Category: Opinion

August 9, 2023 – Americans Really Are Disgusting

August 9, 2023 /

I have spent too much time buying new clothes lately. It wasn’t because I needed them but because my look needed to be right. I am speaking specifically all the activities around my renewal party that we had. For my re-proposal, I was instructed to wear a white flowing shirt with jeans, which I didn’t have. I had to get a new wardrobe to wear to the party as well.

I don’t want to make myself sound better than I am but the truth is I have gotten too fat for much of my current wardrobe. So, the reality is I have been sucking it in for the past year as well as enduring bulging shirt buttons. Getting some new cloths was a opportunity to breath a little (and get fatter). I have probably gained 30 pounds since I started working again. When I was delivering packages for Amazon, I was logging 30,000 steps a day. Now, I am sedentary and I also generally hate exercise. I like a eat and drink too.

So, gaining weight is a me problem. If I really wanted to change that, I could get serious about it and I should before it is too late. I have unfortunately always been a yo-yo person. I am not naturally skinny and I gain weight until I can’t believe where I am at and set about changing that.

But I have also spent too much time in various malls lately. I shudder when I go in. I see a lot of people wasting away their lives looking for things to buy. We colloquially call it shopping. It is not just buying things we don’t need but it is spending money we don’t have which I think is more damaging. What makes me shudder is rampant consumerism for the sake of entertainment.

I do pretty well financially, but I think about the waste and resources that it takes to make things that we buy just to make us feel good about ourselves. With the rash of visibility in homeless, I see piles of trash that just follows their movements. It makes me think that items like clothing are literally disposable. I would say that it is so ubiquitous and inexpensive that it is really valueless.

Recently, I took the whole back of the car to the donation center. Yes, it was clothes my kids outgrew and that I have no fault. But is was also unwanted bedding because the color palette changed, same with the drapery of the whole house. It was many items of clothing for whatever reason. It was decorations that were used a couple of years and now no longer have earned our fancy.

The whole thing just kind of makes me sick. I know that these organizations are cherry picking out of our donations. That means the rest of it just gets thrown away. So while we fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing something good, the net result is still the same, waste.

I suppose that I would be remiss that it is not just home goods or clothing but a lot of our lives. Our cars get too expensive to fix, appliances have dated colors, TVs are not flat enough, curved enough or large enough and don’t have places to plug in more things that aren’t flashy enough. We are so busy looking to buy things that are enough today that we only have enough time to consume things made in factories to save time so we can look to buy more things.

Clearly, we are not all going to be in a position to grow our own olive trees and make our own oil or thresh our own wheat to make flour so that we can bake our daily loaves of bread. But surely chicken fingers and diet soda is not a proper human diet. In fact, it is a diet that actually adds vitamins an minerals to deliver any sort of nutrition at all.

End Your Programming Routine: This probably warrants more work on what should be done to lesson the environmental impact and be good stewards of the land. We live in a modern world with modern convenience. We can eat world cuisine because the ingredients are available. I can purchase an entire set of clothes in 30 minutes instead of waiting days for it to be made, that’s a good thing in my book. Let’s just make wise and future thinking choices.

June 22, 2023 – Is It Really Worth It?

June 22, 2023 /

In today’s world, the cost of ammunition is astronomical compared to three years ago. I have mentioned this before, but I like to pick-up shell casings that people leave behind. Shell casings or brass is one of the four components of reloading and happens to be the single most expensive one.

The downside of range brass is that you really don’t know what you are getting. I have discovered that military brass has a primer crimp that removing adds an extra step. Imported ammunition also tends to have some variation as well. In this find, I have had at least three different casings that I have managed to pull the rim off of the shell holder causing a lot of extra work.

Once the case is stuck in the die, get ready because it is not coming out without some work. Step one is disassemble as much of the die as you can. Good luck because the parts are not separating without force. Then I have to drill out the base for a threaded tap. I tap a hole for a bolt. The bolt goes in against a stack of nuts and washers to eventually pull the stuck casing.

Even once the casing is out, there are still parts possibly stuck in the casing or the die. I have to split the casing to get those parts out or drive a punch through to get remaining parts out.

So much for free. I bent two decapping pins on trying to remove primers. Those are ten dollars a piece. You add all the extra effort for brass prep and it really seams like it is not worth the time and cost.

There may come a day when I do make that decision that it is not worth it. I am hoping that with enough experience that I can feel that something is going to happen before it actually does. Or maybe some day I will recognize headstamps that are more problematic than others. At this point, I recognize some of the ones that are working better and that is a start.

Fortunately, this is only a problem with one rifle caliber that I reload. Most hunting brass is shot on the rifle range and that is much tidier than the private bays of mostly pistol distances. Straight walled pistol cartridges are not a problem but the calibers that I shoot are no where near as common at this time.

End Your Programming Routine: I find reloading a really zen experience. It is part of the reason why I pick-up range brass because I hope that I can get enough to do another batch. That being said, I don’t like damaging or breaking parts and it certainly doesn’t help the bottom line argument. I will power through this batch and get better.

June 20, 2023 – The Rhythm of Summer

June 20, 2023 /

It seems like I never stop whining about not having time to do anything. The reason is choices of course. My choices are erroring on the side of getting stuff done and if you remember I am staining the deck? Well, that is still going on. My weekdays go like this.

  1. Wakeup and go to work.
  2. When work is completed, clean-up the mess in the kitchen and start dinner.
  3. When Dinner is completed, go outside and stain the deck.
  4. Repeat.

It is number three that has me occupied. This was something that I wanted to do last year but I ran out of weather to do it. I figured that I could do this in a couple of weeks, but I am finding that it is taking much more time than I had guessed. One, I have never worked with an oil based deck stain before. Two, I am spending an hour or two a night so not much productivity per session.

Maybe I should enlist my natural labor force (family)? I am going to talk about this in my next podcast but I actually enjoy the solitary labor. I can turn off my brain and just focus on the task at hand. It really seems like my Zen time, I look forward to it. I would love it if they would help but that would deny the summer pool parties and standing tennis practice.

Life is like being in a tide. If you are going with it then you are making double progress but if you are trying to go against it, it is a struggle. The tide is like the school year. There is the schedule when it is in session and the schedule when it is not. While I have traded the tennis matches and award ceremonies for summer jobs and personal activities, one isn’t better than the other, it is just different.

It won’t be long and summer will be over. We are more than halfway through June which means the fourth of July is over the horizon. Then I will have an exchange student for month and then my wife leaves for Europe. By the time she returns, my other son will be leaving for Taiwan. Just looking at my calendar, this is likely the only thing I will get done this year.

By no means am I saying that I am not feeling the pressure. But what I am saying is that I am enjoying my time while I can. I think that is the true rhythm of summer. It is not endless, but making the most of what there is.

End Your Programming Routine: I am cutting this relatively short due to the fact that I have to get back out to the deck. Not really but kind of. As I write this, I am on the way to getting my son to a doctor’s appointment for his Visa application to Taiwan. Despite the fact that I am in Minneapolis this week, all I can think of getting back home to keep working on getting this project finished.

June 15, 2023 – Learn Your Variables

June 15, 2023 /

We all have heard the saying that ‘ignorance is bliss’. There is also a point where you can know enough about something that there is conflicting information. What I am talking about today should not be the case.

As a trap coach, I have literally observed thousands of rounds of ammunition shot in a season. I see different equipment and I see different brands of ammunition used weekly. Traditionally, our team secures an ammunition grant which we provide to the team for practice and games. Each shooter needs to provide their own ammunition for the scored rounds.

As such, the ammunition that we use for practice we have a periodic failure to fire. I am not sure what the problem actually is. But, it has happened with nearly every shooter. We could say that there is some variable with that particular brand that is a problem.

In the great ammunition shortage that we have been in for the last couple of seasons, it has been difficult to consistently obtain shotgun shells. I participated in a bulk buy of some Italian ammunition that my kids have been shooting through. Two of the three shotguns that we have been using have shot it just fine. One was having misfires every three rounds.

This particular shotgun is what I would call my ‘back-up’. It is one that was fitted for my son on his first season as a 8th grader. He shot all fall and some into the spring with no problems. He decided to purchase his own shotgun by the end of the season and so I put it away.

Meanwhile, I bought an adjustable stock for my primary shotgun so that my younger son could shoot in the fall. I only brought out my backup because I was having problems keeping the adjustable stock tight. This is when the problems started happening with the Italian ammunition.

One coach was saying the firing pin spring, so I took it all apart. I saw nothing wrong, but I cleaned and lubricated everything and went to try again. I had the same problem. I watched some videos and again saw nothing wrong. But when I was reading problems on forums, I saw something that caught my eye, an out of tolerance chamber.

For those that don’t know, a chamber belongs to a barrel. I purchased this barrel for my backup shotgun because my shotgun only came with a fixed choke, 18″ barrel. It was not suitable for trap. And, not only that but this was an aftermarket barrel that I only paid $70 new. A factory replacement is $250, nearly the price of a new shotgun.

I surmised that the problem was this ammunition with this barrel. I took it to the range last weekend with the original barrel on it and fired five different brands of ammunition without fail. It is definitely the chamber. It seems to fire fine with certain brands of ammunition but not the stuff that I have cases of. So, now, I am not really sure what I want to do.

Clearly the best resolution would be to get a factory replacement barrel and move on. Do I really need to do this? What if I just stuck to brands of ammunition that worked consistently? And, this is a back-up shotgun, do I even need to do anything? For now, the season is mostly over and I am going to do nothing at the moment.

End Your Programming Routine: The reason that I bring this up is that you need to know the limitations of your equipment. Failures in the trap field are frustrating and embarrassing. Failures when you life is on the line are deadly. I only gained the knowledge that I did by being around a lot of different variables frequently. To solve problems, you have to start eliminating variables in a controlled manner. I feel confident that this shotgun is reliable, just not for trap with the ammunition I have and the barrel that I have.

May 29, 2023 – Memorial Day 2023

May 29, 2023 /

My best description of today is honoring those that died in service of our country. We are not thanking veterans or first responders and we are not parroting “Freedom is not free”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

Imagine that we were farmers and we all plant the same crop. We have the same costs and we all work sun up to sun down all spring and summer. Yet when it comes harvest time, I harvest and sell my crop and you inexplicably abandon the field. As a result I prosper for that year and you starve and die.

We wouldn’t honor that person as a farming hero who died in the career of feeding the world. We would likely say he is a fool who died as a result of his lack of farming efforts. It is not what you do to get to the end point but what you do with it that is honorable.

It would be admirable if I ploughed your field, bought your seed, tended your crops and harvested your bounty. What if after all of that, I died in a farming accident and you then just leave the crop to waste? After that, you then turn around and say ‘I know that this is prime farming ground, this crop has an infinite return and is necessary for a happy and healthy life but instead of farming it, I am going to build a shopping mall here’.

Those actions are not honoring my farming and human efforts, they are doing the opposite. Sure, I defend your freedom of choice to do what you want when you want. We cannot in the same voice then claim that death in farming is a sacred result because it is dangerous, necessary and for the better good. Culture is result of practicing traditions, consistently with a common understanding.

The holiday is not to connect service death to platitudes. It actually to honor people that died rather senselessly. I would ask what is sadder: a person that died prematurely or died prematurely as a result of a higher cause? It is natural for us to invent significance to justify the occurrence. That is why we label it the ultimate sacrifice because it helps quell the doubt of the result.

The reported stance is that military service is required to defend the state and by proxy of the state existing we have the illusion of freedom. The implication is no state/no freedom. For instance, if communism succeeded in southern Asia, then it could advance here and we would loose our country as it were and therefore freedom.

End Your Programming Routine: Not only is that what Memorial Day has become but our actions don’t respect the freedom that we proport to be so thankful for. What are you doing with your freedom? Are you buying a permit for that summer building project or to hold a garage sale, are you complaining to the police about you neighbor’s party or are you scheming because your neighbor’s grass is too tall or house is painted in an unapproved color? To embrace the true ultimate sacrifice, we need need to embrace the true concept of freedom.

May 25, 2023 – Senioritis?

May 25, 2023 /

Thirty years ago at this time, the word had a different meaning. I was in my last weeks of high school and looking forward to new adventures. I was ready to get my life started which meant starting college after summer break. It was time to move on.

I remember running track and counting the days of school left. Everything seemed so pointless to keep marking the days until graduation. Everybody knew that the brakes were off at school. I had no illusions of placing at districts and track wasn’t going anywhere. I had nothing left to prove just wait my time.

I never really had any close bonds in my graduating class. Consequently, with my aversion to social media I never really kept up with anybody. I just realized that this is my thirty year reunion. I didn’t give ten or twenty years a thought, probably wont with this either since my position is still the same and it falls on my wife’s birthday. But it does say something, time is marching on.

Today, Senioritis might have a different meaning. I have a son that will be a senior next school year. My younger son is going to be gone all year on exchange to Taiwan. When he comes back, he will also be a senior. To be honest, I am looking forward to the their transition’s into adulthood.

It would be no secret to those that know me that my wife and I have different ideas about parenting. These high school years have been very hard on those differences. There has been conflict between us like never before and it is all because I feel strongly one way and she does the other. I won’t delve deep into the psychology or details of it but I will say that I am ready for the calm.

This isn’t about right or wrong. I can definitely see her side of things but it doesn’t mean that I am going to agree with it. To be clear, I am not saying that I want them to fly the coop and never to be seen again. No, but I am tired of cleaning up after them, yelling about the same things day after day, trying to reason with attitude and be the peacemaker between them. It is time to grow up.

I am treading a little bit dangerous here because I don’t want to go too deep into our relationship. But, I think it is safe to say that my wife wants to hold on as long as possible. I on the other hand am ready for them to experience real life lessons in the safest possible fashion. Money doesn’t grow on trees so when you break your phone or need to pay for car insurance plus rent plus food plus hundreds of dollars in ‘school clothes’ that doesn’t come easily or without sacrifice.

I am already funding two open ended airplane tickets abroad this summer, plus my wife is going on a three week trip to Europe as well. Now one of my son’s is asking to go on a one week trip to a high school trip across the country. What ever happened to pooling gas money together to get a ride to the next town? We have the money for all of that but I do remember those days of bribing rides by paying extra gas money. I think that was a rite of passage and character building. You didn’t take experiences for granted.

My new definition of Senioritis is moving into the post child rearing years. I do not really want to get old, but it beats the alternative. My kids will find their own balance. I don’t think that it will be what they currently think it is. And that is OK, it is part of the process. We will still be there to support them, we just won’t be or feel responsible for them.

I would love to say that I can see retirement on the radar. When I was graduating High School, there were people in their early 50s that were retiring. For me, that is only two to seven years. I can say this, that isn’t going to happen. It is more likely that I will work until I cant then to have a bunch of years in the retirement zone. Knowing that, it is imperative to get the most out of remaining years while health is still intact and everything seems so far away to improbable.

Recently, I find myself looking at small RVs and boats so that we can get out to fish on the weekend and get back to work during the week. That is likely going to be the flavor of my coming golden years. We are already talking about and looking at houses to move. Part of it is downsizing and part of it is to get out of here. I am feeling closed in in this town and state. My wife wants to move for different reasons but for both of us, they hinge on the kids becoming adults and making steps toward their own lives.

End Your Programming Routine: It bears repeating that I love this time of year. I love the hope that graduation represents. Many people like the winter holidays but I would argue that it is school ending is where everybody is happy and summer is just starting. Not only is there accomplishment from the year that was completed but there is a seemingly endless break before starting the next thing. It is exciting. It may seem like I was complaining but really I was expressing the factors that are pushing me to be ready for a change. I am ready to start my life (again) and I want to do it before I am too old to enjoy it.

May 23, 2023 – What To Do in Transition

May 23, 2023 /

No, not that kind of transition… It’s sad to say that when I now hear this word I think the meaning has changed. I am sure that it is just me, but transitioning seems so pervasive these days I just can’t help going there. We are in transition of season, school year, activities, projects, etc. For me, I have all these things going on.

I often find that after I am pushing to meet a goal, if I don’t pay attention, transition becomes the status quo. Or said differently, if I don’t have a project lined up when I finish one, I will languish in this post project stupor. For instance, it feels like I have just finished my sofa table. In relative terms I did considering it took years to complete. But, the reality was that this was now months ago.

I have a real need. The flashing around my front window is leaking and it means that I need to remove 75% of the siding. I am worried that if I don’t address it soon that there could be real damage to the structure. It has already been leaking for eight years. I have tried some remediation efforts but they have only lasted for a season, so now it is time to fix it permanently.

The best time to do that is now, between May and October. I have the light and the dry weather but this is going to be a big project (for me). Ideally, I would rent scaffolding and I think it will be a couple of weeks (straight through). But I am dragging my feet because we have to finish the school year an exchange student on the way, kids going on exchange and my wife going to Europe. This is not to mention that we have a 25th anniversary party coming up in June.

It is probably something I should consider hiring out given that it doesn’t feel like I have time to do it. That is a whole job in and of itself. So, I am stuck in this transition malaise. In the mean time, I don’t want to completely focus on problems but on solutions. I am going to talk about what I do in those periods.

Clean-Up: Inevitably, while focusing on a project I have all kinds of ‘I will put that away later’ moments. This also extends to other areas of the house, not just my project spaces. I get focus and I prioritize the project work over everything else. This is also to say that if I am working in the shop the broom and vacuum come out for a deep, finishing clean. I certainly don’t do that while I am working. But it could also be site clean-up by picking up rotten wood, off-cuts, shingle pieces, garbage or whatever.

Maintenance: If I can see the finish line, I get super motivated to go there. This then give me the propensity to defer certain items. I recently realized that it had been 18 months since my last oil change in the pick-up. I fixed that. I have another vehicle that needs one too. I replaced the sprinkler that was broken last summer and caused me to shut of the irrigation early. This is also a good time to get things done before starting a new project. So, preventative maintenance.

Exploration: Once I complete something, then I feel like I have earned the chance to do kick-back a little bit. Doing a few of the ‘I like to try that someday’ feels like a reward without the guilt of ‘I should be doing something else’. This is exactly why I keep telling myself that I want to try to find this fishing hole lately. But it is also me wanting to try having on keg on tap and one waiting to see if only having one tap is adequate.

Rest: I am the last one to really preach rest. Rest can drive me stir crazy and I prefer exploration to rest. That being said, finishing that lagging book, taking a day trip to the beach, a weekend movie or family activities at the expense of other things comprise rest for me. I suppose rest is also not planning or thinking about the next thing while in transition.

End Your Programming Routine: What I have always wanted was to be real and honest. I don’t want to make myself seem better than I really am. I would say that I probably don’t have the right answer to any question, but I probably have an answer. For some reason, my brain is programmed to continuously push for more things checked off my list and that is what motivates me. But, making downtime productive can also be rewarding as well.

May 18, 2023 – I Am Not Prepared For This

May 18, 2023 /

Living on Main Street which is also an Oregon state highway, we occasionally get some accidents. The last bad one we had was Labor Day 2019. I remember this because it was the day before school started and several children were in the car. The person in one of the cars had to be extracted.

My neighbor is a former deputy sheriff and if they are home, they are running a police scanner. We do get a lot of sirens that come down Main Street so I can usually tell the kind of event it is by the types and numbers of vehicles that pass. There are certain trucks for vehicle crashes and different ones for fire. Occasionally I will ask him what is happening, especially if there is both police and fire involved.

Last night, I was reading the local paper and my wife was fiddling around with the TV. She kept asking me questions about what applications we needed to keep cache and we were discussing the value of why these applications were collecting data in the first place. I was looking out the window and I saw a flash.

I yelled “Holy shit, call 911. I just saw someone hit by a car”. This is the order of events. I saw a body flipping over a red car (in the forefront) while almost simultaneously a crunching thud and then a short car horn. My first thought was why would someone honk after the person got hit? My wife ran outside and as she was doing so she said “get the first aid kit”.

Trying to process all the things going on I ran into the bathroom. I was looking at band aids and spare toothbrushes thinking none of this is going to help. Meanwhile, I called 911 since my wife ran out the door and was talking with the operator so I was less focused on finding first aid and more on answering the questions.

After the short conversation I grabbed some tape and what I thought were square bandages. I later realized that it was a box of alcohol wipes when I went to put them away. I felt completely inadequate and left the stuff on the dining room table to go outside to see if there was anything better to do. My wife wanted a space blanket so I went to go get that hoping the ambulance would be there soon.

We live about half a mile from the fire station and we have occasionally have called 911. Usually, the service is pretty fast. But, the ten minutes that it took was an eternity. The kid that was hit was a teenager, he was in my son’s grade school class so we recognized him. It looked like a broken arm and leg, at least it was not worse.

Apparently, he was crossing the crosswalk (white pickup to the left) and the driver didn’t see him. Since I didn’t see the entire event, I speculate that the farther red car had stopped and the pedestrian started walking. By the time it was all over, the victim ended up just to the left of the red cars.

I could go on and on but the morale of the story is that I felt completely unprepared and useless. I probably should have a trauma kit by the front door with things appropriate like gloves, space blankets, quick clot, medical tape etc. I think that if I was confident I could respond appropriately, I wouldn’t waffle around looking to be helpful because I wasted all of my initiative trying to figure out what was useful.

End Your Programming Routine: One time I was first on the scene when a co-worker cut his fingers off on the table saw. I didn’t handle that situation very well either. But, I like to think that I learned a lot of things I would do differently for the next time and feel a lot more confident about how I would conduct myself. Fortunately, there has not been a next time. Let’s hope that this is the only time I witness a pedestrian tumbling over a car. But, I will do better if it happens again.

May 11, 2023 – Think Your Government Doesn’t Make Mistakes… Think Again

May 11, 2023 /

Approximately two years ago, we received a letter that our kids were entitled to assistance (food stamps). I actually threw the letter away because I thought the whole premise was ridiculous. Supposedly, it was to mitigate access to food during the pandemic school year.

The first problem with the situation was that my kids should be eligible for assistance. The second part was that all of the lockdowns and the entire school year at home was a year past. So, tell me why I wouldn’t think that was anything other than ridiculous. Sure enough the card arrived in the mail two weeks later and it had about $1400 on it. You can read about it here.

Follow-up from that. We spent the money. We used it to buy food when we went on our family Thanksgiving trip to Houston. At first, I didn’t want to accept something that I didn’t feel was necessary. Once I got into my headspace that I also paid $10,000 in additional taxes to the state that year plus getting audited and paying a lawyer, I put those feelings aside. Mistake or not, I have reconciled that I pay a lot more than I take. In fact, I take almost nothing from the system.

Low and behold, we got another Electronic Benefits Card a week ago. This time it was about $400 in value. I suppose that I am not opposed to taking advantage of situation, but it does start to get disheartening that the state really has no discretion on qualification of benefits. This is what I would characterize as government waste; indiscriminate doling out of money.

If you take those lines, then you will probably understand that this was actually a mistake. My wife sent me a link to a story that said that there were a number of people that mistakenly received assistance. Once the state realized it, they took all the money back rendering some cards, like my son’s to be useless.

Hooray for government, right? You guessed it. Wrong. Aren’t there checks and balances in this process? Do they not have subject matter experts for policy and ample resources (people) to execute something properly? I have to believe that this process took a significant amount of time and effort. Finding someone to print the materials and mail them out only to find out that they made a mistake after the fact has to be something majorly wrong in the process.

I know how these things probably went. Some sort of database report was executed and that is what translated to the wrong results. What failed was the validation of the data and the quality check of the process. Mistakes happen and the government is not immune to them either.

Where I really wanted to go is that the government is always pretty quick to swing a fist. Meaning, the stance is always they are right. Ever try to re-title a car without a complete bill of sale trail? Trust me, your life is living hell trying to get previous sellers tracked down to rebuild a paper trail that is absolutely irrelevant. Trust me, only citizens have to go through the run around. Dealers don’t have to do that.

But more so than that, the government will reluctantly admit mistakes when there is no other options, particularly financial ones or high profile losses in court. Sometimes that doesn’t stop them either. For instance, I have heard no apologies for ruining peoples lives for only permitting essential jobs during Covid. I have heard justification for doing what they did, but no apologies.

The main point with this whole post is not to rail on government. I do enjoy doing so, but that you should use critical thinking when getting notifications about something they think is wrong. Just because the IRS sends you a notice doesn’t mean that they are right. You have to weigh the cost of the fight into the equation. When dealing with the government, there are no moral victories either so it simplifies the variables in the decision making.

Probably every other year I get a notice from the IRS or the Oregon Department of Revenue. After consultation with our attorney, often the resolution is to pay the difference. At $200/hour it doesn’t make a lot of sense to fight a $400 bill. But, I can also tell you that we have gotten letters saying that we haven’t paid for the year and a $10,000 bill is a different story when we have.

Along those lines, it really pisses me off that I have to have an attorney and pay more money to prove that I have already done the right thing. Whereas I know people that haven’t bothered to file taxes for years and they got no hassle whatsoever. This is not to say that the government was going to get anything out of if but that they will go after the people that they will. Dropping it.

End Your Programming Routine: Don’t be a zombie. Don’t fold because you feel you have no choice. Do analyze the situation and make moves that make sense. Do seize the opportunity when there is one. This is the definition of being an individual.

May 9, 2023 – (Sunday) We Have a Free Day, Let’s Go to Costco… No

May 9, 2023 /

I am sure that I violated some kind of title rules with punctuation and choppiness. But this is what I want to say today. It has been a long time since I have talked about productivity and planning. Today I wanted to share my philosophy to prove that I have my priorities all jumbled up.

At this point in our lives, we are slaves to the schedule. In between our own commitments and our kids (let’s not forget Mother’s Day is coming up). It is really hard to get a down day in. I tend to look at things in the light of what can I do on a weeknight versus what needs to wait for a weekend.

We usually do a monthly shop at Costco for groceries. Since we are planning a Mother’s Day dinner, we need to get some stuff for that as well. Looking at what was happening this weekend, we say Sunday afternoon was open. My wife said, we need to go to Costco. I said no.

First of all, we don’t need to go to Costco. We have several grocery stores in town and we are not really out of anything given our well stocked freezers and pantry. It is not exactly convenient being thirty minutes away. There is also the commitment of putting things away. Because once you start, you are committed until at least the refrigerated and frozen items are put away.

Another reason I don’t want to go on the weekend is that it is the very worst time to be at Costco. Parking is a mess, the stores are full. But, there is a third and more overriding reason to not do this. That is, this is a task that can be done during the week. Whereas, there are many things that I really cannot do on a weekday.

Did I use my time wisely? Maybe, maybe not. I ended up coming home late from trap, I transferred my beer from the primary to the secondary, I changed the oil in the pickup, we played tennis as a family and I spent some time with my wife watching a movie. I would argue that any one of those tasks could have been done on a weeknight. But what doesn’t happen is unstructured time in large blocks.

I need some time that I can just do what I want. It makes me feel like I have some control in my life. Looking at the week ahead, I have the following schedule Monday – YMCA meet and greet, Tuesday – Incoming Freshman activity fair (for trap), Wednesday-Friday – Tennis Districts, Saturday – Trap and Mother’s day dinner Sunday – Mother’s Day. The truth is, I really don’t have an open day this week. That being said, I am sure that there is going to be some time in the evening Wednesdy through Friday. I just don’t have the precise schedule until we get there.

My schedule has not been much different this entire spring. Between sports and my kids getting ready for exchange, it seems like everyday is penciled in something. I will also offer an alternative way of looking at things. Don’t wait for the weekend to do things, do what you can during the week. It is not about the day of the week but the efficiency of the job with the blocks of time available.

End Your Programming Routine: Summer is coming and this marathon will change. Notice I didn’t say end. When you are a distance runner, when you see the finish line you run as fast as you can. This is called the push. We are in the push phase with the family. In a little over a year, I will have one in school. When the choice is either family tennis or going to Costco, the choice should be pretty clear. Choose the right time for the right task.