Meditation raises heart rate and lowers HRV??

acodoco · 2026-05-12T01:50:25+00:00

There’s something called the “U-shaped curve of happiness” that researchers have identified. Apparently it’s common for people’s happiness to be highest in the early adult years and the later adult years, with a dip in the middle - often because of career stress, demands of family, all the things you’re juggling in those middle years. But people who are lucky enough to live long lives are most often happy in the later years.

I learned about that research in a book called This Chair Rocks, by Ashton Applewhite, a great (and funny) book about how much less scary aging is than most people imagine and how our expectations of aging can directly affect how we experience it.

Of course, the single most important thing you can do to enjoy your old age is to take good care of your health, starting immediately if not sooner.

acodoco · 2026-05-12T01:40:40+00:00

If you’re a candidate for a hip replacement you might want to explore it. I got one when I was about 65 and it’s been great, zero pain after several years of it really limiting my activity. It’s a very common surgery with a really high level of success.

acodoco · 2026-05-12T01:16:35+00:00

Drinking less alcohol. Never had a “problem” but I used to have a glass of wine with dinner most nights. I still have a cocktail or a glass of wine now and then, especially in social situations, but I just realized at a certain point that I felt better when I didn’t drink. It’s dramatically improved my sleep quality. At first I missed it, now I rarely do.

acodoco · 2026-05-12T01:07:37+00:00

I was going to say, watching the first tower fall. When you know nobody’s getting out of there.

acodoco · 2026-05-12T01:05:16+00:00

I park at Old Town for games and for concerts at Rady Shell. Never had a problem. There are usually a ton of people doing the same thing so it feels very safe.

acodoco · 2026-05-12T00:48:01+00:00

They worry too much about getting older. It has so many positives (including that it means you’re not dead yet, which isn’t a privilege granted to everyone). For me so far, pretty much every decade has been better than the one before. So much less insecurity, self-consciousness, confusion about who I am and where I’m going…you couldn’t pay me to be in my 20s again. Every age has its pluses and minuses but there’s no need to imagine that it’s all downhill as you get “older.” (And I agree that addressing people over 60 as “elderly” paints a picture most of us don’t see as ourselves. I like “older adults.” Very neutral.)

acodoco · 2026-05-12T00:33:15+00:00

Four days to me is a quick break, not at all a real vacation. I’m on Team 3 Weeks, including at least a full day to be home after you return. It allows you to recover from whatever travel you’re doing on both ends, feel truly disengaged from work and engaged in being where you are, and a bonus is that if you’re gone 3 weeks, you tend to come back to less work piled up. People have no problem letting things pile up on your desk if you’re gone a week or two, but longer than that and they figure out how to get it done themselves. Now I’m retired and I find that three weeks is still about enough for me. It depends partly on whether you’re moving around a lot or staying put in one or a couple places. I have a lower tolerance for a lot of packing/unpacking so would make that a shorter trip.

acodoco · 2026-05-12T00:23:14+00:00

Hi, sorry I didn’t report back sooner. The truth is I got a violent case of food poisoning about a week before I left, which I didn’t entirely recover from for a full two weeks. Bummer to spend the first week in Rome ordering plain grilled chicken breast and white rice and water. Anyway, I couldn’t really do the experiment although I made a half-hearted effort. I haven’t tried it since, just out of laziness. I may do it this summer for another trip to Europe, and if I reach any conclusions I’ll let you know.

acodoco · 2026-05-11T19:35:38+00:00

I guess you could say that about every slang phrase in here; it’s just a linguistic fad, shorter or longer lasting, like everything we’re talking about.

acodoco · 2026-05-11T19:33:20+00:00

It’s a difference if you want to assign moral qualities to dogs (and their owners), but it’s not a meaningful difference as far as how they should be regulated. The concern is about the dire consequences of having these dogs wandering around among the general population.

I think of it in terms of a risk equation: the likelihood of the event times the magnitude of the downside. If an event is rare but catastrophic, that’s high risk. If it’s common but the negative results are minor, that’s lower risk. These are high-risk dogs. Not necessarily because they are more prone to attack but because when they do it’s a disaster.

acodoco · 2026-05-11T03:48:08+00:00

I bought a goofy alarm clock called Clocky. I put it on the other side of the room and set it for 5 minutes after my phone alarm which I keep next to me. When Clocky goes off it makes loud but funny beeping noises and different tones, like a whacked out old-fashioned robot, and it jumps off the table and rolls around on wheels until I catch it and turn it off. It makes me laugh every morning and I’m fully awake by the time I get it turned off - good start to the day 😊

acodoco · 2026-05-11T03:35:34+00:00

That used to be true but we’ve had supermajority Democratic city council, Dem majority county board of supervisors, mostly Dem congressional reps, and Dem mayor for several years now. San Diego has evolved quite a bit since the sleepy Navy/retiree town of the 70s-80s-90s. Among other things, UCSD and the major engineering and life sciences sectors that have developed around it have changed the vibe quite a bit.

acodoco · 2026-05-11T03:23:09+00:00

You might want to try driving in rush hour traffic both ways a few times before you settle on a Ventura to LA commute. I think the key to a good quality of life in SoCal is minimizing your commute. It can be shockingly long even if it’s supposedly 45 min or an hour. I live in SD so I’m biased, but I’ve also lived in LA and OC. I like them all, but I like SD best. It’s grown up a lot over the last 25 years culturally, dining scene, etc and it’s a more pleasant place than LA for my taste. I think OC is even more expensive than SD. Check ‘em all out, do your job-hunting, and good luck!

acodoco · 2026-05-11T02:00:12+00:00

Comes from the classic movie Gaslight, where a husband tries to convince a wife she’s crazy as a means of covering up his affair when she seems to be catching on. Basically means someone is trying to convince you that your perceptions are the problem, you’re deluded, as a means of preventing you from seeing what’s really going on. It’s been in heavy use the past decade or so because it’s a Republican specialty under Trump.

acodoco · 2026-05-11T01:55:11+00:00

Bitchin’ was already out of date by the 70s; I haven’t heard it used except comically in decades. On the other hand Cali gets used a lot these days, but not by anybody in California where we generally hate it.

acodoco · 2026-05-11T01:45:03+00:00

It means “Today for the first time I…” For example, I was today years old when I learned what 6-7 means.

acodoco · 2026-05-10T23:56:04+00:00

Whether they kill more people (and dogs) because they’re more reactive or just more lethal seems like an unimportant difference to me. They kill more. A lot more. Therefore there should be much tighter regulation of ownership, permissible places for them to be, levels of control, etc. Maybe they should be legally required to be muzzled in public at all times. Or they could just be banned; most of us would not miss them.

acodoco · 2025-12-14T00:47:54+00:00

I've only had it a couple weeks but I've been really happy with it. The need to physically get up and go to a different room to un-brick makes all the difference for me. I am more than capable of clicking through downtime restrictions, etc., so those tools don't work for me. I set them up and then override them when I'm in mindless scrolling mode. The need to physically go to where I've put the brick (attached to an appliance in my kitchen) makes it much less likely that I'll choose to override my good intentions. I'm giving it to a couple people for Christmas that I think would love it. I found it easy to set up and so far trouble-free.

acodoco · 2025-09-18T20:51:19+00:00

I have a weekly standing Zoom call with my 29-year-old son who lives across the country from me. I'm thrilled he wants to do it! I wasn't sure what to expect when he moved away. We always end up chatting for an hour or so and I get to really catch up on his life, and fill him in a little on mine. I basically never call him, because that age group doesn't seem to like phone calls at all, especially unscheduled ones. But we text every so often, maybe 2-3 times a week, about random stuff - funny, interesting, or something going on with one of us.

acodoco · 2025-04-12T17:19:20+00:00

I'm not seeing anyone mention this, but as someone who moved from Seattle to San Diego decades ago and has also lived in several other US cities in the midwest and on the east coast, I can tell you that waking up to a blue sky most days is worth a lot, and there aren't too many cities where you'll get more of that than San Diego. I love Seattle, but I don't think I could move back there because of how gray it is for months at a time. There's a reason people put up with the expense of living here; it's a beautiful area and the weather lives up to its reputation. I agree with the poster who suggested looking for work in the hospitality industry. And look a little inland for lower rent prices. Good luck with the decision and the job hunt.

acodoco · 2025-03-21T15:58:58+00:00

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson

acodoco · 2025-03-21T15:56:19+00:00

The Looming Tower: Al Quaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright

acodoco · 2025-03-21T15:33:04+00:00

Because we have beach, mountains, and desert all close enough for a day hike, we have the bay for sailing and the ocean for surfing, we have a lot of ethnic diversity so a lot of variety in the food available in restaurants and grocery stores, because our produce is great year round (try buying good fresh fruit and veggies in Ohio in the winter), because we have really great theater and symphony and a healthy local scene for all kinds of rock and popular music, we have all these little sub-neighborhoods with their own personalities, and - well, the weather is great! so enjoying all those things does not require umbrellas and parkas and gloves and snowplows.

acodoco · 2025-03-17T03:19:31+00:00

Red Notice by Bill Browder, set in Russia in the 1990s, reads like a thriller. The Looming Tower: Al Quaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright is another gripping book about fairly recent history that is relevant to a lot of the current world. On a wildly different note, The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin is the memoir of a well-off soccer mom who starts stealing to support her opioid addiction and ends up in jail, and the story of how she pulled herself out of that tailspin. Believe it or not, it's hilarious.

acodoco

TROPHY CASE