fitbit PB + Pitiful Millennials + "Damp Coffee Lap"

fitbit Friday::Special SAT Edition

fitbit Update

Since my last update, it's been a week of ups & downs.

• SAT 3/5: 15,096 steps [Thanks to an expedition to MOA. *]
• SUN 3/6:  3,132 [To be fair, I spent much of the day in a car, driving back from Eagan, MN, with my daughter & two adorable grand-daughters.]
• MON 3/7:  11,318
• TUE 3/8:  12,211
• WED 3/9:  13,239 [I was on a short-lived roll.]
• THU 3/10:  4,956 [Left Norfolk at 5:00a, drove to Lincoln, attended a legislative breakfast hosted by the Nebraska Gamblers' Assistance Commission ***, followed by a meeting of the commissioners, followed by a drive back to Norfolk. Had time to take Sammy for a walk when I got home. I didn't.]
• FRI 3/11:  I'm typing this special edition of fitbit FRI around 7:00p on FRI 3/11 for publication on SAT 3/12. I have 4,146 steps, so it's unlikely that I'll reach "my" goal **** of 10,000 steps today. *****

* Mall of America. We were at Nathan & Laura's for baby Calvin's baptism. **
** His baptism was at Easter Lutheran Church, not MOA. I'm just sayin'.
*** I'm a commissioner, appointed by the Governor himself.
**** I say "my", because I'm still unclear as to who exactly imposed this goal on me.
***** After taking Sammy for his late evening stroll, I did reach 5,879 steps.

Since I'm having hip replacement surgery this next TUE 3/15, I only have several more days to get my quota of steps in before it's back to square one. Also, this will be my last fitbit Update until further notice.
      Late-breaking news! [Perhaps it would be more apt for me to say that I'm late w/this breaking news? Whatever.] I failed to note above re: last Saturday's remarkable accomplishment--which was a P.B.--I received the following email, time-stamped at 8:52 p.m. {CST}, 3/5/6:  "Congrats on earning your first Urban Boot Badge! Whoa! You've walked 15,000 steps. Your step count is heating up! with a number that's almost three times more than the national average, you've earned the Urban Boot Badge."]

• As I've mentioned before, motivation from computer-generated emails? Not happening.
• Where do "they" get their statistics from? The NSA?
• In one week's time, I dropped from the ranks of the Urban Boot League to the Podunk Slipper League.

Criminal Minds

From Omaha World Herald (3/5):  "Brazilian man found hiding in gas tank at border crossing. A man has been charged w/trying to sneak a Brazilian man into the U.S. from Mexico by hiding him in the gas tank of an SUV."  [I can neither confirm nor deny that the plan failed when the driver accidentally filled his tank on his way to the border crossing.] *
* Yes, as a matter of fact, I am feeling a little morbid tonight.

Food for Thought

From OWH (2/28):  "Why millennials aren't bowled over by cereal. Few things are as painless to prepare as cereal. Making it requires little more than pouring something (a cereal of your choice) into a bowl & then pouring something else (a milk of your choice) into the same bowl. Eating it requires little more than a spoon & a mouth. The food, which Americans still buy $10 billion of annually, has thrived over the decades, at least in part because of this very quality:  Its convenience.
      "And yet, for today's youths, cereal isn't easy enough. Recently the NYT published a story about the breakfast favorite, & the most disinterring part was this: 'Almost 40% of the millennials surveyed by Mintel was its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating.'" [Well, boo-hoo-hoo, millennials . . . You have to clean up after eating? Granted, eating a bowl of my favorite cereal, Coco Pebbles, is slightly more strenuous than eating my favorite pop tart *, but, seriously? Sheesh . . . millennials. What next? Just when you were beginning to regain some credibility with me.]
* Frosted, brown sugar cinnamon. **
** The real deal, not generic.

There Is No Place Like . . . 

Florida?

From St. Paul Pioneer Press (3/6): "Anger rises along w/Florida's water woes. What's yellow, brown & black all over? After a bruising watery winter on the heels of a dry summer, FL's water. In July, a stinky stain scientists call yellow fog spread across Florida Bay after a regional drought killed miles of seagrass. In FEB, water managers began flushing Lake Okeechobee, a vast shallow bowl more than twice the size of NYC, into the Atlantic Ocean & Gulf of Mexico after record rain. A familiar wave of black water thick w/sediment soon flowed east, spreading to corals on the northern remnants of the state's reef tract. On the west coast, water turned a muddy brown.
      "'You can't see 3" in the water' said fishing Capt. Mike Connor . . . " [It won't matter when global climate change will cover most of this muddy brown water with 20' of sea water sometime in the next 20 years.] *
* Or is it 200? I can never keep it straight.

Michigan!

From OWH (2/29):  "Firefighter pays struggling family's $1,000 electric bill. A suburban Detroit firefighter had paid off a struggling family's electricity bill of more than $1,000 after responding to a call at their home. 
      "Clinton Township firefighters went to the house 2/12 for a non-emergency medical call & learned that one of the children there needs to be hooked up full-time to a ventilator to breathe. The house didn't have electricity because the parents had fallen behind on their payments & hadn't properly filed a medical waiver that would have kept the power on. The child had to be taken to a hospital.
      "After the visit, firefighter Ryan McCuen, 35, later paid the entire $1,023 electricity bill." [WWJD? This is what Jesus would do!]

Nebraska!

From OWH (3/1:)  "These Suds Are No Duds. More drinkers means more brewers--& more jobs to support them . . . Even in NE, which is generally a couple of years behind coastal trends, drinkers seemingly can't get enough local beer . . . Number of breweries in NE has more than tripled since 2004." [I may be an English major, but I understand "tripled."]

Political Potpourri

From OWH (3/11): "Carson is expected to endorse ----- * " [Couldn't bring myself to read the short article that followed. I considered saving this for my next Mental Health entry, hopefully on MON 3/14, because it is so, so depressing ** . . . but I also have an appt in Sioux City on Monday, so time could be at a premium & I may not get to blog.
* He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named
** No, seriously. It's really depressing.

Some Last Minute Whimsy *

* There will be no Whimsical WED next week, since I'm having hip replacement surgery on TUE 3/15 & won't predict when my next entry of whimsy might be.

From Readers' Digest (Sep 2015), 36 Favorite Facts That Are False:  

• "Don't Touch Baby Birds. Most birds have a limited sense of smell, so they won't abandon babies who 'smell' of humans." [There are better reasons not to touch baby birds. The scientific word to describe baby birds is "icky."]
• "Alcohol Kills Brain Cells. Even in heavy users & alcoholics, brain cells aren't killed, only damaged." [Such a relief to know that you may be harboring thousands of damaged brain cells instead of dead ones. If you were harboring thousands of dead brain cells, chances are you would hardly notice and/or hardly worry about it, right?]
• "Sugar=Hyperactivity. Studies have disproved this. Poor or rowdy behaviors still occur in children w/sugar-free diets." [Studies re:  the effects of sugar-free diets on adults w/OCD? The jury is still out.]

From USA Today (3/4):  "New world's longest flight. Emirates has bumped Qantas Airways out of the top spot for the world's longest flight. Emirates took over the title on TUE w/the launch of its 8,819-mile non-stop route between Dubai, in the U.A.E., & Auckland, New Zealand. That bumped Qantas' 8,576-mile route between Dallas/Ft. Worth & Sydney--the previous record holder--into 2nd place . . ." [My longest non-stop flight was from Chicago O'Hare to Honolulu. It was memorable for a couple of reasons. I had not yet learned that requesting an aisle seat was way more advantageous that a window seat. I dumped part of a cup of coffee on my lap almost immediately after I was served, thereby experiencing the phenomena of "damp coffee lap" for 8(?) hours or so. And the flight was filled with nurses * flying ** to a conference in Hawaii. They started drinking beer the first time the beverage carts rolled around. I was seated next to two of them. First they were chatty. Then they were a little boisterous [as were their many compadres] ***. Eventually, they both fell asleep. Soundly. Know how much trouble it was to get them to move so I could leave my seat to use the lavatory? It was a lot of trouble. And I had to use the lavatory more than once. And I had to wake up one or both of them more than once.
* I have two sisters-in-law who are nurses. I mean them no offense. It's an honorable profession.
** Of course, what else would they be doing in an airplane?
*** Betcha didn't know I was bilingual? I decided to throw that in there to impress my niece Teresa. ****
**** Who is not a nurse. I'm just sayin'.

From SPPP (3/6): "Common money advice that's actually horrible . . . 

• It's Cheaper to Eat Fast Food Than to Buy Groceries:  This ridiculous rationale is the mantra of those who hate to cook. But barring a few rare exceptions, it's simply not true." [Shut up while I enjoy my breakfast burrito w/mild salsa from McD's.]

From OWH (3/11): "Bar patrons belly up for shots at phone chargers. It's not free to charge your cellphone at the Pub, a D.C. watering hole. Customers who need a boost when their batteries die must pay a price. The price is their dignity.
      "Tired of the perpetual requests to charge phones--& then track down the owners once the phones are juiced up--bartender Russell De Leon purchased striped top hats, a la 'The Cat in the Hat,' in a variety of colors. Anyone who wants a charge has to wear one of the hats for as long as the phone is plugged in." [Something tells me this isn't a bikers' bar, but bikers use cell phones, too.]