Unplugged is good, very good.
And probably very relaxing.
I would suggest making it - at certain set times, or spontaneously, on occasion, just because you may feel like it - a habit.
Anyway, sounds as though you enjoyed a lovely day.
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Unplugged is good, very good.
And probably very relaxing.
I would suggest making it - at certain set times, or spontaneously, on occasion, just because you may feel like it - a habit.
Anyway, sounds as though you enjoyed a lovely day.
I'm still just amazed at the 6 cups of coffee per day 
As a tea-drinker (who has one cup a day, sometimes two) I am sometimes astonished at the amount of caffeine coffee drinkers consume on a regular basis.
As a tea-drinker (who has one cup a day, sometimes two) I am sometimes astonished at the amount of caffeine coffee drinkers consume on a regular basis.
1-2 cups of tea a day doesn’t qualify you as a tea drinker. I’ve had that by 8 am most days! 😉I'm still just amazed at the 6 cups of coffee per day
As a tea-drinker (who has one cup a day, sometimes two) I am sometimes astonished at the amount of caffeine coffee drinkers consume on a regular basis.
Yes it is, good point.
I think it was two or three cloves, crushed with my faithful garlic press.
It’s an addiction.I'm still just amazed at the 6 cups of coffee per day
My doctor was astonished too when she noticed that my kidneys weren’t at their best. And I am not joking.
Sigh.I'm still just amazed at the 6 cups of coffee per day
As a tea-drinker (who has one cup a day, sometimes two) I am sometimes astonished at the amount of caffeine coffee drinkers consume on a regular basis.
In my undergrad days, ten cups of coffee (a day) was not at all unknown.
If we were editing a student magazine (and debating societies and student magazines took up quite a bit of my time as an undergrad) - the sort of mad graveyard shift to have it ready for the printers by early morning, which meant we worked through the night - the consumption of copious quantities of coffee went without saying.
These days, when deployed abroad, it can be anything up to six cups of coffee - if I am attending a series of meetings where coffee is invariably offered and consumed (and the meeting will have been preceded by a coffee).
However, at home, it is rarely more than two, and sometimes, only one.
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As @Scepticalscribe said, unplugged is good. Great, actually. I think you’ll find out more and more that unplugged time is probably the most important part of your day.
I for one during the last Lenten season I completely reshaped my relationship not only with digital time, but with food. The consequence is that now cooking is truly one of the things I enjoy the most. After a day in front of a screen, I can take my time to create some good food for the family. I even made handmade Mac N Cheese last week; healthy? No. But we all devoured it and making it was fun.
Ah, yes.
That recipe called out - cried for - the addition of (several cloves of) garlic.
The one thing (apart from reduced coffee consumption) that is different these days, is the fact that - for the past twenty or so years - I also consume considerable quantities of water, both with coffee, and just by itself, between one to two litres a day, more in warm climates.
Thus, nowadays, whenever I have a coffee - even on my most recent deployment to Bosnia - I always request a mineral water as well.
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Absolutely. Garlic is one of nature’s best gifts. I crushed it and added it to the onions while they were stir frying.
Agreed.
And that is exactly how I would imagine that garlic would have been added to that delicious sounding dish.
Fantastic! I am pretty good with water and I do feel immediately when I am not good with it. One of the good things my parents did was to never allow a soda in our house (with the exception of Christmas, Easter, and Birthdays) and even at the restaurant they were fairly strict. Therefore, I never got used to to drinking sodas as a water replacement which here in the US is quite common.
However, give me sparkling water any day. I love it.
Thanks. The truth is that soups are incredibly easy to make. Cooking time might be long, but the truth is that not much skill is required. Stews are a bit different, but even they can be fairly easy. The best part? Leftovers. I have now enough soup for lunch until Friday… for both me and my wife!
@rm5: I am in complete agreement with @yaxomoxay.
Unplugged is not just good, it is great.
Moreover, it is an excellent (and mentally - psychologically, not just physically - healthy) habit to cultivate.
Not only does it give you the gift of silence, - which is an extraordinary gift, one that give you the time and space to think, to be in the moment (the old - as a gentle, wise monk once advised me, - "Just be, don't do") - and the gift of privacy, (you don't need to be on call to everyone all of the time), it also allows you to get into the habit of setting boundaries - different boundaries for different activities, and different boundaries for different settings - contexts - and for different times.
@yaxomoxay: My favourite cousin - @Apple fanboy knows of him, for I have written of him - had, at one stage, studied to be a clergyman, and is still someone I would regard as ethical with a sense of the spiritual.
Anyway, each year, he also chooses to forego a digital existence - swearing off Twitter where he occasionally comments on Arsenal (which he supports) during the Lenten season. Rather than viewing this as denial or deprivation by choice, he prefers to see it as striking a sort of psychological balance with how he chooses to engage with the digital world; again, a form of setting boundaries, a statement where one announces "I shall choose to engage now, but not then, not at that time."
To my mind, as with so much else that has so much to offer, the digital world is - or can be - an excellent servant but a poor master.
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Random musings;
I’m a morning person, the dark to dawn transition, birdsong, then sunrise never gets old, each one special.
Todays via bike ride.
Kindness… we need more of it in the USA. Way too much drama, etc.
I’m 61 and have 3 kids, 2 in college 1 junior in HS. There’s a huge movement to “take over / take back” schools via board of education. Our school board of 7, 3 new people come from this “clean slate movement”, in my 20 years I’ve never witnessed such drama and confrontation attitude. Sad.
I’m a morning person, the dark to dawn transition, birdsong, then sunrise never gets old, each one special.
Todays via bike ride.
Kindness… we need more of it in the USA. Way too much drama, etc.
I’m 61 and have 3 kids, 2 in college 1 junior in HS. There’s a huge movement to “take over / take back” schools via board of education. Our school board of 7, 3 new people come from this “clean slate movement”, in my 20 years I’ve never witnessed such drama and confrontation attitude. Sad.
Sparkling water and coffee: A match made in some sort of culinary Nirvana.
I love it, and consume between one to two litres of sparkling water a day.
My parents were the same; they allowed us to have soft drinks for Christmas, holidays, or birthdays, and that was it.
The rest of the time we were encouraged to consume water, milk, tea (and, in my case, because coffee was not a taste that I acquired as an adult, but - inexplicably - have loved since I was a child, I always loved the aroma and taste - coffee after dinner when my parents would have coffee after dinner on a week-end, or whenever I was out, I tended to request coffee rather than a soft drink).
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Sounds delicious.
Chard, cavolo nero, or spinach would also work well (just at the very end) with such a recipe.
Oh, silence is the best gift I could ever receive. In fact, today during the excursion, the teacher who was leading it made everyone sit at least 30 feet from each other, not make any noise, and just sit and watch and listen for 10 minutes. And it was the most calming 10 minutes I've ever spent. I didn't think about anything, I just took it all in. Then we all walked, quietly, back to where the group initially was, and continued our hike. Then obviously people started their conversations again, but I almost wish that time spent being silent was an hour instead of 10 minutes.
I started to become very tired of the human-generated noise, because in part, I was with younger students (freshmen), who are, y'know, a little more rowdy. But also just noise, after awhile, no matter where it comes from, gets annoying. So having everyone be silent, sitting far apart from each other, I need to make that a habit for myself, to do that every day. I can't imagine how much less stress I would feel throughout my life if I did that.
Absolutely, I don't know what else to say besides that I completely agree with you. It's incredibly sad how much conflict there is in this country, on many fronts. That's why I've chosen to not look at the news - in fact, I haven't looked at the news in quite a long time, because it's just becoming too much for me.
We've been having drama of our own at our public school district, for which the board approved a new schedule for next year. But a certain demographic of people (you can probably guess who this would be), doesn't like the changes, and completely overrode the board's decision, idk how to be honest. And they were taking advantage of another certain demographic's potential lack of support and resources. Anyway, it truly angers me. I just know this because I was verbally told - like I said, I have no interest in looking at the news anymore.
What else is on my mind, is that I need to figure out how to fix a huge mistake - that I didn't even realize was a mistake until now - and one of my biggest in life I've gotta be honest, because I sure was not seeing this coming.
Essentially, I have a YouTube channel, on which I mostly post my compositions, some computer-related content, and some other music-related stuff. It just so happens that when someone reached out to me (for something totally unrelated) and asked me to write a bio for myself, she referenced the channel's "About" page almost verbatim, and I was a little shocked. I didn't expect that a professional connection like that would result in the "proprietor" (not sure if that's the right word here...) referencing (again, almost verbatim), my YouTube channel description, which is quite unprofessional - well so is the whole channel.
So either I need to unlist all the videos (and delete the channel), or figure out some way to make it not something that professionals reference - or for that matter, figure out some way to turn the channel 180 degrees and make it professional. It makes me feel stupid honestly, how people are referencing it... it makes me feel very stupid, because it was a stupid idea in the first place (although I didn't realize it at the time). Although tbf, how could I have realized it when I created the channel?
I just hope that that's the last time something like that happens; it poses a massive risk for my reputation and how people think of me. I don't want to be thought of as a stupid content creator pushing out garbage.
Essentially, I have a YouTube channel, on which I mostly post my compositions, some computer-related content, and some other music-related stuff. It just so happens that when someone reached out to me (for something totally unrelated) and asked me to write a bio for myself, she referenced the channel's "About" page almost verbatim, and I was a little shocked. I didn't expect that a professional connection like that would result in the "proprietor" (not sure if that's the right word here...) referencing (again, almost verbatim), my YouTube channel description, which is quite unprofessional - well so is the whole channel.
So either I need to unlist all the videos (and delete the channel), or figure out some way to make it not something that professionals reference - or for that matter, figure out some way to turn the channel 180 degrees and make it professional. It makes me feel stupid honestly, how people are referencing it... it makes me feel very stupid, because it was a stupid idea in the first place (although I didn't realize it at the time). Although tbf, how could I have realized it when I created the channel?
I just hope that that's the last time something like that happens; it poses a massive risk for my reputation and how people think of me. I don't want to be thought of as a stupid content creator pushing out garbage.
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I can report i survived a second day of this experiment. Barely. I was exhausted by 5pm so I went to the gym to do some light cardio. It was a struggle of inordinate proportions. At home, I made some sandwich with pesto and chicken breasts and mozzarella di bufala, and even such a simple meal was a struggle to prepare. Watched Ted Lasso and by 9pm my brain was in complete meltdown. Went to sleep at 9:30pm and slept like a baby. Woke up this morning very rested and the morning coffee provided a true and much needed jolt.
Without going into theological grounds, I don’t think that it’s random that most, if not all, religions and cults have part of their ritualistic nature periods of abstinence and calm. As a practitioner, and also as someone getting older but not necessarily wiser, I see those periods (lent and Amber days mostly) as incredibly important on a psychological level. I am sure that your cousin has a similar experience, as billions of various humans that follow a religion/cult/spirituality.
I honestly think that it’s rooted on the perennial fight between societal needs - which always require presence, activity, etc - and actual human needs - which require rest and moderation. Not long ago I was complaining on this very thread how much I miss the “Sunday boredom”, when stores were closed, and there wasn’t much to do if not mild entertainment (reading, listening to a soccer game on the radio, chats while walking etc) that I never appreciated as a kid. Silence, boredom, calm, the absence of tasks to do are very important and I do think that our society which wants us to spend money 24/7, be available via email 24/7, be plugged to the net 24/7 is very, very sick. We are affecting all that makes us human, including how we eat and sleep which are the two most basic physical needs of all living things.
Indeed. Silence is an incredible gift. This is why encourage everyone to meditate, and I mean it as in just sit still with your eyes closed, when you wake up and when you come back from work or school, for 15 or 20 minutes. It’s revolutionary, and your generation truly needs it.