Pumpkin Spice Madness

I don’t know who to blame anymore, but the whole “pumpkin spice phenomena” has gotten way out of control!  I remember as a kid, and into adulthood, how much I loved pumpkin pie. I too remember anxiously waiting every year for the release of pumpkin ice cream, which of course is only available for a limited time. It was truly something to look forward to. It was a part of my fall rituals. In fact, it was a part of me. I used to complain as to why pumpkin desserts were only made and offered in restaurants during the fall. Besides, if desserts are based solely on what’s in season, this must mean it’s always chocolate season, right? Anyway, I would often ask servers during the “off season” (if you will)… “why no pumpkin desserts?”  This would usually be answered with the response of…“oh, it isn’t pumpkin season.” To my knowledge most pumpkin desserts are made from puree that comes out of a can, which means you can get it all year long!  I don’t know who they think they are fooling with the whole, “it isn’t pumpkin season” routine, but believe me, it’s a sham! These days however, things have certainly changed. Once the calendar hits September, it officially becomes “pumpkin spice season.” And not just pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks either, NOOO…it’s pumpkin spice EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME! I see every insane pumpkin spice flavored or scented item in every single store I walk into this time of year. O.K., I can see the flavored coffee creamers, and maybe donuts and what have you, and I’m sucker for a pumpkin spiced scented candle this time of year, as it does set that certain mood of fall. But pumpkin spiced; hot chocolate, pop corn, pudding, moon pies, trail mix, cocktail syrup, energy bars, yogurt pretzels and butter spread? Yes, I said butter spread. Oh and don’t forget about “man’s best friend.” Because now we have pumpkin spice dog treats and the new Busch (the beer maker) Pumpkin Spice Dog Brew, an alcohol-free drink for dogs made with pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and water…because of course your dog knows it’s autumn. But not to be outdone, there are now some ridiculous, non edible things on the market we can buy, like pumpkin spice body wash, and oh, where would humanity be without (drum roll please) cinnamon pumpkin spice scented garbage bags! That’s right, there’s nothing better to disguise the scent of your kitchen garbage, than that hint of cinnamon and cloves. Gaaah!!!

At this point in time, I would like to, and in the immortal words of the great baseball legend, Yogi Berra... "thank everyone who made this day necessary."  So, for all of you who have ruined a special time of year with your over indulgence and over saturation of pumpkin spice anything and everything, “thanks.” Thanks for destroying a time of year that I really used to look forward to.  Thanks for destroying a flavor that used to be my favorite.  And most importantly, a big “THANK YOU” for bringing to the market something that I am sure we probably couldn’t live without.  And that something is... pumpkin spice avocado oil caviar (yes, it’s a real thing). 😒

As always, thanks for reading my blog, and I’ll see you in the groves…unless of course I go to town to get some new pumpkin spice tires for my tractor. 

Happy Fall,🍂

-Farmer Tony

 

Abort Mission (for now)

 

Since time began humans have looked up to the heavens and wondered. Wondered what those shinny white points of light were that they could only see at night. We wondered if there were other forms of life out there in the vastness of space. Skip ahead thousands of years, and we were still wondering. We were curious enough around the world, that in the modern age we became engaged in what was to be called a “space race” with rival countries to see who could build rockets fast enough and strong enough to take us humans into space first. And of course in 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step on the moon, stirring the imagination of humanity, that we would someday live and travel further into space. Well since that fateful day in the Sea of Tranquility, we have been eager to continue our quest to conquer space. Lofty goals are planned, even now to someday put a space station on the Moon as a stopping point, on our way to eventually head on over to Mars! Could it really happen? With enough time, ingenuity and of course money, I believe it will happen probably sooner rather than later. There are certainly enough world space agencies like our NASA, along with enough private companies now willing to spend the money and “brainpower” to make it happen.  However, as our goals of conquering space continue to broaden, I look around and feel like we are, in some odd way, conquering ourselves into some sort of weird submission. Instead of thriving, sometimes my skepticism makes it feel like we are merely surviving. Our society at times feels more like “Planet of The Apes,” rather than  a society living in the 21^st century, ready to move on to distance planets. I don’t think we are quite ready to take our “circus” of humanity traveling just yet for other worlds to see. We can’t even have a couple hundred people on an airplane these days without somebody physically fighting with the flight crew because they are denied a gin and tonic before takeoff! Or causing a ruckus because they were asked to use the lavatory closest to their seat!  Seriously? We’re working on spacecraft powerful enough to move us into orbits of other planets, when almost weekly, we see in the news, that we still haven’t quite “mastered” train rail technology that was created literally hundreds of years ago! It seems like train derailments in our country are now en vogue and happening at an alarming rate. It doesn’t really matter to me how or why it’s happening, but the point is, after hundreds of years, we should have this technology “down” by now. Lack of food and clean drinking water seems to still be a big issue around the world, and with a hungry global population that continues to grow at (last count) 2.6 people per second, I’m not seeing any solutions happening for all these new Earthlings anytime soon.  And don’t even get me started with some of the things we do globally to our oceans! Hmmm…war still seems to be bit of a sticking point to the inhabitants in our world. With either ongoing wars, or certainly the threat of war by countries around the globe still staring millions of people in the face on a daily basis, I am not so sure beings living on other planets are quite ready for our brand of existence. Taking our show on the “interplanetary road” doesn’t quite seem like the right thing to do just yet. I believe humanity still needs a little more time in the oven to cook before we go knocking on our extraterrestrial neighbors’ door to “tell them the good news.”  Don’t get me wrong, I find the idea of space exploration as exciting as the next nerd, and images we see from the James Webb Telescope are indeed mind blowing. Yes, “the truth is out there,” and there are things flying around that we have yet to fully understand, and absolutely, Captain, James T. Kirk may have been correct with his declaration of “space (being) the final frontier,” but maybe... just not for us…not yet anyway.

Thank you for reading and I’ll see you in the groves.

Farmer Tony

Human Error

For as long as humans have been around, we’ve made mistakes. Before the term “human error” existed we used to simply point fingers at the sky and blame the gods for our misfortune. Later the more “perfect” amongst us would conveniently force blame onto witches, warlocks and sometimes even voodoo hexes for our mistakes.  Eventually in 1949, we got help in the blame game from Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer, who, while working on an Air Force project, uttered the words… "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it!” Capt. Murphy spoke these words while cursing a technician responsible for wiring a transducer wrong, thus ushering in the term “Murphy’s Law” into our lexicon. So at least from that point on, we had this “law” we could point to in order to take a little bit of the sting away from our mistakes. But eventually as we sought more help in dealing with our “humanness,” we learned that it was O.K. to take the blame for being human, and that mistakes were merely a part of the human experience. Once we finally learned it was perfectly acceptable to call ourselves out for our mistakes, we decided to look in the mirror and call them “human errors.” Except of course for the bank, they still won’t take any responsibility. Because when the bank makes an error on your account, they call it a “keystroke error.” Good thing those key strokes happen all by themselves, or someone would have to take the blame for cashing my $50 check to my credit card issuer for $500 (a true story)!  Anyway, hopefully we’ve learned a few things after some of the bigger man made problems due to “human error,” that we created for ourselves. The creation of Africanized Honey Bees kind of comes to mind when I look at the list of human blunders.  That was a mistake that should have never happened. These days we grapple with people blaming us humans with “man made global warming” or “human caused climate change” or whatever you want to call it. I’m not saying we did or didn’t cause it, all I am saying is that there is plenty of blame going around on this one.  But one of the more strange “human” things that we get blamed for from time to time is the phenomena known as “spontaneous human combustion.” That’s when, for the lack of a better explanation, humans simply bursts into flames for no real reason. Who is really to blame for that one?  O.K. fine, let’s just say for the sake of this blog that it really happens, but is it really our fault, is it a result of human error?  You never hear about anyone blaming sharks or giraffes for suddenly catching on fire or what should be known as “spontaneous animal combustion.” And no, the ending of the movie “Jaws” doesn’t really count. Besides, blame it on the human (Chief Brody), he was the one who blew up the shark! But I digress.  As we move forward, I am glad we can now blame ourselves for our mistakes. I think we’ve kind of grown up as humans and are now in the “golden age” (if you will) of self blame for our many human errors.  We are now mature enough to say “my bad” when you forget the milk at the store, or forget to close the door behind you. But soon, I fear that we will once again start to shift blame back away from humans. As we see the “rise of the machines,” more and more I hear people blame computers and machines for mistakes. “My stupid phone messed up.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that one. Or “there must be something wrong with my computer.” Oh sure…be like the bank and blame some nebulous “key stroke error” on something that you more than likely did wrong yourself.

 What I don’t fully understand is our aversion to being wrong and making mistakes. We know it’s going to happen.  Think about it, we’ve all heard the sayings, “everybody makes mistakes” and “to error is human.” In fact, some of us are so comfortable with it, that we even know when in the very near future we are going to make mistakes. We even warn people around us that a mistake might be coming.  How many times have you said to someone in a conversation…”I could be wrong, but isn’t that (fill in the blanks).  Or my favorite, after maybe too many drinks, and we become a little more ambitious, we often tell ourselves (and sometimes we even say it out loud not meaning to)…”I’m probably going to regret this, but I’m going to…” which usually leads to a “my bad,” or “I am so, so sorry about last night.” Yes, we do make mistakes, all of us. No matter, because deep inside we all have the power to try and help fix some of what we did wrong. It may not fix everything, but we can always say “I’m sorry,” and “I forgive you.” Both of those things go a long way, and that’s what makes us human.

Thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day to read my blog. And if you clicked on it by mistake, that’s ok. I know, it was probably just, you know… “human error.”

I’ll see you in the groves.

-Farmer TOny

 

Go Team!

 These days in the world of “corporate speak,” there are truly some buzz words that are seriously more annoying than others.  True, they have helped those who have became “empowered” by “leveraging” their position in the conference room with their new found verbiage to articulate the company’s “corporate values.” However, there is one word in particular that I would like to bring to a “hard stop.” And that word would be the word with no letter “i” in it.  Of course that word could only be…“team.” “Team goals,” “team trust,” and of course “team building,” are just a few uses of the dreaded “t” word. Yes, it is indeed important to work well along side your co-workers and to share common goals within the “corporate structure,” however I don’t believe that every company with more than one employee needs to call themselves “team.”  In order to “drill down” for the reasons for my rant here, you would have to first “pivot” the discussion to a recent e-mail I received from one of the banks I do business with. My bank “reached out” via e-mail regarding a safe deposit box that I never really used, or even thought about for that matter. I think years ago, at the time when I opened the account, the deposit box was free for new account holders.  And since I own nothing of real value that needs to be kept in a deposit box, well, I agree with the bank in thinking, it’s probably time to close it down.  So as I “circle back” to the reason why the e-mail bothered me, I think it’s safe to say that my bank,  or any other bank for that matter, really doesn’t need to end their  e-mail with the words…”Thank you, Safe Deposit Box Team.” Really, my bank has a safe deposit box team? I guess that in the business world these days it has become increasingly necessary for companies to present a; “Star Trek-Borg-like,” united, we all get together and roast weenies on the weekends together, kind of front, all in the name of showing unity…or something  to that effect.  And  I’m also pretty sure “focus groups” and corporate consultants  alike all feel that from an image standpoint, calling everyone who works in any one particular group a “team” is, well, good for morale and that oh so “warm and fuzzy” feeling you get when you no longer feel alone within the “corporate construct.” However, for me, I find the term to be just a little overused. A Safe Deposit Box “Team” at my bank? Fine, if you have to call them that, O.K., whatever.  After all, it is a big chain bank with lots of safe deposit boxes that need to be managed to one degree or another I suppose.  And I am sure that managing all those boxes properly is all a part of the company’s “best practice” policies.  However, when I think of a “team,” my mind goes to the images of uniformed people playing sporting games for the glory of winning, and having fun. And if you play well enough to make it professionally, well then, one of those aforementioned safe deposit boxes would probably come in handy.  But I digress.

 You now find team members everywhere you look these days…car sales and marketing team members, research and development team members, and (for better or for worse) IRS team members.  Heck, even McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Wendy’s have ”team members” these days.  And believe me; I am in no way disparaging anyone working in fast food. Think about it, when you add up everyone employed in the fast food industry, it s somewhere in the neighborhood of over 5 MILLION people in the U.S. alone (yes, I looked it up)!  That is indeed quite the workforce, but a team?  It’s all a little too much for my overloaded brain to handle.  I guess in the professional world, one can say, “I don’t have the bandwidth” to deal with it. Sure, I know that my little blog post here will probably do little to “move the needle” on how people feel about the overworked use of “team,” and too, I realize that I am also probably trying to “boil the ocean,” here in an effort to get people to stop using it as much.  So, in the end, I am pretty sure that this whole tirade here is probably all for not, and just a long waste of tangled words, but I had to try. And no matter how hard I do try, I suppose I just need to resign myself in knowing that everyone working today is just going to be known as being on a team in one form or another.  After all,  as everyone is so fond of saying these days…”it is what it is.” Oh well.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the groves with my “team”…um, scratch that, I mean, with my guys!

-Farmer Tony

 

New Year, New You

I don’t know about you, but so far this New Year, I keep seeing the advertising message… “New Year, New You!” So by my inference, advertisers are assuming that the previous year brought out all my flaws and a “new me” is in order. Sure, it was a COVID year, I will give the advertisers that much, and hopefully like the commercials promise, I will finally be able to lose a few pounds, grow (or buy) more hair, work out more often in order to finally gain that “lean muscle mass” I keep hearing about, and if the ads are right, even learn to prepare well balanced meals. And if that isn’t enough of a “new me”, then maybe a few sessions with a so-called “celebrity lifestyle coach” might just be what the doctor ordered. But of course, all of these plans to create a “new you” or “new me” (however you want to look at it), seems to be the same, tired, and in some cases, expensive resolutions that we hear about every New Year’s.  Yes, I know, we all say the same thing to ourselves; “this is my year,” or “this year is going to be different,” or “this time I am going to make it happen!” And being that we are still in January, I support anyone who is really trying to make all the right positive changes! I say “GO! Become the best version of yourself that you can.” See? I know how to be supportive.  But, now skip ahead to around March or so, and for the majority of people, the Fitbit watch is still on the dresser, the fitness tracker app on your phone has gone into permanent “sleep mode,” you haven’t been to the gym in a while, you’re back at Starbucks spending that money you promised to save, and your planner probably has some blank pages where you missed writing in an appointment or two. Hey, it happens. It’s called “LIFE”. So maybe the “New ‘22” by mid-year starts to look a lot like the last few years of your life. This doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you human.  We are all wired to be creatures of habit.  And like any good (or bad) habit, it usually takes a while for repetitive actions to become a habit. I think once you let that “sink in” you’ll be a better person for it. Wait! There’s a positive change right there! See? You’re already on your way to this “new you” and it (hopefully) didn’t cost you a dime! Look, can we all be better in some ways? I think so. But guilt from your New Year’s resolutions shouldn’t be what brings you down. You want to be a real success story? It doesn’t have to cost you large sums of money, a lot of hardship, deprivation,  or even a membership to some place that promises that you will become a “whole new you.” Nope, simplicity is the key to starting out any new project. So keep it simple!  Want more exercise?  Walking around the block or around a park is still free (to the best of my knowledge). Want to eat better?  You don’t need to buy fancy, expensive meal kits. The grocery store has everything you need, and you might want to check out the produce section too.  Want to save money? Maybe you don’t really need all those entertainment streaming services, do you?  C’mon, you get the point. Besides, it really doesn’t take someone else or a book to tell you how to de-clutter your home or garage.   Look, if you want this New Year to be better and different, try the simple stuff first. Be kind, considerate, respectful, and most important, be yourself.  Then, maybe you will find that with a few small “tweaks” you’re really not so bad after all. I like you.

Thanks for reading.

I’ll see you in the groves…jogging… until maybe about March of course.

Happy New Year!

-Tony