Success

A young NBA star related that his father used to tell him that when he was asleep, someone else would be practicing. I can relate to that.

When I was in college, I did well in engineering school--only because when my fellow students were asleep, I was studying. My mental short comings were strengthened with hard work and running scared.

During my career at Hewlett-Packard as a designer and manager of computer stuff, I at times awakened at night, realizing that others, much smarter than I, were hard at work. High anxiety. They soon became my boss's boss.

Looking back at my successes in life, they have occurred when I have gone the extra mile. Most of my failures have been aided by a lack of effort.

My most painful failures are of a different type, coming when I did not admit (or sometimes even realize) that I just couldn't do it. Even though I was putting in excessive hours (at least excessive worry), my energy was misdirected. Truth was too painful. The boat was sinking; I did not have the insight to bail out nor ask for help.

The maxim: "Follow your dreams," can lead one to spending $150,000 on NYC acting school to secure a career as a Hollywood restaurant host. Believing that I can do anything has been both my forte and foible.

Today my dream is to run half a marathon in a few months. After I complete this 13.1 mile race, I will be in super shape with beautiful 68-year-old runner's legs, weigh ten to fifteen pounds less, and have an overall better feeling about myself and the world. However, if I continue to sit in this chair watching NFL playoffs all day, I will not to have to endure the pain of running six miles in the cold..

I feel much better being a guilty couch potato rather than feeling better about myself.

Learning about Sarah

My granddaughter Sarah is two years old. You learn something about who a child is when they are one; but when they are two they begin to reveal more about themselves: they just tell you.

Sarah was having a difficult day as a two year old. At nap time, her mother askded her which book she wanted read, "'Let's be Kind', or 'Let's be Happy'?"

Sarah said, "How about 'Lets be Frustrated'?"

High pressure

A fellow member of our local Toastmasters club, Byron, made it all the way to Toastmasters' "World Championship of Public Speaking" last month. The night before the contest, Byron could not sleep. He had to get up by six to get to the microphone check at seven. He kept one eye on the clock.

At two in the morning he got a text message from another contestant from Kentucky. The message said, "Byron, are you asleep?"

Byron texted back, "No."

I'd Rather Do It Myself

During dinner last night, my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter Sarah told her parents that she liked playing the piano at her grandparent's house.

Her father Sonny asked her if she wanted to learn how to play the piano. She told him she did.

Sonny told her that he wanted to learn how to play the piano and maybe they could take lessons together.

"But there is not enough room for both of us on the seat," she replied.

Mis-communication

This morning I went to McDonald's for a dollar sausage burrito and a fifty cent senior coffee. Gabriella waited on me. She is from Mexico. I have known her for several years as a waitress in another restaurant. English is her second language; she speaks it very well.

"I want a sausage burrito and a senior coffee."

Gabriella said, "That will be $3.50."

"No, it should be about a buck and a half plus tax."

She asked me what I wanted again--and I told her. "A sausage burrito."

She came up with the same amount.

We went back and forth--and kiddingly, I said, "Gabby, we are't communicating."

"It's your language," she said with a bit of frustration and a smile.

Who killed Ronald Reagan?

On June 5, 2004, my wife and I attended a BBQ at a friend's home. Their son Jim was there along with his friend Pedro. They had been friends in college. As we sat on the patio dinking beer, the subject of daylight savings time came up.

Pedro said, "It was Ronald Reagan who forced daylight savings time on us."

"Well, this is what you get from a liberal arts education," I thought.

Discussing politics at a party is dicey.  I proceded gently to set the record straight with the truth as I knew it.

"When Benjamin Franklin was the American envoy to France, he send a letter to the editor of a Paris newspaper,  that if the city would set clocks back an hour in the summer that thousands of candel tallow would be saved."

[I checked Wikipedia and found that Franklin anonymously published a letter suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight. This 1784 satire proposed taxing shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise. Franklin observed that tallow could be saved but he did not propose DST.]

I continued,"During WWI and WWII the country went on daylight savings time. I was raised in Butte, Montana, which continued honoring daylight savings time after the WWII, even though it was an island of a different time in the state of Montana.

"When Reagan was in office, congress tried to standardize some of the problems with DST in the country. In Indiana, one could drive thirty-some miles and change timezones and in and out of DST five times. States could sign up for standardized rules for DST (or opt out of it--like Arizona)."

That was the end of my lecture. We talked about guy things, drank more beer and ate brauts.

When the party was over, and my wife and I were in the hallway ready to leave, Pedro entered my space and said out of the blue, "Reagan was evil!"

We talked about this weird happening as we drove home. Then we heard on the news that that Reagan had just died!

Wow, that was spooky. As I remember from Psychology 101, there are only  five possibilities for relating events A and B ("Reagan was evil'" and Reagan's death :

1) A causes B
2) B causes A
3) A causes X causes B
4) X causes both A and C (epiphenominalism)
5) A and B are not related.

It is obvious to me that possibility 5) needs to be eliminated. This is far more than just synchronicity. The two events were synchronous. The only possibility then is that Pedro killed Ronald Regan.
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[Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally un-related. In order to be synchronous, the events must be related to one another conceptually, and the chance that they would occur together by random chance must be very small.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity]


[June 5, 2004 President Reagan died of pneumonia at his home at 2:09 MDT.]

Close Call

Two days ago, my wife Lois and I decided to drive down to Pueblo for lunch. It was going to be in the mid seventies--very warm for mid November.

After arriving in the historic part of Pueblo, we walked up and down Union Street, passing the Branch Inn twice. We then decided to eat at Magpie's Restaurant which was across the street from the Branch Inn.

After eating, we walked down to the river walk. We heard a large blast, followed by the sirens of many emergency vehicles. We went back to where we started and found that the Branch Inn had blown up; it was completely leveled. There was lots of smoke, dust and fire.

Eight people were injured. One of them, a 22 year old woman and nursing student, died shortly after arriving at the hospital.

So many good and bad happenings in life are being (or not being) there at the right moment.