Bellevue Arts & Crafts Fair

This weekend was the Bellevue Arts & Crafts Fair. It is a large event with hundreds of artists selling their wares ranging from beads, clothes, paintings, metal sculpture and paintings along with food and some PR booths from local news media, etc.

Normally, Leslee and I go for a walk at Bellevue Square on Sundays. On the Sundays of the Fair, we walk around the fair looking at booths and chatting with vendors. Some travel from California and Texas to display in Belluevue.

I am grateful to have a major regional arts & crafts fair so conveniently located that I literally have to go to it.

studying and blogging about gratitude has been a life-changing experience

Lacking a specific event to write about tonight, I decided to write more about how much I have learned studying, writing, discussing, and living with gratitude this year.

My friends give me heretofore unknown positive feedback for my listening and supportive skills. My ability to turn my ideas into reality has changed from "another missed opportunity" to "another success story" as the ideas become successfully implemented. I have become much more mindful by paying much greater attention to the task at hand/living in the moment.

My success so far this year created a craving for even more gratitude. I am going to work my way through Martin Seligman's latest book Flourish in an effort to become even more grateful and live a life oriented towards "well being" which is Seligman's term for well-grounded functional happiness.

I am grateful for my decision and the action I have taken this year to learn and live a more grateful life.

Warm summer nights

It was a beautiful night with clear skies and no moon after the meeting. We went for a walk in the South Medina Park. MJ knows her stars REALLY well and named off a dozen or so that were visible in the darkening twilight. The park was dark, but there was a lot of city lights not far away making it hard to see many stars. I did see an excellent shooting star and a satellite in a SE > NW orbit that strangely disappeared while still well above the horizon.

MJ, Margo and I committed to an evening field trip in 4 weeks to a place where the night sky is not washed out by city lights. That will be fun.

I am grateful for clean air, warm summer nights and starry skies.

the talk on gratitude I wish I had said last night

Last night I went to my former home group in S. Seattle. It is a large group of 100+ that uses a microphone so everybody can hear. Last night was birthday night and I got to talk about having 6 years. I rambled on and on in a confused sort of way that finally ended. For simplicity and anonymity, I will use more jargon than usual.

The EW members have been some of my best role models in recovery. We actually have regularly scheduled business meetings at my current home group. I learned that at EW.

Seeing Barry, Gloria, Jennifer and others at the GSIG corrections committee meetings was my start in committee service work. Going to KC Juvie with Josh was a great experience.

When I needed some guidance with the ESIG board, Janny and Shirley met with me at Janny's office over lunch to talk about how best to work with others. The moral of the story was this too shall pass.

When my new home group visited Echo Glen, Jennifer went with me to meet with the kids. It was a great experience. She also started the only new treatment facility meeting on the Eastside in the last 10 years that I know about.

While I don't play softball, it is my understanding that there are 16 teams in a sober softball league that had great support from Scott while getting started back in the early days. One of the biggest meetings on the Eastside is the Saturday night speakers meeting cofounded by Dean.

Recently I have doing some PI service work. Dave is the GSIG PI/CPC committee chair. We are going to put 5000 bookmarkers with website/contact info in all 43 of the King County Libraries.

I learned to shake hands with strangers while serving as a EW greeter 6 years ago with Steve. Vito demonstrated how a master organizes a group anniversary dinner. Vito & Marvin have been spotted at the GSIG intergroup office on multiple occasions.

Crystal's knowledge of the big book is impressive. Jennifer has been a big advocate for increased 12-step literacy at my new home group on the Eastside.

Margo went with me to a concert last month. It was my first concert ever at the Woodland Park zoo.

Then there is the gold standard, Ralph. He is a great role model in having done massive service work, having incredible long term sobriety, and always having a handshake and a friendly smile for friends new and old. His story in the Seattle Times last year was a textbook example of how to maintain anonymity at the level of press, radio and film while carrying the message. His presence & presentation at the 75th anniversary party was inspirational. Sea-Dru-Nar does a fantastic job of providing opportunities for people in recovery to get their lives back on track.

I am grateful for all the wonderful role models at EW. Thank you for my sobriety.

Going back to where I have been before

Tonight was birthday night at my former home group in Seattle. I started going there 7 years ago and stopped going about 3.5 years ago. I went to the meeting and was invited to share since it was my 'birthday month' having had 6 years of continuous sobriety on 7/9/05.

It felt great to go back, say 'hi' to people I knew and share my gratitude with those that had helped me along the way—and those just getting started on their way. Before recovery, I lived my life in 5 year plans that lasted 6+ years before my bridges were burnt and it was time to move on. It was a sweet victory to get to go back across a bridge that I had not burnt and share my success and gratitude with them.

I am grateful for my sobriety time and for no longer burning bridges like how it used to be. It is great to have long-term successful relationships.

SeaTac airport is conveniently located

The SeaTac airport is located about 20 driving miles SW of me. That makes it very convenient without having a problem with excessive annoying jet noise. My friend Leslee travels more on a low budget income than anyone else I know.

Last weekend she went to Orange County (south LA) help her son move to a new apartment with his girlfriend. I had never seen somebody so excited about helping others move. Leslee has a great relationship with her two adult sons. They have had dozens of travel adventures together. It is pleasant to drive Leslee to the airport and then pick her up a few days later. She is excited to leave and glad to be home when she gets here.

Thanks to the miracle of cell phones, there is a parking spot a half-mile from the arrival doors that works really well. People fly into Seattle, get off the plane and call for their ride. By the time the driver gets to the door, the passenger has walked through the airport and steps out the door. Even so, there is a huge demand for parking space at the loading/unloading zones in front of the airport. It was moderately busy on a Tuesday afternoon in July. The cell phone parking lot was full. I can't imagine what a nightmare it is on the busiest days such as Thanksgiving weekend.

I am grateful for a the convenience of a large modern international airport located just far enough away to not be too noisy where I live.

Turning dreams into success stories

Prior to recovery, I rarely finished projects attributing much of my lack of completion to being a dreamer in the classic Pisces mold. Not finishing projects is also a widely held attribute by active alcoholics and addicts.

My latest project is to put bookmarkers in all 43 of the King County Libraries with information about 12-step meetings for people having problems with alcohol. Nearly 5000 bookmarkers were printed, cut and collated for each of the libraries. Big libraries get big packets and smaller libraries get smaller packets. Later this week the packets will be delivered to the library distribution center. The LDC will then ship them out to the 43 libraries. Relative to other local projects of this sort, this will be a huge success story in carrying the message to the still suffering alcoholic.

I am grateful for having the wherewithal to turn dreams into reality. It feels good.

Becoming process oriented

As a kid, I was always taught that to focus on achieving results was the way to go through life. That was a miserable failure as a methodology for me. In recovery via the 12-step programs, I am learning how to live life in a process oriented manner and let go of the results.

A good example of that is when I was a student back in the day, I would worry & stress about my grades instead of simply studying. While I was a student with some recovery, I spent the vast majority of my school time studying and very little time thinking about grades. The result was I got much better grades with much less stress and more enjoyment learning new things.

Tonight we were talking about the 8th Step at our meeting. I was invited to share early on and deferred until later since I uncharacteristically did not have a 'theme' to expound upon. After listening to the other members share, I realized one of the most important things I get out of working the steps is a process oriented way of life. That works a lot better for me.

Today I am grateful for a process oriented way of life that works for me.

A couple days off

The weather has finally turned to summer in Seattle. It has been a long time coming. It is especially beautiful and green this summer after a long wet spring.

My gratitude level is still way up there, just now it is being expressed in other forms than writing about it while I enjoy our sunny days.

I am grateful for sunny days and pleasant warm weather. I am also grateful we are not stuck in a record-breaking heat wave like what the mid-west and east coast experienced this week.

Sharing my experiences with others in a helpful way

30 years I had a surgery on my back where the surgeon wired steel rods to my spinal column after I had crushed a vertebrate. It has worked really well for me.

A friend had a teenage daughter with scoliosis that is going to have a similar procedure done next month. Naturally she was scared due to a lack of experience about the process and the results when we talked yesterday. I did not think much about sharing my experience at the time. I all too often think that others know what I know and this was another case of that. Plus, telling surgical successes over lunch has the tendency to put the damper on conversations and appetites.

I realized on the way home that it might really help my friend (and her daughter) if I shared my experience with her. I wrote her a one-page email explaining what happened, what it was like and what I thought of it now. My experience was almost all good. The somewhat bad experience was that I broke a wire tying the rod to my spinal column after a few years of hard use that would sometimes be uncomfortable for a year or two. Her petite daughter is highly unlikely to put the same sort of stress that a 6'3" 215 lb active guy in a wheelchair could do.

My friend wrote a kind and gracious reply to my email with clear relief thanking me for sharing my experience with her.

In the past, I could share stories like that—in a gruesome way that was unlikely to bring comfort to a single mom with her only daughter facing major surgery. Thanks to the improvement & empathy I have made in my relationships with others, I was able to help two nice people feel much less scared and far more optimistic about their upcoming surgery.

I am grateful for the good friends in my life that I can relate to fantastically better than how it used to be.

A pleasant day

After not feeling so great yesterday and sleeping fitfully last night, I awoke late in the morning having to rush off to have lunch with Tracy. I arrived at her office a few minutes early and practiced my mindfulness for as long as possible (no more than 30 seconds!). Then I read my Learned Optimism book for a few minutes until Tracy was ready to go.

We went to a local restaurant, Doc's, that only serves lunch catering to a mostly hi-tech industrial park. I had a philly cheesesteak sandwich made of thin-sliced ribeye and cheese-sauce on a grill-toasted French roll. It lacked grilled onions and green peppers. Being from Seattle, I have no idea whether or not it was authentic to Philly. I have my doubts, but it was yummy. It was a great day to dine outside. Tracy is a talker. We had a long pleasant funny sometimes intense lunch conversation. Her mom has health problems that she does not want to discuss with the entire family. Similarly, I don't reminisce when I talk with my mother due to all too many topics being overloaded with emotional baggage.

I came home, cleaned up my apartment for a bit and then met with Charlie. We had a great reading and discussion about mindfulness. We read from a book by a Vietnamese Budhist monk The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. That book suggested getting the book The Essential Discipline for Daily Us by Doc The. (A half-hour later after fruitlessly searching Amazon, Google and Bing for that book, I am back to writing about gratitude. I emailed Amazon for help—we will see how well that works. I am optimistic Amazon knows more than I do about searching for books.)

After meeting with Charlie, I walked to a pet store near the mall to get a new kitty litter box for my cats. I did not like what they had. So I bought some groceries and headed home. On the way home, I noticed my timing was such that I could stop in at the Alano Club and catch a meeting. That went well. After that, it was off to Home Depot to buy a cheap plastic tub to use as a kitty litter box. They work well being larger and 1/4th the price of the pet store equivalent.

I came home, started cooking a roasted chicken. While the chicken was cooking, I changed out the litter box, took out a bunch of trash had a nice chicken dinner and reflected on my day. It was good.

I am grateful for good days like today. This was my version of being productive. It feels a lot better than being semi-sick like yesterday.

Feeling slightly ill

For having a "complete" spinal cord injury in my lower back combined with being overweight and out-of-shape, my health is relatively good. Every year in the Fall, I get that season's flu shot. It seems to be working, I have not had a bad case of the flu in years.

When I woke-up this morning, it felt like the first warning signs of the flu with a bit of dizziness, a slight headache and a slightly queasy stomach. After an hour or two, it was maybe a touch worse, but not too bad. I canceled my meeting with a friend and stayed home to watch more TV and read my kindle.

Tonight I felt well enough to eat a poached chicken breast. I still don't feel quite right, but it is not too bad. Hopefully a good night's sleep will leave me feeling better in the morning.

I am grateful that my environment is such that I don't get serious health diseasess such as dysentery, cholera or malaria. Feeling a bit under the weather for one day and thinking about gratitude helps me to keep things in perspective and realize how good I have it. Plus, two big giant nearly new hospitals are less than a mile away. I am sure I will be okay.

Online billing & bank info

I had a question about a charge on my long-distance phone bill that is provided/billed separately from my land-line (POTS) phone. I called their customer service and she could not answer the question. I got online and looked up previous bills. To my slight surprise, I am paying a $2.95 monthly service fee. That is still less than the $5/month Qwest (now Centurytel) would charge me.

I do as much of my banking as possible online. My only trips to the bank are for the cash machine and to get a pension document notarized once a year. Paying bills online avoids the hassles of writing checks, filling envelopes, finding stamps and having to go to the post office. I love the convenience and near real-time transaction tracking.

My plan was to write about my use of the web and how better it makes my life. Bank & billing info is good enough for tonight.

I am grateful for being able to access billing & banking information online 24/7 via the web. It makes my life a LOT easier to keep track of.

Awesome free clothes

A friend's husband recently lost a lot of weight and is now too small for his shirts. She gave me a dozen+ of his shirts that were in nearly new condition including a few dress shirts. I rarely wear long-sleeve shirts so those weren't too exciting.

The polo shirts she gave were really exciting in terms of being very high quality, a little change of color and a great fit. Most of them were in like-new condition and fit me better than the ones I buy for myself! (His sleeves are shorter on the polo shirts even though they are the same size as what I buy, he has different manufacturers with a different cut.)

I am grateful for friends that think of me and give me awesome free clothes. That has rarely happened in my life since I was bigger than most guys even back when I was young and fit.

Showing up on time

Before my recovery, I had all manner of excuses for why I was late or could not make to a scheduled rendezvous. Now I get to make plans, show up on time and follow with my friends and others. One commitment to myself is to visit my mother once a week. It took me until 5:30 Saturday afternoon to make it this week, but I made it.

I have two friends that have gone to meetings, but not worked the program of the 12 steps with a sponsor and so on. There were both going to meet me at my place today. One was late and the other did not make it nor leave a message. Their punctuality came as no surprise. I am sure one will more of an excuse than I want to hear whenever we talk next.

I am grateful I am able to show up on time for my commitments. My punctuality is fantastically better than how it used to be. That is a lot of progress.

Not missing things when they are gone…or appreciating what I have while I have it

A friend used and defined the word "complacent" tonight in a discussion defining it as smug self-satisfaction. That was close enough for her usage.

For me, being complacent also includes taking things for granted and not being grateful for all the blessings in my life. I did not know what to write about tonight and had to think about it for a minute or two before choosing complacency.

I am grateful for the many little blessings that make up my life. My two cats, the birds to entertain them, dry cat food, are a few of the many blessings that make my life better. One cat even greets me by the door when I come home so a can pet her as soon as the door closes. She then climbs in my lap and will go for a short ride until her cat ADD kicks in and she needs to do something else.

There are many other material blessings in my life that I get a bit of cognitive dissonance when I think about writing about them. It is as if there is some rule that I can only be grateful for relationships and the big things in my life. It is disconcerting to write about the washcloth sized microfiber wipes that I have for cleaning my glasses as if that is too trivial to write about. Cleaning my eyeglasses is not trivial. I clean them one or more times a day with a eyeglass cleaning solution and wiping with my microfiber cloth.

To avoid complacency (and writer's block), I will write more about little things that make my life better.

I am grateful for the many little things that make my life better.

A certificate of achievement

For the last ten years, I have volunteered at the Washington State Reformatory. Many meetings give medallions to celebrate yearly anniversaries. They can't do that at the WSR for security reasons. Instead, they give out paper certificates. Tonight I got my 6-year certificate.

We talked about humility, acceptance and gratitude at the meeting tonight. The inmates with any kind of sobriety are experts on humility and acceptance. They also have a surprising amount of gratitude for being in a relatively tame prison.

I am grateful for my sobriety today, that I get to sleep in my own bed tonight and for the great friendship I have with my two travel partners on the trip to and from the WSR.

Glad it is not me…

I have a friend that can't stop drinking even though alcohol had stopped working for her a long time ago. She has multiple large boxes of her stuff stored in my storage closet. I was going to help her move a couple of them to her new place today. We were off to a rough start since her cell phone was not working and she needed to get a prescription filled.

I drove to far North Seattle and picked her up. We went to the T-Mobile store. The clerk removed the battery from her cell phone, waited a few seconds and put the battery back. That fixed the phone problem. She spent about 100x more time bitching & whining about the problem than it took to fix the problem. I was going to pull the battery when I picked her up, but she would not let me do that since she was adamant the problem was far more complicated than that.

On the drive to the T-Mobile store, she showed me her latest scars where she had burned herself with a cigarette when smoking while drunk and medicated. They looked painful. One was a dime-sized 3rd degree burn on her thigh. There were two other smaller burn marks that still looked like it would have been really painful to a sober person.

We drove through nasty i5 traffic in Seattle from the UW down to the West Seattle freeway. Turned out some lady had crashed her car into the car in front of her and caused a 10-mile long traffic jam. I don't understand drivers that need to drive so close to the car in front of them that they wreck their car. There is no way that being one second faster on the freeway is ever going to pay out over the lost time, expense and injuries for people that wreck their car by crashing into the car in front of them. It is like that is not even an accident—it is simply the inevitable result of driving too close to the car in front of them.

We got to Costco and my friend got her Rx for an anti-anxiety medicine. I wanted to get a few things while we were there. My friend tried one free food sample and had to go outside because it made her nauseous. I finished my shopping and met my friend outside. Since I was going to my car to put my purchases in the trunk, she accused me of trying to leave her there. I explained that I would put the junk in the trunk and then go have lunch at the Costco Deli (cheapest place in the State for lunch at $1.50 for a polish sausage and soda).

Unsurprisingly, she smelled like alcohol after she going outside. My friend had snapped somewhere between going outsides and waiting in line to place our order. She was whining loudly about the family in front of us taking too long to get ice cream cones, she banged her ginourmous handbag on my wheelchair a couple of times, made some stupid surly comments to me, and then cut in front of the lady in the next line to get her food.

I sat and talked with a lovely old couple. My friend joined us after getting her pop and haranging a different cashier about a lid for her soda cup—which are conveniently place on both sides of the pop machines. I got a picture added to my Costco card and waited a couple of minutes for my friend. She did not come outside, so I left her at Costco. That is not as harsh as it sounds since she rides the bus, has neither a car nor license, and used to live on the same street as the Costco.

On the way home, I was still a bit annoyed and resentful at my friend for her behavior. I knew I would immediately write a blog story and feel better when I got home. I put the food away, took out the boxes to the trash, checked my email and vmail, and then wrote this post. There was a vmail from my friend, I deleted it without bothering to listen to her bitch about my boorish behavior.

In the 12-step programs, we are strongly encouraged to work with new people. One big reason why that is so important is that it helps us to be grateful for what we have. A couple hours with my friend and am damned grateful for the functional life I have today and assuredly want to not drink today.

I am grateful today that I am sober, that I don't throw-up every morning when I get up, that I have a car and a license, my land-line and cell phones both work, I don't have mold throughout my residence, I can wait in line without causing a scene, I don't smoke, I don't have burns on my legs and have healthy boundaries that allow me to leave bitchy ungrateful active alcoholics behind.

A simple life—that works

I live a quiet life that works. It is not close to what I dreamed of as a child for when I grow up. It is good enough for today and for that I am very grateful. Some nights (like tonight) I don't feel like writing about gratitude since I don't have a big dramatic adventure to be grateful for today. I did have a nice trip to Crossroads Mall where I met with Charlie for an hour and then with Frederic. Both of them are guys that I like and have a lot of respect for.

One of the best lessons I get out of writing about what I am grateful for is learning how to reframe or refocus my thoughts from what I lack to what I have. That is like the difference between a glass that is half-empty or half-full. Either way it is the same amount of water. When I think of the proverbial glass as being half-full, I think about what I do have instead of what is missing in my life. That feels a much better on a variety of levels including have more confidence & optimism and less fear.

I am grateful for the wherewithal to learn how to see life through a glass that is half-full. It helps me to be a much more optimistic happier person with less fear and loneliness. That is more than good enough for today.

Progress, not perfection

Yesterday my attendance was lacking at a meeting that I had committed to attending. I am sure they got along fine without me. In the past, any sort of letdown would be the lead-in to a series of cascading failures on my part resulting in chaos. My outlook and life has changed so that is no longer the case today.

Tonight I had promised a friend a ride to visit her friend in jail at the King County Regional Justice Center (RJC) in Kent. We left Bellevue when she got off work at 6:30, had no traffic problems on the drive to Kent, had dinner at an incredibly delicious inexpensive Mexican restaurant that was one-step more permanent than a taco-truck and then went to the RJC. I waited in the car while my friend visited her friend.

I finished reading Gratitude Factor, The: Enhancing Your Life through Grateful Living while waiting in my car at the RJC parking lot. It was a good place to think about being grateful. I watched friends and family walk into the RJC to visit loved ones in jail. I was glad that: A) I am not in jail nor an any imminent danger of being arrested; B) none of my family nor friends are in jail.

My friend had been to the RJC before as an inmate. This was her first trip as a visitor. She assured me it was a lot better to visit the jail than to stay there. Her visit made her more grateful for the progress she has made in her recovery in the last 2+ years from when she was the one being visited by her friend while she was in the RJC.

I am grateful that I can now help others, I can recover from minor setbacks before they snowball out of control, I am not in jail and that my friends are all on a mostly upward trajectory with their lives. We are all winners now. It did not use to be that way. That is literally miraculous progress.

Six years

Today I have six years of continuous sobriety. It feels good. I got up to five years and then relapsed twice for a couple days each on a one-year span. By 12-step math, I have six years. By my numerology (my favorite word to misuse!), I have 11.5 years minus a week.

Some people at the meetings talk about getting a life better than beyond their wildest dreams. I can easily imagine a better life for me. The great news is that I have learned how to accept the life I have as being good enough. Taking the time each day to write about what I am grateful for has been the biggest blessing in my life since getting sober. I am much more likely to be focused on the good parts of life than the bad parts. For example when driving down the road, I can either fume at the driver that cut me off two miles back or I can focus on being mindful of all of the natural beauty that is around me and the miracles of our modern transportation system. Guess which option feels better? Guess which one is the one I would fixate on left to "my own best thinking"?

I am grateful for the life that I have today. I got to do some service work with others stuffing information packets for professionals, stop by Costco to have $180 worth of copying done while I waited, have lunch & shop while waiting, drive around on a beautiful summer day in Seattle, have a steak for dinner, watch a good foreign flick (okay, it was a Hong Kong Kung Fu movie) and read a book. That is good enough for today.

The joy of a fresh fruit smoothie

I have never owned a blender until earlier this year when I saw one on sale and bought it. I had been vaguely wanting a blender for years. Months later, I finally used it for the first time tonight. I made a delicious yoghurt smoothie with some of the fruit I had on hand at home: blueberries; strawberries; and a banana.

I am grateful for the bountiful harvest available at my local grocers allowing me to have six kinds of whole fruit in my kitchen and for the power tools to conveniently blend them together into delicious concoction. I did not use the Rainier cherries, Braeburn apples nor the peaches in tonight's smoothie—anticipation is nearly as good as gratitude! I am looking forward to trying them in a future smoothie.

my car has a 19 gallon gas tank

I usually don’t put gas in my car until there is less than 1/8th of a tank of gas left in the car. This is the fourth Ford Thunderbird or Mercury Cougar that I have owned. The earlier models all had 20 gallon gas tanks. The car I have now has a 19 gallon tank and a gas gauge that does not go to "E" even when it is empty. You are probably asking yourself "How do I know this?" and why am I writing about it today?

I know this because I ran out of gas today a half-mile from my apartment when I was hoping to have at least another gallon of gas in the car. Fortunately, it happened on a nice wide flat spot on one of my favorite scenic roads in Bellevue—the Lake Hills Connector. I could have called the auto club, but I figured a friend that lives close by would be a faster solution. I called Carol knowing she likely just got home from work. My idea was for her to come get my passenger, Shawna, and go get some gas. Her better idea was just get the gas and bring it to me.

Carol lives close by and is a very functional reliable person. I thought it would be about ten minutes before we were on our way. It took a bit longer than that. Carol had to go the not one, not two, but three gas stations to find one that would sell her a plastic gas can. The first had gas cans—but they were locked up for the night by 6:10 PM even though there was still a couple hours of daylight left. The second gas station was being remodeled and only had a tiny floor-space for consumer goods, thus no gas can there. The third gas station had a gas can, but it was a challenge to fill even with help from the station attendant.

It was a pleasant temperature with overcast skies after having rained in the morning. Shawna and I had a nice conversation about many different topics while waiting for Carol. Plus, I love the lush greenery surrounding the Lake Hills Connector road. My favorite part of the LHC has a canopy of trees growing over the two eastbound lanes. We were in the westbound lanes which offered a view of the newly rehabilitated wet lands and a 360° view of being surrounded by forested hillsides and not a house in sight.

I am grateful for beautiful roads, good conversation, helpful friends, a positive frame of mind that mad waiting by the side of the road a pleasant experience and now knowing that my car only holds 19 gallons of gas. That will avoid learning that lesson under less pleasant circumstances. This was the best experience I ever had running out of gas!

NW beauty at its best

After 300-some days without 80 F weather, we finally hit the big time today with a whopping 81 degrees! It was an incredibly gorgeous day in Western Washington. The sun was out with clear skies, snow in the mountains to the East and West, lush green growth all over and many blossoms from plants, bushes and trees all showing mother nature at her radiant best in the Northwest.

Traffic was light on the surface streets this afternoon. Chances are good that many people left work early (or skipped work altogether) to enjoy the nature's beauty up close and personal at their favorite park.

I am grateful to live in a place with lush green growth covering the landscape as far as the eye can see. Even the houses and apartments are surrounded by lawns, flowers, bushes and trees.

Solitude and choices

I live a quiet life. As I get older, I am becoming more at peace with closing the gap between how my life actually is and how my life should be. Many outside sources strive to stimulate consumers to buy their product with the pitch that it will improve our sex life, financial security, status or quality of life. A big part of this pitch is implication that our lives will not be complete unless we buy this one product providing us endless satisfaction.

Since I don't have the money to buy every product to make my life complete, it works out well that I stopped watching TV commercials a couple of years ago. Now I don't know what I am missing. Unsurprisingly, it seems that I am missing less and less as time goes by with no TV commercials.

Sometimes I can get too caught up in my solitude and stay home for several days like what I have done so far this week. It is nice to live by myself at times like this. Having a roommate would be way more stimulus from others than what I have enjoyed.

It is counter-productive when I spend too much time by myself. Having friends I can call or meetings from dawn to dusk gives me a sense of comfort in knowing that I will go be with others tomorrow.

I am grateful for my solitude and for the comfort of friends. It is good to have choices in where I spend my time and who I spend it with.

Independence Day w/ the Declaration of Independence

2011-07-04 Independence Day

The US Federal Government has created or funded some fantastic ground-breaking pieces of infrastructure such as cross-country railroads in the late 1800s, massive hydropower infrastructure with dams & transmission lines in the early 20th century, the Interstate freeway system in the second half of the 20th century, and funded IT research that led to the creation of the internet and the ensuing World-Wide-Web.

I am grateful for all the work, sacrifice and vision that our forefathers had when Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence 235 years ago today.

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Declaration of Independence

Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence. The original spelling and capitalization have been retained.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

The Fourth of July

I am grateful to live in a nice part of an independent free country that has relatively low crime-rates with a low level of corruption. It is good to be able to drive most places I want to go when I want with nothing more than my car, a drivers license and gas money.

I have been reading the book Learned Optimism. The point is to develop positive thinking skills to the level of being somewhat of a Pollyanna. That is a lot healthier than being a pessimistic Cassandra. While trying to write about the best of our country, I am almost unable to overcome the compulsion to write about corruption or other negative aspects of our great nation. In writing that last sentence, I realized I can write about how minor our corruption is!

The largest developer in Bellevue is against light rail. His balking and legal shenanigans have delayed the process of building light rail for years leaving us with some of the worst freeway traffic in the country. Fortunately for the developer, Kemper Freeman, he had the money to spend on lawyers to be the only guy to be able to fly his helicopter to downtown Bellevue thus avoiding the traffic mess that he helped created and blocks the rest of us from improving by using the world-wide standard for moving lots of people between communities—trains. This is a lot better than the corruption faced in many African countries from Libya to Zanzibar.

The income gap between the rich and poor in the US has been rising steadily in my adulthood from 1981 till now. It's generally understood that we live in a time of growing income inequality, but "the ordinary person is not really aware of how big it is," Krugman told me. During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth—the "seven fat years" and the " long boom." Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of total increase in Americans' income went to the top 1 percent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 percent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads. The good news is that our economy is growing.

I am grateful that the biggest problems with corruption in America are mostly economic. That is a lot better than crimes of violence and murder, although wealth is transferred at a much greater rate by Goldman-Sachs than all the armed bank robbers in the country. At least I am unlikely to get shot while going to my new bank (Chase) that took over my old bank (Washington Mutual) after controversial forced takeover imposed by the FDIC.

2011-07-02 the first bbq of the summer

Went over to Carol's for a steak, lobster and artichoke bbq tonight with fresh fruit for dessert. It was delicious. While I was gone a friend, that I had lent money to earlier this week, came over to mop and vacuum as a way of repaying me. It was nice to come to clean floors.

I am grateful for the great friends in my life and how they make my life better in a wide variety of ways.

an evening concert at the Zoo with Robert Cray

Last night I went to a ZooTunes concert at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle with my friend Margo. Bluesman Robert Cray played a great show in long summer evening. After the concert we walked around the zoo for a bit and then stopped to chat for awhile. Turned out that we talked so long the Zoo was closed before we left. It was as close as I will get to Africa listening to birds call while walking out on a path with a canopy of vegetation above us.

I enjoyed the concert, my time with Margo and the mostly sunny long Seattle evening with midsummer twilight lasting until 9:30.

I am grateful for having the money, time and energy to go to concerts with friends; while having a nice time being mindfully present in the moment.