Tag Archives: exercise
My wife having a good time
At last, the pressure is off. More and more guys are asking my wife to dance. I can retire because our society is not advanced enough for women to boldly ask ol’ me to dance. My ulterior motive to make my wife happy has worked!!
Patience is a two-year long virtue.
Back to the lab!!!!!!!!!
An angel amongst us
Angel F coaches, coaxes, encourages his workshop students…
The story so far…
What is it about black holes that fascinate us little sets of states of energy?
My imagination plays tricks on me at 7:30 a.m. on a Friday morning on the seventh floor of a hotel near the St. Louis airport, while down below me construction crew members, smaller than ants, begin their workday on the local freeway.
A storyline starring Lee and Guin is in the side pathways of my thoughts as I block out time slots for the morning and afternoon to snap some still photographs and video shots to make a video short story about the vainglorious immoral unethical exploits of a black hole.
I had initially named the black hole the Might Blackholio in homage to a television “character” named the Great Cornholio but I’ve changed my mind, not having been a fan of Beavis and Butthead, just a coworker of a fan (an almostfan, like an almost-famous also-ran (but not mistaken for a Ran fan)).
Last night was an almostbreakthrough evening, my wife encouraging me to dance with other people and the two of us almost having fun together on the dance floor. I need to get my wife to show me what she wants rather than tell me — there’s nothing like talking or, rather, instructing your dance partner that does more to ruin a good mood in the middle of the fluidity of West Coast Swing dancing.
Our distance from a black hole gives us hundreds of millions of years of stability in our solar system.
What if a black hole could jump through spacetime?
What if a black hole had the ability to take on a personality like a human?
What if a black hole could hide its personality amongst us?
What would be its motivations, its goals, its dreams, its passions?
I think a better name for the black hole villain in my story is Collapsaricus.
And so it shall be!
Self-realisation, reiterated
Tonight, after a fun West Coast Swing dance lesson by Angel Figueroa, the grand ballroom lights were turned down low and we were invited to show our stuff on the dance floor.
I eyed a beautiful young lady a few times and she eyed me “chair dancing”; that is, I was bouncing in the chair to the beat of the music. She asked me to dance and I learned once more that I love to dance — she was a fantastic follow and made me feel good about myself as a leader — but I am just unable to ask a woman to dance. My wife actually had more men ask her to dance at tonight’s event and for that I am most grateful — this whole adventure in dancing is for her sake, not mine.
Did the St. Louis Rams lose again tonight?
My needs are simple. One dance with a woman other than my wife and I can call the weekend a success!
Are there still three days of dancing left? What am I going to do, sit and watch other people dance? Surely not.
Leon and Traci show Chris and Wanda how to move!
Overcoming natural tendencies to protect family
They say you can smell your competition, doesn’t matter if it’s a covenant or a coven.
If you’re hungry enough, you can smell food through a brick wall.
Lee held out arms, slapping his hands together like a circus seal.
His wife, Karen, had told him that if he made Bai his traveling dance partner, then Karen considered it grounds for a divorce.
Lee looked at himself in the mirror as he practiced his dance turns.
Who was he, really?
He had taken up dancing two years ago because Karen wanted to go somewhere for their 25th wedding anniversary and look like smooth ballroom dancers, putting their dance lessons to use on their Alaskan holiday.
When they went to a regional dance competition in New Orleans a couple of months ago, they noticed that a large number of the dancers were young enough to be their children, if not their grandchildren.
Who was Lee?
He loved the infinite possibilities of living while managing the limited expectations that came with being married to a woman he had shared most of his life with, a woman not prone to taking risks — she had not wanted to see Lee jump out of an airplane, she didn’t even want to look at the Milky Way Galaxy while parked in the middle lane of a small suburban street.
What was preserving the illusion of safety for his wife worth to Lee’s mental health?
It was easy to pretend to be a lone, independent cowboy when surrounded by friends and family.
Where was his reality located?
Lee’s imagination was full of dark oaths sworn in secrecy, training assassins to weed out the deadwood, killing for purpose, pleasure or both, maiming for fun, creating pain and chaos for the sake of business associates; forcing families into starvation just to say we can.
But it wasn’t just his imagination at work.
He created false walls, barriers of plausible deniability that allowed him to give the highly moral/ethical childhood training a safe place to thrive in his thoughts, showing his family that he was preserving their heritage guilt-free.
Aliens creeped and crawled, slipped and slid through his thoughts without boundaries, using Earth as a playground and feed lot.
The sets of states of energy that comprised the visible universe were such temporary illusions that Lee often was bored trying to explain once again to the illusions around him their place in the greater “universe” that was currently invisible to all instrumentation that had been imagined/theorized/conceived, invented and built.
Yet, Lee had found no way to sit idly by when the universe as he knew it kept changing.
One look in the mirror, compared to the photographs of Lee at a younger age, convinced Lee he was doing anything but sitting idly by — the concepts of entropy and chaos were clearly visible.
Lee cocked his head from side-to-side, feeling the popping sounds within his spine.
Who was he?
He was no natural dancer, having little in the way of converting his imagination into physical actions that overcame his stiff joints and aching nerve connections. He could flail around but training his flails into consistent movement exercised his brain in ways that were mentally painful, pushing past the noise and chaos that flooded his thoughts constantly.
Teaching an old horse, breaking it in without breaking its spirit, in other words.
Lee felt a twinge between his shoulder blades.
It was time.
Lee sat down on the floor, his legs straight out in front of him, his back propped up against the dance mirror.
Although Lee believed in the sanctity of science, he had developed a second sense, thanks to the elderly lady who visited him as an infant, almost a toddler, when he could hardly speak his own internally-forming language, let alone that of his parents or the wide old woman.
Lee was married to his wife but he was connected to the curved spacetime of the universe that existed outside of explanation.
A voice spoke to him, a low, gravely voice, ancient but ageless.
“We are what you call the ‘mound builders.'”
Lee looked straight ahead and nodded as if the speaker was sitting in front of him.
“Our spirits are your spirits. We are one people.”
Lee nodded again.
“Your ways were not our ways but all ways belong to every one of us.”
Lee blinked.
“We know you. You and I have not spoken but I know you. Your spirit is strong.”
Lee smiled. “Yes. I know.”
“You are here because the spirits called you here.”
Lee felt his heart skip a beat.
“The spirits have plans for you.”
The pain in Lee’s back subsided.
“Your people say, ‘Resistance is futile.’ We say you cannot escape your destiny.”
Lee swallowed, his throat dry.
“There are others who will travel with you to St. Louis. Their spirits, too, are strong.”
Lee nodded again.
“In your travels, you will meet a man. You will not speak but you will talk to each other like brothers.”
Lee leaned his head back against the cool mirror, looking up at the air duct in the ceiling tiles.
“The female spirit in you will meet a sister. We remind you, she is not like your earthly sister. She is a sister spirit.”
Lee arched his eyebrows, unsure of the voice’s meaning.
“Our earthly brothers long fought the white man’s way, thinking the European was ruinous, a destroyer, taking from the land more than he gave back. In spirit we see that the universe is bigger than this planet. Our message to our brothers and sisters, our message to you, has changed.”
Lee closed his eyes, waiting to hear the message.
He opened his eyes again, unaware of the time change, not knowing that an hour had passed as he entered a trance state, communicating directly with the mound builder’s spirit without words, sixty minutes to the second of a deep conversation about what Lee was going to do in preparation for his trip to St. Louis, turning his internal eye toward a bigger goal, clearing his thoughts of present-day storylines and focusing on an eternal message he would receive and pass on to other strong spirits during their ritual dances over three and a half days in the Gateway to the West.
The pain in Lee’s body was gone, his muscles no longer tense, his worries behind him.
His old thought patterns had shifted. The story was not about dancing, wives, marriage status or planned assassinations.
A spirit brother of Geronimo had spoken to Lee in a language he did not know but fully understood.
In his thoughts, too, were Helen Keller, Charles Lindbergh, Henri Poincaré, and Scott Joplin.
The future is the past retold.
Lee looked forward to hearing from his brother spirit again.
What Momma says, goes
“Check this out. Wait, the cell phone connection’s really bad in here. I’ll walk to the front of the building and get the rest of her message.
“Okay, here it is. I had texted Mom to ask her if she has any plans for Thanksgiving. This is what she said:
‘No, I do not have any plans for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or the New Year. You children are grown up and it’s time you acted like it. My father and I are old and tired and soon we’re going to be gone. You need to start making the decision about what we’re going to do and what we’re going to eat for the holidays.'”
“There’s only one response for that one. ‘Yes, Mom.'”
“Yes, Momma. Yes, Momma. That is so funny. That’s just like her.”
“And it’s like you, too.”
“Huh?”
“‘I’ve taught you all the dance moves. You know all the dance moves. It’s time you need to dance them without me telling you how to dance the moves.'”
“Haha…but it’s true, isn’t it? That’s me! If only I didn’t have so much on my plate right now — moving to my new flat, packing the crate for my boyfriend’s return to France, getting ready for St. Louis, DJing…I can’t believe he’s going to be gone next week! I think I’m going to cry.”
“Can you hold it together?”
“I have to. I have to work. My life is my job. I don’t take a break.”
“We can come over and help you ‘fluff your nest.'”
“No, no. I’m good. Now you guys need to practice what I just taught you. Full weight on one foot, the other leg straight, toes pointed to the floor and just pivot your upper body, keeping your weight on the same foot as your lower body follows around half a turn. I’m so glad I came tonight. You guys are like a rock for me. Thanks!”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll see you in St. Louis!”
When rocket propulsion and engineering program management met
Sometimes, the awkward, bullied grade-school nerd in me shows himself, his tiny, insignificant self-image forgetting that he’s a full-fledged grownup male who has traveled the world and negotiated multimillion-dollar deals.
As I’m oft reminded, a simple “thank you” for a compliment means more than a humorous attempt to act modest.
The awkwardness has declined with time and maturity but appeared this weekend.
So, too, saying thank you as a compliment is not easy for me in realtime, despite my frequent use of gratitude in this blog.
I can’t go back in time but I can record here my thanks for the hard work that Jenn put into not only the hours of practice she provided for our dance routine, but also the great effort she put into a costume for our performance.
It’s been rare to find such a good friend in someone like Jenn, who’s willing to play grownup pretend (or cosplay, in today’s parlance) for a public show, purely for the sake of fun exercise.
I appreciate her husband’s and my wife’s patience during the past couple of months.
Here’s our video, posted for posterity and eternity on the Internet, turned rightside-up, with titles and credits to identify us when we’re old and gray (and a little forgetful — “You mean that used to be you, Great Uncle Rick/Great Aunt Jenn?” “That’s what they tell me.”):
Here’s hoping that we can find the time and energy to put another routine together.
The best leader doesn’t have say a thing to get his underlings to do his bidding
They say a true leader is a coach. Rick is neither — he’s a storyteller who compels his readers to follow their own path to whatever they enjoy the most — pain, bliss, or painful bliss or blissful pain, numbness, joy, they choose it — whatever they do, they’re accomplishing Rick’s goals without knowing it.
That’s a true leader — Rick is the best mob boss in the business.
Think about that the next time you kill someone or steal in the name of justice — you just did what Rick told you to without question.
Mob bosses have different hobbies.
Rick likes to dance.
But Rick likes to dance with his girlfriend — let him make you jealous one more time.
treetrunkdings 