Low nutritional value in a slice of post

A list of things you might not know about me.

Spoiler: There are no really exciting bullets below, I am not responsible for the time you feel you could have better spent doing something constructive. All risk is assumed by the person electing to continue reading.

• I currently have six cats: Two Maine Coons (classic tabby and a tuxedo smoke), one Ragdoll, and three short-haired rescues. Their names, in order are: Fennekin, Wraith, Pixel, Rogue, Goblin and Banshee. With the exception of Pixel, we named them after fantasy monsters and (Rogue), classes. Pixel is named after the cat in Heinlein’s “Cat That Walks Through Walls” (plus he has an atypical “glitch” marking on his nose). I won’t lie, Pixel is my favorite, with Fennekin and Wraith close behind. The rescues are the troublemakers, so I find myself irritated by their antics more than I care to admit.
• I grew up in Minneapolis and have lived in the metro area for most of my life. Seattle is my home-away-from-home and I lived there for a short spell back in the 90s. If I could go back to the Seattle of the 80s and 90s, I would probably do that with few regrets but the city has lost some of that smaller-metro feeling and often feels a little too busy when I have visited since I left. That said, Minneapolis/Saint Paul has gotten to feel too big as well and I have considered what it would be like to move a bit further out and I like the idea. The conveniences of inner-city living are not as important to me as they were back even in my 30s.
• Speaking of age, I am in my mid-fifties. It still doesn’t seem real that I somehow made it this far, and yet… here I am. I was voted to be most likely dead by the 10-year reunion. Someone lost money on that deadpool (including yours truly).
• My approach towards my spiritual sense is that of an animist and influenced by the philosophies of Zen and Taoism. I do not consider myself a pagan, although I have spent significant amounts of time studying wicca, druidism and various pagan subcultures. Nor do I claim to be a “shaman” (however named), a title that I feel is mostly misappropriated by people who have not earned that title, nor truly understand what that title means.
• I don’t practice magic or ritual these days. I find the first to be of questionable ethics, no matter how employed; the second I find to be unnecessary for my needs. The closest I come to either is that I practice a modified analogue to vision questing and I still practice both active and sitting meditation — often ad hoc rather than as a daily practice. I don’t worship gods or goddesses, although I recognize The Morrigan (in all of Their aspects) as my patron. I am guided by spirits. Most frequently appearing are Raven and Crow. Stone and tree spirits are frequent visitors in my life as well, but I have been guided by many more than those listed above. I do not consider them totems or power-animals.
• I have three daughters, the eldest of which is a newly-minted adult, the youngest are twins. According to DNA, they are identical twins, but I can tell the difference and not just because one wears glasses and the other does not. The twins have distinct personalities and appearances. That was an intentional decision. All three young women have uncommon to rare names, but I am often surprised when they are not as uncommon or rare as I thought. They are not modern-constructions for names, just names that have fallen out of popularity. Siobhan was considered for the eldest by way of example. Vivienne was considered for one of the twins by way of another example.
• I am an alcoholic with sixteen years of sobriety. I also quit smoking shortly after drinking and, of the two, I am more likely to fall off the wagon when it comes to cigarettes. I miss smoking something terrible.
• I used to be a licensed minister. Because I am unlikely to be in good standing with the body that granted me the credentials, I am likely no longer able to perform officiating duties. When I tried to get back in their good graces after twenty years of being out of contact, my request for confirmation of reinstatement was ignored. Not denied… ignored. Which is fine, as I don’t have plans to return to those duties any time in the foreseeable future. I do miss having some friends in an Irish band call me out during their local shows as “The Good Reverend, Michael Raven” between songs which was often good for a few free rounds accompanied by cheers from the drunken attendees. But they are no longer a band and I don’t drink anymore, so there is that.
• I have been to most of the States with the exception of the American Southwest (including California), upper New England and Alaska. Most of it was via auto as pre-teen and teenager. A handful of “visits” were only in airports, but I don’t see why those wouldn’t count. I spent most of my summers until I was seventeen visiting relatives or working on a relative’s cattle ranch (Black Angus before it was cool). I’ve assisted with branding and the castrations required, although I didn’t do either myself. They looked at me looking green in the gills, laughed and didn’t bother to ask me to do the dirty work. Mostly, I stacked hay bales and herded sheep with the resident blue heeler.
• My ancestry is about as mixed as you can conceivable imagine. As recently noted in a post, there is one area of mystery with respect to my maternal grandfather, whom I suspect, but cannot currently prove, was Sámi. My mothers DNA shows up as roughly 25% Sámi under several models, and the circumstantial evidence points in the direction of the nomadic reindeer herders, but with scant hard evidence. I may never know. The rest is from all over Europe — there are few places that I cannot claim are part of my heritage. My father’s grandfather was from a tiny village in the Carpathians in what is now the Slovak Republic. His grandfather was related to the Worhol family, so I am tangentially related to Andy Worhol, which is about as close as I come to having royal blood on that side of the family. On my mother’s side, we were at least part of a Scottish lowland clan, possibly related to a lord whose family was transported as a criminal to Ireland (with lands seized by the crown) for being accused of being involved in a plot against the king. Interestingly, recent evidence shows that it might have been a false accusation by a rival lord. I guess everyone might be related to some royalty at some point, even if they ended up branded as criminals. So it goes.
• My job is in the area of science and engineering, working for an engineering firm that specializes in remediation and assessment of environmental messes. Sometimes we are involved in preventing the messes before they happen. I see a lot of data and I get to say if it is “good” or “bad” data, upon which decisions are made. Our primary work lately seems to be centered around PFAS, those ubiquitous “forever chemicals”. And when I say they are ubiquitous, I mean they are everywhere. Polar bears, far from society have these chemicals in their blood stream. You do too.
• As far as science goes, I am the oddball there too. I often drive people crazy by questioning science. Alternately, I downplay the significance of minor differences between measurements unless the scale is an order of magnitude or more. And sometimes then, I still try to pack down folks trying to make a big deal out of the numbers they use. I actually use statistics (as opposed to tossing them out to support an argument), so I understand some of the limitations inherent in any kind of measurements being made in the name of science.

Sorry, there is five to ten minutes of your life that you’ll never get back. 😆

I wish there was something juicier in the contents, but I’m pretty boring as far as it goes.