Do me a favor and take a quick look and let me know what you like, or don’t like. A penny for your thoughts. It uses a lot of different domains pointing to it, with domain forwarding, but the most amusing one is:
http://www.Funums.com
Have you heard any good jokes lately, share them.
I am looking forward to your comments.
How do I improve it???
Donzi’s are unique in the boating industry. They only make 40 of the 18 classics you see above per year. Fortune magazine rated them one of the top 100 products made in America, that were the best in class around the world. Everything is hand made. The other thing is their unique approach to racing. They put a Corvette engine in them with 270 hp, yet the boat is 2700 pounds; rather heavy considering most 19 foot boats are around 900 to 1200. Mated to that they create a 26 degree dead-rise; the pitch of the hull, with a true deep vee all the way back to the transom. What that unique combination creates is a boat that resembles a ballet dancer on the water. It does amazing things in rough chop at 70 mph. It is out of control, under control. The rush comes from knowing you are at the edge, like the experience of being on a roller coaster. It is not crude, it is not crass, it is precision. The finest made, everything is the best. Their is only a few thousand 18’s in existence. It is considered an ocean racer, not to be fooled by it’s smaller size. I guess you can tell I really love this boat. It is a 1987, and I bought it 2 years old in 1989, and have been taking care of it all along.
The amazing thing this boat does is catches air. You can literally get this boat so high in the air, that you can walk under it. That is not a normal occurrence, but catching air in moderate amounts is. Catching air is the more fantastic thing to mention, but the reality of how it handles normal chop, something that makes other boats pound, is where this boat really shines; Bella just slices through it like a ballet dancer. It really is an adrenalin rush, and a thing of beauty. That is why I call it “Bella Donzi”
They used the same mold since 1964 when they made my boat in 1987. They only make one 18 per week. I could go on for hours. Their is a blog, or something that more closely resembles a discussion site, at Donzi.net, which I belong to. If you want to get to know about Donzi’s a lot better, that is a good place to start. It is free to browse, and free to join. Their is a ton of chit chat posted with pictures,and yes you can see owners proudly posting pictures of their boats, flying through the air. Anyhow, I got to thinking about a video that I saw, and decided to post it on Donzi.net, then thought hey, why not post it on wordpress as well. I am relatively new to word press, and want to build friendships here, so why not. Here is a copy and paste that I put on Donzi.net today. Be sure and watch the video, by clicking on the link at the bottom of the post. PS: For the more mellow among us, I love sailboats also, even though I don’t own one. So the following is the Donzi.net post;
Once somebody experiences the rush of catching air in a Donzi, their is no going back. Nothing compares to it. The first time I rode in one, I went home in a 911 Porsche which seemed boring in comparison. Then you go nuts until you buy a Donzi for yourself, then you experience it all of the time. Others riding with you put their thumbs in the air, and talk about it forever.
Then old man winter comes, for those of us who live in the Northeast, or other such cold places. The Donzi’s are put away for the winter, and round about now, in March the fever peaks, knowing that boating season is not so far away, even though it may be 20 some degrees out, and calling for snow that way it is today.
So I thought I would give all of us adrenalin junkies a little bit of relief. This is the closest thing to catchin air in a Donzi I can find. It is a video of a Yamaha Hyabusa motorcycle, the fastest production bike out there. It does the quarter mile in the 7 second range. What this video is, is a guy with a video camera strapped to the tank of his Hyabusa, and he straightens it out at 50 miles per hour, then nails it, the whole front end comes off the ground, he stays in it, the front of the bike is way off the ground all the way up to 140 mph, then it finally dips, but he still stays in it, all the way up to over 210. He burys the speedometer, and then squeezes every last drop of juice out of it while he watches the tach climb over 11,000. The guy is nuts, he belongs in the Donzi club. At 210 you will think it is spring time, and you are catchin air on your boat. Now all the guy on the Hyabus has to do is add catchin air to it, then he will understand what Donzi fever is all about. Check out the video, but turn up the speakers first, you have to hear this as well as see it. I bet you watch it more than one time, the rush is sorely missed. 
Later, Bob http://www.mccallcolors.com/video_player.htm
Talking about catching air, I pulled this picture from off of Donzi.net I also know that I should stay true to the troops, but I posted this post in about 20 tags, and got only a couple of views, and absolutely no comments. I just visited Donzi.net in only 2 areas, and in one area it has already been viewed 96 times, and commented on by 9 people in the same amount of time. Considering their is only about 6,000 members total at D>net, I was expecting a lot more response here. Anybody have an suggestions how I can pump up the action? Thanks.
A thought came to me, I have been computing longer than boating even, if I had a title of “Turbo charged CD rom is sending discs flying through the air” or how about “New Apple iBusa breaks system bus record” or how about “New case fan catchin air for the overclocked Intel Duo chip” You know what is funny, I am going to try republishing this article under those names, and count the blog stats, just to see how it does with different titles. Interesting experiment. Stay tuned, results soon to be published. And who said you can’t judge a book by its cover. 
Ok, get a load of this, I just went and checked it again at Donzi.net and it already has 109 views, and 9 comments. Now their is this guy on their with a link to his 300+ hp snow mobile. Join in the fun, here is the link to my post at Donzi.net; http://www.donzi.net/forums/showthread.php?t=48322
Be the change you want to see in yourself
I am sure many of you are familiar with Catherine Morgan, she posts many interesting items. I just wanted others to be sure and visit her site. http://catherinemarie.wordpress.com/
What I am going to tell you will give you the power to quit smoking. I am not telling you to quit smoking, only you, can tell you, to do that. What I have to say will give you the power to pick it up, or put it down. Maybe you are not ready yet. If you realize what I am saying here you will be ready, it will be easy for you. I am just here to clear up all of the misunderstandings.
Everyone tells you how hard it is to quit. Actually when someone whom I was very fond of, told me after smoking for 16 years, he found out that it was very easy to quit, I believed him. He told me to “Not believe them, those, that said it was hard” Oddly enough it was on that attempt, that I was able to quit. It was due more to the fact that I was on a diet, when I quit, and lost 10 pounds, than it was due to believing that it was easy. Although believing the truth, that it is easy to quit, as you will soon see, is essential as well. “According to your belief, be it unto you”
I smoked for 6 years, and tried to quit many times, then all of the right ingredients came together, and I finally quit, and now I know why it was easy.
I am not selling you anything. As a matter of fact, I crack up when I read the advertisements, or see them on TV at ThisIsTheEasyWayToQuitSmoking.com. Then I see them with a pharmaceutical company logo on the bottom, or a happy person wearing a patch. Let me tell you something, that last thing you will be successful at is trying to quit smoking or ingesting nicotine into your body, if you continue to ingest nicotine. What they are telling you is that by taking in nicotine, into your body, you are going to quit having a desire for nicotine; now isn’t that ridiculous. The patch company is going to make money, and the tobacco industry is going to make money off of all of those people who continue to smoke after using the patch, or the pill. Everybody is happy, and you are still smoking.
My Dad died from cigarette smoke. He lived to be 84 and had an oxygen hose in his nose for the last 2 years. He couldn’t make it up 3 steps without running out of air. He would have to stop and huff and puff for awhile. Getting into aerobic shape is measured by how easily the body ingests oxygen through your lungs.
I’ll never forget taking my Dad to the doctor when he was weak, and couldn’t breathe very well. The doctor put a small device on his finger, which measured the oxygen level in your bloodstream. When he saw the results, he immediately put him in the hospital. That is when he started having to use the oxygen tank. He also took a drug that I won’t quote the name of here, but started with pred______, and that drug gave a second chance for smokers to be able to temporarily use their lungs. It improves the transfer of oxygen into the blood stream. The only problem is that the drug came with a side effect; it made a diabetic out of you. So they administer some stronger doses in the beginning, then they immediately start to reduce your dose levels, until you get to the edge of acceptable oxygen levels in your blood. They were trying to do a balancing act in order to minimize the amount of the damage caused by the drug. .
His doctor was a wonderful doctor, she has a photographic memory, and when you ask her a question, she explains it to you in outline form. She knew just when my Dad was going to die. He didn’t appear to change to me, but I guess from the medical indicators, and having experienced this with so many others, she knew. She sent my Dad home with hospice. Hospice is when they know someone is going to die, and they send attending nurses on a daily basis to attend to them. The person has to sing a release, a “Do Not Resuscitate Order” My Dad insisted on it, but when I witnessed his signature, I told him, no matter what, if he fell down the steps or something, I was calling the ambulance. I loved my Dad. That isn’t how it happened.
The hospice nurses would come every day, attending to his needs, and finally one day, my Dad was sleepier like. He rested his chin on his chest, and slept. I could wake him, I told him that I loved him, and he said in a half awake voice, “I love you too” The nurse told me that he didn’t have long to live, and that she expected it to happen within the next day or two. I woke up in the morning, and he was face down in the bathroom. He was gone.
I want to share with you some of the beautiful things you can do with your body that makes all the difference when quitting smoking. First off you have to relax it. The easiest way to do that is to go on a non stimulating food diet before you quit. That is right, you will be losing weight in order to quit. I lost 10 pounds while I was quitting due to the fact that I was on a diet. The person I was telling you about earlier, who told me not to believe those who say it is hard, I learned many years later, he was on a diet when he quit too. No wonder he said it was easy. The fallacy of you are going to gain weight by quitting smoking is professed by those who don’t know the secrets to quitting. If you believe you will gain weight, you can gain weight, but if you believe the truth, and that is by going on a non stimulating food diet, you will after 3 days be so relaxed, that you will look at a cigarette and wonder what you ever saw in it. I have to put this in bold letters. YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT WHILE YOU QUIT SMOKING, WHICH IS THE ONLY WAY TO QUIT.
Typically what people do is hammer you with the misunderstanding that you will gain weight by quitting. If you believe that, and try to find solace by eating, you will step into a trap. The trap is a roller coaster. You feel deprived of the nicotine, so you reach for food to relax, invariably it is stimulating food such as cane sugar, fat, starches high in the glycemic index, liquor, coffee etc. Then those stimulants create a greater level of stress, so you reach for more of them, and it is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. If you get into that trap by eating fattening foods, then your friend would be right, you will get fat by quitting smoking, that is the stupid way of quitting.
You are probably saying “But that is everything that I like to eat” Don’t worry quitting only takes 6 days. You can change your diet for 6 days, in order to spend the rest of your life enjoying your food more, and saving a fortune. When I quit cigarettes they just went from 35 cents to 40 cents a pack.
You see that when you go on a non-stimulating food diet, which is all of those things that make you lose weight,, you will get so relaxed, that the need for stress reduction, by having a cigarette will disappear.
Let me say one thing right here. Cigarettes are actually a rip off. Normal stress levels are pleasant. The smoker thinking that they are doing something to reduce stress is actually creating more stress in their lives by smoking than if they didn’t smoke. After acquiring a nicotine habit, the deprivation from the nicotine is what creates stress in your body. Then you need the nicotine to return you to what is a normal level in other people. Now that is the weenie.
Nothing relaxes you more than non-stimulating food. Fruit vegetables, water, green tea, and fish, chicken, load up on steamed veggies, and big salads, in addition to your whole grain fish or chicken sandwich without the fat. You know what stimulating foods are, they are the ones you probably like to eat. Junk food, cane sugar, (not fruit sugar in its natural state, you can have all of that you want), the red meats are stimulating as well, with concentrated fat sugars, and the most full of adrenalin to boot.
With non-stimulating foods, you will get so relaxed, that even problems won’t bother you any more, or in the field of psychology, they say that you will enter the alpha state, where you are the most relaxed, and be able with your new found ultimate problem solving ability, be better able to see how to solve them. Narrow vision associated with high stress is not the answer. As a matter of fact, being super wound up is probably causing half of your problems in the first place. Meditation, taking you to complete stillness is the ultimate answer, but that is the subject of a blog all to itself.
So here is the irony. All of your friends tell you that if you quit you are going to get fat. Of course they are all of your buddies who smoke also, and are intimidated by anyone who has the resolve to quit. Misery loves company, and they will say and do a lot of things that will dissuade you from quitting. I always get a charge out of hearing the conversations, listening to their subtle influences, while they are hammering someone about not quitting.
I’m a Christian which I am not ashamed of, although I do not attend church, at least not more than once every few years. The reason why I am bringing it up is that the words of the Lord are beacons. They keep lighting up, whenever there is a dilemma. I spent a lot of years, reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the 4 buddies of the Lord, and his words written in red, ring with the truth. Let me give you an example. While I hear someone talking to somebody who is trying to quit smoking, and I hear their subtle influences sneaking in there, I am reminded of the words, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” He told that to his disciples before they entered into the presence of the Pharisees, because he knew of their ways of subtle influence. You see leaven is something they put in the bread, and it has a mysterious influence, and nobody really knows how it works.
So I hear these subtle influences being said, with the message not so clearly marked, that you will get fat, you will be unpopular, I won’t like you anymore, and the list goes on. The truth is that you will be in better shape, with your lungs able to breath, opening up exercise as an option, you will be more popular considering most people don’t smoke, and if the smoker doesn’t like you anymore, it is because they never cared for you as much as they care for their cigarette, and that is no kind of friend at all.
So part of quitting smoking, at least one of the major things that make it easy to do is that you have to temporarily isolate yourself from those who will not give up on pressuring you into smoking. This is not a permanent thing, and you are not rejecting your friends, you are just creating a small temporary distance from them while you are going through just the very beginning stages.
Actually it only takes you 6 days to quit. The first 3 days you are not going to quit. Keep smoking during the first 3 days. As a matter of fact, I went out and bought a carton the week before I quit, and smoked myself sick.
You are going to go on a diet of the non stimulating foods. Then after the 3rd day, you will no longer feel the need to smoke, putting it down, at that point is a piece of cake. After you put it down, it only takes 3 days for the nicotine desire to completely leave your body. After the 3rd day you will no longer have any physical cravings whatsoever. So your journey is a short one. With the new relaxed mood because of your diet, even that period will be an exceptionally easy one. That is all there is to it, but there is more to know….
Even though the craving is completely gone, you will have acquired habits that are going to be cues to smoke. Those things linger a bit longer. After you finish a meal, you will be reminded of how you used to smoke. It is nothing more than a habit. You have a meal, you have a cigarette. I don’t think me even trying to create substitutes for you to do, or any of that kind of hand holding is important, because your desire for a cigarette will be so far gone, that with the tiniest bit of effort, you will be able to brush the memory away. Habit, what habit, you are a new person now, and you like the change.
I’ll never forget in high school, which in my senior year is when I quit; I used to go out to lunch with my buddies. We were the car crowd, those fortunate enough to have cars in school. (I was fixing mine up) So every day we would go out to the hamburger stand, which was then called Scotty’s like a MacDonalds is today. We all smoked, so it was like getting away with something to go out. When my friends knew I quit, they used to try and cajole me to go out. I spent my time in the music room at school instead. I transferred what I knew about chord structure on the guitar, to the keyboards, learning a new instrument. The guys in my band years later mentioned that I might have missed my instrument when they heard me play. I took offense to that, because I am a rhythm keyboardist at best, while the guitar I spent a lot of time working on. Anyhow, finally one day I went out with them. They told me c’mon Fees, my nickname back then, just go out with us, we are not going to smoke. So I went. I didn’t take any notice that they by chance had me placed in the front seat in the middle. When we got rolling, everybody rolled up the windows, and broke out their cigarettes, fired them up, and made sure every puff went into my face. J I got a kick out of it, they were my buds. More importantly, it didn’t make any difference to me; I had quit, and had no desires or reservations about it. My buddies were back, they adjusted, and I was free from the chains.
I smoked for 6 years. I started at 12 years of age, playing around with it, and then progressed to where at the age of 18; I was smoking up to a pack and a half a day during the weekends, and a better part of a pack a day during the week.
Another key ingredient is that the will to quit has to be there. Action follows desire. If the desire isn’t there, I don’t talk to them about quitting, as a matter of fact, I entertain them with old smoke tricks. Like pulling the cellophane wrapper down below the pack, burning a single hole in the center of it, then taking a puff, and blowing it into the clear bubble of the plastic cellophane, then gently tap on the bottom rapidly, creating a zillion smoke rings, puffing out of the top. Wait a minute, I thought you said that you quit, what are you doing making smoke tricks?
To tell you the truth, one of the other things that helped me to quit was that I grew disgusted with it. I would see a wet cigarette sitting in the dish of a coffee cup, and felt disgusted. I think that helped, getting disgusted with it, and it took me years before I could even go near one. Then several years later, I was no longer intimidated by them. I could even do smoke tricks. I only did them maybe once a year; their was no desire in me to return.
Fresh out of college, I was the Program Coordinator for the American Heart Association, Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter. I was in the main office, and had charge of conducting blood pressure screenings, and electrocardiograms for the 5 surrounding counties. I was one of 6 professional staff out of 42 paid full time employees. I could get off on a tangent about that, but it would not be relevant to our concerns here.
What is important is that I had available to me a lot of resources, that were heart healthy centric. I used to give lecture tours, and I will never forget, after visiting a local large church, and speaking to about 500 people at this engagement, with a panel of 3 doctors sitting at a table on stage with me. After I was done speaking, I turned to the doctors and said, “Is their anything that you would like to add or subtract from what I just said, and they all put their thumbs up in approval.”. The beauty of it, was when the people were leaving, the men shook my hand and thanked me for what I had to say, and the women hugged me and said, “I wish I knew this 20 years ago”.
I am going to get a little graphic for a moment, so those who are faint of heart should maybe skip the next few paragraphs. (Now I know you will read them. J )
I know avoiding anything uncomfortable is desirable, but sometimes a stark reality is just what the doctor ordered. A fundamental change takes place that leads to a change in behavior that is beneficial; otherwise I would leave out the details. In the details is the reality of what we are doing. It is not complicated scientific jargon; it is the simple truth of how our body works, and just how obvious the effect is that we have on its condition.
I went to a Japanese steak house for New Years Eve that year, and who sat down next to me at the common table, which is the tradition in that type of eating establishment, was a pathologist. Not just any pathologist, but one who practiced at one of the major hospitals, which was only a half a block up the street from where my Heart Association office was. So I said to him, that I would be interested in witnessing an autopsy from someone who died from a heat attack. I felt it would be relevant to my job. I went to my superiors, and they gave me a nod, it would be ok for me to attend. Sure enough I got a phone call in a few days, it was the pathologist, and he had a cadaver that was a result of a heart attack. What happened next was an event that forever changed my life. I have to get a little bit graphic here, which is the essential ingredient, which effected the change.
I was busy with Heart Associations business, and could not leave the office immediately, but soon I was on my way. I entered the pathology department, and was pointed in the direction of the pathologists’ lab. Upon walking in the door, the autopsy had already begun. In order to analyze the internal organs, they have to remove them.
It was a woman, and her scalp had been cut at the back of her head, at the nape of her neck, and peeled up over her face so as to be able to access her skull. The top had been removed. Her brain had been removed, so what I was seeing was the base of her skull open. Her chest had been opened up, with an incision starting below her naval, going up the center of her chest, and then spreading out into a Y going into the direction directly above her arms. All of her internal organs were removed, leaving open the body cavity.
It was profound, but for some reason, I was able to stand it. The thing I noticed is just how still the body was. It was lifeless, something I was not used to seeing. It seemed so final; now onto the relevant part.
The pathologist instructed me to put on a gown, with latex gloves, and a mask. Then he took a small dissection of the artery feeding the heart. I was immediately surprised how small it was. The impression of the heart gorging with so much blood was an erroneous one. The actual vessel feeding the outside surface of the heart muscle, was rather small. He took a small section of it, and placed it on the stainless steel lab table. He instructed me to roll it over the table to see how hard it was. With my latex gloves on I rolled the small section, and it was rock hard. The inside diameter was the size of a pencil lead; so small that any occlusion would cause a stop in the flow. Maintaining liquids in an elderly person is important, so as to not thicken the blood to much.
Then I saw that their was this yellow matter which covered everything. It was pretty thick, so I asked him what that was, and he said, “That is cholesterol” I thought cholesterol only affected the heart. He said, “No it covers everything” Did you ever see an elderly person with little bags growing out from under their eyes, which are cholesterol. Even the entire brain was covered with it, as well as all of the organs. Now onto the lungs which is the relevant part of what we are concerned with here, although smoking constricts blood vessels that are already too small due to cholesterol, referred to as atherosclerotic hardening of the arteries.
When he dissected the lungs, I was amazed at how black they were. I asked him if that was due to smoke, he said, “Either that, or she lived in the city” It dawned on me that with cars running around on the streets, emitting black smoke, and the tall sky scraper buildings preventing that air from being whisked away, a person walking along the street would be inhaling that black tar.
Some may think me morbid talking about an autopsy, but others will realize that to face the truth, and learn how tender and precious our bodies are, will be the ones who are ready to effect change.
The experience had a profound effect on me. It stayed with me constantly for a couple of weeks. Some of the changes I made were shifting my eating habits away from heavy meats, or organs meats. Fat was off of my list, opting more for lean chicken of fish. That too is the subject of another blog.
This is an odd subject to cover if this is the first blog you are reading of mine. I am in no way morbid. I don’t know why I went there, other than it was essential to the purpose of my blog here, and that is to help the most amount of people to stop smoking, or hopefully not have to walk around in city streets for an entire lifetime.
Now let’s get back to strictly quitting smoking. No more stuff about the dying, but rather about living. The miracle of the body, and its regulating system, I discovered while walking along in the woods as a child. It was a hot summer day, and I noticed that in my bare feet, how the veins would be visible on the tops of my feet. Then I stepped into a cool stream. (I grew up in
Springfield, which earned its name from all of the underground springs that would gush up clean water filtered by nature) When stepping into the clear cool stream, I noticed that the veins in the top of my foot immediately disappeared. Hmmm, so that’s how that works I thought. Your body can partially control its temperature by regulating the relaxing, or contracting of the blood vessels in different parts of the body. Conserve temperature by pooling blood in the warm areas, and restrict blood in the cooler area. It is all part of the autonomic nervous system, the one we don’t’ think about. Fortunately it all happens automatically, although the heavy meditators, can actually tap into it, and do things like control heart beat levels, and more.
When you smoke, you are ingesting a substance that makes your blood vessels constrict. So naturally it would seem that your extremities would get less blood flow, and in a colder environment, that meant you would get colder hands for example. Now in order for you to understand why smoking can contribute to a heart attack, in addition to depriving your body of oxygen through the tar build up in your lungs, let me explain something fascinating about how the arteries and vessels work, and the effect it has on the work load of the heart.
In blood pressure terms, you have a systolic pressure, and a diastolic pressure. When the heart first squeezes during a beat, the blood exits the heart, and is compressed. That is the systolic pressure; the top number. Then as the valve in the heart closes, not allowing the freshly exited blood to flow back in, but rather draws in fresh blood from the body, the residual pressure that is left in the arteries, after the heart, or the veins where it flows out is called the diastolic pressure. That is the lower number. So a text book case pressure is 120/70, or 120 systolic over 70 diastolic. There is a lot to consider when talking about a text book example of pressures, contributing factors such as age, can make that number go a little higher.
The heart is given a lot of help by the arteries and vessels. They expand like a balloon, and then contract also. So when the heart has its job to do, forcing the blood through the body, it let’s out a burst of compressed blood, the arteries expand, making it easy on the heart to fill that expansion. Thanks to the balloon effect, the heart has it easy. They swell up, and then as the heart is drawing in fresh blood from the body, the arteries are contracting again, picking up the slack, and acting as a secondary pump, to push the blood along its way.
The big culprit in impeding this beautiful harmony is of course cholesterol. It slowly over time coats the linings, and eventually this coating gets hard. That is hardening of the arteries. Another contributing factor is smoking. When you smoke, your blood vessels get constricted. All the more the heart now doesn’t have any help to get its job done. Compound this with the fact that liquids do not compress, and you can see that the heart now has to force the blood out all on its own. As the blood tries to compress against rock hard arteries, instead of soft ballooning ones, it strains the heart muscles to do its task.
When you really think about how un-natural it is to smoke; puffing smoke in and out of your lungs all day. I have to shake my head when I see someone in a car, with a cigarette in their hand, and as they pass me, they hold it so as to say, look how elegant I am. You must be attracted to me, I smoke. The truth of the matter is that 47% of people with a high school education smoke, 17% of those with a college education do, and less than 9% of those with a graduate degree smoke. It seems that either the more you learn, or the less you feel that you have to impress people, the less you feel a need to smoke.
I recently got into reading a book by Deepak Chopra called, “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success”. It is a simple book, yet the most profound I have read in a long time. In it he says that everyone has a gift, or gifts, that they do better than anyone else in the entire world. Learning what that gift is and using it for achieving your purpose in life, and in such a way that it helps others is the true path to success. Realizing just how special we are as individuals, equal all one to the other, and how unity consciousness will result in a better life for everyone is key. The question is not what is in it for me, but rather, how can I help and how can I serve.
I hope everyone gleaned some useful information from this, and I most especially hope that just one person, or more, will receive this message, right when they are ready to receive it, and it led them to knowing; and receiving the strength that made the change, for them to quit smoking. Maybe they will look back, and say, “That guy, the Fees, he wrote a clip in Word Press that made the difference, and maybe those vibrations of love will somehow make it through the blogosphere J and make me a little happier. Bye for now.
Right now I am sitting in my favorite comfortable living room chair. Slouched down in the chair. I have a sweatshirt on, and a good size piece of millet on my chest. I made a little trough in my sweatshirt so as the bird eats, the chaffe doesn’t make it to the keyboard. The amazing thing is that I just got this bird about a week, or week and a half ago. They usually take a long time, if ever to get this friendly. Of course a hungry bird is true to the axiom, a friend in need is a friend indeed. The only thing is that their is other places with millet for the bird to eat, and he decided it is more fun eating off of my sweatshirt. So how did this successful friendship spring forth so easily?
One thing, and this is the most important is to pick out the right bird in the first place. It might not be the most beautiful bird in the cage, but then again it might also. What matters is that they pass the test. You have to spend a little time in front of the glass wall of the cage in the store. Let them get to know that you are not harmful. They grow accustomed to you being there after a few minutes, and resume playing. They are comical to watch. This particular bird would step on the tail of the other birds that were walking by. It was cracking me up. Like a little stinker, they would walk by, and out would come his foot, and stomp down on their tail feathers as they were passing by. It didn’t hurt them, and their feathers just slipped from under his foot, but it was comical none the less. Then the test came. I gently put my hand on the glass, down at the bottom, let’s say at ground level of the cage, and put my forefinger out sideways, so as to ask any bird in the cage to come over and get on my finger. The whole cage didn’t want to have anything to do with me, but this guy marched over and as if he was trying to get on my finger through the glass, and started to hop on my finger. Then he took his beak and bobbled his head up and down real rapidly, which is what they do when they are exhibiting passion toward another bird, and if this behavior matures, they actually bring up a couple of whole shelled seeds to feed the other bird. So feeding one another is a gesture of well, you know. I already have two birds by the way. This little feller is still sitting on my chest, nibbling away at the millet while I am typing. I will have to break out the digital camera some time and take a picture. The cool thing is that when he is done eating, he usually sits on my chest for a long time, kind of like chilling out, almost like taking a nap. What a cool bird. My other two parakeets that I have had for over a year don’t do that. So I guess getting the right bird is like getting the right life partner.
I used to teach school, and the first day of class I told the students that their are only two things in life that you have to get right, and if you get them right, you have it made, if you get them wrong, your sunk; and that is your mate and your job. From the time you wake up in the morning, til the time you go to bed at night, chances are you are either with your mate, or with your job. I told them, I couldn’t help them with their mate, they got a charge out of that, but I could help them with their job. They were special education students in a poor district, maybe more about that at another time. Back to the birds. Well the bird finally flew off of my chest, and is now eating millet from off of the top of the cage. I guess it is the onions I had with the meatless soy franks. My nose is breathing directly on the millet platform of my chest.
I guess I am getting long in the tooth about parakeets, and I can always shed some light on them in the future. I did want to say that when you get a good bird, and spend some time with him or her, you can get a really good buddy. They can be across the room, and you call them and they come to you. When I was growing up, I had one that I could be on my way out of the room, and I could call the bird as I was leaving, and it would chase me into the other room, and land on my shoulder as I was walking away. They will hang out on your shoulder, and sometimes you even forget they are there. Unlike other pets, you can go away for a weekend if you want to. You can put a bunch of food and water in their cage, and they can keep themselves happy for a whole weekend. I leave the cage open all of the time. They become part of your environment that way. This latest bird never goes in the cage. Imagine if you were able to fly. I mean really fly. You should see how these young birds learn. At first they fly into mirrors, or glass windows, but learn that lesson real quick. After only about a week of practice, they do some maneuvers that amaze you. Swoop in, do a sweep toward the floor, arch up, then approach a direction, with a stopping spread, only to redirect, pick up speed very rapidly, then come to a perfect stop, feet outstretched, landing on a spot. Makes you wish you could fly up and join him. Imagine what it would be like flipping on up to the treetops for a scenic view.
Did you ever read the book, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” by Richard Bach?It is a wonderful book. Not everybody gets it. In the jacket it says, “For those who enjoy doing something well, even if only for themselves, they will be with Jonathan all the way, for others it will be a nice book about flight” I first saw the author on the Phil Donahue show, I guess that tells you how old I am. Richard Bach said, that when you are trying to accomplish something, their is this wall, no matter how many pieces you place up against that wall, their is still the wall. You work to get everything done, then finally along comes a floating variable and the whole thing happens. What startled me even more was when he said, ” I was walking along the beach, and the words, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, appeared in my head. Then I went home and the entire book just poured out of my pen. Mozart was amazing regarding that. He would create a whole score, and their wasn’t a single correction in it. Their is a new prodigy, Jay Greenberg, you may have seen him on 60 Minutes on TV. He hears symphonies in his head, and actually hears them on up to 4 channels at a time. He writes the scores for the entire orchestra, without a single correction. They challenged him saying, don’t you want to improve them, I mean can’t you make them better, and he replied, “No they come through the right way the first time.” Do you have a gift that is trying to come through, and you refuse to recognize it? People are amazed that he is able to write pieces for so many instruments, not even knowing how to play those instruments. They say things like, “How does he know the range of the instrument, never having played it, and he is only 13 years old” Now I am getting off on another tangent, their is so much I would love to share with you. Life is fascinating, and I am thankful to be able to share it with you. Isn’t blogging wonderful? To share, and be shared with, benefiting from others experiences. I just read some wonderful blogs; some funny, some informative, and mostly wonderful. I think I am going to like it here at WordPress, let’s all help one another. Thanks for your time.
