Beach Hike

Quincie is at Girls' Camp this week. This morning was the hike. Because of all the rain in the area, the original hike had to be changed. We started at the camp site and walked along the beach to the Temple Park.

Near the end there is a small stream that feeds into the ocean. It carries the run off from the mountain at the original location of the hike. The stream was so full from all the rain and it was running very fast. In a matter of a few minutes it had eroded a significant portion of the beach.


We were able to cross by walking upstream to where it was more shallow and calm.

In the Quest to be Headache Free

Headaches suck. Over the last year or so I have lessened the frequency and intensity of my personal suffering with the headache demon. Here is the list of what I have had success with in my quest to be headache free:

1. Caffeine - 100% eliminated from my diet. I used to LOVE Coke. It just tastes great! I was not addicted. I didn't drink it everyday. But it was my quick fix, go to solution when I felt a headache coming on. The only migraine prescription that ever worked for me included a large dose of caffeine along with a barbiturate. It definitely helps in the moment, but it perpetuates the problem. The rebound headaches create a wicked circle that is tough to break.

2. Sleep - Don't go cheap on sleep, and don't cheat yourself out of the hours you really need.

3. Water - Drink it, drink lots of it, and then drink a little more.

4. Eat - Low blood sugar does a number on me, and a bad headache is usually a part of it. Small meals, healthy snacks throughout the day make a big difference. If I skip a meal I can pretty much bet on a headache.

5. Gum - Don't chew it! The chewing motion, especially if you are like me and you chew with intensity, causes tension on your jaw muscles which can contribute to a headache. If your gum is sugar free, the aspartame can also add to the problem.

6. Aspartame - Don't eat, drink, or chew it! This chemical that is the artificial sweetener nutri sweet is just bad stuff. I have read studies liking it to multiple health problems, but from personal experience I can tell you it is bad, bad stuff and can cause a headache.

7. Exercise - If my head hurts, and I have done 1 through 6, I get up and go for a walk, or turn up the music and dance around. The good brain chemicals that come from exercise usually do the trick.

Anomalies

Day after day life basically goes along at the same pace, in the same circles or squares, with the same faces in predictable places. The most unusual thing in your day is the beets with your Manwich, instead of corn.

I like it when life takes a different road once in a while. It is refreshing to see things from another angle, and experience something new. Breaking out of the typical helps my brain function. Old nagging problems become easier to solve with a fresh perspective. If life is a little too routine, I change things up a bit. Most of the time it isn't any big deal, just change the route I normally drive home, or shop at a different store. By seeing new things, or old things from a different direction, my brain can jump the track out of the rut, and start thinking productively again.

The last string of days have been the opposite of mundane. Last week Ryker was at Boy Scout Camp. The camp here in Hawaii is located on top of a mountain and the drive up there is magnificent. I love that drive. There is such variety and all of it is amazing. I hadn't been up there in a year, then, wham - 3 times in a week! The last time, was at sunset - spectacular! Sorry, no photos, that wouldn't have been safe. It was hard enough just keeping my eyes on the road. Early in the drive, as you are coming up over a hill of wide open fields, you see the ocean before you. The horizon is way out there and it seems as if you can see the Earth curving. It is majestic. Looking at the enormity of the ocean opens possibilities in my mind.

On one of these trips, Ryker was the driver. I have been teaching him to drive and this was the longest stretch of time he was behind the wheel. It was great to actually get to look out the window for more than a few seconds at a time. I have such mixed feelings about my kids driving. Ryker is a very good driver. He is cautious and careful. He obeys the traffic laws and wants to do everything the right way. I guess I am like all parents and worry about all the idiots out there that might hurt my kid. All these milestones seem to be arriving on top of one another. I barely get up for air and slam, another one hits me on the head.

Quincie turned 16 last week. She wears my clothes, I wear her shoes. She certainly isn't a baby anymore. This is the first year she didn't have a birthday cake. She didn't want one. Weird, but true. She had been saving for a long time for a computer and between her savings, and a present from Carl, she finally had enough on her birthday. We took a trip to the Apple store to make her birthday wish come true. That is one COOL store! I could have stayed and played for hours. Gadgets galore! That night we went to see the new Harry Potter. It was the first day so I bought tickets online early. We had nearly a whole row of friends with us. That movie was looooong! Q had a great day, as yet another of life's milestones wacked me in the face.

Ryker's proposed Eagle Scout project was approved. Now he has 2 weeks to get it done. Planning, writing, rushing, waiting, calling meeting, talking - ahhhhh! I am so glad that he is taking the lead on all of this. Stand by for updates as this one proceeds.

I had big plans for Saturday. Q and I were going to go hiking with Angela to check out the hike for girl's camp which is this week. I had an appointment to donate blood at 8am and figured by 1pm I would be good to go. What do they say about the best laid plans??? I am not sure I am ready to write about saturday morning yet. I think I will save that story for it's own entry. Suffice it to say, I didn't go hiking.

Sunday morning I had to speak in church. I have had to speak at least once a year since we moved here. Usually more like 2 or 3 times a year. It's weird. I don't mind speaking to groups of people. What I do mind is the anxiety of waiting my turn. I was last. I have this thing about waiting. It's the same thing with amusement park rides. I love the ride, but I HATE to be buckled in first and have to wait for the ride to start. My mind starts thinking of all these crazy scenerios. Like ... what if while I am strapped in, waiting to go, an ax murderer shows up and tries to kill me? I am strapped in, I can't get out, I can't run way, and I get axed .... So, sitting on the stand waiting for my turn to talk is kind of the same. I walk in, exactly on time, and I am the only one of 3 speakers up there. The other 2 haven't arrived. I start thinking of how I can stretch my talk to cover that much time. Then I start thinking if there is a way I could bail too, if they don't show. Once they show up, and the services starts, I start thinking of all the reasons I would like to get up out of my chair, which of course I wouldn't do, because everyone would see me, and I am not going to walk throught the entire congregation while someone else is speaking, that would just be rude. But anyway, I need to use the bathroom. I drank a big glass of water just before I left so I wouldn't be dehydrated, and it is ready to vacate. I can't get up, but I really need to. If only I had been able to speak first, instead of last. Miraculously, once it was my turn, that urgent urge seemed to vanish.

Today I rescued a friend who locked her keys in her car. Usually it is me that does the locking of the keys in the car and someone else that gets to do the rescuing. It felt good to see it from the other side for once. It's much less stressful and embarrassing from this position. I think I like it better.

Tonight I went to a meeting where we introduced a new website to a group of realtors. I have been involved in this project since it was just a concept. It is not my idea, but I have been around while it has taken shape over the last couple years. I have always thought it was a great idea and believed in the project's ultimate success. Tonight, seeing the faces of those realtors as they came to understand was an experience hard for me to describe. This good idea has become real. I saw it on my own computer as it grew and was amazed and impressed all along the way. Watching people experience the full, working website, for the first time was very, very cool. Let me try to explain it better. This idea was nothing, just a thought, and now, it is real, and others, who did not share in that original thought, are now experiencing it. It works, and they like it. The thought was good, and the hard work it took to get it to this point are not relavent to them. All they see is the finished, working product, and they like it. What an interesting process. I am glad I have been along for the ride.

I am excited to see what the rest of this week will bring. If it's anything interesting, I will be sure to let you know.

Peaceful Pit Stop

Lessons Learned

1. Get gas before you start your long drive. It is easier to relax and enjoy the scenery when you aren't worried about the gas tank.

2. Eat before you start a long drive.

3. I need to buy another GPS.

4. Oahu traffic sucks, I don't care what time of day it is, or what side of the island you are on. It just sucks, all the time, everywhere.

5. The Ocean is vast and beautiful and completely amazing.

My Notebooks

A long, long time ago a great boss taught me a simple trick to stay organized. Ed kept a simple, spiral notebook on the desk at work. Each day the date was written in the center of the next blank line. Anytime a phone call was answered, or placed it was recorded in the notebook. The time went out to the left in the margin. All the notes from the day went in that notebook. If multiple people were working in the office, you put your initials next to what you wrote. When you called a person back, or finished a task, it was checked off in the left margin. All orders that came in over the phone were also written in this notebook. The start date and end date are on the front cover.

I started my first notebook when I worked for Ed, in 1991, before Ryker was born. Somewhere, in a storage unit, I have stacks of notebooks filled with my daily activities and phone calls for years of my life. On many, many occasions, the notebook has saved me. I have been able to make copies of pages and prove that a critical conversation happened. I have been able to go back and look up the date and time an order was placed, and repeat that order for a customer.

I have been self employed, with an office staff of me, myself and I for many years. The notebook went everywhere with me. I started writing my daily to do list in it at the beginning of each day. I also balanced my work and personal check book in it for a few years. I wrote the list of the passwords I was most likely to forget on the back page for awhile, and when I was traveling often, my frequent flyer numbers.

A couple years ago I started playing around with the organization features on my Black Berry. I love gadgets and gadgets can do all that my notebook does. I started to stray from my notebook habit, and would put some stuff in my google calendar which synced with my phone. Then about a year ago I got the iPhone, which can do anything. I found an ap simply called, "to do list". It is really good. I used it for a while, even until last week I was still trying to keep things current in there. It is really well done, and lets you sort the way I like, by project, due date, location, and priority. Of course you have to enter all of your items into this software.

I found myself writing daily lists on blank pieces of paper as well as putting the important stuff in my phone. There is just something about sitting down with a blank sheet of paper and filling it with words that I like. I think that somehow seeing my lists, or my thoughts, or my conversations, written makes they real. They become tangible when I put pen to paper. I see them on the page and my brain takes a picture. I know my list today was about half a page and the shopping items still need to be done, and that phone number, for the new client, is written in red sideways across the right side. Weeks, or months later, I can quickly scan through the book for that red number on the side of the page and find it.

I also enjoy checking of the items on a list. I like to see them all neatly checked off at the end of the day. Having an entire spiral notebook full of pages with checked off lists, is very satisfying. Having boxes of those notebooks stands as a witness that I accomplished something.

There are no forms to fill out in my notebooks. I can write anything I want. I am not limited to a list, or any categories. I can write or print in any color of ink. I can write upside down, or sideways. I can jot down a note in the middle of a list, or a phone number, or a quote I just heard that I don't want to forget. I am not limited. I can write something important in GIANT letters and then underline them in red and hit them with a bright yellow highlighter, just to be sure I don't forget. The blank pages beacon me to fill them as I fill each new day. The blank page is as if the blank day before me. I can cary over the unfinished business from the day before, or I can start out clean and fresh with something totally new. It is precisely, what I make of it.

But more importantly, I think it is the physical nature of a sheet of paper that starts blank, and then fills with words which are people, conversations, tasks, events, that come to mean progress, that is meaningful to me. That is why today, I went back to my notebook.

The Quest

A few years ago I read The Secret. I had several months of great parking spots, which is nothing short of a miracle here on Oahu. Parking is a daily issue and having good luck with it is a BIG deal. The Secret works.

The concepts taught in The Secret rang true to me, but the book seemed over simplified. I wanted more than just good parking spots. I wanted to improve the quality of my life. I wanted to acheive my dreams. I prefer to take the AP class, rather than remedial reading, or maybe I expect life to be hard? Either way, I went on a quest for the details, the science, the meat of the mater. I wanted to know how it worked, why it worked, and just exactly how I should go about making it work in my life. I wanted facts and I wanted homework.

I read several books by the authors quoted in The Secret - Joe Vitale, Christiane Turner, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, Dale Carnegie, Charles Haanel, Benjamin Franklin, etc. These authors led me to others, and related topics, like the fascinating concepts of quantum physics and the nature of time. I learned a lot of cool stuff, and enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Somewhere along the line I ended up on a daily newsletter written by Matt Furey. He is associated with the Psycho-cybernetics foundation, and the work of Dr. Maxwell Maltz. I love most of his stuff, and purchased his DVD about how to get rid of headaches. His particular flavor of this whole concept centers around fitness and internet marketing.

I am pretty interested in the internet marketing, but fitness? Well, slimness has always come naturally to me so I haven't given it a whole lot of thought. If an activity is fun or neadful, I do it. But just walking or running, or anything, for the sake of fitness - BORING~ I think reading those daily emails about how to lose weight and how to get fit might be making me fat. I'd read an email with a tip about what to do to exercise more effectively, etc. and I would think, "Oh crap, I'm not doing that, maybe I should be." Seriously! I never thought it of it before, and I stayed perfectly healthy and slim. I ate and did what I wanted. In the last year I have gained a few pounds, maybe 10 at the most. I know, I know, what am I complaining about, but I don't like it! I want MY body back, the one that I know, that acts the way I am used to, and fits clothes like I am used to. I feel strange in this slightly softer, rounder version of myself. I have thought about buying one of the fitness books Furey is selling.

It's all my brother-in-law's fault that I even know how much I weigh. When he moved back to the mainland about a year and a half ago he left his bathroom scale at our house. I was shipping him boxes a few at a time that he left here. I needed the scale to weigh them. After a few months of it hanging out in the living room, I put it in the bathroom. In all my adult life I had never owned a scale. I never thought about how much I weighed. I started weighing myself often, just cause it was there. Pretty soon it was every day. I'm not going to step on that scale again for at least a week. Maybe I will just ship it to it's rightful owner, he can have the dang thing back.

When I was reading all those books, I fairly devoured them. I would go through each one as quickly as I could, searching for the gems. Most of them had mental exercises you were supposed to go through at the end of each chapter. I was much too impatient for any of that. I remember thinking, "Ya, ya, I know, tell me what's next!". Generally these exercises involve deep breathing and meditation. I discovered that I was not very good at either. So, I skipped through them and on to more information, and then the next book, and the next.

Other than the daily emails, I haven't read anything new on the subject for the last few months. My mind has been processing all that data. Here is what I think:

1. It is really important to know what you want before you go about trying to get it.

2. The human mind is very powerful. Respect that power.

3. Be careful about what messages you send yourself. Look around your life and see what you are telling yourself. (ie the bathroom scale)

4. Knowledge is not enough for true success.

I have determined to slow down and actually DO the exercises in those books I read. I am starting with Charles Haanel's The Master Key System. This is the one that irritated me the most, so it's probably the one I need to do. He suggests you take a week between each chapter to master each exercise before moving on to the next. The first week you are supposed to sit perfectly still in a chair for 15 minutes. You are supposed to do this every day for a week. Simple - but surprisingly difficult for me. Each chapter builds on the previous and now in chapter 3 I am sitting perfectly still for 15 minutes daily with my body completely relaxed and my mind completely relaxed. I have dozed off a few times. Hopefully by the time the week is up I will have this one mastered.

The books I have read are included in the list on the right side of this page. My personal favorites are The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and The Biography of Benjamin Franklin. Come, join me on The Quest!

Quincie the Zookeeper

Quincie started bringing animals to our house a few years ago. It started with a fish she "won" at a school carnival. He is still alive and has been joined by a few friends, some of which have passed on. The fish funeral is not as an emotional of an event as it once was.

The fish were followed by mice. There were 2, then 3, and then a litter of 8. Before we had the science of mouse reproduction figured out there was another litter of 8. The boys and girls were separated, and the boys were sent to live at Kylee's house. Kylee is Quincie's best friend and the other zookeeper. She has birds, mice (thanks to Quincie), dogs, and a cat. There are now only 3 very fat, very spoiled, girl mice. The girls stink less than the boys. This might be a universal truth, not just applicable to mice.

In January Chester arrived! Quincie, and the rest of us, finally had a PUPPY!! We really are dog people and love him lots. Quincie is his "mommy" and takes very good care of him. She is the best at giving him baths and brushing him. She runs with him, teaches him tricks and lets him sleep with her. She kisses him on the head and carries him around on her hip like he is an actual baby.

Not too much later, sometime in March, Charlie, the SECURITY dog moved into Carl's truck. He is awesome. No one is going to mess with us with him around. His bark is fierce! But he is a sweetheart. He doesn't like to run as much as Chester, but prefers a chaotic walk involving sniffing everything sniffable along the way. He really loves the beach and will catch balls in the water until he is out of breath and water logged. Quincie is usually the one that feeds Charlie. When he was sick, he has allergies, and needed medicine, she was the one that hid the pill in the soft dog food and made sure he got it on schedule.

Last night Carl and Ryker came home from work with a surprise for our little zoo keeper. They had caught 3 poison dart frogs. They are working on a house in Manoa and they are plentiful in that area of the island. She had an extra aquarium in her closet, imagine that! They were set up in a frog habitat in no time. They like it warm and humid, wet dirt, dry dirt, a pond for swimming, and ants to eat. They are pretty small, like the size of my Jabra earpiece, less than an inch long. They are shiny black and green. The are not poisonous unless they are eating a steady diet of fire ants, which are not available here. These little guys are harmless. It took only a few minutes before plenty of ants were crawling on the wet cracker Q left outside. The original idea of sugar on a dish was quickly eaten by Chester - plastic dish and all.