50

 The number of years Wife and I have been married as of today. 

Sounds like a lot.

It is a lot! It's a half a century.

A century, a hundred years is a lot. So a half century certainly must be a least close to a lot. 

When I reflect on all that has taken place in Wife and my lives over the last 50 years, I know it is a lot!

So why doesn't if feel like a lot?

I can go through all the component pieces that make up the 50. There's a lot! Highs. Lows. Ups. Downs. Passion. Anger. Frustration. Contentment. Good health. Bad health. Feeling comfortable. Feeling on edge. Are we going to make it. Yes, we're going to make it. 

I have never over-romanticized marriage. A 'successful' marriage requires a LOT of work. 

I can go over all the events. We lived here. We lived there. We had money. We had no money. The children were doing well. The children were in crisis. We were doing well. We were in crisis. We traveled. we built. We moved. We worked here. We worked there. We were fired. We were hired. Just thinking about it makes my head ache because it is A LOT.

So, as Wife and I celebrate having actually made it to 50, I ask again, why doesn't if feel like a lot?

The answer, I think, is the focus on living in the now and being sure your are fully focused on the now, this very moment, as being most important. 

We are in California with the #1's to celebrate the occasion. We've done a number of things, one of which was a cocktail party so they could introduce us to many of their friends they've talked to us over the years but whom we've never met. Included in the guests were some contemporaries, age-wise, of Wife and I. And I noted in their conversation, how much was focused on looking backward. They were making comments about how life goes by in the blink of an eye, how you think you have all this time, but then you become older and it's all over...in the blink of an eye.

I don't feel that way. My life did not go by in the blink of an eye. It was a long, long journey filled with A LOT. But it doesn't feel like a lot because my focus is on now, fully on what is now, living in what is now, committing myself to what is now. And I have A LOT going on right now! So my life is full, and busy, and exciting, and scary, and fun, and frustrating, and all those other components that made up the previous 50 years. 

50 represents a lot. 

But what's important is NOW.

Persevrance And Calm

This has been a year of frustration with Theodora Africa. One the one hand, our young women continue to advance beyond anything I would have imagined when we started. Their capability, commitment, and personal growth advance. On the other hand, we are not where I had hoped to be financially when we started the year. It has required much more  personal effort and enerby as a result especially over the last half of the year. There is so much potential. Yet, it is hard, at times to not get discouraged. 

As chance would have it, I recently started reading an account of the Wright Brothers history of developing manned heavier than air flight by one of my favorite authors, David McCullough. It is a fascinating tale of incredible perseverance in the face of setbacks, lack of funds, skepticism, and sometimes, outright ridicule. Yet, the combination of determination and skill ultimately won out. 

This led me to thinking of so many other stories of the accomplishments. Rarely, almost never, is the path to accomplishment smooth, without setbacks, without frustrations. 

I need to take these lessons to heart. I need to embrace the challenges and the frustrations as the price of accomplishment. Perseverance and calm. Those must be my companions. I know this will succeed. I simply need to have the patience and the fortitude to allow it.

Christmas Miracle

Last night I slept almost 7 hours.

Sleep has always been an issue for me. Even when I was young, 7 hours of sleep would be a lot. But as I aged, things got much worse for a variety of reasons. 5 / 5 and a half hours were and are the most I have come to accept I am going to sleep. The fact that I need to get up early so often to communicate with those in the eastern hemisphere hasn't helped. 

Thankfully, learning to nap as a side effect of the kidney donation event gave me a tool that has allowed me to stay rested and avoid illness.Why, last night, my body suddenly decided it was okay to get as full a night's sleep as ever, I don't know. 

But I enjoyed it.

Refining Pot Roast

Despite having been cooking for a half a century, I continue to look for ways to expand my cooking repertoire and improve the quality of what I make. Pot Roast has been on my radar screen for some time now. It is on the surface a fairly straight forward preparation. However, for a number of years, I have been less than ecstatic about the results I've gotten. Last weekend, I made another attempt with some significant tweaks to what I'd been doing. 

1. Seriously seasoning the meat (beef chuck) I was using before browning. I believe I have been too timid in the past.
2. Similarly, I upped the ante with the amount of aromatics (onions, carrots, celery, garlic) I used for the flavor base.
3. I doubled the amount of beef broth I used for braising. I've had issues with the fluid evaporating too fast in the past. 

One thing I do, is use a pressure cooker. It reduces the time many fold. This is especially true when cooking at altitude as we are here in Albuquerque. Also, I have found using the pressure cooker intensifies flavors. 

I have given another go at documenting my cooking process via self-video. While I am on the one hand vying to become the world's oldest digital nomad, I am simultaneously working to stake out a position as the world's worst self-videoing cooking demonstrator. Let's begin.

Prepping by getting the meat well seasoned, browned, and the aromatics ready to saute.

Next we saute our aromatics

Adding tomato paste gives depth of flavor. Then we deglaze with wine as certain flavor compounds are soluble in alcohol.

Now in goes the beef broth. Then some final herbs (thyme and rosemary). We add our browned meat last.

Now pop the lid on the pressure cooker.

Once it is up to heat, all it takes is an hour of cooking.

Next take out the meat and drain the cooking liquid to remove all the aromatics. Then we can cook our accompanying vegetables. In addition to the traditional potatoes and carrots, I have added celery and daikon. Seriously, if you are not adding these to your braised vegetables, you are missing out. Daikon in particular goes through this amazing transformation when braised. It absorbs all the flavors of the braise and gets very juicy.

We are ready to eat.

Bon  Appetit!

 I suggest a nice Rhone wine like a Gigondas, Cornas, or Chateauneuf du Pape

Learning To Be Wasteful

What do you do when all of your assumptions are turned upside down. When white becomes black? When good becomes bad? When up becomes down? Thus it is in the de-I household. A bit of historical review will put things into perspective. 

A number of years ago Wife and I decided to finally go solar. I was looking back at all my posts and I somehow neglected to write about this which seems a bit weird. But we did. And when we were designing the system, Wife was insistent that we have put in enough panels to handle any major additions to our electric load such as moving from evaporative coolers to real air conditioning. 

One of the oddities of our local electric utility is that you are not actually allowed to use the electricity your solar system produces. Instead you put it into the overall grid. You get credits for this. During the times your system is not producing enough to meet your needs, you take from the grid. If your takes are greater than your gives, you pay the difference. If your gives are greater than your takes you build up a surplus that can offset negative production in the future. 

In our case, we never did get full A/C. Instead we got these incredibly efficient evaporative coolers that use about the same energy as a light bulb. So even in the highest heat of the summer, we are staying positive. This has meant that our surplus has kept growing and growing. 

There is no actual economic benefit to us to have this burgeoning surplus. So we've been forced to think, "How can we use more electricity." It leads to the bizarre think that I alluded to at the beginning. Turn off lights because you are using too much electricity? Nope. Let 'em burn. Need to dry clothes in the dryer extra long? No problem. Turn on that heat pump in the outside room and let it go. The fact is we are failing. We actually have a pretty efficient home. In fact we were buying a new refrigerator recently and Wife was looking for the most energy efficient. I objected. No, get the most energy guzzling one you can find. I'll be damned if I cam going to fund our local utility. And it is actually hard to change that 'saving' mentality. I still go around turning off lights!

Technologically Challenged

 Daughter #3 bought me a book for my birthday. She had it shipped which is not easy as she is in Denmark. I got the book. It is a nice paperback book. However, these days the vast majority of my reading is done on my Kindle e-reader. So what to do?

Start with the book

Next get the Kindle

Okay the challenge is to get this hard copy book onto the Kindle

Should be fairly straightforward.

Hmmmmmmmm

That didn't work

Let's reverse the polarity

Darn

I know. You have to get the 'contents' in the Kindle. Duh

This is not working. Think like other electronics. 

Wait! That's it!

But sadly no

Will have to do more research online.