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June, 2024:

So Am I an Old Man Yet?

72 today. I am quietly rejoicing for having logged another year. Each year we survive is a win. But each year I ask myself: Am I old yet? and every year, well, I can’t in all honesty say yes. I used to think that 65 was the border separating middle age from old age. But when I turned 65 in 2017, I couldn’t shake the feeling of still being middle-aged. So I shoved the border back a few years, to 72. Here I am. And damn if I don’t feel a whit different than I did at 65.

I’ve written about several of my birthdays at some length, and make a few points in those entries that I don’t intend to make again. Here’s 58, 60, 66 (I didn’t do an entry when I turned 65) 69 and 70.

So when does a person become old? My hypothesis: There comes a point when it becomes impossible to live without a little (or maybe more than a little) help. That’s when you become old.

It’s not a dumb question. As we age, things lose functionality. Little failures accumulate, with an occasional larger failure as a sort of quantum leap. A lot of those you can see coming and dodge; I’ve never smoked nor done drugs and don’t drink much. Low-carb has kept my weight down. It’s unclear how much getting plenty of sleep helps, though from all I’ve read it’s a lot.

A few you can reverse with medical help. I’ve been told I’ll need cataract surgery eventually, and whereas my sight isn’t strongly impaired yet, I’m not looking forward to the surgery itself. Joint replacements exist for knees and hips and probably a few others. So far, my joints are in reasonably good shape. Carol and I have been doing some intense weight training since 2003, and I’m pretty sure I now have more muscle than I did when I was in my 40s.

As I’ve written before, sure, I’ve been lucky. That said, a lot of luck you make yourself. Simple caution and not doing stupid things have kept me from spraining or tearing anything essential. I practice sanity, refuse to engage in tribal screaming matches, and don’t take myself as seriously as I might. Laughter feels good, even if you’re laughing at yourself. I keep my brain busy.

Yes, I now have a certain amount of metal in my mouth. In truth, that metal works better than the teeth it replaced. The rest of me is still original stock. I still have my tonsils and my appendix, granting that neither buys me much beyond peculiar bragging rights.

All of which suggests that I’m not old yet. I may someday need a cane or braces of various kinds. 75? 80? 85? Who knows? I’ll take it as it comes. As a grade school friend of mine often says of life, Enjoy the ride. I’m a contrarian optimist. I am enjoying the ride. And as long as I’m enjoying the ride, I suspect I will not think of myself as old.

Odd Lots

  • Spooky or creepy music in SF/Fantasy/Horror flicks is assumed to rely on the theremin. I just discovered the Ondes Martenot, which sounds like a theremin but is easier to play. Furthermore, it’s been around for most of 100 years. Not sure how I got into my 70s without ever stumbling on it. Good link on YouTube.
  • Carol and I don’t go out to the movies much anymore. We stream or buy a DVD for anything we want to see. This writer offers a cogent explanation for why theaters are largely to blame for this phenomenon. (Crappy movies are the rest of the explanation.)
  • This sounds a little (or more than a little) grandiose: A meteotsunami subjected the shore of Lake Michigan in Holland, Michigan to—oh, no!—a 2-foot wave. When I was a kid this phenom was called a seiche, and Chicago got its share, rare though they might be. Certain types of bad weather including strong winds and rapid changes in atmospheric pressure are to blame. Again, I’m surprised I made it to my 70s without ever seeing the word.
  • No small number of people have claimed that "return to office" mandates are back-channel layoffs, a way to reduce headcount by having heads quit voluntarily. Now some research seems to indicate that this is the case.
  • Ok, this is mondo weird: I spun through the McD’s drive-thru not long ago for an iced coffee and got two pennies (and some other coins) in change. Both pennies were 1981-Ds. What are the chances?

    2Pennies1981-D

  • I was looking for Revolutionary War flags and stumbled upon a list of flags on Wikipedia that would do Sheldon Cooper proud.
  • Beethoven was a classical music composer, but his body was full of heavy metal, specifically, lead. The Mayo Clinic analyzed a few strands of the maestro’s hair, and found 64 times the lead found in a typical American today. This likely led to the many medical problems Beethoven had, including deafness.
  • Lazarus 3.4 is now available, built with FreePascal 3.2.2. It’s a bugfix release and there isn’t a lot of New Stuff, but get it anyway! There’s nothing else quite like it in the OSS universe.
  • A few days ago I received an email inviting me to the—wait for it–Lane Technical High School Milwaukee World Naked Bike Ride. I thought it was a hoax but no—naked bike rides are evidently a thing in big cities. Now, Lane Technical High School (which I attended 1966-1970) is in Chicago, not Milwaukee. There is in fact a World Naked Bike Ride in Chicago on my 72nd birthday tomorrow, but they didn’t invite me. I don’t own a bike, and I’m a long damn way from Milwaukee, or Chicago. That said, I doubt there will be a World Phoenix Naked Bike ride any time soon. It was 113 the other day. People would die.

Junewander

Hey, I’m still alive, but I haven’t posted since May 27th and people are starting to ask. A lot of my writing energy is being sucked up into the final pieces of The Everything Machine, which is a full-length drumlins novel where I (finally) spill the beans about what the drumlins are and where they came from. Carol and I have been “going to church” online since COVID, and a couple of weeks ago we decided to attend in person. Four days later, I came down with the worst cold I’ve had in years.

Wait. It was the only cold I’ve had in years: specifically, since I began taking quercetin and zinc in the spring of 2020. Now, we both got COVID some time back, but we knocked it out with a 5-day course of HCQ and zinc. What this means is that we now have reliable natural immunity and I’m not worrying about catching the damned thing again. And just in case we do, I got a telemed firm to prescribe some ivermectin for us.

But this cold hit me in spite of the quercetin and zinc. I’ve begun to wonder if taking quercetin for four years has developed a tolerance for the drug in my system, rendering it less effective. This has happened a number of times in the past with other drugs. My response to drugs has peculiarities: A root canal procedure years ago showed that I do not respond at all to nitrous oxide. Nothing. I asked the dental tech if the gas was flowing. She took a whiff from the cannula and said, Yup, it’s flowing. Regardless, I ended up as tense as always, watching some movie in the TV mounted on the ceiling while they excavated a bad tooth.

After Colorado legalized RMJ in 2014, I bought a vape and tried it. Nothing. And I do mean nothing. I sometimes wonder if (as the first girl I ever dated said) I’m too weird for words. Shortly after Coriolis imploded, I got an acupuncture treatment to make me feel better. It worked! I felt better for…a week. I went back for another go. Nothing. Placebo effect? Probably. I’ve never entirely understood how sticking a bunch of needles in people acts against depression—or anything else.

As June wound down, we were delighted to have my sister’s family stay with us for a few days. They drove down from Chicago, visited some relatives in Texas, and stopped along the way to see the Painted Desert, Meteor Crater, and us. Gretchen stayed with us while my BIL Bill took their kids to VidCon in Anaheim. She’ll be here until next Sunday or Monday, when the rest of her gang heads back from Anaheim. In the interim I have some high-quality sister time, something that’s been scarce for the past few years.

I do have a couple of entries planned, but one of them has been in the works for months and I have yet to put a single word down on it. I have enough bullet points for an Odd Lots, which I intend to post today or tomorrow. June hasn’t been empty offline, which is why Contra’s been empty online. Time to get that particular train back on its track and steamed up.