Whoops -- just realised I'd left a brainfart in the last post: strike 'Amazon' in the 4th paragraph; replace w/ 'Wally's'. The Amazon Furguard and Wally's Furguard are the same model; Target's is the downrated one. Guess my mind were stuck on Amazon for some reason (could it be the fact I can't buy this stick from them and expect to have it shipped to me maybe?). One of the weird s/es of the med (not to mention all the other liver-stressing cold meds I'm having to take) is flubs that used to stick out like a sore thumb like that, get by me -- not always, but much more often on this med. Apologies to anyone actually reading along
Building on the above post... memory lapses are getting a bit more common these days. Used to be, I'd get a feeling I were forgetting something. But since about the car incident, that's become 'oh s**t, I totally forgot', sailing way past PNR. Am thinking the liver and brain (as gut and brain) interdepend on each other, and the car thing and the med happened about the same time. Really weird -- something that stresses me out mentally, and something stressing my body physically, decide to happen within days of each other. Maybe I need to find another temple to frequent (and get omamori [Japanese Shinto & Buddhist warding talismans] from)
1.5 yrs into owning this 5G... and tbbh, no idea what it wants to return better fuel economy. Today since were in a rush near-dark AM... had to make hay a bit more than usual. So used more throttle obvi... but once to speed (a higher speed than usual by 3 - 4 mph)... held and stayed right. As routine, all the urchins wanting good parking spaces at the usual outdoor attractions here, sped by 20 - 30 mph over the limit. Just kept distances non-douchey and throttle chgs light as possible, esp at speed... The drive to the doc appt this AM, is pretty much all uphill. I can get 99.9+ mpg going the other way, and rob tenths this way. So tried to be smooth, as Atkinson-cycle engines really like steady throttle to get best fuel consumption. Found the drive to warble between tripping EV mode and ICE constantly (maybe 10 secs at a time). On the way back, tried not to hold any throttle position, getting all the way out of the throttle where possible. Thought, this trip is going to tank my mileage like it did yesterday, in sub-70F weather pretty much half the day -- kinda rare here. But today's a few degrees warmer -- and the car seemed less apt to rob tenths, if this were genuinely the reason. Found upon stopping by Target to refill my drink, that I'd gained a full 0.5 mpg -- five tenths -- when the previous week seemed to be nothing but robbing them for minor transgressions of throttle. Had never been that sensitive... so chalked it up to suspension alignment wonk... until this gift But did inform my driving style a bit. Was actually going a fair bit faster everywhere on average, esp off the line... but not fartcan-Honda, chirp-y hard. More care at speed, and choosing moments even more carefully for when to apply throttle. But granny tactics that'd immediately result in ICE-only gains, simply don't work in this 5G. Thought I'd found the sweet spot in driving style... but apparently significantly more ground to gain, with less penalty than expected
For years, had been drifting slowly but steadily away from a version of myself from yutes -- an artistic side. Throughout the military, living the first time back in HI then moving away, I'd been an illustrator -- pen and ink mostly. Was one of the few things my ASD / ADHD tendencies seemed to make good in -- the hyperfocus, the hand-eye connection, the long 'dives' immersed and oblivious to the outside world. Used to fill stacks of art pads with the scratchings of many, many hours of daydream -- and often thru the night, when doing it professionally (was a graphic designer in AZ, a year or so before leaving). But life goes where it goes, one follows the money and leaves a toxic boss / culture and considers one's physical and mental health, with the military as a yardstick -- and eventually paying your rent, as adults find, checkmates becoming the struggling artist. I'd always felt a ken to drawing and creating... but whether or not that dovetails with the realities of marketing yourself and jockeying for the right place / right time a decade or so... is another thing entirely. Bodywork became another path into melding creation and discipline... and whilst I don't recommend it for those not 100% invested in spending 10y in the trenches... the fiscal results are far more concrete than an ad artist working for a marketing firm, or a sculptor / painter / filmmaker. I can disappear into it, just periscoping my nostrils to keep the time, and reap compensation for competence. Not so, in the art world. Had a strange tunnelling exp in YT... watching this channel. Had woke from a long, rather knee-stiffening sleep midday... and needed something to occupy whilst heating up my lunch. Hearing about the histories and her-stories of life in the art world in pre- and Victorian eras... was engrossing tbh. Perhaps was a place my mind'd been starved for, recent protective layers of it peeled back by the usual bubbling chaos of viral infection and general compensating misery... and regressing subconsciously to those more innocent years (riiiight well, juvenile and simple'd be more accurate) when I were still putting nibs and India to paper. Turned into an entire two days, watching half the content. There really is unlimited benefit one gets from listening to stories from the past, from people who lived in alien times and worlds from ours. Esp when those stories are of those who threw themselves into that volatile, predatory world of art and entertainment and old money and power, w/o the perspective we have of how vain it would be. Ms. Deco has a nice blend of mixing modern internet humour with the pathos of those stories... some which are genuinely heartbreaking to frankly shocking. do not know why it came across my algorithm, as none of my current interests were to do with art... but very glad it did. Something I regret not following whilst stationed in Germany, were a desire to more fully immerse myself in the history and art in the architecture there. Be educated in how and why the present day is structured and tradition'd... one progresses further in it. We complain about a mere 250y of national history... but in UK, there are literally millennia of stories all stair steps to the world of today... as in Japan, SK, China, and no doubt many other countries. Eight-hundred-year-old churches dotted the city I were stationed in, on cobble streets that dated back to Roman occupation (with wagon ruts worn into them). Bomb and bullet damage from WWII on statues. And a few hours drive away, bomb craters the size of a large church, still scarring the land (WWI). All packed w/ stories... and whilst HI does have a lot of historical monuments from ancient Hawai'u preserved... it's too primitive to be thousands of years of it. When a place has been constantly inhabited by peoples, waves of societies and their resultant, inevitable joys and debauchery and violence and tragedy... every society succeeding them simultaneously builds on and petulantly forgoes them in spite in equal measure, I reckon. The last 1Ka of our history esp the last 500 w/ art, is really bottomless in terms of stories -- and object lessons. My eyesight (and the fact I can't read in bed) make books on the subject -- esp the thick bulky ones -- a no-go at this station. Or at least rarer than it could be. But in video format really draw me in. Yes Ms. Deco does bias her-stories for obvious reasons... but have always found those more interesting than meatsac stories of male flailing and back-stabbing (the Napoleon portrait one, Ms. Deco and I agree on -- please expose the simpering sycophancy resulting in that work -- remind you of anyone...? Me, yup -- he's not considered an anti-Christ for nothing ). Anyhow... good coincidence. And one where I'm defo better on the far side than before
Speaking of coincidence -- a fine choice of affordable, no-brainer timepiece, Mendel Currently own: WS220-1AVCF -- can't beat a Tough Solar watch complete w/ geezer-legible module & split-capable stopwatch... for under $40 PRW3510-8CR ProTrek, which the WS replaced, with what feels like half the weight and nearly 1/10th the cost, plus none of the fancy gadgets I don't use on a daily basis (compass, altimeter, barometer, global [not in HI] radio-signal-updated timekeeping). Was $350, so don't feel like bashing it against what I inevitably do on a daily basis, when a $40 subordinate can do that Hikes in the local ridges & valleys where paths can blend into each other, ProTrek will be on wrist (is of course also Tough Solar). Everything else, the WS... Tough Solar means for $40 one has an ultra-reliable watch, given no firefighter or Marine-on-deployment field conditions... and never worry about batteries dying. Just keep it facing normal std overhead lighting inside, or in as direct light as possible when outside. Haven't done much caring, save clasping it on the OEM plastic box mount pointing at the overhead light in my office when there... and still indicating H (high) state of charge since 2024
That's my new Casio, an A168. My previous A158, the similar, low-end version, likely purchased in a previous century, finally needed a battery replacement. I managed to irreparably bend the tangs positioned below the exterior buttons when reinstalling the "movement" in the case, and it was time, said buttons were getting really flakey. There's apparently a near-cult community devoted to Casio watches, there's counterfeits, controversy. I didn't even know what I had as an A158, till the battery started failing.
I like the blue electrolume screen lighting on mid-grade Casios of the past 10y or so... tho see now they're defaulting to cheaper LED-lit orange-ish lighting on low-end models... which is what's in the WS220, natch. Don't go out at night too much and use my phone to check time in bed (all the big cell providers always update local time using a central US atomic clock -- NIST-F4 cesium or the new more-accurate aluminium quantum logic standard... rather than the non-radio-adjusted quartz in the WS220), so not at all a showstopper. But would be nice if Casio would charge another $10 - $20 and all models had this extremely-legible and power-thrifty, if more expensive, screen lighting.
Something that dovetails with the Bodywork thread's the subject today, and don't remember if mentioned it here before. Well here goes anyway -- does have to do w/ coincidence --- Bodywork is a weird gig. As an apprentice, thought it were straightforward, like learning to be a coder or powersports tech as have done. But with many things concerning the human body and the souls in them... few things are straightforward past the label on the tin... First thing encountered, was how you progress. Most things, more time in svc, more you learn, more you can do -- a straight line w/ time as x-axis vs. skill on y. But in bodywork (at least at the depths I go to and working structures there), there's this odd sawtooth pattern to progress into being able to do more with the human body. People are minds in physical bodies. Bodies support the existence of the mind. They cannot be separated until after death, when the soul persists if not able to transcend its body's physical ability not to contain it. There's a reason the night isn't filled with billions of dead animal souls -- self-awareness is an evolution of the mind, that can cause it to choose not to 'cross over' into the collective, where you'll be reincarnated into another body. Animals don't possess this, not normally. My late teacher at the monastery (same one that teaches my base modality of Zentherapy) said that human souls do not reincarnate into animals -- if you are human now, then you've been human all the way back to when humans gained first gained self-awareness. Previous lives to that as animals can be accessed (or so he says, as one of the few humans in history who could do it).. but if you die now, going forward you'll be reborn human. So think of bodywork like this: someone trained making nothing but LEGO brick cars, cannot competently repair or maintain a real automobile at first. But the skills involved in making a LEGO car, can be modified to eventually work on real ones. Bodywork necessarily has novices struggling in the weeds w/ making LEGO at first... but as epiphanies and realisations begin to accumulate naturally... one cultivates the skills (along w/ medically-endorsed tqs / tools thru ordinary linear learning, of course) to go deeper, to recognise and solve more difficult problems. However, when it comes to the human body and its near-infinite variations of similar ailments on the table... there's no way to teach a novice all the variations of what to do / how to handle. So as in more intuitive disciplines like motorsports and chess... one must develop intuition. Have told somewhere here, the story of when my first breakthrough happened (first tooth on the saw progression), and how odd it felt to know what the answer was, without having x-ray eyes and seeing the physical components and anatomy for myself. How does one know the client has liver cancer on the inner, hidden surface of it, metastasised to the R kidney and adrenal gland? I did, though at the time didn't know it was cancer, just a strong intuition something was wrong enough where I'd palpated under the R ribcage, to have a visit to the docs -- which they followed thru on, and saved their life. There's no linear, rational way to explain knowledge or ability of that kind. Yet, it's a given amongst bodyworkers... and by no means is it restricted to this gig, given the same kind of devotion to truth in progressing. Take fencers, or any martial artist. No one can actually read minds, at least those not extremely talented, and exp'd. But that's exactly what you need to defeat your opponent on the mat -- read their body cues, take action against threats, whether defensive or offensive. And do this, w/o conscious thought, as that takes too long, esp against very skilled opponents. Thru years of trial and error, one picks up what to do w/o passing it thru committee -- the cerebellum and subconscious bypass the cortex, and act immediately. This process of refinement thru defeat, eventually results in samadhi, or total concentration and relaxation, where the mind is wholly divorced from conscious thought, existing in a place we supposed evolved from -- the snimal mind w/o the interference of self-awareness, and thus fear. Only action results from input of the senses, including intuition. Bodywork has seen 5. maybe 6 teeth on my saw blade so far -- moments where something became so obvious after years of beating forehead on wall, that the entire way I look at all bodywork, now becomes informed by the realisation. There've been 'a-ha' moments for sure, hundreds maybe even thousands of them in 15+ yrs. But find only perhaps 6, where they've changed the work, the way I see the human body, how to proceed by working with it. Seems a strange way to mint progression in a discipline, doesn't it? But each time that feeling appears (and the first one after 6y of struggling, was unforgettable -- can remember it as if yesterday, even the smells and how hot it was in the room at the time, that sort of exp), relish how the work will again change, due to being given another page of the manual to fix real cars, issued by someone up there, somewhere... hoping I'll continue struggling to the next tooth
