We’re on vacation at a mini family reunion, and went with the clan to Ohiopyle State Park. We saw some fly fishers there, and I asked Lizzie’s cousin Brian if he knew anything about it (he’s one of those outdoorsy types). He didn’t know much, but it turns out his wife, Patti, is quite an avid fly fisher. So now I know a bit about the technique, the lingo, and the gear. I would say I now know more than anyone else in our group of friends back home, and less than anyone else.

In thinking about the miners trapped in the Chilean mine, I got to wondering about submariners and how they dealt with that kind of isolation. I didn’t find exact answers about that, but I did find this page about the submariner lifestyle. Interesting stuff.

Now that we have BBC America, I flipped past The Graham Norton Show a few minutes ago and one of the guests was Shirley Bassey. I didn’t know she was still around, and had no idea how engaging she is. She’s full of great, well-told stories, and is just damned pleasant to watch on a pithy British talk show.

I have a Facebook friend who, as it turns out, comes down very differently on the Islamic Center in lower Manhattan than I do. It’s not a dealbreaker — she’s a good wife, a good mom, and has some (almost) understandable (if not acceptable) reasons for feeling this way. But I was a little saddened by it. I’m sure we’ve all had this experience in one way or another, but it’s just a little jarring to hear something so opposite my views come from her. Maybe this should be called, “Tom Learns: not everyone believes exactly as he does” (that adds the proper perspective, I think).

Okay, this one’s kind of lame. But since those first two entries, I haven’t learned a blessed thing. Maybe this will be harder than I thought.

Anyhow, Nora has Ms. Swan this year (for those of you keeping score at home).

I’m still sadly out of practice as far as singing goes, but I made some good progress last night and tonight on Honey Pie from the White Album on the mandolin. If I can groove the song, I’ll form (or re-form) a band JUST to sing this with friends.

I learned last night that I still know a ridiculous amount of the White Album by the Beatles.

Negativity breeds lethargy, and vice versa. It’s been months and months since I posted anything here, and my next older post was months before that. But I’m going to try to start something here that will hopefully serve several purposes.

I’m thinking I need an exercise to prove to myself (and everyone else who might be paying attention) that my wheels aren’t just spinning. Every day, I’m going to try to post a fact or thing that I learned on that day. It might be a mundane shortcut in InDesign, or it might be something I learned by watching a documentary. Maybe I’ll read something that fits the bill, or maybe I’ll do something with Nora or Lizzie that will be interesting enough to share.

I’ll create a category for these — future posts will be tagged as “Tom Learns.”

The upshot is that I’m trying to hold myself spiritually accountable for my hours. Not for work stuff, per se — that would be great, too, but there’s more to life than that. And my goal is to keep it positive — I’m sure I’ll fail from time to time, but part of the goal is to be forward-thinking and not to just gripe about what’s already happened. Stay tuned — this should be interesting.

Thanks to Freecycle and a very nice person who had no use for it, I just acquired a Nikon N50. It’s a very nice SLR film camera, and I’ve already walked all over the house taking dumb pictures of everything (Nora’s wishing she hadn’t stayed home sick today — she didn’t bank on being pestered by me and my lil’ flash). Anyhow, I’m getting the film developed today while Nora has her doctor appointment, and then we’ll know if this thing works. Boy, if it does, this is going to be fun.

Of course, the film I found was a few years old, so it could be that this round won’t be definitive proof of its abilities one way or the other. So we’ll see — but it’s sure nice goofing around with an SLR again, particularly one that does a little bit of the thinking for you.

Doug — where do you buy lenses? Are there any sites/stores with good, used lenses at good prices? I need to scratch this itch without appearing on Lizzie’s TomSpending radar, you know?

Sorry. I deleted a big long post with a couple comments about lip inflator in the little girl section at Toys R Us. I’m poking around trying to upgrade Facebook and thought I was deleting a draft I wrote about the current mess in Illinois (you can understand my error — I saw something that made my blood boil, thought it was the OTHER thing that recently made my blood boil, and I got all clicky).

So for all of you getting here via Google and your searches for lip inflator, I apologize. And urge you to stay the hell away from that stuff.