Tag: humor

Gearing Up for Juggling!

Well, Sena and I have been practicing the 2-person 6 ball pass juggling trick. It’s a trick just to get synchronized. Timing is everything—and so is aim.

Sena and I both have a tendency to throw balls too high, too low, high and outside, etc. It’s Sena’s low line drive pitch I’m worried about mainly. Safety goggles are mandatory, but I’m starting to worry about other parts of my anatomy. These are the parts which call for groin armor.

In fact, why not just go all out and get a suit of armor? It might be harder to move around—but at least I’d be protected.

Sena ordered some new juggling balls. Unfortunately, none of them are soft. In fact, she ordered another set of 3 plastic glow balls, in addition to the set we already have. They’re big. They could hurt me.

And they will have an evil glow when they do. Don’t send me your prayers; get well cards are fine.

Darned Rhinorrhea Interrupting People

I’ve been having a runny nose recently that is intermittent and often related to eating hot foods. I have to get up from the dinner table and blow my nose, especially if we’re having hot soups or chili. I’ve been making fun of it, saying it’s caused by the nasal hair condensation index. You could also refer to it as Darned Rhinorrhea Interrupting People (DRIP). I looked it up on the internet and getting a runny nose is pretty common when eating and after other activities. It can happen just from getting older.

It turns out that there is a connection to eating certain kinds of hot and spicy foods called gustatory rhinitis. I never had this problem until the past month or so.

Recently, I get this even while juggling. And there is something called exercise induced rhinitis. It’s been known for over a hundred years.

I always notice I have a drippy nose when I come in the house after shoveling snow. It’s just snow melting from my nose hairs.

But I never got a runny nose from eating chili until a month or so ago.

And I found out there’s this thing called geriatric rhinitis. It can be caused by a number of things like (hold on to your tissue!) gustatory rhinitis. There are a number of other common causes including allergies, certain medications, and extraterrestrial abduction. Those darned ETs are forever sticking implants in peoples’ noses. There is a tendency to believe geriatric rhinitis needs some kind of specific treatment, such as anticholinergic sprays, immunotherapy, and a nasal cork stopper implantation procedure under general anesthesia in the outpatient Ear, Nose, and Throat surgery center. It costs only $50,000 per nostril (not covered by most insurance). ENT surgeons use a device with an Artificial Intelligence module, which can detect the difference between your nose and your eye with 50% accuracy.

Jokes aside (for a fraction of a second), I’ll admit a thought crossed my mind (an infrequent event) that I might have a cerebrospinal fluid leak, which is caused by a tear in the meninges into the sinuses and nasal passages. The fluid is thin and clear. Nasal sprays don’t stop it and you should seek medical attention if you can’t remember your name or find chunks of cerebral cortex in your Kleenex.

This blog post does not constitute medical advice and if you have DRIP, you should contact your nearest Voodoo practitioner.

2 Person 6 Ball Pass Juggle

Sena and I reached for the sky and tried another two-person juggle pattern with 6 balls. It’s supposedly one of the easier tricks, but we are ordinary jugglers and beg to differ. One YouTube expert juggler says you should be able to stand in one place and juggle 100 cascade throws to do this trick.

Sena finally wore her safety goggles, probably because she got knocked on the head once while we practiced.

The idea is for both partners to do a solid 3 ball cascade pattern and pass one of the balls at regular intervals. Believe it or not, the slowest pace is to count “1, 2, pass” so that you throw the pass after two right hand tosses in your cascade. Both partners pass with the right hand to each other’s left hand.

That was difficult for both of use because we’re used to counting every throw, including the left-hand throws. You have to skip counting the left-hand throw and starting counting with only the right-hand throws. There are faster variations of this trick, including passing every throw!

We drop a lot of balls, needless to say. But we have a lot of fun!

Parsons Chairs Our Latest Knockdown Furniture

Our old Parsons chairs are getting pretty lumpy, so we ordered some new ones. We generally buy and put together knockdown furniture to save money, although squatting on my haunches and sitting on the floor while cranking a hex head wrench makes my joints sore.

Sena was having a little anxiety about the chairs. Ordering knockdown furniture can be a daunting experience, especially because I’m one of the least handy persons on the planet.

I looked up Parsons chairs on the internet. It’s named for the Parsons School of Design in Paris, France. They were first created in the 1930s in reaction against very ornamental designs of that era. They’re plain and simple, often used as dining chairs.

When I was a skinny kid, I used to lift our dining chairs for exercise. We couldn’t afford barbells. I think of Parsons chairs as being pretty light weight, so I don’t know if the chair I used for bench pressing were Parsons—although I was definitely a lightweight.

On the other hand, these chairs are definitely heavier than the ones they’re replacing. The tough part was getting the screws lined up when fixing the seat to the chair back. I had to tip the seat slightly either to me or away from me to get the screws in. When I can screw them down easily with my fingers, I’m usually OK. Occasionally, it takes a quick crank with the wrench to get it going.

When I wasn’t interrupting myself taking pictures of my assembly of the chairs, I put one of the chairs together in about 25 minutes. For me, that’s not the record. I assembled a typical knockdown Parsons chair in 15 minutes back in March.

Sena was had high anxiety about the chairs-nervous about possibly having to return them if they were damaged or parts missing and so on. She read some of the reviews by people who got them and had bad experiences. She had high anxiety about me, in case I broke something. But things turned out OK.

Juggling Updates

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.

Claw Back Those Juggling Balls in The Steal!

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.

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.

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.”