Early Rising, Optimistic About Day to Come

 Here I am on yet another earlier early morning, pre-dawn wakeup...it's 6:33...having run in place on the rug for about 11 minutes so far with a nice mug of hot flavored coffee in my hand.  I'm envisioning some meaningful, purposeful study ahead, particularly about foreign languages.  Melissa wants to begin my next cycle of enhanced TMZ treatments after a pharmacy visit. Then we should get to see Anita and Jim a little before they head on homeward.  Study, interaction, exercise and rest, each in good measure, should all do the trick for me (and us) today as I am more careful about what I eat.  Also, keep Pewee from licking me (like she loves to do) to protect her from the toxic (to her) medicine seeping out through my porous skin.  Oh, and some TV time is in store as well. And since I won't be scratching off any lottery tickets, then it's good fun, never could stand those tv commercials.  Now let's have some "good fun" surfin' them channels. Just don't forget to listen to that great music. How Soon is Now, by the Smiths, has my Song of the Month easily, followed by the metaphysically intense Zebra piece Who's Behind the Door?.  My favorite line from it: How much more do you think you really know about who's behind the door?. Yes. I'm also thinkin about sitting in a comfortable cloth folding chair in the front yard looking casually through one or more Shaum's math guides, checking for patterns to notice. No pressure and it's nap time whenever I choose...

October Dinginess at Starbucks

Please read this as a "mood" piece...

On this dingy, climatically unpleasant day in late October, I am sitting here at my nearest Starbucks, driven here by Melissa after the health care authorities at the hospital enjunctioned me against driving for a while. The business is slack and the workers are right now inactive, standing around talking.  I don't like the corporate music being piped through above me, but the cinnamon dolce latte Melissa ordered for me is very good.  I remember years ago when I could walk into this place and sit at a high black-top rectangular study table that resembled high school chemisty lab, quickly lighting into my reading and writing.  Coffee shops used to be good places to go to just sit and think, but in the most recent years I've usually felt the urge to get up and leave after only a few minutes there.  There's this creepy sense of being under someone else's negative scrutiny, and I'd rather be in a place that accommodates my desired privacy without any feeling of an impending deadline for the stay.  So sitting comfortably at home, my head leaning back on a soft pillow, seems more attractive: maybe I can slip into a nice nap!  On the other hand, why not just pass up on Starbucks and sit at the dining room table from here on? With my medical issues I don't see circumstances improving in the near future.  With me and my afflictions, at least for these recent times, my negative reactions have arisen from their treatment and not directly from the afflictions themselves.  So here I am at Starbucks, a recently-turned 69 year old man with a horribly hideous surgical scar streaking across the top of my head, just barely under the cover of hair.  Welcome, Halloween! I am grateful to be able to be at home, finally released from hospital confinement.  I can still exercise, which I do through no-impact movements that raise my heart rate to zone-like levels: that's good.  Well, I am committed to a light shower later on today, and then it's the couch for me.  I really deeply love and appreciate my dear Melissa, as well as our sweet, silly uptight mixed-breed rescue dog Daisy, who I call "Little Pee Wee"...

Sleepiness and Headaches, Probably Medically Induced, Cloud My Day

After attending church with Melissa this morning, we went to a nearby, very noisy Newberry restaurant for breakfast.  The French toast meal was delicious, but with my headaches and drowsiness I found myself in a state of wanting to curl up into a ball and sleep off the next few hours.  The church service itself, although conducted in good taste, was itself an ordeal to get through...I just wanted to sit back in my cushioned chair and close my eyes.  I think tomorrow, along with willing myself into doing some exercise, I'll make a visit to a local coffee shop for some study and, perhaps, writing.  And I'll make a point of studiously avoiding the propaganda TV channels designed to manipulate my feelings according to their biases.  Just keep brewing some coffee and sit at the table...and try to ignore the rain pouring down outside...

Still Working Out Parameters for Study, Reading and Writing

Following up on last Thursday's article about studying in coffee shops as my retirement is now in its second week, I'm still looking for "The Place" to set up my studying.  Still, so far I've managed to cover my daily goals, mixing reading, studying foreign languages and, of course, writing for this blog.  I'm finding myself usually spreading it all out over the course of the day at home, although here my attention span isn't quite as strong and I'm more likely to be distracted as opposed to be sitting somewhere in a public place.  I've been diligent with the language study, continuing as I earlier stated with taking a few sentences from a specified article and writing each of them down, taking turns in Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese according to the Google translations.  Since unfamiliar Chinese characters can be problematic since their pronunciation isn't readily apparent, I have begun using ChapGPT to provide transliteration of my articles into the Pinyin Romanization writing system, which I print out and use.  Since I am at intermediate "Level B" stages in all four languages, I still have quite a task in front of me with thousands of words in each to internalize before I can more comfortably understand them...and with listening comprehension consistently lagging behind the reading (I also daily listen to radio/podcasts in each of the four).  But more than anything I enjoy the process of learning: it's fun!