Month: October 2023

Geezer Level One Leg Stand Juggling

This is just a suggestion for whoever’s on the rules committee for juggling world records. Recall that a couple of young guys grabbed world records for longest time juggling the 3-ball cascade while standing on leg.

The current world record is a little over 22 minutes. Wow!

I think there needs to be a new category—for older persons like me. I can tell you I can’t get past a few throws while juggling the cascade on one leg.

I’ve made a short YouTube on the kinds of allowances the world juggling records judges might consider for geezers.

I might have a ghost of a chance to set a world record in my age group if the officials decide they like my idea.

Drain Grates Screwed!

Well, early this morning all the drain grates were screwed down tight. We never heard the workers. The rocks we had set on top of them were all piled up neatly on our back yard patio.

Any critter that tries to yank those off will get a hernia. If those grates come off again, we’ll have to call the FBI and report we have an X-File for them.

Sena and Jim Do Two Person Juggling Again!

Against all odds, Sena and I did what looked impossible the other day—Two Person 5 ball 2 Count Asynchronous Juggling. For some reason that was harder to learn than the first two person juggling trick we learned.

You can find only a stick figure GIF of how the trick is done on the web. It’s harder than it looks. It took us about 3 hours to get it right. It’s hard to appreciate how it’s done in a YouTube when the jugglers are shown from a side view. On the other hand, the balls fly in every direction and moving the camera closer might have resulted in knocking over the tripod.

It’s not a competition, even thought it reminds you of a table tennis match. You have to put the ball where you partner can catch it. The pattern is similar to the cascade in that on count 1 you throw a ball from one hand to the other and on the two count you pass a ball to your partner. The count is very important.

It’s very important to lob the balls up fairly high. This gives you enough time to catch what’s flying at you.

It’s great exercise. You can see why I wear safety goggles.

Butch Haircut Fixes the Bozo Effect

Sena gave me a butch haircut the other day. What led up to that?

About a month ago, I got a haircut at a local shop. Usually Sena cuts my hair (she’s been doing it for decades), but I occasionally go out for a haircut. I was pretty impressed with the guy who asked me if I was getting the bozo effect.

I immediately knew what he meant. I’m going bald on top and Sena sometimes may not cut the sides a little shorter to offset that—which I didn’t consider until the barber mentioned that bozo thing.

You might not know about the bozo effect unless you’re old enough to remember Bozo the clown. If you ever find a picture of him, he’s bald on top and has big, bright orange wings of hair sticking out from the sides of his head. When I was a kid, I got to sit in the studio audience once to watch his show. I remember there was a TV cartoon show segment which I couldn’t see because the TV set was way too small from where I sat in the bleachers. That was the technology back then.

Anyway, I was really happy with the haircut the guy at the shop gave me. It was the first time in my life I ever gave a tip to a hair stylist or barber.

It was time for another haircut and I had decided that I was going to get my haircuts at the shop. I tried to get an appointment at the same place. I found out the hard way that you can’t telephone to schedule appointments, you’re not entitled to see the same stylist every time, and the on-line check in system was out of order at both of the two shops in town. The wait time was 2 hours. The waiting areas were the size of many walk-in closets.

Sena was very sure that she could do just as good a job, though. She got a new hair cutting kit with all the different colored clipper guards and followed the instructions. She was scared at first and I was a little nervous. As it turns out, she gave me a great butch cut, which I haven’t had since I was old enough to watch Bozo the Clown.

I think it looks pretty good.

The Fox Gets Breakfast

We again caught sight of the fox. It was hunting for breakfast, and this time it caught a mouthful of—mouse or mole, but whatever it was the hunter gulped it down in a hurry.

It got pretty close to our neighbor’s fence while circling the outlot. Just like the tabby cat, it switches its tail when it’s about to catch a meal.

We think this is a red fox rather than a gray, but we’re not naturalists. The web reference I read says both red and gray foxes don’t chew their food, but swallow it whole, which is what this one did.

Foxes walk on their toes (called digitigrade), which is probably why I thought this one had a funny-looking gait. I thought at first it was lame when it was walking in the tall grass.

Door Painters Remembered Everything But The 3 Legged Pig Joke!

The door painters remembered everything but the 3-legged pig joke yesterday. But they remembered everything else. They worked pretty hard getting the doors back on the hinges.

One mystifying thing was that they rehung all the newly repainted doors without leaving so much as a smudge on them. They were spotless. We don’t know how they did it.

Anyway, the 3-legged pig joke is below:

One day a man drove by a farm and saw a three-legged pig. The man went up to the farmer and said, “Excuse me, but why does that pig only have 3 legs?”

“Well,” said the farmer, “that pig is very special. One time my wife was cooking something she stepped out of the kitchen and it caught on fire. No one in the house knew about it but the pig, and he saved me, my wife, and my 2 kids.”

“That’s amazing!” said the man, but why does the pig only have three legs?”

“Well, there was that time the pig saw a big storm coming and we didn’t. The pig ran into the house and dragged us out to the storm cellar. If it weren’t for that pig we would all be dead.”

“But still, that doesn’t explain why the pig only has 3 legs.”

“And I remember the time my youngest son was stuck up a tree, but I was too far away to hear his cries for help. The pig ran to me and led me to where he was.”

“Well, that is a miracle, but how come that pig only has 3 legs?” the man said quite annoyed at this point.

“Well,” said the farmer, “with a pig that special… you have to eat ’em real slow.”

Hey, I don’t write these jokes. That one came from a web site called Funny English Jokes.

Air Purifier Went to Code Green and More Odds and Ends

Just some odds and ends here today. Our new RENPHO Air Purifier went to Green Air Quality yesterday around lunchtime. It’s the first time since we got it that it changed. Green still means “good” air quality. Blue is “very good.” Orange is bad, red is “polluted,” and magenta is “evacuate now!” The fan speed increases a little between air quality indicators. It went back to Blue in about 20 minutes. We’re not sure what made it switch. I would make a comment about Sena cooking tater tots for lunch to what you might call Black quality, but then I would have to leave town.

I saw a new juggling trick that has attracted some jugglers to post new world records. Since I like to brag about being able to stand on one leg for a minute, I can tell you there are world records posted for longest time juggling the cascade while standing on one leg. There are two records. The first one was set in 2017 by a young man who did it for almost 11 minutes. Then, in April of 2023, another even younger kid did it for over 22 minutes.

I’m thinking there is a need for an “Old Guy Juggler” category so that I could set a new world record for juggling while standing on one leg for 4 or 5 throws. I’m sort of practicing.

Sena and I are trying to learn a new 2-person 5 ball juggling trick. For some reason, it’s a lot tougher than we thought it would be. Slow progress. I’ll keep you posted.

Our freshly repainted doors are supposed to be delivered today by a couple of painters. I’m wondering if I’ll hear the three-legged pig joke from one of them. How about a painter joke?

So, the painters finished painting my house and hand me the bill. I notice that by the paint, it says $0. I say, “You guys did such a nice job, why didn’t you charge me for the paint?” The head painter says, “Don’t worry about the paint, it’s on the house.”

Day of The Fox Hunt

Yesterday, Sena called me to the window in the sun room to see the “tabby cat.” When I got there, it looked a lot more like a fox. It was hunting in the outlot and it may have caught a rodent. It also seemed to be flea bitten.

When we first moved in to this house a few years ago, I saw a fox moving her kits from the outlot way off north somewhere, probably to another part of the woods. I guess she didn’t like the neighborhood. It was beginning to get a bit noisy from all the construction on the new neighborhood.

This was not the same fox. It looked quite at home.

CDC Update on Respiratory Viruses and the Covid-19 Vaccine

CDC posted an update on Covid-19 vaccination on October 13, 2023. In brief, the salient points:

They save lives and prevent hospitalizations.

The vaccines work.

The side effects are mild or moderate.

Scientific evidence supports the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

They don’t make you magnetic and they don’t have microchips to track your movements. We’re not living in an X-File episode.

Plant Based Cheese Made with Artificial Intelligence Is Only The Beginning!

We tasted plant-based cheese by Kraft yesterday. Sena bought it at Hy-Vee the other day. It’s actually not bad. The company is called Kraft NotCo. They make Not Cheese. It’s made with chickpeas, which are the same thing as garbanzo beans. You can also buy plant-based mayo, called Not Mayo. I don’t know if it’s made with chickpeas.

Sena could have got Not Mayo; instead, she got Miracle Whip—a miracle by itself because she likes “real” mayo.

What’s really interesting about these products is how they’re made. On the Kraft Heinz NotCo website, you’ll find a description of these products in the About section entitled “Not Your Average Joint Venture.” One line is thought-provoking:

“Our partnership reimagines the brands you love from Kraft Heinz using proprietary AI from NotCo to give you the plant-based version of your favorite foods that deliver on taste and performance.”

I’m assuming that AI stands for Artificial Intelligence (not “Absolutely Inedible”). So, how did Artificial Intelligence get involved? What does the AI actually do? Does it come up with the recipes for Not Foods? Are tiny bits of genetic code and nanobots involved?

Does this mean we’ll become enslaved by AI powered men in black who conspire with extraterrestrials to collect human embryos to create the giant Cheese Bots who take over the earth making it a gigantic assembly line to make smartphones that will make it easier to butt dial your congress persons to demand more laws making Home Owners Associations covenants mandatory and violators punishable by the giant garbage goblin in the well-known X-Files documentary “Arcadia”?

No; no, it does not mean that. You can safely eat AI manufactured chickpea products without fear of being transformed into an Extraterrestrial-Robot-Not Cheese hybrid super soldier marching on Washington, D.C. to force feed congress persons with Braunschweiger and Not Cheese Sandwiches with Not Mayo on Not Wheat Bread and Not Lemonade.

I kind of like Not Cheese and I don’t feel any different.