The Ministry of Happiness

On the Road: Cross-Country Days 3 and 4

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Michael Kane

On the Road: Cross-Country Days 3 and 4

Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.
~ Jack Kerouac

So yesterday I made for Dallas, TX to visit with an old friend and his wife, just a week before their 30th wedding anniversary. I was their best man so the wedding reference seemed relevant.

The drive was the official beginning of spring for me, drove by lots of daffodils that were up and in bloom. Lot’s of trees are starting to leaf out and flower and so I have officially left the Northeast and winter behind.

Dallas was great, got to visit with an old mean parrot that tried to kill me 15 years ago. I swear he remembered, he looked at me with a knowing eye. I also got to meet their dog, she’s 10 and had just had ACL surgery, yes, she’s an athlete. But she’s a Labrador Retriever so she has an unlimited desire for affection and I spent a lot of time petting the old girl. Much to the dismay of the cats, who sensing I was allergic to them, desperately wanted me to pet them and experience minor anaphylactic shock. Had a lovely dinner with my friends and watched a bit of Documentary Now! which is very funny.

I left this morning making for lovely Santa Rosa, New Mexico. My view isn’t great but there really are some nice places in the area.

Staying tonight on historic Route 66, I’ve driven large chunks of Route 66 and I wish I could have seen it in the 1960’s. Today, Route 66 depresses me, it reminds me of the old guy in the club, the one that’s too old to be there but is trying really hard. There are still some great stops, my favorite is the corner in Winslow, Arizona, a tribute to the Eagles.

But all in all Route 66’s time has truly passed.

Nothing too fabulous or interesting on the drive today, but I did roll through Amarillo, TX and pass my favorite food challenge in America. If you eat the 72 ounce steak and fixins in an hour, it’s free. However, fail and you just bought a $72 dinner.

So tonight, early to bed, eleven hours of driving tomorrow arriving on the evening of St. Patrick’s Day in Las Vegas. As always, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in 2018 Adventure, Happiness on the Road | Tagged amarillo, be happy, blog, dallas, happiness, happy, rev kane, route 66, travel | 5 Comments

On the Road: Cross-Country Day 2

Posted on March 15, 2019 by Michael Kane

On the Road: Cross-Country Day 2

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. –Gustav Flaubert

Today wasn’t the most exciting day on the road, there was again, a lot of traffic.

I started the morning in Virginia in spring like 50 degree weather that would then go to 70 degree spring weather and then 80 degrees with humidity, just Tennessee reminding me of what it was like to live here. Also caught the bottom of the cyclone bomb storm heading east, a little rain and a lot of really gusty wind, got blown out of my lane a couple of times.

Always shocked when I see someone in a little electric wheel chair cart on the side of a major highway. This dude looked awesome though, big white-blonde beard, huge flag, lots of mardi gras beads.

First big goal today make Nashville, TN by 1:30 to meet my friend Flip from the Appalachian Trail for Indian Food. It was great to see him, he’s a great guy and a total badass hiker and chef. Our little hikertrash reunion was great.

After lunch I was pushing on for Jackson, MS. Happily traffic lightened up a bit while heading west and another early day tomorrow heading for Dallas. The highlight of the day was a phone call this afternoon inviting me for a job interview in a couple of weeks, so it begins. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in 2018 Adventure, Happiness on the Road | Tagged be happy, happiness, happy, jackson, nashville, rev kane, tennessee | Leave a comment

On the Road: Cross-country Day 1

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Michael Kane

On the Road: Cross-country Day 1

So every time I’m doing a cross-country road ship I have this whole day full of stories. Things happen, wild traffic, on one trip I almost drove right into a tornado in Pennsylvania. Typically I might mention some of these things to a friend, or on Facebook, but I decided that this week, I’ll do my best to bring you along on Michael’s Magical Mystery Tour.

Ok, the picture above is where I started this morning, upstate New York and a lovely 19 degrees Fahrenheit when I got in the car. A chilly start to say the least. It was fun watching the temperature as I first went south, then west and then southwest. It started going up slowly but by time I hit the Virginia border this afternoon we were well into the 50’s and by time I stopped for the day here in Christiansville, VA it was 65 degrees. Needless to say I’m pretty happy to be walking around comfortably in a short-sleeved t-shirt.

It was a heavy traffic day, felt like national traffic break today. You know traffic breaks, when the cops get side-by-side across all the lanes, hit their lights and slow down until traffic stops. Instead today it was never quite a stop, and it was being done by truckers driving tandems, utterly frustrating.

I really don’t like driving through Pennsylvania, I really hate driving through Pennsylvania, and as usual they were doing their thorough job of enforcing the speed limit. My favorite bit, I-81 pretty much through the whole state has a speed limit of 65. So you see a sign, next 8 miles, 55 mph. Of course there are only two 55 signs across the 8 miles as well as two-speed traps, both with cars pulled over.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened today was that while getting gas I heard someone say something. I didn’t quite catch it, but felt like it was directed at me. A minute later I caught another comment, it was about my car. The person was really friendly and engaged me in conversation kind of excitedly, felt almost like he was flirting. But I finished up, said goodbye and hit the road. He was right behind me coming out of the station and on to the highway, did I mention he was a big, burly, hairy guy. He pulled up along me, smiled and waved and drove on. As he passed me, I caught the pride sticker on the back passenger window and then got a look at his plate, ursus 4U. I got a quick chuckle out of the whole situation, it’s nice to be appreciated.

Finally, as I rolled into my hotel here in rural Virginia, I availed myself of the happy hour soup and salad that was available and right on cue, as I sat down, the familiar whistling of the Andy Griffith Show came across the big TV in the lounge. Time for a shower and an early bedtime, Nashville bound in the morning. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in 2018 Adventure, Happiness on the Road | Tagged be happy, blog, happiness, New York, rev kane, travel, virginia | 2 Comments

Happiness and Hitting Reset

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Michael Kane

Happiness and Hitting Reset

What’s so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you’re constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that. ~ Billy Crystal

Occasionally, even if things are going ok you can end up out of sync. That’s where I found myself this past week. My new job had started out insanely busy but I’d finally got into a routine and was feeling comfortable. My fitness goals were moving in a positive direction, I’ve recently lost 17 pounds although I’m still nursing a fairly serious shoulder injury. My blood pressure is pack into an acceptable range and my blood sugar is improving, I’ve even gotten a little hiking in over the last two weeks. So all in all things were good.

Last week I was out for a conference and out of my routines. I found a decent pizza place and since there is no good pizza where I live I indulged two nights while away. Sleep is always iffy in a hotel and there was a lot of learning at the conference. The conference was informative but was also an opportunity for me to reconnect with some old colleagues as well as reconnecting with a few I didn’t expect to see. There was also some bad news, a person I really liked passed away last week. We’d worked together for a few years, he was one of my favorite adjunct faculty and I have missed his smile, his greetings and our conversations.

So I found myself at the end of the week feeling disconnected. The weekend was hectic with a college event on Friday night and a Relay for Life Event, I typically do a late night slot for my hour walk and this year was no exception.

So with my eating and sleep patterns wrecked and feeling just a bit out of sorts I decided to hit the reset button. I slept in a bit, did my Sunday chores around the house, took a little walk and completed a little DIY home project to take care of a problem with my hot water. My favorite football team won big tonight, I’ve written down some goals I needed to solidify and I sit here at the end of the weekend and am appropriately tired, my chores are done and I’m ready to get rolling again. Back to it on Monday morning, keep moving forward, keep making things better, keep trying to be a happier person and always remembering to have a little fun and happy days my friends ~ Rev Kane

Coming to the End of the Road

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Michael Kane

Coming to the End of the Road

From the end spring new beginnings ~ Pliny the Elder

Well I am in the middle of my ninth month on the road. Job applications are being submitted, hopefully soon, I’ll start interviewing for jobs. The very first step is to leave the east and head for California. I’ll get to see a couple of friends on the drive as I head west and will even spend St. Patrick’s Day in Las Vegas.

It’s been a good run, and the one thing that always happens when I step out of working is that time slows down. Hiking across Scotland seems like ages ago, not just eight months. This trip has been a wondering sort of journey from Scotland, across Spain and Portugal, down into Morocco. A couple of months in Mexico, down to the gulf in Alabama, back up into the damn snow in New York and now finally, back to California.

I’ve made a couple of new friends, checked off a few items on my bucket list, took a couple of good pictures, am close to having my next book edited and spent time with a lot of people I don’t see often enough.

Tonight my oldest niece even baked me a going away cake, with a little message, see you later alligator. It was a very tasty cake and made for a very happy day. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged adventure, alabama, blog, morocco, photography, Portugal, rev kane, scotland, spain, travel | 1 Comment

Happiness and finding your bliss

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Michael Kane

Happiness and finding your bliss

The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage ~ Carrie Jones

I know that today’s title seems a little odd, if you’ve found your bliss you should be happy right? In fact I believe you would be, and we’ve talked here on many occasions about ways in which you can work toward doing that very thing. In a perfect world we all would have the time to experiment, meditate and figure out what drives our passion. However most of us don’t live in that perfect world, we live in a less than perfect place. If we could all go back in time I’m sure we’d do things different in our younger years, take our time, experiment and travel more, delay the encumbrances and responsibilities of our lives just a bit longer. But we didn’t, so now what do we do?

For many of us our work is just that, work, it’s not our passion or our dream job, it’s just a way to make a living. Not that it’s necessarily a bad job, I’m sure there are elements of your job that you like and if it was truly awful you would find a way to change. So the trick of it is how to we begin to find that special thing we want to do in our life while still earning a living, taking care of family and our other responsibilities. The answer of course is the same as to the question of how to eat an elephant, you take small bites and keep on eating.

The secret is first to figure out what it is that you could do that would truly make you happy. Sounds easy doesn’t it? In fact I think this is the hardest part, because what it takes to accomplish this is giving yourself the space and time to think/meditate on the idea. Some of us are list makers, some of us are dreamers, everyone has their own way of figuring things out. What most of us don’t have is the time to do it.

So step 1, can you carve out a few minutes every day to contemplate the idea, plan to take a weekend and make a retreat focused on answering this question. Small bites and keep on eating. The next two parts are easier, once you’ve identified what work will make you happy, it’s a just a matter of planning, action, time and patience. Again, not easy, but certainly accomplishable and my friends believe me, you can do it.

On the way to the new destination in your life, don’t forget to smell the roses along the way and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged bliss, career, happiness, happy, inspiration, life, meditate, work | Leave a comment

Happiness and Guilty Pleasures

Posted on March 8, 2019 by Michael Kane

Happiness and Guilty Pleasures

If no tourists came, we’d still have Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is a state of mind. ~ Ed Muniz

So tonight I guest posted for my longtime friend LeAnne on her fabulous Good for Spooning Blog, she’s doing Lent serious about Guilty Pleasures. Give it a read and check out her blog, it’s centered around food and quite fabulous. Have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Posted in Random Happiness | Tagged food, guilty pleasures, happiness, las vegas, Mardi Gras, new orleans, NOLA | Leave a comment

A Beautiful Snow Day

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Michael Kane

A Beautiful Snow Day

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted ~ Mae West

I grew up in upstate New York and when I was kid I lived on a block with a lot of kids. We also in some of the years of my youth got massive snowfalls. This had a lot of advantages. First, I would hustle and shovel sidewalks, the bigger the snow the better the cash. It was not uncommon in the mid-seventies as a ten year-old kid to make $20 or $30 in a morning. You’d make more but, we were in a middle class neighborhood and after shoveling your own, everyone was out trying to make money. So by noon, we had all made the cash we could make, had eaten a lunch we’d bought with our own cash and were ready to play.

As kids we made snow forts and massive tunnel complexes, we built defenses to hide behind for the inevitable five or six snowball wars that would break out during the day. We also, we were admittedly juvenile delinquents, throwing snowballs at trucks and cars. Coming through our neighborhood on a snowy day was like running a machine gun gauntlet in World War II albeit with less serious consequences. While I have clear memories of being chased and even one time caught, I never remember us actually causing a heart attack or an accident. Although we certainly provided some adrenaline bursts for drivers.

The older I got the less fond my snow memories become. Once you’re driving and you own a car and you actually care what your clothes look like winter and especially the transition to spring (mud season) start to lose their charms. Winter becomes more about trying not to crash your car, I failed once really spectacularly, and trying to keep your work clothes clean and dry. The snowball fights, forts and tunnel times have been left behind. There were a couple of good things to winter when I was older, skating and hockey as well as snow sculpting contests in college. But they were certainly outweighed by the work and annoyance of winter and while in the Adirondacks the unbelievable number of sub-zero winter days.

So by time I’d finished my undergraduate degree I made the following, the criteria for my choice of schools for my masters degree. No snow, not cold, has an ecology program. Which is how I ended up at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU). Granted, not the most extensive or brightest set of criteria but I got lucky, EKU turned out to be a really perfect place for me to get my masters. Of course it snowed my first semester there. I have vowed never to live in the snow again. I love the way it snows in California, only up in the mountains, I can drive up, play in it and leave it behind.

This week we got the third snowstorm since I’ve been back in NY staying with my sister’s family. The last two didn’t have great snow but this storm was awesome. Good packing snow and a sunny day in the low thirties afterward, so I after I helped my brother-in-law get the placed shoveled and plowed out I decided to play. It was really great, a throwback to happy snowdays in my youth, without the snowball fights unfortunately, I was really good in those. But I decided to show my stay in the house and stare at an IPod all day nieces and nephews what you can do with some good snow.

So I built a snowman and put him in snow jail:

Really should have made those Daleks

Then I did a little snow sculpture to thank my sister’s family for putting me up in between my travels this past year:

So just a nice little post tonight, a little nostalgia and a couple of pictures, have a happy day my friends, I did. ~ Rev Kane

Addendum: Decided to color my creations today.

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged happiness, snow, snow day, snow sculpture, snowday, snowman, winter, winter wonderland | 2 Comments

Movie Review: Alita Battle Angel

Posted on March 5, 2019 by Michael Kane

Movie Review: Alita Battle Angel

“Science, in all its greatness, is still subject to human creativity. It starts the first moment a child tries to reach up and grab at the clouds. Soon, the child learns that his own hands cannot reach the sky, but his hands are not the limit of his potential. For the human brain observes, considers, understands, and adapts. Locked within the mind is infinite possibility.” ~ Yukito Kishiro (author of Battle Angel Alita)

So I saw the ads and trailer for Alita Battle Angel and thought it might be worth checking out, Hollywood is putting out so few good big screen movies these days I thought this one might be fun on the big screen. Not 3D mind you, I really don’t like it and rarely do it. I was on the fence when I read a quick piece about how the producers and director really wanted to put people squarely in the uncanny valley with the main CGI character, Alita. For those not familiar with the term, the uncanny valley, it is the feeling of being creeped out by something that gets a little too close to being real, without actually being real. The dichotomy ends up creeping people out and it has been a problem with utilizing CGI humans in a film.

So that clinched it, big screen, action, science fiction and purposely trying to be creeped out, I was in. I kept my expectations low, I expected a basic science fiction, underdog takes on the big guy film and no spoiler but that’s exactly what I got. I saw some people online complaining that since you needed to background reading to understand the film they were out. Well, those folks either didn’t actually see the film or are really stupid, you’ll have no problem following the plot or discovering the background necessary as it unfolds the way the writers intended.

Although the CGI had no creep out effect at all it was really impressive right from the first shot. The first time the camera goes in to really look at Alita, I became instantly impressed with how far the digital artists have advanced CGI techniques. Alita looks so close to real that as the movie progresses, as she’s being displayed next to live actors, you really forget she’s a CGI.

So all in all, it’s a cool fun big screen movie, just don’t go to Crossgates Cinema in NY, it was bloody $13.70 for a matinée. Utterly ridiculous pricing and probably explains why quite happily I had the theater to myself.