2018: Day 20

An old dog that I see at times on my daily walks. It is the twentieth day of the New Year and the say that you can't teach on old dog new tricks. Maybe the old dog is just tired of trying to learn and just wants to be left alone, but occasionally petted. Never the less I consider myself to be tbe eternal student. I want to learn more of this glorious world, endless space, wondrous people and amazing cultures. And that is something that I find to be totally baffling. All the science naysayers that have popped up in the years of growing social media. Flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, creationists, politcians, people who don't take the science that is right before them. Of course if you don't believe in something you should challenge it, put in the work to prove it. All science is theory. We are built on a history of scientific theory. All science goes through many levels of peer reviews to prove if it is right or wrong. 2+2=4 is still basically a theory. It is just that no one has disproven it...

2018: Day 19

The sun had just gone down while I was staying at Pismo Beach a few years ago when I came back from over seas.

Day 19, a cold and rainy day. Man I do love this weather, hehe. I have been going over my previous days and finding many typos. I am not one for typos or double words and I have caught many of them. Sigh. The problem is I am doing most of it on my phone when I stop at the coffee shop on my walks. My phone is old and it doesn’t have spell check and therefore, typos. I am sorry. Come to think of it do phones come with spell check?

It goes and makes me think of why I am doing this. I am doing this for many reasons. The first and foremost is that I am doing it to for the repetition. I have been writing more and more, but not constantly, day-to-day. I want to get used writing, even if it is for this crappy blog I am doing. Now I will not get every day, but I will try my damnest to do. Another reason I am doing this is for my writing. To try to put down and in flowery words, to use words that I have would not use in a fortnight. Hehe, like fortnight. Reason the third, because of the strokes I have suffered. I really don't want any others to plague me, for you never know if the next one will be the one to put you away permanently. I have had the good fortune to not to so far. So I try to write, and I warch how I write, looking for any evidence of a stroke coming my way. Número veir... hmm. I had four or five reasons but I have forgotten them. Well rats...

2018: Day 18

The month is fast coming to an end.  It is the 18th day of the New Year.  It is over half way done, much like I am in years.  Over half way done.  Now I am not one for bucket lists, the things you would like to do before you die.  To me it was a reminder of what you couldn't do because of whatever reason.  There are so many people out there who will just say that, that is an excuse.  I call it for what it is: the realities of life.  Some people are lucky in the fact that they can do whatever they want.

As for bucket lists, I keep mine rather small to avoid the inevitable disappointments that they will occur.  Hiking the Appalachian Trail, travelling to all the National Parks, to wake up in the morning with the woman I love.  And oh, there is a Japanese wrestler who people say I look like, I wanna meet him.  Small things that I  can accomplish, that I can look back and say, "good job, I did it."

There is something that I want to add to the list.  Doing the Rim-to-Rim Hike in the Grand Canyon.  It is something that I have wanted to do now ever since I have gone to the Grand Canyon in 2015.  It is something I would like to do by the end of this year.  It is a strenuous, twenty-odd mile hike down one rim, across the canyon floor and up the other side.  Crossing the canyon is not that hard.  Going down isn't that hard.  Coming up the five-thousand plus feet... that is hard.  But so is the twenty-two hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail, and I am looking forward to that.

2018: Day 17

Day 17 of the New Year. I remember when I first left for Japan all by myself around three years ago. It was the first time I have left the United States in twenty years and I was sick to my stomach. I wasn't ill, I was unsure of myself and this trip I was going on. Like I said, I was going by myself. I couldn't help but to think of my life until then. I have tried to convince my lady friend to go with me, but she had just started a new job. My parents were dead as my mother had just died a year before. My brother had just sold his house so the place I was staying in was no more. I had nothing, really to anchor me here. So, the last day in August, 2014, after a game convention, I boarded a plane and left. 

Still, I was sick to my stomach. I could sleep on the long trip as I looked out the window at the clouds below that opened up into the vast ocean, like it would swallow me whole and not even notice. However the coastline came into view and at that moment, all my fear and trepidation about going to Japan, about what I will see, who I will meet, vanished. I knew then that it was going to be all right. That no matter what would befall me, that this wasn't the end of my travels, it was the beginning of them.

2018: Day 16

Azaleas at the Huntington Botanical Garden. A peaceful picture to show the undercurrent of anger that used to rule my life. Day 16 of the New Year. I've been walking to the coffee shop pretty much every day now thinking of what to write every day. I get some fresh air and some exercise, so win-win. I think, much like I always do and usually I can think of something to write. Not so much today. I have been thinking of how my intelligence has been stunted by my strokes. People tell me that a stroke does not affect overall intelligence but I find that it does. I cannot recall and access the information quickly or at all. That has got to affect intelligence, right? I used to be very smart, I have read all sort of books and could recall all manner of odd or esoteric information. Now, not so much. The problem is that I was lazy smart. I never really applied myself and because of that I have wasted that part of my life that was, I guess formative in my life.
My strokes have done something good for me. I do not get that angry any more. I used to have a great anger problem, and my mother talked to me about it one day toward the end of my shop. I have always known I have had a problem but that crystallized it. It didn't end it right then and there but I recognized the problem. I find that when I had my first stroke several years later, that I just don't get that angry any more. Well that is a lie. I do get angry at the a-holes that speed up to pass me but then end up going slower than me once they get in my lane. Yea gods, it is infuriating. Hehe. I get upset and sad; my empathy has gone through the roof but I rarely get angry anymore. One thing about that time was that I am glad that I was not hurt anybody. I learned from a young age that I was strong and could easily hurt people. It got more evident as I got older and learned a variety of martial arts. At least I had the self control not to strike anyone, that no one got me so blindingly angry to make me attack them. There just isn't time for it any more as I have hit the middle of my years. There is so much more that I want to do and not that much time left...

2018:Day 15

The three people that stayed in my campsite at Yosemite. 

It is day 15 of the New Year and I have come to the realization that I like to have a house full of people, even if I dont deal with them a lot. But it could be the size of the house. I mean it is like some 3000 square feet split between three floors. We are social creatures after all. When I was young, so many year ago, my father picked up the game of Dungeons & Dragons. We first plyed it at the college he was attending at the time in Pennsylvania back in the 70s, via the GI Bill. Eventually the games moved into the rambling farmhouse we had. The thing was, that for like thee or four years there was always people at our house. I really liked that feeling and that is one of the reasons why I opened my game store back in the day. The people. I have made some excellent friends because of that. Even though the shop has been closed since the start of the millennium I have always searched for that lost feeling of home. For example when I went to Yosemite a few years back, I just went with no plans, no reservations. I had to sign up for the first-come, first-served at the Rangers hut. For both days I have gotten a campsite and because all I had was my little Prius, and the sites can hold two cars and six people, I invited another car to stay at my camp.

We are all social creatures. Keep that in mind... 

2018: Day 14

Day 14 and it is a rather nice day, though clouds in the distance do threaten it.  It is supposed to rain tomorrow… mmm, I like the rain.  I like the clear and sunny days too, but I really like the rain.  I am getting a little too comfortable coming to this coffee house just about every day.  Sure I walk it, it is a good 4000 steps there and back, that is why I like it here.  It is pretty much the only coffee house in the distance that I could walk too that has a seating area inside.  I guess I am getting to be too complacent.  Bad!  Bad!  Bad!

I noticed two dead bird when I walked here.  The third bird was atop the powerline.  I hope that it isn't the beginnings of a new superbug that affects the birds first…