see double you

With an inability to come up with one particular thing to write on, and a desire to not post a visual commentary this time, I came up with an idea to post some things I’ve learned lately. Hopefully it will become a reoccurring thing…

1. Eating vegetarian, at least part-time, isn’t that bad at all. But I still don’t have to like tofu, and you can’t make me. To go along with this, all Germans don’t eat wienerschnitzel and all Americans don’t eat just meat and drive big fat SUVs.
2. Renovating a room or two isn’t as simple as HGTV would like you to believe. This corresponds to an earlier post of mine. Kill your television. ITS EVIL!
3. As cliche’ as it sounds, the best thing we can do for our children is teach them well. Even if it means going flat broke.
4. Snow tires make all the difference in how well your car performs in the snow.
5. Daylight Savings time sucks. All it does is make you late for a week (or more).
6. Don’t assume you can figure out how to get around in downtown Boston your first time there. Everything is connected by tunnels and one-way streets.
7. Drunk drivers are dangerous to themselves and to those on the road with them. If you see one, call the police. You’re paying them, and they’ll thank you.
8. Even in today’s fear-addicted society, it is still possible to see the good in a total stranger, to trust them enough to invite them into your home, and to create with them a wonderful experience that enriches the lives of everyone involved.

With life as seemingly “full” as it is these days, I somehow manage to stay free and clear in mind and heart. Considering the fact that the house is a shambles due to the mayhem that comes with having children, but mostly to the fact that almost every room has some sort of major or minor renovation project underway, I seem to be avoiding the typical feeling of overwhelming anxiety to expediently return this chaos to order. Outside the realm of what I would consider within my control, things around the world continue to be caught up in a never-ending whirlwind of significant chaos. While Hurricane Dean plows a path across the the Gulf of Mexico, destroying homes and changing lives, many countries around the world continue to demonstrate their ability to test how to reach global peace and unity regardless of the amount of pigment in our skin, which Deity we choose to worship, which language we speak, or who we pick as our favorite sports team.

All of this, in my opinion, is due to fear and an ignorant ego and sense of self-importance.

I’m not going to rant. The Internet has made that too cliché and does nothing but perpetuate the issue.

I asked my wife this week if she thinks the world has just recently become absolutely nuts, or if its always been this way and we’re just now old enough and aware enough to recognize it. The latter was the best explanation we could come up with. The fact that for as long as we humans have walked the earth, our highly EVOLVED brains have led us down this path of ‘i’m better than you for (x) reason.’(no, i’m sorry folks, the Baby Jesus and his Father really didn’t just *POOF* make us appear one day)

With that fact before me, I realize there is very little in the grand scheme, though actually quite a bit, that I can do.

I possess two lumps of clay. By molding the two lumps to treat themselves and others with unconditional love, respect, and compassion without reservations or discrimination, I give the world two more chances to reach the peace and unity I think it ultimately is searching for. In my own travels, I too do my best to demonstrate these qualities in my encounters with all the other lumps of clay I encounter, thereby leaving a positive impression and perhaps an impact on the greater good.

Consider your pet. No matter how long you neglect to fill its food and water, or clean its litter box, or take it outside for a walk, or demonstrate any sort of treatment that would be a lack of compassion and kindness towards this faithful companion, that animal still demonstrates unconditional love towards you, its faithful companion, no matter how you’ve treated it.

Perhaps we highly evolved humans should learn from our pets to behave this same way towards each other.

Technorati Tags: compassion, kindness, pets, ego

Please let me know if you’ve noticed this too.

There are no cicadas, no catydids, and very few crickets or frogs.

What the heck is going on?  Here we are, the middle of July, and I can sleep at night with little difficulty because the typical drone of night time creatures is nonexistent!

There’s also no “heat bugs” as we call them here in New England.  Those strange insects you hear during those hot summer days that make that noise that gets louder and louder like some kind of electronic siren, then dies down.

Now I am not blaming global warming, because I’m not sure if that even exists yet, and I’m not going to blame the Republicans for screwing this up too, but something is going on, and I would love it if someone out there could give me a realistic explanation.  Is this the same thing as what has caused a disappearance of the honey bees?

I have to wonder, from an ecological standpoint, if these bugs are disappearing and we’re too busy with our hustle and bustle to notice, what else out there is “going poof” that’s going to cause us to recognize a problem.

Ideas?

Technorati Tags: bugs, catydids, cicadas, crickets, frogs, summer, silence

A pair of headphones and your favorite “natural sounds” meditation CD couldn’t beat this.

As I sit here in the silence of the last cool evening in May, a thunderstorm rolls across the sky and I listen to it move from West to East. Thunder sounds from one side of my head to the other and flashes of lightening flicker at seemingly random times. Occaisionally, I hear the patter of rain drops on the back deck that had already been soaked by a prior passing storm.

In the background, yet closest to me, the wall clock tick-tocks away without a care in the world if electricity is lost or not. As long as I remember to wind it every Saturday or Sunday, it is the most accurate clock in the house.

My family has already gone to bed, tired from a full day of playing outside. I take advantage of the situation to enjoy an hour or two of solace before I too pass out from a typical day of the week.

Suddenly, the phone rings, the peace is broken.

The thunder and lightening continues, the tick-tock has never stopped, the rain is steady now. Oh what a night.

Just a typical Spring evening at Chez See Double You.

This picture doesn’t even come close to showing how the past few days has been here…

Personally, I learned *exactly* where all the low spots in the road are on my commute to work, and which particular spot I shouldn’t attempt to cross in my car. Yes, little Mr.Saab wasn’t too happy at one point and left me temporarily stranded and screaming across the flooding to Mr.State Trooper who found it necessary to belittle me because I wasn’t supposed to cross this unmarked road hazard. You’d think a warning sign prior to said hazard would have been more effective than waiting for the morning commuters to attempt it, then chastising them after the fact. Oh well. Eventually the little car that could decided to start again, and back I went on my exciting journey into work.

I’m not sure what the grand totals are for rainfall, but people I work with say that they haven’t seen it like this since “The Flood of 55″

Click the image, view the gallery. Many are Quicktime movies that take a little bit of time to load. Definitely worth the wait. Especially check out the ‘Great Falls’ pictures. Unbelievable.

Technorati Tags: flood, rain, storm