Some Blog Site

We were driving home from some event, and the topic of conversation turned to blood pressure. One of the kids asked what the two numbers were, and I couldn’t remember the term, so I just said the top one was “apostolic”.

The funny thing was that it sounded close enough so that people just went with it.

I then admitted what happened and the kids were throwing out other options, just about anything that ended in -olic (but not -holic).

• apostolic
• anabolic
• diabolic

Those are the terms I could remember. Feel free to use any of those next time you’re discussing blood pressure.

I traveled to Maine to visit family. Here’s a short recap of some of the events.

We stayed in a small house overlooking Union Bay. Here’s the view from inside the house.

And here’s the view from the backyard.

Our first Maine activity was hiking around Jordan Pond. Everything associated with it had the prefix “Jordan Pond”, so that became a short-lived running joke. To get there, you drive up Jordan Pond Drive. You know you’re there when you see the house, which is named Jordan Pond House. Etc, etc.

It was cold in Maine, but since everything there is ocean salt water, we mostly saw liquid water. Jordan Pond was the first place where a body of water was actually frozen. And it was a good frozen too – several inches thick, we could see a few layers. Other people were running and skating about, so we ventured onto the ice.

We went there not to slide on the ice, but to hike the trail around Jordan Pond. It was called, of course, Jordan Pond Trail. We started going north along the east side. It was a scenic trail, fairly well maintained, like this:

About the halfway point, there was a bridge, I’m guessing to cross over the Jordan Pond river that feeds it.

After that, the trail became less of a trail and more of a suggestion. It was just a bunch of rocks piled along the shore, and you had to guess where to go next, mostly judging by the shoreline.

The amount of effort to scramble over snow-covered rocks was more than we anticipated for our group, so we made up a plan B – just walk across the water.

It was the shortest distance between two points. The snow-covered sections were ok, but the bare ice was polished smooth by the winds, so that was pretty slippery.

When we got just past the point of land that jut out, we could see that the shoreline was no longer rocky and there was a path we could walk again. So we decided to abandon plan B and go back to plan A of hiking the trail. The trail for most of the rest of the time consisted of a boardwalk.

The boardwalk ended right near a bridge for the carriage road. There are a few carriage houses and various old bridges leftover from the Rockefeller days, before it became Acadia National Park.

We also visited Bar Harbor quickly. There is not much to do there in the winter. And a swing by the LL Bean outlet. Trying to fit in a bunch of typical Maine experiences. Including buying food at Shaw’s and perusing Marden’s for whatever we can find.

It’s not band books week, but there was a news story – or whatever substitutes for one in these social media days – about some people getting upset at certain schools for banning some books.

And I got to thinking that they’re overreacting.

Sure, the schools aren’t allowing some books in the school, but how is that different from any other category?

Our schools in the area have a dress code. Certain types of outfits are not allowed at school. Are groups protesting the fact that the school has banned those?

Our schools in the area also have a movie policy. Teachers are not allowed to show anything over PG-13 (or PG for the lower grades). It’s the same for the charter buses used for long field trips. So certain types of movies are not allowed at school. Are groups protesting the fact that the school has banned those?

The people who are mad at the schools for “banning books” are approaching it from the wrong angle. The angle should be that the content of any media is restricted to what’s appropriate for the age.

Part of the problem is that there is not a rating system for books like there is for movies. If there were, then it would be easy for the school to have a policy of “School library books are to be rated PG-13 or lower” or something like that.

The other part of the problem is that books are synonymous with knowledge, so the people opposed to restricting books are decrying that as banning knowledge. On one hand, I suppose you could learn a lesson from just about any books, but on the other hand some books are meant just for entertainment. Not all books are equal when it comes to their educational merits, and thus their place in school.

I was tasked with making a food item, and so I started following the recipe. First item of business: gather the ingredients.

One of the ingredients was 16 ounces of cream cheese. No problem, I opened the fridge, found a 16-oz box of cream cheese, and then got the rest of the items.

Once I had all the stuff, I started mixing them. But when I got to the cream cheese, I noticed something wasn’t quite right. I opened the 16-oz box and pulled out one foil pouch of cream cheese.

If you look, you can see that the measurement on the pouch indicates it contains 8 oz of cream cheese.

And the box clearly says 16 oz. And it’s a 2 pack, but it contained only one pack of cream cheese.

I think it’s a very misleading label on the box.

What they meant is that this is one box of a 2-box pack, and this box contains only 8 ounces but if you have both boxes (each labeled as 16 oz) then you get the 16 oz.

And it says in the top left that it is two individually wrapped 8 oz packages, and so I was expecting the box to contain the foil package that it did contain. But it contained only one foil pouch not two, and that’s what caused me to consider how I had been mislead by this awful packaging.

With a nice variety of winter weather lately, combined with a teenager with a new-ish driving permit, we as a family had some discussions during his drive in snow.

The phrase that came up was “turn into the spin”. That was an answer to what you’re supposed to do if you start to lose control of the vehicle.

The main problem with that phrase is that it is ambiguous. People have different ideas of which direction that is. Is that with the spin, or against the spin?

I told my new driver to forget that phrase and just point the wheels in the direction you want the car to go.

The other problem with that phrase is that it is a phrase. It won’t help you in an emergency because you need to think about it. The best way to prepare for an emergency is to practice it. So he’s going to practice it. Don’t worry, it’s a class given by professionals. But then his mind will know what to do.

As with most people, I had to renew my license plate tabs again this year.

Something new I noticed, though, was that we in Michigan now have an option to renew for 2 years at a time, instead of just one.

“That’s a good idea,” I thought, ready to take advantage of halving the vehicle paperwork over the next several years. I got most of the way through the process online, and then it showed my total: exactly double the one-year rate.

When I state it like that, you may think “what’s the big deal? It’s twice as long so it should be twice as much.” Yes, but the down side outweighs the up side, at least to me.

The Michigan Secretary of State is thinking that most people will go along with my initial thought (“less work for me”) and not think any further.

But I want a price discount from them before I sign up for a longer term. Mainly because I have 4 vehicles, and that’s around $450 per year. If I sign up for two years at once, I am giving the state a $450 interest-free loan for that second year.

What is my incentive to give them a chunk of money up front and lose out on my using that money for a year? Especially now, with interest rates being higher.

For example, most Certificates of Deposit are giving about 5%. For a 1-year CD at 5%, that $450 would earn me $22.50. If Michigan wants me to lose out on theoretical interest, they need to give me a discount for the longer term.

Plus, how much does it cost them to mail out reminders, process the renewal, and print out the new tabs? Why don’t they pass those savings on to me? I don’t even need my discount to be all of what they save, but they need to make at least some effort.

For now, all the benefits go to the state and I’m left with only drawbacks. So I’m going to keep renewing annually, until they come up with a better offer.

A few weeks ago, we watched the MAC championship football game. I wouldn’t normally plan to watch the MAC championship, but two things happened.

1. The top team in the MAC going into that game was the University of Toledo, and our oldest son goes there, so we’ve been to a game at Toledo both this year and last year, so it was of interest to us.

and 2. Thanks to a friend’s generosity, we got to be in one of the Terrace Suites. So that was another vote for going.

I have to applaud the person who setup the arrangement of TV screens. But first, some background.

The way the Terrace Suites are setup, they are not fully private. You have a seating section in front that’s open to everything, and then a small counter area that’s somewhat enclosed. The enclosure is a partially frosted glass pane, so you can see your neighbors in the next suite. Like this:

Each suite has a TV screen in the “inside” counter area and a TV screen in the “outside” seating area. You get a remote to be able to change the station if you want. Here is what they looked like in our suite.

When we got there, our screens were on but our neighbor’s screens were off. At least they looked off to us, but the kids noticed if you look through the glass, you could see the image. Like this:

The initial guess was there was some sort of filter, but then we noticed the images were reversed, and it was actually a reflection of the screen in our suite.

And that’s why I was impressed with the person who setup the suites. Because I moved my head up and down, and no matter at what height I viewed the other screen through the glass, the reflection lined up perfectly.

Here are some GIFs of how well the inside and outside screens both align.

That was me just moving the camera left to right. I didn’t get shots of it moving up and down.