Happy ?? Birthday? If you insist.

    With just 11 days before my 60th Birthday thought I’d take stock. OMG was I out of my freekin mind? Looking in the mirror was the first mistake. Taking stock of the physical frailties was a disaster & then looking in the financial folio, better known as the checkbook was as depressing.

    There were several things I always said I’d attend to as I aged, cropping the forest that seems to appear in the ears of older men was one and I must say that I’ve been as diligent as other failings have allowed. I refer to my inability to focus on objects closer than arms length which makes seeing hairs in ones ears reflected in the mirror while side viewing through +2.50 strength readers difficult and brandishing a pair of scissors to reduce the growth sometimes painfully unwise.

    What’s that you say? Speak up damn it stop mumbling! Have my barber tend to it? Well if that’s all you have to contribute I guess not hearing such inanities is worth missing a few conversations. You have looked at my pics I suppose. Wanna borrow my readers?

    Then there’s the medication I’ve been taking to help me get to this august state. The majority, cost wise, helps my breathing, and is truly a Godsend but some of it doesn’t actually benefit me in my every day and is prescribed to enhance my chances of seeing future Birthdays. Then there are some that I’m sure I take to counter the effects of some of the others. I’m sure this is part of a world wide conspiracy, one of many I’ve been able to uncover since taking some of the said medicines. No I’m not being paranoid, I take a pill for that.

    The rest of the physical frailties are just one sad TV commercial after another and beside not worth reporting are disgusting and will therefore be overlooked.

    The financial part will go without much comment. Let’s just say that before the recent downturn in the economy it looked as though I might be able to take it a little easier as I approached 64. Not a retirement but at least a little relief from the pressure, but now, as I’ve often joked in the past, when I retire I’ll just drag the other leg into the box and pull the lid down … and I’ll have to build the box.

    So I guess after such a thorough analysis I should, like those interested in the health & well being of our country (thought I wouldn’t slip in some politics? Get a Grip), I should cut and slash my budget. Having no health care I can’t slash that, no children to feed or educate I can’t slash that, I get no welfare and if I did I certainly wouldn’t slash that, if by foreign aid you mean contributions to church & charity those have already taken as much slashing as conscience allows. Which means…. MUDDLE ON!!

Vigor

    
I finished shoveling yesterday & last nights snow and ice. I stood back and marveled at my accomplishment. Puffed chest due to accomplishment yet not out of breath, tired but due to great exertion not a lack of oxygen. So I asked myself how could I report this feat to others and share this feeling of triumph? Well I’d find a quantitative measure that would readily bring to mind the immensity of the task and the truly Herculean effort. Stables had been used so I decided a measure of land, since it was terra firma that had been exposed, would suffice. I'd Bushoged Acres before and seen feilds that were described in Acres. An Acre it is.

    
So looking at it, the area exposed, I’d need a descriptive fraction because as large an area that it was it definitely was not an Acre. Half Acre? No. One sisteenth? well I don't really know what an Acre meassures. So off to Google with a shot of celebratory & medicinal whiskey I go.

    
Well this sucks!! An Acre is 43,560 square feet! The area I’d shoveled was approx 12 x 80, or 960 square feet. One forty fifth of an acre. In my defense the snow/ice was 6 to 8 inches deep but 1/45 th ? Even if I divide it by six it's only 6/45 th's. What a slacker.

    
One more shot of this medicinal shit and I’m headin back out to shovel a path to the lake by God!