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During my break I've been writing things that are more like normal blog posts but not posting them, thinking I would wait until I have material for daily posts for some time. But I'm now rethinking that.
I think I will try giving priority to the moment, and then fill in with other things when I need to. Of course now I need to catch up with some of the posts that were "of the moment" but no longer are. One good reason for this new, more spontaneous (less guarded and considered), approach is that it makes me uncomfortable. Chances are I'll get back into a book and revert to my old ways. But for now...
Summer
Northern California is having a bit of a heat wave at the moment which pulls in the fog making San Francisco a little colder than normal. This morning, before I got up, I was thinking that it is the end of July and I'm still under my winter comforter and wearing my winter pj bottoms (though not top, for a week or so). Even I look forward to those rare evenings when you can dine outside and not either freeze or get blown away by the wind. Those evenings will come in the next month or three, but this weather is the reason I would be reluctant to move away, even to Portland.Organ recital
Also this week I've been thinking that, having turned 65 and become officially a "senior", it feels like my warranty has expired. My problems are all just continuations of things I've had to deal with for years (in several cases since high school), but they all decided to spike at the same time. The ulnar nerve thing is newish -- and it's one of those annoying health issues where it's hard to determine to what extent it's the nerve in the arm, hand, or the neck.My family (all my cousins, as near as I can tell) are blessed with the ability to generate lumps under the skin on a variety of parts of the body, the way oysters generate pearls. Three years ago I had one we were "keeping an eye on" suddenly go bad and get infected Thanksgiving week, when it was impossible to get an appointment with a doctor. To avoid that happening again, I decided to be proactive and have the latest -- in the same awkward location -- seen to yesterday. From past experience, I assumed Step One would be doing a biopsy followed by the minor surgery next week. If I had known she was just going to cut/push it out I would have waited until after this weekend, since I'm working Berkeley's Kite Festival on Sunday.
Both of my back issues should be much better by Sunday, and my ulnar doesn't bother me when I work -- same with my eye problem -- so none of this should really effect my life.
Berkeley Kite Festival
And now we are really up-to-date. Yesterday was the Kite Festival and everything went just as I had hoped. No problem with my back, and the crew chief for both days was so happy to have me working on Sunday. I came up with a new way of interacting with the Berkeley garbage crew, who do the hauling, which I think we can copy in the future. We were even finished a little early, with everything sorted before the garbage trucks made their final pass.I have no idea why my back went "out-ish" last Tuesday, I wasn't doing anything, but as I did my usual thing Sunday -- including leaning down into containers to sort out trash and picking up and then dumping heavy cans of compost -- it struck me again how odd it is that this never bothers my back. There were a few cans I waited for help with this week that I would normally have attempted, but at the end of the day my back was fine. Maybe even better than when I started. I have my x-rays, so I know (approximately) what my vertebra looks like, but I don't understand why one thing trashes it while something else doesn't. I'm pretty sure if a back "expert" were to watch me work he would constantly be saying, "For God's sake don't do that." Yet, from the beginning it has always been something stupid like getting up out of a chair that causes me problems. Of course I do wear a lifting belt when I work -- against recommendations.
This park (Caesar Chavez) could have been created with kite flying in mind, and yesterday the weather and wind were just about perfect. We're not seeing the sun that much in SF, but the story is different even a few miles away across the bay.
The only drag was the new bus situation. Perhaps AC Transit got word of my proposed motto for Golden Gate Transit ("It's the Least that We Can Do") and wanted in on the action. Besides replacing the 51B with the 81 line, they've removed the two inbound stops that were convenient for me, so that I now have to walk all the way to the seawall -- as close to SF as you can get without getting wet -- before I can catch a bus home. I'm guessing AC Transit is trying to knock down the ridership numbers from the Marina even further so they can stop service entirely. That would probably be the end of my working events out there, so I hope I'm wrong.
Whether through planning or just luck, I did have great connections home (after waiting a quarter hour for the driver to take his break). The bus took me to Ashby BART and I arrived on the platform a minute before the train I wanted arrived -- I was shocked as I normally have to wait 20 minutes for this train. And when I transferred to the SF bound train at the next station, that train was already waiting with doors open.
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