Easy Advice to Offer?

I think this piece, Admit It: You're Rich, by Megan McArdle is brilliant. Now, that may just be because I agree with her and point it out to people who complain about the rich, usually with an offer to take a check representing their net worth minus $2,000 to the Gambian embassy so they can help out the poor.

So why don't we feel like Scrooge McDuck, rolling around in all of our glorious riches? Why do we feel kinda, y'know, middle class?

Because we don't compare our personal experiences to a Tanzanian subsistence farmer who labors in the hot sun for 12 hours before repairing to his one-room abode for a meal of cornmeal porridge and cabbage. We compare ourselves to other Americans, many of whom, darn them, seem to have much more money than we do.

Envy tends towards ugly. So instead, enjoy the blessings you have, feel free to work hard to earn more, and do not begrudge others what they have.

Unless it's a sub-3 hour marathon PR.

Nah. On second thought, just go run your guts out - you're still miles ahead of the rest.

The End (of Daylight Savings Time) is Near

I don't know about you all (when I lived in a more southerly clime, that'd been y'all) but I positively hate time changes. I'm a guy that likes to follow life in a certain rhythm. Get up about the same time as the sun, go to bed with the moon, weird naturalistic practices like that. 

Those patterns assert themselves else where, too. I write best in the morning, exercise best in the afternoon. Work I can do  while there's daylight. 

It wouldn't seem as though a hour change makes such a huge difference but the evidence at this point is irrefutable. Heart attacks increase, accidents (both workplace and auto) increase, productivity declines. 

And I whine. I do it every year, though it does not change the circumstances. It does relieve a little pressure. 

This week, I'll be looking over the schedule and deciding how to adapt to the time change and to current demands on time. One of the few luxuries of self-employment is a smidge more control over how I decide to spend my time. It's one of the main perks that keeps me out of traditional employment. That, and the fact that I don't handle bureaucratic stupidity well and almost any company with more than about six people develops a bureaucracy. 

A Little Homesick. . .

Every once in a while  I see an image that evokes memories, which I think is a sign of getting old.

Last night, it was a picture of a place I used to climb rocks when I was a kid and it came from a Facebook post here. The nostalgic "ahhh" sighed out almost immediately, before the thinking part of the brain really recognized the setting.

The good folks at the Alice Springs Running and Walking Club getting ready for a 10K walk.

The picture that the Alice Springs Running and Walking Club put up is at Simpson's Gap. We - me, my brother, our friends - played there, and at Honeymoon Gap nearby, and a dozen other outposts along the way. We'd hike into the bush far enough to feel intrepid and do boy things, climbing rock towers, hunting lizards, and camping under the most brilliant stars you can imagine.

No one ever asks, but I can trace my love of trails and adventure to the Outback. Every once and a while, it comes back to me in a flash, today in a picture but more often when I run on rough and rocky trails, when the red hues are just right. Sometimes then, I'm still eleven or twelve, and it's all play.

My Inner Child Is Pouting

I just let the dog out to fetch the paper. We don't get newspaper delivery anymore and why he fetches the paper is a story for another time.

The day dawned clear and bright, with just about perfect temperatures to go play on a trail someplace. A bunch await discovery and a photo log by me.

But instead, I'm going to go to work.  Being self-employed I can say this with a fair degree of assurance; the boss sometimes is a jerk. He's got me working seven days this week, and long days at that.

It's putting the kibosh on my running and my writing, and I would whine more except it also finances both. Still, the inner dude wants to play and is feeling pouty.

Not Quite Done in the Garden - Yet

I picked a few tomatoes from the garden yesterday and saw the cucumber has new and pretty flowers. Since October is in close pursuit, and the goblins will arrive soon after the first frost, I doubt I'm getting any more cukes this year.

In truth, we didn't get a whole lot earlier in the year. The cucumber was a purchase from the Asotin greenhouse sale that the FFA holds every year. (I think it's the FFA.) I got a steep discount on the plant. It was the last one they had this season and scraggly, with just one little leaf.

Mr. Landris charged two bucks for each of the pepper plants I was also buying, looked at the cucumber, and sighed.

"We'll only charge you a dollar for the cucumber, since it might not make it."

I nodded, handed him a ten, and told him to keep the change. Firm rule on charity sales and auctions -  I over pay, cheerfully because the money goes to causes I believe in. Don't believe me? Bid against me at a charity auction. Someone will be paying above retail for the item. I'm annoying like that.

Anyway, I carried the plants two blocks down the street, slipped into the back yard, and put them in the my once portable greenhouse. Early June is no time to plant cucumbers. The nights are much too cool yet.

Three weeks later, I planted the little guy. He was up to three leaves and I felt unduly optimistic. The cucumber never really bushed out, not like the cantaloupe and the watermelon (this was an experimental year because I was bored with the normal choices.) One long vine was all that developed, but in July we got the first cuke.

The deer got the next two and that seemed to set the ratio for the entire summer.

Now, the nights are getting nippy. For those of you who have raised cucumbers, you understand they are the wimps of the garden. A hint of frost and they swoon.

Except not this little guy. The runt of the litter, he's game for more. Cucumbers can be hard to transplant but I might try and buy this one some time by getting him back into the greenhouse.

Who knows, maybe it'll work. If it doesn't, it won't be from a lack of trying.

Is He Good Enough for D1?

That was a question that someone asked at Saturday's meet. It wasn't about Chandler Teigen who had just broken the course record for the third year in a row, but about his brother, Chase.

The question irritated me and it took a few minutes to understand why. We'll get to that in just a sec.

First, for those who didn't have the pleasure of watching Chase Teigen, the young man ran in the front, battling for the lead. He also, as with his brother now, did it with an old-fashioned graciousness. His times were good, very good in fact, but not the kind of times that garner full-ride scholarships at Pac-12 schools.

Now he's up at WSU, studying (last I heard) mechanical engineering. It's a tough major. He still runs - his freshman year he walked on with the cross country team before a tender knee parked him for a bit. I don't know if he still runs with the team. I do know that he's advancing in his field of study - my daughter was a teammate of Chase's and is studying electrical engineering at Idaho, eight miles away. The two of them swap messages occasionally. I ask for updates because I like seeing people succeed and Chase is doing that.

And that is where my annoyance came in.

The question, "Is he good enough for D1?" places exactly the wrong emphasis on high school athletics. It's that same thinking that led North Carolina into the minefield of academic fraud that still explodes with new articles of no-show classes and fake papers.

The athletes are supposed to be student-athletes and the student part should always, always come first.

Chase probably could have gone on to be a scholarship athlete at the D1 level - but maybe not in a power conference like the Pac-12, but somewhere. He might not have been the star of the team, but he would have been a solid contributor and a great teammate (and don't underestimate the latter!)

If he had, studying for a challenging major such as ME might have been discouraged, because the twin demands of athletics and study would have been too much. I remember Miles Plumlee, a Duke basketball player, started studying mechanical engineering, only to change majors in his sophomore year. Very few athletes can handle the additional time demands.

So was Chase good enough for D1? Yeah, he is, where it counts - in the classroom.