Johnaberdeen's Blog

And I'm not talking about "public display of affection". When I was growing up, we didn't have cell phones in high school or college. We had to plan accordingly and use a payphone if necessary. These days it isn't anything unusual to see a 14 year old with their own cell phone and cell phone accessories to go with it.  Now don't think I'm an old man who don't trust teenagers and think that they should wait until they are 16 or 18 before they get any responsibility.  I am a big advocate of kids taking on responsibility and even employment at a young age.  There is one thing about kids and cell phones that I do find a little strange though.

Why does a middle school or high school kid need a PDA?  I can understand a cell phone, but not a $200+ mini computer.  I know many businessmen and businesswomen who have PDAs and heavily rely on them for work reasons.  I have no idea why a teenager needs an expensive PDA that cost so much even with cheap PDA accessories.  Let me know what you think about this topic.

If there is one segment of our population that I give my utmost respect to, it is the elderly.  Nothing enrages me more than when people don't respect their elders as the saying goes.  I know that when I was growing up, my grandparents on both sides of my family were instrumental in raising me.  It is too often forgotten on younger people that these are the people who paved the way for many of us.  Their hard work in the mines and on the farm allowed our parents to eat.  I know that the respect for hard work and my fellow man comes from my grandparents.

It's too bad that people think of this segment of the population as Adult Briefs wearing, slow driving miserable people.  These people are veterans in the wars that have allowed us to live with freedom.  These people are the people who came up with devices and ways to make our lives easier.  I think they deserve a little more respect than most give them.
 

I'm totally clueless here.  I know I should probably err on the side of caution and wash them more frequently than I do, but it's kind of a project.  Right now my bedding consists of 4 pillows, a comforter, a sheet, the sheet that goes over the mattress and the bed skirt.  I think that's too much to wash every time you do laundry or house cleaning.  I'd say right now I wash all of my bedding about once a month.  It doesn't really get that dirty.  My room is also air conditioned, so it's not like I'm sweating like a pig while I sleep.

So I was wondering how often everyone washes their bedding.  I like to stay sanitary, but I also don't want to have to wash everything every week and waste so much time.  Let me know what you think.

I was taking my customary run around the lake yesterday when I got to thinking.  I was getting more tired that usual towards the end of my 3 mile run, which was very odd.  I've been running pretty much the same route a few times a week for the last year.  I ate well throughout the day, hydrated properly and got a good stretch/warm up in. 

As I finally came to the end of my route and decided to cool down, I pondered why exactly I got so tired.  What did I do different today than other days?  Then it dawned on me...I didn't have my MP3 player.  I wondered to myself "does that really make that much of a difference"?  Apparently so.  I enjoy running with my MP3 player and my armband I got from a MP3 player accessories store.  Unfortunately, I forgot it at home and was already at the lake when I noticed.

The rest of the week I'm going to do some experiments to see if this is an isolated incident or if an iPod and some cheap MP3 player accessories can actually enhance your workout.  I'll get back with the results.

I have a practice that I partake in when I'm falling on some rough luck.  I've been told by my friends that it is "Feng Shui", but I don't have a particular name for it.  What I do is clean and rearrange pretty much everything in my house.  I've done this probably about a dozen times in my life, stemming back from when I was a teenager.  I guess it makes me feel kind of like I'm starting over.  The whole process takes about a day.

What I do is give my place a thorough house cleaning.  As thorough as possible:  dusting, sweeping, scrubbing, polishing, even painting.  After that I'll start with the upstairs.  After everything is cleaned, I'll rearrange everything in my room.  Move the bed to a different wall, move the dressers, TV, nightstand, etc.  Anything that can be moved gets moved.  I do this with every room, except for the bathroom.  Not much you can move in the bathroom!

After everything is moved in my bedroom, guestroom, den, living room, TV room and kitchen, I start to change small details.  I'll take $100 bucks to a local salvation army, furniture store, Wal Mart or wherever I can get some small, cheap trinkets.  I'll pick up everything from new rugs to paintings for my walls.  It is kind of time consuming and a little expensive, but strangely enough it works.  It's kind of like a cleaning service for the soul!

A few years back, myself and a few buddies were out celebrating my friend Steve's birthday.  This was quite the occasion because we were all in town and a limo took about 12 of us bar hopping for the night.  We started at about 7 pm and didn't get back until well after 2 am.  The night went perfect...all of us had fun and nobody (but Steve) got too silly.  The limo was a nice addition, but the one thing I'll never forget about the night were the French Toast shots.

I'm not much of a drinker and I certainly don't do very many shots, but all the guys chose this one so I had to do it.  The French Toast shot, as I understand it, is equal parts Bailey's irish cream, butterscotch shnapps and cinnamon shnapps.  The bartender then puts a tiny bit of high proof alcohol on the top so he or she can light the shot on fire.  You then shake cinnamon from a shaker over the flame, which sparks a really cool blue color.  You then blow out the flame and drink it.  When I had it, I couldn't help but thing that it tasted exactly like french toast with absolutely no ethanol alcohol burn you'd expect from a shot.  

I went back to this bar with 3 of the guys this past weekend, looking forward to do the French Toast shot the whole ride there.  We spend a few hours there catching up on old times when I finally ordered a round of French Toast shots.  The female bartender looked at me with kind of a strange look and said "sorry, we can't do that here".  I was stunned, and asked why not.  "A guy lit his face on fire and needed first aid burn care, and another guy lit our wooden bar on fire" she matter of factly said.

I was pretty bummed, but I understood.  Apparently the guy didn't know you had to blow out the flame before you drank it...which is extremely stupid.  Good thing the first aid burn care items were there, I thought.  In retrospect, alcohol and fire probably isn't the best combination.  I guess I'll have to go out and buy the necessary ingredients and play bartender one of these nights.

I am definitely a guy who likes to wear sunglasses.  I wear sunglasses for a number of reasons.  First and foremost, I wear them for safety from the sun.  There has been a lot of studies done showing the harmfulness of UV rays to your eyes.  I actually fear going blind more than probably anything in the world, so needless to say I wear my Wiley X sunglasses continually. 

Secondly, I always keep a pair of sunglasses in my car.  My brother got into an accident because of sun blindness, and it can happen easily to anyone.  I am making a conscious effort to not let that happen to me, hence my second pair of Wiley X sunglasses clipped to my visor.

Third, I kind of like people not seeing my eyes.  Not for any lude reasons, it is just a lot easier to talk to someone and them not knowing you are shifting your eyes around.  I'm kind of a nervous guy, so it helps me greatly.

I've been pretty busy lately running a lot of errands and working a good amount of hours a week.  My house and truck are taking the brunt of it, both of which are looking pretty messy.  I decided to take 2 hours out of my schedule and clean out the F150 the other day.  All I can say is wow, what a mess.  It was like there was a rock quarry underneath the seats.  I have no idea how that much rock and dirt can get into one man's truck, but nevertheless it was time to do some work.

I started out on the interior, like I always do.  I took a trash bag over with me and proceeded to empty out all the old bottles, food wrappers, gum wrappers and other miscellaneous garbage.  I got the leather Armor All wipes and gave my seats, wheel and dash a good dusting.  I like to be very thorough, so I made sure all the hard surfaces were cleaned on the inside.  After that, I used my mom's old window trick...newspaper.  I got some window cleaner and old newspaper and scrubbed the inside of my windows, windshield and any other glass/clear plastic in the truck.

Since I don't have a car vacuum, I had to go down to the car wash for this next step.  There is one about 2 miles away from my house, so it wasn't a big deal.  It is always right before I vacuum that I wish I had a cleaning service to do this stuff for me!  After taking the mats out of the truck, I gave the interior a good sweeping and then worked the mats over.  After the addition of an apple scented air freshener, the interior was done.  The inside is always the hard part.

I gave the outside a good, manual wash then took it for a ride to dry it off.  When I pulled into the driveway, the F150 looked great, glistening in the sun.  I should start my own car cleaning business!

I have several family members and a good friend who are living with diabetes.  All three of them have type 1 diabetes, which from my understanding means they did not get it due to a bad diet or lifestyle choices.  It was simply an unlucky roll of the dice.  All of them live with it and take care of themselves very well, so they haven't had to deal with any major problems yet.  It seems like a really scary affliction with many side effects and symptoms that many people don't know about.  My friend just recently told be about how diabetics have to take really good care of their feet and wear special diabetic socks in some cases.

The one thing that I have noticed about these three indivuals is that although they have this serious illness and have to constantly carry around insulin and syringes and the such, they all maintain a positive outlook on life.  I know I, myself, can learn a lot about appreciating life and not taking things for granted from these three.  I hope one day they discover a cure for this disease, not just treatment.  It would be a happy ending for these three inspirational, brave people.

I have a Ka-Bar knife that was getting a little dull after years of use.  I used my tried and true method of knife sharpening by using a large piece of tin foil folded over several times to rub along the blade.  I got a good talking to from a friend of mine who is a knife enthusiast about how to really sharpen a knife.  I had no idea how complex it was.  I saw those knife sharpeners on television and thought they were a little bit drawn out, but apparently that is how it's done. 

I never knew to concern myself with the edge angle and things of that nature.  Looks like I have another facet to practice!

I was listening to some music looking online for mp3 player accessories and I started to think about something.  I really enjoy country music, and all of my friends like to bust me about it.  I've grown up on country, listening to all the greats like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Elvis, etc.  I think country music is about our life.  Nothing glamorous, nothing fantastic....just life.  There is something to appreciate about that kind of music. 

Unfortunately, not a lot of people can appreciate that.  Most people have excuses like "I'm not from the South, I don't connect with country music".  Or "I've been raised in the city, country music doesn't appeal to me".  It is a shame that people are close minded about their music, they are missing out on something truly inspiring.

So I think I'm going to take these discount mp3 player accessories I just bought and go listen to some Johnny Cash and think about this some more.