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Sunday, February 24, 2019
Am slowly losing my war to maintain my weight.
The battles so tiny, insidious.

Terribly frustrating.

What gets my goat is that I’ve already walked away from such favorite foods as ice cream.
Ice cream.
Five years ago I’d never thought I’d go without ice cream.
To no avail.
The ounces keep arriving.
And staying.

Got this thought.
I am a checklist person.
Added to it this thought: I am one who thrives on routine.
I shall compose a list of times at which I eat and the type of food that I eat,  and carry the list/table with me, adding to it as I go, retyping it when at the computer.
It may be just the reinforcement I need, or just another small battle lost to shapelessness.

Anyway, here’s that list:

One problem I see with this is that dinner is so pleasurable it’s difficult to refuse that last bite that I don’t really need to fill up on.
Will try, once again, to portion out my meal BEFORE I sit.

As Eeyore says, “Pathetic. That’s what it is. Pathetic.”

Wish me well.

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Tagging Today
Sunday, February 24, 2019

My 318th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.

Time is 12.01am.
On Sunday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 48* with a feels-like temperature of 43* with rain.

Dinner is Roasted Veal Breast leftover.

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Tick Tock
318 posts to date.
Today we’re at the 6.36% mark of my commitment,
the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.

The 5,000-posts commitment will take 13.69 years, taking me to a new phase of my life.
We will see thirteen “Winter-Spring Shoulder Season Calendar, Feb 14 to April 7,” before that happens.
But it will.

The winter-spring shoulder calendar features a panoply of weather conditions, from stormy winter to lovely spring, the latter somewhat rare.
And the next several days will showcase that: mild for the next couple then freeze your rear-end for a couple of days to follow.

Typical for the unpredictable shoulder calendar.
Accept that many unpleasant days are lining up to annoy us.
For a while yet we will often be dressing for wintry weather.

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Question of the Day
Who is Robert Kraft?

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Elephant jokes to tell at a bar:
Why can’t an elephant use a computer?

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Love your notes.
Contact me at existentialautotrip@hotmail.com

Web Meister responds: To the comments from Howard re: purpose of the opening remarks.
Sometimes, in our opening remarks, we try to be amusing; sometimes to present ideas out of the box.
But always, always we present thoughts for readers to chew on and respond to.
Howard has some follow-up comments to the posting on restraint from flushing.
Due to its length, we’ve placed the comments after the answer to the question of the day.

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Answer to Question: Who is Robert Kraft?

From the Boston Globe:
By Bob Hohler Globe Staff  February 22, 2019

Patriots owner Robert Kraft, one of the nation’s most powerful sports figures, is expected to face charges of soliciting prostitution at a Florida massage parlor, in a case that could mean lasting damage to his reputation and possible disciplinary action by the National Football League.

As part of an investigation into international human trafficking, hidden surveillance cameras at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Fla., recorded Kraft engaging in a sex act with a prostitute during two alleged visits to the club between Jan. 18 and Jan. 22, law enforcement authorities said Friday.

Wiki says:
Robert Kenneth Kraft (born June 5, 1941) is an American businessman.
He is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Kraft Group, a diversified holding company with assets in paper and packaging, sports and entertainment, real estate development and a private equity portfolio.
He is the owner of the National Football League's New England Patriots, Major League Soccer's New England Revolution, and Gillette Stadium, where both teams play.

Robert Kraft says:
“We categorically deny that Mr. Kraft engaged in any illegal activity. Because it is a judicial matter, we will not be commenting further.’’ Quoted from the same Globe article.

Web Meister responds:
We at this blog come down strongly on the side of the rights of the accused.
We shudder at the speed at which popular opinion paints EVERY accused person with guilt before trial, before indictment, immediately upon seeing a finger point.

We also shudder at the abuse of wealth and power.
At the ease with which the rich and powerful stomp others into the ground for their amusement.

In this case, however, one must give a good deal of credence to the police.
They have video tapes of him, of Robert Kraft with his pants off and his underwear in full view.
They have nothing to gain and much to lose if their accusations prove to be inaccurate.

How pathetic is a creature who would debase the downtrodden.
How miserable is the creep who, when caught, would lack the fortitude to own up.
To reflect on himself.
To acknowledge his guilt.
To seek counsel as to the most heartfelt way to apologize.

Who is Robert Kraft?
If he did this thing, he is a betrayer of the power and position he holds.

Will he fess up?
Or creep out?
On this answer rests a refined definition of Who is Robert Kraft?

_______________________________
Love your notes.
Contact me at existentialautotrip@hotmail.com

Howard’s response to the posting on flushing:

I cannot fault you for your mindfulness concerning matters that impinge on the general health of the public and the protection of the environment.

But I am always left with the feeling after reading your account of your essentially truncated research and understanding—which I’m always left to conclude is based at least in part on some form of common wisdom—that you have reached conclusions that not only satisfy your sense of a rational way of dealing with everyday life, but always has along with it an air of being an unassailable conclusion.

Your remarks about flushing after urination left me unmoved. It seems from what I understand about these things to be essentially an esthetic decision, although there is merit in considering that each flush, for whatever reason, consumes the capacity of the tank in the toilet, or the allotted volume of discharge of water through the valve of flushers configured without a tank. And there’s no reason I’ve ever encountered (I can only guess that my research in the fullness of time has exceeded yours as to scope and thoroughness, but I’d be delighted to be proven wrong). Not flushing is not unhygienic (though not thoroughly cleaning the seat, the inside of the toilet, and all surrounding surfaces, including the floor periodically is, and is far more important than whether you follow the rule of “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown flush it down” a minor verse I learned at a friend’s house in St. John, USVI, which all guests followed as the water in the tanks was the same water used to shower and to cook, and that is, it was from a cistern under the deck of the house, which was replenished only by rainwater… and as there was no water table to speak of, and it is a mainly arid climate, required topping up by trucks that roved the countryside full of replenishment for such cisterns, and as you can imagine, such a service was not cheap).

As the attached article, which I remembered reading about a year ago when I saw your post from today, makes clear, the jury is out on whether those hand driers (which personally I abominate; I’ll explain in a moment) are more or less hygienic than paper towels. It seems to depend on which study you read, and these in turn depend on who was paying for the allegedly “scientific” study.

As for me, I prefer paper towels for a number of reasons. At least the paper is sustainable, and most paper products that we use in the form of consumables are sustainable. It’s long since that the major paper companies (something of a redundancy, all paper companies today are “major”) adapted the policy of maintaining pulp supplies from sustainable forests with minimal environmental impact, under current laws. Even more stringent laws would not endanger the supply.

I’ll have to get back to you on whether more or less energy is required to put a reasonable amount of paper in your hands to dry them than is required to manufacture, maintain, and operate one of those air dryers. From what I do know, I doubt there’s much differnce. And I operate under the presumption that, again in the fullness of time, more and more energy will derive from sustainable sources, making the question less relevant, if not moot.

The reason I hate those driers is because they are noise polluters. I’ll get you the sound pressure levels they generate while operating. It’s cheaper to make them that way. You can’t, however, get cheap ears to replace the ones whose hearing you degrade with every everyday exposure to excessive noise.

More importantly however, akin to the need for cleanliness I cited above with regard to toilets, neither air driers nor paper towels do a thing about the significant number of users of bathrooms, both public and private facilities, who simply don’t bother cleaning their hands properly after touching their nether regions, which, necessarily, at any time, except possibly stepping naked from a fresh shower, are effectively covered with micro- and sub-micro-organisms, both non-threatening and potentially pathogenic. Most people then proceed, washed hands or not, to touch a multitude of surfaces on the way out the door after having sought relief.

The availability of paper towels makes it possible not only to dry your hands after washing properly with soap and water for 20 seconds, but to use the paper towel as a barrier between your freshly cleaned hands and all those germs, which do spread disease, mostly minor and recoverable, but sometimes rarely not so much.

I have a lot of faith in the formidable natural defenses our bodies represent in their immune systems, but this does not leave me barren of vigilance regarding the truly disgusting personal habits (and I am not including whether they flush after #1 or not; that’s silly) of my fellow humans. So I don’t touch anything in a bathroom that is public without something between my skin and the surfaces.

I’ll carry a used paper towel out with me, and search for a trash receptacle, rather than avoid the inconvenience of doing otherwise. And using an air drier, regardless of its relative effectiveness in the process of maintaining hygience, is not an option I embrace, because I don’t always have an alternative handy for getting myself out the door uncontaminated.

Having spent some time recently in one of the top rated hospitals in the country visiting with a stricken loved one, I’ve done my tour of the vast facility’s many public bathrooms, used by the public, patients, and the medical and maintenance staffs alike. Not one in any pavilion covering eight square city blocks had an air drier. All had mechanical paper towel dispensers, which required waving your hand in front of them, untouched, to dispense another ration of towel. And all had foot-pedal operated trash receptacles strategically located just inside the door for disposal.

And I assure you, a facility as large as this one is at leasst as mindful as either of us of the impact of disposing of such necessary consumable items on the environment.

Maybe you should rethink it one more time. At least that’s my objective here.

Oh, and here’s that article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/health/hand-dryer-petri-dish.html

xoxo

hhd

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Good Morning on this Sunday, the 24th day of February.
We talked about a losing struggle against weight gain and an effort to turn the tide.
About the calendar, Roast Veal Breast, and the weather.
We told a second grade elephant joke and asked who Robert Kraft was.
We gave several entries shedding light on the subject, leaving it up to Kraft to define how low he wants to sink.
Due to its length, we inverted the usual order of bloggers’ comments, leaving Howard’s well-written piece, his pieces always well-written, as the penultimate entry before my own.

And now? Now gotta go.
Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Your love