International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Audio:[powerpress feed=”podcast”]
Barbossa (with Jack Sparrow)
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) (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.
Image via Wikipedia
Ralph likes to dish stuff out. He likes to rail on myself and Bob about not getting our posts out. I have one thing to say to him! You’re right. If it wasn’t for Ralph, this blog would be like my other one. By the way, if you have ever visited my other blog at justinsbrainpan.com, you may have noticed that the domain now shows a girl who I am sure is way to young to be desireable and some ads. If you missed it, I have changed the domain (and host) to www.catharsisofthebogue.com. Like the phone company lady says, Please make a note of it.
Now back to that…..Ralph. Yes my balls have been dropped, wait, that sounds wrong. I have repeatedly dropped the ball and posts have not been flying from my fingers like the proverbial roomful of monkeys. I am not going to promise a change, but at least there are a few of my posts peppering the site from here and there, unlike Bob. He is into taking the video world by storm and making a site that will make all of the other “How To” sites weep like little girls.
But where are the posts that were promised Robert? I only hope that the Political Coot is a hit and we are getting loads of undeserved traffic. Well slightly deserved traffic. And you know what else? I keep finding places where www.catharsisofthebogue.com is not the current link for my stuff. Good grief I have a lot of things that are pointing to the old site and not at www.catharsisofthebogue.com.
But I digress. What are we going to do this year as the coots? Well we are going to let Ralph carry us for the most part. He doesn’t seem to have anything to do other than write anyway, (well there is that Europe trip so his wife will not either castrate him or hang him by his ankles in the town square) and Bob and I will contribute infrequently and sporadically. That way it will keep you readers guessing when I am going to shower you with shit er wisdom.
Cantankerous Old Coots is a great site with some wonderful things going on in the cantankerous realm of Cantankerosity. I can’t exactly recall what those great things are right now, but trust me, they are great. Keep coming back here and reading this drivel that I am producing, you will be grateful for the poetry that Ralph puts out. Bob is on his own, he likes video anyway.
Stay tuned faithful readers, there will still be variety here at the coots most of the time. Otherwise, I guess this is just ralphcarlsonblog.com part deux.
Have a dandy weekend.
-Justin
PS I am curious to know why the “suggested post tags” came up with Preparation H as a term…..I am confused.
Folks…I try to make the “Tinfoil Hat Club” videos look as spontaneous as possible, but the fact is they are usually scripted. Not this time. This time I just got mad and did the video totally off the cuff…I apologize for it not being very “polished”.
Barack Obama proved he is a Saul Alinsky believer…you know, the author of “Rules for Radicals”… and that he (Obama) believes “the end justifies the means”…even if the means include intentionally inviting a terrorist attack ON PURPOSE for political gain…to promote his communist…yes, I said communist, not just socialist…agenda.
I know this show is called “The Tinfoil Hat Club”, but there are no tinfoil hat similarities here…just hard, straightforward facts that cannot be denied. My interpretation of those facts? Well…you’ll have to decide that for yourself. Continue reading »
Image by krow10 via Flickr
Maybe you still believe the old saw “use it or lose it”. If you do it means you are still a wet behind the ears spring chicken because when you get to be a Cantankerous OLD Coot you will know without any doubt that just using it is not enough. If you want to keep going like you always did just using it won’t work. You’ve got to use it like a madman just to stay where you are. And if you are trying to improve you will need to use it like two madmen. How crazy are you?
You hear it so many times that it no longer carries much meaning day to day. Of course it is true up to a point. Lack of use will slow down almost anything: your brain, your muscles, your judgment, even your smile. Keep active. Keep moving. Don’t slow down. Don’t take it easy. Just keep on being active the way you always have and you will keep on going strong. That’s what they tell you but life is more complicated.
At least when you get past the young and foolish stage say about 50. Maybe you remember the days when everything worked and nothing hurt- we call those the good old days. Back then it was easy to tell yourself that nothing will change and that you will keep going just like you are now forever. Then one day, the cold, wet mackerel slaps you down. You haven’t changed anything but suddenly it is hard to do things that used to be easy. It’s probably different for everybody. For me it was getting up from a chair and climbing stairs. For no identifiable reason suddenly those things were hard, really hard.
I went through all kinds of rationalizations about this. First I decided that it was just temporary. I had probably strained something and when it healed, I would be back to normal. After a few weeks with no progress, I abandoned that theory. I tried walking more but it didn’t help. I wasn’t improving. In fact, it was even harder getting myself our of a chair. At that point I was beginning to accept the inevitability of getting old, feeble and immobile. I was using it and still losing it. It felt really bad!
Purely by luck I was talking with a personal trainer at a social function and confessed my problem. He shrugged it off when I used age as an excuse.
“Core strength” he huffed. “You are losing core strength.
Then he really let me have it. “You are stooped over like an old man “ he told me “And you don’t have the muscle strength to lift your body any more. Give me six months and I can straighten it all out.”
After that devastating conversation I dithered for a month or so but finally, in frustration, I gave in. I put myself into the hands of an expert. Here is what I learned.
Use it or loose it may be a good working philosophy when you are young. With a young healthy body, keeping active is enough to keep everything working right. When you get older, however, it it poor advice and sure to fail. When your body starts to decline, normal activity won’t keep it from declining further or even keep it where you are. Just to stay at your current state, you need to work like a madman.
These days, I’m working like a madman building core strength to get me back to normal abilities and it is helping. I’m better than I was six months ago but still a long way from ten years ago.
Core strength means crunches, push-ups and curls. And it means them every day. These days, I’m working like a madman building core strength to get me back to normal abilities and it is helping. I’m better than I was six months ago but still a long way from ten years ago.
So for all Cantankerous OLD Coots out there today’s lesson is for you. Don’t expect the normal level of activity to keep you from loosing it. When you start getting old, the equation changes. It is no longer ‘use it or lose it’. You have to get realistic and pick your battle carefully. You need to chose what is important to you and be prepared to use it like a madman in order to keep your abilities from further decline and like two madmen if you want to get back to where you used to be.
Getting old is not for the faint at heart.