Category: whatever

I am lucky…

• To have met my wife
• To have had the parents and family I was born with
• To be in a good situation
• That we (my wife and I) are both still alive

These four facts are never lost on me.

I watched the space launch yesterday. It reminded me that we can, as a nation and a people, still do great things. Instead we choose to argue over who gets to be a citizen, can’t agree that everyone can be provided healthcare coverage, and allow a few individual scumbags to hoard the wealth generated by our collective creativity and hard work. Fuck Elon Musk. Fuck anyone who drives a Tesla. Fuck AI. Fuck Trump and Fuck all his supporters.

So, here’s what I’ve been doing this month.

• Playing Traveller
• Reading science fiction
• Playing D&D
• Went to the No Kinds rally in downtown Dallas
• Went on vacation to San Diego and to Catalina Island, where I discovered my fear of heights is worse that it used to be.
• Teaching at aikido

As always I find myself feeling rushed to do everything I want to do. I hate feeling rushed. I am looking forward to the end of the year, retiring (becasuse, again, I am old now), and enjoying a non-rushed lifestyle with my wife.

Getting back to my practice of reading at least 5% of a novel every day has gone pretty well. I have failed a couple of days, but in March I finished 5 books, 4 of which I actually started in March. Short SF novels, but it is a really enjoyable practice. I love it. I don’t really understand people who don’t like to read. I feel like a lot of people have reading beat into them as children and learn not to like it. I also think that the internet and social media have ruined many people’s ability to concentrate for more than 30 seconds or to simply slow down their brains and enjoy what they are doing. I think it’s pretty clear that is the case.

Speaking of reading…I have noticed a trend on various social media/video sites of young people (they are all young to me) talking about…GASP!…reading books! I think this is an entirely positve thing, even if those folks are attention seeking monetizers. I think people reading books is just a good thing, and to some extent I think posting on social media about reading, which is the antithesis of social media, is a wonderfully subversive thing (even if it is unintentionally subversive).

Overall it has been a good month! Heading into April I am already loathing the upcoming Texas summer. It is a bummer. Next year maybe we’ll pack up the cat and the dog and go somewhere nice during the hell-months.

It must be confusing to be a Republican voter in Texas (or elsewhere), especially in the primaries. How do they figure out which candidate is the absolute stupidest asshole they could pick? I suppose they have reach down deep in their dead souls and figure it out.

I ordered these wheels a few weeks ago. I’ve had the smaller versions of them and the slightly larger versions. They’ve all been pretty good. These are the 56 mm ones. I’m thinking about bumping up my wheel size to 56 mm from 54 mm on my ditch board. 2 mm might not seem like that much to a non-skater, but it makes a difference. Significantly smoother role. A little bit more inertia. A little bit heavier but that won’t make any difference to me. When you’re putting together a board everything is about balance and proportions. I think these will work on my current set up without making it feel like a monster truck.