A few Measly Steps a Day

Slipped on you, delightful, but glad I noticed it tonight, and I'm so happy for your daughter's Russian second family!

I did find that the AI ignored my incorrect use of "connotate" and replied with "connote," which is the word that I should've used.

D~, what a great good news story about your daughter and her reunion with her Russian hosts. I remember when you were debating getting the kareoke machine, and now you've turned it to great use over and over again. A good buy. What song would we cue up for that?

Speaking of the K machine, I'm invited to a party where there will be K singing. I style myself as "audience" for a reason. My party skill are eating the free food and small talk. Part panic/part fantasy now as I count down the days. I have to go to the bank today and the host is leaving town—hm, maybe I can bribe her not to force me to sing. Oh, should mention that I don't drink alcohol, so whatever I do is felt at full awareness.

Today measlies include

• scheming how to avoid traffic delays caused by bridge repairs,
• collecting free catered meals,
• going to the bank,
• attending a film discussion group (Elaine May's Mickey and Nikey on deck) &
• second day of four on some condo yucks.

And my philosophical puzzle: our Fisher kitchen shears have gone missing—do we make do and wait out their mysterious re-discovery or do we buy a new pair?

Revu2

R , Of course the shears will show up right after you buy a new pair. So I have no good answer for your philosophical question. Meanwhile, I am awed by your ability to try out new things. I just want to use what I'm familiar with. (I had to look up Claude on the Internet. AI is wonderful when it works, and it's a bear when it doesn't. I got a text from Xfinity saying that there was a problem with my WiFi, and if I answered yes to the techs, they'd send out someone to fix it. Of course I figured it was spam, because who ever heard of Comcast wanting to fix something? I got a text from Xfinity confirming a bill payment, and it came on the same number as the text about fixing the wifi. (my wifi is crumby.) So I answered the text. Xfinity then texted me with try these things first." Their comments looped over and over again. I do know how to reach a human. I'll use the phone number for new customers. They never send out the robots when they want you to buy something.

Hi AFMSAD. What new things am I trying out? Or, alternatively, I'm always doing tiny new things that show up. I guess I have to pick.

Tomorrow we're going to see an outdoor showing of a movie. Haven't done that! in the whole of our time together. Plays in the parks. Yup. Music in parks. Yup. Might be fun.

Off to the Jung Cafe to discuss the Handless Maiden fairy tale in the morning. Long and complex tale with lots of meaning for some people, especially women. I plan to listen. I always do, but then I get an idea.

Revu2

Damping down my mode as helped my client polish off and submit a grant yesterday. The more people, the more nutty it gets.

Also worked up a Second Notice our Board has to send to a scofflaw owner. Oh, the burdens of leadership.

A spring-summer friend is leaving town and throwing a party tonight. Which reminds me, I have some work to do on her gift.

Plus the usual rounds of yuck stuff.

Hi,

R, are you going to retire or semi-retire?

I've seen movies in the park. I recommend the experience. Me - plugging along. MInor health problems are making me irritable. It's about two in the morning, and instead of sleeping I'm typing. Rats!

Hey measlies, what to call my plans: retire or semi-retired? Right now, I'm doing might be called semi-retired as I'm collecting Social Security & continuing to work as a consultant (part-time more or less by definition). I'm either too old now or not netting enough income to trigger the reduced SS benefit.

Here's what's on deck: ending my 6.6 years of working as a consultant with a Sr. center in December This brings no more grant writing ,ever. Retired from that. I'm happy to coach other writers, though. For pay.

I also attend board meetings and take minutes. No more of that.

We applied for a grant with me as the lead for researching wayfinding in clinics and hospitals. When I wrote the grant I had the concept but not the word, wayfinding. Got news from my client that we didn't get it. That would have run out to Dec 2024. But not happening. So retired from that potential. I'd been told since childhood that I had a lot of potential. I guess that's run out.

My other client work runs out in December, too. So retiring from that.

My stint as board president is supported to run out in March. Don't have faith in the other owners so not sure what I might have to do to keep hearth together. One day at a time for this, but will create ways to get away a month at a time.

I'm also cancelling my business liability insurance after December and getting a refund if I can for the last 1/6 of the year I won't use ($700 a year, about $116 back) and if any pickup client can't deal with that fact I'll turn it down.

So, I'm going to float along and see what I'm called to do.

Reu2

Hi threaders, finding a comfortable rhythm among self-time, condo yuck, and friends. The last week of December I attended a meetup to preview the year and determined that friendship would be a higher priority and code named it: Oasis. I have lots of files and folders now scatters about with Oasis on the title. As my paid working time shrinks, social time expands. Ah, this could be happiness.

Condo muck and yuck.
Some semi-good stuff we're doing with a siding upgrade. Decided that our vetting from 4 years ago was thorough enough that we would continue with our chosen vendor. They came out on Tuesday, had a proposal yesterday, and am now drafting tweaks and getting the written summary ready for a board vote. We had $30 k set aside for repairs and painting. They proposed replacing it all, and the tab dropped in at $68K. BUT, on our Reserve Study for future upkeep we had $110K, which we no longer will need to worry about. So, for the long run, we're $42K out front and thus can afford this. It also means that we will be "fully paid up" on paper, the holy grail of 30-year reserve study work.

The yuckpit is that we finally sent a 2nd Notice of Violations to our Noxious Scofflaw (NS). Sent the first one in February. NS total fines came to $950. There are a couple of emails pending about all this which I will steel myself to look at after 1.31 pm today. 92 minutes from now. Note to self: Breathe. Remain calm and silent and let him vent and rant and tantrum at the hearing.

More fun, I've used one of the notetaking/recording/transcribing AI apps (grain.com) to make quick notes from Patricia Highsmith's diaries because I had to return them to the library and I didn't have time to type them all out. This was a couple of years ago. So since I had to pay for the premium service on grain this month to work through a grant, I used the extra features to download the transcript and then Claude (an AI chat) stripped out the timestamps for me.

Had about an hour of recording and the transcription was less than 50% accurate. Yuck. But then, I found that I could borrow the ebook from my public library. Ha! A chore became fun! All I needed to do was to use my page and date references to find the quote and take a screenshot to copy into my quotes file. Finished this morning. Feels great.

On that positive note I bid good day. R

Sounds like semi-retirement on the way to full retirement to me. Congratulations, and good luck. I like the idea that friends are in your plans.
I had hoped I was done with spending money for a while., but Tom says he needs a new truck. I hope he can hold out for another year, as we've gone through most of our reserves. I don't like buying on time as it costs twice a much that way.

I'm getting my house painted. Needs it badly. Plus there's bare wood where dry rot has been replaced.. I was hoping that was the last big expense.

On a hopefully fun note, this Saturday, I'm hosting a Creativity Unlimited group. consisting of a writing group that was dying and some creative people in my church. Wish me luck. I'm bringing my karaoke machine. I hope nothing can go wrong . . . go wrong . . . go wrong.

D, looks busy and expensive for you for a spell: a new truck, house painting, repairing bare wood, set off by creativity unlimited.

Have you used Kilz paint? We are looking at it for our siding project. it's 35% cheaper than Sherwin Williams and generally gets the highest marks on review sites.

Party should be a blast, and if something goes wrong ... goes wrong ... goes wrong make it part of the time.

Today I'm approaching as a "pre-production" day because I won't get a clear run of time. Tomorrow and Friday and possibly Saturday are my production days. All around some creative yet yucky stuff for the condo. I'm inviting Joy, Fun, and Surprise to buddy along with me. Going with the Seinfeld method of getting to it every day till it's done. Immediately I started thinking of ways I might find help or compress the work. I'm in good company.

In a look about period with regards to practicing drawing. It's something I'll be a beginner at for a long time. Darren Fisher parlayed a practice of doodling into a PhD and now career rebooting people's drawing practice, said this:

Quote:

So choose an art style you love and copy it. Encourage children to while away hours drawing. Don’t worry about how it turns out. Prioritise the conscious experience of drawing over the result. With regular practice, you may find yourself occasionally melting into states of “flow”, becoming wholly absorbed. A small, regular pocket of time to temporarily escape the busy world and enter a flow state via drawing may help you in other parts of your life.

Drilling down.

1. Choose an art style you love ... Right now, it'll be single panel New Yorker style snapshots of living or creative insight.
2. Copy it. Permission to copy! Mimic! Lookalike! Style self after ...
3. Encourage children to draw. Well, encourage everyone to draw is better phrased.
4. Don't worry about how it will turn out. This is THE SWITCH that stopped most people around the age of 8. Stopped me, for sure. Other kids could draw, I couldn't. Instead of worrying ... celebrate how it turns out. Find one line, one shading, one curve where the improvement arrive this time. And make a new drawing right away with tweaks.
5. Prioritise the experience of drawing. The conscious deliberate experience. This is building out fresh neural tracks. Let it happen.
6. A regular practice ... a regular pocket of time ... and maybe you might glide into the long sort flow state.

Today's task is finding the Staedler non-photo blue pencil. Or Prismacolor Verithin. The idea is that you use the blue pencil to sketch first then overdraw in black the lines you like. When scanned the blue wouldn't show up. Turns out that modern scanners DO see the blue, but I guess I'll find out. Review by someone stalking Lynda Barry's syllabus AND lives in Seattle!

Have fun with the art, R. I find that drawing makes me happy. I think it's because it uses the right side of the brain. I keep forgetting about how good it feels just to draw. (I started drawing during a workshop. I embellished my agenda. Since then, I embellished many agendas, especially during boring meetings.

The painting job is in progress. No, I'm not painting the outside of the house. I hired someone. This is really weird. The paint from the last house painting has been peeling off. My painter planned to clean up the places where the paint was peeling - pressure wash and scrape. It turns out he's scraped about three quarters of the old paint on the house. I don't know what the previous painter did, but it sucks.

WRiting - I think I have one edit left before publishing "Refuge and Warm Tea." I'm redoing the ending of "Through Unfamiliar Waters" and then I'll put out a second edition. I have some new marketing ideas that i'm scared to try. And I'm goofing off shamelessly because I don't want to face the hard stuff. I'll write up a to do list someday soon.

that's it for me.

Hi crew, awoke today with scattered thoughts about chores, duties, follow-ups, etc. It was hard to drive out these "unwanted intrusive thoughts." Apparently, someone has named this and so it's written about on the blogs.

Here's the deal: choose my thoughts. Then I thought, what's my currrent project to fantasize about about? Pause. I repeated the question. Silence. Huh, I'm without a project.

So I then spent a very merry 10 minutes thinking about what my project will be. And the what last one was. The last one was copying quotes from Patricia Highsmith's diary. This round, I spent 20 minutes yesterday searching for a list the questions Lynda Barry pops on every page of his graphic philosophy book What It Is: the formless thing that gives things form. Ha! Now here's a project. I'll do it as a discussion prompt on Goodreads. Barry early in has a page on ... unwanted intrusive thoughts. She doesn't name them like that, but that what they were.

Having a creative project to hide in makes me a much happier, less grumpy, more patient person.

Off to Goodreads to get started. Revu2

From bridge writer Mike Lawrence: "Avoiding a fight is wise if possible."

Just what my muller has been mulling. About issues about the condo. I'll leave it at that.

Last nite, to bed without doing my nitely rituals due to exhaustion I suppose. But recovered some verve today. Remainder of the day kinda casual: nap, then out to hear some personal storytelling. Taking a stack of index or business cards to doodle on.

Which reminds me of the measly principle, also know and the William Stafford principle. When Stafford was asked what he does if a poem is not up to his usual standards, he said, 'I lower my standards.'

So, drawing seems to up status. Cezanne drew. Van Gogh, Monet. Rockwell. Schultz. Scott Adams. Lynda Barry. R Crumb. They Drew! Yikes.

But doodling? Can't name many famous peoples. Or maybe any. So I'm lowering my project title from "Learning to Draw" to "dabbling in doodling."

I'll doodle some tonight while listening to stories. Mostly catching lines for captions and doodling some doodles while I do. Revu2

Drew a random message card and it read: tidy up. Good reminder and I'll spend my time today getting to as much as I can.

I want my sense of my body to be ease. I find I tense more when working, feeling a tense body is more active? I dunno. Breathing and ease are my reminders.

Tidy Up. Breathe easy.

Let's Flow! Revu2

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted. So my house is painted. The painter and his crew spent about a week scraping old paint off the walls. It seems that the previous painter used cheap paint. You could just peel it off like orange peel. Anyway, the job is finally over. The colors are pretty masculine, so I'm going to add some girly touches. I'm going to write "peace" across the garage door, and I have cutouts of doves for either side of the sign. They're coated with housepaint, so they should stand up to the weather. Also, A dove with an olive branch will be flying across my mailbox.
I love drawing. I think it's a left-brain/ right brain thing. I makes me happy. Yesterday I was thinking about what makes me happy (besides eating and watching TV.) the answer is drawing, scrapbooking, making pretty things like doves flying across my mailbox. Why don't I know this all the time? No, playing solitaire doesn't make me happy. Bad thoughts run through my brain when I do it. Don't know why. And the bigger question - why do I play solitaire when it doesn't make me happy????? Writing is happening. As predicted, rewriting the end of Through Unfamiliar Waters is harder than I expected. But it's happening. I have one epilogue to go, and then I'm done. I wonder what it would look like if I had a deadline. Hmmmmm.
Today, I took a friend to Kaiser. It was fun in that I don't see my friends as much as I used to. COVID got us used to being alone, And we don't just go out for lunch or something. Another Hmmmmm.
Cool possibility. She god a CPAP machine for sleep apnea. She says it's wonderful. I've resisted the idea. I have some apnea, but I'm afraid that I"ll sleep worse with a stupid cup attached to my face. She says that she feels more together - as if her body and her mind work better. When I get a bad night's sleep, I'm dumber than dirt. The thought of having my old brain back is an appealing one. I see the sleep doctor in September. I start Physical Therapy on Friday. We'll see what modern medicine has going for it.

Later,
D

Hi measlers. Ms. D, great you got that painting finished. We're trying Kilz paint for our siding redo that begins .... Monday! The contractor texted me that they would start that day on Wed. and it naturally scrambled my day. I walked up and rented 2 of those easels for No Parking spaces. Used a folding hand truck, two wooden cubes taped together, a couple of long porcelain tiles, and gloves. About a mile to get back, up and down hills and across a busy street. Made it, of course. Years of experience scavenging in NYC.

I'm suspecting doodling, drawing and such are much better calmers than solitaire.

My struggles right now are Way too Much To Do (WTMTD). I'll list in another post.

Friends are a true balm. Cherish all of them. We're learning that many people we know are wrestling with medical/health challenges right now. Makes us sad.

Did manage to play in a bridge tournament yesterday. Scored around 38%, not too good. Still had fun and it was my first tournament. revu2

Great news! Peace never goes out-of-style. Thank you for making your part of the world a better place!

What I like about Solitaire is that it satisfies my inate need to put things in order. Also, it's not a totally mindless activity -- it does require some strategy.

Yay! Keep at it! Good for you! I heard that a famous writer once said, "I don't like writing; I like having written."

I love my CPAP machine. I wrote about it on my blog many years ago. If you do get one, make sure the DME company does a proper mask fitting on you. Then be sure to clean the mask (and perhaps your face) prior to the first use. My mask was set too tight, and the edges dug into the bridge of my nose and I got a skin infection. I used to have a "cup-like" mask (Fisher Paykel FlexiFit), but I switched to Nasal Pillows, which the new sleep doctor recommended. The improvement in comfort was unbelievable!

thanks for the information, Square Peg. Guy.