Good Morning! What a beautiful day The Lord has made.

Good morning! What a beautiful The Lord has made. That's the greeting from President Obama welcoming Pope Francis at the White House this morning. A good sign of a warm relationship that -no doubt- will mark the visit of His Holiness to the United States in which global issues will be alluded .

I will expand on this later.

Books

                                 Reading books.
I went to a Salvation Army Thrift Store today. Went straight to the books and media section.
I noticed that the section has been greatly reduced, I mean, they used to have a very large area of used books, in fact that had them in three different areas throughout the store. This is the location in Alamo and South Flores.
I didn't find anything interesting. Except maybe for the old tittle "The edge of sadness" by Edwin O'Connor.
What I've been doing lately, and it puzzles me why I always come late to the game, so to speak; is that , while I'm browsing and looking through book titles, I do a little google search to see if it's a popular tittle and see the number of reviews and if those reviews are mostly favorable.
Well, my phone could not get a decent internet connection and this has been happening as of lately. Now, I wonder if these places along with Half-Price Books and Goodwill Stores have either a signal descrambler of something that blocks phone reception as if to keep the customers from finding out that most books that fill their shelves are shitty books, book "leftovers", titles that are not sought-after or titles that have very low or poor reviews.
But then, I think Am I being too paranoid about it? Do they (owners or managers) even care about literary gems or masterpieces at all?
Anyway, I just found out that it is a decent title, about a hundred or so reviews and most of them favorable. It was published in 1961 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1962. The copy I saw there is a very old hardcover with out the paper flaps. So the book is my age. I'm thinking about going back and buy it.
What prompted me to start this post was that for a person that likes or I should say, loves books too much, I should write about it every once in a while.
when I go to a book store or these thrift stores that have a used books department, I feel like a child in a candy store or better yet , like a stray doy in a meat market.

Many a time has happened that start reading a book and jump to another, then if after reading the synopsis I set it aside and sometimes by the time they announce that the store is about to close and customers should make their selections and take them to the front, then I often have to decide which book (s) to take or which I can afford, and sometimes its a struggle.
I don't just base my decision on the Amazon or Barnes & Noble's or even Goodreads site's reviews, the book that wants to come home with me, must first meet my strict criterion.
Has the book been discussed in any NPR program?
Is the author known for other popular titles?
Is the genre, one of my favorites? I read a wide range of genres: Biography, business, self-help, science, cognitive psychology, medicine, history, classic literature, etc
Some of my favored authors are fiction writers like Philip Roth, Dan Brown, Jose Saramago, Carlos Ruiz-Zafon, Cormac McCarthy, Norman Mailer, Eckhart Tolle, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Smith Albom, Paulo Coelho, William Styron, Kahlil Gibran, Leo Buscaglia, John Irving, John Krakauer, John Steinbeck and many, many more.
I've been asked innumerable times, why do I like reading as if there must be a purpose for it. Is like asking "why do you love your wife, or children? That's a silly question. You just fall in love, that's it, that's all.
Some people read, because is required of them; there's purpose in it, some people read as a way of entertainment; that's amusement, some people read to gain knowledge and in turn get smarter, as if to gather experience but in a "hands-off" method.
I read just for the pleasure  of it. I find solitude appealing because it leads me to grab a good book and enjoy it. I have been  growing my private collection for the last ten or twelve years, I think, I am not sure, when I started to buy them and keeping them. No, wait a minute, let me go back a little. Ok, I'm sure I can come up with a better number if I do a little research, but that's going to have to wait.
I'm getting sleepy, I'm going to sleep and stop now, I meant stop and sleep now.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Hard ride

I just feel the need to make a record of this; Two days ago on Wednesday August 5, I went to ride my bike on the Medina River Natural habitat Trail on South Texas 16 (Palo Alto Rd), because I like pedaling on the uneven road and going through the switchbacks that the place offers.
When I left the house the time was about 15 minutes before 12 noon and the temperature was about 88 ° degrees, partly cloudy, breeze and in fact it look like rain was possible, in other words it was perfect weather for biking.
By the time I arrived to the start of the trail it was 12:30, the sun was at its highest position and radiantly hot, that should have been my first clue to abort the trip.
The parking lot was deserted, with the exception of two vehicles whose occupants were about to leave, which should have been translated to me as "you are going to be all alone in the trails", second clue to rescind the plans, and equally disregarded by my cerebral cortex.

Biking in the afternoon sun by the Botanical Gardens

I took off with only a meager sample of water in my bottle and about 5 miles into the ride I started to get a headache and feeling very hot and tired, so I stop at a concrete bench to rest and drink a little water. I contemplated making a U turn and head back but as I had done before, I tell myself that I need to face the challenging odds and get done with it, after all, -I tell myself- I need the exercise .

After about 15 minutes, which is a long break, I usually make only 3 to 5 minute stops, I couldn't cool off quick enough. I decided to complete the ride and got on the saddle and rode on.
2 1/2 miles down I got to the end of the road and stop to rest again because I started to feel a little shaky, again waited about 6 minutes and not feeling any better got on the bike and started my way back, thinking that was not well and if I was going to pass out in the middle of nowhere, I would not be found soon. To top it off, as soon as I mounted the bike my phone indicated that it was about to die, it was down to 5% of battery life, so I stopped the GPS feature to conserve a little.
about 3 miles on the return I noticed that even though I was very hot I was not sweating anymore, looking at my arms, my skin was completely dry and I was shivering. I had to dismount when I got to a switchback going uphill and ket thinking that I didn't want to pass out there in a desolated part of the park, and why was I feeling this odd?. I concluded that my body was so hot internally that my system was trying to cool off and in the process, stopped my glands from secreting sweat and prevent dehydration among other things perhaps. 
I could not believe that with an ambiance temperature of 98° degrees and a heat Index of 102°, pedaling fast and hard, with the sun bearing on my back, I was not drenched in sweat,  something was amiss, I thought.
Mindful of the critical situation, I visualized getting to my car and driving off to a convenience store and getting me a couple of big cold bottles of Fiji water to drink and pour over my head, that was my immediate goal. Still about half of the trail to make it to my car thinking about reaching my goal took my mind away from panicking. I have never experienced something like it, I haven't researched the subject yet, but I thought the i needed to put it down in words while still fresh in my mind, now a-days I can't afford to "leave it for later" at the risk of forgetting minute details as I describe them here.
It was only as I approached the entrance to the trail that I encounter the first human, a man about my age riding a smaller bicycle, then about ten minutes after another guy also in a bike passed me back.
I finally made it to my car and as I tried to start it up, the security "theft-lock" system set in and I just turned the key to "accessory" got out, and went to a small shade not far to wait for it to reset, set the timer on my iPod player and as soon as it went off, got in the car started up and took off.
While I was driving on Texas 16 by the Poteet Flea Mkt. I realized that I had left my gloves in the helmet, which was hanging from the bike handles. I didn't want to stop until I could get to the convenience store, which I did. 
There's a Valero convenience store on Zarzamora and IH 35 access road, I left the engine running to avoid the security lock up again and went inside, got my two bottles of water and two bananas, went to my car and ate one banana right away. Within a 3 to five minutes I felt alive again.
I can't wait to go back again, only better prepared, if I remember to take the obvious provisions and safety measures. Happy trails!!! 

Tribute to the fallen rider.

Anxiety / panic episode

I was reading online "la sombra del viento" which I had saved couple of days earlier in pdf format. I was reading as I normally do, I starting to have a hard time making out the small font, but more accurately it is a medium size font, so I resorted to magnify it by pressing shift-command-+. Two clicks and presto, I can read it without straining my eyes.
I restarted to read the text again and all of a sudden I felt a combination of dizziness and panic, I felt like I could not breath easy and normal. I felt,, as it had happened before, an impending doom, as if I am going to drop dead and nobody is around to help me. Help me how? you ask. That's the thing, I don't know the answer.
Anyway I needed to put this on record for now, before it fades out. Lucidity seems a luxury right now. I will try to come back later and elaborate. I worry about Junior, he may need my help and I want to be able to help him in anyway I can.

The blood typing game

What pushed me to start dieting

On a Friday March 13, this year this what I consumed throughout the day:

• 07:30 I stopped at Taco Cabana on my way to work and got two tacos and a cup-o-joe
• 14:13 Breakfast at Cracker Barrel that included two scrambled eggs, two strips of bacon and three pancakes wit butter and maple syrup.
• 20:57 Leaving work and homeward bound I've got two small trays of veggies one for us and one for Jesus and Marla and a small tray of melon chunks.

Saturday, March 14, 2015;

• 07:32 AM Potato & egg  and Brisket tacos and coffee.
• 11:47 AM At McDonald at work; A cup of coffee and an apple pie.
• 14:10 For lunch, a Cobb salad. Later I had indigestion that I blamed myself for eating a salad that had been opened, but maybe it was just my imagination.

Sunday and Monday I could not eat much due to stomach cramps, which I still blamed on the bad salad. I went to work as usual on Tuesday March 17,  but went home after two hours

* The times posted is the time reflected on the receipt at the time of paying.

**THIS POST SHOULD BE READ BEFORE THE LAST

Rectally peeing

HERE'S A LITTLE DISCLAIMER FOR THE READER: 

THE NEXT POST MAY BE TOO GROSS OUT FOR SOME PEOPLE, 

AS GRAPHIC DETAILS OF BOWEL MOVEMENTS IN NATURE ARE DESCRIBED. 

READING DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

I don't feel like going to work today. It's almost 3:30 PM, I just called my staff to check-in and ask how are things going, Sandy said that business is slow, it's raining , so no wonder there. She also said that they are staying busy by prepping for inventory, which is next week. I told her that I'll be coming in later today, because I have to take the last markdowns found by Jason and his Posse.

Curiously, I don't feel week, I just don't feel safe of not having a deplorable accident with mother nature betraying me as before.

I've gone to the bathroom no less than seven or eight times in as many hours. I seem to be peeing out of my rectum, for all I expel is a very pale yellow fluid discharge, almost like urine, no solids at all. My stomach keeps this churning noise as if digesting it's own juices. (?) I don't know where I got that from.

I had some turkey tacos last night, consoling myself knowing that they're not packed in fat nor calories I had four of them. Today I had three oranges , an apple and the leftovers of red potatoes and macaroni and cheese, very little.

I've had to change clothes four times since 4:22 this morning, after getting them soiled. While changing underwear I tell myself that next time I go visit little Damian, I'll joke about both of us needing to wear diapers, which naturally gives some light to the fact that newborns, as very old people, by nature can not control their bowel movements. The baby, because he has not yet developed the way to mentally control such natural physiological behavior, and the old timer's body has lost control of it. So for the initial time of an infant and the months, weeks or days before an old persons demise, a diaper is of utter necessity .

Haven't gotten the chance to go and ride the bike today, it's raining, and I'm afraid of the urge to take a liquid dump while riding.

But I'll post a couple of pictures of my last ride, last Sunday.

On the Leon Creek Trail, Sunday March 15, 2015.

Leon Creek Trail, bridge near Grissom Rd. March 15, 2015

I feel tired today....

I’m tired

Maybe I’m  getting sick, I don’t know. It all started yesterday  I thought that it could just be related to my not eating or ingesting any sweets since last Saturday March 14.

I’ve decided to reduce, or better yet to cut al sugar intake. Once more I am going to loose weight.

I read it somewhere that in these endeavors, there is some withdrawal-like symptoms, but they should disappear  after a week or two. God, it hasn’t been a week yet  and I feel sick. Nevertheless I went walking for a few minutes and then rode my bike for another while, until Raquel called me to go pick her up from school. Although  it was drizzling it had not deterred me from going longer.

I thought about calling Anamaria to go and see Sus’s baby but I did;t want to get blamed for getting little Damian sick. I could not know if it’s a cold, an allergy reaction, food poisoning or like I said before, just a “normal” reaction of my body freaking out for the lack of sugary intake.

Since Saturday I’ve been eating light and less. But I know I have to give my organism to adapt to my decision. I am the one in charge, after all.

Curiously, I went to Target to get all the ingredients to make Turkey Tacos, ‘cause I felt starving, (of course, I recognize that, that  it is just an illusion). While doing that suddenly I developed a diarrhea urge  and had to go to the bathroom three times, once in Target, once in Walmart and  as soon as I got home. But I was still hungry and had already decided to eat a low fat and calories entree. i did not disappoint my appetite.

This is an old pic, circa 2010

I can’t afford to get sick now. I have to be ready for the annual store inventory next Wednesday, March 25. 

My books, my friends

I've been pondering for some time if my love for books is at all a healthy trait.
Often in my free time, on my days off from work or when I get to leave work early, I go to a bookstore. Usually one of the five Half-Price Books locations in town, but I also, as of lately have found out that in The Salvation Army stores and Goodwill donation locations and stores I can find gems and treasures.
As a matter of fact this week while I am on vacation I plan to hit other locations that I have not visited before and maybe even the Hal-Price Books store in San Marcos, Tx.
  I just came across an article about bibliomania and on reading it (Hooked and Booked below), I see myself reflected in some of the traits that psychologists see as a symptom of some obsessive-compulsive disorder. I must clarify that I don't steal books but look exhaustedly for bargains. Por ejemplo: I have just be given as a birthday present three (3) gift cards and a 20% coupon tu use in Half-Price Books and I've been salivating since I got them just imagining and planning how to best spend them. To me $40 in gift cards is the equivalent of more than $100.00 worth of books if done right. See there's some books already on my list of "To Aquire" that I've seen but have not gotten because I don't want to pay the already discounted price when I know I can get them at a much lower price. The down side of this strategy is that too often, by the time I am ready to get a certain book, armed with a 20, 30 or even 50% off coupon, the book is gone and I course myself for not accepting that there's other people with the same tastes in literature.
For the record; one of the books that I've been looking for is one that I had in the backpack that was stolen from my car; the spanish version of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I had both the english hardcover, -given to me by a patients of the Vision Center at my work- and the spanish one, a rare book that I have not been able to find so far. Another title that I would like to get is tthe biography of Albert Einstein by Walter Isaacson, The Rite by Matt Baglio, Manson (Charles) by Jeff Guinn, Rosewater, formerly published as Then They Came For Me By Maziar Bahari, among others.
As the reader can see, my choices in genres are varied, and for the most part are not too frivolous or  too fictional and cheap.

Hooked and Booked

A brief look at bibliomania

Published on September 16, 2013 by Mark D. Griffiths, Ph.D. in In Excess

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“Some people think that collecting old books is a kind of mild insanity. The collector, on his side, smiles upon the ignorant who cannot understand the enjoyment of collecting. The philosopher says: Ne quid nimis, go not too far. But all of the adages this one is the most difficult to follow. The bibliophile is the master of his books, the bibliomaniac their slave. With development of bibliomania, the friendly, warming flame of a hobby become devastating, ravaging wildfire, a tempest of loosened and vehement passions. We are then in the presence of a pathological, irresistible mental compulsion, which has produced more than one crime interesting enough to be remembered”
What amazes me about this opening quote is that it was written almost 70 years ago. It comes from an article by Dr. Martin Sander published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1943). So what’s the evidence for the existence of “bibliomania”? Does it really exist? In a nutshell, yes.

Bibliomania has been reported to be a symptom of some obsessive-compulsive disorders particularly those associated with the collecting and hoarding of books. For a small minority, bibliomania can result in the breakdown of personal relationships and/or the damaging of the person’s health. It is believed that the condition had no generally accepted name until 1866. Dr. John Ferriar – a British physician from Manchester – had a poem published simply entitled "Bibliomania".

In his 2001 book The Anatomy of Bibliomania, Holbrook Jackson noted that English bibliographer Thomas Dibdin (1776-1847) wrote about bibliomania. Dibdin described the condition as a fatal affliction and referred to it as “the Book disease” that has “almost uniformly confined its attacks to the male sex, and among these, to the people in the higher and middling classes of society, while the artificer, labourer, and peasant have escaped wholly uninjured”.

In recent history, arguably the most well known bibliomaniac was Stephen Blumberg from Iowa (US). The so-called “book bandit” was convicted of stealing $5.3 million worth of books (over 23,600 books). In 1991 during Blumberg’s trial, the forensic psychiatrist Dr. William S. Logan noted that Blumberg had been treated for compulsive behaviour and had suffered schizophrenic delusions ad that these conditions had underpinned his bibliomania. Following a 41⁄2-year prison sentence, Blumberg was released but immediately resumed his book collecting and stealing.
Despite the condition being written about for 150 years, bibliomania is not a psychological disorder recognized by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Bibliomaniac behaviours include the multiple purchasing of the same book and in more extreme cases the persistent stealing of books. One of the defining features of bibliomania is that the acquisition and collecting of increasing numbers of books have no use to the bibliomaniac, nor little intrinsic value to genuine book collectors. Other book-related conditions include ‘bibliophilia’ (which is simply the love of books but not in a paraphilic sense), ‘bibliokleptomania’ (the stealing of books), ‘bibliophagy’ (the eating of books), and ‘bibliotaphy’ (the burying of books).
Dr Norman Weiner wrote a theoretical paper on bibliomania in a 1966 issue of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly because it had “largely been ignored by psychoanalysts”. He noted that few people enter treatment for bibliomania and speculated that this was because the activity may be ego-syntonic (i.e., a behaviour that is in harmony with and acceptable to the needs and goals of the person’s ego or ideal self-image). He also provided case study evidence that for some people, the act of book collecting as a hobby may cause psychological conflict that for sufferers relieves anxiety.

Writing in a 2006 issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Dr. Peter Subkowski wrote that the urge to collect is a ubiquitous phenomenon
that has anthropological, sociobiological and individual psychodynamic roots (not surprising given that Subkowski is a psychoanalyst). He also claims that collecting occurs far more frequently among men than women. He describes collecting as an activity that can be “addictive, obsessive and messy””. From his psychoanalytical standpoint, Subkowski claimed that the type of collecting and choice of object were important indicators as to the unconscious psychodynamics of a collector and that:

“Collecting ranges across a broad spectrum, from an ego-syntonic integrated mode (i.e. sublimation) to a neurotic defence against pre-oedipal or oedipal traumas and conflicts…Collecting represents a specific form of object relating and way of handling primary loss trauma, which is different from addiction, compulsion, or perversion”.
When researching this article, I came across very little academic research on the topic although there has been a fair amount of research on collectors. For instance, Dr. Russell Belk (1991) writing in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality describes collectors of mass-produced objects as falling into one of two main types: the taxonomic collector who attempts to own an example of every type of a series of items produced, and the aesthetic collector who simply gathers items because they are pleasing in some way. Belk also describes collecting as “fetishistic” and that collecting items and bringing them together makes them sacred.
In a 1991 issue of the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, Ruth Formanek’s suggested five common motivations for collecting. These were: extension of the self (e.g., acquiring knowledge, or in controlling one’s collection); social (finding, relating to, and sharing with, like-minded others); preserving history and creating a sense of continuity; financial investment; and finally, an addiction or compulsion. Formanek says that what is common to all motivations to collect is a passion for the particular things collected. Professor Donald Case (University of Kentucky, US) in a 2006 review of collecting in the journal Library Trends says that it is this almost “sexual excitement” that led many early psychologists (including Freud) to see collecting as a manifestation of anal-erotic impulses.
An empirical survey by Formanek of 167 people (a mixture students, university staff members, collectors, art dealers, etc.) was published as a book chapter in the 1994 book Interpreting Objects and Collections (edited by Dr. Susan Pierce). One of the primary objectives of Formanek’s study was to look at the motivation of book collectors. She noted that:

“An important motivation is the feeling of excitement and elation. Referred to but as yet unexplored in the literature, is the collector’s addiction to collecting. The terms ‘obsession’ and ‘compulsion’ are mentioned chiefly in the popular literature, and are not distinguished from addiction”.
Of those who completed the survey, nine of the participants specifically mentioned addiction, obsession and compulsion as one of the reasons for collecting books although only one collector went into any detail. There were many other motivations for book collecting listed including the books being a financial investment, the challenge of the hunt, adding to one’s knowledge, and “collecting as preservation, restoration, history and a sense of continuity”.
Bibliomania probably means different things to different people and for some it is seen in a more positive light whereas others pathologize the behaviour. It doesn’t look as though the condition will appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders any time soon, but there certainly appears to be a small body of empirical evidence to suggest that for some people, book collecting can be compulsive.

Interesting article except for the part about "anal-erotic impulses" sick Case.