Lord Huron

Notice how TV shows these days employ songs as part of the show?  I don't mean like as in a musical but as part of the dramatic flow of the show. 

I've listened and liked several songs from various shows and used my mad internet skills to find a website that identifies the songs from the shows.  It is Tunefind.com

All that said, here's my latest find, the group Lord Huron.  Their videos are pretty cool too!

The Corporate world and stress

Regular readers of this blog know that I recently exchanged the life of a wage slave for that of the contentedly temporarily retired. 

The upside of this change has been for my health:  While laboring as the before mentioned wage slave my blood pressure was regularly in the 135/90 range and that is with leading a fairly active life with walking 3 miles a day and eating sort of ok.   Since leaving the daily grind my blood pressure as been in the 120/80 or less  when checked at the doctor's office (I'm doing a lot of catch-up on doctor appointments).  I also lost average weight since stopping work at the stress factory.

Once I knew I was leaving my job I was able to watch and really listen to my colleagues during the boss's staff meetings.  The anxiety in their voices and on their faces was telling.  They too were being squeezed in that stress vise. 

Stress kills and we all need to somehow figure out how to negate the effects of it on our bodies and our lives.

I feel very fortunate to have escaped before it did me in.

Where am I from?

The Missus got each of us the Ancestry.com DNA test for Christmas.  The family story has been that we are German/Irish although my maternal Grandmother's maiden name was Pattison which is an English name.  None the less, here's my DNA readout:

Europe/West (the German part): 37%
Ireland/Scotland/Wales:              35%
Great Britain:                              14%
Scandinavia:                                 9%
Africa, North:                               2%
Everything else
(Spain, Eastern Europe, etc):      the rest

So let's stop for a moment and contemplate the human history that brought this mix to be me.  Sure, we get the German part and the British Isles part, but what's up with the Scandinavian business?  Interesting bit of history there, involving marauding Danish Vikings who terrorized the British Isles for centuries and who colonized parts of Great Britain and intermarried with the locals.  The Vikings were so feared (and very rightly so) that a special prayer was coined just for them: "God save us from the Vikings". 

So there is a good chance that some Viking men hooked up with some women of the Brit isles not all that long ago historically speaking and shoved some of their DNA into my family make up.   I guess I have the Viking DNA to thank for my lifelong desire to explore (but not to conquer) the far reaches of the world.

So, now that the Danes have been handled, what's up with this 2% North Africa strain?  I remember as a kid my uncle announcing quite loudly to a family gathering that my nose was 'Jewish' much to his great amusement.  He was a very loud Irishman and loved to announce things at great volume.  My parents were at a loss to defend my somewhat large and oddly shaped (for the German/Irish family) nose.  Actually my nose may be the only remnant of a North African Berber who found his way into my family tree.  When did this happen and how? 

All in all my DNA results were more interesting than the German/Irish heritage that I expected.  That is of course if they are indeed factual and not spiced up by the boys in the lab to provide an interesting story for me!  If I had the dough, I'd do the test again and see how it comes back the second time around.

Can't wait for the Missus' results!

How did this happen?

Who's watching "Victoria" on PBS Masterpiece theater these days?  Great show, the Missus and I enjoyed season I and we're most of the way through season II.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/victoria/#

A new character was introduced in this season, an elderly woman who is the Duchess of Buccleuch and the Queen's mistress of the robes.  Also a scold and someone who the young queen Victoria finds to be stodgy and grumpy.  As I said, we are enjoying the heck out of the show.

I was watching the credits for the show when I saw that the Duchess of Buccleuch is played by....Diana Rigg!  How can this be?!  Mrs Peel, what happened?

Mrs Peel?

Every teen boy of my era was in love with the kick-ass, sexy, and enigmatic Mrs. Peel from the TV show, the Avengers.  When she moved on from the series we all mourned her absence from prime time TV.

We all age and it is great that Diana Rigg is still working and having fun with her role in Victoria but until now, she was eternally youthful in my mind.  I guess I see my own aging in her.  May she continue to be seen by audiences across the world.  She is still the fearless Mrs. Peel even in her golden years!

Mrs Peel!

We were young once...

Hey there! Anyone still checking Citizen Grouch?

On the off chance that anyone is still regularly checking this site after an absence of about 5 months, I'm back.

There's been a few changes in my life, the biggest being the departure from my job at the trash yard.  February 9th was my last day.  I really couldn't take the absurdly long hours, the 6 day work week, the attempted bullying by my boss (bullying, really?  At my age?) the swarms of rats and flies ( I had rats in the walls and ceiling of my office and flies falling into my open can of diet Pepsi), and the pressure, always the pressure.  So one day I said 'enough'.

 I realized that all of the above kept me from doing many of the things that I like to do, this being one of them.  So now I'm back.

Now the next worry: how to pay the bills without a job....Nah, I'm not going to worry!

Stay tuned for some updates.