I'm a retired consult-liaison psychiatrist. I navigated the path in a phased retirement program through the hospital where I was employed. I was fully retired as of June 30, 2020. This blog chronicles my journey.
We took a couple days to get the hang of the side steal juggle. It’s not easy and a lot of the throws look more like sneaky passes than steals. But it’s a lot of fun!
Sena juggles with her arms really reaching for the sky, like she’s getting robbed—which actually fits this complicated crime of a juggling trick.
You have to get a feel for whether you feel more skilled by reaching with your left or right hand when trying to steal your partner’s juggling balls. That dictates on which side you stand. One of the key points is to stand fairly close together.
It helps to toss the balls a little high and close to the juggling pane of glass so that you don’t have to reach too far out in front or you or too far behind you.
We counted the initial throws just to get started. After the first steal, it got too difficult for us to keep track of the count and a free style pattern began to emerge. We traded balls 4 times and Sena was gunning for 5. We almost got there.
Because we were so close together, ball collisions were common, making it important to time throws.
Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, this is a juggling trick in which teamwork is the key. It really helps you develop more skill with the 3-ball cascade.
Well, I’ve been juggling for a year now. I have been trying to learn the shower juggling pattern for 6 months. I can still do only about 3-4 throws. I think it’ll happen eventually.
All of the juggling balls are downstairs on the lower level since all the upstairs doors were repainted. We can’t scuff them up by dropping juggling balls anymore.
We’re working on a new two person juggling trick. It’s a variation on the steal. It’s a side-by-side steal pattern and it’s more difficult to do than the front steal. We have to orchestrate it a little, sort of like the ever-popular Wolfgang Amadeus (“Bud”) Mozart’s Symphony No. 573.8 in J Minor, Op 74: II. Andante Pizzacata Beef Jerky de Bigfoot. I bet you’re wondering how I got to know so much about classical music. Anyway, we’re getting there.
We’re both working so hard on juggling that our shoulders are sore. I do a total of 200 throws of the cascade every day in addition to other tricks. Sena does air juggling at the dinner table. Maybe we should be doing some shoulder mobility exercises.
I’m pretty consistent about wearing safety goggles. Sena won’t wear them. You should comment that she ought to start right now. Thank you.
The 2023 Scouting for Food drive is on! The Hawkeye Area Council announcement just arrived on our doorknob the other day. Pickup day is October 28, 2023. Instructions:
Prepare non-perishable food items (canned or boxed)
Place donations in a clean bag or box
Put them out by your doorstep by 8 AM
Make sure it’s visible from the street
The food drive supports local families in need. All items collected will be distributed locally. If your bag is not picked up by noon, please deliver to local food pantry.
The other day, Sena and I were talking about growing up in Mason City, Iowa. As kids, both of us were the ones who lugged the groceries home. That was back in the days of paper sacks and, for me and her, food stamps. The food stamp program got started during the Great Depression. The goal was to keep people from starving and farmers from going under. In other words, it was kindness.
Food stamps were a sign of hard times and I don’t think that has changed much, except now I think you get a debit card instead of stamps.
I did grocery shopping at Fareway Store, which got its start in Boone, Iowa. Sena did hers at Grupps Food Center.
When it comes to shopping, I followed what my mother put on a list. I got the items and paid with food stamps. I can’t remember ever coming up short. I think I just gave them the cashier the stamps and they took what was needed to cover the price. I walked to Fareway and then I just walked home carrying two or three paper sacks of groceries. It was about a mile trip up and a mile back. My arms were pretty sore when I got home.
On the other hand, Sena came up short on stamps one day. It was embarrassing enough to have to pay using food stamps. But it was awkward as hell when you didn’t have enough to pay. At that time, the cashier was a guy named Bud Grupp. Bud was Carl Grupp’s son. Carl bought the store in the early 1960s.
Bud counted out the stamps and had to tell Sena that there wasn’t enough. She didn’t know what to say. People were lined up behind her and they could probably tell something was wrong. Bud just said “We’ll put you on credit,” and that was that. He sacked all of the groceries like there was nothing out of the ordinary. Sena didn’t know what was done about the balance on credit, whether it was ever settled or it became just a running bill that never got paid off.
Sena also had to walk home carrying bags of groceries. One winter day during a light snowfall, she dropped all of the bags in the snow. They got wet and all torn up. A woman saw it, came out of her house with some bags and helped Sena get the groceries sacked up again. She got home alright.
About a year ago, Sena was in line waiting to check out groceries. An elderly woman was ahead of her and came up short on money to pay for her few items. She fished in her purse and looked embarrassed and pathetic. Sena was thinking about paying for them herself but just before she could, a guy behind her handed the cashier his credit card and told her he would cover it.
Regardless of what you see in the news, kindness is still out there. Our Christmas cactus is already blooming.
Sena and I have been practicing the front steal trick in juggling. It’s another two-person juggling pattern that took us a couple of days to get right—sort of.
We tried it at first by counting the throws (and catches), which helped us sustain the pattern. On the other hand, it was a lot more fun not scripting it that way. You do get a lot of great practice doing the 3-ball cascade.
Neither one of us knew when the smash and grab was coming. We just stole balls whenever we felt like it. When Sena stole the cascade, I clawed it back and vice versa.
Stealing in two-person juggling is not a crime—it’s a hoot.
The latest update on how to get the respiratory viruses vaccines is updated on the CDC website. Highlights:
“f you have insurance, these vaccines should be free to you in most cases.
Adults without health insurance or adults whose insurance doesn’t cover all COVID-19 vaccine costs can get an updated COVID-19 vaccine for free through the Bridge Access Program.
How COVID-19 vaccines are being distributed changed in September 2023 when these products moved to the commercial market, but there is still plenty of vaccine supply.
Flu, COVID-19, and RSV vaccines may be given at the same visit.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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