Contemplating

Judgy-Judgerson to a whole new level

by

Spent some time today during my upper-body workout at Planet Fitness reflecting on how I became such a rule-follower and resisting the very strong urge I have to police the rule-breakers, telling myself, “You don’t work here,” “This has nothing to do with you,” and “Finish your own workout and get out of here.”

Background

Planet Fitness has a rule stating that no sandals or flip flops (or basically any open-toed shoes) are allowed on the gym floor.

There was a guy there tonight in flip flops — who happened to be hot, which made it extra challenging for me not to keep looking at him — doing free weights and the multi-station workout machines.

Here are all the thoughts I had over the course of the 45 minutes I was there:

“I wonder why no front-desk workers have told him that he can’t be working out in those because it’s a safety hazard.”

“Why hasn’t that digital sign on the monitors throughout the gym come up to that slide that says, “Flip flops are great at the beach. But they are a hazard at the gym. And not allowed.”

“That guy would never just happen to walk by the monitors at a time when that one slide was showing anyway, much less be looking at it — or care.”

Once when he walked right by me, I thought hard: “Don’t do it. Don’t say anything. Man, he’s hot.”

“I wonder if I alerted the front desk people to him, if they would actually approach him.”

“I wonder if I did alert the front desk to the situation, and they didn’t approach the guy, and then the guy dropped a weight on his foot and sued Planet Fitness…”

Bless my absolute mess.

2
1
1

My anti-bucket list

by

The top-3 items in my anti-bucket list are:

  • Drink cognac or tequila

    I first had cognac in the south of France during a 6-week business trip I was on, and even though I desperately wanted to like it because it sounds so sophisticated to say you drink it, I found it deplorable. And tequila is that drink for me—the one of which I drank too much in college one day and barfed my brains out afterward.
     

  • Drive from Miami to Key West

    I’ve done this once—rented the convertible and all. Two things: 1) To me, convertibles and fireplaces are two things that sound good “on paper,” but the reality is your hair gets messed up in the former and somebody has to get up every 10 minutes and tend to the fire for the latter. 2) With regards to this trip specifically, most of the route is 2-lane roads, which when you get behind—let’s just call them life-experienced—Florida drivers there’s little opportunity to pass, and I’m an impatient-AF driver.
     

  • Visit the Grand Canyon

    Here’s the backstory and the little inside joke Bob and I have whenever looking at something a lot of people go on and on about:

What’s something on your “anti-bucket list?”

Prompt: Perfectly clear

by

Writing prompt: Start with “It’s all perfectly clear now.”

It’s all perfectly clear now that I will have a successful career. With a 41-year career behind me, even if things go south in my remaining 8 months of working, that won’t change.

It’s all perfectly clear now that I will be “lucky in love.” I’ve been married to two smart, ambitious, self-sufficient, loving, companionable, honorable, and easy-to-love people. In each case, we’ve had shared values around work, religion, and finances. During my time here, I’ve been lucky to find not one, but two, people who were emotionally, physically, and financially healthy. And I’m grateful.

It’s all perfectly clear now how I’ll handle the deaths of my parents. It’s a great source of comfort to know that they had a good life, that the end was quick and peaceful for both of them, that I stepped up to the plate when I was needed, and that I won’t spend my entire old age tending to theirs.

What’s perfectly clear to you now?

Why I think Wordle is more luck than skill

by

Here are 3 reasons why I think the recently-gone viral game is so popular:

  • It has a broad audience, appealing to both logophiles and logicians alike.
  • It has a super high degree of luck involved.
  • It was designed so that most people get most answers in 6 tries.1

I posit that luck is the biggest factor in solving the puzzle in 3 or fewer attempts. My reasoning:

The more letters you get in the first guess, and the more of those letters that are in the right place, gets you exponentially closer, statistically, to the answer.

Granted, logic can be used in deciding which letters you use in that first word, such as choosing letters that appear, statistically, in more words, letters such as R, S, T, N, L, and E. But, there are so many of those words that’s it’s just going to be luck that the word you settle on has letters that are actually in today’s answer and even luckier if any are going to be in the correct position in today’s answer.

Another huge aspect of luck is when you place a letter that you already know is in the answer, but not in the correct position, in a different position to find its correct position or eliminate another wrong position for it, and you try to choose “the most likely” place it would be, often it’s as likely to be in one place as another, so you have to just chose a place. Luck!

And then even when you’ve narrowed it down to 2 or 3 words it could be, you’re just lucky if you choose the right one. For example, here’s where I was today going into my 3rd guess (on which I actually got the correct answer):

At this point, I knew I wanted to try a word with “i” since I knew a, e, and o weren’t in it, and “i” is more likely than “u,” so I chose it.

Also, I wanted to try the “m” in a different spot to narrow down where it actually falls in the word. And then I thought, I think “i” appears before “m” more often than it falls after “m” so I went with “im” instead of “mi.” But the fact that I chose to put the “i” in the middle of the word was arbitrary, and as luck would have it, it was correct.

When deciding to put “im” where I did, I then asked what words fit the pattern “- – i m -“? And looking at the letters left on the keyboard that hadn’t been eliminated, I first saw “chimp” as a possibility, and then crimp, blimp, and primp (that ugly chance that “p” was used twice).

The only logic I used in finalizing this decision was that I think “r” is more frequent that “l”, and “p” is in several of the words I’m considering, so I’m going to go with one of the “-rimp” words. Pure luck! It was just as likely to have been chimp, blimp, or primp.

Or, with the letters available going into that third guess, the answer could just as easily have been milky! But, I just happen to see “chimp” first in those available letters, so I worked with those. Luck, I tell you! So much luck!

1According to Josh Wardle who invented the game: ‘Wordle’ Creator Shares Ingenious Tip For Players—Even If He’s Not Very Good At The Game

New dictionary words, because language

by

I absolutely love Merriam-Webster’s Word Matters podcast. Its most recent episode is about their addition of 455 new words into the dictionary. Notes about a few of them:

fluffernutter
Peter Sokolowski: “Well, there’s no question that the favorite, the darling of this batch is the word ‘fluffernutter,’ and everybody loves that word, and I do too. It’s a fun word to say.”
Emily Brewster: “I did not write this definition and I really love that it specifies the white sandwich bread. If somebody is making you your fluffernutter on whole grain bread, they are doing it wrong.”

whataboutism
Peter Sokolowski: [I] like the term whataboutism that we added to this batch as well because the definition is the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.
Emily Brewster: Yes, and we also entered in British English, they don’t say whataboutism, they say whataboutery.

amirite
Emily Brewster: “Sounds like a phrase; it’s a single word. It’s slang. It’s used in writing for the phrase ‘Am I right?’ to represent or imitate the use of this phrase as a tag question in informal speech. It’s the second time in recent history that we have entered a word that is primarily a written form. I think it was just a few months ago that we entered the spelling of folx, F-O-L-X.”
Peter Sokolowski: “But you can’t tell by just hearing it.”
Emily Brewster: “Nope. Doesn’t work in speech, right? You have to see it for it to really do its job. The word F-O-L-X and F-O-L-K-S sound exactly the same, just as ‘amirite’ and “am I right.” You can say it with a nod that kind of implies that you’re using this single word spelling, but it’s a written form.”

the prepositional use of because
Emily Brewster: “It’s the use of because that you see when someone says, ‘This very technical process works, because technology.’ So traditionally, ‘because’ functions as a conjunction, it joins together phrases or clauses, but this is a new use of because. It’s very informal. It’s very useful. We say in our definition that it is often used in a humorous way to convey vagueness about the exact reasons for something. I like it. Don’t go using it in your term papers.”

This one made me LOL, because I have employed this usage of “because” in one of my exercise check-ins: “I always carry a knife in my pocket; you know, because cheesecake.”

If you love words or if you have an “attitude” about what words should or should not be in the dictionary (e.g., irregardless), you’ll enjoy this 28.5-minute episode—and you’ll learn a few things about how words “make it” into the dictionary. Spoiler alert: It has nothing to do with whether you like them or not. 😂

Hopes & dreams

by

A colleague asked in a work chat room: “Since I hate setting resolutions, what are everyone’s personal goals or dreams for this year?”

My response:

  1. Finally take our cruise, which was originally scheduled for April of 2020, then postponed to September of 2021, and is currently still scheduled for April of 2022.

  2. Start blogging regularly again now that I’m not having to come up with a theme for, and write, three 50-word stories a day.

  3. Retire on my birthday in October.

  4. Schedule post-retirement travel using up $3000 worth of airline vouchers we have from canceling and postponing trips over the past 2 years.

Our April cruise on the Seven Seas Splendor

Stock watching

by

COVID SALE

Toward the beginning of COVID, on March 16, 2020, the stock market plummeted nearly 3,000 points, and I went shopping for some depressed stock.

A month earlier, IBM stock was trading at $149.92 per share, so on the day of that crash, I snagged 250 shares at $94.51 per share. How can you resist a stock that’s essentially on sale for 37% off?
Purchased for $23,630. Currently worth: $34,887. Up $11,257.

STOCK SPLIT “SALE”

I’d wanted Apple stock for a long time, but I’d always considered it too expensive. So, when its $500-per-share price was set for a 4-for-1 split on August 28, 2020, I bought 25 shares on August 27, 2020, waking up the next day with 100 shares at $125 per share.
Purchased for $12,500. Currently worth: $18,214. Up $5,714.

ROI TO DATE

Even though I am fully aware that it’s nothing but a “paper gain” at this point, it still tickles me to no end to have a 47% gain on the IBM purchase and 45% gain on the AAPL stock.
Total spent: $36,130. Currently worth: $53,101. Up $16,971.

Sure beats the credit union’s tenth-of-a-percent return on savings and 1.25% return on a 5-year CD—and my money’s only been tied up for less than a couple of years.

I’ll enjoy this ride until the next big crash, unless I sell before then. The good news is that the time has passed to make these both long-term gains now, so I can “pull the sales trigger” at any time tax-wise, at least.

Contemplating the new year

by

It’s the first day of the year in which I’m going to retire.

I’m not retiring in the traditional sense of the word; that is, there won’t be a gold watch or a pension involved. Furthermore, it’s not my first time at the retirement rodeo.

I like to do big things on my birthdays:

  • On my 57th birthday, October 13, 2014, I retired for the first time.
  • On my most recent birthday, October 13, 2021, I bought myself a brand new, $50,000, left knee.
  • And on my 65th birthday, October 13, 2022, I’m going to retire again.

I’m hopeful that retirement will “stick” this time for 3 reasons:

  1. Healthcare. I’m (or will be) 8 years older than the first time I retired, and I’m eligible for Medicare to aid in medical coverage, which was a concern the first time I retired.
  2. Expectations. I have more realistic expectations about being retired since I’m somewhat “experienced” in it. The first time, I made a retirement to-do list a mile long, and the best lesson I learned during the 1 year and 4 months that I was retired was that because you have time to do something doesn’t mean you’re going to want to do it. I think a lot of us convince ourselves we don’t do certain things (like organizing all of those—printed or digital—photos) because we don’t have time to do it, when the reality of it is that even when you do have time, it’s mind-numbingly tedious and probably not something you’re going to want to spend time doing.
  3. Life events. This time, I won’t have a father die a year after I retire and a mother to worry about eventually running out of money, which was one of the reasons I went back to work that first time.

Retirement countdown as of this posting

My 60th birthday

by

~Friday, 10/13/17~

Here are 4 highlights of my life that stand out over these last 10 years. I just couldn’t narrow it down to 3—too much has happened this decade.

50 – 59 years old (2007 – 2016)

CELEBRATING TWO MILESTONE BIRTHDAYS. For my 50th birthday, I went to 3 places in Australia that were listed in the book, “1000 Places to See Before You Die.” One was in the Blue Mountains just outside of Sydney, one was Seven Spirit Bay on a private island in the outback that you had to be taken to by private plane, and the third was Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. For my 55th birthday, I saw Barbra Streisand in concert in Brooklyn. It’s something I’d wanted to do all my life and had been willing to spend up to $1000 for a ticket. You can just imagine my delight when I scored a seat for $399.

RETIRING (THE FIRST TIME). On my October 13, 2014, I gave myself the birthday gift of a lifetime—I retired. My boss and my team were so gracious and supportive of my decision and they gave me a wonderful send-off, complete with limericks, haiku, and love. I enjoyed being retired for one year and three months, and then as it so often will, life happened. Eventually, I’d have the second biggest coming out in my life, coming out of retirement in February of 2016. You can read why if you’re interested.

LOSING A PARENT. On Tuesday, September 8, 2015, I had the hardest conversation in my life with my dad about entering him into hospice. He died three days later.

LEGALLY MARRYING A PHENOMENAL HUMAN BEING WHO JUST HAPPENS TO BE A MAN. On June 26, 2015 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of same-sex marriage and that night, I asked Robert Anthony McVeigh to marry me, which he did on November 28th. With Bob’s family of 14 siblings, I picked up a cool 108 in-laws in one day, while he inherited a grand total of 8. We had an unbelievable November weather day and married in our backyard with heartwarming support from friends and family who traveled near and far to be there, including my ex-wife.

Other reflections: Birth – 9 years old | 10 – 19 years old | 20 – 29 years old | 30 – 39 years old | 40 – 49 years old

The penultimate day leading up to my birthday

by

~Thursday, 10/12/17~

As I countdown to my 60th birthday tomorrow, here are 3 highlights of my life that stand out for these years.

40 – 49 years old (1997 – 2006)

CRUISING THE GREEK ISLES. In 1999, I toured the Greek Isles on the now-defunct Renaissance Cruise Lines. Our itinerary consisted of two days in Athens, port calls in Santorini, Rhodes, Kusadasi, and one day at sea cruising The Dardenelles. It ended with two days in Istanbul.

A SURPRISE PARTY FOR MOM AND DAD’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY. In September of 2003, my sister and I organized a surprise party in Orlando for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. We had invited several of their brothers and sisters to join us there, offering to pick up their 3-day, 2-night hotel tabs and dinner the actual anniversary night. We hadn’t told anyone that we were eating at Emeril’s Orlando (location now closed, but he still has ones in New Orleans; Miramar Beach, Fla; and Las Vegas), and since some of them came to the event from Fall River, MA, and my parents were born and grew up in that city, and that’s where Emeril is from, and we’re all Portuguese… well you can imagine how excited everyone was when we arrived there. I picked up the tab, which to this day remains the most I’ve ever paid for a dinner at $1503.00, which included the $364 tip. Worth every penny. Read about the details, including the exquisite customer service.

CRUISING ALASKA WITH FAMILY. In 2005, I went on an Alaskan cruise with my sister, my parents, my aunt and uncle and their daughter, and my aunt’s sister and her husband. The itinerary included: one day cruising the Inside Passage, a Ketchikan port call, a Juneau port call, a Skagway port call, a Wrangell port call, and a final day at sea.

Other reflections: Birth – 9 years old | 10 – 19 years old | 20 – 29 years old | 30 – 39 years old | 50 – 59 years old

The antepenultimate day leading up to my birthday

by

~Wednesday, 10/11/17~

As I countdown to my 60th birthday on Friday, here are 3 highlights of my life that stand out for these years.

Note: The coincidence is not lost on me of this post falling on National Coming Out Day.

30 – 39 years old (1987 – 1996)

TOUR OF EUROPE WITH OUR PARENTS. In 1987, my wife and I treated both sets of our parents to a 13-city bus tour of Europe with stops in London, England; Paris, France; Italy (The Italian Lakes, Rome, Ostia, Florence, Venice, and Verona); Innsbruck, Austria; Germany (Munich, Heidelberg, and a Rhine River Cruise); and Amsterdam, Holland. It was challenging at times, but so worth it as my mother still gets a charge out of saying, when someone mentions one of those European cities, “Oh, I’ve been there.” As I write this, it occurs to me that that was 30 years ago this year, and my parents were 5 years younger than I’ll be on Friday.

QUITTING IBM AND WORKING ON MY NOVEL. In 1993, IBM offered the first “package,” in which they paid employees to leave the company. Since my wife worked there, too, and we were DINKs (double income, no kids) making a ton of money, I applied for it and was accepted, taking a $30,000 payout to do what I wanted to do anyway—leave. For the next year, I worked on a novel, got as far as chapter 9, and then couldn’t figure out a believable way to get my protagonist pregnant. Shortly after that I came out.

COMING OUT. One day in 1994, on my way home from IBM to our quarter-of-a-million house, in our BMW, I wondered, “Is there any way I could drive this ‘ultimate performance machine’ into that roadside ravine in such a way that I could be sure I wouldn’t have to live with an ‘intending to die’ for the rest of my life?” That’s when I knew it was time to start living my authentic life here. My beautiful, loving, and incredibly generous wife’s response to my coming out? “I’m so sorry that we live in a society where you’ve felt like you couldn’t be who you really are your entire life.” As we were packing to sell the house we’d custom built, we glanced at each other from the rooms on opposite sides of the upstairs shared bathroom while Whitney sang, “I Will Always Love You.” I can still tear up when I hear that song today, especially the lines, “Bittersweet memories – That is all I’m taking with me. So good-bye. Please don’t cry: We both know I’m not what you, you need…”

Other reflections: Birth – 9 years old | 10 – 19 years old | 20 – 29 years old | 40 – 49 years old | 50 – 59 years old

The preantepenultimate day leading up to my birthday

by

~Tuesday, 10/10/17~

As I countdown to my 60th birthday on Friday, here are 3 highlights of my life that stand out for these years.

20 – 29 years old (1977 – 1986)

GETTING MARRIED. I got married at 20 to a 21-year-old woman, whom I truly did love, even though I knew I was gay at the time. It seems hard to believe nowadays, but I truly didn’t think coming out was an option, and I truly believed I could “make it work.” We had a lot in common—both military brats, both Catholic, both with the same financial aspirations and willingness to work and save to achieve them. We really were a good team—right up until we weren’t. I’m grateful for many invaluable lessons I learned about being in a relationship, most of which transcend gender and time. See wedding pictures from another time and place.

STARTING A CAREER. I got hired by IBM right out of college, and I remember that first day, Monday, May 19, 1980, taking the Alexander Drive exit off NC-147 in the Research Triangle Park, turning into IBM, and thinking, “I have arrived.” Over the course of 21 years there, I would do programming, test software, manage 9 software testers, work on quality (Six Sigma, The Defect Prevention Process), track service tickets and test fixes, become a member of the network performance team in IT, and then work on the IT communications team. In the later years, I would become an information developer writing software documentation and eventually become an editor.

GETTING A VASECTOMY. At age 29 and 9 years into our marriage, we’d known all along we didn’t want kids, so I got a vasectomy. The Duke surgeon wanted me to get permission from my parents, which of course, I refused to do. I said, “I no longer get permission from my parents to do anything.” On the day of the procedure, with my legs up in stirrups and my junk pulled through a hole in a sheet, the surgeon said, “We have a group of interns that we’d like to watch the procedure, if that’s okay. Having already attained “maximum shrivel factor,” and with the valium beginning to kick in, I said, “Why not? Pop some popcorn and give them all front row seats.”

Other reflections: Birth – 9 years old | 10 – 19 years old | 30 – 39 years old | 40 – 49 years old | 50 – 59 years old

The propreantepenultimate day leading up to my birthday

by

~Monday, 10/09/17~

As I countdown to my 60th birthday on Friday, here are 3 highlights of my life that stand out for these years.

10 – 19 years old (1967 – 1976)

GETTING MY LICENSE AND GRADUATING FROM HIGH SCHOOL. I learned to drive on a car with a stick shift, and I got my license as soon as I could at 16. One time, as a newly-licensed driver, I parked in the inclined driveway of a girl’s house, and after we’d kissed for about 30 seconds, I opened my eyes to see that we’d rolled down the driveway and into the street because I’d had my foot on the clutch instead of the brake. I graduated 4th in my high school class in 1975 to Pomp & Circumstance and our senior class song, which was Stairway to Heaven.

GOING TO COLLEGE AND THE FIRST TIME FEELING LIKE AN ADULT. I didn’t do very well on my SATs (verbal higher than math—no surprise there), but I did get accepted into East Carolina University. I initially planned to major in Music before switching to their Math with a Computer Science Option degree. This was before there was a separate, accredited Computer Science degree, and I “wrote” Assembly and Cobol programs on an IBM punched card machine and later learned to program a PDP-11 computer. The first time I felt like a bonafide adult was shortly after moving into a dorm, when someone asked me to play tennis at 10 o’clock on a “school night,” and I realized it wasn’t “too late to do that” if I wanted to, and I didn’t have to ask anyone permission anyway.

WORKING MY WAY THROUGH COLLEGE AND BUYING MY FIRST CAR. For the first two years of college, I rode a bicycle from my dorm to Burger King, where I worked 40 hours a week at $2.37/hour while carrying a full class schedule. I once got a ticket for riding my bike home from work with no light on it after dark, and I remembered being outraged that someone working as hard as I was “just to make it,” would be “penalized” in that way. Then, I bought a brand new 1977 Toyota Corolla, and my car payments were $79 a month.

Other reflections: Birth – 9 years old | 20 – 29 years old | 30 – 39 years old | 40 – 49 years old | 50 – 59 years old

The eve of the propreantepenultimate day leading up to my birthday

by

~Sunday, 10/08/17~ And so begins the countdown to my 60th birthday on Friday. I’ve been thinking about this for the past couple of months, and it’s been an interesting exercise trying to narrow down 3 things to highlight about a whole decade of your life. It’s made me think of Jonathan Larson’s Seasons of Love from Rent, the musical, a few times, too.

So, without further ado, here’s today’s reflection.

Birth – 9 years old (1957 – 1966)

BEING A MILITARY BRAT. My dad was a 30-year career marine, and we moved around a lot in my formative years. Most of it was between the ages of 4 and 13, and I attended 9 different schools between kindergarten and 7th grade. Most of the places were in Massachusetts, where all of both my mom’s and dad’s families lived. See a list of all the schools I went to and where.

LEARNING ABOUT AMBITION AND DETERMINATION. When my dad went to Vietnam for a year—his second tour there—we lived upstairs from my aunt and uncle. My uncle was building his own home, and I watched him cut stone that he had previously measured to fit its neighboring pieces already up. He cut the stone by hand, with a chisel. If I remember correctly, it took him over 10 years to finish that house. See a picture of the house.

REALIZING I WAS GAY. At age 7, I began to realize that I was gay, although I didn’t know that word then. It was more like coming to the frightening realization that I was a freak—one of those kind of people—and although I didn’t know it then, it was the beginning 28 long, and at times exhausting, years trying to hide it.

Other reflections: 10 – 19 years old | 20 – 29 years old | 30 – 39 years old | 40 – 49 years old | 50 – 59 years old