Nov 262014
 

I’ve written about daylight savings time before. In general I like it. Most of the time I’d rather have the extra sunshine at night than in the morning. But the transition is really a trial. Twice a year I have to set the clock and in these times when everything is electronic and programmable the number of clocks to set keeps growing. At least those electronic clocks are set and forget. It may take a half-hour to reset the oven, the microwave, the thermostat for the HVAC, the clock in the car, the sprinkler system, etc. but at least once you are done you can forget it. The bigger problem is resetting the clock in your head because that clock runs on automatic pilot. There is no convenient dial to change the settings or automatic adjustments that you can program. It’s got a mind of it’s own that resists.

daylightsavingstimeEach six months when the time changes it takes at least a week for my internal clock to reset. During that week my body is pissed at the disruption and it lets me know. I either wake up early (Spring) or oversleep (Fall) and both times I get jumpy and irritable for no reason. I have trouble going to sleep, trouble waking up and a tremendous need to nap.

I have found no easy way to deal with the impacts of that one hour time change. It’s like jet lag in the way it messes up your life but without any of the mitigation. I’m fine with a bit of inconvenience to make a 4 hour time shift and wake up in Buenos Aires or a 9 hour time shift to be in Venice. I’m not fine when a measly one hour shift causes just as many problems and I’m still at home. Continue reading »

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Nov 262014
 
Ochlerotatus notoscriptus, Tasmania, Australia

Image via Wikipedia

It is finally drying out here in Utah.  We have had record rain and snow all year, with the wettest May in 150 years.  What that has been good for is to keep the bugs down.  Except for the time I went fishing under one of the dams here and apparently stood in the middle of a mosquito convention where I got approximately one bite for every 3 mosquitoes I killed.  And I had a lot of bites.

Anyway, here in the Salt Lake valley it is warming up.  Today, Sunday it was almost 90 degrees, quite a turn around from what it has been.  And as such, there have been mosquitos aplenty flying around.  This is the first time that I have seenn bugs this year and I am not looking forward to them this year.

Not just the flying bugs either, my main bane is the earwig.  Those little stinking buggers get everywhere.  They are in the house, in the garden, in the fruit and in the ground.  I found the entrance to a nest last year (just a note, while I am sitting here writing, I just killed a mosquito on my monitor.  Bah!)  anyway, the earwig nest.  I found the hole in the ground where they were just pouring out.

I proceeded to fill the hole with the mixed gas I use for my boat motor, that way the oil keeps it burning longer.  It didn’t seem to help, many died and the fire burned underground, but too many of those buggers still were **everywhere**.

So, this year I am taking action against many of the bugs that I don’t want around.  Mosquito traps are baited and placed around.  Yellow Jacket Traps….I didn’t tell you about the yellow jackets.  Call them hornets or wasps or yellow jackets, those are everywhere as well.  Last year I wrote about the ones that came out of my mailbox every time I opened it.  Read that post HERE.  This year I killed two or three inside and didn’t think much about it until my 9 month old son started screaming in pain.

I was sitting next to him on the floor, my 7 year old was standing on his other side and here is the baby screaming for nothing that I could discern.  I picked him up and saw something in his mouth.  After the swipe to rid him of said debris, it was a freaking yellow jacket that had stung him in his mouth!  It couldn’t fly too well, being wet and all and took a while to die after I cut it in half.  But the Baby got stung in the back of his mouth by a yellow jacket.  Luckily we found out he is not allergic to the venom and had no problems.

But there are Yellow Jacket Traps up now.  Earwig traps are littering my backyard as well.  I have declared War on many of the insects in my world.  Don’t get me started on the mice in the shed.  They are next.

Do you have bug problems?  Let us know in the comments below….

-Justin

 

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Down with Health Food

 Posted by at 11:48  Down with
Nov 262014
 
Health Food
Image by Duane Storey via Flickr

“I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric unit.” John Mortimer

Health ‘exerts’ can’t hold a story for very long.

When you have been around the block a few times you begin to notice that the ‘experts’ change their minds from time to time. What they tell you one decade can be considerably different from what they tell you in another. And when those decades mount up, the ‘experts’ often reverse themselves altogether. If that isn’t enough to make you swear off listening to ‘experts’ then I don’t know what is. Take health food for example.

Health food used to be simple

Back in the naive 50’s when I was growing up, we knew what health food was. It was the stuff you got from the farm stand or maybe the farmer made deliveries of fresh stuff every week. It was real food like fresh eggs, whole milk, cream and butter, home grown vegetables and maybe you would buy a cow to butcher and store in the locker. It was a simpler time and we weren’t far removed from our pioneer ancestors, The only processing we did was canning vegetables and making pickles. Then the ‘experts’ stepped in.

Throw out the good stuff

First to go were the eggs, or at least the yolks because of the fat and later the cholesterol. Next it was the whole milk because it contained too much fat and if that wasn’t enough, the ‘experts’ told us that it was bad fat. No more cream. No more butter. Use that paraffinny margarine instead. And while you are cutting, no more pickles because you have to reduce the salt.

Oops!

It was a decade or two later before the ‘experts’ discovered that margarine was even worse for you than the butter they made you give up. You would think that all this revisionism would teach us to ignore the ‘experts’ and eat the good foods that humans have always eaten but you would be underestimating the terrifying consequences that ‘experts’ are able to marshal to cow lesser mortals into submission. They upped the ante (and the syllables) and got us scared again. Mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fats, good and bad cholesterol entered the lexicon. You needed an ‘expert’ to know what was safe to eat and what would kill you-

Keep that target moving

These days the ‘experts’ are more tolerant of eggs. Of course they never admit they were wrong. They just reveal that new information makes it safe to eat a few more these days. What rubbish! Throw away all the over processed, chemically enhanced food products foisted on us today as healthy. Toss the tofu. Jettison the vegeburgers. Ix-nay the chemical sweeteners. The future of health food was captured in the prophetic Woody Allen movie Sleeper back in ’73. Forget about the crap from the ‘experts’. Eat what tastes good.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Sep 022014
 

Feeling my way…

I started writing this post today without actually knowing my topic.  Lately this seems to be the way my life unfolds- I wake up with a vague mysterious feeling that I ought to be doing something but I’ll be darned if I know what it is.  Sometimes the fog clears and I get to work.  Sometimes it doesn’t and I roll over.  It’s nice not to have the pressure driving me to get up and do something important, especially when it wasn’t my important but someone else’s important.  Still It makes me wonder if there isn’t something important that I want to do.

Life was simpler back when I was clear about my mission in life like when the kids were at home or I had a boss to please in order to get a paycheck.  No thought required.  These days each day is a clean slate with only the items I choose penciled in. It doesn’t make much immediate difference what I do- or even if I don’t.   When I didn’t control my day I used to dream about what I would do if I didn’t have a job.  I created fantasies about doing important things and making a difference.   Now that I can, I find that it is harder to act out those fantasies.  I have doubts.  I wonder if it is worth the trouble.  These days I realize it isn’t easy thinking for yourself.

Looking back over my experience

RedPillBluePill

I finally realize is that life is just one cop out after another.  At every fork in the road I took the easy route.  I followed the crowd.  I avoided responsibility.  In modern American, people don’t want to lead.  They pass the buck.   They blend in.  People careen through life grabbing mindlessly at anything that might excuse them from making commitments, setting goals and being responsible for the consequences.  Going to college is a good example.  It is a four years deferral of responsibility and a place to learn bad habits.    Then when you can’t postpone earning a living any longer you take a job and let that define where you live and your place in the world.  All along the way there is the illusion of control, after all you did make the choice but deep down you know it is a lie.  Whatever control there is isn’t yours.  The only decision you made was to become a pawn on the chessboard, a cog on the wheel, a needle in the haystack.  Modern life is an illusion of independence while we choose safety and control.  We dream about independence while we suck at the teat of the Matrix.

Moving right along.

So what was I saying when I started this post?  I seem to be having a bit of trouble with this thinking business.  It’s like I’ve been asleep so long that I don’t really know what is important.  I keep stumbling over my purpose in life and how should I spend my day now that my crutches are gone.  Even more troubling, do I actually have an independent thought in my head or am I merely a sounding board for all the messages bouncing around in there telling me what I ought to be thinking and what I ought to do.  It’s hard work thinking for yourself; no wonder most people won’t do it.

This explains my morning befuddlement, lying in bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and looking for a purpose to give my day meaning.  The crutches are gone; somebody moved the goalposts and I don’t seem to know the rules.   Each day I face the dilemma.  Do I get up and stumble forward hoping to find a purpose along the way?  Or do I just roll over and go back to sleep?  Am I the only one with this problem?  Am I going senile?  Is there anyone out there that can relate?  Somebody out there tell me I’m not the only one looking for help getting out of bed each morning.  Even better, maybe you’ve found the solutions.

Help me out here!

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Down with August

 Posted by at 18:09  Down with, rants
Jul 292014
 

I’ve got the August Blues

Too Darn Hot

Too Darn Hot

We are only halfway through August and this Coot is already ready to throw in the towel. August starts out in the negative, if for no other reason than being the hottest month of the year in these parts. Hot, in the idyllic sierra foothills means 100 degrees or better. It stresses the plants;It dampens the spirits; and it makes everyone long for cooler days when it is pleasant to be outdoors;

In addition September brings a change of pace, the end of Summer, the start of school and an invigorated commitment to stop playing around and getting serious about earning some more income. All the more reason to want the doldrums of August to end. Continue reading »

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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