January 2019 Daily Steppin'

[Elaine Glimme]

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Another year - another fresh start.

"Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential." -- Ellen Goodman



Commit to taking small steps towards your goal. The goal, the steps - that's up to you. We'll cheer you on.

Jason, thanks for the quote.

[Lynx]

Hello Year,

Literally shaking off last year. Really not treated the best the past couple of years, now that I feel back through them. Water on my duck back.

Last year I collected a mixlist of shaking songs:

1. Shattered - Rollin Stones
Look at me, I'm in tatters
I'm shattered
Shattered

2. Shake it out - Florence and the Machine
And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my rope
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat
Because looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Well, why the hell did I let it happen to me?

3. Shake! Otis Redding
(In the midnight hour) Shake!
(When the time's going bad, now) Shake!

4. Breathin - Asylum Street Spankers
Lovin you is easy – It's like learning how to count
Lovin you is easy – just like breathin in & breathin out.

5. Rock Steady - Aretha

While you're moving
Rock steady, rock steady baby.

6.I've got Rhythm - Gene Kelly
Ol man troubles
You won't find him
hanging around my door.

7. Twist and Shout - Beatles

[Had the Royal Command Performance clip but someone called ©opyright!]

Shake it Up Baby, Twist n Shout!

8. Shake my Sillies Out - Raffi

Jump, jump, jump jump my jiggles out, & wiggly my waggles away.

Bonus - amazing TEDx talk on making self-posing challenges to pivot ones life:

Phil Hansen: Embrace the shake

Shake away that ol cruddy 2018!
Lynx

[Elaine Glimme]

Love them! Somebody said that some of the best poetry is in songs. So true! I try to remember to listen to the lyrics.

[Lynx]

A whole week, goners. Oh well, 51 to go.

Keeping more or less active. Just had an offer to run a workshop approved by a local senior club. Already have 4 people eager to attend, so think it should be a lot of fun.

Just learned that the site where I keep a permanent copy of pages I like, Perma.cc, is going to start charging in two weeks. So, did a little research on free alternatives and have two that stand out.

Webrecorder.io & archive.today both have lots to offer. For one, both have unlimited use. Perma had a max of 10 per month. This actually was probably a good thing as I kept myself alert to articles I might want to keep permanent copy of. Anything on Medium I liked, for example.

One of my questions is does the site have it's own URL shortener. Perma.cc does. Archive.today does. Webrecorder does not. Having a built-in shortener saves about three steps: finding a shortener site, entering the page URL, and recording somewhere what the shortened URL is so I can actually us it.

There's another site that's part of the Wayback Machine but it wasn't intuitive how I could find my page again. Eh, that's the whole point.

Can I organize my pages? Archive.today = no/Webrecorder = yes.

My 100 or so pages on Perma are good forever, or so they say. Once I find another one I'll reload them again on the new site so I can keep adding and organizing in one place.

If I start a stand alone spreadsheet I might get away with using all three: entering my Perma.cc and not copying them, and both of the other two.

Or perhaps someone out there has solved this for me and I haven't found them yet.
Lynx

[Elaine Glimme]

Lynx, you're asking questions I never knew existed. I hope someone else has answers for you.

Hoping for a good day today. I have parties to prep for this weekend.

Happy answers to everyone.

[Lynx]

Hi world steppers,

About to enjoy a nap. Taking a nap reads like theft, but from whom?

Books stacks everywhere. My appetite for books grows daily. A writer mentions a book. I get the book. In the book is a comment about another book or author I've never heard of. So I track that one down. Haven't finished the first yet, now have two books.

Now movies stacking up as well. Reading Stella Adler on the American masters. So watching the film version of The Country Girl by Clifford Odets. After that, the 1950's version of William Inge's Come back Little Sheba. That's about 3 hours right there. It's actually a bit of fun, too. Grace Kelly stars in The Country Girl with Big Cosby. At one point, Bing rhapsodizes about his wife (Grace) and says when he met her there was a "nobility" about her. Nice foreshadowing of the destiny of the future Princess Grace of Monaco. She's also a good actress.

Plus, our local government geniuses are shutting down one of our major highways tonite at 10 pm. That's required a lot of time to basically keep reading the hwy is shutting down on 1/11 at 10 PM. Well, 90,000 vehicles a day (probably the work week number) will have to find alternative routes. In reality, there ain't any. Dubbed the Seattle Squeeze, this is just the clogged middle of something to last at least 5 more years.

Nap time before going to a 10:30 theater performance.

(Sometime later) Nap over. 3 hrs! Plus, the production company declined being reviewed. The nerve.

So, still going for the fun as it's pay-what-you-will.

more later.
Lynx

[BarbaraSher]

I don't know whether to feel good or bad about your post, lynx. It's fun to read but now I am worried about all those people trying to get to work. I hope they'll be okay.

[Lynx]

Hi world,

Viaduct - Hwy 99 closing — First day much lighter jams and shorter delays than predicted. So far. 20 or so days to go.

I'm focused on these goals today:
Billable time – finish last hour of a webinar and draft proposal memo to client on how to use information (about 3 hours)

Next Hardest Thing
Tax related - pencil draft totals for state and city business taxes. Looking to see if what's due is higher than $0. If it is the next next hardest thing is listing deductions. I typically don't have to start that list until February.

Complications
Traveling on Thursday. Traffic & shut down's impact on security checks of concern. Already we're calculating how early will we need to leave? I'm also thinking I'll need more in-travel snacks and another book to read.

Out there
Watching the Parliament debates on Brexit. What a mess.

Happy stepping through the flowers and the rest,

Lynx

[Elaine Glimme]

I'm hoping for a productive hour and then bed. I guess I can blame it on caffeine withdrawal - I spent the whole day doing almost nothing. I did do some editing in my head - a new take on a chapter that is interesting but a tad unbelievable the way I have it now. But it's easy to see wonderful things in my head. it's a lot harder to turn these ideas into words. Here goes nothing.

[BarbaraSher]

Go for it, Elaine! We're here cheering you on!

[Elaine Glimme]

Thanks for the cheering. I did turn the ideas in my head into something that reads well, so I guess your cheering worked. Today looks like another good day - I took a break for a mini-run and now it's back to the good stuff.

Barbara, it's so great to get a post from you. I hope you know that you're one of my heroes.

[Lynx]

Zoom goes January!

Back a few days from a trip to visit my mom in Atlanta. Turned out well enough. I wasn't at peak health, and it takes a lot of psychic energy to stay within bounds of manners and sociability even when I feel great. Managed it.

One thing in particular I nailed. My mom, being a Southern lady, prefers that men like me or my brother open cars and building doors for her. I went to college during feminism wave in the Northeast in 1970. Do I have to spell out how I was un-trained to open a woman's door?

Anyway, I made up my mind that I would open the doors without being reminded too much. Result: I went 6 for 6, so 100%.

I also wanted to get around Atlanta more on my own to learn how the transit system and streets worked. Did that, too.

And, I wanted to return to the ongoing discussion with my mom about end of life wishes (I used the 5 Wishes book). It was hard to get rolling, but once begun it keep going. Did that, three.

Overall, about 78%. Had I had better health and the weather hadn't dropped to 20° with us staying in a thin-walled Airbnb with broken heating (for 2 days) it might have nudged my score over 90.

Lynx

[Elaine Glimme]

Yay, Lynx,
I chuckle over your door-opening stories.

Me - just hip hopping along one step at a time. The writing is bogged down in I-don't-know-how-do-this.

Today is lot of driving - memorial service for a friend - retirement party - lot of cleaning. Haven't pooped out yet.

Happy steppin'

[Elaine Glimme]

I chuckle over the door opening stories because -

My dad had been living in Thailand for many years and was visiting in New York. He was waiting for an elevator, and when it came, he made a gesture with his hand indicating that a lady standing next to him should enter first. She gave him a sneer that could kill, looked him over from head to foot to head to foot. And told him (I leave it to you to imagine her tone of voice.) YOU go first!

[Lynx]

Very early on the 28th.

I luv your story, but it saddens me, to Somehow our non-discussed customs have crumbled to instant hostility, rather than many of the other alternatives. Like, say humor ... "Let's flip a coin ... "

Last years I dropped a relationship with someone I once thought a friend. One night at an event I saw her and forgetting she was touch adverse approached with arms wide for a hug. She moved to protect herself and I thought she might strike me !! So I grabbed her wrists to protect myself. Too late I recalled she wasn't a hugger (I am). My grabbing her wrists she coded as intentional rather than a misunderstanding and "confronted" me briefly after the event. When she mentioned it everything flashed clear in my mind where the mismatch happened. Without a video with stop-action close-ups I have no way to restore myself into her good graces. So I'm not even going to try. Sigh.

With #MeToo getting such high profile putting both men and women on High Alert, I guess it's only a matter of time before papers feature pieces on the death of the art of flirting. Here's one from 2013!

Lynx