Bainstorming Blog - May 2018 to August 2018.

Subjects in this blog: Exercise, Bain Quotes, Troubles, troubles, New book in pogress, Young, Baked Fried Pies, Hearing, The End.

BAINSTORMING

Bainstorming - May 2018 to August 2018.

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Bainstorming: Darrell's Bain's Blog.
Copyright © August 2018, by Darrell Bain
http://www.darrellbain.com

Responses to subjects brought up by this blog are welcome. I can be contacted by e-mailing me from my website.

Subjects in this blog: Exercise, Bain Quotes, Troubles, troubles, New book in pogress, Young, Baked Fried Pies, Hearing, The End.

Instead of catching up, it appears that I’m getting further and further behind. Well, I’m getting old and don’t work nearly as fast as I used to, so I suppose it makes sense. I don’t have to like it, though. In fact, I’m not getting old, I am old. Where have all the years gone?

I have a young man, 16 years old, who works for me every Saturday and I find myself telling him stories of how it was before his time. He appears to be a good listener, though, and hopefully, I’m passing along a little wisdom from 79 years of hard living. In fact, he is a very good worker, a good driver and extremely polite. He says, “Yes, sir,” or “No, sir,” rather than, “Yeah,” or “Naw”. He shakes hands when he arrives and again when he leaves. He has a firm handshake which I like in a man. He’s punctual and I’ve yet to hear him make excuses about anything. Now, how many of those virtues do you see in teenagers these days? Rarely do you find them all in a teenage male and seldom even a few of them. His father has raised a fine young man, one he can be proud of. And I might mention in passing that his father worked for me when he was a teenager.

The only fault, if it is a fault, I can find in this young man is that he isn’t a reader. I believe reading, fiction or non-fiction enhances the mind. Reading requires one to expand the mind, which is good exercise. The brain improves with exercise just like the body.

Exercise

I am finally getting back into an exercise routine after my accident, which I believe I wrote about in my last Bainstorming. Exercise is good for elderly folks. I walk 30 minutes every day, which approaches the 2 miles I used to walk outside a few years ago. I no longer walk outside for fear of turning an ankle on the different sized rocks in the road and being incapacitated again. A sprained ankle is worse than a break. I’m still having twinges from a sprained ankle I suffered years and years ago. I have a straight path in the house from the back door, through the big office/library (about 500 square feet), through the kitchen, through the dining area and on to the fireplace at the other end of the living area. Then up and back until 30 minutes have passed. It’s a good way to meditate also. Maybe too much meditation. No telling what kind of crazy ideas I can come up with while walking. Of course I have some good ideas while walking as well. And I’m likely to go off on tangents as we old people frequently do, and as I have just done. On to the next subject.

Bain Quotes

1. When all else fails take a nap.
2. Songbirds sound happy but how do we know?

Troubles, troubles 

Yesterday, Betty noticed a drip from the ceiling. That is always bad news. This house is old enough that part of the AC/heating is in the attic, and don't ask me why they put it there. When AC is on the excess moisture drains through a pipe going to the outside. There is also a drip pan to catch overflow in the attic. That's where the trouble always comes from. When the excess moisture pipe is stopped up, it goes to the drip pan, then when it overflows it goes to the ceiling. And don't ask me why they have two systems to catch the moisture. It only delays things long enough for the drip pan to fill up. Anyway, after we put a pan under the drip from the ceiling we thought we'd caught it with minimum problems, but no--the drip on the floor had then puddled and found spaces between the sections of flooring and disappeared. When we went to check the pans they hadn't caught much water. It had found another path and was leaking from the doorjamb. Pans   went under three separate drips from there. By the time the AC people got here there were water stains on the sheetrock of the ceiling in the hall and bathroom. They unstopped the blockage and we still thought minimum damage that we could paint over. Then my stepson came by to check. He said the floor was wet and pulled up one section of flooring. Underneath it wasn't wet; it was flooded. He left and then when Betty was checking to see if the ceiling stains had spread, the ceiling fell down beside so she could get a closer look. All day, it was like trying to dodge shrapnel if you wanted to go to the master bedroom as pieces of ceiling kept falling. Then he brought in dryers and de-moisturizers. They roar like jets and we have to put up with that for ten days in order to get the concrete dried. We spend the day in the office and thank the Lord its big! Couch and easy chair available. Anyway, I spend a good bit of time out there anyway, and we turn off the noise at night when sleeping. I paid for a prescription for Betty in the meantime but it disappeared on the way home. Another 50 bucks for a new prescription plus all the time spent going back to the doc and getting a new prescription. Then I couldn't get a card activated that Betty had received for her birthday. Come to find out the gift giver had it activated before sending. No wonder they gave me such a hard time. My brother's back went out suddenly and completely, just as mine had. I think we are spending our retirement trying to out do each other with physical mishaps like aneurisms and fractured vertebrae and car wrecks, etc. When all else fails, take a nap, which is what I'm going to do if I can go to sleep with all that racket. Ten days. I'll go mad! Betty is going off and leaving me, too. Visiting grandson who is afflicted with cancer of the colon. There's practically an epidemic of kids under 50 with colon cancer. I guess our troubles are minor compared to that.
Nap time!

New book in progress.

I am progressing slowly on a new book, working title Chances. Suppose you were in prison serving a life sentence without parole. You are promised a pardon if you will go on an interstellar voyage. The catch: The planet Earth Space Service is interested in is probably inhabited by intelligent life. In order to get to that planet, your ship must make five jumps. Each jump offers only a 50% chance of succeeding. Any one of the five jumps that fail and the ship is lost. No one knows where it goes. Given the odds of beating that 50-50 chance five times in a row? One in 32. What would you do? Take the minute chance or serve a life sentence without parole?

Young

I have two photos over my desk of me and Betty. I believe she was about 16 at the time and I was 21. Why do I have them to look at every day? Perhaps to remind me that we were young once. It is hard to imagine now, but we were. I’m 79 now and Betty 88. I keep remembering that Paul Anderson was still writing into his nineties. At my present rate, I will be that old by the time I get all my books re-published and the two I’m working on now done. At least I’m still working, I tell myself, but I’m increasingly distracted by reading other authors’ newest offerings. That’s what’s slowing me down so much, but it’s hard to resist Ringo, Weber, Sawyer, Heinlein and others almost equally talented. I get some nice reviews, but I’ve never made it to the major publishers despite the fact that I sincerely believe I’m a pretty fair story teller. That’s the defining aspect of a writer, after all. Can he or she tell a story that keeps you interested? I can, judging by reviews on Amazon and other sites. My writing has vastly improved since I first began selling my novels and short stories, but I no longer try to sell to major publishers. Even should one of my novels be accepted, it would still take three years for it to see publication. Heck, I might be dead by then.

Baked Fried Pies

If that sounds like a contradiction, it is. Just as one of our granddaughters used to say she liked to visit granny because she made such good homemade canned biscuits. Anyhow, this morning Betty announced that we’re going to make baked fried pies. They are as good as the old fashioned fried pies but not near as messy. They are just baked rather than being fried. We’ve worked out a system where Betty gets the operation started by rolling out pre-made pie dough (she makes up about a dozen at once and freezes them), then we combine our efforts at making the pies and getting them into the oven. Twenty minutes later we have baked fried pies! Those I can’t eat get frozen and are nearly as good when thawed and heated as the first day they were made. Baked fried pies are one of my favorite sweets. Yummy!

Hearing

Tomorrow, the day after gorging myself with baked fried pies, Betty and I are going to a nearby town and have our hearing checked. We know Betty’s hearing is not that good, and we know I have trouble with my high definition hearing. I could get a hearing aid if I went through the test at the downtown veteran’s hospital but it is just too damn far to drive. Oh well. Maybe maybe my hearing hasn’t deteriorated any further. Better to be an optimist than a pessimist.

The End

I believe this will do it for now. I promise to try harder to get some more books re-issued and new ones written. After all, I’m supposed to be an author. So until next time I wish all my fans, readers and friends the best.

Darrell Bain
Shepherd, TX
August 28, 2018

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