Darn feet, constantly aiming for glass

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Last week, I had managed to fumble in the dark and crack the shit out of one of my drinking glasses. Honestly, it kind of made me think if I was superstitious, I should just be glad that unexpected glass breakage tends to be considered more a good omen than a bad omen in many cultures, unlike mirrors. But I figured, odds are I’d still get a piece of glass stuck in my darn foot no matter how careful I am.

Of course, while making dinner tonight I ended up on a detour to the bathroom with a piece of glass stuck in my foot. Maybe 2 mm wide by 3 or 4 mm deep at the most. Something like that, just enough to stick in the outer flesh and cause a bit of bleeding as it scrapes against lower levels at a slant. What I classify as a flesh wound, or “It pisses me off but isn’t dangerously urgent”.

In retrospect, I’m glad that the old as what the heck decade is it from bottle of 70% isopropyl alcohol that’s almost empty, ended up left on my counter instead of being disposed of. I ended up needing to break out the container of hanging instruments and use a sterilized old push pin to pry it up far enough to grip it with the tweezers from my pocket knife. This is a ranked improvement over the last time, where the glass was stuck in my foot for a couple weeks before ‘falling out’ a few days before a doctor’s appointment. I’d much rather have success with the needle and tweezer approach, not that I’m fond of using a push pin because I have no idea where my sewing kit ended up, lol.

TIL: Bundling is a pain in the neck

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Ya know, for years I’ve listened to the old spiel: bundle your home and auto insurance and save! Yada, yada. Well, I’ve now decided the next time I consider changing providers or sticking with my current ones — yes, you can save quite a bit by bundling, but by the time you’ve gotten the quote, you will have answered so many questions, you’d pay that much just to not have to answer another question!

Like seriously, that was a pain in the ass.

Quasi random thoughts

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Growing up an era where phones were painfully slow and low bandwidth, I find it interesting how often people sound the same on the phone compared to eons ago. I’m guessing whatever the bandwidth for the now common HD Voice services, really sucks a lot less.

Either that or maybe I’m just getting old? HA!!!

Safari scrolling to the bottom

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One of the things that has pissed me off lately, is Safari deciding any press of the down arrow key should keep scrolling ad-infinitium to the bottom.

Solution: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/459274/the-up-and-down-arrows-not-working-correctly-in-safari

I’m just going to assume there was a reason for this feature in the first place that doesn’t involve stupidity.

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In cleaning out my patio’s storage unit, there was this one box that I just wondered what the heck was due to the unexpected heft of it. Much to my surprise it was full of some of my mother’s books.

After wondering just how many copies of the holy bible did we have, I was both surprised and amused to find her copy of Lady Chattery’s Lover (1928, D.H. Lawrence) mixed in along with a couple less controversial novels like Hotel (1965, Arthur Hailey) and Cleopatra (1937, Emil Ludwig). Not sure how to feel about the combination, but let’s be fair, while far less explicit the Bible probably has as much sex in it as Lady Chattery, if not more 😂.

Being the odd family, my grandfather had recommended it to her in high school and in turn she had recommended it to me in high school as a book she had enjoyed. Reminds me that I never did get around to scratching it off my reading list, lol.

Perhaps this was an answer

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On my way to an appointment, I was making a left turn when someone going straight decided to cut me off and take to the turn lane at throttle, causing me to slow down. A few moments later a car comes zooming out from the outer side of street and plows straight into him. It almost looked like they were aiming to swerve into the wrong side of the street after running the light or something.

Quite literally, a few short breathes could have separated me from disaster if that first person didn’t cut me off. It was maybe the only time I’ve felt like shouting “That could have been me!” at the sight of an accident and listened to my heart pounding in my chest. Plus by virtue of the car I’m driving, Yukari has anti-lock breaks and life back in Newnan taught me to just calmly slow a bit when crazy people do crazy things in turn lanes. Folks turning around the Publix did it so often that such antics don’t even affect me any more. In my old car that lacked ABS, or if I had been a hothead instead of a calm cucumber, I could have ended up joining them. Ditto if someone had been up my butt. I was able to stop abruptly but safely and then get the heck out of the line of fire instead of becoming a third party.

With how hard the past couple years have been, it’s kind of been a reoccurring prayer of mine for the lord to keep walking by my side as he always has; Not to be forsaken. I’m kind of inclined to take this incident as a sign of God’s attitude on the matter, that he’s either right beside or at least has good folks watching over me. Because the only other way I can interpret that moment would be the lord shouting, “Die, mother !@#$%^” and that alternative would be very negative compared to how unscathed I was in such a very dangerous moment. So, I’m choosing to believe the positive of these two points of view.

One of the reasons I believe God is real rather than our world is pure Chaos, is that over the years I’ve had some rather close calls and quite frankly, random numbers don’t like me that much.

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There’s a joke that a friend is fond of that ends in a payment terminal displaying, “Kill him at once” instead of “Approved / please remove your card”.

As I find myself remembering this joke, I kind of hope we never reach the point where computers declare that someone should be killed. Which oddly makes my mind flash to Project Insight rather than Sky Net.

Growing up, I decided if I ever had to fill out a time capsule describing my generation that a VHS copy of Terminator 2: Judgement Day would have to be in it. For me, it’s kind of defines the time I grew up in, lol. But I have to admit, as terrifying a concept as a defense network declaring humanity a threat and launching judgement day upon humanity is, I think S.H.I.E.L.D.’s idea in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, is far more alarming. Project Insight effectively called for roving surveillance of the people they were charged with protecting, and both the computing and military infrastructure necessary to automatically catalogue potential targets and the tools to assassinate that target. Although, I would kind of like to think on Fury’s watch rather than HYDRA’s that agents deployed would have been more common than deploying the nearest helicarrier for a kinetic strike 😅.

A shot at a healthier lunch

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Much healthier than I would usually make when doing lunch at home, and frankly it’s a day when I’d be more apt to have McDonald’s or La Madeleine than make something at home.

Figured since todays plans calls for being more active than ordinary, a whole sandwich and a nice salad would be more filling than either half and chips or only a salad. Plus the net result is a sandwich more in line with the doc’s advice than making it two, and incorporates more greens and veggies since I was already making a sandwich.

Remains to be seen if it proves filling enough, but I suspect that with an apple in between it should get me to dinner reasonably well. What I should really do is investigate some type of light salad dressing, even if salad dressing is basically defined in terms of fat and salt, lol.

Amazing Burger

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Finding myself in the position where it’ll take too long to cook versus need to eat before I chew the world apart, I opted to visit the local burger place. It’s kind of sad that it’s the least healthy thing I’ve eaten all week, but it’s also the most satisfying thing I’ve eaten all week.

Yeah, I think tonight’s a cheat day as far as the healthy eating goes, lol.

Experiments in healthier eating

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In general, I’ve tried to be more mindful of sodium and fat content in the things I order, and work in more fruits.

So far, switching out my snack habits has worked better than expected. For the most part I don’t have much fruit in my diet, because it’s rare I’ll eat it all before it’s either time to toss it or freeze it. Which pretty much describes my relationship with bread, lol. Apples and oranges for example, are working quite well as a hydrating snack with a decent shelf life.

Regular eating is a bit more difficult. In my own cooking, I don’t use a lot of salt beyond what’s in powdered spices, and I probably don’t want to know how much that is. Pretty much everything involving restaurants or fast food has a lot of sodium in it, and I reckon if water is the universal solvent then sodium is the universal seasoning 😅.

Tonight’s meal was brown rice, red lentils, shredded carrot, bell pepper, mushrooms, and some tomato. This incorporates two things I don’t normally cook with: brown rice, since I usually make white; and lentils which I like, but never really have cooked with. This is a spin on something I’d usually make with a lot more seasoning and some ground meat or chicken added. Heavier in the lentils, made for an enjoyable meal. In retrospect I think it might have been worth while adding some unsalted nuts or a bit of bread/oil to make it more filling.

On the flip side, this made a good opportunity to polish off some strawberries and blueberries I’ve been meaning to finish while they’re still good, and declare it desert. Which come to think of it, I don’t really tend to eat desserts so much when left to my own devices.

Just the same, I’m not sure if I want to know what my blood pressure is before bed.