Jenobi's World

Christmas dinner is not a challenge for me, unlike most people all over the world. Depending on your main dish selection and the corresponding side dishes, the difficulty level can differ for anyone, but I always suggest keeping it on the simple side so you can spend more time enjoying yourself than living in your kitchen. It was just my partner and me this year, keeping it a bit low-key and quiet. He just started a new job and didn't want to go too crazy, doing a little extra studying during the festive days off. His decision was leg of lamb, which I was happy with as turkey for two is either too much trouble or not special enough if using turkey thighs for your main dish. Using my kitchen and cooking tools (and skills) was a great decision, making our neighbourhood festivities available while also having time to cook. After visiting the local pub and enjoying a few rye and cokes (beer for him) we tried to gather an appetite, filling up on Christmas brunch with my family earlier i...

Forget your headphones, earbuds, AirPods! That's right, I said it and it is my advice today. I am known to be listening to talk radio all day all the time if I'm not otherwise working or out socializing and I love to always be informed, but lately, I have tuned out the background noise - at least for a part of my day. I recently found that having continuous focussed noise in your ears is like looking directly in the sun for long periods, leaving you partially blind. With the music, radio, and podcasts consistently battering your eardrums leaves you mentally blind (I don't mean deaf) in a way. I mean desensitized to natural noise outside the speakers enveloping your ears. I also think it can drain you mentally especially if you are listening to news or talk radio, making you analyze what you are hearing and making subconscious decisions on every topic. I just decided to have parts of my day silent to ease to noise in my head.  I went for a walk last week and forgot my earbud...

I was trying to charge up my old iPod touch the other day after a news story came up on my LG Velvet mobile phone Google news feed regarding the obsolete iTunes store and how it will be gone soon. So, obviously, I had to check to see if my vintage tech was still working, powering up my iMac G5 PPC and checking to see if that still had iTunes. Happily, it still is up and running and even has all my music, radio stations, and even that funky screensaver with the psychedelic bouncy ball. The speakers were great on the relic of a computer but they may need a dusting or they are old, sounding a little scratchy on the left speaker. Running Tenfourfox as a browser and Open Office, I used this aged technology for simple paperwork, listening to my huge CD collection or radio. I noticed the browser is out of date and cannot be updated, while the Open Office software is probably obsolete too.  I have quite a large vinyl collection and a few years ago I purchased a cheap Victrola record player...

Welcome Back! That's to say I am back and hopefully for more than a day or two. I have some stuff swirling around and thought I might try to see if it comes out on the page similar to what is clattering around in my head. I have had quite an idle mind and body lately and, as you read recently, it is because of my time off from work, that usually has me gathering 20,000+ steps on my fitness tracker per day and leaves me exhausted physically and mentally after work. Often I go straight to see friends after work rather than home because I will pass out unless otherwise entertained like I have an automatic "sleep" button set when sitting down. It could be a lack of sleep, food, water, etc no doubt, but if I go home immediately I fall asleep and wake up late on the couch and then never fall asleep again. So, being on vacation (stay-cation) has made my mind like an overripe banana, ready to mush up and be baked in some banana bread. I have completely changed my regular sleep pa...

Scroll, rest, tv, rest, what time is it, what day is it? I remember last when my life was the same but that was during the pandemic. Where do I start with this random appearance in my blog, where I appear only to rant, fill the silence, or just look for attention? Downtime is considered a godsend for busy people but is it? I am usually and epically piling up steps at work - never stopping - and running my body down daily. Cooking professionally will do that to the mind and the body. Was I directed here because of this or for some deep-buried need, usually when my mind and body are idle? Shall I fill the void with writing, daily, as I used to do, emptying my mind in my words - regardless of whether it makes sense - and posting it for all to judge? We'll see, but doing it on my mobile phone is impossible since my eyesight is shite and my one hand can't feel the touch screen.  Tune in... I need to have some motivation...