everyone.  As local Kosher oversight committees around America made similar arrangements for their observant Jews, the independent kosher butchers closed their shops in all but the places of highest Orthodox presence.

I also had my transition, as did my Jewish community.  We have become older.  Parents of late teens and college kids at the start of the project became empty nesters.  Rabbinical transitions and animosities among key players took its toll.  Kashrut attracts older people.  As actuarial realities and sunbelt migration play out, there are fewer kosher consumers.  But those who remain, continue our personal loyalties to that particular store, despite a selection of beef and poultry far less diverse than it once was.  The misdeeds of Rubashkin's Agriprocessors ended economical kosher beef.  Its substitute suppliers keep us afloat with ground beef, cubes, and minute steaks.  I've not seen liver in years and briskets only near the Festivals when people make big dinners for extended families.  The deli has become a pawn as key people who truly have not been treated well by dominant local Jews, protect their turf.  Yet our loyalty to that store in that location remains firm.  I seldom make a purchase from the deli, deterred by expense.  Same with the bakery, which rarely offers anything baked in store for what I am willing to spend.  Indeed, the store's hechsher has the logo of the departed Rabbi, not the current mara d'atra of my synagogue.

What I seek out as specialty kosher for my basket, though, is a pittance of what I put in my cart each week.  The economics of food processing has made available every imaginable mass-produced edible with a factory-applied kosher insignia from one of several international supervision agencies.  My full cart has kosher, but not locally supervised.  The same packaged stuff available anyplace.  But I shop at the place where I can also purchase kosher raw beef and chicken, though I rarely prepare either other than for Shabbos and Festivals.  Even my kosher Thanksgiving turkey I buy someplace else.  My Rabbi and his supermarket CEO chum called it right.  Kosher brings loyalty.  So do better prices, which this store seems to have.  And top tier employees, where they seem to struggle.

Every Wednesday, the postman delivers a packet of supermarket advertising.  It contains circulars from about a half dozen competing markets, each of colored newsprint, about eight pages long.  I extract the one from my grocery, recycle the others.  I take it to the desk in My Space, extract a page from one of those 8.5 x 3.5 pads that I harvest from periodic non-profits solicitation envelopes, take out a pen, most commonly a red Flair pen, and begin my review of the coming week's supermarket promotions.  The page from the pad has a logo with lines for writing on the front, blank white on the right.   On the front, I note what I definitely will purchase. Either it's a deal too good to pass up, or I need it.  Typically that fills a little more than half the sheet.  On the blank reverse, I write those items that I will consider as I shop.  That list fills an entire column, then a third or so of the next column.  After I am done, usually two sessions spread over a half hour to get through all eight pages, I write on the front what must get because I am running low, irrespective of its inclusion in the weekly sale circular.  The circular and shopping list then get clipped together with a home on the far reaches of my desk until ready to drive to the supermarket.

Short essential list:

1. K-Cups; House Brand #36
2. Stovetop Espresso Maker
3. #2 Pencils which I buy each year
4. Papermate stick pens, which did not write last year
5. Spiral Notebook purchased each year
6. Chex Mix
7. Tastykakes

Essential has a context.  I have enough stationery.  My doctor thinks I snack too much.  Have enough coffee pods to last a while.  But my stovetop espresso maker failed some time ago from a deteriorating gasket that I cannot easily replace.  Essential becomes things I will eventually use which can be obtained at a price low enough that I will not anticipate a similar bargain in the near future.

 

I entered the store expecting to purchase little more than this, as I did not want to spend a significantly greater amount of time there to explore the much larger number of items on the back side of the sheet.  This store puts its advertised circular bargains right near the front entrance.  I put two boxes of Tastykakes in my basket.  Usually they have sale K-cups there, but not this week.  I wheeled my cart to the coffee aisle, taking a box of 36 for my cart.  School supplies just entering the Back to School season, though school will not reopen for another six weeks.  I found a minimal pile of spiral binders, wide rule 70 sheets each, my usual Back to School annual purchase. I put one yellow and one red cover in my basket.  No advertised pencils or stick pens.  A sign pointed to a supply at aisle's end.  None there either.  Looked at cereals and snacks without finding Chex Mix.  Wouldn't even know where to find the espresso maker, the one item that would add to my enjoyment.

Near the front door they keep a customer service area.  In this computerized era, the clerk can type in a number and find it.  I waited my turn, a short wait.  The young man greeted me, though he looked like his coffee break might have gotten overdue.  I asked him to get me a circular, then I circled from the ad what I could not find.  No pencils or pens in stock.  Chex Mix with the snack aisle, where it was not when I went back to look for it.  He did not even have the espresso maker listed in his store's computerized inventory but he told me which aisle it would be in if and when the store stocks it.  Rainchecks for pens and pencils.  No Chex Mix to be had.  And the Espresso Maker exists only on newsprint received by a few million households in my metro area, not in the store or even in the inventory of what the computer can affirm as present on site.  Rain checks have to be generated by their computer as it includes a UPC code to scan for the discount.  Phantom items like my desired stovetop device have no way in modern grocery retailing of providing me the discount, even if the item appears on their shelves past the expiration date of the weekly circular.

So basically, the best and brightest of the grocery world lured me into their store expecting bargains that they were not able to fulfill.  In my younger years, the 1970s or so, an age of emerging consumerism where people read Consumer Reports and watched interviews of Ralph Nader on talk shows, we called this Bait & Switch.  Advertise an item at a low price, not have it, consumer gets similar item at full price or does other shopping in store.  It was at the time part of strategy to squeeze a few dollars from each shopper.  Most merchants offered rain checks, handwritten vouchers to purchase the advertised item at the sale price later, but it required the consumer to wait her turn at the customer service desk.

Unavailability of advertised items still occurs, though no longer part of profit enhancing strategy.  Replacing it seems more the growth of businesses to massive proportions with centralization of shared tasks, dependence on technology which never runs glitch free, multiple satellite outlets, serving millions of consumers, all in a competitive but oligarchical environment with a few similar enterprises trying to make their branch store the one I find most attractive.  My grocer has hundreds of stores, but rather than being centrally owned, they are regionally owned and franchised by a central distributor.  Somebody has to decide what will go on sale in what region each week, tell that to the staff that advertises those decisions who prints and mails the weekly circulars.  Then somebody else has to secure a supply of those thousands of different products, obtain them from suppliers in an era where expected distribution does not always happen, bring the products to the individual sites, and record it for the clerks who interface with the customers to call up each individual item by current supply and location in that store.  Plenty of steps to break down, and as I learned, they do break down.  There was no Chex Mix even though the computer said there was.  

Sometimes the merchants can anticipate iffy supply.  The circular will say "where available, no rainchecks."  That way they can advertise Kosher Chicken everywhere but only stock the stores which have enough Jewish customers to buy enough of it.  Back to school, Valentine's Day, and Christmas have seasonal items which will run out and not get restocked as the targeted events pass.  But the items I wanted, especially the espresso maker, did not have that restriction.  Still, I could not be assured that my store will ever have it or that I can receive the advertised discount if it ever appears on their shelves.

Retailing in America, at least stores, have earned the shopper's skepticism.  They invite you to get something at a good price that you cannot have, after making an effort to drive there, bring your own shopping bag, and looked on the store's shelves for more than you came for.  Electronic shopping doesn't have that albatross.  Circulars from Amazon do not arrive.  Even unsolicited pop-ups are rare.  People sign on when they know what they want to purchase, though the browsing options are ample and easy to use once a category gets selected.  Shoppers learn of discounts once ready to select.  A blue shirt may have a different price than a lemon yellow shirt.  I looked up the espresso maker, known in e-tailing as a MokaPot.  No shortages.  But not at the price my grocer advertised, either.  I guess, like some of our political candidates, they dedicate themselves to they/them but rarely to you.

Difficult Day Trip

While not an overly challenging time, in many ways good recent weeks, enough activities caught up with me to warrant a day to myself. My computer failed.  I took it to a local shop with long reputation.  They concluded that it had run out of memory, recommending a new computer with data from the dying one loaded onto it.  Like many, I've become dependent on my laptop.  The local public library has desktops for public use, so I can access the internet and use a flash drive for personal writing.  I did, but it was not really My Space where I do my best work.  The expected return date did not happen.  Lacking a convenient computer, I thought I might do some house upgrades and garden enjoyment.  My best herb pot underperformed, vegetables not thriving and flowers barely emerging.  Rain did not help.

Each summer I make two trips to the state's beaches.  If the rain lets up, I  committed to doing that.  A go from weather.com, a day off from my treadmill schedule, to which I have remained faithful.  I offered my wife a chance to share the luxury of warm sand.  She interpreted the weather report as hot sand but blazing sun, and too soon in the season for the water to lose its chill.  I went myself.

Two sand chairs in the trunk. Sunscreen SPF 30 applied to face by finger, sprayed elsewhere.  Canvas tote bag with my initial embroidered on the front and leather handles filled with all that I would need.  Room left over for my street clothes.

My home state of Delaware has beachfront assigned to three state parks, which I visit preferentially.  A shore runs for some twenty miles southward to the state line with Maryland.  All has public access to the sand, but not public access to facilities.  When my children were school age, like many families we would take a few days off from work, stay at a small hotel a few days, walk the five blocks to the beach each day, and enjoy the interesting town of Rehoboth Beach, dining at places different from what we would find at home.  Now state parks work better, as I have an unlimited Senior Pass that affords me entry and changing facilities.  I've been to all three.  The middle park seems the most developed, with two bathhouses in different stretches.  The southern park is most isolated but has the fewest parking spaces.  I've never been closed out, but had to drive around for a bit at mid-day, seeking somebody vacating their space to go to lunch.  

Sussex County, Delaware's southern county, has changed considerably over forty years.  It used to be a pleasant drive, nearly toll-free, over an iconic road that stretched almost the north-south dimension of the state.  The kids could look at farms and small business areas as we drive to our destination.  Very pleasant to get to and to be at.  Sea shell and t-shirt shops along the main street, little places to get breakfast in the morning and pizza for supper.  People would vacation from Baltimore and DC as well as Wilmington. A wooden boardwalk with a small amusement section just right for grade schoolers preparing for their pilgrimage to the grander Hersheypark or Disney.  Candy shop, ice cream places.  One single realtor dominated.  And a short drive, gave an afternoon at the Outlets, something less ubiquitous at the time, more bargains than now, and an escape from the rain when needed.  The world changed.  Those Federal Workers and lawyers from DC retired with pensions.  Vacation with families became relocation for healthy seniors.  Gays with substantial incomes and no college to save for found second homes and eventually retirement relocation.  And with new money came businesses providing places to spend it and maintain elegant residences.  The state built an expressway to connect its northern population center to the beach.  Now a drive clogs about two miles north of Lewes, the northernmost beach.  Every square cm of flat surface along the main thoroughfare now hosts places that year round residents need.  Lowes, WaWa for gas and snacks, supermarkets with the same names that we find at home. Restaurants are now big, whether parts of chains or independent places funded with private equity.  It's much like home, only farther away and with more traffic that does not let up until state land takes over south of the town of Dewey Beach, where families on vacation can still save up for a few days away.

To get to my chosen state park, I had to creep through the full milage of this economic growth.  I had plenty of gas.  I could use some lunch, not having eaten more than two cups of coffee at home and a small thermos more as I drove.  WaWa has become my roadside destination.  Hoagiefest week, $6 for a 10-inch customized roll.  And a reliable, if not always immaculate, men's room.  I pulled into the lot.  Checked email, called wife.  A few snags on my computer repair.  They needed passwords that I didn't know existed so they could load my Microsoft products from the dying computer to the new one.  I got my cheese hoagie, Swiss at the base, cheddar as the second cheese, some toppings, and some honey mustard.  As I ate half and a few bites of the second half, I dealt with computer care.  Once parked at the beach lot, they would send me a text allowing me to set a new password.  I drove the last few miles, over a bridge, then followed some not entirely single interpretation signs to the beach entrance.  I flashed my Senior Pass, waited for the attendant to nod, then drove to a distant but ample part of the lot.  I called the computer repair tech back, waited for the text message, read him the access number, then gave him the new password.  I wrote it down on a paper next to me, though I am likely to remember it as the one I use for sites that require a complex set of small letters, capital letters, numbers, and symbols.

Ready for the beach.  The walk to the changing lockers are upslope.  I had my tote and beach chair.  My wife interpreted the heat index correctly.  Still, I got changed into swim trunks and t-shirt, then took my time schlepping it all over the state's wooden boardwalk to the sand.  I found a vacant spot at just the right distance from the last tide mark.  After setting up the chair, I took out my cell phone.  The midday sun and intense brightness made reading it unrealistic.  I could not even see the numbers on the screen to enter the password.  I rested a few minutes, then tested the water.  It contained people, mostly kids.  Having lost one pair of glasses in the surf two years previously, I wore a backup pair, and left those at the chair.  It took about a minute to get to the water's edge and another minute to figure out that the ocean warms slowly as the summer progresses from June to August.  Still too cold on July 1.  

Back to my chair, basically unable to communicate, forgetting that for most of my life I could not communicate on a beach, I covered my head with a gray floppy hat, and sipped water from a very effective insulated bottle.  I knew I would not stay very long, maybe another half hour.  I set the time on my smart watch, which offered enough brightness to discern its numbers and settings.  At the appointed time, I put everything back ot the tote bag, folded the chair, and schlepped back to the locker room.  Once back in street clothes, I walked to the parking lot, put the chair in trunk and canvas bag in back seat.  I noticed a few things from the parking space not appreciated before.  At the end of the parking lot they have a pier.  I did not see a lot of fishermen.  They usually position themselves across the street on the other side of the suspension bridge near a series of rocks. I have fished there unsuccessfully once previously but remember the other anglers wishing me and others luck with hungry fish.

Destination two, the only winery in my state that I've not visited previously.  I had been to their tasting room much closer to my home.  Great experience.  Waze told me I had sixty miles to get there, 1.5 h driving, considerably longer than anticipated.  Delaware has two borders with Maryland, one that runs east-west and a longer one that runs north-south.  This town, which borders the two states, sharing the name Marydel, sits about halfway on the north-south line.  When I requested my GPS provide the route home from the winery, it was another 1.5 hours.  Visiting would take me about 30 miles out of my way from the route home.  I had enough time.

About half the distance covered the same route, including high traffic miles, that I would have taken anyway to get directly home.  Then it veered west.  I knew Delaware had its own agricultural presence, though a much smaller one than most other US states.  I've driven past much of it.  Poultry coops line the southern county which I drive past to get to Fenwick Island at our southeastern border or when my destination is the length of the Delmarva Peninsula to reach Virginia Beach.  I have much less familiarity with our northern agricultural areas.  However, two years of every three, I attend the State Fair which showcases my state's farmers.  The route took me through some decidedly rural scenery.  Some farmers apparently do very well, with impressive houses.  More have prefab housing, either converted mobile homes or prefab one story foundation homes.  There are schools, and an occasional child occupied a driveway or yard.  Numbered roads have businesses, typically places to eat something, though not very many familiar chains other than gas stations with convenience stores.  Roads with names rather than numbers only have isolated houses, fields, and some storage silos.  I found that part of the drive relaxing, though I had to keep glancing at the Waze map as turns to local roads came frequently.  While the vineyard may attract the most visitors that the town receives, no signs indicated directions, or even its presence.

I arrived.  They had a semipaved parking area.  I could see grape vines off to the side, though not many of them.  When I visited their tasting room in Pennsylvania, another location not obvious from the road, the superb attendant had given me some background of the vineyard, its town, its history, its transition from purchasing grapes from other vineyards to bottling more recent wines exclusively with grapes grown on its own property.  The winery shares its building with another enterprise of only minimal signage.  I don't know what they do there, and maybe they don't want me to know.  The right half of the building looked better maintained, with a banner at the door indicating open.  I entered.  To my left they had their bar.  Nobody was at the bar, but two groups of about three each sat at round tables in an adjacent room. 

The attendant came over, explaining their tasting policy.  For $15 I could choose four selections, two ounces each.  She confirmed that all grapes had been grown on their property.  Some of the wines had won awards.  I picked two of those.  In all, three reds and a white dessert wine.  She instructed me to take a seat at a table in the large adjacent room.  I chose one near the middle.  As she indicated at the bar, she brought my selections to me, then disappeared to her post.  Ordinarily, at wineries I prefer to remain at the tasting bar with the attendant.  While the wine is their product, information on how they make it, history of the vineyard, sweeteners, conversations about the area I am visiting are all part of the visit's experience.  I had been abandoned to taste what I wanted by myself.

A typical glass of wine ordered in a restaurant would be 5-6 oz. Most wineries that I visited in the past offer five one ounce samples, about the equivalent of a restaurant meal order.  Each portion sipped and swirled.  For a combination safety and experience, I did not want the full two ounces repeated four times, or 8 oz.  The attendant did not bring me rinsing water or little cracker palate cleansers.  Just four stemmed glasses with wine, each sitting on a disposable white paper strip with the name of the wine written in pen beneath each glass.  I drank about half of each red, the full glass of dessert wine.  That seemed enough.  I felt more processed than welcome.  I left with nothing else, not a bottle to take home, a logo glass, or a t-shirt from their small gift shop.

Waze set for home.  The winery sits on Delaware's westernmost road.  It was unclear which direction to turn on exiting the parking lot.  The GPS had me make another right at the next intersection, which brought me to a road marked Maryland and at the next intersection a gas station named State Line.  I turned right again, re-entering Delaware.  While I had only been in a trivial part of rural Maryland, that section appeared more unkempt than the properties on the Delaware side.  More rural roads, mostly named rather than numbered.  Towns that I had heard of but never visited.  Kenton, Hartly.  Recognized from the exhibit signs at the State Fair. Attractive towns from the roadway, though I don't quite understand how people make a secure living there if not themselves farmers.  A few more turns brought me to a much bigger place called Smyrna, which hosted the state's largest correctional center.  Within commuting distance of Kenton, Hartley, and even Marydel.  I assume some correctional workers, not lavishly salaried, would be willing to drive a bit to obtain lower-priced housing on a larger lot.  Numbered highway the rest of the way home, most full speed.  I had only been to Smyrna one time before, to the high school where my son participated in a math competition.  This part of the town looked quite different, less isolated than their HS property, with a number of small businesses.  Some served the surrounding agricultural areas.  Signs and GPS direct me to the highway.  I had entered north of the toll plaza, leaving only one bridge over the state's Canal to deduct a dollar from my EZ Pass transponder.  I arrived home with drizzle the final few minutes, finishing what was left of my Hoagiefest cheese hoagie while still approaching Smyrna.

It did not take long to put my tote bag on the kitchen floor, then stretch out horizontal on the living room sofa.  The day had been long.  Elements of the day's travel took their toll.  Beach time minimal.  Driving time a lot.  Phone with computer technician intrusive to what I thought would be a mini-vacation.  Traffic near the beach within my capacity coped without resentment.  Winery a great disappointment.

But like many of my travels, getting to the destinations offers more satisfaction than staying at the destinations.  Beach not a great outing, marred by traffic and oppressive peak midday sunshine.  I can avoid the traffic on future trips by going to the northern or southern state beach park. The hoagie was quite good, and a bargain at $6.  My thermos kept the water refrigerator cold for the entire day, finishing the water shortly before arriving at the winery.

As much as I admired the winery's peripheral tasting room nearer my home, the on-site experience left much to be desired.  I learned what I already knew.  The experience of visiting a winery for me involves much more than taste.  I insist on an interactive session, which is my usual encounter.  The attendant pours, tells me about my selection, tells me about the winery, the grapes that enabled what I sip.  Even the tastings at the big wine stores offer personal contact.  The wine should be served in a stem glass with enough room for a nose and enought clarity for a swirl.  The stores offer liquid, about 20 ml in a stemless plastic cup.  That's distinguishes a liquor store wanting to sell you a bottle from a winery taking pride in what they produce.  This time it fell short.

In exchange, though, I got to drive through parts of my home state that I've not visited before.  Pretty parts of the state, no crowds, no traffic, few traffic signals.  I learned that some farmers do quite well.  The schools I drove past were regional ones more than local ones, about the same building sizes as where my children attended, but probably much smaller classes and teachers willing to sacrifice salary for a better lifestyle away from the state's population centers.  The produce and the livestock displayed at the State Fair come from these farms.  I got to see them and understand why the State Fair has an entire pavilion devoted to its farms.  Yes, getting there sometimes overrides being there.

Exercise Benefit

Intensifying my physical efforts has gone mostly well.  Treadmill schedule maintained over months.  Speed gradually advanced.  Duration gradually advanced.  Cool-down period initiated.  I might even approach a sense of Flow periodically, but not often.  Mostly it is a chore to complete with a daily end point but no future end point.  It has a purpose.  Feel more energetic.  And I do.  Sleep better.  Mostly improved, though harder to tie the consistency of my exercise program.

Everything has its downside, including exercise.  While I try to have a set time to put myself on the treadmill, with a ritual of placing a brace on my right knee, then adding the running shoes kept adjacent to the lounge chair adjacent to the treadmill, some minor deviations become necessary.  Morning appointments require me to exercise either earlier or later.  I prefer earlier, though when done on consecutive days during the OLLI school term, I can sense the disruption.  While I usually wear my designated treadmill shoes, I also have two other pairs of New Balance walkers.  Both are better quality running shoes than those generics kept on site.  And I walk more comfortably with the New Balance shoes, but I use them primarily as daily street wear because of their comfort and versatility.

I've also made an attempt to improve my flexibility.  Every MWF unless traveling I set the big flat screen in My Space to an eight minute Tone and Tighten program.  It had been M-Th for a long time, but due to inadequate progress, I added an extra session each week.  I feel less stiff but more achy, particularly the sacroiliac and thigh regions.  It does not seem to be the type of myalgia I can blame on each evening's statin dose.  And since adding the intensity and frequency, I've only had to postpone the treadmill once and the stretch program not at all.  Yet the soreness remains noticeable, even at each month's end when I give myself a three day recovery from the treadmill, though not the stretch.

For now, the commitment to this has been mostly good.  In addition to physical well-being, there is a mental boost.  Maybe it's Grit, that ability to perform on days I don't really want to perform.  I've not experienced Mastery, though I probably could not have endured what I do now at each session a few months ago.

It time, some illness or injury or maybe travel will disrupt what I have achieved, as it did previously.  Now I know I can reset the program, add to the intensity every few weeks, and restore what had been achieved.  Worth the effort, both to feel better and to prove to myself my ability to meet a difficult challenge and the excuses to avoid it.

Tolerating IKEA

Wandering IKEA's aisles, or really maze, never gets stale.  I can always count on at least an economical platter of gravlax and dessert.  My last two visits, a recent entry to their St. Louis store prompted by a need for a reliable restroom and to my local offering just a half hour away, did not go well.  Not even that gravlax, as they remodeled their cafeteria.  Still, getting there, followed by a lengthy walk from their parking lot to their furniture display, or even the St. L restrooms, does not deter my next visit, at least to my regional location.

Usually I have some notion of what I might want to buy.  At St. L nothing.  Mostly my local drives, which take a half hour each way through some parts of South Philadelphia shared with marine terminals, other big box stores, some gentleman's entertainment, and warehouses make me wonder how far into the future the next drive there should be.  At times I know what I want.  A mattress. A sofa. My wife accompanies me for those.  More often I go alone.  She and my daughter even stayed in the rental car as I sought out the St L facilities.  

Even when I don't have a specific item to assess, I create some imagined focus.  Shelves, kitchen ideas, closet upgrades, replace my desk chair, some kitchen or lighting tools from their lower level Marketplace.  Something to enable me to stop following the ubiquitous arrows they place on the floor.  I divert myself into a model room or an array of stuff on the floor.  I sit.  I touch with my hands.  I check the price.  For bigger things, can I get it home?  Do I really want to assemble this item in my living room with their shoddy disposable tools and language-free drawn instructions?  

Sometimes I just need to drive someplace other than my house.  A half hour seems the right distance, especially if rewarded with the Swedish version of chocolate layer cake and sodas in flavors that the WaWa does not have.

It was time for my next trip, as I looked at no merchandise while visiting their St. L store, which happened to be in convenient part of town, had readily available free parking and a restroom maintained by attendants.  At home I look at stuff when I visit IKEA, irrespective of need.  Two items:  maybe replace my desk chair, obtained from an office surplus clearance thirty years back.  IKEA has all sorts of desk chairs, price $100-500.  Not all had price tags.  Indeed, on this visit, many bins and individual items had no indication of price.  I sat on several, mostly high-backed, mostly expensive by their standards.  I liked some.  None truly superior to my current chair.  I looked casually at storage.  My Space might benefit from a new recliner.  IKEA living room furniture does not measure up to those of in-person or online furniture stores, either comfort or price.  I did not even seek these out.  As much as I like decorative things, I already have too many, having just purged some from my desk.

In their Marketplace, I look at all sorts of stuff.  I learned on Shavuot that I did not have milchig serving utensils.  Their salad sets looked shoddy.  I could use more milchig plates.  I prefer patterned of some type.  They only had solid white or light blue.  Storage I could always upgrade.  Nothing caught my attention. Gradually I have replaced the lighting in each room and outside.

IKEA creates the illusion of need, but what they really market is want.  I needed nothing, wanted almost nothing except a plate of gravlax and some cake for lunch.  This time they deprived me.

Packing Judiciously

By now I should have more experience, or at least more wisdom.  My long-awaited trip has reached its packing stage.  A round-trip plane ride of several hours.  To take advantage of schedules and preferred airlines and avoid plane transfers, we selected 8AM flights both ways, which will require us to rise much before my daily smartwatch signals.  It also seemed prudent to turn our car rental in one day early, while transferring from more luxurious lodging to a hotel with airport transportation for our final night.  Those inconveniences bookend four full days and most of the first day.  Our purpose of travel this time is a family event, an informal gathering of people dear to us, including two in utero, most of whom we only met once or twice previously.  Other than that afternoon, I have no compelling reason to make a personal appearance that leaves a favorable, enduring impression.  I bought a new shirt for the occasion, one that looks better without a tie, which I will not pack.  The remainder of our visit will include a day trip, visiting a synagogue where I had wanted to worship on a Shabbos morning for fifty years but never had the right circumstance.  The hotel has amenities, so every incentive to try out their treadmill which has more features than mine.  There are aquatics at the hotel.  My usual summer wetness at home in recent years has been limited to two beach outings and a water park linked to an amusement park, which I opted to forgo this summer.

Packing does not seem difficult.  My daily and seasonal clothing is fully organized by each type of garment.  Polo shirts stacked neatly in the closet.  Pants on hangers, with dress pants, chinos, and jeans sorted.  Three t-shirt bins.  A drawer devoted to colored socks and a section with white socks.  Just go through each section.  When I did that, it filled a laundry basket.  Having lived in that city, I remember the seasons well.  Organizing clothing properly, which I have, allows for appearance choices with little advance planning.  If I want to put on blue shorts, moccasins, and a team t-shirt, I take them out and put them on.  Suitcases do not handle contingencies as easily.  I can take only a few t-shirts, so priorities matter.  Regionals, like Philly, alma mater, and Delaware logos.  Maybe my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle selection should have representation.  And as a platelet donor, the many appreciative t-shirts I've received make a statement about what I value.  And our trip spans Memorial Day.  Must have something that says USA.  Summer weather invites shorts.  Plaid or solid, plain pocket or cargo.  White socks some days, colored others.  A team baseball hat, but I can only take one of dozens.  And shoes, multipurpose shoes that go from treadmill to street.  The good carry-on remains in the closet in My Space. It would get rather heavy if everything I put into the laundry basket gets transferred to it, but it has wheels.  Finally, grooming, including the TSA liquid restrictions.  I've accumulated multiple Dopp sets over the decades.

The SDS Weatherman, or the reasonably predictive weather.com, altered my preferences considerably.  Downpours at home on both my travel days.  Rain at my destination most of my visit days.  Unseasonably cool temperatures.  That means long sleeves, which I did not intend to bring, fewer shorts and T's, an undershirt most days, long leg pajamas, maybe a sweatshirt with a home logo, and a baseball cap that would not cause distress if lost or ruined by the storms.  Some layers.  Less using clothing to showcase myself as a sojourner among natives, including our hosts at the family event.

What I intended, assuming better weather than the forecast indicates, was not very smart.  Too many outfits, decisions on appearance deferred to the times of dressing with too many options, much like at home.  Some of my logo items can stay home. Or better, buy a new t-shirt or two while I am traveling, one that announces where I've been when I return home.  Layer things.  Bring a poncho.  Replace the coarse canvas tote with a mini-backpack.

And do not get sidetracked from the trip's purpose.  Family event.  Overdue visit to a once pioneering synagogue.  A day trip to a place I've not visited before.  Being with my kids.  Celebrating their pregnancies. Enjoy some hotel amenities.  The suitcase and its contents enable that.  I really do not need to display all my teams, the Blood Bank, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Heeding Circadian Rhythms

Count myself among the many who wish their sleep patterns were better.  Short of a formal sleep study, a form of excessive medical care for me, I've engaged in a lot of interventions.  I am aware of sleep hygiene principles, which I commit myself to periodically.  My bottle of melatonin from the shelf at Walmart gets judicious use.  My card of diphenhydramine gel caps, obtained from the Dollar Store, allows me to get drowsy but at an unacceptable cost the next morning.  Unlikely that I will finish the remaining aqua capsules.  I've used Ambien samples, four of them conserved over several months.  That stuff works, and offered to me by my doctor, but not the direction I should be taking in my senior retirement years.  Sleep Hygiene is the way to go.

The principles are very easy.  Lights out at a predictable time.  Avoid zonking out early.  Put away the blue lights from the smartphones and tablets a couple hours in advance. Big Screen TV causes fewer disturbances.  Arise on time.  Avoid snooze button.  I've also had sleep trackers.  I found the free apps on my cell phone intrusive.  The Apps themselves periodically failed.  My smartwatch has a basic program that works consistently, if not all that accurately.  Often I have two half-nights sleep when trying to adhere to fixed sleep and wake times.  The most difficult advice for me has been how to deal with the middle of the night wakening that creates those two half-nights.  Professional sleep organization advice recommends getting up if not back to sleep by a certain interval.  My smartwatch has a timer that allows me to create that interval.  I am rarely back asleep.  However, the sleep app of the watch shows the wake time to be not that much longer than the recommended allowable in-bed wake time.  If I feel groggy I stay in bed.  If I feel wired, I head to My Space where I turn on the big screen TV to Modern Marvels or How the Earth was Made to maybe learn something.  By the end of the show, if not dozed in my recliner, I usually find myself loopy enough to return to bed for a successful second half of the night.

Wake times occasionally challenge me.  My smartwatch has an alarm set to my wake time with a snooze feature for ten minutes.  I am rarely jolted awake by the buzz.  My internal timer has me either awake or dozing lightly when it signals my left wrist.  By then I have already read the red numerals on the should be obsolete clock radio behind my bed.  I rarely arise with the buzz but nearly always am able to head to the bathroom for dental hygiene before the reminder buzzes ten minutes later.  Then to the kitchen to begin the day.  Make k-cup coffee, retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway for my wife, then bring that brew back to the laptop in My Space.

Recent weeks have changed my internal pattern.  The middle of night awakening still occurs at a predictable time, but my smartwatch indicates that light sleep resumes within a few minutes.  And if I am awake within a half hour of the alarm set, I just get up early to begin my day.  My internal rhythms seem a reasonable guide.  My energy has improved, as has my ability to stay awake past the designated lights out time most nights.  I rarely doze off before that, something I used to do most nights.  Time to falling asleep does not seem unduly long.

So the sleep hygiene protocols seem on target.  While they can sometimes be disruptive to follow, consistency seems to pay off.  While these recommendations make people subservient to the clock with its timers, biological signals remain recognizable.  It pays to follow them if not predictably destructive.  So now my wake times have become longer, my activities within those daylight times more productive.  That was the intent.  Sleep study not needed yet.

Cancelled Classes

Each Sunday morning I write my week's fixed appointments on a magnetized whiteboard, as does my wife.  A look at the refrigerator door enables us to coordinate our flexible time activities.  In the right margin, we write upcoming appointments to be transferred to the weekly list when the events arise.  Events are often repetitive.  Choral rehearsals for my wife.  Obligations at the synagogue, from monthly board meetings to tasks on the bimah for shabbos.  Doctors' appointments are few.  We each take full class schedules at the regional Osher Institute, three days each.  And I enrolled in a monthly session from the Rabbi at synagogue.  Few days have no entry on the weekly whiteboard.  Moreover, we have our routines that recur without an entry.  I exercise and stretch on a reasonably fixed schedule, was dishes at predictable times, prepare and eat dinner.  My wife lights shabbos candles and we recite kiddush with shabbos dinner in season or separately when Daylight Savings Time moves the onset of shabbos much past our usual suppertime.  I read my NEJM articles at set times and plan my next day in My Space after supper most nights.  No reason to coordinate these.  Cluttering the whiteboard with too many things reduces its value.

During the school year, our classes dominate the weekly list of places we have to be at specified times.  This week looked especially full.  My monthly expense review got delayed a day by yontif Pesach.  Classes with Osher and the Rabbi.  Interviews of scholarship candidates.  A yahrtzeit for my wife, where I am needed to help make the minyan that enables her to recite Kaddish.  A day trip on Thursday. So it came as a welcome surprise when the Rabbi and an Osher instructor cancelled classes for Tuesday night and Wednesday morning respectively.  Fixed obligations suddenly became flexible time.  Free time and flexible time differ in productivity expectations.  Opening Tuesday night and Wednesday morning creates an unexpected block of opportunity to insert what I ought to do, perhaps more important than scheduled activity.  

I had wanted to try out the new pizza place nearby.  My wife and I registered at the front register twice, leaving when the hostess informed us of an unacceptable one hour wait.  I had anticipated no free suppertimes this week, but cancellation of the class brought opportunity.  Not having supper plans, we headed there early, finding the half hour wait acceptable.  Parking lot still full, most tables already occupied by our 5:30PM check-in.  Eventually seated.  Served a unique pizza not available elsewhere.  I understood its pre-opening hype and large crowds despite its recent opening and early service glitches.

My Wednesday morning class at the OLLI site at 9AM followed by a second class would have forced me into my treadmill session a half hour before my customary time.  When I step on at 8:15AM I achieve a rhythm hard to duplicate at the earlier time.  Because I am likely to find some excuse to skip this exercise session, I have disciplined myself to do it before I leave home in the morning, even when inconvenient.  The cancelled class allows me on the treadmill at my optimal time.  It also enables some quiet time, just me and my keyboard that an early class would have pre-empted.  This newly captured block of time did not go to trivial social media or YouTube.

I might question, if not having the two classes creates opportunity, should I even enroll in those two classes?  While I found the free time an opportunity to do something else of value, the two cancelled classes also enrich me in their own way.  The Rabbi's format allows interaction with other learners.  The OLLI session does not, as the lecturer goes from starting time to closing time without pause, not even for questions.  But having to drive there, I get to wander the lobby for a few minutes, usually encountering an old friend or two.  This cannot be duplicated at my laptop.  So if suspension of the classes infrequently creates personal opportunity, it is only because that time was otherwise dedicated to activities that push me ahead.  It is better to regard the two classes as the places I most want to be at those time, and capitalize on their occasional cancellations.  This time the options of what could I be doing instead came easily.

Classes suspend for the summer, typically in May.  The lesson of cancellation creates new insights into into defining blocks of open time.  Try visiting a new place.  Push my exercise targets.  Match mind and keyboard.  Enroll in another fixed activity that meets during the school and synagogue intercessions.  While I did not expect this absence of classes, I used the new found flexible time in a very satisfying way.

Pick One

The more preferable of two goods.  In an electoral world of objectionable choices, this one seemed welcome.  Two invitations arrived by email, one directly with ample notice, the other in a more backhanded way on much shorter notice.  Neither anticipated.

First, a program on addressing anti-Semitism to be held at the Museum of American Jewish History on a Wednesday evening.  The topic interests me, though as an American, my Jewish identity has been mostly secure.  A few snide comments by fellow university classmates along the way, but no personal threats, or even limitations.  Yet, the past several years have added to my exposure.  The physician gunned down at the Tree of Life massacre I knew well in college.  On a trip to Pittsburgh to visit family, I reserved a Saturday morning to worship at the repackaged Tree of Life Congregation.  Four years later, it was no longer the multiplex of several simultaneous services in a single building.  The survivors assembled as a single worshiping community in a rather opulent space, part of a more cathedral-formatted Reform synagogue.  The President introduced himself to me as a visitor.  No one else did.  They still spoke of that fateful day, after four years, during their Dvar Torah discussion.  

The Monsey Hanukkah attack enabled me to generate an essay for our local Jewish magazine.  I knew the geography well.  I kept up with its transition from secular Jewish of my childhood to the Haredi dominance today.  Animosities are understandable.  They seem more generated by the experience of proximity and negative consequences for a secular minority than to scripted anti-Semitism.

I've had minor interactions with Islamic anti-Zionism repackaged as a form of negative transference reaction to American Jews like me committed to a vibrant, secure Israeli nation-state.  There seems little role for education where people are pre-scripted, yet that has remained the focus of our own legacy advocacy agencies.  Protective, enforceable laws and an unequivocal national policy with minimal wiggle room seem a better option for keeping everyone safe.  Some, however, rationalize the compromise of physical safety in the guise of free expression.

While this forum took some planning, and I am grateful for the invitation I received, I never received a formal agenda.  The session had been assembled by an educational institution of Jewish auspices, but I did not know whose presentations I would hear.

On much shorter notice, a brief mention in the weekly OLLI newsletter that arrives by email every Monday morning disclosed that Robert Putnam would be speaking at the University's main campus at a time that largely coincided with the Jewish event.  Like many others, I have held this Harvard professor in high esteem for a long time.  In addition to becoming thoroughly engaged as I read through his landmark book Bowling Alone, I've had occasion to hear him speak.  He came to my town about five years ago.  I paid $30 for seats in the auditorium, along with a minor parking imposition.  He did not speak about Bowling Alone, which I had read maybe three years earlier, but about his latest work focusing on childhood poverty and economic inequality's harmful effects that pass down through generations.  As compelling as his presentation was, the benefit to me came afterward.  The Delaware Community Foundation, which sponsored Prof Putnam's appearance, set up tables in the foyer outside the auditorium.  They had representatives recruit those in attendance for the many ongoing projects that the Foundation oversees.  I expressed interest in reviewing scholarship applications.  Once signed on, I remain active with this project.  Each spring for five years, I review some twenty-five applications.  Some come from high school students seeking assistance with college.  Others originate with people already attending medical and law school, needing some relief from tuition and loans.  Along the way, I've made a couple of friends and offered suggestions that get implemented for subsequent years.

This time Bob, which is what the Professor likes to be called, has a new book and a Netflix movie called Join or Die.  I got to this in a very indirect way.  After supper, I often retreat to My Space, where I watch YouTube videos.  I particularly learn from Rev. Dr. Russell Moore, who produces a new podcast on modern evangelical Christianity each week.  His podcast usually interviews authors of new books with a social message.  While the host is an Evangelical, though one who has kept his distance from the political alliances of the Christian Right, the people he interviews originate in many backgrounds, including Jewish.  He recently interviewed Bob Putnam, a show I had to watch.  When Bob told Russell his brief bio, he noted that as an undergrad he took a liking to a sweet Jewish girl of the opposite political party who sat behind him.  They went on an outing to the Kennedy Inauguration.  After graduation, they married, he converted to Judaism, and more than sixty years together brought them an expanded three generational family and shared professional accomplishments.

After the interview, I watched the Netflix movie, taking three sessions to match my limited attention span.  Only after seeing the movie, did I notice the OLLI announcement of his visit.  I contacted the University sponsor, which offered seats in the rather limited auditorium for my wife and me.

Which to attend?  From a content perspective, I think my prior fondness for Bob Putnam's insight and my appreciation to the Delaware Community Foundation for welcoming me as a participant gave them an advantage.  So did my wife's interest in accompanying me to that event.  Logistics cannot be discounted either.  I've been to both the National Museum of American Jewish History and the University's Trabant Center in the past.  The University placed its parking garage adjacent to this student union where Bob would speak.  Some traffic anticipated, minor annoyance registering my car and paying the fee at the garage kiosks, but just a minor stroll from my car to the event.

Philadelphia requires more planning.  I have an unlimited transit pass and the event planners made provisions for use of a garage a block or two from the museum.  To get there and back by public transit, I would have to take light rail from a station near my home, sit on the local train for multiple stops comprising a little under an hour, then transfer to either the city subway or bus to the Museum.  The driving option would require me to deal with some city traffic and with a significant diversion from the interstate to city streets before accessing the garage, then walking as darkness approaches going and fully established on the return.  The light rail schedule would leave me with either slack time with an earlier train or a rush with a later one, then return well into the evening.

Both content and logistics favored Prof. Putnam.  That's where I went.  He gave a suitable presentation.  At the end, I got to ask him a question.  I also got to greet the CEO of the Delaware Community Foundation to remind him that Bob's previous presentation connected me to his agency.  Some light snacks at the end with small talk with a contemporary who I had not met previously.  Then uneventful drive home.

I made the right choice.

Priced Beyond Good Will

 

There was a time, probably pre-pandemic, though certainly through the bulk of my final working years, when Sunday morning would begin at a coffee shop.  Brew HaHa dominated, though at times I would vary the location to Einstein's, Starbucks, or Panera, mostly near each other.  My agenda mostly included some quiet time to plan the upcoming week.  I kept a black canvas zippered pouch with my supplies:  colored pens, colored highlighters, my semi-annual projects grid, a pad of 8.5 x 3.25 in paper culled from some fundraisers that send them in the mail, and a cardboard of the same size harvested from the back of a used up pad.  With pouch in my hand, I walked over to the counter to order my brew for the morning.  Typically they came in four varieties:  dark, blonde, flavored, and decaf.  Mostly I ordered dark, though I could be swayed by the morning's flavoring.  When given the option, I preferred a large porcelain mug which I would sip on site.  I put the pouch where I claimed my seat, then took the mug over to the fixings stations.  Half & half most weeks, cinnamon or nutmeg, on occasion brown sugar or cocoa.  Then I returned the ready to drink coffee to the table.  From the pouch I extracted five colored pens of which I had several brands:  black, blue, green, red, and purple.  Then my semi-annual grid, a page of the pad with supporting cardboard, and two highlighters in different colors.  As I nursed the morning's coffee creation, I planned my desired pursuits for the coming week and for that Sunday.

I could make coffee more economically at home, but too many distractions.  The pandemic changed my Sunday mornings indefinitely.  No longer working, I needed less quiet time alone.  I created My Space, designed for me to sit with my thoughts, though with everything I needed, including that pouch, within arm's length.  I had purchased a Keurig Mini-Express, a vast improvement over the Mr. Coffee generic K-cup unit that eventually failed.  I had K-cup varieties of my preference and mesh inserts to fill with my own ground coffee.  I had two workable French presses.  No need to go out for coffee.

My personal habits also changed for the better.  At a specified time two mornings out of three, I walked briskly on a home treadmill.  That time coincided with the times I'd be whiling my Sunday mornings at a coffee shop two weeks of every three.  And having committed to this physical activity on a priority schedule, I felt more energetic.  Some time later, I abandoned my SSRI which also improved my perceived well-being after a transition.  The coffee outing had lost its purpose, maybe even destructive to more important activities.

I didn't stop going to the coffee shops altogether, except for Starbucks, which got more expensive and, more importantly, withdrew my ability to choose my coffee additives myself.  However, weekly planning shifted to Sunday mornings in My Space, followed by a treadmill session if scheduled that day.  Periodically, would still feel a need to sit in a public space, even if tending to myself.  Brew HaHa and Panera still enabled that.  The time would be mid-morning.  In retirement, it need not restrict to Sundays.  Both places offered porcelain mugs, though I preferred Brew HaHa's service at a counter to Panera's self-serve kiosks.  Brew HaHa had another advantage.  Other people I knew also liked to go there.  Every few visits I could update with an old friend, usually a person of mental substance.

The coffee prices inflated, more noticeably as my attendance at the coffee shops declined in frequency.  I have enough money.  And the purpose for going there was never the coffee, which I could make easily at home.  That $3 or so served as temporary space rental, a place at a table for a half hour where I could type on my laptop or jot thoughts onto a paper pad.  I almost never purchased anything to eat, or an overpriced beverage with foam additive.  I rented space for about $3.

Might coffee be price elastic?  Despite my ample funds, might there be a threshold that negates my demand for either the coffee or a seat at the table?   Maybe.  Starbucks got the heave-ho at $3.25, part price, part forcing me to use a disposable cup, partly taking my freedom to customize away.  If it were $2.75 would I tolerate the irritations?  Probably not.  I go there for the experience or for quiet time to type away on my laptop.  I can still write, but with a lesser experience.

Panera kept the price more stable but also changed the experience.  I don't mind the kiosk.  The edibles remain very tempting but those clearly are price elastic.  As much as I like quiche or coffee rolls, the price rises eliminated them from what I order.  Brew HaHa remained the wild card.  For purchase of coffee, maybe at the upper edge, for purchase of an experience still acceptable.  For good reason, when I go there they seem to have more customers than the other places.  Yet each time I walk through their doors, maybe every couple of months, that coffee price rises another 10 cents.  I do not even consider the pastries.  

I did my Sunday planning at home.  Walked on the treadmill with slightly increased intensity and duration.  A reward seemed appropriate.  I drove to Brew HaHa, taking a writing pad with me.  A short line.  While waiting my turn, I looked at their beverage menu.  My size coffee $3.35.  It was $3.10 at my last stop there not very long ago.  I had more than enough cash, but not sufficient need for the experience of customizing my coffee and jotting my thoughts onto the yellow pad I brought with me as I savored a special dark roast that I do not recall having previously.  I guess the coffee and the experience are price elastic.

Vacuuming

Floor surfaces in my house could use some attention.  I mopped the kitchen's synthetic tile floor.  A two person job with furniture repositioning.  Most of my floor surfaces, though, are carpeting.  Sturdy synthetic nylon.  Most installed when we moved into our house in 1981, with a few more recentm additions.  By the advise of most experts on home maintenance, once in book, now online.  The vacuum with rotating brush head should be allowed to clean and restore this flooring weekly.  I use my bedroom and part of the living room and the exposed parts of the family room's Berber carpet daily.  As a reward to myself for passing Endocrinology Boards I treated myself to an elegant round rug for my office, since relocated to My Space with retirement.  I step on it daily.  About once a week I do my various loads of laundry, taking the dried clothing to the living room for folding.  Residue from the carpet finds its way to the surfaces of the clothing I had just laundered.  So I got out the vacuum cleaner to make long overdue amends.

It is not like the carpets never get cleaned.  In anticipation of Passover, we arrange for formal carpet cleaning of the living room, dining room, upstairs landing, and stairs.  In order to do this, the cleaning service has to vacuum all the surfaces first.  The bedroom and My Space have neglect exceeding one year,  I made the vacuum cleaner, a modern Shark Model with YouTube access guiding me in its use, fully functional.  Empty bag.  No suction without an empty bag.  Learned how to put the rolling brush in carpet mode.  Create Zones.  Easy:  upper landing, always kept clear, and my special area rug.  Hard Zones:  my half of the bedroom which needed subzones as I moved stuff covering the floor to expose carpeting, then vacuumed, then moved some selectively back to expose another section of the royal blue velvet pile.  Did this three times.  Slightly winded but done.  Wife's side of bedroom a lost cause, no carpeting exposed beneath clothing, books, and assorted surface priorities that she has.  Still, one-person job.

Living room: two-person job.  Moving and replacing a lot of furniture, creating sub-zones.  The area near the room's entrance had its carpeting tamped down daily with contributions of outside walking ground beneath the carpet's surface to its lower pile.  I vacuumed each zone in two directions.  Between the moving and replacing of furniture, negotiating the vacuum's excessively long cord, and long swaths of surface, each cleaned in two directions, I found this unexpectedly tiring.  But accomplished in a way that I could discern an improvement when this part of the project was completed.

That leaves me with two more sections.  The dining room will be fairly easy.  Mostly chairs to move and replace.  Finally, the stairs, walked upon multiple times daily.  This one needs the tools.   I found most of them.  Family Room judged lost cause.

Those are the carpeted surfaces.  There are other surfaces, including our tiled entry hall.  This might be better cleaned with a Swiffer Kit, which I own but need to make functional.  Laundry Room with kitty litter dragged by Priscilla the Cat into the adjacent powder room and across the living room surface.  Vacuum without the brush beater, followed by mop or Swiffer.

Having done this, and also recognizing some exceeds my capacity for doing more than on rare bursts of determination, I will need to engage a professional cleaning crew.  And sooner rather than later.

Wandering Costco

I did not take a cart.  Despite a new corporate policy to confirm active membership, the door greeter accepted a quick flash of my card's COSTCO in bold red letters, waving me in without scanning any bar codes.  I had no intention of buying anything other than maybe a soft ice cream sundae at the snack bar on the way out.  With their kiosk ordering, I would not need confirmation of membership maintenance for that either.

On a mid-week mid-afternoon, few shoppers crowded the aisles.  My intent for going at all was to secure a quiet hour away from the distractions, or maybe allures, of My Space with its abundant neglected projects.  Nothing that I needed.  Costco's immense success, however, depends on a network of psychology grads who understand how to create want that transforms to need.  Bling in its most glittering forms greets shoppers at the entrance.  TVs with the biggest screens on display.  They were not set to broadcast Fox News or ESPN, but they all had brightly colored images on their flat screens.  Beneath the displays with prices in bold black numerals, shoppers could eye small stacks of very big boxes far too bulky to fit in a cart, which I opted not to take for myself this visit.  Much smaller, encased in thief-proof glass that sparkles from periodic Windex rounds, people could ponder how to display their material success with baubles that reflect ceiling LED light in the most dazzling way in the store and God's light when worn outside.  Cell phone displays were muted.  So was a section with eyeglass frames lining a wall next to a counter where experienced opticians will offer the best deals in bifocals.  I keep my membership exclusively for this benefit.

Continuing the main aisle.  Appliances to enable the homemaker's leisure.  Washing machines, refrigerators.  All better than what we likely have at home right now.  Hectic work schedules and smaller houses and condos have changed what we do in our homes.  We prepare food, we entertain ourselves, sometimes we work.  As kitchens become the hub for families and empty nesters, aisles of enhancements challenge one's credit card restraint.  Cookware, countertop appliances, display baskets, storage of the most attractive design.  Our square footage, or maybe even a whole room, allotted to our side hustles require soft chairs with high backs that swivel us from our desks to our shelves, then glide us across the room on casters.  Writing implements in colors. Shredders.  Papers to remind us of our failures to go paperless.  

Bling attracts the eye.  Pampering soothes the other body parts.  Bedroom decor, new lighting for the bathroom, made more sybaritic by other products awaiting us on their shelves.

Turning right brings me to clothing, men's for me.  Long pants as autumn approaches.  Light jackets.  Sweatshirts in green with an Eagle on the front.  Shirts in piles, some needing ironing, others in easy care synthetics.

One must traverse half a warehouse of stuff to arrive at what most people place in their carts.  Food.  Lots of food.  And mostly beyond Family Size.  For this tour sans my own basket, I started with the freezers.  At previous membership intervals, I could not pass up Kosher-certified tiramisu, my wife's favorite dessert, though modified with whipped cream where the mascarpone should be.  Not in the current frozen collection.  Neither was anything else, except for some packages of Beyond Burger which would be a challenge to stuff into my already occupied home freezer.  I like things I would not buy at Shop-Rite.  Best buy on lox slices.  I still have one chunk of homemade gravlax at home.  And cheeses with at least a Tablet-K.  Those are hard to find, so while my membership remains active, I'll have to return.  Big boxes of snacks that I don't need.  Did not enter the cosmetics, pharmacy, or bakery this time.  By now mid-afternoon.  A snack maybe.  Too late for pizza.  Not hungry enough for a sundae.  Just head home.  No money spent.

I'll be back.  Having scouted the place out, there are more wants than needs, by a significant multiple.  Eventually my gravlax will need replacement by commercially smoked and sliced lox.  Not had some of those cheeses in a long time.  Maybe tiramisu will return to the freezer.  And maybe my kitchen experience will get its next enhancement.  And depending on the time, pizza for lunch or sundae on the way out.  

At My Desk

My Space has two focal areas.  In the center, I placed a recliner, one probably no longer even suitable for a yard sale as its Naugahyde has been punctured in many sites.  I purchased a navy velour cover with its surface texture of mini diamonds which conceals the tears.  The recline mechanism works adequately, as does its infrequently used rocking capability.  It does not rotate but faces forward to my big screen TV which gets watched most evenings. Once I finish My Space to its optimal appearance, that chair will get replaced as the reward for multi-year diligence.

The heart and soul of the room, though, has been my desk.  It began decades ago with a trip to Conran's, once a trendy home furnishing boutique, a small chain run by a once popular British interior designer.  I drove to the King of Prussia Mall, a gleaming complex with the finest named stores.  At Conran's I  purchased two low file cabinets painted with off-white enamel and matching plastic drawer pulls.  The unit with two file drawers I placed on the left, the one with one file drawer below two small drawers went on the left.  Straddled over them I centered a 72 x 36 x 1 inch thick board of black laminate.  It left the surface a bare tad in height above a commercial desk, but it became and remains my personal work destination.  A mat of Rhinolin 35 x 19 inches defines my immediate work area.  Lighting has evolved over the decades.  Now I have two sources, an architect lamp secured from IKEA affixed to the left with a clamp, one with springs that allows its lamp portion with its 60-watt bulb to direct light most anywhere.  This provides most of the needed light.  I also have in front of me a Banker's Lamp with a cylindrical halogen bulb.  This brightens the Rhinolin surface, though it is obscured by the laptop screen when open.  When the laptop goes to its closed position for daily or weekly planning or other writing, the Bankers Lamp makes my work area sparkle, bouncing just the right amount of reflection from the bulb to desk to my rods and cones.

While now quite personalized with zones for papers, stationery, writing implements, and clocks dominating the mostly covered black laminate, this desk, or at least its Rhinolin portion, serves as my hub for creative output.  I plan my time every morning, connect with friends across distances, write my thoughts, record my weekly YouTube video, all at this designated place to do these things.  My finances have their monthly review.  Phone conversations are conducted with a wireless hand set, while I stare at a screen or recline in the basil green swivel chair harvested from a DuPont Surplus furniture sale decades ago.  My weekly grocery shopping list gets assembled from the Shop-Rite circular, one page at a time, with the newsprint portion to my left and a tall writing pad to my right. To avoid a reflection from the incompletely shaded window behind me, Zoom conferences require minor repositioning of the laptop but still on its Rhinolin surface.

My desk supplies comfort  I keep tubes of Voltaren and Icy Hot within reach. A whiteboard, with its semi-annual projects on its left side and my most fundamental values on its right, receives periodic glances into my direct line of sight as I work or as I reflect.  My desk invokes memories with a photo of one of my two children in each direction.  Their early attempts at ceramics hold my large paper clips. The first vacation that I contributed to, a few days in DC the year JFK entered the Oval Office, brought my first souvenir, a bronze White House replica.  It sits straight ahead, adjacent to a partially painted stone created by my daughter as a pre-schooler.

My desk has its share of the obsolete.  Five spiral notebooks where I generated my thoughts as a frequently entered personal journal.  Audio tapes, full size and micro.  Clocks with hands, one plastic run by a AAA battery, the other Seiko brass with an LR 44 button battery.  A retro radio capable of tape recording, AM/FM, and shortwave, complete with telescoping antenna.  Smaller than a boom box but with a handle that makes it portable once I add C Batteries.  Files that contain Index Cards, one for 3x5, the other for 4x 6.  I have a slide rule, once a high school and college essential.  There is a PDA. never extensively used.  At one time, I found the free maps available at gas stations worthy of taking home.  A sample of that collection appears on my desk. So do picture postcards from my travels, never filled out and sent.  A place for hobbies that never developed.  Calligraphy, a decent art kit in a wooden box.  Loose Leaf Notebooks with zippers, once a school essential.  Each remnant of a past era was once integral to my personal timeline.  Items all set on the periphery, not to intrude on active workspace, though not discarded.  All important to my reflections about where I've been, where my remaining years might take me.  None a serious legacy, however.

My descendants, those obligated to dispose of my possessions when life concludes, might find this nook something of an archeological dig.  What was their Dad like?  What motivated him or frustrated him?  Why did he collect and retain so many unused things?  Let's read what he entered in all those spiral notebooks when we were kids.

Monarchs have possession of kingdoms with varying levels of absolute autonomy.  My Desk has been my statement of autonomy, a place for me to seek out every day.  Tasks performed.  Respite sometimes. But always my territory, always a private display of what value and what captivated me.

Half-Year Concludes

My life, or at least accomplishment focus, runs in six-month cycles.  I plan each half year in December and June, then proceed.  As this cycle reaches its closing days, some reckoning on how I did and what contributed to the inevitable shortfalls has come due.

Closets:  I had wanted to get my storage options more functional.  While I could pay to have a closet fully remodeled professionally, the expense is not worth it for my closing years in my house, to say nothing of my wife's likely objections to the disruption this would entail.  I regret not doing this maybe fifteen years ago.  Instead, I selected a few closets to organize.  I did OK.  My half of my bedroom closet has usable floor space, cleared upper shelves, and removal of clothing that no longer fits.  The three closets in the main bathroom have better utility.  And the two in My Space, while not complete, now accommodate what once defaulted to the floor.  Not a bad outcome for six months of mostly casual effort.

My Space:  This one I had hoped to complete in its entirety, but I did not really give a full effort until done.  There are usable zones.  Loose items have been boxed.  The corner desk has been made functional.  Books under my control have been designated for donation, though not yet brought to their next destination outside my house.  Not a bad result, and done without the help of a professional organizer.

Write Novel Draft: Began with optimism, closed with failure.  I started by searching the web for how to do this, but got absorbed in the technicalities.  I do not have an outline.  I still would like to write a book in my lifetime but find myself more disheartened than I expected to be.  I have a story that should be told, as all people probably do.  Telling mine should be a primary focus of my effort.  Learning how to do that effectively needs some investment of time, commitment, and perhaps money.

Read Three Books:  My most easily filled initiatives.  One must be traditional, e-book, audiobook.  One must be fiction, non-fiction, Jewish theme.  What I found, though, was an unusually high number of started but incomplete reading.  My willingness to abandon what I started may or may not be a good thing.  I like to have Grit, but plodding through what is not worth completing has some very big downsides.

Visit Three New Places:  Did this and then some, though not entirely with intent.  Went on a short vacation to a new town, toured a museum that I've wanted to explore.  I also found myself at two places locally that I had never entered despite living in my home for forty years.  My branch library closed for repairs, diverting me to a different one.  Nice place but smaller.  Also got invited to a reception at a college whose gates I had only passed but whose grounds and buildings I had never entered.  Neither was particularly memorable, as the new town and the museum were, but they were new to me.

Submit Three Articles:  Past rejections took their toll.  I wrote quite a few pieces, all articulate, all likely to be declined, either because the writing wasn't good enough or the publication was not the right destination for what I created.  In either case, I wanted to approach this project in a more rational way and took some steps to do that.  Yet I remained primarily timid, avoiding the anticipation of rejection and the reduction in self-esteem that it brings.  Be Bold appears on my Daily Task List.  Often I am with people or organizations that I've established some element of rapport.  Not Bold with strangers.

Three New Experiences:  It had been my intent to purchase new experiences.  White water rafting perhaps, maybe deep sea fishing.  Drive cross-country.  Have my hair done by a stylist, though I have had that at low level in the past.  Or after years of unsuccessful fishing, maybe catch a fish.  Or play a round of golf.  Instead, I acquired the experiences but backed into each.  My temporary headquarters library wanted me to pick up a reserved book from their drive-up window.  I had never done that before.  I went to a funeral where the surviving spouse arranged for an open casket ceremony.  I won a raffle.  None intended.

Three Guests in My Home:  I hosted three Shabbos dinners as intended.  All synagogue people.  Unfortunately, I also hosted a Shiva house, also synagogue people.

Join Two Organizations:  One came my way, sort of.  The other came from my responsiveness to an inquiry.  I had become vocal about some of the questionable deeds of Congregational Influencers, including a detailed conversation with the new Rabbi on targeted exclusions of people, with some side comments on what I regard as basic laziness.  I've been among those snubbed, though only selectively.  This fiscal year, they offered me a two-year term on their Board, which I accepted.  My other attachment has been the Osher Institute.  They broadcast to their enrollees a list of committees.  I filled out my three preferences, got three responses, two invitations, and selected the most suitable.

Evenings with Wife:  Recapturing, or really sustaining, courtship and early marriage with my wife has challenged me for sure, and likely her.  Since retiring, I retreat to My Space while she watches movies and MSNBC attacks on a former President who deserves many of those attacks.  While our interests diverge, our mutual affection has not.  Yet we are in the same room too infrequently.  I resolved to set aside two evenings a week to be adjacent to each other, touching each other.  I did OK.  Not perfect.  Room for better consistency.  This one's important.  This one's harder than it looks.

Manage IRA Withdrawals:  Hiring a financial advisor about a dozen years back turned out to be a wise decision.  With the help of a new high paying job which I held for the closing eight years of my career, my savings have grown immensely.  I've not touched them since retiring.  Social security for myself and my wife along with her corporate pension annuity provides us more income than we can realistically spend.  American tax law, however, allows us to to grow our income, though not forever.  This year I must begin withdrawing the minimum mandated amounts from my two tax deferred accounts.  It was my intent not to do the withdrawals until the second half of the calendar year but to decide on the process.  As a federal employee early in my career, I accumulated a small account.  By contacting the agency, I was told it could be tapped passively though it is in my interest to request the requisite withdrawal to avoid having them withhold 10% and reconciling with the IRS a year later.  My private account is managed by the financial advisor.  It comes in two components.  One is a list of charitable contributions I want him to disburse to the various tax-exempt agencies.  I do not have to pay personal tax on those withdrawals.  The rest goes to my account.  I have been keeping up with recording my charitable contributions on an Excel Spreadsheet each month, so compiling a list should not be that difficult.  Then after Thanksgiving the rest goes to my joint account, less what Uncle Sam the Croupier skims off the top.

Health Targets:  I did not reach my weight and waist goals.  I did achieve a BP within accepted medical targets.  Due to side effects of rosuvastatin, my PM cholesterol lowering therapy was amended to atorvastatin.  My cholesterol has not yet been measured.  I am waiting until the proximity of my next doctor's assessment, so I do not know if my lipid target has been achieved.  Despite not reaching the data wish list, I have done an admirable job with scheduled exercise, some favorably revised dietary habits, and good adherence to medications as well as medical appointments.  SMART goal as a Process, done.  SMART goal as Performance fell short in some ways, which is why process is often recommended by planning experts.

So mostly I did well this cycle.  Room for improvement as the next cycle approaches.  Some of the initiatives will be extended an additional six months.  Others are better replaced by new challenges.