Traveling Companions

Traveling Companions

There are a few things I always take when I’m traveling, which I seem to do a lot these days.

I always take a ton of my own tea.  We seem to be living in a world of coffee.  Coffee is available in two hundred and fifteen flavours with frothed toppings and a dozen or two drizzles … chocolate bits, added caffeine.  Or, half the caffeine, three quarters caffeine, just a teeny-itsy bit of caffeine, or even, yes it’s true, no caffeine.

Coffee is available in sizes from way-too-much to you-have-to-kidding.  Bladder busting, ADHD inducing to full on brain coma overload.

Years ago I discovered that my own bladder did not like coffee.  I liked it, but for some unique reason every time I drank it, I had to spend the better part of my day finding men’s rooms.  One cup = five trips to the bathroom for a drop of urine each trip.  It was beyond enduring.  After innumerable trips to the Doctor, including specialists like Urologists and Allergists, thousands of dollars, dozens of very uncomfortable brands of probing – they found nothing.

So, just on a hunch, I gave up coffee.  It just took a couple weeks of skull squeezing headaches and I got off the stuff.  Poof – all the bladder problems went away.  I mean, just gone.  I found I could drink all the tea I wanted, just no coffee!  So I haven’t had any coffee for going on twenty years.  But I have to have my tea!  And I have found in many hotel rooms and even many coffee shops, they don’t have tea.  None.

And, they look at me like I’m some kind of unicorn for even asking for it.

Which is annoying.

So now, I lay out my stuff for traveling and I always include a zip-lock bag of tea, lots of it.  Oddly enough in Central America, they always have hot tea everywhere, but they always put two tea bags in a small cup.  Which makes it way too strong and bitter, so I have to take one of the bags out right away and then they look at me like I am loco.  Plus they always want to dump a kilo of azucar in it.

Next, I always take, and wear almost exclusively, miracle fiber safari shirts.  These are some kind of nylon, Dacron, polyester (I really don’t know) with the mosquito repellent nature.  I tried t-shirts for many years, but t-shirts, especially cotton ones, got dirty easily, had no pockets (need a lot of pockets when traveling) and couldn’t be squashed down very much (too bulky).  It’s amazing how much room a cotton t-shirt can take up in an overhead size bag.  Plus when it gets wet, it’s like wearing a beach towel.

My safari shirts squash down to nothing, unwrinkled quickly, can be washed right in the shower and dry the next morning – even in high humidity – and look good enough for a casual dinner out.

Underwear and socks are a given; that is one pair per day up to five pairs.  After that plan on more shower laundry.  And take camping cake soap.  Liquid soap the TSA will confiscate.

Always, always, always try to get a toenail clipper through.  TSA might take it, but if they don’t, it’s worth the hassle.  Nothing worse than blisters and hot spots on your feet during the middle of a hike up a volcano because of toenails that are too long – even a tiny bit too long can be nearly crippling from hard hiking.

Just to be sure though, I always take the time before I leave to check all my nails, fingers and toes, to get them cut as close and correctly as I can.  Just in case my clipper is taken away.  I always do this after a long shower or bath, when my nails are soft.  This avoids splitting and rough ends.

Good quality flip-flops are essential for when the day of walking is over.  Gives the ole footsies a chance to breathe and stretch out the toesy-wossies.  Flip-flops can be like heaven on the footsies in the evening.   And they take up very little room and they can double as slippers.  Cheap, plastic crappy flip-flops are just torture devices.  Don’t bother.  Gotta be good ones, broken in, trusty ones you know well.

I also make sure my hair and beard are trimmed as close as possible before leaving.  Haircuts, etc. are always a gamble when traveling.  Sometimes, tragic. 

I always take a high quality non-electric toothbrush.  I’ve had a battery powered toothbrush go off in my luggage and in an airport that grr-rrr-rrr-rrr sound coming from your luggage is not a sound that promotes a happy ending. 

Then an extra pair of glasses and sunglasses.  I have lost good glasses in cabs, busses, hotels and B&B’s all over this country and a couple others.  I got hit in the face with a rock in Barcelona (somebody didn’t like Germans – I am often mistaken for German – for some weird reason).  This fun welcome broke my glasses and I did not have a spare pair.  I saw a lot of Spain peering through the telescopic lens of my camera.

I generally buy a new hat when I get where I’m going.  For one, as just a cheap chotchky to remember the trip, but also it saves luggage space.  For the trip home, I chuck out one of the dirty pair of socks or underwear to make room for the hat. 

In the next blog on Traveling Companions, I will go over my techno list; since now we all carry so much of that stuff.  That is computers and other gizmos we can’t live without these days.

Thanks for reading and your subscriptions.

Dalepeterson.us

E-Books on Amazon KDP

Obsessive Compulsive Resistance

Obsessive Compulsive Resistance

My students who are learning to design objects with Computer Aided Design (or CAD) software are, of course, focused on cars.  Right now – and it does bother me – the only kids who seem to be attracted to getting into this kind of really technical mathematical and engineering type of subject are boys.

I can’t get very many girls to take up the challenge.  But that’s only temporary, I believe.  When it comes to the 2D digital Art, the girls are just as good, or better than many of the boys.  So eventually it will not be matter according to gender.  It’s just that right now, in the beginning of this course, all they want to do are cars.

Teen age boys think about two things generally – girls … and CARS.  Now this software is complex and functions in two complexes of x,y & z and Δx,Δy & Δz.  In brief, this means that everything a designer does, exists as far as the computer is concerned in full 3D.  It is very real to the computer.  We’re talking Tron here.  Xbox worlds.  It is totally safe, but it is not flat and finger painting – to me, like PhotoShop. 

It’s fairly easy to put together primitive blocks and carve them, in CAD, like soap.  That’s what I call it – carving soap.  Once they get done carving the outside as a primitive glop of shapes.  I require them to hollow it out and work out the interior.

When you can dig into your brain and get enough of the skills with this programming to take root, something else begins to happen.  The world of 3D design and creation becomes almost godlike.  Soon enough you are making, what your brain thinks, is real.

The whole involvement becomes nearly an addiction.  It’s worse, I think, than video games or social networking websites (FaceBook, etc.)  For the young men (boys), they can create their total fantasy car.  A chick magnet they could, and most likely never will, be able to build and if they could, they could never afford it. But there in the world of 3D CAD, they can have it.  They can be the creator and the owner of a famous actor’s ride, in their fantasies.

The next step is to put their fantasy creations into some kind of 3D world.  In their worlds, this always seems to mean some kind of Startrek world.  Never like downtown Detroit or St. Louis, but Planet 56_Y in the Whamfargle Nebulae.  Floating islands and highways.  Compared to a video game, which they love, being the god and creator of your own unique fantasy, this world evolves.  They don’t just get better at beating a game that never changes, they get better at creating more and more stuff in their fantasies, plus at making them more and more realistic. 

I have taught both young men and young women with ADD and ADHD, and other learning differentials.  The main difference is that young men tend to be far more physically expressive.  They have a very hard time sitting still and NOT breaking things.  A very hard time, NOT being discipline problems in a classroom setting.

I let them chew gum and listen to their own choice of music on their own earphones, when they are actually working on assigned CAD projects.

Their focus is intense.  A good teacher is gauged on the per centage of time students are involved in class.  75% is a good rating – or, the kids are engaged with the class material at least 75% of the time.  I have students who come into class, politely say hello, go to their assigned computer and remain absolutely glued to their work for 85 minutes at a stretch.  (We have extended studio classes at my school).   And I mean glued!  There could be pole dancers and strippers in the room and they wouldn’t even look up.  Or at least, they wouldn’t look up for very long.

For my own part, I also get completely sucked in.  I don’t care much about flashy concept cars, but I do really get into designing tables, lamps (furniture) and building rooms around my designs and playing with the lighting and so on.  I get so obsessively compulsive  about it, I have worked for 24 and 48 hours straight some times.  Not a healthy thing to do – especially at my age.  Not eating, just caffeine and sugar is all.  It can be horrible to come down from that.

So I have to practice Obsessive Compulsive Resistance.  I now truly give myself eight hours in any one work session and then I force my self to “put down the needle”.  Jeez, it’s hard.  Such power, such omnipotence. 

“Friends don’t let friends learn 3D CAD.”

dalepeterson.us

E-Books on Amazon KDP

Angels and Rusty Buckets

Angels and Rusty Buckets

This winter we have held on to the recent trend towards short and really tough seasons.  Fall here in the northern south was long and nice and it felt like we would slide right on through without much of a winter to tax our good natures and patience.  Just a romp through maybe some cold days, a dust of snow here and there.  A bit-o-rain and Spring would come joyfully wafting warmly into our lives, renewing spirits, bringing the greening of buds and the wonderful daffodils everywhere.

Well, that was a stupid dream.

Like last summer – or rather, take last summer … Spring dragged out wet and cold and it seemed like Summer would never get here.  Then – bamm!  it was ninety degrees and hotter.  In like one day.  Typhoons crashed through the trees every other day, popping up in weirdly disconnected places.  I’d leave the house on my motorcycle in clear sunny weather, get twenty miles down the road and crash!  Thunderstorm!!!  Make it through that, all soaked to the socks, and ten miles later, no clouds and it’s nearly 100 degrees and I melt at every traffic light.

My kids and wifey and all met up for Christmas in Florida.  When we left there had been no winter at all yet.  We had a very nice time .. Florida was all warm and stuff.  Got back, backed into the New Year, still no winter.  First couple of weeks of January is when we started to think we had skirted a hard season.  Of course right then we had one snowfall after the other, with rain, super freezing cold (for southern Virginia), more snow.  Schools have been closed for nearly two weeks.  Back roads, which means our road, have been a slip-n-slide. 

This means that I, who has never had any kind of a sick day in nearly twenty years, has been laid low for a week with a cold.  You just can’t slap people around with weather like this and not have them get ill.  The human body just doesn’t know how to take it.  One day an old guy is riding his motorcycle without a jacket because it’s so warm and the next he’s shoveling two feet of snow off of long driveway and can’t feel his ears.

IT’S NOT RIGHT!

Between snow and ice storms I had to clear off my motorcycle and then cover it before the next hail of shit.  Now it’s frozen to the ground.  Every time it melts a bit, the bike sinks lower into the mud and then freezes there overnight.  I’m gonna need to crane it out if, and hopefully when, Spring does finally come.

There used to be a sort of cosmic justice or karma to seasonal curves like this.  Or, a cold and clammy summer generally was followed by a warmish and light winter and kind of warming up to better summers and colder winters over a span of generations.  Now it’s – like – you just don’t know. 

All the Farmers’ Almanac wisdom (?), like, “You know it’s gonna be a hard winter if the squirrels’ tails are bushier than normal.”  “You know winter’s gonna come early, if the geese leave for the south early.”  “You know it’s gonna be a hot summer, if all the turtles start crossing the road from right to left, instead of left to right.”  “You know it’s gonna be a wet Spring if the bullshit is piled in mounds, instead of flat pancakes.”  None of this works anymore.

“Red sky at night, sailors delight.” Used to mean that if a sunset was all rosy, the next day would be nice.  Now it just means something beyond the horizon is on fire – like a hazardous chemical train has derailed and exploded.

I can only say that I really appreciate the improvements in weather science.  Most of the time, they pretty much nail it on the hour anymore.  Right down to the exact GPS where you are standing.  So that helps, but if you’re of my generation it’s hard to get to used to that and remember to check your stupid smartphone weather app.

So that part is on me.

Addicted to Happiness and Sunshine

Addicted to Happiness and Sunshine

Whenever I go to Florida or Central America, I find that I am happy.  Yes, I admit it.  I love warm breezes and sunshine.  I don’t even mind the occasional rain, whether a drizzle or a downpour, if it is warm.  A warm rain is wonderful.  It’s like a tepid shower at a health spa.  I don’t think anything really feels quite as cleansing as a long walk in a calm rain.

Then it stops and the sun cracks through the clouds and maybe it gets a bit steamy and begins to dry everything.  It is simply wonderful.  There are the bugs; you have your spiders and snakes and minor annoyances like that.  There are inconveniences in everything.  And that’s how I like to view those things.

Actually I am fascinated by snakes.  Sure the super-poisonous viper type snakes frighten me.  Although I also have to admit to considerable ignorance on that subject.  I truly would not know a deadly viper from a garden snake.  Unless I happen to be in the company of an expert on snakes, I leave them alone.  Like mushrooms; if you don’t know what you are doing, best to just look, admire and leave alone.

Now spiders are another matter.  I am also fascinated by spiders, especially the really big ones.  And being aware that the bigger they tend to be, the harder it is for them to actually hurt a human.  It’s the really little plain looking ones that are the most deadly.  The ones you don’t see until it’s too late.  I have had a number of spider bites from those guys and whoah!  They do hurt.  Getting treatment is pretty much mandatory.

But a reasonably healthy person can recover without too much permanent damage.  What you gotta do is educate yourself on where those kind of spiders tend to hang-out, and avoid those places.  Like Black Widow spiders.  Black Widows like untraveled out-of-the-way darkish places.  Very distinctive looking, with the red hour-glass abdomens, but they are slow as slugs.  Their webs are easily recognized by the crazy insane patterns and are extremely strong and sticky.  In warm to hot climates, anywhere that is dark and unswept for any period of time WILL have a Black Widow in residence.  So you just need to dust and sweep a lot and help them into the next incarnation when found.

And then why is it that in the warm and sunshiney places are the people so much friendlier?  Smiley with a tendency to be helpful and just a tad more polite.  At least in my experience. 

There are paths wherever you go.  Paths that will avoid much of the bug, snake, etc. (alligators) and other matters that can inflict conflict.  I find it’s fairly easy to find those paths, if you just allow yourself to tune in to them.  Maybe it’s a matter of looking for the tiny bit of extra sunshine you can catch just out of the corner of your eye.  It’s there, I swear.  I think a big part of it is giving yourself the allowance of just being happy.  That might seem to be obvious, but is it?  I have found I have to work at it a little bit.

dalepeterson.us