5 Reasons to Embrace Jet Lag

 Posted by at 11:03  Up With
Feb 232015
 

Up with jet lag.

Jet Lag is the travelers best fried. Despite the complaints about how jet lag messes up your trip or your return, I’ve learned to embrace jet lag for what it is- the worlds best excuse for not doing anything you don’t want to do.

 

Jet Lag (album)

Jet Lag (album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m enjoying jet lag as I write this. It’s our third day back and I’m still putting stuff away, chipping away at the bills and struggling to get back to the old routine. The trip was great. We were in beautiful places, going whatever we liked and best of all, I didn’t get robbed once. Still, all good things must come to an end and Monday we flew home on the worst of all possible schedules. We left at 10:30 in the morning and 24 hours later entered our front door at midnight. We were dead tired and groggy.

 

My wife and I behave differently on getting home. I crash. My wife cleans. No matter, both of us are seriously still seriously jet lagged and only now beginning to recover. I woke up early and went grocery shopping in a brief surge of energy. Then I crashed later, roused for dinner and crashed again. My wife has similar patterns although our schedules don’t coincide. It’s a bit odd but otherwise, as Hillery would say, ‘What difference does it make anyway?’

 

Relax and go with the flow. Jet lag is not life threatening. It is painless. And it hasn’t kept us from doing anything important so from our perspective, it’s no big thing. Life will return to normal accountability soon enough. For now, I’m enjoying the relief from responsibility that comes with jet lag. I’ve decided to stop complaining about it and embrace it fully. You might want to reappraise jet lag yourself at your earliest opportunity and to help you, I’ve compiled 5 reasons to embrace jet lag.

 

1. You made it home
2. Nobody will question what you do
3. It’s an excuse for almost anything
4. It distracts you from annoying real life problems
5. It’s over when you say it’s over.

 

Ralph

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

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Coots Podcast 2: Veterans Day

 Posted by at 11:02  Podcast, Up With
Feb 232015
 

Hello Everyone.  Today’s podcast is not very cantankerous.  It does however discuss a very important holiday, that I feel is underrated, Veterans Day.

[powerpress]

Please utilize all social media to get the word out and leave your comments in the comments section below!

-Justin

Link to more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Day

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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Introspection from a coot? Yer kiddin’, right?

 Posted by at 11:02  principles, Up With
Feb 232015
 

No, I’m not kidin’. Jack Lalane’s death over the weekend has made me think about just how true it is that old things and old ways are far better than our newfangled plastic world.
Now, I’m already pretty much of a throwback, having been variously described as a Neanderthal, a caveman, a Luddite, and, by those who wish to be kind, retro, and I am all of those and probably more.
But I get in a hurry, and I skim, both in my talk and in my actions. It’s not that I don’t believe in what I say or do, I just have a tendency to get in a hurry and hit the high spots.
Jack Lalane didn’t get in a hurry, and he didn’t “hit the high spots”. In short, he didn’t skim.
I remember watching Jack Lalane back when I was little more than knee high. I don’t really know what I liked about him at that point. I was around 10 years old, a bit young to be a fitness buff, but there was something about his show that I actually liked watching. Maybe it was just all the energy, I don’t know, but I was always in front of that black and white console TV watching Lalane show American mothers how to stay fit. Looking back, what was really amazing (though I didn’t realize it at the time) was that Lalane was 50 years old even then.
Now, though, I find that there are two things about Jack Lalane that I find inspirational:
First, he was living proof that it didn’t take every newfangled exercise machine in the world, every exercycle, every treadmill, every stair stepper, every nutritional supplement, every protein rich shake this and nutrient dense bar that…in order to stay in shape.
Jack Lalane showed us that if you want to lose weight you simply burn more calories than you take in, and you could burn those calories with little more than a straight back chair and a 3 foot piece of stretchy cord. He would have been the nightmare of every 3:00 AM infomercial pitch man in the world (including Billy Mays, my hero and a Great American, RIP).
The second thing Jack Lalane taught us was that in our quest for good nutrition there was one cardinal rule:
“if God didn’t make it, you don’t put it in your body.”
Now, Jack Lalane is dead and the country (including me) is fat.
See… I told you Retro Is Right.

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Bob@HayleStorm Interactive

Bob comes to us with a skeptical attitude and a full cup of Cantankerousness. He also writes about homesteading and yurts over at JuicyMaters.com and rants about politics at Common-Sense-Conversation.com Most of the time, though, you'll find him at HayleStorm.net, cranking out great websites for clients OR writing tutorials teaching them to build their own sites.

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Up with the Government Shutdown!

 Posted by at 11:02  principles, Up With
Feb 232015
 

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” 

― Charles Bukowski

So here we are, two weeks with no government. Do you miss it yet? It all reminds me of a song- actually it reminds me of several but I’m struggling to stay focused here. What kind of world is it where stopping government means it is all over. And what makes us think that the people in charge are smart enough to fix it?

Sorry, we're closed.

Sorry, we’re closed.

I’ve come a long way during my life. When I was a kid, the US was the bomb! Literally, but we were the good guys and WWII was proof. We beat the evil Krauts and the evil Japs, and we did it pretty much single handed because the rest of the world was either brutalized by the bad guys or too spineless to stand up. We were a free people, proud of it and proud of our country. Government was a joke.

Nobody back then expected the government to save us from anything. We could take care of ourselves. We were Americans. We didn’t win the war because of our government. We won the war because of our American spirit. We won in spite of the government. If anyone back then had threatened to shut down the government, we’d have laughed because we knew it didn’t matter. Today, shutting down the government is viewed as a disaster. We are supposed to drag our dependent asses into a corner and weep. There seem to be a few weepers out there but they all live in Washington. Who does the shutdown really hurt anyway? It’s those government workers who work daily to make us miserable.

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Ralph

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

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Once Upon a Time…

 Posted by at 11:02  Podcast, principles, Up With
Feb 232015
 

Hello folks.  It seems that there has been quite a resurgence of fairy tales lately on the old Television.  NBC and ABC are both putting up some dark fairy tale inspired shows.  But I will tell you something today that is not a fairy tale.

Veterans Day

Image via Wikipedia

Freedom.  It may sound like an ethereal concept to some but it is real, and here, the coots celebrate the freedom that we have to get on and rant.  If you haven’t noticed already, today is November 11th.  Besides some movie releases, today is also Veterans Day.

So from the coots, happy Veterans Day!  If you have served these United States at any time, thank you for your service.  Thank you for allowing us to keep the freedom that lets us write a silly blog like this one without worrying if the government is going to kick in the door and shoot one of us.  Bob may disagree with this, but that is his show to rant on.

If you are currently serving somewhere far from home, or even keeping the peace stateside, we thank you as well.  We spend a couple of holidays honoring those in the military: Memorial Day for those who paid for our freedom with their lives, and Veterans Day for those who made it home.  I like to add those currently serving to Veterans Day, they will be vets soon enough.

VETERANS DAY CEREMONY 2009 - US ARMY AFRICA - ...

Image by US Army Africa via Flickr

Last year I had a Veterans Day Podcast, you can listen to it here.  My sentiments have not changed.

So you may not be able to go to the bank and you don’t get mail, while you are railing against those facts, remember that it was brave men and women who allow you to get that mail and go to the bank anyway.

Go out and thank a Vet today.  That is Veteran not Veterinarian.  Fly your American flag proudly.  At 11AM  take a moment of silence to honor all of those who have made our country great, from the cooks and secretaries, to the Admirals and Generals who get all of the press.

Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for our freedom.

If you are a Vet, please leave us a comment below we would love to hear from you.

If you are here reading this, Vet or not, please use the share buttons below and promote this post and get our feelings out there to the internet.

Thanks for reading.

-Justin

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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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