A dog is truly a man's best friend.
If you don't believe it, just try this experiment.
Put your dog and your wife in the trunk of the car for an hour.
When you open the trunk, who is really happy to see you!?
Wednesday, March 12
Monday, March 10
new drug side effects
I used a new drug today. Someone was handing out free cans of an "energy drink" (basically guarana/caffeine and sugar) so I used it this morning, instead of the performance-enhancing green tea, to rev myself up for the weekly swim.
The effect was impressive.
First the plus side. Normally, my swimming feels limited by my breathing. I never seem to get enough air. Today the blood must have been shooting through the lungs at high speed and picking up a double dose of oxygen, because I swam the whole mile at about 90% of my flat-out speed, without stopping. I even got cocky and decided to skip the occasional breath by swimming underwater. What a fortunate person I am to be able to do this at my age. This opens up a whole new level of fitness training for me, if I can avoid giving myself a heart attack with the jolt juice.
But of course everything balances up, and the downside included feeling nauseous for most of the swim. And there's another side effect. It makes you start up chirpy conversations with strangers, and that's always asking for trouble. In the sauna I had a long chat to a guy who speaks several languages including Mandarin, Latin and Greek. Recklessly, I let him find out where I work. Later it transpired he's not entirely on his trolley and has done some serious bin time. Several times he used "faggy" as a pejorative term, and I let it pass rather than say "If I was gay I might think you wanted to insult me". I think he's Australian so he probably doesn't know any better, a bit like Scots. At one point he said New South Caledonian doctors would be much more competent if they had trained "in that world-famous medical school in Edinburgh." I was about to explain that Edinburgh Uni is actually quite short-sighted, rejecting some of its best students. But I decided I had told him enough about myself already.
PS - this energy juice makes you type faster and better. I doubt if the actual content is improved though.
The effect was impressive.
First the plus side. Normally, my swimming feels limited by my breathing. I never seem to get enough air. Today the blood must have been shooting through the lungs at high speed and picking up a double dose of oxygen, because I swam the whole mile at about 90% of my flat-out speed, without stopping. I even got cocky and decided to skip the occasional breath by swimming underwater. What a fortunate person I am to be able to do this at my age. This opens up a whole new level of fitness training for me, if I can avoid giving myself a heart attack with the jolt juice.
But of course everything balances up, and the downside included feeling nauseous for most of the swim. And there's another side effect. It makes you start up chirpy conversations with strangers, and that's always asking for trouble. In the sauna I had a long chat to a guy who speaks several languages including Mandarin, Latin and Greek. Recklessly, I let him find out where I work. Later it transpired he's not entirely on his trolley and has done some serious bin time. Several times he used "faggy" as a pejorative term, and I let it pass rather than say "If I was gay I might think you wanted to insult me". I think he's Australian so he probably doesn't know any better, a bit like Scots. At one point he said New South Caledonian doctors would be much more competent if they had trained "in that world-famous medical school in Edinburgh." I was about to explain that Edinburgh Uni is actually quite short-sighted, rejecting some of its best students. But I decided I had told him enough about myself already.
PS - this energy juice makes you type faster and better. I doubt if the actual content is improved though.
Saturday, February 23
cleaning out the cobwebs
Big clearup of the basement last week. Best place to be anyway in the hot weather. Stacked up the beer all in one place and found I'm down to my last 140 bottles or so. At this rate I'll need to get brewing.
Another new thing last Monday - I volunteered as a guinea pig for a research project where they wire you up with electrodes all over your body (all above the waist unfortunately) then they give you psychotherapy. The deal is that I get free head-fixing (not that I need it) and they get free elctrical data on the psychotherapeutic process. A win-win situation. Naturally I had to pretend to be a bit psycho to get on the program but that's nothing new for me.
Actually they wire the therapist up too, and all the wires disappear into a computer. To break the ice I said "I've seen this movie, it's the one where the computer blows a fuse and my personality gets sucked into your brain, and vice versa". I think I may have freaked her out.
For an hour I talked about my parents and my childhood and how it relates to what I'm doing now. Then at the end of the session she was tentatively peeling the electrodes off my skin, and she said "I don't want to hurt you". I said "don't worry, I've got a German mother, I don't feel pain."
She set me some homework, I've to write for 20 minutes non-stop every day without censoring or caring about spelling. It's not so easy. Probably blissheids experience something similar when they're meditating. The mid wants to wander off or to censor or to rebel. I've been typing my stream of consciousness to a new blog, which I would link to except that it might influence my future postings there if I know it's being reaad. Maybe I'll link to it in 6 weeks after the research project finishes. I know you're dying to read it.
Yes well, I've been a bit too busy to actually complete the wiring of the possum address system. The possum actually moved out, of its own free will, to the new possum nesting box. But my triumph was short lived. The next night it moved back in to the ceiling above my bed. In the short term I've adopted a more buddhist attitude to the whole thing. When I hear it coming home at 4 or 5 in the morning, I smile paternally, almost relieved that it hasn't come to any harm on its travels. As it scrapes around and makes its bed, I jam the spare pillow over my ear and settle down for some more kip. It actually feels a bit like the dorm at Portsmouth barracks when I was a schooolboy cadet; or like all the youth hostels when I did the world tour. The reassuring communal feeling of sharing bunk beds with a crowd of anonymous room-mates.
Actually, at Portsmouth we would be awakened at 6 a.m. out of our hangovers (oh the bliss of the cheap scrumpy) by a sailor's voice shouting over the P.A. - "wakey wakey! Hands off cocks! On with socks!" What did he mean?
Last but not least - in the previous post what a delight to have a visit from the fragrant keda!
Another new thing last Monday - I volunteered as a guinea pig for a research project where they wire you up with electrodes all over your body (all above the waist unfortunately) then they give you psychotherapy. The deal is that I get free head-fixing (not that I need it) and they get free elctrical data on the psychotherapeutic process. A win-win situation. Naturally I had to pretend to be a bit psycho to get on the program but that's nothing new for me.
Actually they wire the therapist up too, and all the wires disappear into a computer. To break the ice I said "I've seen this movie, it's the one where the computer blows a fuse and my personality gets sucked into your brain, and vice versa". I think I may have freaked her out.
For an hour I talked about my parents and my childhood and how it relates to what I'm doing now. Then at the end of the session she was tentatively peeling the electrodes off my skin, and she said "I don't want to hurt you". I said "don't worry, I've got a German mother, I don't feel pain."
She set me some homework, I've to write for 20 minutes non-stop every day without censoring or caring about spelling. It's not so easy. Probably blissheids experience something similar when they're meditating. The mid wants to wander off or to censor or to rebel. I've been typing my stream of consciousness to a new blog, which I would link to except that it might influence my future postings there if I know it's being reaad. Maybe I'll link to it in 6 weeks after the research project finishes. I know you're dying to read it.
Yes well, I've been a bit too busy to actually complete the wiring of the possum address system. The possum actually moved out, of its own free will, to the new possum nesting box. But my triumph was short lived. The next night it moved back in to the ceiling above my bed. In the short term I've adopted a more buddhist attitude to the whole thing. When I hear it coming home at 4 or 5 in the morning, I smile paternally, almost relieved that it hasn't come to any harm on its travels. As it scrapes around and makes its bed, I jam the spare pillow over my ear and settle down for some more kip. It actually feels a bit like the dorm at Portsmouth barracks when I was a schooolboy cadet; or like all the youth hostels when I did the world tour. The reassuring communal feeling of sharing bunk beds with a crowd of anonymous room-mates.
Actually, at Portsmouth we would be awakened at 6 a.m. out of our hangovers (oh the bliss of the cheap scrumpy) by a sailor's voice shouting over the P.A. - "wakey wakey! Hands off cocks! On with socks!" What did he mean?
Last but not least - in the previous post what a delight to have a visit from the fragrant keda!
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