After 34 years in the classroom and lab teaching biology, I'm ready to get back to traveling and camping and hiking. It's been too long of a break. I miss the outdoors and you can follow my wanderings on this blog.
This will be short. Yesterday afternoon my diarrhea came back with a vengeance. In an hour’s time I must have had six very explosive episodes. I was concerned enough I called Chris and asked her to check on me later that night before she goes to bed. What I didn’t realize was my phone shuts off at 9 pm and I forgot to set the phone to allow certain people to reach me after 9. She walked over and rang the doorbell to make sure I was OK. I felt so badly about that. I’ve changed my phone notifications.
I intend to lie low and try to get over this. I’m pretty weak but I have plenty of Gatorade and apple sauce. I’ll order some bananas and I have bread and tea for the BRAT diet. My biggest problem now is I constantly am passing gas and belching. The belches don’t taste very good. If I drink anything, I can hear it as it winds its way through my stomach, my small intestines and my large intestine and out the end. Try getting some sleep hearing that all night.
I very reluctantly dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 this morning. After micturating and turning the computer on, I checked my phone for the day’s forecast. It showed rain occurring at the very moment I checked. I listened carefully and didn’t hear any rain. I decided to go look out the window and the streets were dry. That tilted me to do my morning walk. I had just put my boots on when there was a bolt of lightning, a crash of thunder, and a downpour. No morning walk.
I’m not sure what’s going on this morning but I’m kinda blah. I don’t feel badly but I also don’t feel great. I went to bed last night at 10 and got almost 8 hours of sleep so that’s not a problem. My back is slightly better today after the yoga exercises yesterday so I hope to continue them – just not today. Today I need to clean the pool filter, check the pool chemicals, rake leaves, wash down the patio and pool deck (iguana poop) and kill weeds. That’s enough exercise for today. I’ll be sure to wear the back brace.
Jim and Holley picked me up last night and we went to Flanigans. We all three ordered a full rack of their “famous” ribs with the idea of taking some home for lunch or dinner today. Truth be told, we ate only a few of the ribs and it looks like we might get three meals out of the leftovers. I have to agree with Jim and Holley that my Flanigans (just down the street from me) is the best and their ribs are the best of any barbecue place in town.
I did my morning chores. I raked leaves, cleaned the pool filter, checked chemicals in the pool, hosed off the patio and pool deck and sprayed for weeds. It wiped me out. I even took breaks during the various tasks. The back brace did help.
I had no sooner finished than we were hit with another downpour. Seems I timed it perfectly in between thunderstorms. For some reason, we seem to be getting a lot of lightning strikes and the accompanying booms in August. Pity the golfers with metal cleats on their shoes and an iron club in their hand.
Mea culpa. I was waxing too poetically on the blog about remembering when I saw a particular episode of history. I can now firmly say I did not see Nixon’s “Checkers” speech live. I was all of 3 or 4 years old. Sometimes I get caught up in the moment.
Ugh! Getting out of bed at 6:15 to do my morning walk was a real effort. I stayed up last night until midnight. It was movie night and I decided after that was finished to do some reading. In any case, I managed 1.19 miles – let’s call it 2. I confess to be dragging by the time I made it back to the house.
After my second breakfast, emptying the dishwasher, reloading the dishwasher and making the bed, I did 18 minutes of yoga stretches. My back is really bothering me. I wore the brace after my walk and took it off for yoga. The real pain comes when I lie flat on my back or when I roll over to either side.
Movie night was Tea with Mussolini, released in 1999 and directed by Franco Zeffirelli with an Allstar cast: Cher, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, and Lily Tomlin. English and American expats are being held in Mussolini’s Italy. Maggie Smith play Lady Hester Random, the wife of the former ambassador to Italy. After the group is roughed up by Black Shirts, a group led by Lady Hester protest to Mussolini and are served tea. Mussolini promises them there is nothing to fear. Of course, there is. Cher plays a great role and I forget sometimes how great an actress Joan Plowright is.
On thing I caught that was interesting is the Scorpioni(The name for the group of expats) are listening to the radio about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and later the announcer states Italy has declared war of the U.S. and Britain because of Pearl Harbor. Actually, the U.S. declared war on Japan. Later, Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S.
The movie is well worth watching for the star power alone but it has a comedic/dramatic tale to relate. Tucker, Chris and I had a good time.
The weather forecast is for thunderstorms and rain. Looks like a “read a book” day for me. I’m waiting for the 27th of August so I can get back in the pool. The steristrips are still in place and haven’t decided to release yet. I may start tugging on them around the edges to urge them to fall off.
That’s all from Flamingo Park neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale. Stay tuned!
I was awake by 6 and decided I needed to get my butt out of bed and do my morning walk. I’ve been hesitant for a while and I think indolence took over and kept me unmotivated the past week. I made the first morning walk since August 1st today and managed to do 0.9 miles. I could possibly have made a little more distance but discretion is the better part of valor – or so it is said.
My Tootsie Roll order showed up at the doorstep yesterday. I was a little taken aback by the size of the bags.
I misstated when I said 750 in each bag. What I didn’t realize when I ordered these is they are Party Size.
The Part Size is definitely smaller than the Mini size. I guess I’ll just have to eat twice as many. I wonder how the reception and nurses at the Cancer Center will react to the smaller size?
I used to be a big fan of political conventions. I would watch both Democratic and Republican. I remember the 1968 conventions – the fiasco of the Democratic in Chicago and then the Miami Beach Republican one where there were riots in Overtown. It was a contentious year. Twenty years ago, I remember watching the Democratic convention and heard this unknown speaker named Barrack Obama make a speech of a lifetime. After he got through speaking, I thought “He’s gonna be President one day.”
The one thing I still like to watch are the roll call votes of the states. I confess not watching the Republican convention this year and have only caught glimpses of the Democratic convention but I did watch the majority of the roll call vote last night. I enjoy how the states brag on their famous personalities and their sayings about their state. I never understood why New Jersey was called the Garden State until many years later when it dawned on me most of New Jersey in the west is farm land. I was disappointed Idaho didn’t acknowledge they were the gem state last night. Tradition has its place!
The roll calls are quite educational. You learn what state personalities are from (even if they don’t claim the state). You see President want-a-be’s announcing the delegate totals. Everyone who answers the roll call knows what they want to say and have rehearsed it ad infinitum and then they get carried away in the moment and still screw it up.
These days, conventions are mostly boring. I haven’t watched them in years and this year is an anomaly for me. Give me the conventions of 1968 and prior when there was back room dealing and sniping and back stabbing. It made for better television. Of course, that could be due to Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. Today’s television hosts aren’t quite the same. Does anyone of a certain age really think John Kennedy wanted Lyndon Johnson on the ticket? He needed Texas.
It’s the same with the debates. Everything else kinda of pales to the Nixon-Kennedy debate. I watched that on black and white tv (it was recorded in black and white so that’s all you ever see). Who can forget the riveting topic of Query and Matsu at that debate?
I see the instant analysts praised the speeches last night. I didn’t hear any but I miss great speeches.
I watched live as Martin Luther King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech and later his “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech before his assassination. I saw Bobby Kennedy’s speech to a restless crowd after Martin Luther King’s death and how he calmed the crowd and turned it from angry to pensive. To really date me, I remember Nixon’s “Checker’s” speech.
I also remember Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican convention. You didn’t have to like his speech to realize it was a great oration. I still listen to recordings of Winston Churchill’s “We will fight them on the beaches…”or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “a date which will live in infamy.” I’ll be curious as to how well Kamala Harris does. I probably will not watch it – remember, conventions are boring – but when she appeared the first night of the convention, I think she was a little taken aback by the size of the crowd and she didn’t quite know how to play to it.
I like to think the greatest speech in American history was William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech at the 1896 Democratic convention. And no, I did not hear him make that speech. He spoke without any amplification to a packed crowd. He simply projected his voice over the crowd. He wasn’t even running for President but his speech was so powerful, the convention ditched the announced candidates and nominated him. That’s a powerful speech. He was for free silver as currency and not basing the U.S. dollar on the gold standard. His most famous line ended his speech with “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
It’s primary day in Florida. I hope everyone who is a resident voted! Democracy at work. I sent my mail-in ballot early and the Broward County Elections’ site tells you if they received your ballot and if it is counted. In Florida, you can count mail-in ballots as they come in.
I had a horrible nightmare last night. For some reason, I was back in graduate school at Ole Miss and had to take two semesters of undergraduate calculus. I was sitting in the classroom at 7 am waiting for the instructor when students began twittering about the cost of the book – $1000.00. I was horrified. Since the instructor had not shown up at 7:29, I left the class to go to a second hand book store and found a two volume set for the price of $640. Later, I found out I had missed the first class because even though the computer system said the class began at 7, it actually started at 7:30 and the professor arrived on time (it was his book we were using). I then went through the process of trying to find my office in the biology building. That part is a recurring nightmare. Someone keeps moving my office. When I got out of bed, I was in a sweat.
The truth is, while a faculty member at Itawamba Community College, I took first semester calculus under a friend, Dixie Russell. Trust me when I tell you she didn’t cut me any slack. Dixie was an excellent teacher and I actually earned a “B” in the class. I was going to take the second semester but something came up and I couldn’t. I think it was a class conflict. I never did take the second semester.
I know I probably rely too much on Amazon. I order my groceries from Whole Foods through Amazon, and even though I check prices at pharmacies, the vitamins the doctors want me to take are cheaper through Amazon. It’s just so damn convenient.
Today I tried to find my tootsie roll minis at both Publix and Winn-Dixie. No cigar. I came home and went to Amazon and found a 750 count back for around $18. I ordered two and they will be delivered today. How do you compete with that?
We’re in that part of August down here with high humidity so that when you walk outside in a fresh shirt, you soak through in about 10 minutes. The air conditioner in the Jeep that froze me yesterday with the cloud cover and rain seems to barely cool me on my errands this morning.
I needed to pick up some Total Hardness (Calcium carbonate) for the pool and a prescription at Publix. Something is going on with Florida Power and Light since they have crews out that have closed some roadways and blocked lanes in others. We’re talking several trucks and about 10 personnel working on each site and there are multiple sites in my neighborhood where this is occurring. Maybe they are concerned about hurricane season?
Here’s hoping you don’t have nightmares about taking calculus class. My brother once gave me his definition of hell. It was sitting on a block of ice and having to work algebra problems. I can relate.
I was awake at 4:30 am and got out of bed at 5, more because I was hungry and not because I wanted to go back to sleep. Lately I’m a Shredded Wheat guy with strawberries and blueberries accompanying. I keep forgetting to make my overnight oatmeal and I need to finish up the Shredded Wheat. I like the large biscuits, not the small ones. You really have to hunt to find them in the grocery stores.
I spent breakfast (and the morning) looking at local and national newspapers. I miss having a real paper in my hand but I quit when the deliveries got so hit or miss. Both the Miami Herald and the Sun-Sentinel had trouble keeping delivery personnel. If someone missed their paper and called it in to the circulation desk, the delivery person was charged for the paper. Gone are the days when my Dad said you could set your watch by the Commercial Appeal delivery person.
I first fell in love with papers when Dad and I would get down on the floor and we would read the Sunday comics together. I think that’s how I learned to read. Later, at Ole Miss, I worked in the periodicals department and got introduced to newspapers from all across the United States and the world. I confess to at least reading the headlines from all of them as I put them on their sticks and putting them out to the public. The newspapers were, of course, kept and stored in the basement of the library and every so often, a grad student looking for original source material would require me to go down and dig out the paper from the musty, dusty collections. It was dirty work considering none of the papers had the new print that didn’t rub off on you.
I also check several online comics but my favorites areNon Sequitur and Gary Larson’s The Far Side. Of course, Larson’s are all old stuff but they stimulate my sick sense as a biologist.
Of course, all during the day I get bombarded by news breaks, news updates, and advertisements. Sometimes I yearn for the days where you got one paper delivery during the morning and the 6:30 (Central time) news on one of three channels. We have too much information overload for my aging mind to keep up with. I’m my own worst enemy.
Whole Foods delivered my groceries around 8 am and it took me forever to unpack and store them. They err on the side of overpacking everything. In any case, I’m supplied for the week.
This past week and the start of this one has been with very tolerable temperatures. Our highs are in the low 90’s and our lows are in the low 80’s. What makes it tolerable is the humidity is a little lower. I might even get up enough energy to start my morning walks again.
It’s a lazy Sunday morning. I was awake at 6:30 to hear the neighbor’s behind me dog begin barking. For some reason, they let the dog out and leave him out even though he continuously barks to get inside. Fortunately, they do take him in at night.
The outside bandage came off last night after tugging around the edges. Now I’m left with steristrips that have to remain on until they come off. You can still see some of the antiseptic solution they used to “mop” me down.
As you can see, the steristrips are beginning to come loose. The area is also itching so I know it’s healing.
The lazy Sunday morning turned into a lazy Sunday afternoon. I did a little reading and then watched the final series episode of Endeavor again. I really liked that show – and of course, it was British television.
I ordered Chinese for dinner. I actually craved Chinese food tonight. Don’t know where that came from but I ordered sesame chicken with house rice. I have enough for three meals. When DoorDash delivered it was still hot from the wok.
I put an order in from Whole Foods early today and they will deliver it tomorrow. I also have a dental checkup later in the afternoon. I may actually watch a little of the Democratic National Convention tomorrow. The times they are a changing.
I got enough energy yesterday to clean the pool filter and basket. It hasn’t been cleaned since Denyse did it for me the week before I got back. It took some time. I didn’t rake leaves even though it was needed but I did hose off the pool deck and patio. I was pretty tired after everything. But – I took my first shower since the port removal! I actually feel clean for the first time in three days, spit showers not withstanding.
When my grandmother Ruby and Aunt Buleah went antiquing, they were always on the lookout for a basin and ewer (pitcher). I can’t image that as your sole source of clean up in the house. Ruby was probably raised without a bathtub per se but probably had a watering trough inside for that purpose with hot water heated on a wood burning stove.
By the way, one of the best places for antiques in Mississippi was Sebastopol, Mississippi.
The town is located about half way between Jackson and Meridian and just east of Walnut Grove. We pronounced the town as [seh BASS teh pool]. Maybe because Mississippians pronounce it differently, it will not be annexed by Russia. Mississippi has some very classy sounding names like Carthage and Heidelberg. Then again, there’s Chunky and Scooba on the other side of the argument.
I loved going to Sebastpol and antiquing with my grandmother and aunt. There were warehouses of antiques of every shape, kind, period, and price. Everything was negotiable.
Much later, I was manager of Golden Memorial Park in Walnut Grove (another Mississippi Metropolis) which is near to Sebastopol and hired a lifeguard from Sebastopol, Larry. We are still friend to this day and the last time I was in San Antonio, I stopped by and met Larry to catch up. We have a few stories we can tell about the swimming area at Golden Memorial.
Grandma Searcy, whenever I would visit, would chase us kids out into the yard during a rain storm and have the water from the roof provide the shower. Just think of a yard full of neckid kids running around, hooting and hollering in the rain. The lye soap got us pretty sterile.
Which makes indoor plumbing all that more enjoyable. I managed to clean the bathroom (toilet, shower, basin and floor) and vacuumed the house, mopped the kitchen, and changed bed linen. Each required a little R&R before completing. I just finished washing and drying clothes and putting them away.
There’s some satisfaction getting the linen changed, the clothes washed, dried and put away, and the house cleaner (I won’t say clean – I’m not up to it yet.). I have another shower in store for me today (luxurious) and Sunday is a real restful future.
I waked to a very slow drip, drip, drip. I thought “Oh no! There’s a leak somewhere in the house.” I thought if I stayed in bed it would go away. Not. Around 7:30 I decided I needed to investigate. I went into the hallway where I thought it originated – no drip. I went back into the bedroom and stood by the east windows. Success! It was raindrops hitting the Bahama shutters. About that time, it started a downpour.
It was nice to relax in bed after knowing I was not having a roofing problem and listening to the rain and the thunder. I can see why some people opt for a rainstorm as white noise. It almost competes with rain on a tin roof which I used to enjoy when I visited my grandparents on my Dad’s side. Of course, you’ve never heard a din like hail on a tin roof. I remember that occurring one time thinking the world was coming to an end.
I’ve been in a few hailstorms in my time. The largest size hail I remember seeing was about golf ball size. I was at Logan Pass at Glacier National Park one trip when it snowed, hailed and the sun came out – a triple whammy. I’ve also seen hail so intense, it covered the ground like snow. Of course, in the South, hailstorms can be a prelude to tornados so it pays to be alert when you see or hear hail. I’ve only had hail here in Fort Lauderdale once and was alerted to it when it made a real funny sound on the awning over the back porch.
My GP appointment went well. In essence, he doesn’t think it is worth the effort for a stool sample. It probably was a virus or the Metformin causing my diarrhea and I was overdoing the anti-diarrhea medicine by taking two capsules. He did suggest a probiotic like Align and to cut back any lactic acid intake like my yogurt, cheese or milk. Otherwise, unless it keeps recurring, to just quit worrying about it and it might straighten itself out. He said my bowels may be recovering from the August 1st episode.
Looks like more rain today so I may have some major nap time with the raindrops hitting the Bahama shutters.
The ides of August are upon us! As you might guess, the diarrhea was followed by constipation. I’m back on prunes again every morning.
I really wanted to sleep in this morning. I stayed up until 12:30 am scrolling through Instagram. It’s gotten to be a bad habit. I finally crawled out of bed around 7:30 and slowly got ready for the neurologist appointment.
The nurse took me back early but it was almost 11 before he saw me (10:30 appointment). I didn’t mind because I assume other people are worse off than I. The examination showed improvement with my ulnar nerve damage and the neuropathy. I have more feeling in my legs and hands than before. He’s keeping me on Cymbalta and Jardiance because they are good medications for neuropathy. My next checkup with him is in a year.
From the neurologist to Walgreens. The endocrinologist changed my Metformin from 1000 gm twice daily to 500 mg twice daily. He thinks it might be a source of my diarrhea. The neurologist’s opinion was a viral infection. In any case, I have an appointment with my GP tomorrow at 10:45 to see about a stool sample. I feel like I’m going back to those days of Mother checking my brother and me for worms every year. I should be an expert in fecal smears by now.
John is bringing over a BOGO from Honey Baked and a plain vanilla Bundt from Nothing Bundt Cakes. They do mini Bundts that are delicious.
Chris and Tucker stopped by for a visit yesterday and I gave Tucker his present from my trip – Chicken Pot Pie treats. He loved them. Chris and I caught up and Tucker did his usual exploration of his “territory” to make sure everything was in place and normal. It was good to see them.
My TRIM notice came today and the market value for my house according to the tax collector was $398,820 last year. This year my market value is $450,500. That’s a $51,680 increase in home value. My property taxes last year were $2292.68 and if the proposed budget is passed, my taxes this year will be $2,371.75, a $72.79 increase. I can live with that. For some reason, if the budget has no change from last year, my taxes will be $1610.40.
