Saturday, January 07, 2012

Dr. Qunatum...

01/07/2012

On the plane while returning home from our sojourn to the Orange Bowl I was enamored with Dr. Fred Alan Wolf’s book “Dr. Quantum’s Little Book of Big ideas,” an inspirational read explain “where science meets spirit.”

I cannot pinpoint the exact time I became interested in Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics, but I surely know I am fascinated by them.  Photons, neutrons, electrons, atomic particles and all that tiny stuff these physicists get into is way over my head, I can barely do simple mathematical equations.  These quantum dudes are thinkers, real thinkers, unlike me who gets hung up early with insignificant the details (or ignores them). 

Dr. Wolf, in the 2004 movie “What the Bleep Do We Know,” spoke of the strange behavior of atomic particles and of how while observing atomic particles they might disappear and then reappear in a different position.  His question was, “Where do they go?” He says of “time” everything that has ever happened, is happening and will happen is occurring at this very moment.  In the book he explains we live in memory, explaining by the time our brain processes what our eyes see and our ears hear the event is over and our brains reconstruct what it thinks we viewed and heard.  He discusses connectivity, something Neale Donald Walsch talks about in “Conversations with God,” and it is something I so totally believe.  We are all inexorably connected; we are one spirit, or Walsch notes, “individuations of the one soul, the Soul of God.”

Ponder this factoid for a moment: every atom that exists today has existed in some form since the beginning of time.  “Life is a journey. It’s a roundtrip.  We end up where we began” says Dr. Wolf.  He goes on to say, “There is no such thing as either a birth or a death.  They both are temporary markings having to deal with the illusion that we are each a body.  We can mark our bodies as having a birth and a death, but the ‘I’ has never been born and will never die.”

He speaks of parallel universes, something the thought of intrigues the hell out of me.  This gets into the area of quantum mechanics which explains every event has many outcome possibilites.  Dr. Wolf believes we may drift from one parallel universe to another when we dream.  I know I have been in some interesting universes from time to time, and awakened (drifted back to this one) at some inconvenient moments – bummer. “As fantastic as it may sound, the parallel universe theory posits that there exists, as if on a different but parallel layer, another world, a parallel universe, a duplicate copy, slightly different and yet the same as this one.  And not just two parallel worlds, but three, four and even more – no less than an infinite number of them make up a universe of universes.  In each of these universes, you, I, and all others live, have lived, will live, will have ever lived, are alive.” Don’t you just love it?

I have to leave you now; I have had enough of this stuff.  I didn’t write this yet and I wrote it yesterday or was it last week?  At the key stroke of the last tittle and am out of here and out there somewhere into the great beyond.  Later, dudes!

And that is all I have to say about that…

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Details and Assumptions...

01/04/2012

The Nancy and I are down here in Miami to attend the Orange Bowl, a trip we decided to make on a whim.  The planning and details left up to yours truly, you know, the detail guy.
I simply am not good at details, never have been, it is just is not my nature, and takes way too much time.  I cannot get bogged down in the minutia, I must keep moving.  This generally creates issues for me and I am too old to change, I think.

We made the decision to attend the Orange Bowl when West Virginia University was selected as one of the participating teams.  The Nancy and I had season tickets this year, made it to five home games, and decided this might be our last opportunity (financially) to see a real live bowl game.  So here we are.  But, where are we?

One would surmise when making plans to attend The Orange Bowl to be played in Miami, Florida – assuming one is not a complete screw up – that the Orange Bowl would be played at the stadium of the same name.  Makes complete sense, right?

I checked Google and got the address of the stadium, researched hotels nearby, determined our best airfares would be on Southwest flying into Ft. Lauderdale (a mere 24-mile drive to the hotel) and booked it, Dano.  I secured the hotel and a rental car.  The Nancy ordered our game tickets.  We were set to go.

We arrived at our destination yesterday at 3pm.  We have a very nice room on the 12th floor of the Miami Hilton, a corner room with a tremendous view of the ocean and downtown Miami.  Just to the west I can easily see the Orange Bowl Stadium about 2.3 miles away.

Details, assumptions?  Last night, while enjoying a couple of hundred brewskies at the hotel bar, talking with a Clemson fan, we learned, much to our surprise, the Orange Bowl is not being staged at the Orange Bowl in Miami but rather at the Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, which is a scant 15-mile drive back toward Ft. Lauderdale.  Say what?

Let’s analyze this a little?  I am here in Miami staying in a hotel where I will make a total 30-mile round trip to see the 2012 Orange Bowl being played at the Sun Life near Ft. Lauderdale. Wonderful!  I could have stayed at a hotel near the Sun Bowl that is probably less expensive and only five or six miles from the airport in Ft. Lauderdale, taken cabs instead of a rental car, but, no!  Instead, I will get to drive back to Miami tonight after midnight and arise tomorrow and drive 25 miles to Ft. Lauderdale to catch our flight home.  Brilliant!  Details, details, details.

Perhaps a New Year’s Resolution is in order for me to get more detail oriented, but then in the whole of my life I have never been a detail man.  Why change now?  I subscribe to the tangent of Murphy’s Law that says, “There is never enough time to do it right, but always time to do it over,” and it has served me well.

And that is all I have to say about that…

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Defying Gravity...

12/31/2011

A song in the play “Wicked” is entitled ”Defying Gravity.” A couple of weeks ago The Nancy and I were traveling back to The Farm from a foray into Winchester, Virginia and enjoyed listening to the soundtrack from the play.  The song “Defying Gravity” resonated and got me to thinking about my own gravity defying life.

I am not into self-aggrandizement and am really not comfortable in settings where people say nice things about me – it’s not my style.  I am just a guy who knows the Universal Presence some of us refer to as God has smiled upon me all of my life, and I haven’t a clue as to why.  Bloviating is not my style, so what I am about to write is not a boast but moreover a point of fact.

I recently retired from a job that provided me with six-figure income for many years, and now a handsome pension that will allow me to live a comfortably yet conservative life.  This is truly amazing to me in so many ways.  I have to be honest and own up to being a not-so-bright kid from a blue-collar neighborhood in Baltimore with a mere twenty-two disjointed college credits, and one who quite frankly made it through life with an innate ability for bullshit.  I know I didn’t make it on my looks, but nonetheless I made it.

This begs the question, why?  I said earlier I haven’t a clue as to why, but I do know exactly why.  In my rapidly atrophying medulla oblongata I inadvertently created my life without ever realizing it.  I knew early on I would never make it in this world using my hands – frankly, I have no mechanical ability at all: well, maybe a tad, but a small tad at that.  Being the lazy ass that I am, I knew I would never make it via an education.  I hated school and was determined to do as little as I needed to get through it.  The only reason I have twenty-two college credits is because I needed to take some courses to get my GI Bill money ($325.00 a month) at a time when I needed the mulla.

I have written many times before about being the consummate underachiever.  If awards were given in this category I would have received top honors.  I mastered the art of it, but somewhere deep within me there was a plan, a course, a path that led me to a management position and a rewarding 28-year career.  I defied gravity while so many others of my ilk did not. 

My granddaughter coined the phrase “The Best Day Ever.” It is one The Nancy and I have adopted and declare every morning.  This is going to be The Best Day Ever!  This has been The Best Life Ever!

I think deep within my soul I have always thought of each day this way, though never voiced it, never realized I was declaring it.  It took a four-year old to put it in perspective for me.  I was successful in life because of my attitude toward it.  My glass has always been full to the brim, and never just halfway of anything.

And that is all I have to say about that…

Friday, December 30, 2011

Five Weeks of Retirement Bliss...

12/30/2011

Consider this a status update on my retirement.  Retirement ain’t cracked up to be what everyone has told me it is to be.  I am not complaining, and no “buts” are included in this statement.

You may have heard this before elsewhere or read it here at one time or another.  Someone once said if the word “but” is used in a sentence, everything prior to the “but” is a lie.  Example: “I hate to bother you, but…” Admit it, we have all done it.  But in this retirement thing, I am not complaining.

Now here come my non-complaints.  Firstly, I have remained busy these five weeks, though at times I sit and wonder what to do next.  There seems always to be something to be done – little chores, little projects, much of what I have put off forever.  But, there are times when I feel I am not doing anything constructive.  Make work is more like what I am up to these days.  I do not have any plans to change what I am doing or how I am going about my present life.

I do not have a Bucket List and don’t plan on developing one.  There are things I want to do and am delighting myself in my rampant procrastination.  I suppose the greatest thing about retirement is the mere fact I do not have to do anything at all…ever.  Life is still full of possibilities and choices, and I have complete control over the choices I make.

If there is any real disappointment at all it is the issue I am having with sleeping beyond 5:30.  I would really like to be able to sleep and wake up bathed in sunlight.  In the past ten years I bet I could almost count on my fingers the number of days I have awakened to daylight.  Believe me, it sucks, but I ain’t complaining, just saying.

Okay, okay!  I am complaining, so sue me!  Some years back I made the decision to accept full responsibility for what happens to me in my life.  This is the bed I have created for myself, and though I may not be able to sleep until sunrise I am loving life and loving the fact I have reached an age wherein I can bullshit to my heart’s desire and it simply does not matter.

Bullshit is not complaining and bullshit isn’t lying.  It’s just bullshit, and if I must say so myself I am getting better at it every day.

And that is all I have to say about that…