Banjo and Wife Take Tai Chi Lessons

What my wife looks like doing Tai Chi

My wife and I have recently started a Tai Chi class, attending once a week. She never looked better. She manages a grace that, so far, has eluded me.  I don't let that bother me.

Our instructor plays flute music. All Tai Chi instructors appear to do this. I think they do this to cover up the grunts. I played music all through high school and college, so I enjoy music. But this music doesn't appear to have a beginning or an end. It's always in the middle of whatever piece they are playing. It never goes anywhere. It starts in the middle, meanders around, and ends in the middle. Who thinks up music like this? I think they need some BBQ, then they can get somewhere, and have a start, middle, and end, instead of all this wandering around.

What I look like doing Tai Chi

We do things with our arms. And then we do things with our legs. The music facilitates this, as arms, legs and music are all wandering. Sometimes I just stand and stare at my arms – they are doing things I don't remember issuing commands to do. Sort of like autonomous arms, I guess. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I'm keeping an eye on them just in case they start to do something embarrassing or illegal. I don't think I'll be able to stop them, but I'm keeping an eye on them anyway.

I have to remember to keep my mouth closed. All this wandering about makes it want to gap open.

It's important to keep your toes pointed in the correct direction.  Mine want to wander.  Some people go barefoot, but I keep my shoes on so all my toes are forced to go in the same direction.  It's also important to use your head.  He hasn't said why yet, but I can tell by his looks at me that this is important.  Someday I'll figure this part out.  In the meantime, I'm busy keeping my toes pointed in the right direction, my head doing something as yet unknown, and my gaped-open mouth closed.  This all keeps me pretty busy.  My wife is not amused.  A husband can tell.

Sometimes we stand on one leg, and for some reason, yet unknown, we extend that leg. I'm glad nobody from my old hometown can see me like this. We don't go any where with it, just put it out there, then bring it back in and put it right back where it was before. We do it s-l-o-w. Then we do it again, except with the other leg. At least, I think we do.

Whatever.

Sometimes my arms do something like you might think a propeller would do, if a propeller had arms. It's been my experience, making buzzing sounds while doing this doesn't appear to be part of the approved plan. My instructor has a bald head; when he frowns, like when I'm making buzzing sounds, it goes up all the way from his eyebrows, up over the top of his head, and down his neck to his shoulders. You can see it. It's like one of those Chinese dogs – Sharpies, or something like that – the one with all the wrinkles - whatever. It's almost worth the price of admission to see that. But, seeing it once was enough – remember when they told you, as a kid, not to cross your eyes, or they might get stuck - so I don't do that any more – I don't want him stuck like that.  Did I say my wife was not amused? A husband can tell.

We do other things, all of which have names, but none of which appear to have anything to do with the names given them. We do brushing knees, first one, then the other. We brush them without touching them. It reminds me of how I cleaned my house when I was a bachelor.

We do parting horses manes, first the horse on one side, then the other horse. It's never the same horse, so I don't try to learn the horses names. It's probably better that way. It'd be my luck to get a frilly horse, one with ribbons that wants me to use a comb, when what I was really wanting was a Mustang, snorting and … oh, never mind.

We also push clouds around. Then we stand on one leg, push it out, then the other leg. But we don't go anywhere.  I can't tell if I'm pushing the clouds right or not; I can't see them.  I'm apparently the only one that can't see them, because everyone else is doing this with great enthusiasm.  I don't let that bother me either.

Sometimes, while doing things with our legs, we twirl our arms. At least, I twirl my arms; my wife appears to be doing some sort of smooth, silky ballet, performed with grace and elegance; what I do reminds me of hanging tobacco in barns to cure when I was a boy. No body accused me of dancing ballet then, nor are they likely to do so now.

Everything is done deliberately. There appears to be two speeds: slow, and real slow. I thought at first we were going slow so we could learn better, but I think the more we learn, the slower we are going. It might be the music.

I have to say I'm excelling at breathing. People are turning to stare, so I'm taking quite pride in that. It's apparent they think I know what I'm doing, and hope to learn from the master. I can also stand on one leg pretty good now, then the other. But I never seem to go anywhere.

I think things would work better if they got some new names for the different moves. I even wonder if they got them translated right. Wouldn't it be funny if, instead of parting horse's mane, it really meant baiting a hook?

Here are some names that I think would work better:

• Pushing off a seat on MARTA. This would consist of lowering oneself onto one leg, while extending the other, to gently push off nappers so you can sit down.
• One legged twirl. You extend one leg, holding it by the toe with one hand, while extending the other arm up in the air, all the while hopping on the other leg. I think the Russians have a dance similar to this, called the Putin Vodka Punch Roll.
• Parting Lion's mane. This would consist of a quick forward thrust with one arm then the other arm, on a sleeping lion. This time, the legs are picking up and putting down as fast as they will go, and you are going somewhere, or else you're dinner.
• Bowling clouds. Left arm comes up to your chin, where it grabs a cloud and moves it aside. Meanwhile, the other arm is coming up to do the same thing. Where these clouds are coming from, nobody has said, nor where they are going. However, with one leg in the air, turn, squat, and lay that sucker down the hall for a strike.
• Old man grunt. This is where you extend one arm up high, do something with the palm, count your thumbs; turn real slow, sweep the floor with it, grunt, and repeat until you no longer grunt, or death, whichever comes first.
• Saturday Night Fever. In this one, you try to look like John Travolta. Or in my case, you just try to stand with one arm up high, and the other is down low, with the finger pointed. Shake your hips some. It's hard to find a beat with that meditation music, but I never let not finding the beat get in my way before, so I'm not going to start worrying about that now.
• One Quack Waddle. This is where you pick your leg up s-l-o-w-l-y, then semi-squat on the other. Then, with one hand in the air, and the other hand stretched out in front of you, with your palm up, wiggle your hips while scooting forwards. It works better on a wooden floor; unfortunately, our floor is carpeted, so I keep pitching forward, doing face-plants. That's OK, because everybody appears to enjoy pointing and laughing, and you get bonus points if you quack while falling forward s-l-o-w-l-y.

There appears to be a correct way to do everything. So far, it has eluded me.  I'm not holding out much hope for the future either.

I was told tonight to extend my left arm, to put my left palm facing me. I would know that I had done it right because the thumb on my left had would be pointing to my right. Meanwhile, stand on one leg.

Try as I might, I was unable to put my left palm facing me, and have the thumb on that hand be on my right. My dumb left hand's thumb just kept ending up on the left when I had my palm facing me. I must have the wrong thumb on the wrong hand, or the right thumb on the left hand. Or something like that. I'm not even sure what that means, I'm so confused.  My wife is concerned.  A husband can tell.

So far, I can say this with authority: my wife looks good doing this, and I can stand on one leg. I'm not sure why yet, but I'm doing it. Along with breathing and grunting.

Appears like the Wind is from the West

Appears like Wind is From the West

Maddie the Coon Dog

Banjo - On Controlling Remotes

We've been married for 36 years. Thankfully, they've been wonderful years!

There was a time when I couldn't imagine being 30, let alone being married more than 30 years. 

I wanted to impart some of the wisdom I've discovered that have helped make this feat possible.

The most important thing in a marriage, as we all know (at least those that have been married more than two years), is … who controls the remote. It's popularly known as the 'remote control.' That's not entirely correct – it's actually the 'who controls the remote' remote-thingie.

When we were first married, we didn't even have a remote. I had seen remotes; I even had an uncle that owned a furniture store, and who actually owned a remote control, back in the 60s. This was a big, heavy thing made by Zenith. It was gold colored, and had a wire-grill on the front where the radio waves would emerge to turn the channel.  To change the channel, you pointed it at the TV and pushed the 'up channel' button or the 'down channel' button - there was no way to select individual channels. But that was OK, because there was only three channels anyway, and you were never more than two clicks up or down ever.  And it changed the channel by this little motor on the TV; it would go, sorta slow-like: 'ca-didge, ca-didge, ca-dige', and you had just gone through all three channels. 

Well, we didn't have a Zenith remote control, and we sure didn't have a furniture store either, so we made do.

What we made-do with was a black-and-white TV that I had 'repaired' by replacing the 'on/off' button. Only I couldn't find an 'on/off' button that looked like the one that was already on the TV, so I had to make do with what I could find. And what I could find was this BIG RED (that's in caps because it was BIG and it was REAL RED) that I mounted on the top of the TV.  If there's another one of these out there anywhere, it's probably on the TV set of Larry The Cable Guy.  

That wasn't just an ordinary BIG RED switch either; it was PUSH-BUTTON!  The way I figured it, that put us somewhere ahead of the rest of the people that made do with some sort of BIG RED TOGGLE SWITCH.  It worked great, but you were never quite sure, when you pushed it, if the TV was going to come on or you were going to launch!

We didn't realize it, but we were actually quite ahead for our times – this was not only a TV with a big RED launch button, but it was also an e-x-e-r-c-i-s-e machine! It was a simple exercise machine; the idea was, you waited around long enough until something came on you didn't want to watch, then you jumped up, ran the eight feet across our 'big' living room, and you CHANGED THE CHANNEL by twirling a knob; then you twirled another knob to 'fine tune it'. Then you sort of swaggered back to your seat on the couch, to gratitude from your mate. YOU were the channel-changer-remote-thingie, not some dumb plastic thing that only offers impersonal service; this was 'husband-to-go' and TV remote all rolled into one.

But. That's not what I learned that I'm trying to teach you about being married for a while.

What I learned is: how to tell how long a couple has been married.  And you don't have to be an anthropologist to do it.  

It appears that marriages start out where she's changing the channels for the two of you, and she does it with a smile ;-) too!

Then it becomes, he's changing the channels for the two of you, and he'd better do it with a smile :-O too!

Then technology advances; if you are lucky, you get a new remote; if not, you get divorced!

We were lucky; we got a new COLOR TV because I wanted to GRAPH MATH FUNCTIONS and see them in color on a friend's Apple II!

Yup, that actually pretty much sums me up – I bought our first color TV because I wanted to be able to see different equations in different colors. Since this was pre-computer monitors, this meant a color TV. And, since we were living in the future now, with computers and cassette players, that TV came with a remote! Best of all, you didn't have to own a furniture store to get one!

But I've been wandering around without getting to the point. So let me see if I can get back to the point.

When the marriage starts out (in the old days before Facebook), each one of the young marrieds gets up to change the channel.

Then, when you get the new color TV (were talking tubes here, not LCD or Plasma), and it comes with the remote, the guy takes charge of the remote.  I know some of you are busting-a-gut over that wording, but that's pretty much it.

The lasts until about the time the kids graduate from high school. Once those kids are gone, there's a new power structure – suddenly, the wife is in charge of the remote!  I think, best I can figure out, is that this is probably the first time she's had to actually sit down to watch TV since the children have been born, and by golly - she's dang-sure going to watch what she wants to watch!  

Fair enough. 

So, I'm sitting here tonight watching reruns of Everybody Loves Ramon, which was shown new in 2004. I'm watching it because I don't have charge of the remote. Of course, I could get up to change the TV manually, but first, I'd have to get up. Second, those little dim gray-on-black buttons that are flush on my TV – I can't see them without a flashlight. That's OK, because the price of those new LED flashlights has dropped so much, I get a pack of three every time I go to Fry's. I have one in my pocket still from last night's storms in case we lost power – they are just the thing to see those dim buttons.  But, as I said, I'd have to get up.  

So, what's a guy to do? She's got the remote.  She's in charge of the remote.  I read sometimes where guys say they've got charge of the remote, but either they are single, newly wed, or just a short-step away from divorse, if the kids are gon; if the kids are still home, there still some time left to pretend.  

It may be that she's got it because she's the only one that can find anything – I'm always setting something down and dang-it, where did I leave that? But she knows, or maybe she's hiding it, but anyway, she can find it so she's in charge of it.

For a guy like me, that's keen on technology, in addition to math equations, that means just one thing: I'm building my own remote control using an Arduino, and I'm going to mount it to my belt buckle. And, I'm going to make sure mine has brighter LEDs, so I can override hers!  And, if we don't get a sun-tan or convulsions when I stobe it, we may just be watching Nova next!

Legos - What a great video!

This is pretty stunning!  If this doesn't get your kids whipped into a frenzy, then they need to retire!

It's a movie showing a massive Rube Goldberg machine built from Legos!

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/insanely-intricate-lego-creation/20vq18c3?from=sharepermalink&src=v5%3ashare%3asharepermalink

Banjo's Jokes - Poor ol George

This is a favorite joke.  It was told to us by Eddie M. while my wife and I were dating - 37 years ago.  I came across it on the Internet today!

Young Clyde of a rather affulent family has returned from summer vacation. At his first day at his posh private school we have what did you did this summer day. Clyde tells his tale. We went to London and saw Big Ben and the tower of London my brother George went too ... he's crippled you know. And then we went to Paris and the Eiffel Tower. And my brother George went too he's crippled you know. And then we went to Italy and we went to the Vatican and we met the Pope and the Pope put his hands on Georges head and said "Throw down your crutches and walk".  And Whiing - George's left crutch just flew off!!!  and Whing - Greorge's right crutch just flew off!   

And in unison, we all said "What happened???".

And Clyde said: Well, George fell on his ass...He's crippled you know. 

My Neighbor Never Stops Talking

My neighbor never stops talking.  There's no point in even trying to communicate with her - she will talk over you anyway.  She's obviously not interested in anything anyone else has to say.

My sweet wife just said: "There's more mouth on that woman than ass on a goose!"

Learning the names of birds

My wife has transformed our back yard into a bird oasis, and in the process, into a bird watcher's oasis as well.  We enjoy this pastime a lot.

Some time back, I decided it was time to quit fooling around and learn the names of some of the birds we were seeing.  I also wanted to be able to identify the birds by their song.

A conversation at the local store Wild Birds Unlimited made us the proud owners of a bird clock.  This clock didn't have regular hour numerals, instead it had a picture of a bird where the numerals would normally be.  A great feature of this clock was an on/off switch that when on, played a MP3 recording of the bird image pointed to by the hour hand when a new hour occurred.  The only thing missing was the name of the bird next to the image, which I think would have made the clock complete.

At first, when I would hear a bird song on the hour from the bird clock, I would run in to the house and look at the image, and note the bird that sang this song.

Gradually, after a while, I became capable of associating the bird song to the image of the bird.  As you can imagine, I was quite proud of this accomplishment - I was slowly but surely learning the song each bird on the bird clock would sing.

Soon, I was able to look at a bird in the yard and sure enough, I could correctly anticipate the sound this bird was going to make.  

I hope you can understand my proud feelings when a bird, unseen in the trees or bushes, would sing a song, and I could turn to my wife and say with complete confidence: "That's a three o'clock bird."

Re End of the World Today

Dang.  I took a nap and missed the end of the world.

I looked around and thought at first my sweet wife was gone, but she was busy with dinner, so she's still here.  Not sure why.  Figure she got special dispensation for the weekend, be gone Monday.

Figure it will just be me and a bunch of Democrats.

And maybe Newt.

Banjo

You know how many years you've been married by the TV shows you watch

When you are first married, a young marriage watches what the husband wants to watch.

Middle age marriages watch what both agree on to watch.

Older marriages watch what the wife wants to watch.

Paul's house had a big front yard

This story under development...

We all played at Paul's house because it had a big front yard.

All the boys lived on Paul's block; my block only had girls, four of them. That meant I had to travel to Paul's block. Girls were OK, but I mean, what do you do, at four, with four of them? I tried playing dolls with them once, where they bent little paper cloths that had paper shoulder tabs on them around the cardboard bodies. Then you were supposed to jig them up and down while moving them forward. I asked them what to do, and they said, grabbing the Father doll, jigging him up and down and walking him onto the towel that represented the house floor then saying "Hi, I'm home", then picking up a woman doll, jigging her up and down while marching her towards the father doll, saying "hi" and then making kissing-smacking noises.

This was stupid. I couldn't see any point in this, I mean it was me jiggy marching things around and me saying things I knew I was going to say, so what was the point in this? This was s-t-u-p-i-d.

So I had to travel to Paul's block to play with boys, where we could pretend to be robots and stick our arms out straight and march towards each other while the others ran away, all while making clicking noises. This wasn't stupid - this was thrilling!

Paul had an older brother Frank. Frank was in the first grade while we were too young to be in school yet.

Frank beat me up when he got home from school. He beat me up by making fists and punching me in the stomach as hard as he could. I didn't know what to do with this. So I would go home before he got out of school.

We lived close enough to school to hear the school bells.

My grandmother would tell me to quit going over there because he was going to beat me up, but the only other choice was to not play with the boys, and be sentenced to playing with girls all the time. So I went to Paul's.

Paul lived in my old home. It was sold to Paul's parents after my parents divorced and I moved in with my grandmother while my mother moved to Florida and my father went somewhere - I didn't know where.

I had a hard time understanding why my places in my old home were now Paul's.

I liked to crawl under the house when it was mine - it was cool, dark and the dogs would follow me in and lay around with me, now I couldn't. You could lay under there and listen to the grownups call for you. You had to wait until they were gone before coming out, otherwise they would know where you were and you knew, somehow, they wouldn't let you go back under there, so best to keep it secret.

The dogs always seemed anxious to go under there with me. Probably the heat.

I never met a kid with a bottle opener

I never met a kid with a bottle opener.

That thought came to me this morning as I was laying in bed preparing to get up. You prepare to get up if you have vertigo. No point getting up just to do a face plant!

Anyway, I was thinking about a crack the dentist found in one of my molars. It's from an old filling that has acted like a wedge and is being driven down into the tooth, causing it to split.

So I'm going to have to get a crown on May 12 2011.

This will be my 2nd crown, caused by the same problem, but on a different tooth.

The noise from grinding the tooth for the crown is the worst part. Last time, I mentioned it to the dentist while he was grinding. He disappeared for a few minutes, then came back with his iPod, selected some blues for me and handed it to me. I cranked up the volume, allowing it to mask most of the grinding. It made for a much better experience.

Anyway, thinking about my tooth cracking led me back to my childhood and visions of us kids walking up to the corner gas station to get a soft drink - either Pepsi or Mountain Dew, another Pepsi product. We preferred these over Coke because Pepsi gave you twice as much for a nickel, the cost of a drink in the 50s.

These were the old style bottles with crimped metal bottle caps on them.

We were four, five and six years old, plenty old enough to walk to the gas station by ourselves.

Buying the drinks was an experience. We had learned, if you were barefoot on the cool moist concrete floor of the service station, you would get a little jolt of electricity when you reached into the old top-loading drink cooler. It would make you dance, and everyone would giggle - us and the grownups. We giggled because we knew there was a secret. The grownups, not being barefoot, didn't know the secret. They thought we danced because we were happy.

So being barefoot was the preferred method of obtaining your drink.

Reach in, grab your drink, squeal, dance a little, giggle. All for a nickel.

We all left with our drinks. We didn't open them on the side opener. Instead, we all marched out holding our drinks. The grownups thought we were carrying them home to drink.

But we didn't wait to get home to drink them. We were going to drink them on the way home, after pouring a pack of salted peanuts into them.

Pouring salted peanuts into a drink makes the drink fizz. You have to drink the liquid down enough so there's room to accommodate the peanuts and the fizz. It's a delicate balance; drink too much and the drink is too salty; too little and it will fizz over when you pour the peanuts in.

But to add the peanuts, we had to open the drinks. We didn't open them in the store because we were going to all open our drinks by using our teeth to carefully lift an edge of the bottle cap. Lifting three or four of these edges would allow us to pop our cap off our drink.

This was the preferred method for opening a bottle cap. We didn't need no stinking can openers, we carried our own can openers! We could open a bottle any time we wanted one.

It gave us a little swagger. Four kids, heads held high, a swagger, and barefoot.

When you lift a bottle cap in this way, an instant of fizz gushes into your mouth, and a smile breaks out. Everybody laughs and giggles.

One kid said his momma said not to do that. He wasn't sure why. We thought about it and realized it was stupid. Stupid being telling his mother. We knew telling a grownup anything only resulted in one thing - being told "don't do that".

I still remember the day my best friend Paul told me his mother said for him not to eat his buggers, so he wasn't going to eat his buggers anymore. I asked him why we weren't supposed to eat buggers. He said she said they were dirty.

We thought about it. We decided the little hard buggers were, in fact, probably dirty. However, the clear runny kind that hadn't hardened yet were obviously clean, you could see through this, so we could continue to sop those up. We felt good, we had solved the issue - we were obeying Paul's mother, and not eating dirty buggers. Of course, it wasn't a problem for me anyway because my mother, who knew everything, hadn't told me to stop eating my buggers, so I knew Paul's mother was wrong. But I didn't mention this to Paul, I didn't want Paul to know his mother was stupid.

Paul and I had a favorite game. It consisted of going to a field behind his grandmother's house. If the field had just been turned over by a plow, and then allowed to sun dry for a day, the earth would have baked hard, which made for perfect dirt clods that could be thrown at each other.

I liked this game a lot because my aim was better and I could throw harder, and thus stand back out of Paul's throwing area. I could hit Paul, but he couldn't reach me, and if he threw harder, it went wild.

I remember hitting Paul in the chest with a clod. His surprised look when it hit him tickled me so much I fell down on my back laughing. When I opened my eyes, there was Paul, standing over me, backlit from the sun, holding a dirt ball over his head that was so huge, it took both hands to hold it. He raised it up over his head, and at that instant I foretold the next. It came crashing down on me. Paul ran into his grandmother's house.

This wasn't fair, and I was going to get Paul.

I couldn't just go into his grandmother's house, I had to knock. His grandmother told me Paul was in the bathroom. I waited a while then knocked again. He was still in the bathroom. Soon, she quit coming to answer the door.

I realized he was never going to come out to get his reward.

I left.

Golfers with Business to Conduct - Wyndham Resort Golf Course, Edisto Beach SC

We are staying on the 18th hole golf course here at the Wyndham Resort on Edisto Island.

We became aware of frequent side excursions, by golfers, usually without clubs, and no where near where their golf ball landed.

So I decided to start taking pictures of these side excursions, as they were happening directly in front of us, in plain view of everyone.

Have a look at some interesting pictures! I took them in a 15 minute time frame.

I'm thinking about placing a banner on our deck that advertises golfing pictures for sale.

It's just a steady stream of these guys on the weekend!

Wonder what they were doing?

There's a "things to do" here at the resort, but I don't recall seeing this as a featured item!