Mostly Muppets

I think my earliest memory of a piece of media that resonated with me emotionally is Jim Croce’s “Time In A Bottle” on The Muppet Show. Now this episode originally aired October 10, 1977 just before my 1st birthday so I must’ve seen it in re-runs. This is how I was exposed to The Muppet Show as a kid, since we didn’t have cable when we lived in Michigan. We got the big 3 network affiliates, PBS,…

From Kottke I learned that Lego is launching Muppets minifigs in May! Muppets Lego Minifigs I haven’t built anything with Lego in a very long time but I’d buy some minifigs* for a little home office desk display. Also, here’s my list of Muppets characters for the second release (should there be one): Beauregard Dr. Teeth Floyd PepperLew ZealandPepe the King PrawnRizzo the RatSam the…

Yogi (And Not The Bear)

I would never be mistaken for a flexible person. Being tall (6’ 3”) I’m more often referred to as lanky or rangy, never flexible. But age takes a toll on all of us and during the pandemic, but especially the last fee months as my 45th birthday approached, I’ve incorporated more yoga into my weekly exercise routine. I’ve pretty much stopped running. I have a bad bunion on my left big toe that…

New Home Screen, New Me?

One of the largest changes I’ve made during quarantine relates to my phone. I’ve always been an iPhone guy, and that hasn’t changed, but I’m trying to take advantage of widgets in iOS to help me become a better version of myself. This could mean being more mindful (and/or meditating more), tracking my mood, keeping a journal, and reading more often. I do all of my fitness tracking via Apple…

I’ve written a few blog posts during quarantine cataloging the weekend walks (and their corresponding pictures) I’ve taken these past 7 months or so. This time around I took a very leisurely stroll in the rain on Saturday and then I did a combo walk/run on Sunday when the weather was better.

I’ve broken up the pictures into two galleries but I find them hopeful. The recurring theme is that…

I’m a very difficult person to live with. I can be sullen and withdrawn and maudlin and, even when I’m doing the dishes or cooking dinner and you try to talk to me, I can be miles away – years away – thinking about an ancient conversation I wish had gone differently or idealizing a future that requires zero effort for me to fix.

In short (too late) I’m a magical thinker who tends to give too…

Related to some thoughts I’ve been having – both recently and as part of a longer exploration for a book I’m half heartedly and haphazardly writing – a poem fragment sprang into my brain yesterday.

Here’s what it became after some refinement last night:

Cicadas Late Summer Sunday stroll amidst cicada song I’m struck Maybe these are sirens That I’ve misheard as wilderness wallpaper And I wonder

My most recent blog post was about a new routine – at the time – of taking a walk on Sunday afternoons to find some time & space for myself, to listen to an audiobook, podcast, or meditation, and to take some pictures of the natural world.

For pretty much the majority of the Summer I’ve kept the same schedule. This weekend I actually took two walks – both about 5 miles – to soak up the sun and…

In times when my mind is weak I’ll do something physical in an attempt to reboot the connection between my mental processes – thoughts & emotions – and my body.

Today I took a 2 hour walk in the afternoon sunshine to feel the light and the shade. To make sense of the turmoil I felt inside and process the discord of the world and try to make it all rhyme somehow.

I successfully finished…

Maybe this is what bipolar disorder is like. Some days are manic, the others depressive.

The sun was shining yesterday and I took a long bike ride but all I could think about were worries of infection, my eyes peeled while I rode to ensure no one got closer than 10 feet to my imaginary bubble nor I to theirs. I tried to exhaust my body to match my emotional state, beating the anxiety out of…

At the start of 2020 I reached out to a friend and former coworker to ask about getting lunch sometime soon. The idea was borne simply out of a desire to talk to him in person after so much time apart. We’d had an ill-fated Fall where we’d each scheduled and then cancelled on numerous attempts, so a new year provided a perfect re-starting point.

I’m not even close to the first person to use…

New Blog Post: Remembrance

This morning I drove with the two younger girls to a veterinary hospital that specializes in exotic pets. One of our three rats, Tulip, (yes, we have pet rats) had, over the course of the past few months, developed a large tumor that impeded her ability to move around much. After much discussion and calling around, we decided to euthanize her as surgery was both expensive and no guarantee that…

A blog post about my Dad who has dealt with a lot over the last 12 months.

A few weeks ago, during my seemingly annual crisis of confidence, I deactivated Facebook & Instagram. I also changed my Twitter avatar to the wound vacuum that sat at the end of my Dad’s hospital bed back in May.

I’m including it here for folks to ogle:

The eagle-eyed among you should be able to clearly read the word “stump” written in Sharpie on the device. It’s written there because a) my dad…

Is there an open web any more? If you’re not reading this on Facebook or from a Tweet or a “link in bio” on Instagram does it even exist? Is using an increasingly unwieldy framework like WordPress useful anymore?

I’m about at the point I’d like to either a) move to a free WordPress.com subdomain just to keep these archives, b) start over with flat HTML that I hand-edit, or c) delete the whole…

Sometimes you just want to listen to something familiar to make it through your day.

I feel the strongest tug at nostalgia and remembrance today, but that may be due to abandoning FB/IG the day before my birthday.

C’est la vie!

Here, then, are the tunes rolling around in my head, unrolled onto the blog. Please enjoy them in the spirit in which they are offered.