Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Don’t Tell Me What to Eat

Posted on by

Why should I listen to you, anyway?

Since being interviewed for an NPR piece about diet books (read/listen to “Diet Books: Fat On Profits, Skinny On Results?“), I’ve received numerous e-mails and other contacts from folks offering me advice on my diet. Here’s one from today’s e-mail:

I caught the interview you gave on NPR about dieting books.

If you want to learn about health and nutrition read “The China Study”, by T. Colin Campbell, PhD.

All diet books are wrong, because they are about eating less of the same, unhealthy food. If we base our diet on whole, plant-foods, we will drastically reduce our risk of chronic diseases and as a side effect, lose weight. This book shows the huge amount of science available, and it’s really, really interesting!!

Ironically, he recommends a diet book and then says that “all diet books are wrong.” I guess he means all of them except the one he’s recommending. How many other people are saying the same thing with another book? All of them.

I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by this. I began to write the guy a response, but I figured it might be better to just post it here, so everyone can read it:

My friend Tom gave me a copy of The China Study. I gave it away. I am not interested in diet books at all. Period.

And frankly, I’m pretty sick of strangers telling me what I should and shouldn’t eat. You don’t know a damn thing about me. Why do you assume that I eat “unhealthy food”?

I eat fresh vegetables, both raw and cooked simply. I eat fresh fruit, plain yogurt, whole grains. I eat grilled meats and fish. I don’t fry, I don’t eat much processed food, I don’t eat ANY fast food. I don’t drink soda or energy drinks and I don’t use artificial sweeteners. I minimize salt usage and season with fresh herbs whenever I can.

I eat healthier than 90% of the people I know. The other 10% are either vegetarians or misguided fools who follow the advice of books like The China Study and give up the foods they love, hoping to extend their lives by a few years through that sacrifice. All you have to do is eat a nicely marbled grilled steak in front of them to see how they’re suffering.

Life is short. Why shouldn’t I eat what I want to eat — especially when there’s nothing really wrong with it? I don’t want to live forever and I want to enjoy my life. Eating is one of my simple pleasures.

My weight problem — which isn’t even serious, according to my doctor — is due to inactivity and midlife metabolism change. Simply said, I need to eat less and exercise more. But don’t most Americans?

Sorry if I seem angry, but I’m really bothered by strangers trying to advise me when they know absolutely nothing about me.

This is what I wrote, but I didn’t send it. In fact, I didn’t answer the e-mail at all. Maybe he’ll see the response here. Maybe he won’t. I don’t really care.

I guess my point is, you’re wasting your time if you try to advise me on issues relating to diet, weight loss, or eating habits. Enough said.

And Tom, if you’re reading this, do treat yourself to a good steak once in a while. It really won’t hurt you. I’m sure the person I gave the book to will get a lot more out of it than I would.

Blessed by Arizona Highways

Posted on by
6

A great magazine gives my business a much needed shot in the arm.

Arizona Highways has long been one of my favorite magazines. There’s no other magazine that consistently shows off the beauty of our state with high quality photographs and articles that paint pictures with words. I’m sure that more than a few people have been lured to Arizona by something they saw in the pages of Arizona Highways. And I’m sure plenty of us have remained to make Arizona our home.

Last fall, I had to follow the route of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I’d hired a video production company to make a promotional video about my company and wanted footage from every location we visited, from Phoenix to Monument Valley. There would be a videographer on board for the entire six-day trip and another following in a truck with equipment they expected to need at each location. Since I had a spare seat on the helicopter, I decided to offer it to two different high quality travel publications. The idea was to put a photographer or writer on board and maybe build a relationship with that publication to trade flight time with advertising.

At least that was the idea.

The Arizona Highways editor responded quickly. He assigned one of the magazine’s writers, Keridwen Cornelius, to accompany us and write up a story about the excursion. If everything worked out well and they could use what she wrote, they’d send a photographer out to get pictures later.

Arizona HighwaysI was thrilled, but didn’t really expect much. I certainly didn’t expect the 10 pages about my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure that appeared in the May 2009 issue.

I got my advance copies about two weeks ago. I ate up Keridwen’s words and aerial photographer Adriel Heisey’s photographs. The article is amazing. Keridwen gave readers a look into her mind as she experienced each part of the excursion, from our departure from the Terminal 3 Helipad at Sky Harbor Airport to our winding canyon flight down the Verde River — and everything in between. For the first time ever, I’m able to understand how people who don’t usually fly around Arizona in helicopters see and feel about the magnificent terrain.

(By the way, this is one of the reasons I like to fly people who don’t usually fly. I get to experience a bit of the wonder of it all through their eyes.)

The magazine reached subscribers on Friday, April 10. That’s when my phone started ringing. I’ve been answering questions and sending out printed literature ever since. The Flying M Air Web site has also been busy, with about four times the hits it usually gets. The magazine just hit the newsstands and the Arizona Highways Web site. I formally announced it on Flying M Air’s Web site and began offering a 10% discount for all excursions booked before June 30.

And yesterday I booked an excursion for a couple from Pine, AZ for the last week in this month.

To say that this is a breakthrough for me is an understatement. One of the toughest things about building a small business is getting the word out about your services — especially when your services have a limited market and are relatively costly. My company is the only one in the country offering multi-day excursions by helicopter. But I can spend thousands of dollars on advertising and not be able to reach the right people. After all, ads are ads — we see so many ads, we know how to filter them out. But editorial content is different. And there’s nothing better than seeing a positive report about a product or service written by an objective third party.

I feel extremely fortunate to have my business covered in such a way.

I hope everyone reading this goes out and tracks down a copy of the May 2009 Arizona Highways. I really think you’ll enjoy every single page.

Foraging with Alex the Bird

Posted on by
Comment

A down-to-earth video.

So many of my videos are about flying or show off scenes from the air. I thought I’d work on one that was a little closer to earth. This one features my parrot, Alex the Bird, foraging for treats in his cage. I blogged about this particular toy way back in 2006.

The text that follows is the narration you’ll find on the video. The video is at the bottom of this post. This was mostly an experiment to see how I could use the voiceover feature of iMovie ’09. I couldn’t. I wound up recording the narration in Audio Hijack Pro and editing it in Fission, then dragging clips into iMovie. iMovie apparently no longer includes audio editing features. This is unfortunate. I’m trying to figure out why Apple keeps removing features from iMovie as it updates it. (Of course, I can’t complain, given the image stabilization feature is so incredible.)

Anyway, here’s the narration and video. Enjoy.

I’ve put together this little video of Alex foraging for treats. I thought it might be interesting for folks who like birds or are considering buying one. It’s also a video exercise for me, but that’s another story.

In the wild, parrots forage for food. That means they use their claws and beaks to tear apart nuts and berries and pull bark off of trees looking for food. They don’t have their food in ceramic cups like caged parrots do. Foraging is an instinct. It also keeps the birds pretty busy all day so they don’t have time to be bored.

Alex has never lived in the wild, but he still has foraging instincts. And I like to keep him busy so he doesn’t get bored and engage in self-destructive behavior, like feather plucking.

What you see here is a cage-like structure that I bought years ago when I first got Alex. It came with shreddable toys and blocks in it. Alex was only mildly interested in it. But when I replaced those toys with plain old shredded paper surrounding Alex’s favorite treats — edamame or soy bean pods and unsalted cashews — he got very interested. So every few days, I set him up with this hanging toy so he can forage for his favorite foods.

As you watch this video, you might notice a few things.

First, Alex knows the treats are in there and he knows what he needs to do to get at them — pull all the paper out. This looses up the tightly packed cage so he can pull the beans and nuts out and eat them. You’ll see him successfully remove a few beans and nuts in this video. I cut out a lot of the shredding activity. It took Alex about 40 minutes to work through the toy today, and no one is interested in watching him that long.

Also, you’ll see Alex use his feet to steady the swinging toy. Letting the toy swing from the top of the cage makes it tougher for him. Tougher is better. I’ve learned that the goal is to make the foraging task difficult enough that it takes him a long time but not so tough that he gives up.

You may also notice Alex glancing back at the camera. The camera was sitting on a tripod near his cage and he didn’t quite trust it. He keeps looking at it to make sure it’s not sneaking up on him to attack him. Fortunately, he’s more interested in the treats than the camera.

Alex is almost eight years old. He’s expected to live 40 or 50 years. Right now, he’s just finishing up his winter molt, so his feathers don’t look as good as they would in a month or two. He molts every winter and looks pretty ratty for about two to three months.

I hope you enjoyed this visit with Alex. You can stop by my Web site, AnEclecticMind.com, to see more videos from my life.

The First Day of Spring at our House

Posted on by
Comment

The start of our annual fight against the sun.

On Twitter, lots of folks are talking about the fact that today is the first day of spring. That day has special meaning in our Arizona household. It’s the start of “blinds closed” season.

Upstairs
One of two upstairs rooms in our house. I took this shot with a fisheye lens, so things are a bit distorted, but it shows the three big windows.

Our house sits diagonally on its lot. The front faces northeast; the back faces southwest. The second floor has two 4 foot by 8 foot windows facing front — northeast — and one similarly sized window facing the side — southeast. In the winter, sun coming through that side window most of the day helps keep our house warm. The windows work together to keep the house bright — that second floor room is open to the downstairs.

I like living in a bright place with big windows. It makes me feel good — healthy and alive, part of nature even while indoors.

Anyway, what we’ve found is that when mid-March rolls along, the sun starts to angle into those two big, front windows for the entire morning. While that’s quite nice when daytime temperatures outside are in the 60s and 70s, it’s not very nice when those temperatures reach toward triple digits. The sun warms the upstairs when we’re trying to keep it cool. The solution: lower the blinds to shut out the sun.

Downstairs
The upstairs room is open to downstairs, so the big windows let in a lot of light

Blinds and curtains in our house are an afterthought. We don’t have any neighbors close enough to look in, so there’s no real need for privacy. My office and the guest room have blinds because they both get overnight guests once in a while — I’ve found that most guests just keep the blinds closed all the time they’re with us. (I can’t figure that out. Why would someone choose to live in darkness in such a bright, sunny place?)

The two upstairs rooms have blinds or curtains strictly to block out the sun half the year. And we need them. If we didn’t have them and use them, the air conditioning simply would not be able to keep up with the power of that bright sun shining in those big windows in spring and summer. So we begin lowering the blinds in that room on the first day of spring.

At first, we lower them just in the morning and raise them after noon. But later, as the sun creeps northward and spends more time shining in, we keep them closed all day. You see, as the sun shines on the house, it also heats up the double-pane glass, which then radiates heat into the house. The blinds offer another layer of protection.

The first day of spring is a kind of sad day for me. It means the end of the bright mornings in my house and the prelude to what I’ve begun calling hell season. You might know it as summer.

It’s Worth the Extra $58.80 per Month, Right?

Posted on by
2

I bet the driver doesn’t think so.


Take a drive on dirt for the last 1/10th mile to my house.

As I’m typing this, I’m watching the town’s garbage collection truck rumble down the unreasonably steep and rugged road that leads to my home and my two neighbor’s homes. This is the third time the driver has come down the unmaintained road and he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet. The loose rocks slip under his wheels on the way down and move aside to make deep ruts on the way up. His round trip from the last house on his route to our three garbage pails takes him about 15 minutes each day. He does this twice a week.

But that’s what the Town of Wickenburg wanted, I guess.

Four years ago, they annexed our three homes, against our will, into the Town. Apparently shopping and operating businesses in town wasn’t enough for our land-hungry mayor (who has since, thankfully, been defeated by someone who isn’t quite as obsessed with empire building). They wanted our property taxes, too. It didn’t matter that they weren’t interested in providing additional services for those tax dollars. The road to our homes remains unmaintained, there’s still no fire hydrant within at least a half-mile, we can’t get cable or DSL or town water or sewer services. They assure us that the town’s police and ambulance will come to our homes when called, but none of us have tried that yet. I don’t think they’ll find us. They gave us all new addresses, putting us on a street that apparently doesn’t exist — there’s no sign for it anywhere. My neighbors may have taken the hit of a “move” on their credit reports, but we didn’t — we changed our address right back to what it was.

But it’s worse for the rest of the folks annexed with us. They were promised that their road would be paved. That’s why they voted yes for the annexation, dragging us in with them. Their road remains unpaved to this day.

About two weeks ago, the Town added yet another insult. The town lawyer, who really ought to consider going into a different line of business, sent us a letter telling us that we were in violation of some town code because we didn’t have a contract with the Town for garbage pickup. The letter threatened legal action, with a daily fine of $300 or so dollars a day. The letter was nasty and accusing — as if we were purposely denying the town $19.60 per month of revenue.

I don’t take kindly to threatening letters. I got seriously pissed off and started making some angry phone calls.

Turns out that when the Town annexed us, the letter they sent to inform us of all the changes we could expect — like our new address — also told us that garbage service was available from the town. I don’t have the letter anymore — I tossed it long ago — but I don’t recall the letter saying garbage pickup was required. There’s a big difference, especially to a writer, between available and required. We already had garbage pickup from the local sanitation company and it was cheaper, so I didn’t see any reason to make the change.

My call to Town Hall got me many apologies from the person I spoke to. She told me they’d gotten a lot of complaints about the lawyer’s letter. I’m glad. It means that I’m not the only person who gets angry when some idiot backwoods (or back desert, in our case) lawyer flexes her fingers without thinking on a word processor’s keyboard. Apparently, the townspeople aren’t quite as lifeless as I thought they might be.

Since garbage pickup with the town was now roughly the same cost as with the private company and they’d come pick up twice a week rather than just once, we signed up with the town. It’s unfortunate for the other company. If they keep losing business to the town, they’ll soon go out of business. But heck, what does the Town of Wickenburg care about the viability of local businesses?

So now the garbage truck lumbers down our steep, rutty, loose gravel road twice a week to collect garbage from three pails. We make very little garbage because we recycle so much — and no, they won’t pick that up — so they’re not collecting much from us on every visit. The truck crawls back up at 5 to 10 miles per hour, spinning its tires once in a while to dig one or two new ruts that it’ll have to drive back over a few days later.

After the next rain, my neighbor will pull out his Bobcat and scrape down the road surface. My other neighbor will drive up and down with a home-made smoothing bar — think railroad steel and chain link fence dragged behind a pickup truck. We’ll do our part by driving up and down the hill at 15 miles per hour without stopping or with 4WD turned on in our pickup — the only way to avoid making ruts.

And the town will collect an extra $58.80 per month in revenue for the 2 extra hours it takes its truck and driver to include us on the route.