Category Archives: ideas

I resolve | 2013 Edition

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Here are my resolutions for 2012, I didn’t do that bad on them except for the losing weight and being more active.

  • I do need and want to lose more weight and get into shape.  I am going to double down on last year’s goal of biking a total of 750 km’s a year.  I need to use Run Keeper more but I will definitely start hitting the bike trails around Saskatoon, no matter how unfriendly the city is to cyclists.
  • I need to get more organized.  I have some tools and plans and I want to both implement but document the process.  Last year I underwent a massive decluttering exercise (which I should start again today to get rid of the 2012 stuff that has accumulated).
  • I will write and blog more.  Last year I wanted to write daily but that isn’t going to happen.  Expect 3 posts a week here.  Not quite Kottke-esque but not really slouching either.
  • Read 12 books this year.
  • Paint three paintings this year.
  • Listen to more current music.  I love my jazz and blues but it’s time to discover new music.
  • Plan a date with Jordon every two weeks.  I am terrible at this but 2013 is the year it will change.
  • Play tennis weekly this summer.  I know the City of Saskatoon has let it’s (west side) tennis courts deteriorate (like our roads, snow removal, and a lot of other things) but I do want to develop a decent tennis game this summer.
  • Pick up a winter sport.  I don’t know what this will be but I need to be more active starting tomorrow.
  • Spend more time with friends in 2013.  I am horrible at keeping up with friends and it is a part of me that I want to change.
  • The Cooking Blog was either feast or famine in 2012.  I want to be more consistent with it including shooting some video and a lot more photography.  It should be fun.

So those are mine.  What are your resolutions in 2013?

F.S. Michaels speaks on Monoculture

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This talk is by FS Michaels and is from the Vancouver talent search for TED Talks.  FS Michaels is the author of “Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything,” which won the 2011 NCTE George Orwell Award for outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse.  Watch the presentation and if you like it, head here to rate it.

via

How doctor’s die

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Doctors die but not like the rest of us.

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen—that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).

Operation Declutter + 1

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As I mentioned before, I am a packrat.  I come by it honestly.  I am not sure why I am like that, some of it is learned but the other part of it is this fear that if I don’t have it, I won’t be useful down the road.

With my depression, making decisions has become harder and if I can put off a decision, I will and the perfect place to delay my decisions over stuff is to put stuff in the basement and the master bedroom.  My friend Gloria says it is also because of my personality (I am an INTP).  Since this spring it has become overrun with junk and finally over Christmas Jordon had enough.  For weeks and months I had been promising to clean it but it just got worse.  The basement is the easiest place to put stuff because of the nerve damage that Jordon has in is feet.  Normally Jordon doesn’t go down without shoes but stupidly I bought him two pairs of slippers (including a pair that look like the heads of bears) for Christmas.   Today as I was at work, Jordon decided to upload several hundred photos to Flickr and he started to toss things out downstairs while he waited to upload.  It wasn’t all my stuff, Jordon got rid of hundreds and hundreds of books and theological texts that he no longer wanted or needed.  He had Mark clean out his room as well.  They made a big dent in the mess and made me feel a bit better about the stuff I needed to clean out.  Jordon said that there was probably 100 boxes of stuff that needed to be tossed and while I cringed when he said it, he is right.  We tossed out about 15 boxes tonight and there is a lot to go.  It wasn’t just stuff that needed to be tossed out, it was stuff that needed to go to the shed but all need to be outside of the house.

Of course I never had any plan for what needed to be done but the plan is to get rid of two massive bookshelves (and burn them), move some of the stuff out that we are still storing or Lee (they will be gone this weekend) and then get rid of some furniture that we have down there.  Jordon’s mom gave me her sewing machine and I had been almost crying over the idea of getting rid of it but when everything else is gone, there will be a space for the sewing machine.  It made me happy.

I realized tonight that I don’t really have any thing of sentimental value from my family and I doubt I ever will, maybe that is why I hold on to Marion’s sewing machine.  Someone thought enough of me to pass it on.  I am also thankful to Jordon for finding me a way and a place to keep it.

15 boxes, four chairs, and a coffee table down.  A lot more to go.  Tomorrow the first load goes to Value Village.  The first run of many.  It feels pretty good.  When you suffer from depression, you tend to pile up more defeats than victories.  Today felt like a victory.

Christmas Gift Guide for Your Husband/Boyfriend and All of the Men in Your Life

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I don’t freelance write much (umm, never) but every year I write a Christmas gift guide on what to get for your husband/boyfriend and all of the significant men in your life over at JordonCooper.com.  It has become quite popular and I encourage you to wander over and check out my holiday gift suggestions.  Let me know what you think over there in the comments.

Basically I use Evernote to keep track of all of the ideas I get, suggestions I get from Jordon, Lee, and others and I take a day and put them into a big long post.  Then I get Jordon to format it for me because getting the formatting right is a big deal when you consider how much traffic the post gets and how stressed people are when Christmas shopping.

In case you are wondering, I will be back over there as I write the “What to get for a brother in law post”.

A Christian look at harm reduction

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Jordon has a good look at harm reduction from a Christian perspective.

this isn’t about a moral stand, it’s a puritan stand, one that says that people that do wrong must be punished.

I concur and I’ll make the observation that the progressive conservative husband I married is now much more progressive than conservative.  You could almost say he’s liberal.