Happy Birthday, Daddy

My father just had his 89th birthday. Last weekend, my father, daughter, son, and I took a Father's Day hike. The photo above was taken five hours after we started the hike, after hiking three hours in similar terrain or worse. My father is on the right. See the notebook? He is making a plant list for a ranch in eastern Washington. The guy is tireless. How does he do it? Here are some hints:

1. Keep reading and learning
2. Become a recognized expert for something you know, not for what you can do
3. Keep active in several social groups
4. Live well BELOW your means and build some savings – it relaxes you
5. Plan on working until you are at least 70
6. Stay trim – It helps prevent joint problems, heart disease, diabetes, and lots of other stuff
7. Get lots of exercise -- Walk about 5 miles per day, with some on rough terrain to improve your balance
8. Diet -- He eats a big breakfast at 7, a big lunch at 12 sharp with vegetables, protein, and starches, and a small supper at 6, with NO snacking.
9. Water – Forget the ubiquitous water bottle. He goes 1-2 hours between drinks of water, even when he is working hard.
10. Alcohol and drugs – Heavy drinking for him is a glass of wine with dinner. He doesn’t take any other drugs, not even a daily aspirin.
11. Sleep – He regularly gets 8-9 hours of sleep every night
12. Don’t be so obsessive-compulsive (Who, Me?)

My Old Pickup

I drove a white Nissan 4x4 pickup from 1993-2007. I left it sitting overnight in a church parking lot on a scout campout in December 2004, and some burglars stole it during the night. Judging by the mess they left behind when I saw it again, they were from south of the border, and they used it to burgle several houses. My pickup was found by the police when they went to investigate a report of a stolen Honda (the car theives hopped out of my pickup to grab the Honda). I used my insurance money to repair all the amazing damage they did to it, and kept on driving it.

I sold it to the dad of an Eagle Scout in our scout troop, and he drove it while he attended college. I just learned that the dad sold it to his brother-in-law, whose son had just turned 16. The son, whom I also know through the scout troop, recently pulled into a convenience store with a friend in the passenger seat, and the two of them were attacked by four Russian thugs. Three of them assaulted the two teens while the fourth drove off in the pickup. Fortunately, the police caught all four thugs rather quickly and returned the pickup. The two boys have healed from their wounds, and the carjack driver is now sitting in jail with a huge pile of charges against him and with a bail to high to pay.

My question is, "What is it about that white pickup that thieves like to steal it?"

Keypads

Whose brilliant idea was it to make push-button telephone keypads upside down from computer (and adding machine) 10-key pads? I am reasonably quick on the computer numeric keypad, but it often takes me three attempts to dial a phone number without messing up, and there is no backspace key on a phone!

Spelling Challenges

Which is correct, grey or gray? I never remember.

Also, how about blond and blonde?

I also get confused with words ending in "ling" such as modelling and modeling, and travelling and traveling. I credit my childhood reading of books by British authors for this confusion in my mind.

I know that words ending in "or" often have a British spelling ending in "our", like color and colour, behavior and behaviour. And words ending in "ize" are spelled "ise" in Britain.

Speaking of British spellings, "tyre" always looks very British to me. :)

When I wrote my PhD thesis many years ago, I was describing thin metal plates (called diaphragms) with groves on them forming an "X" that burst along the grooves when the pressure differential across the plates exceeded the strength of the remaining metal in the grooves. Being a bike rider, I used the word "pedal" to describe the four flaps that opened. An astute reviewer pointed out that the flaps were named after the parts of a flower (i.e., "petal") and not the parts of a bicycle. A natural confusion for me, because my American accent does not distinguish between a "t" and a "d" in the middle of a word. For example, I pronounce metal and meddle the same. I do not, however, pronounce "tent" and "dent" and "tend" the same. I wonder why?