Bananas, Bottles, And Other Odd Things
My wife asked me last night if she could eat one of my bananas. I have no idea how to write a sentence like that so it doesn’t sound like a euphemism, but it’s not. I just like bananas. I eat more fruit than I used to, but it’s almost always berries and bananas. An apple is just not worth the trouble.
They’re not my bananas, but we’re a weird family right now, with my wife trying to eat less while I try to eat more, a complete reversal of what was normal for most of our marriage. We have particular foods we like. She was being polite. There are more bananas in the store.
And I know this sounds kind of dumb, but I get a little jolt of pleasure whenever I eat the last banana, as I did this morning, and it has a couple of dark, soft spots, as it did. Eaten in the nick of time, saving waste while earning potassium points. I compost the peel. It’s kind of a win-win thing then. It’s never a euphemism.
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I bought a water bottle the other day, and everyone thinks it’s so funny.
The more water bottles I see, the more ridiculous they seem. We’re human beings. Thirst is a major existential drive, and few of us are hiking across the desert during a normal day. It seems silly. There’s always some place to get a drink of water.
But I’ve been drinking a lot more fluid with all of these hospital visits, hours in the waiting room, something to do and something to go with food. I alternated between buying bottles of Diet Coke and taking advantage of the water fountains, and I felt better. I have no idea, but I watched all of these young nurses lugging these huge water bottles around, as my wife does, and I started thinking about it.
People laugh at my bottle because it only holds 14 ounces. I say only. Nearly a pint, half a liter. Again, looking at my plans for a normal day and seeing no desert treks on the schedule, I think I’ll live. Make your jokes.
It’s just weird that I have this reaction. I’ve always had it. I drink more water and I feel better, so I tell myself to make an effort to do that, and I set alarms and keep track and guzzle down a pint at a time, until it feels stupid and kind of annoying and then I stop. It makes no sense to me. There’s no scientific reason I can think of unless I tend to exist in a semi-dehydrated state, which I guess is possible.
But I’ve taken many, many hikes over the past decade, suburban hikes as well as in the hills, some of them over two hours, and I’ve never taken along a water bottle. The one time I did, when I hiked 30 miles across Seattle a few years ago, I actually got dehydrated (I was walking through a city but ended up on an urban trail that was really a desert in terms of convenience stores or any place to refill for about an hour, and I just timed it wrong).
So I have no idea. But 14 ounces at a time seems plenty.
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I read an article the other day that kind of horrified me with a statistic. It mentioned that only 1% of internet users employ a password manager.
You’re probably one of the 99%, then (I don’t know how to write that sentence either. No one said there’d be math). And my horror is mostly theoretical. You’re probably fine.
But it costs me 12 bucks a year to use LastPass (there are other good ones), which also works on my phone. My passwords all have a dozen or more random characters and I know none of them, which is the kind of ignorant you want to be.
Anyway, it’s probably enough to inspire a technology column soon. Most of my readers, or I suspect, are older and perhaps less vigilant about the ways that being online have become more dangerous, as hard as that is for me to understand.
And it’s a big motivator for me, the idea that I might have something useful to share, especially at this point in my life. Use it or lose it, in other words. Kind of like the last banana.
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Finally, John and I knocked off Dr. Strange yesterday, and then he saw Black Panther with his mother (he’s the only one in the family who missed that). He added a couple that his research suggested we’d need, so we’ve got four left.
I liked Dr. Strange, particularly Tilda Swinton (duh) and Rachel McAdams, who’s really one of my favorite actors. She’s just watchable, and good in a variety of roles (I thought Benedict Cumberbatch was so-so, although I find myself wondering how these actors pull it off, trying to perform a scene that’s going to be mostly filled in later with effects).
And I had the feeling it was important, and will be important, but I’m trying not to speculate. I’ve bookmarked articles successfully so far (i.e., saved them without accidentally reading) on this Endgame film, but it’s hard not to find stuff out.
As I mentioned, this is really just something to do with my son. I’ve been around this guy since he was 5 seconds old, and he doesn’t wander far, so sometimes I can get a little cranky. I don’t care about anime or video games, but I can sit for a few hours and watch things explode while people in costumes fly around. The films all have different effects on me, but they all feel pretty much the same. I’m entertained, never bored, but not all that excited. Just a thing to do.
It’s funny how people feel, though. The more folks who know we’re trying to do this thing, the more we get suggestions on films we absolutely have to see. We’ve already gone from a list of 7 necessary films to 9, and I was clear from the start that our goal was to streamline this, skipping the ones we could. To add more hours to my week just because you love one particular film seems kind of mean now.
But I’ll think we’ll end up in a theater on Saturday, with 17 of 22 under our belts (once it’s over, I mean). Mission accomplished, father-son bonding, comic book closure. Nine movies in a week is probably a personal record, and it’s nice to do it the right way, plan and execute, and catch this thing in the theaters before it’s too late.
Again, like the last banana. Work with me here.
