Last evening was another late one for me ─ I can blame my hapless wife for it, I suppose.
She had spent the day in bed, for she never came home until after dawn and likely didn't retire until nigh 7:30 a.m.
It was just after 6:30 p.m. when she finally emerged from the bedroom, and was soon busy cooking, and cheerfully interacting with her two sons and me.
I knew that she was probably going to be leaving us for the weekend, since she generally spends her weekends somewhere in Vancouver and only stays here at night during the workweek because the Thai restaurant she works at is out this way.
Such is my marriage.
My younger brother had not napped midday as he usually does before he heads away for the afternoon to end up drinking somewhere. Thus, I was fully expecting that I would be able to get to bed quite early that evening.
We tend to watch our T.V. shows through our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box, but I am the only one of us who knows how to operate it. The usual routine for an evening of T.V. is that he and I will sit up until into the midnight hour watching episodes of a few of the shows that we enjoy.
However, if he lapses into unconsciousness at any point in our evening, I will cancel whatever show was tuned in, switch off the Android TV Box, and leave him with the only news channel that we can receive through the basic cable package that we subscribe to.
When he regains his senses, he is then left to himself for the remainder of his late evening ─ I will be here upstairs where I keep my computer.
Well, as it happened last evening, after he was home fairly early in the evening from wherever he had been drinking, he began falling unconscious during the very first T.V. episode I tuned in ─ a Travelers episode.
At least a couple of times, he suddenly began snoring.
But I was trapped. My wife was still home, and in fact she had joined us to watch some of the episode while she enjoyed some of the supper she had cooked up for everyone.
And so it was that I lost my chance to go upstairs and get to bed early. By the time my wife left us around 9:00 p.m., my brother thereafter retained full consciousness and I was on steady Android-duty until late into the midnight hour.
We watched a second episode of Travelers, and then two episodes of Beyond. We finished up with the debut episode of the latest (2019) season of The Durrells.
I only consumed one can of the strong (8% alcohol) beer that I keep in stock; and although I mainly slept well, I rose once ─ perhaps around 5:00 a.m. at latest ─ just to turn on and log into my computer so that it would be all set for later use.
I probably managed to get back to sleep, for it was about an hour later when I checked the time again and got myself up so that I could get to work on the day's final content assignment for the post I wanted to publish at one of my six hosted websites.
I was unable to do this in a single go, for by the time I was half completed the assignment, I needed to return to bed for more sleep.
It was around 8:30 a.m.; and my brother had already risen, showered, and was downstairs having instant coffee and reading the Saturday morning edition of the Vancouver Sun that I subscribe to.
I had not neglected my daily plank ─ I am presently performing 6½-minute planks, but this morning I overshot that limit by just over 15 seconds. Nevertheless, we shall just say that I performed a 6¾-minute plank.
I slept quite well at returning to bed, for it was about two hours later when I checked the time and rose back up.
Oddly, my brother was gone. I had thought that maybe he only went out for a haircut and would anon be back, but he remained away (it is 7:29 p.m. as I type these words).
I resumed work on the Lawless Spirit post, and at last got it published: Holistic Medicines Ⅱ.
Early in the afternoon this very sunny day, I went out to the backyard toolshed for the exercising session that was scheduled for there ─ I was to have exercised here in the house yesterday, but having my wife tying up the bedroom all the day long contributed to its cancellation. And it was the first time in probably at least a couple of months that I missed performing any exercise at all during an entire day (although I did do a plank).
I did very well in the toolshed ─ the day's break may have helped with that. And dressed in my runners and gym-style shorts, my bodyweight may not have been any more than around 186 pounds.
I took this video clip of myself afterward and gave it the following description at YouTube:
This was almost painful for me to do!I took this short video clip of myself on a very sunny Saturday afternoon (July 20, 2019) while trying to present myself as being comfortably relaxed, but it is clear that I have trouble handling a spotlight. I was practically squirming with discomfort in front of the camera.My voice was a little hoarse at the time. And I was not speaking as loudly as I would have liked to, for we have a small backyard and I didn't want neighbours overhearing me and thereby bring attention to myself. In fact, one set of neighbours has an upper-floor sundeck that gives them a view of almost our entire backyard.I could have tightened my abdominals and spread my shoulders / chest to appear better toned and muscular, but I wanted to be more honest about my physique.My 70th birthday is a little under three months away; and dressed as I was in the video, I weighed around 186 pounds at a height of a tad over five feet and 10 inches.I have never exercised in a gym; and the only weight I ever occasionally use here at home is a 43½-pound dumbbell that leaves me limited as to what I can do with it.I have no workout machines or devices. All else I engage are exercises like pull-ups and push-ups.I also started doing a daily plank four to six weeks ago, and at present have 6½ minutes as my targeted daily minimum ─ I managed seven minutes two days ago, and did 6¾ minutes this morning.But those were almost accidental. You see, rather than torturing myself by constantly look at my cellphone's timer, I instead slowly count to 300 first ─ 300 seconds are of course five minutes. But I try to count slower than one number or count per second so that by the time I am done, I will ideally be around six-minute mark. And so it happens that sometimes I count extra slowly and find myself already over my present daily 6½-minute plank target.I'm unsure just where I intend to go with these daily planks ─ for example, does anyone perform a 10 minute plank on a daily basis? People who are good at planks and who write about the exercise never seem to declare just how long it is that they personally plank as a daily norm, do they?
So yes, that's me, if anyone has ever wondered.
It is now almost 9:00 p.m., and I want to get this post over with ─ my brother may be showing up at any moment now.
But I want to refer anyone interested in the topic of the concept of 'God' to have a look at the following article:
LifeSpa.com
Although I am not a church-goer, I have always believed in the existence of God ─ even though I have only ever considered myself to be an actual 'Christian' for a short period in my life.
Just in the past year or so, I have come to quit thinking of God as some spirit-formed version of us, although He is supposed to have made us in His image ─ whatever 'spiritual' form He has, it may be anthropomorphic or humanoid in shape.
But I no longer believe that God thinks anything like we do, nor that He has the same sense of value for life that we do. After all, He created everything, and it was He who mandated that everything must die.
It was He who created flesh-eating creatures that would prey upon the living bodies of weaker creatures. Since He is the giver of all life ─ He has an infinity of it to give ─ He does not regard it with the same preciousness that you or I might.
He knows that if He chose, He could resurrect anything that died, even though he does not do so. Everything is meant to die ─ and most of the time, it is a very violent death.
It does not have to be that way ─ God could have made life such that creatures were all vegetarian, and they would breed so very sparingly that there would never have been any chance of any of them overpopulating the various ecosystems of our planet.
But he chose instead to have prey creatures of all kinds that would die in horrific, excruciating, and bloody fashion so the flesh-eaters could live.
And so often, we become victims of some of these deadly flesh-eaters, despite the fact that overall we have dominance of our Earth.
You don't want to die. You don't want you child or your parent or your sibling or your dearest friend to die.
But you are looking at death from the perspective of a limited and fleshly being who will exist for a comparatively short time in the scheme of everything.
This is not a perspective God has. He is never imperilled. He never knows fear or dread or horror such as can we. It is alien to Him.
It is why in the Old Testament, He had no compunction in ordering the Children of Israel to occasionally go forth and put entire villages and even collections of people considered to be 'tribes' to the sword ─ every man, woman, and child of them.
Could not the very young children have been spared and raised to believe as did the Children of Israel? Certainly. But God was making a point.
Likewise with the Flood. All human life ─ except for those on the Ark ─ had to die. Even little tiny newborns, or those not yet born because they were still within their pregnant mothers.
This is God ─ the creator of horrific, slaughtering dinosaurs long before Man, The Being who is witnessing the awful deaths of unimaginable numbers of human beings and animals every single millisecond that we have existed.
He is unaffected by all that colossal amount of death ─ a soft and tender Entity would go mad from the toll of it all...or else become so innured that it becomes meaningless.
But life and death are nothing to the God who is the Creator and Giver of all life.
If He chose, any life could be immediately restored; and so, a life's extinguishment means nothing.
Oh gosh, I am babbling on ─ I have to stop.
I want to link to two final articles.
You must have heard by now something about the discovery that a number of cellphone users have been found to be developing actual bony spurs on their skulls where their cellphones have been pressed during use.
If this is news to you, then...enjoy:
JacksDailyDose.com
Mercola.com
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