Tom's Diary

Today’s Activities

• Shower. DONE.
• Cat duty.  DONE.  Cat duty involves cleaning the litter boxes, bagging the excess, feeding, and house cleaning cat dirt of all types.
• Wash (3) loads of pending laundry.  DONE.

Log

08:30 AM: I’m up.

08:45 AM: Facebooked for perhaps ten minutes. Friend count: 623 (unchanged). Fan count: 114 (unchanged).

05:00 PM: Replaced basement windows 7 and 8 on the south wall with glass block upgrades.  This took much of today, as window 8 had lots of crumbling mortar around it.  I had to shovel a few buckets of gravel into the gaping holes in the foundation that surfaced when the old window was removed.  I then replaced that old mortar with a fresh new coat of a way more modern mixture.

07:00 PM: Watched today’s episode of   The Young and the Restless   via the DVR.

07:45 PM: Watched today’s episode of  Dr. Phil,   called   Under The Influence.

11:00 PM: Talked with   [Emmy].  We watched tonight’s rerun episode of   Hawaii Five-0.

11:20 PM: I’m heading to bed.  Good night and do stop back tomorrow for more content.     Good night.

Tom Hesley

Received Mail and Shipments

• 5-day sale coupon from Wolf Furniture.  Well, unfortunately, with the expense of all the new windows I’ve incurred, both in the basement and on the 1st and 2nd floors, I can afford no furniture.  Check back with me in a year. 
• Offer from American Express Personal Savings to set up a savings account with them.  Not at this time, thanks.
• Credit card offer from Chase Freedom.  Not at this time, thanks.
• Balance transfer checks from Chase Freedom.  No thanks.
• Auto insurance offer from Mom’s bank.  No thanks.
• Eleven month contract summary from the company who manages some of my investments.
• $15 coupon from Dell; probably because I bought a computer from them last summer.  However, as it expires at the end of February, 2012, I’ll probably not use it.
• Discover card offer.  Not at this time, thanks.
• Sewage bill.
• Misc. medical bills for Mom.
• Updated rate sheet for 2012 from my cable television provider.
• The Writer magazine; the 2012-01 edition.
• Letter from the company that manages some of my investments, detailing the numerous changes to tax law for 2011 filing.  None of these changes affect me at present.
• Misc. bank papers.
• Gas bill.
• Bill for Mom, for her transportation to the last leg of the Christmas Eve progressive dinner at sister Christine’s house.
• Offer from my electricity company for exterior electrical line protection insurance.  No thanks.
• Monthly bill from the nursing home where Mom is staying.
• Consumer Reports magazine; the 2012-01 edition.
• Talking book: The Examined Life; edited by Stanley Rosen.
• Talking book: Get With The Program: Getting Real About Your Health, Weight, … Bob Greene.
• Talking Book: Imperfect Control: Our Lifelong Struggles with Power and Surrender, by Judith Viorst.
• Talking Book: Practical Philosophy, by Immanuel Kant.

Related Posts and Links

• Today’s Diet: 2012-01-23

Dear [Mentat],

Your screen resolution probably did not change, especially if you did not adjust it yourself. However, Amazon’s web site did change – it seems busier these days than I remember it a year ago. So perhaps that’s what’s affecting your JAWS.

Sorry to hear about your firewall. I had a battery go bad in one of my laptops this week. Fortunately however, it was covered by the   extended service   warranty I purchased. I usually buy these with computers because they’ve saved me bundles of money, especially on the first two Micron machines I purchased in the late 90s. Both of them required replacement of motherboards during the extended warranty period. However, I wouldn’t buy the extensions for CD players and small appliances. Generally speaking, if the item costs less than $500, I don’t buy the extension.

Yes, I know of   request only   ordering from NLS. In fact, that’s how I did it back in the late 80s. However, I wanted to give myself some compulsion to read; so I told them to send me three to five books a month in the general areas of philosophy, psychology, and classic literature. So far, I’ve been very happy with the books, but keeping up with the reading feels a bit uncomfortable at present. Oh well. I hope I can learn to tolerate it, because, since I was so   unread   for my school years, I have much catching up to do.  

On Aristotle: I think I’ll read Plato first, since much of what Aristotle writes is based upon or refutes Plato. The translation of Plato’s complete works I mentioned in September seems much easier to read. So I’ll tackle it first, and then try Aristotle once more.

Later,
Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

Well, it might be something Amazon has done, although I don’t know what that might be.

By the way, if you want, you can re-restore your computer to as it was today, if you found that the earlier restore point didn’t fix the problem. No, restoring to an earlier date doesn’t erase files on your hard drive. It only restores files that you might have deleted since the restore point you’re restoring to.

Yes, I’m doing this speech this weekend. Boy, what a bunch of work!! I’ll not be so quick to agree to do something like this in the future.      

I’ve also been reading several philosophy books, hoping that the gained material will help advance the “Can We Date Up…” thread in my mind. I’ve a couple responses I’ve been working on as well but you’ll probably not receive them until sometime next week, _after_ this speech has been delivered.

Tom

Today, I received confirmation from the library for the blind in Pittsburgh, that they received my order for the following book: The Story Of Philosophy   by Will Durrante.

Tom Hesley

[Dana],

Happy new year. Sorry I haven’t responded before now. But being self-employed is busier than working for a company.

Anyway, I hope to write philosophical books on romantic relationships. The one I’m working on now is 70,000 words so far with the goal being around 150,000.

When I started it in 2002, I had a different view of how it would shape up than I do today. Writing is quite the journey of self-discovery, so I’ve learned. What I believed when I started this project, I no longer believe. So writing the book is almost like shooting at a moving target. Hopefully I’ll nail it sometime in the next few years. I’m still trying to find “my voice” in prose.

I’m living in Altoona, PA now, where my family is. So I see them all the time. That’s much nicer than living so far away from them as I did when I resided in Dayton (365 miles). I don’t imagine I’ll ever leave them again, although if I do, it would be just a move to Pittsburgh (a 2.5 hour train ride away). It just depends on how life shakes out.

Glad to hear your family is doing so well. Give my regards to [your husband].

Talk to you later,
Tom Hesley

Good morning Grace.

Yep, Altoona is an old railroad town with a population of about 70,000. It’s a quiet place, nestled in the Appalachian mountains, about 110 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, and about 210 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

To answer your question, I am writing to offer philosophies, practices, behaviors, diets, beliefs, insights, routines, motivational tid bits, and so on, that help enable people to take a maximally active role in finding their “perfect match” mate. Many of us become rather anxious when faced with the prospect of introducing ourselves to someone we -REALLY- find attractive, and so never end up letting them know of our interest, choosing instead to “settle” for someone less attractive to us than we would like, primarily because they were just easier to approach. Ironically, the more we desire a person, the more self-conscious and uncomfortable we may feel when thinking about approaching them, and thus, the greater the anxiety becomes as we attempt to make their acquaintance.

Fear and desire, at first glance, appear as opposite concepts. Yet they really go hand-in-hand. The greater the attraction for someone, the more that that fearful part of us moves us away from them.

My mission therefore, is to help eliminate this anxiety barrier that keeps people from dating their dream mate by dispelling mate-seeking myths, dissecting the anxiety phenomenon, identifying its typical yet numerous causes, and exposing any irrational beliefs that the one experiencing the anxiety may have, which are crippling him / her. There, that’s it in a nutshell.

Changing the subject: I’d really be interested in reading the profile you wrote, that match.com rejected – you mention this in the profile they DID post.

Later,
Tom Hesley