A sunny trip to Alki

Took a friend out for a birthday lunch to Alki on Tuesday. Alki is a strip of beach/boardwalk/condos/headland three miles SW of downtown Seattle across Elliot Bay. It was a great day to go to Alki. There was light rain in the morning that kept the tourists and sunbathers away from the beach so we were able to find a parking spot, eat lunch and go for a walk without the usual summer beach crowd.

There was not a lot of boating activity. I think there may have been a problem with some of the Washington State Ferry boats that run from Seattle to Vashon, Bremerton and Bainbridge. We did get to watch a big giant cruise ship leave the dock and steam off to Alaska.

Web research determined it to the Carnival Spirit with a max capacity of 3400 people heading up the inside passage to Alaska. It is almost the end of the season for Alaska cruises. There are two more trips scheduled for Alaska. Then the Spirit does trips from Seattle, LA and San Diego to Hawaii for 6 weeks. After that, it goes from San Diego to Miami in November via the Panama Canal. (The boat's scheduling was a topic of discussion at lunch.) The trips to Hawaii are a bit of a holding pattern killing time between the Alaska season ending and waiting for Hurricane season to be over in the Caribbean in November.

My friend's car needed a muffler and she could not afford to buy one. We left her car at my mechanics hoping it would be done today. The shop wanted to check prices before doing the work. They will call me tomorrow and we will go from there.

I am grateful my car runs great, for delicious pizza at Alki, sunny warm days, the beauty of snow-covered Olympic mountains, companionship, and to be able to help a friend with a useful birthday present.

Helped a friend with his PC today

A friend thought he had problems with his PC fan and asked me to come take a look. I got there, he turned it on and it was fine. Let it run for awhile, rebooted the PC a couple of times—no problem.

I have 3 PCs that all work fine. When they don't work correctly, I fix them right away.

A year ago, it was predicted that Microsoft would release Windows 8 in 2011. Now the release prediction is for late 2012. When the W8 Beta is released I will buy a new PC. Not because I need a faster one (although I am sure that I do), but because one PC is a bit too noisy for me. MS Office is also supposed to have a 2012 release.

A great thing about living on the Eastside is having friends that work at MS. They will give me software that they are able to buy at the company store with their significant employee discount.

I am grateful that I understand PCs well enough to be able to help others and, even more importantly, keep my PCs running at all times.

A great day for a picnic at the lake...and more

Today was the local intergroup picnic at Lake Sammamish State Park. It was a perfect day with clear skies, 80 degrees and a slight breeze. The turnout was good, the food was great, the people were friendly and we passed out lots of bottled water with cute little Happy Birthday District 34 stickers on them.

After the picnic, coming home to a clean apartment thanks to my friend Shawna was a treat followed by a walk with Leslee at the Mall made for a great Sunday afternoon.

Tonight's meeting was on the 8th tradition Twelfth Step works should always be nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers. It was a great time to talk about the 8th Tradition after the picnic since there was one staff person there and 150 others that volunteer one way or another. We also had our business meeting after the regular meeting. We discussed the 4 motions to be presented at the Area Assembly this year. One motion was to request that the Grapevine put together a collection of stories on Gratitude. Guess who wrote that??? J

I am grateful for the good things in my life. I am also grateful for the fantastic progress I have made this year in being able to recognize all the blessings in my life instead of being stuck wallowing in my self-pity and morbid reflection.

Working with others

A fundamental part of the 12-step programs is 'sponsoring' others. To be a sponsor is to guide or mentor others as they work the 12 steps. It is often a very intense close relationship. For whatever reason(s), I have only sponsored a few guys in my dozen years of recovery. Gotta be some commitment issues in there somewhere...

I have talked with others on many occasions. Tonight, I talked with a lady for an hour and gave her a copy of Seligman's Flourish. It was an invigorating conversation sharing my conviction the program works if you work it and the benefits of sooner is better than later.

It was a pleasant surprise to hear myself share my strong conviction on the benefits of working the steps. As a Pisces, I have been ambivalent about most issues all my life. It was cool to hear the strength of my convictions as I discussed my experiences working the steps.

I am grateful for my faith in the 12-step programs and the progress I have made since I… came to believe. [That was a pun on the first 3 steps sometimes colloquially phrased as: came; came to; came to believe]

Visiting others on a gorgeous day

I have a former relative from a divorce that lives on a fixed income in subsidized housing. About once a month, we go out for lunch. Today we went to his favorite fish-n-chips place. They have 8 kinds of deep fried seafood there. It was good.

After a sight-seeing drive through the U-district on the way home, I got an emissions test on my car so I can renew my tabs. My timing worked well since I only had to wait for one car in front of me. The tech was not a car buff—he thought my car was front-wheel drive even though it has a big giant 'transmission hump' going down the middle of the interior that he could easily see. Once we got that sorted out, things went pretty smoothly and my car passed the test.

After almost 40 years, Washington State is phasing out emissions testing. That might have been my last emissions test. Emissions testing was a successful program that is going away due to its own success. Cars emit a small fraction of the pollution they used to emit 40 years ago. Unleaded gasoline cut down on lead pollution in a big way.

Later, I visited my mother at a really nice assisted living facility. Conversations with her can be a challenge for me. Today a talented older musician played folk music for an hour. We sat together and listened to the music. That worked well.

I carry a small camera with me all the time. I took some pictures of my mother and Sukie the marketing person where my mother lives. I put my camera away a bit haphazardly after that. When I was getting into my car I dropped it without noticing. When I got home 15 minutes later, there was a vmail letting me know that the staff where my mother lived found my camera and set it aside for me. That was lucky and very thoughtful of them.

It was a gorgeous warm August day in Seattle. Driving around with the windows down is my favorite way to drive.

I am grateful for a gorgeous day with pleasant interactions with others.

sandwiches

Made a sandwich for lunch today with thin-sliced turkey, cheddar cheese, Dijon mustard and mayo on toasted wheat bread. I rarely make a classic two slices of bread sandwich. It was good. That got me thinking about some of my all-time favorite sandwiches.

My first great sandwich memory was a foreign adventure. When I was 14, my brother and sister Valerie went skiing in Europe for an Xmas vacation. On the way home, I had a croque monsieur (French for toasted ham & cheese sandwich) with Dijon mustard at the Paris Orly airport. That was my first experience with Dijon mustard and the beginning of a life-long love affair with spicy mustards.

Another great sandwich memory is after spending 3 months in the hospital in 1981, I got a day pass for an afternoon to my parents house. The first thing I did was make my own sandwich with lots of mayo and mustard. It was your basic ham & cheese with lettuce sandwich. It felt great to make a sandwich exactly how I liked it for the first time in three months. Hospital food had lost its luster months before I got to make that sandwich.

I am grateful to have the resources (bread, meat, cheese, condiments, toaster, knife, plate) to make a nutritious delicious sandwich on a whim.

A nice walk in the sun

The hot summer sun has finally arrived in Seattle. We had two days of 80F in a row! Last night, I took two friends out for dinner with outdoor dining. It was so nice out that we sat and talked for 3 hours. This afternoon, I went for a walk with friend at the Bellevue Downtown Park. It was glorious.

I am grateful for good friends and the warm summer sun.

Making healthy choices

I am extremely overweight. Today I went out for lunch at a vegan restaurant. I like vegetables, spicy food and peanuts. The vegan kung pow was not delicious. I won't go back to that restaurant. I am working on becoming less carnivorous and more vegetarian. My goal is to lose weight and be healthier. I like meat too much to give that part of my diet.

I am grateful for making healthy choices today. I ate vegan food and stayed away from toxic people.

BBC TV nature shows

Until recently, BBC TV meant Masterpiece Theater and Monty Python to me. I was not a fan. Lately, I have been watching BBC nature shows. They are fantastic shows with excellent narration and great camera work that all comes together bringing out the best that TV has to offer.

My latest & greatest favorite BBC series is Predators Killing for a Living, a 13-part series about cats, birds, fish and more.

I am grateful to the BBC for providing top quality nature shows that give me a sense of what it might be like to 'be there'.

My iGoogle home page

I love the WWW. It is a huge part of the quality of my life. I have used Google as my primary search engine for at least a decade. Word is that Bing might be better than Google now. I love the competition to see who can deliver better results at no cost to me.

My home page is http://www.google.com/ig?hl=en&source=mpes. I have a bunch of 'gadgets' setup so that I can read the 3 top headlines from a wide variety of news agencies every time I open my web browser of choice—currently about 80/20 Chrome over Firefox.

My favorite browser used to be Firefox hands-down for 6-8 years. This year, Mozilla, the group that manages Firefox has gone crazy and made Firefox worse with a slower boot time and rapid version upgrades that kill the FF add-ons. Meanwhile, Chrome got faster and better.

Either way, I have the same home page at iGoogle on both browsers. It is great having some many different news sources. It is a bit like reading summaries from half the articles in the Economist with a bunch of other cool and/or interesting tech stuff from Wired, Slashdot and others.

I loved my iGoogle home page since it first came out in 2005 as Google Personalized Homepage. It is the most popular webpage in the USA, Iran, South Korea and Bangladesh and in the top 5 for 30+ other countries from Australia to Venezuela.

I have tried using RSS readers. For me, RSS readers are like trying to drink from a firehouse. I get a little compulsive about having to read all the articles and there are just too many new articles to read every day.

I am grateful to have a wide collection of news sources that I like located all on one page.

a few of my favorite things

Spent much of today reading sci-fi my Kindle and watching a BBC show called The Code. The Code is about how math can be applied to model any behavior, more or less accurately, from a flock of birds to weather to playing rock-paper-scissors (it is not entirely random). I also visited with a friend and spoke with some others by phone.

I am grateful to have the time and resources to spend my day as I like.

A little help from my friends

I am going to upgrade my décor from the bachelor hand-me-down collection to the level of nicer used furniture for my living room. Thinking back on how traumatized I was just buying a nice new flatware set, I know I will need help with planning. It is a given that I will need help with moving.

I have a friend that has worked as a professional designer in both the fashion and furniture fields. She is going to be my go-to gal on design. Few of my friends are 'truck people', but I am sure I can find somebody to help me move the new furniture in. A speedy goal is to upgrade by Labor Day. A practical goal is by Halloween. A pragmatic goal is by next year!

I am grateful to have responsible reliable friends that I can turn to for help. I am also grateful that I get to be a responsible reliable friend to my friends. That is miraculous progress from how it used to be.

admitting when I am wrong and changing my behavior

It used to be that when I had hurt someone else, was late, whatever, I would come up with a lame excuse and then inevitably proceed to repeat the same behavior again later on. Wash, rinse, repeat… Thanks to the power of recovery and the tenth step of promptly admitting when I am wrong, I know admit having been wrong and change my behavior.

I still make mistakes. Now mistakes get taken cleaned up and don't happen nearly as often.

I am grateful for having the tools to change my behavior so that I no longer need lame excuses and don't have to feel bad about being wrong nearly as often.

being in the moment

I served as guest secretary at a speaker meeting tonight since the regular person went a conference at Ocean Shores for the weekend. There were 12 people at the meeting of which 7 were there as a result of my efforts to drum-up some support for the speakers Anna and Gary.

Gary did a very good job in his first experience being a speaker at a 30 minute speaker meeting. It went well and was nice to remember what it was like before recovery. With just over 2 years in recovery, he has an excellent recollection of how crazy it used to be.

Anna was doing well enough and her time was running short when she started talking about being 'healed' at a tent revival. That was an intense story of love, rage, confusion and a happy ending.

There was progress for me in that meeting being 'enough'. Before recovery, I would get separated from being in the present moment by worrying about things that I could not control such as what the speakers thought about the low turnout or what the audience thought of the speakers that I lined up. Tonight I got to just do my part as secretary and be in the moment while listening to Gary and Anna share their experience, strength and hope.

I am grateful for my progress towards 'living in the present moment' on a much more consistent basis. Now I actually get to spend time living in the present instead of rushing by it on my mental/emotional trips to the past and future.

hearing the commonality

Prior to recovery, I would hear the 'differences' instead of listening for the 'commonality' when others were talking to me. In 12-step vernacular, I was 'terminally unique' which is another way of saying that I thought my problems were a LOT worse than your problems.

Thanks to the miracle of recovery, I can hear the similarities in our stories when listening to other people talk and get stuck focusing on finding the differences. My sister and I have been working on the process of getting a court-appointed guardian for our mother. Several people this week talked with me about their aging parent issues. I was able to hear the similarities while responding with compassion and empathy. After each conversation, we both felt better.

I am grateful to hear the similarities while talking with others. That is a lot better than being terminally unique with my self-pity and loneliness.

a trip to the reformatory

Today was our monthly trip to the prison in Monroe where some of my friends and I meet with inmates. It seems like every time there is a new hire in administration, the system is tweaked slightly to show how the new hire is 'improving' the system. It feels like change strictly for personal issues of power and control so that the new hire can demonstrate a hands-on can-do approach to taking charge of their new job. I am sure if I got a new senior admin job at the prison, I would follow the well established tradition and make some changes too….

Tonight's change resulted in us leaving at 8 PM instead of 8:30. That is not that big a deal for my crew that only goes out there once a month. For those that volunteer weekly or more often, that is a big change for their program.

We had 8 inmates at our meeting tonight which is about par. Attendance varies between 3 and 20 inmates and tends to bounce around between 6 to 12 inmates at a meeting. Some are relatively new and others have been going for decades. One inmate has been attending our meeting for 30 years.

Tonight we talked about having a setback and responding with a more functional approach than how we used to respond. I know I have made tremendous progress in having more functional and appropriate responses. The inmates' progress is nothing short of astounding. One young man talked about how a bully in a guard's uniform verbally abused him, handcuffed him and took him to the lieutenant on duty for further punishment. By maintaining a calm response, obeying the guard and having a rational discussion with the lieutenant, the inmate was able to avoid further problems and likely won't be picked on by that guard again for some time.

I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from others in harsh living conditions in a way that helps me to be more grateful for the good life I have here in Bellevue and to let go of my self-pity for how tough I think I have it.

Replacing self-pity with gratitude

I get a couple of thought-for-the-day emails. Today's email sums up what I have been doing with my gratitude posts this year.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. --Maya Angelou

Some days we grasp at self-pity like a blanket on a cold night, and we are momentarily comforted. However, extended periods of self-pity will undermine our primary purpose, which is to be at peace with ourselves and others so that we may know freedom from our addictions. Thus our self-pity prevents us from carrying a message of hope to fellow sufferers, that they too can find release from their suffering through the Twelve Steps.

Staying clean and sober are gifts available to all of us when we cultivate gratitude. We can be grateful for this program that has brought manageability and serenity to our life, and that leaves us little room for self-pity, anger, or impatience. Our mind will be willing and open to receive God's guidance and support when we let go of our self-pity.

Today I will stay free of self-pity so I can receive God's strength.

I am grateful to be changing my thinking in a positive way that makes my life and my relationships better.

stability in a changing world

It has been a turbulent month in the first 8 days of August. The US lost its S&P AAA (now AA+). Stock markets around the world have tanked as much as 15%. After London cops (bobbies?) killed a man last week, riots have expanded from London to throughout the UK—due in part to government cutbacks in jobs and welfare payments. A US Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan killing 37 troops—the Afghan resistance looks to have developed new strategies that will change the way we fight the invasion of "NATO troops" (nearly all US).

I have a stable pleasant life here in the Pacific Northwest. My income and retirement are not contingent upon the appalling abuse of government policies and shady stock market practices nearly as much as is the case for others my age and older. It has to be stressful to work all your life and watch your savings tank by 15% in a week with no chance of the economy ever getting back to the glory days of 5% GDP growth per year with current policies. All too many baby boomers can look forward to a retirement that includes questions such as "do you want fries with that?".

The truly sad, tragic and despicable part of the situation is that it did not have to be this way. If we had not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan under false pretenses such as WMDs, not let Bush steal the election from Gore, stopped taxing the largest corporations, and let the military-industrial-congressional complex run out of control, the US could be paying down the national debt instead of political brinksmanship in the fight to raise the debt ceiling with no new funding to pay the debt.

I am extremely grateful that the chaos described above will have a limited impact on my life resulting in almost no change in my life.

some late spring cleaning

A friend came over to help me with much delayed spring cleaning. My apartment gets a lot of dust from the kitty litter that is put out for my cats. She dusted places I can't reach, swept and vacuumed. I also tossed out a bunch of books, old papers and deprecated computer accessories that were so old they used PS2 connections. She also swept the hallway outside my door. It feels a lot better now. We will do some more sorting later this week with items to be donated or trashed.

I am grateful to have a cleaner place and to my friend helping me clean my apartment.

Working with troubled teens

I recently restarted volunteering at a juvenile faciilty which is essentially a medium-low security kiddie prison called Echo Glen by attending a weekly 12-step meeting on Saturday night. For several years a decade ago, I would go twice a week. My plan now is to go once or twice a month.

In theory, I am going there to help the kids. In reality, it helps me at least as much as it helps them. My teenage years were troubled times lacking a solid & secure foundation for healthy emotional growth. Listening and talking with the troubled teens at Echo Glen takes me back bringing up repressed feelings that I am know able to process in a much healthier way.

It is a win-win situation for me and the kids when I volunteer at Echo Glen. It gets me out of myself and my apartment while providing a good adult role model for the kids to talk to and be with. Many of them have NEVER had that in their young lives.

It is a pleasant 30 minute drive to Echo Glen up a mountain pass freeway and a cute winding foliage covered side road. Tonight on the way home, I stopped at an upscale steakhouse, Jak’s, in Issaquah for a wonderful dinner by myself. Between courses, I was reading Seligman’s Flourish, a great book on well-being and gratitude. It was a delicious pleasant dinnner by myself in a crowded restaurant with an inspirational.

I am grateful for the easy opportunities I have to help others that cause me to feel better about myself and my life.

A double recession

An economic debacle has clouded the US for years. This week, it was exacerbated so badly by the deal that Congress and Obama negotiated to raise the artificial "debt ceiling" that the US lost its AAA credit rating from S&P. Thank god the Tea Party was there to at least declare that way lies madness.

Stock markets around the world tanked up to 10% in the last week due to US political shenanigans and European debt problems by some of the needier EU countries such as Greece and Portugal.

I am grateful the S&P pulled the plug on this madness before the US creditworthiness became as bad as their AAA rated credit derivatives that bashed the world economy in 2007.

Email

I love email with its asynchronous timing that enables me to communicate with others at a time that is convenient for all of us. Additionally, I can go back, search & re-read emails when I need to find out information that I forgot. That works a lot better for than telephone calls.

I don't use a smartphone and am not into texting and don't even have a Facebook account using correct last name. Email works for me.

I am grateful for the plethora of digital communication methods, especially email.

TED talks at www.ted.com

I have known of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) for the last ten years. TED was started in 1984 to bring people together from Technology, Entertainment, Design in a conference. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TED Global conference in Edinburgh UK each summer -- TED includes the award-winning TED Talks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TED x programs, and the annual TED Prize.

The annual TED conferences, in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh, bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less). On TED.com, they make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. More than 900 TED Talks are now available, with more added each week.

Here is a recent favorite by Steve Jobs given as a Stanford Commencement speech.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

Salman Khan on his 2200 education videos on Youtube and their use in the classroom.

http://blog.ted.com/2011/03/09/lets-use-video-to-reinvent-education-salman-khan-on-ted-com/

I am grateful for brilliant thinkers such as Steve, Salman, and Bill in they changed our lives with their insights into using technology.

Flourish

Flourish is the title of Martin Seligman's latest book. It builds upon his previous work in positive psychology with the concept of "well-being" which is a well-grounded all-around happiness in life complete with purpose and good relationships.

I am still working my way through the book the first time. There are a bunch of exercises in it that I will go back and do on a second reading. Many of the exercises can be found here on Dr Seligman's homepage http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx

Here is something to think about.

I am grateful to be learning more about how to flourish in my life.