Welcome to Bud’s Blog

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes - Marcel Proust

Sometimes Older Eyes work, too - Bud

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Necessary Definitions

Sage – a wise man; a man of gravity and wisdom; especially, a man venerable for years, and of sound judgment and prudence.

Curmudgeon – an ill-tempered old person full of stubborn ideas or opinions.

Fool – A person with poor judgment or little intelligence; a jester, a person whose role was to entertain a sovereign and the court, often with foolishness.
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I’ve been wondering lately what it would be like to be able to relive my life knowing what I know now. Or if I was able to give my grown children a view of the world through my Older Eyes, would it change their lives? Here’s a provocative proposition: If I could get every twenty-year old to look at the world through sixty-four year old eyes for just a few minutes, it would either change them for the better or kill them. Provocative but probably not true. I doubt there are many young men making bucket lists as a result of watching Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

With a do-over unlikely and getting my children to listen to my archaic opinions only slightly less so, I’ll record the view through my Older Eyes here in Bud’s Blog.   As you read each post, you decide … Sage, Curmudgeon, or Fool … we can agree to disagree on which is which. Your comments are welcome, whatever your age.   If what you read changes you for the better, I’d especially like to know.   Hopefully there will be no casualties.

Friday Favorites – 1/27/2012

Posting Friday Favorites once a week has been the most time-consuming task of the week here on Bud’s Blog.   I went back and looked …. I posted the first Friday Favorite back in August of 2010 on the Atlanta Rhythm Section’s hit, So Into You.  In describing my plans for Friday Favorites, I wrote, The intent is a short (yes, I can do short) post on something that’s a favorite of mine, be it music, art, books or whatever.   Well, they are no longer short, so maybe I can’t.   Part of the problem with Favorites is that after over 70 posts, it’s hard to come up with another favorite and Friday Things I Like a Lot just doesn’t catch the ear.  But I keep doing it because Friday Favorites is, in fact, the weekly post I do most for me.

Getting Things Fixed

My blogging friend, Meleah, asked in her latest post, Would you ever consider cosmetic surgery?  I could get on my philosophical high horse and answer that We’re better off accepting who we are than changing how we look, but nobody likes me when I’m on that horse.  Well, maybe fans of my curmudgeon do.  The simple answer to Meleah’s question is, No, but simple answers don’t make for good posts, so I’ll expand.  From about seventh grade through high school, I regarded myself as fairly homely, mostly based on the fact girls weren’t interested in me.  It’s possible that girls weren’t interested because for most of that time I was 4′ 10″ tall and hadn’t a clue how to act with girls but at 13, who thinks of that?  Years later, I’d realize that girls did like me, just not the girls I wanted to like me but that’s another story for another post.  The bottom line is that looks were never something I saw as a strong point.  As I got older and realized I wasn’t exactly Quasimodo, I still viewed my appearance as interesting rather than handsome.    When your life proceeds just fine as interesting, you don’t mess with it.

Almost Viral

I suspect if you were to ask most bloggers why they blog, they would say something like, I write for myself.  I love to write.  That’s what carries some of us through the days of fewer views and one or two comments.   I’ve certainly said just that but I’ve also checked Bud’s Blog at the end of the day … particularly on a day that I’ve posted something I like … only to be disappointed that there are no comments.  That’s particularly likely to happen on the weekends, when readers are inclined to be busy and I’m inclined to post on more serious subjects.   Every one of us likes to be read.   I think we all dream of a post going viral, reaching thousands … no millions … of readers, bringing new readers and hundreds of comments, including an offer from New Yorker Magazine.   Could happen.  Right.  We also love when our posts touch someone, make them smile … laugh … cry … think.

Gremlins

It was a cold and rainy day here in Socal, perfect for settling into my office begin work on a new contract we just signed.  Oh, didn’t I tell you?   Retired Older Eyes is semi-retired again and with interesting work, too, that requires a substantial amount of online research.   I made a pot of coffee … Starbucks’ new Veranda blend and some toast … spent an hour doing my Morning Pages … then plunged into an internet search: template matching, image comparison, automatic identification, the usual stuff.  Lots of good references turning up, then Muri called from the hallway.  Bud, can you come here for a minute?  Oh, oh.  The something’s wrong tone of voice.   Sure enough, there’s water dripping from a spot in the ceiling over the entryway.  We placed one large stainless steel salad bowl under the leak and started back up the stairs but now the water was dripping from the entryway light, too.  I put another pan under the light then head upstairs to call the roof repair guy who showed up an hour later.

Monday Smiles – 1/23/2012

Have you ever wondered who is the smiling visage in my Gravatar? That would be Kitty.  We first met Kitty when Muri and my daughter, Amy, thought they heard a tiny meow coming from my son’s room.  When they went to investigate, they found a tiny gray kitten in his closet, complete with food dish and water bowl.   Apparently, a girl had given the kitten to Aaron and he was afraid we wouldn’t let him keep it, so he hid it there.  He was a teenager …you may have noticed they don’t always think things through.  Years later we found out he had named it Glenn, but those weren’t the best years between us and since he wouldn’t tell us its name, we called him Kitty.  At any rate, Kitty stuck, Glenn didn’t … and as with all of the cats that have turned up in our lives, he got to stay.

Faceless

He walks on, doesn’t look back
He pretends he can’t hear her
He starts to whistle as he crosses the street
Seems embarrassed to be there – Phil Collins, Another Day in Paradise

Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills are quiet suburban community where many people live but few actually work, what we always called bedroom communities.  In the years we’ve been here, only the death of Richard Nixon (who was born in Yorba Linda), the dedication of the Richard Nixon Library and the periodic wildfires that sweep through our hills attract the attention of the national news.   That changed on Friday, January 13 when a homeless man was murdered in Anaheim Hills near a fast food restaurant.   A bistander by the name of Donny witnessed the vicious stabbing and chased the man into a local mobile home community, where the police apprehended him.  The killer, an Iraq veteran, had killed three other homeless men after stalking them over a period of two weeks, stabbing them up to forty times.

Pages and Posts

If you are a WordPress blogger, you know the difference between Pages and Posts.   Pages are static and used to publish information that doesn’t change much.  Good examples are Older Eyes’ Home Page, the Who’s Bud page and Bud’s Favorites.   Pages often show navigational links, like Blogrolls, links to other sites and subscription information in the sidebar.  Posts are individual publications that are listed in reverse chronological order, usually on the Home Page.  If you click on a blog entry … or arrive directly from an email subscription … the post will appear as if it is a Page, with or without the navigation, depending on the WordPress Theme the blogger is using.   I use Sapphire, which by default does not show the sidebar.   As I wander about the blogosphere, I notice that quite a few people use the word Blog interchangeably with Post, as in, I like today’s Blog.  Technically, the Blog is the entire collection of Pages and Posts, the blogger’s website, if you will.

Friday Favorites 1/20/2012

Years ago … six to be exact … Muri and I used to take a mini-vacation every Valentine’s Day.  I’d pick a place that wasn’t to far then search the web for things to do there: museums, concerts, tours … and, of course, restaurants.  This all stopped six years ago when our first grandson, Reed, was born on Valentine’s Day and Valentine’s Day became Reed’s Birthday.  In fact, the year Reed was born, we were spending the weekend before in a bed and breakfast in Lake Arrowhead, CA.   The plan was to drop Muri at the airport Valentines Day morning to be with Amy, with Older Eyes coming on Friday.  I was working then and needed to finish some work.  A dense fog settled over the mountains that morning, so we had to navigate the windy roads with ten foot visibility, wondering if Muri would make her flight.  She did and the rest is history … including our Valentines Day vacations.

Much Ado …

In our 43 marriage, Muri and I have had remarkably few arguments and even fewer big enough to be called fights.  That’s not to say we never disagree … we just have very different styles of dealing with anger.  When I’m angry, I tend to yell and want to talk-talk-talk it all out immediately.  Muri tends to go silent when she’s angry and withdraw.  I suppose that could be a volatile situation in some marriages but it’s worked well for us.  It didn’t take me too many years to realize that no matter how much I talked, we weren’t going to settle anything right away, so I might huff and puff … or sulk for a while … but the net effect was that we’d settle the disagreement once we’d both calmed down.  As a result, our kids didn’t get to hear us argue very much.

Black Out

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