Boomer Randomness

When you see the word Mercury, what comes to mind?   A car brand?   A Planet?   An outboard motor boat engine brand?   That stuff in a thermometer?   A friend of mine often reminds me when Mercury is in retrograde.   That would be a planetary reference.   I am equal parts skeptic and believer when it comes to astrological stuff but more on the skeptic side about the real behavioral influence of a distant planet. So I looked it up. One web site says “The planet Mercury rules communication, travel, contracts, automobiles and such.   It goes in a retrograde motion – or motion that makes it appear to be going backwards … three times a year for … three weeks at a time.   When Mercury is in retrograde, there’s usually much confusion.”   This website says you shouldn’t start anything new during these periods. My first thought when I read stuff like that is “what a load of crap.”   But I do not dismiss the possibilities.   The ...

Dirty, noisy, gritty. Diverse to the max. ALIVE! Concrete jungle with a couple of trees. Expensive. Almost worth the price. Standing in line at Starbucks I watched a scary looking man carrying a shopping bag walk through, then out another door, then back in. He looked around, specifically at the busy barista, then stuffed a stack of New York Times into the shopping bag and quickly left. Bet he was selling them on the street minutes later. Criminal or entrepreneur? You make the call. Walk walk walk I walked everywhere. Three days here and I did not get into a vehicle. Walked fifteen blocks from Penn Station to my hotel, walked several blocks to Museum of Modern Art, walked to Central Park, walked to a neighborhood a few blocks outside of the tourist zone. Next day walked 10 blocks to the meetings I was here for, walked to the Empire State Building, walked back to my hotel, walked back to the previously-mentioned neighborhood for dinner again. Today walked to stalk the Today Show, w...

There is a persistent and largely accurate belief in life coach circles that says a person must fail to really learn. If that's true then I must be very smart. I've been fired from half the jobs I've had. I've made mistakes big and small. I've failed at many attempts professionally and personally. The positive side is that I have recovered and learned from those failures. I also now know how to monitor myself in a way that warns me when I am in over my head. The warning sirens have sounded in my head several times this month. Ouch! I have also learned what to do when I get close to my limit and I am at that point right now. I do not believe I am in any danger of blowing up or losing my job. I am not really in over my head either. But there are times when I am temporarily overwhelmed by the quantity of what is involved with my job. One step toward turning the situation around is to step back for a minute, change thought patterns, take a walk, anything to sh...

Have you ever wondered why there is such passion and controversy about the English language in the U.S.?   When it comes to groups of languages, English is considered by some linguists as the second hardest language to learn, behind Asian languages.   In this contest, I lump English spoken in different countries together; American English, British English, Jamaican English, etc. are all sort of the same language but are as dissimilar as they are similar.   Spanish spoken in Spain and Spanish spoken in Mexico are sort of the same language but are also quite different.   Asian languages are not the same but to those of us who speak American English, the Asian languages are similar and all are more difficult than English … at least is seems that way.   My point is that we are a nation of immigrants and our most common language is very difficult to learn. One problem is that those of us who speak and write only American English don’t even know how to do it corr...

You know what PMS is, right?   I sometimes use a similar acronym … PFMS.   Pre Full Moon Syndrome.   The behaviors are related. A full moon often brings out the worst in people and it seems like the bad behavior begins a couple of days before a full moon.   I expected the recent super moon to result in even more lunatic behavior (an aside: I love word derivations, such as lunatic, from luna, which is Latin for moon and refers to someone affected by phases of the moon) .   The pre Super Moon should have even led to more craziness.   The irony for me is that today, several days after the full super moon, began and ended with widespread lunatic behavior. I’ll skip most of the details.   Let me just say that drivers were crazy during my morning commute, combined with my uncanny ability to get behind the slowest vehicle on virtually every road I travelled on during my 22-minute ride to work, which today took 35 minutes. My first hour at work was e...

A diner in my new neighborhood has a tiki bar set up outside on Friday and Saturday evenings and a band plays on the plaza next to the bar.   It is a great gathering of the diverse array of residents.   Here are some random observations from last Saturday. - The cover band must really love the Beatles because five of the eight songs I heard were Beatles songs. - A man from Ghana played a percussion set of three songs during the band’s break. - There were plenty of kids dancing around; most appeared to be between three and eight years old.   Some of their parents were dancing too.   Can you really dance to Beatles songs? - There were several women who appeared to be in their 80s sitting on a bench nearby … except for the one who was dancing.   I bet she never heard those songs before but that didn’t stop her.   I also would bet these ladies all live in the senior apartments two block from this bar. - I’ve said before that this is a multi-g...

We all have our patterns and rituals, things we do on a regular basis, personal schedules we keep.   I spent so many years living in the shadow of someone else’s patterns that I lost many of mine or simply gave up having my own.   Never again.   I can flex and compromise but I also will do what I want to do. Do you have patterns and rituals in your life?   Saturday laundry?   Sunday brunch?   Hit the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays?   Laundry on Wednesday evenings?   Wine with dinner?   Church on Sunday? I don’t know if three Saturdays in a row leads to a ritual, but today (a Saturday) I realized I’ve repeated some things on the past three Saturday mornings.   Shower and yogurt to start, walked to Starbucks for coffee, the neighborhood farmer’s market for produce, a local wine store for two bottles of red and creative routing to minimize the number of alleged crosswalks in which I dodged vehicles whose drivers barely realize that stopp...