8/28/2025

1* I had a Week Of Woe! 

* An annual physical where my doctor seemed very out of it, and when its summary was posted on the portal it was even weirder, because they'd made up a bunch of stuff (for example, answers to a depression screen they did not administer). My bloodwork came back with a fasting glucose of 102, which is technically prediabetic, and especially annoying given that I've lost 10% of my body weight in the past few months by eating painfully small amounts of painfully healthy foods. (The doctor did not follow up with me about that, of course.) 

* A physical therapy appointment showed minimal improvement, despite spending two hours a day on PT. Both surgeries can be considered a failure at this point and I'm in a lot more pain than before I started. The moral of the story is don't try to improve your health I guess? (The purpose of all this was to remain active, which the bone spurs were making impossible.) 

* My body generally crapped out on me, perhaps due to a UTI which became apparent late Friday night. I'm self-medicating with an antibiotic I opted out of taking post-surgery because the side effects are harsh. (Every positive neurochemical in my system is apparently produced by my microbiome, so antibiotics leave me depressed for weeks.) 

* A workday which involved a 3-hour meeting that was completely irrelevant to me (I thankfully rarely encounter these since 2020 moved many pointless activities like this online). It was followed by another meeting in which I was told, AFTER we spent an hour discussing further analysis possibilities, that they wouldn't have funding for my research center going forward. (This was budgeted to pay half my salary.) I was discombobulated by this so didn't pay attention to where I was going when I walked to where Google told me my car was. Unfortunately I must have dropped the pin incorrectly, so I spent about an hour walking in the rain on my damaged feet trying to find the car. 

* My kid going back to school after what was probably the last time she'll live with me. I barely got to see her this summer between her job and social life and I feel a lot of loss. She will be moving to Buffalo with her partners in December; she would like to work in publishing but unfortunately this summer's bakery job may provide more relevant work experience for whatever she ends up getting than her newspaper editorship, book, or degree. 

* A frustrating day with a partner when I was already spent. 

2 * Well. In happier news: 

* My dog seems to be feeling a bit better the last few days; sleeping less, eating more, sometimes running a little bit on walks. This may be because the weather has cooled; fingers crossed it continues. He's down to five pills a day, but some are taken on an empty stomach and some with food, so it's still a little complicated. I discovered that the picnic table (which he's always used as a lookout) is a great massage station for him, where I can sit and reach him comfortably. 

* A local land conservancy had a fun event where they spaced musicians around a hiking trail. (This is the same location that had a wine tasting on the trail last year. They don't seem to be repeating that; hopefully not my fault!) It brought in a different crowd than hikes usually do; specifically, people who use umbrellas in the rain, which I don't usually see on trails. 

3* I only recently learned that a lot of public transit systems (including NYC) now let you tap to pay instead of needing to buy a MetroCard or the equivalent. That's a big friction reduction for riding transit, and I hope my local bus system manages to do the same. 

4* My family and I were looking at old slides (as one does) and there was one of a kid holding something that, bafflingly, looked like both a radio and a gun. Only in America, right? I looked it up and it turns out that it is supposed to be both a radio and a rifle, but in actuality is neither; this too may say something about America. 

5* My town's newspaper published stories hallucinated by AI. 

6* I have already successfully convinced a number of you to use RSS readers. For the rest of you, this explains why and how. 

7* Locals, both the Riverfront Jazz Festival and the Tugboat Roundup are coming up on September 6th! Both are free and a lot of fun.

8/1/25

 July went quickly!

1* The Vermont Fourth of July trip was a lot of fun, with seven of us relaxing in a cabin entertainingly decorated with Jesus and hunting paraphernalia. Unfortunately we couldn't get the VCR working to play the Rodeo Bloopers tape thoughtfully provided by the hosts, but we soothed ourselves with cheese. In the hot tub my luscious body (bed-bound for much of the past year, and also full of cheese) was so buoyant that I needed to wedge myself under people with muscle mass to stay put. I was expecting to spend the afternoons reading alone in the cabin while everyone else was off swimming, but as it turned out most of our group ended up staying in. Which was nice, but not the vacation I was expecting, so I spent the day I got home in bed with a book to make up for it.

2* My birthday trip to the Adirondacks was better balanced: two days with a bunch of friends, a few more with two partners, and the end of the week with my daughter. It was fantastic. I am super grateful for all the help I had to make it happen, especially given my broken body: lots of people brought stuff, loaned me things, helped manage food and cleanup, etc. (An extra kind friend even weeded Japanese knotweed and poison ivy for me back home!) Health issues mean this may be the last time I'm able to host a large group up there, and I'm glad that went out on a high note.

3* (My birthday itself was not awesome. I had to go to a work picnic; while most people would not opt to spend their 50th with coworkers, this was extra depressing because a lot of people have wisely jumped ship and the rest of us are just waiting for the axe to drop. It was so awkward we were sent home early.)

4* An unfortunate addition to the usual physical problems: I had a really traumatic breast biopsy the week before (which came back benign). I waited until I turned 50 to get my first mammogram because earlier screenings among my demographic lead to so few lifesaving diagnoses and so many unnecessary biopsies, but of course that just POSTPONES the unnecessary biopsies. I was pretty unconcerned because I knew the statistics around it but was completely unprepared for the physical reality of it. I thought it would be fairly quick and uninvasive... and no. It was close to an hour lying in an awkward position, not allowed to move, with my breast clamped in a machine; the biopsy itself was incredibly painful (they used lidocaine but I only knew that because they told me); I was stuck there an extra hour because the bleeding wouldn't stop; and there were unexpected lifting restrictions afterward which made vacation prep a challenge. It's been more than three weeks now and I'm still in quite a lot of pain. I've even had to WEAR A BRA this entire time, which would be torture enough in itself!

The emotional fallout was even worse though. I couldn't stop crying for much of the following week. I was hoping that would improve once I got the results back a week later, like maybe I was fooling myself about not really being afraid I had cancer, but it didn't. I guess having a massive needle driven through your breast without noticeable pain relief, when you were expecting something closer to a blood draw, messes with your head all on its own.

5* My sweet 13-year-old dog with a newly diagnosed heart murmur deteriorated rapidly while I was away. My ex (we still have a ridiculous but convenient joint custody arrangement for the dog) took him to the vet and got a bunch of meds for him. Which help a lot, but need to be administered in a complicated enough way that I emptied my own AM/PM pill case to repurpose it for him before I could buy a new one. He gets various meds 4-5 times a day because some are once a day, some twice, and some three times. Some need to be taken with food, and he doesn't eat his regular food on command so that adds in another complication. I also need to take a set of eye drops four times a day, so medication management feels like an enormous part of my life, which is only going to get trickier now that I'm supposed to be going into the office.

(We are trying to get him in to see a cardiologist to determine if we can improve our care and to learn what to expect going forward, but can't get anyone on the phone to make an appointment. He's doing okay right now though, especially when the weather is cooler.)

6* He takes the pills in peanut butter. I too love peanut butter and am tempted to take a spoonful of it every time he gets one. Alas, peanut butter is hard to fit into a 1200-calorie budget, and I need to refrain. So I find myself slightly jealous of my dying dog several times a day, which maybe helps me worry about him less?

7* Partner A and I went to a Billy Joel Cover band in a park because I wanted to get out of the house, and because we once wrote an "Uptown Girl" parody called "Upstate Girl" (she spends a lot of time at Stewart's and apple orchards). It ended up being awesome! The band was fine but the people-watching ROCKED. One couple brought an entire table to eat at. A guy in an electric wheelchair/scooter brought a cot and pillow so he could lie down. Kids were dragging each other around in a wagon, and making new friends to add to the wagon. I like people when I don't really have to interact with them.

8* Some of them force interactions, alas. Like the creepy dude at a party who, immediately after being introduced to me and told I was recovering from foot surgery, LEANED OVER AND STROKED MY FOOT. Initially I pretended it didn't happen because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of a response or to ruin the host's night, but he made it even more obvious he was intentionally boundary-pushing by bringing it up, and I told him off. He refused to take responsibility for it, declaring that he was a child and not capable of learning appropriate social behavior. It's clear that he's been allowed to get away with this sort of thing his whole life, which makes me rethink whether community shunning is appropriate for some people.

9* Interesting book: Private Rites by Julia Armfield. It is mostly a family drama taking place in a near-future affected in weird ways by climate change (though I'm tempted to tell everyone to skip the prologue and the last chapter, because there's a dumb cult subplot there). I learned when I logged it into Goodreads that it's a King Lear retelling, but I've never seen that so had no idea.

10* A woman hires a sex worker so bad at his job he gives her a refund.

https://oldster.substack.com/p/for-my-70th-birthday-i-hired-an-escort

11* Unlike this woman, if a jigsaw puzzle is tedious for me, I give up on it. Small tedious sections are fine, but it moves from meditative to boring very quickly. (Sadly I haven't been able to do any puzzles post-surgery, because if my feet aren't elevated they swell painfully. I miss it.)

https://theamericanscholar.org/puzzled/

6/30/2025

 1* I went out on the solstice to pick black raspberries and see the fireflies. After a year of serious disability it felt good to take joy in the season in ways that I used to. I miss sharing it with my family, but that doesn't reduce the pleasure I take in it on my own.

2* I am wondering if I'm becoming the neighborhood cryptid though. I'm limping, doing a variety of Silly Walks as part of my physical therapy, foraging along the way, frequently after sunset or at 5am, with my hair and boobs doing whatever they're gonna do. If I'm not lurking in the shadows or wearing a weird hat, I'm squinting at the ground like I've never seen the sun before and disapprove. One night I walked to Stewart's and stopped at a live band afterwards while wearing an eggplant shirt, covered in burrs; I did not fit in with the other Delmartians.

3* I was thrilled by Mamdani's win in the NYC mayoral primary, both because Democrats need more progressive leaders and because Cuomo needed a comeuppance. It was also another confirmation that polls are useless. My career was built on survey research, but over the past ten years it's become basically impossible to affordably conduct a decent survey with a representative sample. Attempting to determine whether a respondent is an actual human providing true answers is futile, plus marketing bombardment reduces everyone's willingness to participate. This makes phone and internet polls virtually meaningless, and there are big obstacles to mail and in-person surveys too. Even if the government wasn't gutting all science funding, valid opinion and experience data is no longer a thing, and that's a big loss. In my work we're often switching to focus groups to get a general vibe instead.

4* I waited too long to get someone to switch out a storm window for a screen in my office. I tried a few times to pull down some grapevines taking over the window but robins WIGGED OUT on me, so while I couldn't see a nest I figured there must be one. It'll be a few weeks before they fledge so my climate control system is down for now.

5* Speaking of climate control, last year I bought a used U-shaped Midea air conditioner because their purported quietness might improve my sleep. It turned out it wouldn't fit in my bedroom window so I figured I'd install it somewhere downstairs, though the installation process is even more unpleasant than that of typical window A/Cs so I wasn't excited about it. But then the manufacturer recalled it and refunded me $200 more than I paid for it! And someone from a Buy Nothing group was happy to take it off my hands and repair it, so I didn't feel bad about the waste. Everybody won (except for Midea)!

6* Unfortunately this has been a bad week. I twisted my ankle which is setting back my physical therapy, I've been miserably sick with a horrific cough which keeps me from getting any sleep, and on the same afternoon I learned that I need a breast biopsy and that my dog has a serious heart murmur as well as an unclear-how-to-resolve jaw issue. The timing especially sucks because I have fun stuff coming up and I won't recover on time to fully participate in it, and I'm missing several going-away parties of colleagues who are fleeing for greener pastures. 

7* I am still excited about the fun stuff though! There's a polycule trip to Vermont over the Fourth; my foot and ankle will keep me from being able to get to the nude beach, but I'll still enjoy the pool, the hot tub, and general hanging out. And then there's my birthday party in the Adirondacks. I plan to stay the week after that to enjoy a change of scenery, though I don't know if it will be depressing to not be able to do the outdoor stuff I usually do up there. I'll have a lot of books in any case.

8* Speaking of books, I tried reading two books by authors I'd been unimpressed by as a teenager, figuring that different books and a different life stage might help. I started out really appreciating the fantastic writing of Philip Roth's American Pastoral. And when we learn the (self-insert?) narrator is impotent following prostate cancer I thought, "Yay, that means much less opportunity for being as gross as Portnoy's Complaint!" Alas, it was not to be. It's not fair for me to give a review because I stopped 100 pages in after a weird incest thing pops up out of nowhere. It appears that the characters are going to view it as an honest mistake, and this combined with the narrator's self-absorption and several other distasteful sexual references means I'm out. (And I'm normally happy to read about sex, for the record! Just not the way Roth apparently likes it.)

And Sinclair Lewis's Main Street is quite funny; maybe Babbitt was too and I just didn't get it at the time. The writing is brilliant at the sentence level; however, it is also a LOT of words and description with very little happening. I was listening to the audiobook and would not have gotten through it otherwise. Also, it mocks both small town attitudes AND the woman who wants something better, which (along with the bleakness of the ending) I find a frustrating sort of cynicism.

So while I liked both books better than the ones I read as a teenager, and have much more appreciation for their writing quality, I didn't enjoy either at all. Back to authors writing in this century.

9* This link talks about how it's not doing the left any favors when we pretend personal responsibility isn't important. I don't agree with all of it but it makes some useful suggestions.

https://jasonpargin.substack.com/p/to-save-the-world-save-yourself

10* The URL tells much of the story of penischocken, but the writeup and video are quite fun.

https://defector.com/hurdler-wins-400-meter-race-despite-his-dick-and-balls-falling-out-several-times 

11* Mad Max Fury Road was rated the 11th best movie of the past 25 years, and it's one of the dumbest things I've ever watched, so I am skeptical of ALL movies now.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/movies/best-movies-21st-century.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SE8.YhJ7.rzOY7TixtX-8&smid=url-share