Life

I’m in my second uke class at Front Porch. It’s been a great experience. I’m much better than I was when I started earlier this year. I’m not good, but that’s sort of besides the point. Uke really is about the journey for me. I don’t even know what the destination is. I don’t have ambitions to be like this guy, not that it would even be possible. It’s been a great distraction as well.

The Economist has a Special Report on the US economy titled “The envy of the world” (subscription required). It makes a very compelling case that, although things aren’t perfect, the US economy is doing much better than rich world peers and mostly better than emerging economies like China and India. The first piece of the puzzle is productivity. Overall labor productivity in the US is much higher than in Europe and increasing at a faster rate even adjusted for the greater number of hours US workers tend to put in over their peers.

I used to complain about cable TV. Mostly because it was obscenely expensive to get the channels that I might want to watch from my local cable monopoly. But it mostly worked and didn’t change much. At this point, I just want that simplicity to come back. There are never ending problems and channel churn with the Internet based TV providers. Last year, I switched from YouTubeTV to fuboTV because that latter had both MASN for Orioles games and Monumental sports for Capitals games.

This is the earliest solstice since 1796 according to WaPo. I was wondering that as I had assumed the solstice was always 21 June. I guess it drifts in the calendar which makes sense when you think about it. The calendar is just sort of a loose approximation of the actual mechanics of the universe. The article has an indepth discussion of how it all works which is quite interesting.

At the beginning of the year, I bought a uke and started to learn how to play it. I just completed the 30-day Uke Challenge by Bernadette Teaches Music and it was really good. She’s got a nice teaching style and goes through things at a good pace - not too fast, not too slow. Highly recommended. It’s interesting learning how to play an instrument as an adult. I took a few years of piano lessons as a child but don’t remember anything.

I usually try to learn a new thing every year. Last year, it was rowing. This year, it’s ukulele. I know I’m a couple of years late to the trend as learning an instrument was very de rigeur during the pandemic, but it looks fun and I have some nice memories of my Dad playing ukulele. I ordered an inexpensive Kala Concert Ukulele and it looks nice. I don’t really know how to play it yet, but I’m going to do a 30-day uke challenge and then see if I can take some inperson classes later in the year.

I went to my first large concert since the onset of covid-19 last week. The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie were great. The show was at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I grew up nearby and it has changed dramatically in the past 30 years. It’s much more modern than the rustic bandstand in the woods that it used to be and is still a great place to see live music.

I’ve been keeping a journal on and off for over 30 years. It has never been a literary work, merely a recounting of what was going on that day, what was good, what wasn’t. A few years back, I started to make sure I wrote what I was thankful for each day. There is always something to be thankful for, even if it is just being alive. I’m glad I’ve kept with it because it’s fun to look back sometimes and see what I was doing and thinking about all those years ago.

I used to travel quite a bit for work. I’d been in the top tier of an airline frequent flier program for years. Until now. The pandemic changed my work travel habits indelibly. It really isn’t necessary to travel for work when most of the meetings you attend in person have somebody attending remotely. Why not spare yourself the hassle of travel and also attend remotely? I’m less into personal travel as well.

This article on the metric system in the US is great. I’ve read a lot of history but I’d never heard the story about pirates capturing a French scientist who was on his way to bring a meter and a kilogram to the US at the request of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a very interested in a new system of measures to replace the crazy quilt of measures we inherited from the UK but the scientist never got there.