last seen receding

Advice For Cuenca

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 May 2024 21:25:00 +0000

One person's advice for visitors or new expats.

Weather here can be coolish to chilly, especially if cloudy all day and clear all night (mostly July/August though). I'd say that winter here is like early spring and summer here is like early fall, compared to western Washington state. Others say it's like spring all year. If you're prepared for a little coolness you'll be fine, though if you're from the U.S. southwest or Florida, you might not like it. And when the sun is out, it's REALLY out, and you can overheat quickly.

Overall, things have been mostly normal here, despite the pandemic. Get vaccinated, wear a mask, avoid crowds, keep your hands clean, be nice, and you're set.

Some possibly handy tips.

• If you have a small folding umbrella and room for it, bring it and you'll have it at the ready. Always handy. Also available to buy here cheaply after you arrive.

• A good place to buy things like the above (and food) is "Coral Hipermercados". The downtown location is "Coral Hipermercados San Blas". Map

• Also near downtown is "Supermaxi el Vergel" for food and sundries, recently remodeled and huge. Maybe worth a look as a tourist attraction. Map

• Find earplugs that you can live with, figure out how many you'll need for your stay, then double the amount, if you expect to sleep while here. You never know when some dog, some hand-grenade-sized firecrackers, or some car alarms will go off. And they do. All too often. Personally speaking, I'd rather sleep at night than be up swearing. Maybe you too.

• Plan on needing sunscreen too. On a clear day you can get the worst sunburn of your life in 20 minutes. Lubriderm hand lotion with SPF15 sunscreen in it is widely available here for $5-$6, or else bring a bit to get started with. Regular sunscreen can be quite expensive here, but the Lubriderm works for me, so hey.

• Check your bank and see if you can grab some dollar coins before you arrive. It's really hard to use paper money to unlock an airport luggage cart if the machine takes dollar coins. Anyway, the coins are used here in place of paper dollars. With them, you don't have to pull out a wallet, fumble around and maybe lose it - just reach into your pocket for coins. I've gotten to like them.

• There's a branch of Banco Central del Ecuador at the intersection of Calle Larga and Huayna Capac. Map

• Small change is handy, and may be hard to come by here. It wouldn't hurt to bring a roll each of pennies, nickels, and dimes to get started.

• ATMs are all over but to avoid lines I shoot for Tuesday through Thursday shortly after 9 a.m., or maybe between noon and 1 p.m., or mid-afternoon around 3 p.m. as a last resort. It depends. I carry my debit cards only when going to get cash, and go straight home afterward. I've had no problems with Banco del Pacifico (they have a $4 fee per transaction), unlike Banco Pichinca whose machines have hosed me more than once. Others have different favorites.

• Google Fi works, though I'm looking into another solution which doesn't involve paying $30/month just so I can authenticate while logging on to my financial accounts and maybe make one or two calls a year related to them.

• Safety: There are lots of loose dogs here, and some dodgy people too. The TSA allows you to have a container of pepper spray in your checked luggage. I read that as one per bag. Never had a problem. I bring it in its sealed packaging. Last time heading south I must have mis-counted, because I brought two in each of my two duffel bags. Still no problem. Recommended products, see: www.sabrered.com They make a spray that's hardly bigger than an oversized tube of lip balm. Almost disappears in your hand, if you want to hold it and be ready but not obvious, and I have small hands. It definitely stops dogs immediately. Recently a woman was attacked by a pack of them up at Turi. She got badly ripped up. Think about it.

• Going out onto the street is like entering a perpetual festival. Whenever I'm back in the U.S., one of my first thoughts is "desolation". Everyone there is in cars, the streets are almost too wide to cross on foot, and the sidewalks are empty. Here there may also be a lot of traffic, but the streets are narrow and full of other people walking too. Always something or someone to see, smell, hear, or even avoid.

• Also, dogs, again: loose, stray, crapping, barking, attacking. Pepper spray works wonders, but won't keep you from stepping into a pile of fresh shit while out walking, though that in turn is better than being treated for rabies, which is why I always carry pepper spray. Dogs here can get dangerously aggressive with no notice whatsoever. Sometimes just showing a folded umbrella or bending over to pick up some rocks is enough to make a dog shy away, but don't count on it.

• Expenses. I don't have a life. I pay rent, buy lunch and some food to keep at home, and that's about it. I do a lot of walking. Never use a bus, the tram, or taxis. Costs are somewhere between $700 and $750 for a typical month. Maybe $800, tops, if I buy some stuff that month. Someone recently said $2000 a month for them, which I can't imagine, even for two people, but no matter where you are there is no upper limit. You can check the link below for info on the place I stay at, which could be a good place to start.

• And if you don't yet have a place to stay, check out Hotel los Balcones. I have an apartment there. They're friendly and completely, thoroughly, absolutely professional. Disclaimer - I have a financial connection to them: They allow me to stay as long as I pay my rent. Hotel web site.

Random possibly useful resources

• CIA Factbook

• City-Data (U.S. info only, to compare where you are to what you can expect in Cuenca)

• Holidays: Holidays and Observances in Ecuador (and other countries)p

• Cuenca Weather

Weather.com

Weather Underground Cuenca

Keep in mind that what you see on each of these sites is forecasts and that aside from temperature, the forecasts are largely wrong. If people could make accurate forecasts, then we wouldn't need anyone making forecasts because we'd all be able to do it ourselves without thinking.

To see at least some information on actual current conditions (not speculative forecasts) visit this NOAA site.

It's pretty basic, but you'll get a rolling 24-hour summary including time, temperature, dew point, pressure, wind speed and direction, and maybe a brief description.

• Mail Forwarding Services

Lots of these outfits are oriented to RVers, especially those in TX, Fl, SD, due to location and state laws. (That's not necessarily either good or bad - just saying.)

I personally use USABox. They charge $10 per month plus $9.99 for each scan. Forwarding a piece of paper is around $30 via DHL, which takes about 36 hours from Miami to my door in Cuenca. Some outfits include scanning costs but have signup fees and higher monthly rates. There are lots to choose from though.

To have mail delivered to your forwarder from the USPS, you'll need to submit a notarized USPS form 1583 when signing up for one of these services.

Blank 1583 form (PDF)
Sample 1583 form (PDF)

Earth Class Mail
FL American Home Base, Inc.
FL MyRVmail.com
FL MyUS.com
FL St Brendan's Isle
FL USAbox.com mail forwarding
Getmy US mail
Mailbox Forwarding
Physical Address
PostScan Mail (many locations)
SD Americas-Mailbox
SD My Home Address, INC
SD South Dakota Mail Forwarding
SD Your Best Address
Traveling Mailbox
TX Escapees RV Club
TX PostalMethods
TX Texas Home Base
US Global Mail Mail Forwarding
USA2ME
Virtual Post Mail

Climate

Whenever I want to go somewhere I check out the climate. A good place to start is Wikipedia. Try this for Cuenca. See if it matches your needs. You can get a rough idea in about a minute.

I check the average highs and lows, the record highs and lows, and the precipitation. That way it's pretty easy to get an idea of how a potential new place compares with where you are.

I especially like this little chestnut: "The rainy season...is characterized by bright sunny mornings and afternoon showers." That really says all you need to know. That's as bad as it gets.

For more detail than Wikipedia has, try WeatherSpark. Look up whatever locations you want, and compare actual facts, one to another, though the graphs and charts require a bit of squinting and close reading to make sense of them.

Not long ago, a gent in Seattle wrote in to GringoPost, twice in fact, virtually wringing his hands and moaning about how weather sites like Weather.com and Weather Underground always showed Cuenca weather as clouds and rain, day after day. Clouds and rain, clouds and rain, and he had had too much of that in Seattle.

Obviously, he didn't care enough to do his own research, but those sites give only a rough, sketchy, blurry summary of what might happen during a given day. So he wrote in and asked a crowd of random strangers to reassure him without specifying what information he actually wanted or why. Many wandering replies in scattered degrees of vagueness ensued.

But anyway, let's take a look. January 10, 2022, when I started writing this here weather bit, for example, was sunny and a little too warm, but breezy too. Lots of clouds in the sky, but also a lot of blue, and more than enough sun to get a good burn on, but Weather.com said "Muy nublado" and "Lluvia, Las tormentas continuarán."

Nope. It wasn't so. Not at all.

Not "very cloudy".

There was no rain.

The storms were not "continuing", because there were no storms.

Weather Underground had the same report: gloomy and wet according to them.

Completely false. Totally, absolutely false in both instances.

We did have some rain the previous night, but that's the beauty of it — falls while you sleep, doesn't become annoying.

Based on my personal, non-quantified, unofficial experience over 10 years, at least 80% of rain here comes as afternoon showers, especially mid-February through mid-May. That's the "wet season". I don't call it a rainy season because it isn't, not to me.

You're more likely to see afternoon rain most days during this period than to not see rain. Maybe five or six or even seven days out of every seven, but 20 minutes or an hour or even an extreme two hours of rain in the afternoon, somewhere between noon and six — well, not bad. And often, things get sunny and beautiful after the rain, and it's all dry again within an hour, actually. Dry. Dry everywhere except the bare ground, and except for a stray puddle or two. All dry. Over and done.

You're out and about, some rain falls, you open your umbrella and keep going or you wait, and then a bit later it's done. Meh.

And if it isn't an afternoon shower, it's something overnight.

Very, very occasionally, maybe an average of one day a month, there is light rain all day. Calm winds, slow, episodic waves of mist, or drizzle, or light rain. It's a nice change of pace. Refreshing. Breaks the routine, and does not happen every month. It's an average. Some months in the wet season have two or three all-day wetness. Other months have none.

And there is no "rainy season" here, no monsoon, no dead gray dripping skies for months on end. In western Washington, for example, the rain begins the last week of October and quits when the calendar reaches mid-July. Depending on the year, you get eight to nine months of leaden skies and brain-eating endless rain, rain that sometimes continues for actual days without a break, but not in Cuenca.

No sleet, no freezing rain, no snow, no black-ice-covered roads. No storms here either, none that I've seen. No real storms. No "pineapple express", or "atmospheric rivers", of any kind, no "high-latitude hurricanes" like you see in western Washington. No winds that blow down entire forests. It's pretty mellow here overall, and the air is even dry most of the time. Too dry for some, in fact.

Even in summer, western Washington is humid, and then it's damp all throughout the fall, winter, and spring. There are those who have moved away from Cuenca because the air is too dry here. True. I can handle that. But it is cool here all the time. Pleasantly cool. I can handle that too, and even better, I love it. Good walking weather. Good sleeping weather. Cool and dry. No bugs. And sunny a lot. And lots of interesting clouds blowing through. And a few rip-snorting thunderstorms, especially in the summer and fall, but not many at all. Nice, nice variety. Not overwhelming in any dimension.

I personally call Seattle's weather "mid-latitude marine", and I call Cuenca's weather "tropical alpine". Seattle is located halfway to the north pole, at zero elevation, on the shore of an inland sea, on flat, boggy, estuarine land, full of lakes, just a few miles downwind from the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest.

Cuenca, on the other hand, is less than 200 miles south of the equator, so almost on top of the equator, 8000 feet up (2400 m), in the north-south "Inter-Andean Alley", very near the tippy-top highest ridges of the Andes Mountains. The city sits in the bottom of a well-drained, U-shaped valley plowed smooth by a long-gone glacier, and it has a nice little one-degree to two-degree slope to it, so the city is well-drained. At times a thunderstorm will get ahead of the natural drainage and there might be a bit of water in some streets, but Cuenca's three little mountain rivers take care of that pretty quickly.

Cuenca is on the opposite side of South America from the Atlantic Ocean, where the weather comes from. Any weather that does make it here has to first cross the whole continent, and then climb up the mountains to get into the city. It loses a lot of water along the way, but since this is mountain terrain, it's fine. We have mountain weather. How appropriate.

People refer to Cuenca's weather as "changeable". I disagree. I call it "unsettled". It's never strongly one thing or another. In a day you can have sun, then clouds and sun and then different clouds and more sun or less sun and maybe thunder and some rain and whatever, all in one day, and yesterday and tomorrow will each be similar but different too, with the pattern being some-of-this and some-of-that, randomly changing. In case you were wondering, a cloudy day in Cuenca is about equivalent to a sunny day in Seattle, and a sunny day in Cuenca can take your skin off while giving you the worst sunburn of your life in a quick 20 minutes.

So then, the weather is never just one thing or another, except that when the sun is out, it feels a whole bunch warmer than the air temperature says it should be, and yet it's always cool here. It's always cool, even when it's hot, because the air is cool, and if things feel hot, it's because you're in the sun.

So too hot in the sun? Try the shade. Might be too cool over there though, unless you're exercising. It happens. Since I walk a lot, I prefer cool dry air, and handle the sun by putting on a lot of sunscreen and sticking to the shady side of the street when I need to, when I can. Others can't handle the cool? OK by me. It's your call. Just pay attention to what you might be getting into by coming here, and then act accordingly. There are other places.

Have extra info to add?
If the commenting system is out again, then email sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Recently nominated for this year's Doofus Awards. (Next year's too, maybe.)

How To Travel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 23:51:00 +0000

So Mommy says don't put beans up your nose, but did she ever try it? Don't think so.

My mom came from a time and place where beans went into the ground (spring) or into the soup (any old time). And that was it. No nose beans, because everybody knew that beans and noses were not meant to be. No need to try it yourself. End of story.

A lot of things were like that where I came from. Common knowledge. Absolute limits. Duh.

Look both ways before crossing the street, even an empty street.
Wear your mittens.
Brush your teeth once a day, right after getting out of bed, before eating.
Always have on clean underwear, in case you're hit by a truck, so the people at the hospital won't be disgusted as you die.
Never miss before-bedtime prayers, lest the god-thing rise to anger and reach for the whacking stick.
Eat everything on your plate to make up for starvation somewhere.
Respect authority. All authority. Everywhere. All the time.
Rejoice in progress, for it will make us all happier, richer, and ever more content. Even if it hurts and is confusing.
It's for your own good, so conform. Comply. Shut up.

If it now comes in a pouch, and costs less, and is never touched by human hands, and is harder to understand, and can't be repaired by ordinary mortals, and goes faster, and sluices you into the drain of complete faceless anonymity, then it's progress. So give up — you can't fight it.

I just finished a long airline trip. It was a miracle, a miracle of our age.

Imagine traveling thousands of miles in a single day, spending a day or two in a strange place, and then rewinding it all and magically returning home with all your original parts in place, albeit a tad tired. That's me, after an incident of progress.

And you know what? Poop on it.

Just poop on it all.

The best way to travel is the slowest. Not the fastest but the slowest. The most primitive, the most rudimentary, ordinary, most old-fashioned analog way you can. The way most open to fumbling, misdirection, error, and serendipity, with plenty of slow-motion time flowing all around so if something kinda goes wrong? You know? Wrong? Well, you still have plenty of time to fix it.

The way that gives you time to think, and time to feel. And time to sleep a little if you want to, and not be left stranded thousands of miles from home because your life, your self, didn't quite fit into an arbitrary schedule.

Multi-day, cross-country bus trips used to be an ordeal, but now that we have cross-continent and cross-ocean air travel, I long for a simple, agonizing multi-day bus trip, the sort of ongoing event that would let you get out and stretch your legs every now and then, and sniff the air, and hear a thing or two, and actually see, in person, whatever small town the bus happened to be stopped in, if only for a few minutes.

Air travel is fast, and that's all. Everything else about it is horrific.

I'm not big as people go these days, but sitting in my airline seat, I didn't even have room to cross my legs. That's bad enough. Two eleven-and-a-half-hour layovers, one going, one returning, were worse. It's now five days later and I'm still running into walls, and I have a head cold or something, and a headache and a sore throat, and I didn't even cross a single time zone.

I would much rather get on a boat and kill two weeks each way than to fly any more. I would much rather mount the stairs and board a gigantic fantasy airship that held a thousand people and cruised at 50 miles an hour and took a whole week or two, and be able to sit and look out the window and marvel at leisure, and walk around and be totally at ease than to sit, stuck in a tiny seat just barely big enough for my smaller-than-average self, for four-and-a-half-hour flights. Yes.

I cannot at all imagine a really long flight like the ones that cross the Pacific. I'm not even sure that humans can actually endure that sort of experience, despite knowing that they do. Some do — good grief how?

I'd even be willing to try walking or bicycling from one continent to another, if that could be managed. Perhaps not in the world as we know it, but it's a thought — in a better world, yes, maybe I could do that. Maybe I'd be willing to try. It would not be fast, but it would be real, a journey to remember.

But flying any more? Not really, no, unless I absolutely have to. Not any more. It's too much progress for me to comply with any more. I'm done complying.

Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff+eff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Jetlagged, yet somehow not full of hope.

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Why I Don't Like The U.S. Any More

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 22:49:00 +0000

Yeah, well, why would I?

Things are ugly there. People hate each other and themselves. You can't get anywhere without driving, even if you only want to cross the street.

I know. I was born there, grew up there, tried one thing and another, and finally left.

I didn't want to leave so much as to re-locate what I'd lost. Peace. Quiet. Safety. Community. Adventure. The ability to walk anywhere that I needed to go. Freedom from gunfire.

I saw the following today too: 15-minute cities are making a comeback Defined as "a 'complete neighborhood' that centers around the idea that residents can meet most of their daily needs by walking or bicycling a short distance — i.e., 15 to 20 minutes — from their homes."

This is a concept I've followed my whole life. Except for brief periods I was always able to walk to work. It saves a lot of time, and preserves sanity, besides giving your feet something to do twice a day.

And besides that, there is Steve Bannon was just charged with fraud and money laundering in a border wall scheme.

Right. Who needs that? Invent a pure movement, build it up, become righteous, then fuck your followers and suck them dry.

And that is only one item from one day of this week. Those items have been flying by in whole nasty flocks for close to four years now, with no inkling of an ending. And it was nearly as bad before that. It's only worse lately, not different.

Don't expect the next presidential election to put the flames out. Expect instead to see real flames, and rival gangs doing some shooting, along with state security police, even if they won't be called that, yet. I expect that the first crisis following the next presidential election to last at least two to three months. Then there will be severe turmoil for another year or two, assuming that there will be an end to all of it somewhere. But there may be no end, only an eventual tapering off as people and their systems gradually turn their attention to other things.

Things won't go back to normal soon. In fact, Things won't go back to normal ever. It will be one novel experience following the last, for time without end. What with current worldwide political and economic crises, global pollution and overheating, overpopulation, and the inevitable nuclear wars coming Real Soon Now, we will be living in Interesting Times™. Yep.

Good thing for me that I'm already old, so I won't have to see the worst of it, probably. I'm thinking now that the ideal time to have been born in the U.S. was between 1929 and 1939, assuming that one could have avoided the worst of the Great Depression. Assuming that, and a couple of other lucky breaks, I'd be dead by now, having benefited from the development of industrialism, a hydrocarbon economy, antibiotics, telephony, radio, television, and the beginnings of the computed society, but would definitely have avoided the current and soon-to-arrive global catastrophes.

If nothing else, the earth has too many humans. That alone would take us down. With a carrying capacity of about a billion humans at the best of times but an actual human population of 7.8 billion, we now have almost eight times as many humans in the neighborhood as it will support.

We're out on a limb, population-wise, and it's going to break off, no matter what. Boom.

The other stuff (global pollution, global heating, nuclear war, successive plagues and so on) are all gravy. Overpopulation will come charging at us first and is enough to do us in all by itself.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here 2.54° south of the equator, in a mostly peaceful country, where I can afford to live a decent life, and watching the U.S. hit the wall. It's way over-extended, especially with its philosophy of pedal-to-the-metal hyper-individuality, and get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way, mother-fucker, or I'll shoot you.

Go ahead, good old boys. Boys. Yep. Boys and girls. Up there. Not here.

People are grown up here. No one has crossed the street to tell me how to live, or threatened to kill me. Last time I was in the U.S., someone threatened to shoot me, twice, within a couple of minutes, because he thought his dogs had a right to attack me in a public place and because he thought I didn't have a right to take exception.

Which is why i don't like the U.S. any more. Nuff said.

Have extra info to add?
If the commenting system is out again, then email sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Wondering why that monkey has been following me around all week.

Scatter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 23:23:00 +0000

I'm headed into my eighth year associated with Ecuador. I'm an Associate Ecuadorian. But I still don't know poopy-poo.

Still un-housebroken, still rough around the edges, still mushy in the middle, I stick out like a sore thumb, a thore sumb, a prickly stub, a discarded butthead.

Recently it's been different here.

We're coming out of a long lockdown, a time when it was illegal to be out on the streets in search of anything other than medical care, pharmacy goods, bank cash, or food. And super double plus illegal to be out on the streets before 5 a.m. or after 2 p.m. And the Fuerzas Armadas were watching. Also the police (the regular, city police), and the transit police, and maybe the civil guard, and possibly the provincial police and quite likely also the national police.

At the hotel it was just Waleed and me, two spooks in the dark holding down the fort.

He'd go out early nearly every day, and I'd hold back, hitting the streets only to pull cash from an ATM, and to buy food. But then he speaks Spanish well for an Arab-Canadian, and I can't, because deaf. Nearly deaf. And I'll never become un-deaf so poo.

I don't know what-all he was doing outside every day, but I studied my Spanish upstairs on the "terrace" (the sort of verandah-thing where there is a view and where there is also warmth on sunny days). For exercise I'd hike laps from my apartment in the building behind, into the hotel, around the lobby, up and down the stairs, and back to my apartment. Five laps took around 10 minutes, and required heavy breathing, so it was good.

Pretty good. Better than only sitting, and I seem to have maintained my strength and most of my fitness, for now that I'm free again I can go anywhere and still do whatever it was I used to do without suffering.

But others have suffered.

The hotel staff is all gone. Let go. Unemployed. I feel for them.

Originally the shutdown was to be for two weeks. But it was a hard shutdown and lasted close to two-and-a-half months, and many businesses have now closed, and many people are still at loose ends. The world has disintegrated. Turned to chaff. Is blowing in the wind.

At least the hotel hasn't closed. At least this one has not. I still have a place to live and the owners are in, cleaning, refurbishing, and planning to reopen when they get customers. Which may be a while yet. Maybe two more months. Maybe three.

Too bad.

Too bad for many reasons, but I am glad to see the hotel still open because that way I still have a home, though I've been pulling cash from the machine and lining my nest with it in case. I can move out if I need to, in case, if there is another place still open, if I really need to move out.

And I've managed to share some of that cash with the former employees — a little here, a little there, as they come around. As I can find them. But I really hope that they can all come home soon and make this a living business again. And reverse at least some of the scatter.

Ever find a snake in your soup? Supposed to happen to everyone sooner or later.
Comments? Send email to sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
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Gringo Poem

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 31 May 2020 17:28:00 +0000

Sandwiches to distribute to street people in need. Quito Second-hand offers excellent condition items.

Laptops, Canadian money and withdrawals, treadmill. Large dog, found near Feria Libre.

I'm looking for turmeric as a supplement or pill.

Danny's Computer Service. Is an End of Life document necessary?

Need your knives and scissors sharpened? The best New York cheesecake in Cuenca.

For sale, small couch, Peach-Skin Midnight Fantasy Comforter, Duglis.*

Brand-new disinfection trays for home or businesses. Stay safe and clean. Warmth and comfort. Desinfection alcohol and antibacterial gel. KN95 masks.

Recommendation for Diana Vera, facilitator. Are you in for a treat?

Craft beer: growlers and four packs.

Mexican food: tacos al pastor, gringas and more delicious options. Have you tried our bagels yet?

El Rey del Burrito, the best Mexican food. Nuts for delivery.

Cuchi Suco BBQ pit is back.

Cozy, fully furnished one-bedroom apartment with balcony. Sourdough bread.

* Footnotes. (This will be on the test.)

Question: I want to light my 4×2×2 with T5 and LED, and to mitigate cost I want to do a little DIY. I have three ideas and am looking for advice or reviews. — Duglis

Possible answers:

(1) Are you Duglis the Immortal?

(2) What type of name is Duglis?

I'm not sure
Boy's name
Girl's name
Boy's or girl's name
Last name or family name
Pet
Food
Pet food
Fet pood
Poopoo
You-know-who
Other (Example: How difficult is it to pronounce Duglis? Another example: Do you ever have pains in all the diodes down your left side?)

(3) How unique is the name Duglis? Out of 6,028,151 records in the U.S. Social Security Administration public data, the first name Duglis was not present. It is possible the name you are searching has less than five occurrences per year.

(4) Weird things about the name Duglis: Your name in reverse order is Silgud. A random rearrangement of the letters in your name (anagram) will give Isuldg. How do you pronounce that? Go ahead. Just try.

(5) But again, I do not know how you feel about it, but you were a female in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere around the territory of USA South-Central approximately on 750. Your profession was entertainer, musician, poet, and temple-dancer. You always liked to travel, to investigate, could have been detective or spy. You should develop self-love and ability to implant hope into hearts of people. Ambition is not everything. True wealth is buried in your soul. Dig for it, Babe. (Click to save the high quality version of yourself.)

Yes — "Desinfection." I don't know either.

Recently found lint on the ceiling. Didn't realize I was looking at the floor. All OK now.
Comments? Send email to sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
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Post Of The Wild Gringo

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 May 2020 15:08:00 +0000

We present you with a win, win, win, today only, only, only.

Language exchange is looking for a Dr. that is a specialist in treating sciatica, and hopes to import my US stuff to EC.

But Albert, well...Albert is as Albert does, which is shipping belongings to US, and so looking for XL bike, or looking for Pimsleur Spanish Level V, whichever arrives most intact or smells better.

Pet service!

Are you where you want to be for the second wave? Just ask for Bonobo Bob's Devil's Kiss craft shrub cocktail.

But lovers of ear, nose and throat Dr. beware: Nuts for sale, updated.

Meanwhile, the best New York cheesecake in Cuenca arrives on cue via Nathaly Vivas, personal chef, food delivery, and her Four Types Of Motion Sensing Lights.

Cameron Kayce, massage therapist, is open for business and offers domestic cleaning of your Yali, if you have one. Services provided exclusively by Manual Manuel's Digital Manipulation Services.

Well! No cover.

For sale or rent: Ladder, aluminum, 5-step (three up, two down).

Fresh chickens, fresh roses, fresh red hot chilis. Fresh wife not included.

The Birds of Ecuador — Field Guide — hard to find. 740 pages $35. Free clues, but bring your own feathers and magnifying glass.

Two older Roku units, slightly impressionistic. Cranky on Thursdays. Will trade for specific aromas or a slightly used syllogism.

Bar stools, complete with shoe disinfection trays. Brand-new. Stay safe and clean while drinking.

Nuts sale. (Again.) No other information available during daylight hours.

Roasted pig delivery. El Jardín Restaurant — Ask for Hornado. Will perform tricks for donuts.

Even kids with chicken pox love hot dogs at The Good Life Cafe, but sourdough comes in different flavors and is mostly not contagious and can be fun as well if you have some imagination. No kids allowed.

Extreme desserts: Breads, Bagels, and Biscuits delivered to you in Cuenca from a modern house with small garden in gated community. Watch for snipers.

Fully furnished apartment, 13 BR — 12.5 baths. Near earth orbit. Remigio Crespo and Solano across from the fulminating giant tunafish. Tell them the virus sent you.

Which reminds us of something...Ah, yes...Covid-19 plasma donations gladly exchanged for expiring/expired visas. Extra credit if they smell like catnip, or you do, or are lickable.

That's all for now. Remember to brush your pants.

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Welcome Back To CrazyLand

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 21:55:00 +0000

I ain't got it no more. Never had it, really.

I may be a dick but not a crazy one. Some are. Lots here, it seems. I don't like this country any more.

I parked at Margaret McKinney Campground early enough to go for a hike, even with the short days we have here now, getting on toward the end of November. I parked and then went for a hike.

At the last minute I decided to grab my canister of bear spray, to have it in addition to my pocket tube of pepper spray. Almost immediately after getting onto the trail here comes a woman with a huge dog. She was different though. Her dog was on a leash. Attached to the center of her chest with some kind of harness. Odd, but I was grateful.

A couple of weeks ago I was returning from a Sunday hike on this trail when I saw a dog aim itself at me and then launch full-tilt down the trail. Happy, happy dog. Not me though.

I had time to yell "Get your dog under control!" about three times before the dog was on me. So happy, it, to put muddy paws all over me. Not so much happy, me.

The owner's comment was "Most people don't mind."

After the dog jumped all over me a second time I pointed at the owner and yelled "FUCK OFF!".

"I'm so sorry was what I heard as I walked away." What? Makes no sense.

I put on clean pants and headed for the laundry the next day. Not much harm done but discouraging.

Day before yesterday was somewhat less fun. A guy threatened to shoot me after I pepper-sprayed his three dogs.

See three dogs on the trail. See them see you, alone. See them begin barking and watch them fan out as they come at you, Jurassic Park style to surround you, all barking, as two people on horseback bring up the rear.

Back off the trail as far as you can, both to avoid the horses and to get as far back as you can from the dogs. No good. Not enough.

As a last resort, pull out the pepper spray and hit the button, fanning across all three of them to keep from being bitten. Get a dog bite and then you've got weeks of hell being vaccinated for rabies and filling out criminal reports and all the rest. Pepper spray at least keeps the teeth a few inches from your skin.

That part worked, but then the owner, the guy, looming over me on the top of his horse, told me that he was armed and if I did that again he'd pull out his gun and shoot me.

The woman of the pair kept yelling at me about how I couldn't mace her dogs.

Etc.

I managed to get past them and backed up the trail in the direction that they'd come from, then continued up to the top of the ridge where I grabbed a late shot of Mt Rainier, which wasn't worth the price.

About then I began wondering about the state of my car, the only vehicle in the vicinity besides the two pickup trucks with horse trailers, fantasizing about all the windows being broken out, or worse.

That didn't happen, but I left the campground and spent the night at an undisclosed location, in relative peace, just to be sure.

I'm not liking life in the USofA much any more.

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You Can Trust The Cold

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 22:15:00 +0000

I'm not freezing any more, and I hate it.

I got back to Washington State on October 4, bought a car, and began living in it. According to plan.

According to hope, but not hopefully, I caught a spell of fair weather, which is like free bags of gold dust handed out on street corners in western Washington in November. Rare. Unheard of.

Usually the rain doesn't start until the third week of October, sometimes earlier. But November is dead set on rain. It's always there, no avoiding it.

Except for 2002, when blue skies, sun, and calm air prevailed pretty much through the whole month of November, when I made one of the greatest day hikes of my life up the west slope of Mt St Helens. And except for 2019, which is now.

First, I got back here. Then I got the car. Then the rains began and I went nuts.

The bad part of buying a car is that you have to wait for the registration and the title and the plates, which takes about six weeks. You can't avoid that.

So there I was, here I was, in the rain, and looking at another five-and-a-half-weeks-of-it, so I bugged out for eastern Washington and got away from it for four or five days. And by then?

Well, by then a high pressure zone floated in and western Washington also got clear and sunny. And cold. Very cold some nights. Hard cold. Hand-freezing cold.

I managed.

It hurt, but it was only pain. Pain isn't always bad, because this was clean weather. Dry weather. Cold weather. Almost a month of it in total, combining eastern and western Washington locations.

If you're cold, you warm up, by going inside somewhere, by putting on more insulation, or by exercising. That's it. Wet does not work that way.

Get wet, and you stay wet, sometimes for days, even indoors. It used to take two full days for my bicycling clothing to dry after I washed it in winter, in the cool air and the humid air inside my apartment.

Cold isn't like that.

If you're cold and you do something about it, you get instant results. Period.

Cold is predictable. It cooperates. Fight it and it yields, not lingering forever, not hanging around inside your shoes, making your skin feel slimy. Cold really is clean. I like it, a lot better than wet, but now things are wet again, and I've been having troubles with the dealer where I bought my car. Things are slow. Dragging on and on.

Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. I should finally have my plates, and then I can leave, can take back control of my life and tour. I want to head south to see the deserts and the desert winter sunshine. I can hardly wait.

Maybe in a day or two. Maybe I'll be free by then.

Meanwhile, I'm wet. I hate being wet. Time for sun.

Ruffle my fur, see what happens. I dare you.
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Showertime Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 20:33:00 +0000

Lovely. Bathing.

Not much fun sharing that bathing space.

I abandoned the state park yesterday and showered in town today. A different experience. It is.

Millersylvania State Park south of Olympia, WA is nice. The facilities suck. They look like they were built with CCC crews in the 1930s. I'm sure that they were at least inspired by that period.

Last year, early on, the main restroom was closed, leaving only one "bathhouse" open as a shower location, and it too often was still locked in the morning when it should have been open. Later on it was working but someone vandalized it. Even later there was more vandalism at other points in the park. Someone seemed to have as life's mission the destruction of shower facilities in the park. Whoever it was hit the coin machine parts: where you drop in your tokens and it turns on the hot water. Looked like the person had a pry bar, the way they were ripped off the wall.

This year the main (i.e. in the RV area) bathhouse has one of its two showers working, and it was fine. Fine, considering the location. At Sportsman State Park in Yakima, WA, they clean the restrooms three times a day during the summer months, and the showers at least once, maybe twice. At Millersylvania State Park the schedule seems to be by phases of the moon, if anyone feels up to it, possibly only when the howling grows loud enough.

And anyway, the facilities are old and shaky. Shoddy. Sad and rundown. Even the one working-and-available shower began balking a few days back.

I found this out when the water stopped about three minutes into a six-minute shower, leaving me covered in suds with only a slow trickle of cold water emanating from the shower head. Not a good sign. Not usually. Not this time either.

I tried banging on the meter, which procedure did not work, and tried rinsing in the drippy-drops of water coming out of the plumbing, which did not work, and tried more banging on the meter, which produced hot water.

After this, I decided to put in one token at a time, which also did not work, though adding a third token after the second one failed, seemed to be the solution, for the time being, which wasn't really quite good enough, and banging had no effect either, and so.

I had my last bath there yesterday.

Today I was back at the Olympia Center downtown. Three naked guys were there. Fun. One seemed agreeable when I asked what the fare was these days. I think I used to stuff in four quarters, so that's what I did. He said it was two minutes for each. Four quarters seemed a safe bet.

Then another guy with a hooting voice came over and started flinging verbality at me. His is the kind of voice I cannot hear (being mostly deaf these days), but it sounded like he wanted me to give him a towel, and then soap, and then money, so I gave him two quarters. Generally speaking, I'd rather give a wet naked guy a couple of quarters than my soap and towel.

I think it was rinse-and-dry-only day for him. After he finished with the water part, he went under the forced-air dryer and rubbed himself a lot and got mostly dry.

One guy left and it was just him and the other guy I'd talked to and me then.

I finished and toweled-off and dressed while Noisy Man made some phone calls begging people to send him money with the third guy's phone. I didn't want to be there but I was. Too bad for me.

About the time I was ready to go we were down to Noisy Man and me in the locker room, and he hit on me again, starting with a couple of things I could not catch, followed up by him asking in his extremely loud voice what my favorite color was. Truly.

After that was something I don't remember, but I gave him "I don't have one" as a color answer, and he hooted a few more things before I scuttled out.

You never know.

We seemed too close to the edge of an aggressive moment for my taste.

I'll be back again tomorrow, but maybe a half hour later. It could be that if he's a regular he'll be gone by then and I can still slip in and be done by the 9:00 a.m. deadline while entirely missing him. I hope.

Yeah. Real fun, but I did tell myself before leaving Ecuador that I should seek out colorful characters during this trip. So at least I'd have something to write about.

Yeah. Real fun, and today I got one. Didn't really like it though. Here's hoping for quieter times, starting Real Soon Now.

Clean but annoyed, me. How's by you then?
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Why Am I Here, Really?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 20:14:00 +0000

I still don't know nothin. Winging it.

Barely escaped rain last week. Lots of it. The worst of it.

Friday, October 11, I got up, stored what I didn't need in my little rented cubby, laundered my dirties, and left for Eastern Washington. Better forecast there. Turned out to be true. The forecast did.

I was going nuts in the Olympia area, and rain had closed in. I can't take that, not while living in a car. That life is extremely constrained. You can't get up in the middle of the night to piss. Or you can, but need to do it inside the car, which gives you one chance to get it right. And then you have to store what comes out of your peepee until sometime the next day, when you also need to go looking for a place to put it.

And whenever you leave your car to cross any stretch of ground whatsoever on foot, you pick up some wet. Which returns with you to the car, where it's really hard to get rid of it.

Have an apartment? Fine. You go out, get your shoes wet, maybe your pants cuffs, a rain jacket or umbrella, and then you come home. When there, you set your wet stuff where it will dry, and then it dries. Next time you go out, you put on your dry clothes and life is fine, except for the rain, but the rain is not a major problem.

But rain is a major problem when living in a car. Mainly because there is no place to put your wet things to dry. Wet things dry a bit, if you are a lucky and careful person, but while rain is still falling, those things do not dry completely. And if those things do not dry completely, then they will rot. Decay. Mold. Stink.

Unless you drive to the self-service laundry to use the dryer at least once a day, preferably in the afternoon, when you are done going out, and before you park for the night. The cold, dark night, when rot goes creeping.

So visiting Eastern Washington was nice. I avoided all that. For a short few days.

The first night, Friday, I made it across White Pass where there was sleet, and parked along the Tieton River near Rimrock Lake, and listened to the rain all night, but heard less of it than on the western slope of the Cascades, for sure.

This was followed by a nice Saturday, a nice Sunday, a nice Monday, a nice Tuesday, and then I was back in Western Washington, where the weather had somehow, suddenly, become nice.

Although Monday night, when I was parked on the Columbia River at Jackson Creek Fish Camp, things got windy. Srsly. The whole car was bouncing. Gusts must have hit 70mph to 80mph. Roaring gusts. Ripping gust. Roaring ripping gusts.

I knew better, but was still afraid that the car would flip over.

So that covers my sleep between 11:30 p.m. and whenever it was that I woke for the final time, around 5:30 a.m., when the whole world was calm again. And not a drop of rain, unlike the west slope of the Cascades, which I'll let Cliff Mass cover: Heavy Rain, Strong Warm Front, Flooding, and Model Problems

But what's the point here? The point is that I'm still waking up in the dark wondering what the hell I've done and WTF I'm going to do next. In different words, Why Am I Here, Really?

Right now, I guess I could say For waiting. I am waiting, and I can do absolutely nothing until the car I bought is registered, titled, and plated in my name. Can't go, can't plan, can't have fun, can't even bail out and leave and scurry back to Ecuador as a last resort.

Which is why I had even more fun last weekend than I've mentioned so far, because while at the post office on my way to the laundry, I found a FedEx envelope in my mailbox, and it was sent to an address I used to have, and Hertz, where I bought the car, seems unable to understand that the address they have from a year and a half back is no, not my address now. But at least I got the envelop. But it contained an "odometer disclosure report" which the kind and thoughtful professionals at Hertz Burien, where I bought the car, had forgotten to have me actually sign it. So there was that.

Lovely.

There was an included prepaid return label with something scribbled on it. Also a note to call, with a number. So hey. I tried that. Got ahold of Erika S, who was "in a plane over Utah". I do not jest.

Why call? Who knows. I don't.

Signed the report and sent it back, hoping for the best. Got an email the following day, saying that I would be receiving an odometer disclosure report to sign and send back. Wrote a long reply. Got no response, but may have to end up by putting this into the hands of the Department of Licensing, possibly (and I hope not) continuing to small claims court oh god no.

So I still don't know. Still winging it. Having a fucking adventure, eh?

Currently screaming into the void, etc.
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Forks: Let Us Praise Metal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Oct 2019 17:00:00 +0000

I did. I bought a fork. It's a good one and it's mine now.

First it was a knife. Knives are essential. How else would you stir your peanut butter? See?

You need a knife, and it has to be strong, so that's steel. You need a steel knife. That's what Wally Mart is good for. They have table knives, of which one can buy one, individually. For us singletons. So I bought one.

The peanut butter is yet to come, but I can feel it in my future. I never get far without reverting to peanut butter, and it is sure to arrive on-scene soon, expecting my knife to stir it. I am so ready, now, but having only a knife left me feeling incomplete, so I went back to the World of Wally.

And there I found Spoon. Spoon-ness. Became spoonified, with two. Had to get a package deal, but I'm set in case I bite the head off the first spoon, because I have two. Or I can commence lunch armed with one spoon in each hand, which works at times, and is mandatory at others.

So, the score: One knife, two spoons, and a box of plastic ones, plus plastic forks.

Plastic forks are amazing, but not for eating with. Likewise the knives, spoons, and so on. Amazing. But try to eat a can of cold Spam with a plastic fork. Iffy: bend, break or catapult are all conceivable outcomes.

The bendy part should be obvious, because plastic. Get over-bendy and you have breakage, which is disappointing at best, and breakage is always better than a bit of slippage resulting in catapulting food in every direction, to stick all over the inside of the car. And the cold Spam?

You were probably wondering. I understand.

Spam. It's food, even if you don't think so, but it is. Meat, and other things, packaged nicely. Keeps forever in its can until desperately needed.

A life saver if you haven't eaten in 36 or more hours and need fat, and can buy the "lite" sodium version which still has more than enough salt in it if you eat the whole can at one go, but lacking refrigeration and being hungry, you do. Do buy. Do savagely eat.

So I've eaten three cans of Spam as the major part of a meal in the last week-and-a-half, and damn-well worth it. Lifesaver. Did I say that yet? Miracle food. Better sauteed but hey. If you gots it, then eat it and be full. And you will be.

Fat. It has fat and once it's on your inside you're set.

But you need a decent fork for it. Plastic is entirely iffy. Entirely so. Therefore I bought a steel fork. $1.78 and worth it. It's amazing how sturdy a steel for is, which I realized when I used in on dill pickle spears. Wham. Jam it. Just jam it in, no worrying about bending or breaking or anything. You see a pickle you want, stab it and then bite. That's it. No more, no less. I love it.

So now I have flatware good enough to survive World War 3, and am content on that front. Envy me, for I am satisfied.

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Currently wondering where to sleep tomorrow.

Why Am I Here?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 23:21:00 +0000

My problem is that I'm alive. Being dead is easy compared to this — you just lie there and rot. Anyone can do that. Even I, I think.

Probably. I may try it some day, but not quite yet.

Which leaves me wondering. Wondering "Why am I here?". Which is what I began thinking at the Cuenca, Ecuador airport (Mariscal Lamar), waiting for dark, and then waiting for my plane on Tuesday, October 1 of this year. Why. Why?

In other words, what am I doing, if anything? And why?

Still don't know, and now it's October 16 and I've been back in the U.S. for a whole two weeks. Two weeks and I still know not.

I have been busy though. That's a change. I might not know why I'm here or what I'm supposedly doing, I've been pretty busy doing it. Because doing it is better than doing nothing, which is not an option at this point. Not now, and definitely not here.

I spent the first few days fretting about missing my tidy and simple life in Ecuador, wherein I arose at about daylight and had coffee and read the news and sent a peevish reply to the local idiot gringa food blogger, a Mediterranean Diet™ proponent. (And also a low-process proponent, and a strident no-added-sugar campaigner. Who loved to sing the benefits of chocolate candy as a healthy food. And also wine, though it contains alcohol, a proven human carcinogen. And so on.)

Anyway, a quiet life, full of fine coffee (one cup a day), and going out for lunch, and walking five big ones a day, and not being responsible for anything else, all while saving up gobs of money because I didn't need to spend it on anything. Quiet, boring, safe, well-defined, predictable. Yeah.

Not much to do, and no schedule, and every day a day of fine weather.

Not the same weather every day, but fine. Agreeable. Mildly interesting, and then home by dark, because I had nothing to do after dark and a single (sane) person would not be found alone on the streets after dark. Or more likely would be found, but only by someone best never met. So I was always locked in by dark.

Well, that was my life and is not my life now, and I am still wondering "Why am I here?", but a little less than last week.

I've been busy.

First with buying a car, and then with buying lots of outdoor things that I need to re-buy because I dumped everything I had a year and a half back and have to replace all of it, and then with searching all the stores for things I need to customize and cozy-up the car, and things to wear and so on. Busy.

Been busy but not with importances. Busy with many little things requiring lots of thought and much careful shopping. They kill time.

What I'm really waiting for is my car's license, registration, and title. Should be here by November 18 at the latest, the last day I can legally operate with the temporary documents. Meanwhile the rain is closing in.

The last two weeks were good. Lots of sun after a little rain. Monday afternoon was even uncomfortably warm, given the layers of insulation I've been wearing. Rained last night. More this morning. Eighty percent chance for tomorrow, and so on for another week, after which it might let up for a day or two, but winter, you know. The Big Inevitable.

Lovely weather in its own way, this wet stuff, but I am living in a car. Living in a car means that your space is always over-populated. There are fights. Swearing. Spills. Lost goods. All kinds of things. And you are always in public. Always, even while parked out in the woods. Because you never know. Really. You never do. People come out of nowhere, at all hours, doing every variety of odd thing. Though usually, in the woods, it's quiet, if a long drive from town, and I don't have my car fixed up so I can sleep in it unobtrusively while in town. Not yet.

I am working on it. It's a thing. One of many things. One of the many things that are keeping be busy and not wondering "Why am I here?", which I still do anyway, in every odd moment.

Well, it will either get better or it will get worse, or it will stay the same. Pretty much like the price of real estate, so there's no real progress on that front, is there?

Maybe I'll know more later.

Currently making the transition from old creepy guy to creepy old guy.
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Sounds Kind Of Like

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 02:43:00 +0000

First, the state of nutritional science in 107 words:

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is what kills you.

That's about the sum total, folks. No one really knows nothin', outside of a few hints.

Dhoti? Dhow? Dia? Dido? Die? Die Away? Die Out? Diode? Dit? Ditto? Ditty? Do Away With? Do It? Doh? Doha? Doodad? Doodle? Dot? Dote? Dotty? Dowdy? Dud? Dude? Due Date? Due To? Duet? Duty? Dye?

Nope. Diet. Let's talk diet.

A diet is a way of eating to achieve a purpose. All diets exclude. Every general-purpose diet, intended to cover people in general, is a fraud. Let's label that fraud as "fad". There are three broad classes of diets. Two of them are not fads, and they are critical, but those two classes are so narrow and so tiny that they are almost non-existent. We'll start with them.

Class One Diet

What works for you. Like the woman who eats only beef, with water, and a bit of salt. Perfect.

I'm happy for her. Whatever she says is fine. I cannot judge what she does, and I also have no interest in even trying to eat this way because I don't want to. I also don't think that it would help me in any way. Probably the opposite.

This diet is exclusionary.

I know that I could not eat cow brains, cow livers, cow kidneys, or cow hearts to get at their essential fatty richness, which is required because lean meat will not sustain life. I wasn't raised on organ meats and could not even force myself to eat them now. I also know that I could not afford to buy enough beef to keep myself alive, and I have no interest in spending hours each week cracking open long bones to get at marrow.

This diet is an interesting data point for me but nothing else, a curiosity. Some people are more oriented toward vegetables and grains, or fish, or meat. Some can't handle milk. Some can. Evolution has worked in different directions in different parts of the world. We have all been tuned differently. We come from separate sub-species. We need to eat differently, accordingly.

My people are flatlanders. They are tough and stupid, hard to kill. They can stand out on the prairie in their underwear, at night, in a blizzard, just to see what it feels like and say things like "Hey! This is the real deal then, not?" And then go back inside to watch more TV. They eat potatoes and meat and butter and milk and cheese and eggs and dumplings and a little cabbage and some borscht now and then, and grow very old and feel utterly fine, while remaining skeptical of those vegetable things lurking in the garden. And they love gluten, passionately.

Maybe not you, but who's asking?

Class Two Diet

This one is prescribed by a qualified, knowledgeable, experienced medical professional for exactly one person, based on a diagnosis backed up by verifiable, quantified data, to treat a real medical condition. It is exclusionary.

End of story.

Class Three Diet

The fad.

I break this out into "fad", "fantasy", "fetish", and "cult" subclasses, but they are really all the same. They claim to be applicable to one and all — just "Do this, and everything will be perfect." That's the hook. Always with the hook.

These are also exclusionary.

Some exclude sugar, some exclude all fat, or only "bad" fat. Some exclude protein. Some exclude starches. Some leave out fruit, leave out everything but fruit. On and on. All of them promise. Promise big time. Lovely promises, all.

Cult

The Jim Jones Kool-Aid diet. Ends all your problems in mere seconds. Drink up.
Breatharian. Ditto — Death, but slightly slower to arrive.
Vegan. Guaranteed to kill you as well, but it could take a decade or two, due to deficiencies in vitamins K2 and B12 (B12 is not produced by plants).

Fetish

"Detox" diets, as if the body didn't do this, day and night, forever, on its own, relentlessly.
"Clean food" diets. (Which apparently prevent everything you eat from turning to shit.)
"Macrobiotic". Do anything you want, because the food will protect you, because it makes you holy.

Fantasy

Want a butt like Kim Kardashian? Then eat what she does.
Want a husband like Kim Kardashian? Then eat what she does.
Prefer Suzanne Somers? Then try Somersizing. Works for me! Ya-sure-you-betcha-right.

Almost anything, really — too numerous to list them all.
Mediterranean. (Enjoy sunny, lazy days the yacht, guzzling olive oil).
Baby Food Diet. (Yeck. You know how hard it is to hire a diaper-changer?)
Cabbage soup diet. (Like starving in the old country, when we felt blessed to find bugs in our soup.)
Gluten-free. (As if.)
Fruitarian. (Recommended by Sir Shitsalot.)
Grapefruit. (Or his wife.)
Master Cleanse. (Cf. Sir Shitsalot.)
Morning banana. (What — apples are out?)
Paleolithic. (Drag them knuckles, Knut. Grunt and fart like you mean it.)
And an infinite number of others.

Class Act Diet

This isn't a diet. It is inclusive.

The trick is you just eat. Food doesn't really matter that much unless you fuck with it. Like by not eating it, which is what each and every "diet" mandates. Or by obsessing over it. There is a line spouted by some that goes "Don't eliminate, replace." But replacing one food with another is eliminating. Fish isn't beef, isn't chicken, isn't tofu, isn't pork. Each is similar to the others in some ways, but no food is a drop-in substitute for any other. Better to add or maybe alternate than to either eliminate or replace.

Instead of all this crap, go back to step one, but not to eating only beef. Rather, pick a cuisine that appeals to you — Vietnamese, Peruvian, Icelandic — anything. Just pick one. Or what your grandmother ate, if she was born before the 20th century, before food became big business.

What you'll get is good food that has been vetted for centuries, possibly millennia. Guaranteed to make you happy and keep you well, because it tastes good and because it also supplies everything you need to keep going. Because it's what people have voted for, with their mouths, and because they stayed alive and happy and healthy on it.

Cuisines are continuously evolving, but they do so slowly, by adding new items, and seeing a few items gradually fade out. This is good. Because, if nothing happens suddenly, then there is plenty of time to make corrections. And because there are millions of mouths involved, the cuisine gets voted on by all sorts of people with varied lifestyles, body types, and nutritional needs, constantly.

That means that you yourself are guaranteed to be well treated by a cuisine, any cuisine, and if you just eat it you will be OK. That's it, all there is.

But I bet that much more depends on getting lots of sleep, shunning dangerous chemicals like tobacco and other drugs, avoiding contact with communicable diseases, and getting a lot of exercise. This last one is probably the most important. A good goal might be a tithe — exercise for 2½ hours a day, every day. Pant and break a sweat. Repeat tomorrow, forever.

Even a hundred years ago most people were physically active most of the time. Imagine being on your feet for 10 or 12 hours a day, at a job, moving, using your muscles, and then walking home and doing chores. We don't do that now. Maybe we should. Fewer of us might be crazy.

And food would be just something to eat and enjoy.

Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com

See if that helps.

Esther's Reflexology Garage

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 18:34:00 +0000

Starting next Thursday, Reflexology therapy is now available at Esther's Beauty Garage. Or will be next Thursday. At Esther's Beauty Garage. Next Thursday. Got it? At Esther's.

Esther is big on Reflexology. It's a thing. Reflexology resembles Plumbing Therapy®, in which a sensitive pudgy guy with a prominent butt crack thoughtfully massages your home's pipes to relieve leaks, squeaks, squawks, and creaks, without the inconvenience and associated high costs of having a plumbing license, business license, or anything other than a butch butt crack. Like Esther. She's butch too, Esther is, and she can reflex like crazy.

What is Reflexology anyway? It's a thing. That's about all anyone knows, so let's ask WonkyPedia. The WP knows all, eh?

Reflexology is one of the most used alternative therapies in Denmark. (Wherever Denmark is, and does it actually count?)
There is no consensus among reflexologists on how reflexology is supposed to work. ('K...Check.)
Reflexologists posit that the blockage of an energy field, invisible life force, or Qi, can prevent healing. (Invisible! Qi? Quiche? Cheese? What?)
...no evidence found to support the use of reflexology for any medical condition. (Jeez — not again. Not this too...)

But a couple years back the Australian Government Department of Health & Stuff reviewed 17 alternative therapies to determine if any were worth paying for. Reflexology was in there but no one could figure out what it was, so at that point they all went out for cookies and beer.

All fine by us. If the cat lady down the block thinks it's a good deal, WTF then, I'm easy.

Come live the ultimate body care experience with Esther. Her reflexology massages will make you feel beautiful and healthy from the inside out. Different massages will make certain parts of your body feel a lot better.

Probably, especially if you catch Esther within a day or so after her monthly bath, and ask her for "The Special".

Do you want to try it? Just call Esther, she lived many years in the US and speaks English, so she'll be able to understand your needs.

Woof!

Bajada del Padrón 4-07 and Calle Larga, in front of Hostal Casa del Río. Monday to Saturday, 9 AM to 6 PM. Look for something resembling a garage. That will be Esther. Come prepared for a little friendly arm wrestling.

P.S.: How about a spring tuneup?

Have your muffler probed for pests.
Tinkle therapy by request.

Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com

It may or may not help.

So, Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 21:16:00 +0000

Category: Things my sister has apparently read all the way through.

Yeah, so I got up Monday and had a reminder to myself by email notifying me that Tuesday was a national holiday.

Oct 9 Tuesday Independence of Guayaquil National holiday <- See?

So I had lead time to buy some food, since you never know what's going to be closed. Mostly everything. But hey — I had a day to get it sorted out, so no probs.

I followed my usual lazy schedule, and after a late-morning shower I got dressed and went to lunch. All OK.

But then I noticed that things were really quiet. Not much traffic on the streets, not that many people. Some shops open, some closed. Eh?

Then I turned the last corner, the one only a few feet from el Túnel, and the menu boards weren't up yet. Well, it was a little early, so... But then I saw that the doors were closed up tight. Another oops moment. So I went back to my apartment, ate, and headed out for Supermaxi, hoping that they were open.

Luckily, yes. Coral was open last Xmas day even, but you never, never know, and Supermaxi is a different business, so I always feel lucky when something works. If one or the other is open, you can get pretty much all you need, though Supermaxi has a better selection of food, and at Coral you can buy tools, clothes, or a kitchen range if you suddenly feel a need for one.

So I loaded up on the basics and braced myself for Tuesday.

As it happened, I didn't bother going out Tuesday. Had plenty to do, and food, and the water didn't go out, or electricity, or the internet, which is excellent here after Henry worked things out while I was gone last summer. I don't know what he did though he said it was hard, but at least the wifi here has been stable, and that's a big deal. Like everything else, around here you just don't know what's going to happen next.

So the maid was still here, and I had to go hide while my apartment got cleaned on Monday, but I skipped hauling my pack full of dirty clothes to the laundry — wasn't worth the exertion. Lots of places take an extra day off when a holiday comes, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday being a nicer break than just Tuesday. I figured that I'd try for laundry on Wednesday, which worked out, and I had two days off as well, though I don't have anything to do anyway.

So, aside from minor panics like not knowing where I'll find my next meal, things are generally quiet here. The weather suddenly warmed a lot after the end of August, and the sun is back, though a lot of the days are still cloudy. We're definitely headed for summer. Too bad I'm getting bored again.

I did take a one-month Spanish refresher, taught by an ex-teacher from the U.S. who's been here for seven years or so.

You can tell she was a teacher because she can go a full two hours without either closing her mouth or taking a breath, even once.

Edgewise was a way you could not even get a word in. I know, I tried. She'd stop and look dazed. But.

There were two others in the class, both new here. Holly, who I don't know much about, a pleasant woman who apparently is about 63, and trying to get residency mumbo-jumbo sorted out and get her cats here, which is easy but complicated, and Bones, a former 39-year Harley-Davidson dealership owner who spends a lot of time rumbling around the countryside on his locally-bought on/off road motorcycle.

Ultimately the class didn't amount to a whole lot, but I was able to get out a bit and talk to at least a few people for a few hours a week.

But bored, me.

I've been wondering if there's another place to go.

It still seems like Portugal might be one of the best places to relocate to. Close to the rest of Europe, good infrastructure, good climate, not too expensive. Then Hacker News had a piece on it. Still a possibility.

I've also looked at Santa Fe, NM, but then wondered about Flagstaff, AZ. It looks like the general climate in Flagstaff is milder, more agreeable, and it's closer to the backcountry in California, Nevada, Utah than Santa Fe is, and looks like it might have a more reliable water supply, which is going to be more and more important as the years go by.

You can tell that i'm thinking of making the same mistake i've made several times already — moving back to the U.S. and trying to be 30 years old again. Maybe, maybe not, but this time I'd buy a van and live in that. Last season living in my little Nissan wasn't that bad, but nowhere near adequate since I had to keep most of my my things in storage, and was tied down by that. And if I got a van, it would almost have to be a new one for mucho bucks, so there's that.

Might be better to take a "vacation" starting and ending in Cuenca, like touring Britain, or Iceland. But then Cuenca is a godawful long way from anywhere else, and expensive to commute from. Don't know. Will have to dither some more.

One thing that mostly worked was that I managed to dole out gifts pretty well. I had 18 bottles of Dr Bronner's soap for the nine girls, and 10 little LED flashlights for the boys, plus a few things for a couple people's kids. Unfortunately, there were two new women working at el Túnel, and one bottle of soap leaked on the way here. Then Paólo quit working at my hotel, and MaríaJosé and Oskar no longer work at el Túnel (they're both university students now) but I had things for them, and for MaríaJosé's daughter, but luckily I found out from Xavier that MaríaJosé is his wife now, and Oskar is her brother, and Xavier sees him almost every day, but with the two new women working there, I didn't have enough bottles of soap to go around (not to mention the empty bottle that leaked).

And when I talked to Henry about the children's books I brought (Sandra Boynton, translated into Spanish), they seemed too simple for Sonia's girls (8 and 10), but Santiago has a daughter who is about 4, so maybe, I thought, that would work. Santiago was covered (LED light) and I found out that he's married to Joanna, the other maid at the hotel, and I had her covered with soaps (one lavender and one rose for each, except for Eva, Anita, and MaríaJosé because I just didn't have enough to go around so I bought some semi-high-end chocolates to cover for that, and though both Eva Anita work at the hotel, they're part-timers, so maybe...).

So that left four frog lights for Sonia's girls (plus a sheet of Hello Kitty stickers), and I gave one to Santiago's daughter, and one for MaríaJosé's daughter, but I had enough LED rechargeable tube lights so I could give one of those to Xavier's son, who was hanging around at el Túnel while school was out. And since Paólo was gone, I had an extra, until I came back from lunch one day and saw Paólo at the hotel. He was picking up his last paycheck or something, and I felt a little bad that I no longer had anything to give him, but I got a hug anyway.

As far as I know, that about covers the story of the gifts, except for Janet and Luís, the owners, who were on vacation, but I kept their things in my closet until they turned up, so they got their treats too (LED light and soap). Arrr.

And then yesterday I was coming back from lunch and heard "DaBEED! Buenas tardes!" as I came around the corner. It was Sonia (Sonia from the hotel, not Sonia from el Túnel) and her two girls heading into the hotel, and that's how my name is pronounced around here. School goes in two shifts, morning and afternoon. She had her girls with her (Pamela and Carolina, in their spotless little school uniforms). I looked up, caught off guard, but mumbled something and waved just in time to trip over a nubbin sticking up from the sidewalk and almost fell, but mostly just bounced a couple of times on one foot until I recovered.

Sonia had gone into the hotel entrance by then, but her two girls were trailing, and one grabbed me around the hips and gave me a hug and also said "DaBEED!", and then the other girl gave me a second hip hug (they're really short, about the height you'd expect to see on five-year-olds except they're eight and ten). So anyway, I guess they got their flashlights and kitty stickers and I forgot what I was saying, but it sort of looks like things worked out so far.

Now I'm watching for those little six-piece boxes of Guylian chocolates so I can start hoarding them for Xmas presents. My bread store (Rey Pan) is gone but the laundry is still there (Kleenex Lavandería), and two of the three dwarves (haven't seen the woman, just the two guys), and the legless guy who sits begging on a skateboard all day on one of the streets near here. The dwarf guys really appreciate seeing me because I give them each a dollar coin every time I come by, and leave them their popcorn balls to sell to someone else (it's how they make their living and it must be a pittance). And the older wheelchair guy who tries to sell candy bars by the ATM — I give him a dollar too and just say thanks when he holds up a candy bar — he can keep that for someone else.

And then there's all the dog shit on the streets, but I at least know two friendly cats, when they're out, but other than that I'm sort of bored, so we'll see how this shakes out. At least there is always something going on around here.

Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com It may or may not help.

Los Balcones, My Home, eh?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 23:48:00 +0000

Hang time, 3^rd floor.

So I'm back here. Cuenca, Ecuador, late winter (September 1^st). Loving it.

Temporary room.

My apartment wasn't ready so I was stuffed into one of the regular hotel rooms. Anything but regular, but that's why I like this place. One of the reasons. The people here, the staff, are Reason One, and the businesslike nature (i.e., honesty, fairness, predictability) of the whole enterprise is Reason Two. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyway, it's good. Good here, and good to be back.

From another angle.

I spent my first 26 days in country at another place, Hogar Cuencano. It's OK, but I like it a bit less every time I stay there. I am certainly glad to give up the lukewarm shower and the dirty AC current, which scared the snot out of me (I thought my laptop had gone on the fritz but it was definitely the current — both the laptop and the electricity are OK-fine-and-dandy in my apartment).

View three.

The day I left Hogar Cuencano I gave the owner, Maggie, a treat of assorted chocolates. They have lots of gift bags here in various sizes. If you buy those you don't have to wrap anything — just find a bag big enough with an agreeable design on its outside, and plunk your thingy in that. Whenever anyone sees you pull out a gift bag they immediately know what's up. And then they can re-use the bag when giving their own gifts.

Obligatory bathroom shot (everybody around here photographs the bathroom).

So when Maggie saw me pull out a gift bag she grabbed it, held it tight, and scurried around to her bedroom, went inside and locked it up. This was in front of her employee, the person who does most of the heavy lifting of floor mopping, stair sweeping, toilet cleaning, and bed re-sheeting. "Yep." That's what I thought: "yep". Worst fears confirmed. Maggie is a real tight-ass. I don't think I'll go back there.

View through the doors from the balcony, on the building's corner.

It was good that I was conservative. I had brought two bags of assorted chocolates, one for Maggie and one for the young woman who works for her, but I only gave Maggie her gift and kept the other hidden. Good thing that I did. Maggie might have bullied her and confiscated the second give as soon as I got out of sight. (It's a thing here.) But it turned out fine in the end, better than I could have expected, and the maid got a treat too. (Keep reading.)

Looking west, up Gaspar Sangurima.

It was later that day that something magic happened. First, I hoofed it over to Hotel los Balcones and left my valuables. My apartment would be ready "later" they said, after 2:30, so I went to lunch.

Looking south, along Presidente Borrero.

After lunch and some messing around I was ready to haul over the rest of my things. I returned to Hogar Cuencano, where they were stashed in a closet under the stairs. I looked around. All quiet. Dang. Now what? Eventually I heard some tapping upstairs. Someone sweeping the steps. Eventually the maid came down. After waiting politely for her to finish I asked if Maggie was around. No.

Hmmm. I don't speak Spanish well, and she didn't speak English, which Maggie does. I needed a taxi. Now what? Again.

Looking east, also along Gaspar Sangurima.

So I tried my best. Something like "Necessito un taxi", with a few por favors thrown in. It worked. She understood, and was more than happy to help. But she couldn't manage to locate a taxi company by phone. She tried two phones, at least. Maybe three. No luck.

So she had to run outside, and down to the corner, and stand on the street to try flagging a taxi by waving her arms, which is the usual method around here. I waited.

A look north along Borrero.

It worked, but while I was waiting, standing over my three duffel bags in the hostal's entryway, I pulled out that second gift bag. It's good that I'm not always slow in the head. I'd given up on getting a thank-you gift to the young woman but this was my chance. Our chance.

I had it ready when she located a taxi. I was outside by then, and waved at the taxi and pointed at the street, indicating where to stop. Then I went inside to get my first bag, but the woman was there ahead of me, hauling it out for me.

I said something inadequate, on the order of "No, no — please.", and grabbed it. Then I set it down and reached for the gift bag. "Para usted", I said, "For you." "Gracias por su ayuda" — "Thank you for hour help." Then I grabbed that first bag and hauled it out to the taxi.

Across the street, kitty-corner.

By the time I got that to the taxi and headed back for the second bag, she'd already gotten it halfway into the street. I felt bad again, but could only mumble something like "No, no", pleading.

When I took it from her, she clasped her hands together and said something. It was almost like I'd saved her baby from a tiger. She was trying to thank me for being respectful, for paying a little attention, for appreciating her worth, for thanking her, for the little tiny gift I gave her.

Then the third bag got stashed inside the taxi and I was off. I waved goodbye. I only wish I could have done more.

But up on the roof, around back, it was laundry day.

So then I found out that my apartment wouldn't be ready until manaña, about 4 p.m. Arrr. But I got to see what one of the fancy rooms was like, which is where the photos came from.

Street style.

So that got worked out, and now I'm in an apartment. Not the one I wanted, but it works. I'm home. I have privacy, and room to wander around within my own walls, and hot water. The electricity is clean and it's always on. The internet works. One of my kitty-cat friends lives around the corner, and when I feel like I need being bitten, I drift by there and see if he's home. I rub some of his fuzzy parts and he gets happy and then he bites me. It's a relationship — you know how they work.

Across Borrero on the corner, from my balcony. A typical roof. A shop downstairs and WWII upstairs.

Now I'm getting settled in. Today is September 18 and I've been here since September 1. It seems like about six hours. It has been pleasant. Even though this is the "wrong" apartment (I'm in #3 and want to get back into #4, if possible), I'm OK. I'm fine. I'm content. I like it here.

West, a higher view, looking across the third or fourth floors at the mountains just outside the city.

But wait — there's more...

One of the smart things I did, if I'm allowed to judge myself, is that I brought back gifts. Two 2-ounce bottles of Dr Bronner's liquid soap for the ladies: Sonia, Jenny, Maríajosé at el Túnel, and Sonia, Janet, Joanna, and Anita at Hotel los Balcones. (One bottle of Rose and one of Lavender.) For the guys, one "Nitecore Tube Tiny Keychain USB Rechargeable 45 LED Flashlight" each. The flashlights cost more, but the cost for the ladies vs the boys is kinda-sorta equal.

The guys got toys and the girls got an experience. I tried to be as fair as possible and mostly, I think, I got it right, except that at el Túnel, Maríajosé and Oscar were no longer there, and they'd added two female kitchen helpers, and at los Balcones, there was an extra female staffer. And the children's gifts I had gotten didn't quite shake out.

So I fudged.

The top side of the "New Cathedral", with another church in the background.

Sometimes you have to fudge.

The children's books didn't go to Sonia's girls, but they got flashlights that looked like frogs and a bunch of "Hello Kitty" stickers.

The children's books went to Santiago's daughter, along with a frog flashlight. And I found out that Santiago is married to Joanna, who also works at los Balcones, which I had no clue about. Now I know that.

Maríajosé was gone, but she's Xavier's wife, and has a daughter, and I had planned for them, so she got one bottle of soap and some chocolates and her daughter got a frog flashlight.

Xavier's son got a rechargeable LED flashlight, just like all the grownup guys, and I had one for Oscar too, even though he no longer works for el Túnel, because he is Maríajosé's brother and Xavier's brother-in-law.

Paólo is no longer at los Balcones, so that freed up one LED light (Whew!)

Anita and los Balcones' new employee, Eva, each got one soap and some assorted chocolates instead of two soaps, so even though I didn't have enough soap to go around and one bottle leaked itself empty en route, that sort of worked out. Not all the ladies got two bottles of soap, but they all got something more-or-less adequate. I don't think that anyone felt left out.

And...I think I'm done.

The three blue domes — Cuenca's icons.

So now I can kick back a bit, and am mostly happy. I get up, read the news, go to lunch and try to end up having walked around five miles a day, and then I go back to bed. Pretty good so far.

Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com

How's It Going Then?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 18:35:00 +0000

Yeah right. Am I happy? Am I having fun, yet? Are things going, and well?

Sure, why not. I am my own happy meal. I sit, endlessly gnawing at my leg, and one day it may finally come off. Until then my life is a set of oscillations between despair and boredom. Gnawing helps pass some of the time.

Most days when I wake up I don't see any reason to keep breathing either, other than that I'm doing it because the alternative is worse. Pointless. It all seems pointless. But that may be a personal thing.

I expect that my level of exuberance may be due to getting here at the end of February, in time for two months of heavy rain with nothing to do. I lasted through the wettest April on record in Western Washington, followed by the warmest and driest May on record in Western Washington, while still not being able to go hiking let alone backpacking because most trails are not even close to being melted out until mid-July, oh happy days.

As William Least Heat-Moon said in "River-Horse", the price of life is death. I'm feeling it.

Coffee helps. I haven't brewed a real cup since February when I personally made my last cup of Café de Loja. (How short a time it has been since I forgot the name of the grindery, which, no, has just come back to me: "El Tostador". Well, no loss either way — El Tostador will be there when I return to Cuenca, whether I remember its name or not, and because coffee.) But I have a large-size container of Walmart's best Syntho-Feine in crumbly form. Coffee crumbles. I sleep next to them.

Mornings, I fill my mouth with those crunchy bits and push them down my gullet with cold water as soon as I get out of the car, and then wait. When things go well my mood lifts. This is no substitute for coffee but at times it works. Sometimes my bowels also start dancing.

Then I both feel better and feel better while running for the bushes. I leave the valuable part of my effort in the forest as a thank-you to the trees, and take away the white paper puffs and donate them to one of several dumpsters in need of them.

Am I happy? Am I having fun, yet? Are things going, and well? Sure, why not.

I have only five months to wait until I return to Cuenca, where I was endlessly bored, and where lunch was good, and cheap, like the coffee, and the season was always spring.

Time marches like ants on a string, but ants never sleep, do they?

Living In Public

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 May 2018 21:53:00 +0000

I got here too early. Way too early, at the end of February.

I wanted to get a good deal on a used car at a time of year when car sales are slow, and to pick up one from at least a year ago rather than a few months ago. Via Hertz Car Sales, anyway, more reliable than Bob's Random Car Sales Lot or a private party.

I have no home here anyway, so I needed to make a transaction happen within a span of days rather than of weeks or months. That part worked. And then what?

I sat. In the rain. In the rain inside the library. In the rain inside the car. In the rain, sleeping, at night, in the car, listening to the rain pound down. For a long time now. Like a week short of three months, although the rain let up about a month back. Despite that, I still have to wait.

First I waited for the rain to end, and now I'm waiting for high-country snow to melt.

I've checked. Anything above 4000 feet (1200m) still lies under snow. Can't walk there. Can't drive close enough to walk there. The backcountry is closed, the roads are. Even some low places I could go have washed-out roads, so I can't go there either. And now the Memorial Day weekend is here, and all sorts of nuts will be out driving around. Have to wait that out.

Maybe in a week. I will get out. I will. That's why I'm here.

Right now, though, I'm waiting. Still waiting. Waiting is harder than it sounds, partly because everywhere I go, I'm visible. Out there. A fixture of any public place I happen to be in, and there are no private spaces for me here.

I used to live here. I had an apartment. I liked it. I was in my apartment a lot, and when I wasn't in there, I knew that I could return to it, go through the door, shut the door, and be home. Alone. Alone and quiet and safe and private. I can't do that now, not here, not at this time.

I have a car. I can move, I can drive, I can go, but I can't drive home. I can't be home. I have none. I can be a guy sitting in his car eating in a parking lot, or a guy parked, sleeping in the back of his car, in what I hope is a place that no one will investigate.

Everything I do is public now — sleeping, eating, bathing, pissing, shitting, traveling, cleaning house, making my bed, reading, sorting, packing, unpacking. Everything. All of it.

Even if I'm out in the woods, privacy is temporary, if I happen to be in a place where no one else is, at that moment, then I am alone for that moment only. When others are around my privacy is partial — screened from one side if I'm on the other side of my car, which just leaves me open and visible and vulnerable, at least to being seen, on the side I'm on, anyway. There is no resolution, no absolute, as in closing the solid front door of my apartment and shutting out all the world without exception.

Now I'm out there, out here. I'm here, and if you are too, then you are too, and all I can do is to put up with it, or drive away. Meanwhile I have to do only those things that are allowed in public, and not do the others, and try not to look too "suspicious", which is a description these days.

It gets stale. It does.

If I do any more of this next year, and I might, or might not, I'm doing it in a van. It would not be glorious or luxurious but it would be private. That's all I really crave. I could sit on the floor of a van with a squirt bottle and washcloth and bathe. I could do that, with the cover provided by even a small van, and be satisfied, in my own little way, but I can't do that in the vehicle I have now, which is too small even for me, and all windows.

So later then. We'll let things stew for now. I have months to go. We'll let things stew and later on I'll decide yes or no, or stay or go, but I won't do things this way again. I am not a public person and need to live up to that

In Case Of Problems, Steal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 07 May 2018 20:06:00 +0000

One of my recent problems has been walking into a supermarket and forgetting to bring my own bag. You have to do that around here now.

I moved away at the end of 2012, and when I came back six months later, bags cost 5¢. If you wanted one, which duh?

And then they give you one of those old ⅙-bushel brown paper bags that begin to rip as soon as you touch them, like what we got every time we went grocery shopping in the 1950s. Progress, eh?

But they really expect you to bring your own, and if you walk out of Al's Sooper Markit without a bag, carrying a few goods in your hands, then they want to see your receipt. Unlike if you walk out of Al's Sooper Markit with a bag, carrying a few goods in that bag (which you got at Peggy's House-O-Valu, and carrying Peggy's logo), no one blinks.

Well, pisser anyway. So what do do?

Q: What to do about what?
A: What to do about going into any and every store and forgetting to bring my own bag.

Ah - I finally figured it out: Steal one.

I buzz through the produce section and grab a couple of those clear plastic bags they have hanging there. Some stores even have more than one size/weight option. They're small, but if I'm not buying much, I can use one of those.

Then, on the way out, I also drop my receipt into it, with the store logo facing outward, and don't have to get searched for not carrying my stuff in a $20 "sustainable" heavy cloth shopping bag, or a brown paper one which if I'm really lucky will mostly hold together all the way out to my car.

But wait - there's more. A better idea is to steal some of these produce bags every time I buy something. Then I hang one from a small 3M Command Hook I've stuck onto the passenger side of my car's dash, and use it for trash. Being plastic, albeit lightweight, they're good for both dry trash and wet trash.

I also bought some larger bags for random larger cruft I accumulate, and I can put several of these small bags into one of the larger plastic trash bags, and get the effect of double-bagging if I have something really messy, like dripping food cans, or used toilet paper/wet wipes. (I clean up after myself.) Or worse. (In case I need to do something while squatting inside the car. It happens.)

Neat. This works. I get the bags I need, and since I grab these produce bags only when I buy things, I'm sort of paying for them anyway.

One online vendor chosen mostly at random sells 2000 of these produce bags for $45, which is 2.25¢ each, retail. Wholesale is probably a tenth of that price, so three seconds of the cashier's time reaching for a paper bag to sell me costs more for both of us.

I'm not worrying.

Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com

Privacy Curtains

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 20:49:00 +0000

How to do it. I think.

Step One: I bought a car that was not a van, so then I needed to come up with a way to block views of the inside.

Step Two: I tried stuff. It didn't work, so I tried other stuff. That didn't work either, so I kept trying. Now I think I have it.

Conclusion: Every iteration has ended with a simpler, easier, cheaper solution, so that's good. Maybe I can quit now.

Why: Invisibility.

(1) When the car is parked, and I'm inside, there are times when I will need not to be seen, such as when changing clothes, having a sponge bath, pooping, peeing, sleeping, or metamorphosing into a glorious winged flutter-by. Since the car has 360° windows, I uh, I have to block them.

(2) When the car is parked, and I'm off somewhere, like backpacking for days on end, I will want the interior of the unoccupied car to be invisible, because my valuables are in there, and because I can't just put everything into a 40-ton vault.

Invisibility in this case will be a stand-in for security. I'm hoping that if things are not visible, then anyone nefarious will tend to try being nefarious elsewhere, because of being uncertain of the payoff of breaking into a car that does not have valuables in sight (and might just possibly have someone inside, though you can't really tell, but just might). And like that.

Definition: Invisible. Here it means "not able to be seen", and does not mean being transparent.

Transparency would be nice, since then no one would know there was anything to look at, but invisible in the sense of "a blocked view" is the best I'll be able to accomplish, and will work.

My first pass involved two layers of black bug netting backed by a sheet of what they call "clear" poly film with a thickness of 2mil to 3mil. "Poly film" is dropcloth material — polyethylene.

My thinking was that the bug netting would give the curtain a no-gloss surface and sort of fuzz it out, and in a way, from a distance, it all would not look too different from professionally-tinted glass, while the poly film would be partly transparent, but since it's actually milky (the genuinely clear stuff is no longer sold for some unknown reason), it would blur the view to the point of obscurity, though on a bright day I could still sort of see out a bit from the inside. Plus, since it's sort of white-ish, any light inside the car would bounce around inside the car, and help with visibility when I was in there doing something.

The problems were that this required cutting three pieces of stuff, attaching the pieces together, and then hanging this thing, and getting it all right. Didn't work.

The concept was fine, but without a really good place to work (i.e., somewhere indoors with a decent work table), it wasn't possible to do the measuring, cutting, and assembly with enough precision to make it work. And then there was the problem of how to hang these curtains.

Wandering around a Fred Meyer store I had come across 3M Command Hooks. I'd used these before, in apartments, and realized that the really tiny ones might be a good bet for the narrow spaces inside a car. I bought some and mounted them. Everything seemed fine until it was time to hang the curtains, which turned out to be misshapen and wrongly sized.

So next I decided to try using cut-open trash bags, the dark green ones. In lightweight bags, this material is really thin, and naturally translucent, so it does let some light pass through, but also does obscure the view well.

I put tabs of duct tape where the material would need to be held by hooks, and used a hole punch to make a proper hole. I also placed the holes just a tiny bit too far apart, so that the material would need to be under light tension, so that it wouldn't hang limply, or hang with wrinkles. All went well enough.

I didn't have to actually cut anything, just use a scissors to cut open a bag into a long and narrow piece, put the tape and holes where needed, and hang it.

But.

At some places in the car, the interior plastic lining where I was putting the hooks is unaccountably slippery, as though it's been waxed. I couldn't clean these areas well enough, short of using a nuclear-grade solvent such as acetone, which might well permanently damage the car's interior. Hmmm.

So. Next I went looking for different hooks.

I decided to use badge straps. Or "ID badge strap clips", or whatever. (They have several names.) There is a spring-loaded metal clip on one end, with a narrow vinyl strap attached to it, and a pair of snaps.

Take a look at what Office Depot has...

I already had duct tape, and the vinyl strap would offer a decent place to anchor the clip with the tape, and so on. Didn't work, for the same reason: Some of the car's interior was just too slippery.

So. Next I tried something completely different — I skipped adhesives and stuffed the clip's strap and its two snaps sort of behind the wall. I pulled the hard plastic interior lining of the car out a bit, just enough so I could slide the strap and the two snaps behind it, and then let go. What I ended up with was the metal clip protruding into the interior of the car. Once the clips were placed, I verified that I could hang cut-open plastic bags from them.

This method is awkward because I can't put a clip just anywhere, and hanging something from the clips takes three or four hands, but it does work. There is no adhesive involved, so there will be nothing to clean, ever, and there is no damage done to the vehicle. There is a line inside the car where the headliner meets the "paneling", and I can stick a hook (mostly) anywhere along that line. There are one or two places where this technique will not work well, or where I need to use some tape, but I'll be able to get by.

Success.

Photos:

Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com

Hacking Through It

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 23:04:00 +0000

Living is a hack these days. I like it better this way. It's better than living with bags of regret and no remedies.

I won't say what I have to regret, but there is something almost daily. If I didn't care I wouldn't care, but I've always been reflective and it's not going to stop this week, or next, so out of desperation I guess, I found something else to do besides hate myself for what I've done in the past out of ignorance, or shyness, or inexperience, or laziness, or wrong-headedness.

Now I hack. Hack myself.

Maybe this approach started due to the influence of Craig and Lucy. They are retired dairy farmers. They now own a cafe in Cuenca, Ecuador, the Windhorse Cafe. They follow Tibetan Buddhist practices and lead meditation sessions at the cafe. It's a thing for them, a big one, and also apparently for others.

I heard a woman in her 60s gleefully exclaim "I'm a Buddhist!" Go for it, gal. Done in the tone of the Smothers Brothers' "Streets of Laredo" parody: "If you have an outfit you can be a cowboy too."

Point One: Being a buddhist (in, if I may say, the real sense), means that you don't claim to be one

Point Two: If you're a Buddhist you don't get there by buying a t-shirt and wearing it around town.

Point Three: Diet isn't a thing. Claiming to be a Buddhist and being a vegetarian and using one to prove the other doesn't prove anything.

Point Four: You're grown up. You should know better by now.

I taught myself to meditate beginning back in 1964 or 1965. It took 10 or 15 years before I started to catch on. I wanted to be a Buddhist too, but I'm not a joiner. There was no one to join in Bismarck anyway, but still I don't play well with others, so I had to do everything the hard way while being honest with myself.

The years tell. As decades go by, a person matures and gains perspective on things simply while continuing to breathe. Things stick to you the way lint sticks to a shirt. Things have stuck to me. I now claim that there is no magic. I will never be a Buddhist, and don't want to be one. I still have sporadic episodes of meditation, but that's my private deal. It's not going anywhere. Meditation doesn't go anywhere.

I can say that the single most important thing I've learned is how to meditate. I'll stand by that.

However, I'll also say that there is no enlightenment — it's a brain hack. Meditate and you hack your brain.

Keep hacking and eventually you change the way your brain operates. That's it. No magic. No religion needed. No rituals. No secret handshake.

Hack harder and longer and you will probably get bigger changes sooner, but there is no guarantee, and no matter what you'll still get old and ugly and then die, unless you die sooner, in which case you'll still die, but with less oldness and less ugliness.

Meditation does change how you think about things and how you feel about things, and overall it's a good deal, but going around squeaking about how advanced you are or how Buddhist you are this week or how much you know that no one else knows is not a sign that you have the real item. In fact, you never have anything — you change a bit here and there, subtly, and maybe take a more nuanced and helpful approach to life, and don't get your shorts tied in so many knots.

That's about it.

And then for the rest, I'm extending the hacking idea to my life in general.

When something happens I try to figure out out why, or to figure out what could have made it work, if it possibly could have worked but didn't, and then yell into my internal ear "HACK!", and remember it. Then do the hack next time, to get things right, rather than doing the same dumb wrong thing over and over. Or feeling nasty about myself.

Now, currently, I'm in western Washington state. I arrived February 27. I wanted to come early to get a good deal on a used car, at a time when there was still a good supply at depressed winter prices, and little competition. That worked.

What hasn't worked quite so well is that, once I accomplished that, the weather turned especially bad, and there has been nasty rain for the last month. Mostly I've been spending days at the library and nights sleeping in my car in the rain. Heavy rain. Rain and wind. Record rainfall. Waiting for the car's paperwork to grind its way along. That took the full 45 days, oh joy forever.

But, there is a hackishness to this too. I am tired of waiting, and am way behind on such projects as modifying the car's interior to make it more amenable to living in and to sleeping in, but I know that the weather will catch up to the calendar. I know that things will improve. I know that spring will really come, and then that real summer will be here, and then that I will forget what I'm going through now, and that I will be doing a lot of fun traveling and fun backpacking.

But not yet. Not today.

Today, as in weeks previous, and for some (small) time to come I will be moving slowly and will continue to be frustrated by weather. But the deal is that I'm hacking the hiking season. I'm living outside, though (gratefully) protected by the hard shell of a car, with plenty of money for fuel, a car which supplies mobility and heat and electricity to power what devices I have, and all that, and I have two places where I can shower up any day I need to (each). I'm OK here, sitting but sitting alertly, just as though I'm some goddamn meditation master smirking at the universe and watching it unfold.

"Gimme shot — gimme best shot, you. Hah! You call that shot? Piss on you, eh?" That's me, sort-of.

I'm getting to see the hiking season develop. Getting to see my opinions change, my plans change, my gear closet fill up, my thoughts about where to go and when and where to go first, and second, and later some time, and then maybe where to go at the end of this season, and what to do with my car and my clothes then, and what about next year, if there is a next year. I'm learning. I'm watching the lotus blossom.

Which means that I'm hacking my life some more. I'm gaining perspective. It's like a meditation retreat, except while sleeping in my car. And eating in my car, and urinating in my car, and changing clothes in my car, and (although not yet, not yet this trip), defecating in my car (into a plastic bag, of course).

Yeah, so lucky me. I could be in Cuenca now, watching fall arrive. There now, in Cuenca now, the season is the equivalent of mid-November, because Cuenca is south of the equator. In truth, Cuenca is deep into winter, winter being the rainy season, when not huge amounts of rain fall, but when rain falls regularly and when the temperature overnight is in the low to mid 40s (°F) and the day's high might touch 55°F. It gets effing cold with no heat and almost no sun. But still it's more pleasant than what I'm in now. But still, this here-and-now stuff is what I wanted. Go figga.

So, nothing especially to do now, at this moment, but to continue observing, learning, and updating my approach, i.e., keep on with the hacking.

Which sounds good. Not that bad. OK. Tolerable.

I hope I'm as smart as I sometimes think I sound.

Rainwet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 19:57:00 +0000

No — not yet. September. September, 2016.

Friday, then Friday night, then Friday night rain.

I'm a turtle, inside my shell, sleeping while the rain beats at it. Let it beat. I'm down for the night, shelled in a car.

Then I'm up, and it's Saturday. Another day, another day at the library.

So that's Saturday, then there is Saturday night, and then Saturday night rain.

How familiar by now, and back to Turtle Island, my car, floating, dreaming in the rain. Turn the good ear up and it's pain. Turn the deaf ear up and it's an endless long hum.

A hum caught in the sky's throat. The sky takes long nighttime showers, takes the full night, goes all in. I dream of Frenly Denwa, of Fulsom Honeydew, of Mindy Fresh. Know them? I don't think so either. They only passed by once, full in their beam of portable sunshine, while I loitered in the darkness.

Then Sunday comes. Hope. Should be better, no?

Better then? No.

Off to the park for my own washup, needed. How bad can this state park shower be by now?

Shitbucket.

The hygienic equal to diarrhea soup, served cold. Like a deep bowl of cold diarrhea soup to stand in.

One test token turns the shower on but twirling the knobs only bounces it from off to full glacier. By mistake I tune it to variably tolerable. Someone failed here, so why not, and leverage their oversight, enduring the warm to hot to warm to chilly cycles and bathe anyway. Ha! Beat you! Sorta.

...Dave's qwikwash interlude...

Then back to my car in a solo umbrella parade. Sunday. What a fine day for laundry. So I do that.

But the weather itself fails later, and dies, and weak sun burns in. Yeah. Always later, isn't it? But sun.

Monday then, today, and how is it? Partly to mostly sunny. For now.

And tonight? And tomorrow? How about? Oh.

Rain.

How Is Car Living?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 07 Apr 2018 20:21:00 +0000

"How is car living?" you might ask, if you knew me. (Although you don't, but I can pretend).

If you did, and had too much time in your life to deal with on your own, and needed to kill some of it in probably the worst possible way, then you could ask. Why ask is your problem, because you won't, so then I will never have anything to do with this question, like answering it, but you still have to deal with the why of it all, because you're thinking about it, aren't you? Eh? Or would be if you existed.

So anyway, if I know one thing, that's it right there. I'm on my own.

Yes, and living in my car. What separates me from the rest of the homeless population around here is that I have a car. I make sure to remind myself to remember that. To remember that I left my warm cozy life of waking up late and only trying to make it to lunch by noon and then doing nothing else all day except possibly buying some fruit and going for a walk, for this. I spent a bunch of money for this. For this living in a car, which has around two thirds the floor space of my former bathroom, which was in turn just large enough that if I turned around exactly slowly enough I would not bump into myself. Slowly. Not faster.

Counter, toilet, and half the bath tub. That's my car, but without the headroom, or the plumbing. I'm living in my bathroom without the washup option and can't also flush away what needs to be flushed away.

A plastic bag, paper toweling, and a bunch of those wet wipey-wipes do work, but your aim has to be accurate right up front, assuming that you do have room behind the driver's seat. And no one is looking. And after that, The Disposal Routine. Problems that it doesn't even occur to a normal bathroom to think about.

But that's life these days. Free as a bird.

A bird named Ed, for example. A bird with a cigarette-stained beak, one leg, a bad cough, graying feathers, a limited time horizon.

Or not. Maybe some other Ed.

The watchword is carefulness. That's it for now: Think first, then act. Move slowly. Don't spill. Especially don't spill. Anything. This car needs to be resold at some point. If that's in a few months then Pay Attention Now, Hear? But if I keep it and continue breathing for two or three more years, then it doesn't really matter unless I miss the bag, and lay my secret right on the floor. Probably best at that point to pull a cap down around my ears and burn the car and hitchhike back to Ecuador without saying anything.

That's where carefulness comes in. I'm practicing it.

Carefulness is like mindfulness but not dressed in black leather or moving to the music. Mindfulness is trendy now, and sleek and slim, but "carefulness" is barely even a word. It's doesn't go to parties or get its name dropped every 10 seconds. It means "Don't eff up, then, putz-face", and means to mean it, and will give you a slap across the forehead right now, not even one second from now, no time to even begin thinking up an excuse, just Whack! if you forget and let your attention wander and do something you shouldn't.

So, yeah, I'm having fun. Life is real fun now, sleeping inside a damp car 25 miles out of town, listening for engines in the night, remembering to wake up by 6:30 so I can get into town and have a shower before it locks up a 9 a.m., having a cup of coffee, buying food from the refrigerated section, and spending the day at the library, inside of which is has not rained. Yet. And then going in reverse in the evening and hoping I won't need to use a toilet until right before tomorrow's shower, and waiting for the car's title and registration and plates to arrive, and drier weather and all that so I can tool around and remain being a homeless guy but one out hiking in the summer.

Something like that.

Exciting to think about if you're the right kind of person.

The story of Ed: I rescue this dog. He rescues the bird. The bird rescues all of us in a weird sense and it's just a miracle. A different Ed.

Helicopter toilet

Good Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 19:18:00 +0000

Overnight.

Parked in the woods, at my hilltop stop. As the car door closes and locks, the rain begins.

I am inside alone in the wet until until dawn, listening to drops tapping their dances atop my car. Cozy sleeping but cramped. Little air but enough. I can manage.

My facilities are reduced. I have an empty jar, if I need it, and I will. No reason to go out, to stand in the rain. Better to stay dry, inside, to bleed pressure from my bladder. As long as I don't spill.

"If you live long enough, everything is possible," they say, so one day I will urinate my car. "But not tonight," I hope.

The moon is with me, above, but it hides. I know it is watching behind its curtain of clouds. We are separate tonight, cannot see each other. The moon has been keeping me company for days now. Nights. For nights. We will get past this and resume our conversation directly, but not this night.

The moon itself is always dry, you know, but cold — the eternal tradeoff. Wet or cold, pick your pain. The moon is dry but I am wet. We both suffer then, in our separate ways, and talk later.

In the morning after showering with the other homeless men I visit a laundry to let a dryer have at my towel. It will never come dry otherwise, today, not inside the car inside the rain all day. I have money, and it is well spent. The towel revives.

Then, surprised, hours later, the following evening, last night, parked again at the same spot, there is no rain, not all night, and I see stars while outside, not needing my jar, or chancing a spill. I see stars, and tonight was due the deluge. Later, I guess. It will still come, I think. It will. The year is still too young to be dry, and the storms still range free.

Very well. I have to accept all outcomes because there is no choice among them. At least I have seen stars again. They are still doing fine, and the hazed moon was only slightly hazed. Beyond the clouds, but only slightly out of reach.

This is good. Good enough, I guess.

What Place Is This America?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 23:27:00 +0000

I'm back inside the United States. I have observations, made on-the-fly.

Random.

They don't necessarily follow a sequence, add up, or fall into a hierarchy. Nevertheless, some things have struck me about this always odd land.

In a supermarket checkout line, I noticed that the people ahead of me, evidently a mother and nearly-adult daughter, had a lot of packaged foods. Among them five or six tubes of potato chips. Tubes. Chips packaged in plastic tubes that may outlast the pyramids.

I used the restroom at Millersylvania State Park one morning. The gent walking out ahead of me went from the restroom to the parking lot, got into his large SUV, and drove 200 feet back to his home-away-from-home, where he exited the truck and went back inside.

About half the land area here seems to be parking lots. There are no free-range people at large on the streets. Everyone is in motorized wheelchairs (Ford, Toyota, Mazda, Jeep, Kia, whatever).

The streets are desolate. (See previous item.) We are all isolates in our steel cans, drifting separately. Most afoot these days are homeless.

No one has children. In supermarkets, you see a few infants sitting in the grocery carts pushed around by Mom, and occasionally see one carried in a harness (usually on Mom's front side), but you don't see children walking with their parents. The three to 10 cohort is missing. There are no family groups walking around together anywhere, holding hands.

People are afraid of contact. Two years ago, out of practice from being away, I crashed my grocery cart into someone else's. The guy apologized, to me. It seems that one of the worst things a person can do is to get close to anyone else. Within two feet you hit the warning zone. People stop, jerk upright, look around, brace themselves for evasive action.

Within two feet things go critical. People begin actually taking evasive action, say "Sorry!", "Excuse me!", "Whoops!" in hopes that they won't under any circumstances actually make physical contact. Closer than that and anything can happen. If you actually touch someone they may erupt in anger and get in your face (without getting any closer), or erupt in an abject apology and slink away. Or do something completely unpredictable.

But on the road it's all close calls. While I'm driving safely and not holding up tens of vehicles behind, or any, I have people floor it and roar around me so they can slam on their brakes and screech to a stop at the impending stop sign just ahead — but ahead of me. That's the important thing. It's those two or three critical seconds that Americans will not let get away. Or will die trying to hold fast to.

Speed seems to be the most important thing in life.

Back to the supermarket: You get an apology from the cashier if the transaction of the person ahead of you takes more than 30 seconds. As if that mattered. On the road: The speed limit is seen as a minimum, especially so if the road is familiar and the person roaring out to pass from behind you has been over this stretch a couple of hundred times without crashing or murdering anyone's children, so hey, if the speed limit is 30 then it should always be safe at 50.

Aggressive, uncompromising moralism applied to random events: As I stood in the supermarket aisle reading the label on a can of beanless chili, a guy passing behind me yelled out "There's a lot of salt in that!" There wasn't, but he couldn't help it. He had to warn-criticize me in public for being so perverse as to buy chili in a can, possibly containing some of this week's evil edible. And why was it his business? Because he was moral and I wasn't. So there, guy, watch your salt.

The stores are full of the crippled. Especially food stores. They travel in motorized carts. Those able to walk do so but hobble. These are people who have never walked farther than from the cab of their giant SUV to the restroom door and back. They are stiff. Their spines no longer flex. Their knees hardly bend. They rock from side to side as they walk, and quit as soon as they can.

Obese. There are huge numbers of obese people here, growing all the time. They take up so much otherwise beautiful space. When I was young a fat person was a rare sight, something to wonder about. Now they are an ever-present shuffling obstacle course.

Packages. Nearly all the food is in packages, each fulsomely decorated with clever graphics. The raw meat, fruit, and vegetable sections continue to decline. They are not trendy, and at best represent yet more work to do once you get home. Instead of ripping open a convenient package and just stuffing the contents into your head, which is what God intended, after all, isn't it?