Category Archives: life

It’s too darn hot

life, ,

Its-Never-Too-Hot-To-Play-OutsideI knew July was going to be a sparse blogging month, since I’m doing Camp NaNoWriMo again, this time to wrap up my previous novel to get it published. I didn’t take into account how unproductive I become when it’s hot.

Of course, I’m always hopeful that the hot weather will hold off a little while. Statistically, the jet streams and other large weather systems that directly impact Seattle don’t switch to the summer pattern until about July 12. Even though we have only experienced measurable precipitation on Independence Day about one out of every four years (and many of the years that precipitation is a very scant trace of only a tenth of an inch or less), that’s the reason that some people often joke that “the rain will end on July 5.”

And it’s not as if the weather we’re having constitutes a heat wave according to most people. But any time the temperatures get above 80°F I start melting. I just want to find some shade with a cold breeze and a cool drink. And if I do find a moderately cool spot, I usually just fall asleep.

I’m okay most of the day, since I’m in a nice, big air conditioned office building. I have energy, I work, I get things done. But the walk home in the sun and heat just wipes me out. And we don’t usually get enough of these days for it to make economic sense for most people to have a fully air conditioned house.

We bought a new small air conditioning unit for our bedroom. In the past we had one of those window units. It worked okay, we could have one room that was a comfortable temperature. We could hang out in the bedroom for a few hours in the evening until the sun went down. The temperature outside drops considerably at that point, and we can open the doors and windows, put a fan in the front door, and cool down most of the house to a reasonable temperature again. And of course, the bedroom is cool enough that we can both sleep.

But our windows aren’t really the kind those sort of air conditioners are designed for, and there were some issues. It started dying a few years ago, I think hastened by those issues. We got rid of it. We toughed it out two years without.

The new one is one of those units on wheels, with a large PCV hose that attaches to a vent we put in the window. It’s really only intended to cool one room, but we’ve made that work before.

Each night since we got it I’ve taken various writing project materials into the bedroom intending to get work done in the cool room. And each night I made it about a half hour before needing to take a nap.

It’s supposed to be a little bit cooler today and tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get some actual writing done.

Wish me luck!

Cousins, part 3

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Cousins David, me, Tom, Trudi, and Chip, plus Aunt Silly, Great-uncle Lyle, and Great-aunt Viv (I'm second guy from the left).
Cousins David, me, Tom, Trudi, and Chip, plus Aunt Silly, Great-uncle Lyle, and Great-aunt Viv (I’m second guy from the left).
When I was 14 years old I went on a road trip with my Aunt Silly and her family. They lived in Phoenix, so I was sent on a bus from the tiny town in northwest Colorado to Arizona. After spending about a week in Phoenix, we were all loaded into a big station wagon and drove to California where, among other things, we visited my favorite Great Uncle and his wife and youngest son, after having spent several days visiting with the same Great Uncle’s older daughter and her family, then up to Washington were we visited Grandma and Grandpa P, then back to Colorado where everyone visited my folks and our Great-grandparents and a few other relatives from my dad’s side of the family, before Aunt Silly and family got back on the road to return to Phoenix.

It was a big family trip. Our misadventures were nothing like anything one would get in a road trip movie, but there were a few. Continue reading Cousins, part 3 →

After six months, how are the goals?

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When I set my goals for the year, I said I’d do regular check-ins. It’s a new month, I should check in!

I tried to set very concrete steps for achieving. Inspired by a friend’s suggestion, I tried to identify a better habit to replace each bad habit. So how am I doing? Continue reading After six months, how are the goals? →

Speaking of childhood memories…

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Blurry picture of me sitting in front of a christmas tree.
I’m 3 years old in this picture, taken at my maternal grandparents’ house.
I mentioned earlier about one set of Christmas pictures showing me with cowboy toys, even though that was apparently the first year I started begging for an Easy Bake Oven. Several of the toys in the pictures are related to the television show, Have Gun, Will Travel, which I was told years later by my grandmother was my favorite show at the time. I don’t remember the program, at all. I only found one picture from that Christmas, which I’ve posted here. This is taken at my maternal grandparents’ house, so I suspect the only presents visible are from those grandparents.

My mom has a picture of me in the same “Have Gun Will Travel” shirt, along with a cap gun and a couple of other cowboy-related toys, taken in front of our Christmas tree in our own living room. But I don’t seem to have a copy of it.

Publicity photo for The Rifleman
Chuck Connors as the Rifleman and Johnny Crawford as his son in a publicity photo. Chuck was shirtless in a lot of episodes.
While I have no recollection of Have Gun Will Travel, the show I do remember, which was on the air those same years (both of them aired their final episode in April of ’63) was The Rifleman. I have a lot of very vivid memories of that show, even though I was only three when it went off the air. I don’t remember the plots of any episodes, but I have a lot of memories of the star, Chuck Connors, and the many times he appeared shirtless on the show.

While there is still some debate about how much genetics play in sexual orientation, the overwhelming evidence has shown for a long time that what arouses us emotionally and sexually is pretty much set in stone by the age of two.

Let me repeat that: by the age of two.

This seems weird and a little creepy, but it makes sense when you remember that we are fundamentally social creatures. We are definitely hard-wired to form various kinds of bonds with the people around us. When a little boy exhibits the signs of having a crush on a girl or woman in his life, we think it’s cute and adorable and a nature precursor to other feelings that will come along later in life. That’s all we’re talking about here, except the fact is that for some of us we developed crushes on males.

Congressman Shock has a great anti-gay voting record, but posts pictures of himself to Instagram like this, has never married, and has lived with a string of similar male "roommates" for over a decade.
Congressman Shock has a great anti-gay voting record, but posts pictures of himself to Instagram like this, has never married, and has lived with a string of similar male “roommates” for over a decade.
And if the adults around us noticed, they freaked out and tried in various ways to redirect those impulses. That redirection is doomed to failure. The closest anyone gets to success at that is that some non-heterosexual kids become fairly good at faking it later in life (though most seem to be pretty bad at it, cf Aaron Schock or Marcus Bachmann).

I have wondered why I don’t recall this show that my parents and grandparents all say was my favorite, while I do have memories of the other show. It’s possible that the adults around me noticed that my enthusiasm for Chuck Connors wasn’t the same as the way I talked about the other show, and so they were discouraging my interest. I suspect that it is more likely that Have Gun… was also the favorite show of one of my grandparents or parents, so the shared enthusiasm made it a stand out. I have some vague recollections of Dad commenting disparagingly about Chuck Connors when one of his movies came up on TV a few years later, so maybe I only got to watch the Rifleman occasionally, and it was safer not to talk about it around Dad.

I don’t know when my parents first began worrying that I was queer. The Easy Bake Oven wasn’t the only toy that I got told I couldn’t have because it was a girl’s toy… But I should point out that when I finally did get the oven, I quickly converted it to a device for amateur chemistry experiments. And the toys I most remember loving to play with in those early years were my Tonka trucks—especially my bright yellow steam shovel. So I wasn’t that gender non-conforming.

Publicity photo from the television show, the Rifleman.
Publicity photo from the television show, the Rifleman.
I have previously said that I think my first celebrity crush was Race Banon, a character from the cartoon series Jonny Quest. But I suspect that it was more likely Chuck Connors’ character in The Rifleman.

Vegetables in the dirt, part 2

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Copyright 2014 Gene Breshears
I put two fuchsias and two petunias in each hanging basket.
After spending Saturday evening with the tomatoes, I needed to get the rest of the flowers I’d picked up planted. We have a number of pots that sit on the steps of our porch, and I try to keep flowers in them. I haven’t done a good job of keeping care of them this year, so the pots had the dead remains for last falls flowers in them.

I’ve also, for several years, had two hanging baskets that I usually put fuchsias into. A lot of the stores with garden centers in our region have a push with fuchsias at the beginning of April, so if I head to one of them in the first weekend or so of that month, I can find dozens of different varieties of fuchsia to choose from. Since I didn’t get to that until June this year, I had exactly two varieties to choose from, one that results in blooms that have dark purple centers and red exteriors, and the other has white centers with pink exteriors. There also weren’t very many of each.
Continue reading Vegetables in the dirt, part 2 →

Vegetables in the dirt, part 1

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Copyright 2014 Gene Breshears.
The amazing thing is how many other purple garden ornaments from the store I was able to resist buying.
I am very late this year dealing with the yard. Now, we don’t have much of a yard, and I’m only responsible for a tiny fraction of it. Because we live in the front unit of a triplex, and the landlady pays someone to mow the lawn and trim the hedges, the only thing I take care of are two flower beds. One is about six feet long and three feet wide in front of the house, and the other is about 14 feet long and maybe a foot and a half wide along the driveway.

Since the people who mow the lawn don’t do weeds, I also go around the lawn with my weed weasel from time to time. The weed tool is one of those things with spikes that impale the root of the weed below the ground, so you yank out the weed and leave a little hole maybe 2 inches wide and 3 inches deep. After I pull a bunch of weeds, I go around with a bag of grass seed and a bag of potting soil. I drop a big pinch of seeds in the hole, then fill it with potting soil.

Continue reading Vegetables in the dirt, part 1 →

How are those goals progressing?

life, ,

When I set my goals for the year, I tried to set very concrete steps for achieving. Inspired by a friend’s suggestion, I tried to identify a better habit to replace each bad habit.

I said I’d do regular check-ins on the goals I set for the year, and it’s another month, so how am I doing? Continue reading How are those goals progressing? →

We aren’t the ones recruiting

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I'm about 5 years old in this picture of myself and my sister.
I’m about 5 years old in this picture of myself and my sister.
I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked a variant of, “When did you realize you were gay?” or the more exasperating “When did you decide to be gay?” For the latter question my response for some years has been to turn it around and ask when the person asking decided to become straight.

But there isn’t an easy answer to the first version of the question. I can remember very vividly the first time it was made clear to me, without a doubt, that I was different in a fundamental way from most of the people I knew. And furthermore that that difference had something to do with the meanings of the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.”

That incident happened a bit more than three months before my fifth birthday…
Continue reading We aren’t the ones recruiting →

I know you think you know, but…

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Close up of a sleeping bobcat
Thanks for the advice, but I’m going to sleep now.
We had an unpleasant adventure Sunday night. Before I explain that, I should mention that ten years ago I nearly died because of a bleeding ulcer in my esophagus. The reason I nearly died is because, contrary to what everyone thinks, not all bleeding ulcers are painful. I had absolutely no pain, discomfort, or any symptoms of indigestion. None. Zero. Zilch. Continue reading I know you think you know, but… →

Confessions of a packrat

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www.stockvault.net
They comfort me… (stockvault.net)
During our recent visit to my Mom’s, one of the new accessories we set up for her was a pair of over-the-ears bluetooth headphones. The headphones required a micro USB cable to recharge, but there wasn’t a cable in the carrying case. So I had to dig around in my computer bag for one, which I did eventually find, but it seemed to be the one and only micro USB adapter cable in the bag.

Which isn’t good, because we have lots of things that use that particular cable to charge. So when we got back I went to a site online where I have previously purchased reasonably priced cables, and I ordered a bunch of one-foot long micro USB cables (they were less than a buck). While I was at it, I tossed a couple of three-foot versions of the cable into my shopping cart (they were more than a buck, but not my much), just to cover all our bases.

I figured I’d put one each of the short cables in my work backpack, my personal laptop backpack, my travel computer bag (which is different), and Michael’s laptop backpack. And then I planned to pull out all of the chargers in my travel computer bag, count up all of the headphones and things we usually take with us on trips that require a micro USB connector, and make sure that I had enough of the adaptors and chargers in the travel bag to charge them all simultaneously.

The online cable source, as these websites often do, offered some suggestions of other items that were similar to the merchandise already in my cart which I might be interested in purchasing. One of which was a long micro USB cable that had flashing LEDs built into the ends. It was being offered as a “hot deal” marked down to less than two bucks.

Now, I know the reality is that the cables were being marked down because no one needs adaptor cables with flashing LEDs on each end, so people were buying cheaper cables without flashing LEDs. So the things had been sitting on shelves unsold for a long time. The company just wanted to get rid of them.

But I looked at the pictures of the cables with the lights on the end, and they looked cool and silly. I just could not stop myself from clicking Add To Cart.

And once I did, the website (recognizing a sucker when it had one), changed the suggested items displayed. And look! There was a ten-foot long lightning adaptor cable! Ten-feet! We actually had a need some time back for an extra long iPad charging cable, and I’d wound up buying a couple of ten-foot models. They worked great, and it was kind of silly and fun to, when I first got them, set one up on a charger on one side of the room and string it out to plug an iPod or iPad into it on the other side of the room.

And you never know when you might need a cable like that, so of course I clicked Add To Cart!

And look! They were now suggesting I might be interested in white iPod adaptor cables marked way down. I have been worrying just a little bit about those cables, because Apple is phasing them out, but we have several older iPods we use for various things around the house that use that adapter. One of those iPods that we still use (it plays wake up music from the far side of the bedroom at me every morning) is a 2nd generation iPod mini from 2005, and it still works great, so I have no intention of tossing it until it dies. And I fully expect the 2010 model iPod Touch that we use in the car to last at least as long as the mini has. I’m going to need those adaptors for some years, yet, and cables that are used frequently do eventually wear out. I just recently threw away one in the car (replacing it with a cable from my computer desk) because I had to jiggle it to get the connection to work. So stashing several away against the day when they’re no longer sold isn’t a bad idea, right?

Add To Cart.

So the box of cables arrived a couple of days later. I’ve distributed the cables to our various computer bags and such as planned. And I’ve used the silly flashing LED cable to recharge a battery case (it doesn’t just flash at both ends; the LEDs change color as they flash!).

But while I was stashing all those things away, I also pulled out some older adaptors and cables for things that we no longer own. I put those obsolete cables and adaptors in with the pile of dead headphones that I had found stashed behind my second monitor when I cleaned out my desk last month. And I carried them (along with some other things that need to go to the recycler) out to the car.

Did I go overboard with the new cables? Probably. Will some of these cables languish around, forever waiting to be used, and ten years from now get sent off to recycle? Most assuredly.

Am I going to be able to prevent myself from ordering extra charging cables the next time I notice a shortage of a particular type? Almost certainly not.

But you know what? I just plugged in the flashing LED cable, again. And it made me grin. I might have even giggled, just a little bit.

So I regret nothing!