Flies by so quickly.
By extension forty years must fly by quickly as well.
or Seventy!
There are many things to be thankful for.
Does a conscious gratitude of time make one better at spending it?
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Grinding the gears
I knew these few weeks would be a bit heavy, but it’s one thing to rationally expect it and another to go through with it.
I’ve been coping with the help of coffee, which is a pretty standard way of handling things in this world.
But I’m hyper-sensitive to caffeine.
So I’m up early, much too early.
At least I’m gonna schedule this post, and then I’ll do my blood pressure, and then I’ll practice the form for a moment. Only then will I go and do some work at home.
I could just jump straight into work, but I’m learning that I gotta slow down enough to exercise a bit.
This body is growing older one way or the other. It’s not waiting for work to slow down.
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A glass inside a slinky
Yesterday we were playing with a pepper shaker inside our rainbow colored slinky.
The shimmering of the slinky being pulled up and down made for an interesting effect that was belied by the cheap label and plastic cap of the shaker.
This morning, I found a one of our girl’s cups inside the slinky. It is a simple clear glass cup with vertical ribs, but it contrasted nicely within the graduated pastels of the slinky.
Usually it’s just a mess, but occasionally, kids will come up with oddly beautiful juxtapositions.
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A missing tooth
She goes up fast.
And he’s no longer an infant either.
Time marches quickly.
If you blink, you only miss a day.
A couple more times and the years will have flown away.
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Government info
Nevada has a citizen legislature that meets for four months every two years. So it’s a bit of a feeding frenzy at this time, especially since this is my first rodeo as a state worker.
But I can say, all the info is out there. If you dig around on the legislative website, you can find what you’re looking for.
And if you’re interested, you can watch the hearings live. The other day they had a hearing that started at 6pm to allow public comment. It lasted four hours.
The hard part is sifting through all this data. Everything is hiding in plain sight.
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Lake Mead, Nevada
Coming back from Overton, I took a slightly longer route via the Lake Mead Recreation area. It was an absolutely gorgeous drive.
So this weekend we trundled up in the van and went back to visit.
It did not disappoint, though partly because it is run down, with buildings from the late 70’s we’re heading towards a half century now, and the falling water levels certainly add to the air of disuse.
I’ve always had a fondness for lonely roads and straggly architecture and this got both in spades.
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Just a nudge
To make a recommendation requires confidence in the product and one’s knowledge of the person you’re talking to.
It’s not that big of a deal when it comes to a meal at a restaurant perhaps, but for something bigger?
Do you care enough to nudge your buddy out of inaction?
Do you really want to risk your reputation nd relationship on it?
You could be wrong after all.
Or you might be right.
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Exercise
One week went by without exercise.
Work, kids, sleep, eat…but no movement.
It seems to me that the art of balancing life is to be so imbalanced at any given time that you fully focus on the most important task at hand.
To make the important more urgent than the seemingly urgent.
But dang, those drawings won’t redline themselves.
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Learning
I had to do some difficult work for the first time. It wasn’t easy. Nerve-wracking even.
I guess they call that learning.
I bet it will be a lot easier the second time.
But I suspect they hire you precisely because you will go through it that first time.
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Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln, 1863
I was doing the dishes while my father-in-law was watching a trivia game show on Chinese TV. Amidst the hijinks, I snapped to attention when they host quoted in English “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.
My Mandarin isn’t any good so I have no context on what was going on before or after the quote drop, but I’m pretty sure the folks out there had no idea about all that is embodied in this line.
But it was a great reminder to take a moment to revisit this speech as a cornerstone of our shared mythology, defining who we are as Americans.