Early Rising, Exercising, Cut back the Spending

 During the major college football championship playoffs a couple of months ago, I adopted the posture that it was  okay if "my" team won...and okay if they lost.  This is the identical position I've taken regarding basketball, particularly men's basketball.  The Florida Gators, seeded #1 in their region, had folks in their corner confidently predicting double-digit wins for their tampa contest against #9 Iowa.  But the Hawkeyes managed a last-second unguarded three-pointer to surpass and beat Florifa 73-72, causing star starting center Rueben Chinleyu to bitterly cry over the heartbreaking, season-ending loss.  Well, better luck next year.  If today were 3/25/71, I'd still be getting myself up early to prepare for my long grind of a Nova High School 9th grade day. As for right now, I have all of today ahead of me, including more exercise, reading and studying.  I'll be rerturning to the back bedroom with some A.C. and our sweet pea Daisy as the new day slowly dawns on us.  I don't see any scheduled excursions for us anytime soon.  I'd also like to take it light and easy with the expenditures, too.No need to get carried away with laying out the dough unnecessarily. There is nothing pressing down on us to unnecessarily spend a lot of our saved money on "stuff" when I for one don't see the value in going down that road. I'm not looking to struggle against anyone determined to spend down our reserves of cash. I'm old, but i'm not at all in a big hurry to become poor, all for the very foolish sake of "stuff"...I'd like to believe that somewhere along the lines of my 69 years of age I've outgrown the need to be lectured about money by someone else like my father with important ideas on the subject that may diverge a bit from mine.  The last thing in the world I want is to be dragged down into poverty because I'm supposed to want something (and if I don't there's something wrong with me).  I'm still looking forward to doing well with my cancer treatment and recovery.  I think that's the area I should be focusing on...I think I'll stash away the petty greed: relaxing and taking it easy with my loved ones is a good thing...

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This was a "good" early morning for me,  Let me do a few little things and enjoy life for a while. and enjoy the down time as well. Nothing wrong with some contentment and gratitude, too,...

Hormone Therapy Injection for Residual Prostate Cancer

Early this afternoon, as mentioned in yesterday's article, I went down to the University of Florida Medical Plaza, oncology section, to have a prescribed hormone treatment injection to inhibit my body's production of testosterone and consequently stem the growth of cancer in my body as I anticipate radiation treatment beginning in a few weeks.  The injection, done on my rear, has a six-month span of effectiveness and I'm confident that it will help to diminish, if not eliminate, the presence of any prostate cancer within me.  Everyone there was so nice and I barely felt the needles stick when they first drew blood from my arm and then made that hormone-inhibiting injection.  Now my butt feels a little sore but that's all right: time to let the medicine work its magic...

Napier Finally on the Hot Seat

University of Florida head football coach Billy Napier, ever since he's been at the helm, has presided over a team that has under-performed to fans' typically ambitious expectations.  So the question each season is: how long will he go before he's described as being on the "hot seat"?  I've jokingly been entertaining this notion for 2025, a year that the Gators have been hyped as being a breakthrough season that could even propel them to the college football playoffs at the end.  They had a couple of "soft" home games to start off the season.  On August 30th they played Long Island University and performed well for that level of competition, winning 55-0.  Their opponent this past Saturday, South Florida, had opened their own season with a surprising walloping of Boise State, 34-7, so I wasn't very sure about how they'd do against UF.  As it turned out, Florida was a disorganized, undisciplined mess, unprepared for this game, a close contest ultimately decided because one of their childish, unsportsmanlike and entitled players decided to spit at an opposing player at a crucial moment, resulting in an 18-16 loss to the Bulls.  After it was over, I had no trouble at all finding references to Napier now being on the hot seat.  The question was, would he do like he did last year and say something snide about his critics?  I haven't heard anything of this sort yet...let's see how the Gators do on the road this Saturday in Baton Rouge against #3 Louisiana State.  If he survives that contest, then Napier will "get to" travel down-state to face #5 Miami the following week: oh joy...

Looked at "New Student Edition" Florida Alligator

About a week ago I picked up a copy of the free local paper titled The Independent Florida Alligator, and opened it up to look for anything of use to me.  This issue's called "new student edition", so since I'm pretty damned old in the grand scheme of things I guess they're not all that concerned about me...but that's all right.  The contents were full of upbeat, encouraging articles aimed at helping students avoid burnout while offering suggestions on where they can hang out, eat, exercise, and so on.  I enjoyed reading the opening article describing the recent politicized crap surrounding who gets to be University of Florida's president ever since our excuse for a governor, Ron Desantis, appointed Nebraska senator Ben Sasse to the post, only for him to suddenly resign one day, leaving many angry people in his wake.  Then they brought back Kent Fuchs, who had served at the post for eight years, as interim president until they completed their search and confirmed a new one.  University of Michigan president Santa Ono was picked, resigned his old post...and was ultimately rejected by the politically obsessed Florida Board of Governors, leaving Fuchs still in charge.  He's retired now, and maybe UF doesn't really need a president anyway...what a pathetic joke this once-respected office has been degraded to.  I enjoy the creative writing in the Alligator, and it tends to have a personal edge to it that I can relate to...kind of like blog articles.  And of course I enjoy their little puzzle section toward the back, especially the "spot six differences" one.  But would I ever shell out any money for the Alligator? No way...

UF Wins Men's Basketball National Championship

Congratulations to the University of Florida men's basketball team for winning the NCAA Championship Tournament tonight with an exciting come-from-behind 65-63 win over Houston.  The Gators were trailing at half-time and fell further behind early in the second half, at one time twelve points in back of the Cougars.  Yet as was the case in their previous two tournament contests, they mounted a comeback and squeaked it out in the end.  This is UF's third basketball national title and the first under coach Todd Golden.  Yet it isn't the same kind of feeling I had when Billy Donovan piloted the Gators to championships in 2006 and 2007.  It's a completely different world in college sports, what with the transfer portal enabling schools to take in established players from other colleges...this version of Florida hoops is full of such transfers, especially their star, Walter Clayton Jr..  And their coach Golden had Title IX allegations investigated earlier in the season...and then suddenly dropped without comment.  A lot of us aren't sure what that all means, except that they had something to do with women accusing the Gator coach of stalking.  That being said, Florida won a hard-fought, close and exciting tournament... 

Kudos to UF Men's Basketball Team, Now in Elite Eight

My congratulations go out to the University of Florida men's basketball team as they have advanced all the way up to the Elite Eight in the NCAA 2024-25 championship tournament after putting on a strong second half to defeat Maryland, 87-71 earlier this evening.  I remember following the Gators' two (consecutive) basketball championship seasons much more closely (2005-06, 2006-07) and can even recall their starting lineups from back then...I know hardly anyone on this year's team.  Yet they're Gators, my alma mater, so "go team go" as they like to say.  Florida will play Texas Tech on Sunday for the West Regional final.  The winner will be in the vaunted Final Four.  Looks like some of Florida's old conference rivals, like Auburn, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, are headed that way, too, with this weekend's remaining games to sort much of that out. And then there's Duke and Houston, two schools that could easily win it all.  Should be fun to follow...

Wilmot Botanical Gardens...and Will

 

Our dearly beloved son Will tragically left us for heaven last July...we miss him so much.  He was employed by the University of Florida and worked with their IT section.  In honor of him, they placed a brick bearing his name, alongside others honoring departed UF employees, on the walkway of their beautiful Wilmot Botanical Gardens.  This place, under the management of UF Medicine, is situated just north of their Medical Plaza off Archer Road.  I have been there a bit recently with radiology and physician consults, and Melissa and I gladly took advantage of these visits to stroll and sit here.  It was kind and thoughtful of those at the University of Florida to accord this honor to my son.  Wilmot Botanical Gardens has a number of different-themed gardens within it...Will's memorial brick is accessible through the Japanese Maple Tree Garden...

Kudos to UF Football Team, Bowl Game This Friday Afternoon

The 2024 University of Florida football team accomplished what many, including myself, felt was highly improbable at the start of the season...especially after that horrendous opening day performance against the Miami Hurricanes: they had a winning season!  And, to top it off, they upset two ranked conference schools, LSU and Mississippi, during their ongoing three-game winning streak.  The quarterback position solidified under their star freshman D.J. Lagway and the formerly porous defense, which earlier on seemed incapable of stopping anybody, has matured over the course of the season into a cohesive unit working together effectively.  They're at 7-5 now and finished at 4-4 in the Southeastern Conference, easily the most difficult conference in the country...head coach Billy Napier should feel vindicated after many Gator fans were calling for his dismissal just a few weeks ago.  Florida has been invited to Tampa's Gasparilla Bowl to play against Tulane University.  The game is coming up soon: Friday the 20th, at 3:30 pm. That should bring in more TV viewers as the college football playoffs kick off that very evening when Indiana plays at Notre Dame.  You can watch the Gator game on ESPN2...

The College Football Flag-Planting Nonsense This Past Saturday

This past weekend the seemingly harmless act of a victorious road football team planting their school's flag in the middle of their host's field right after the game has blown up into violence when a number of contests across the country ended up in violent melees between opposing teams long after the final whistle had been blown.  I don't claim to know much about this practice of flag-planting, which seems to only be done with rivalries and is part of an ongoing year-by-year kind of oneupmanship that, at least to me, seems to be a completely legitimate form of expression.  Yet this year during "rivalry weekend", the losing schools seem to have decided that their "safe space" was being unfairly violated by those mean old winners and fought back.  Ohio State reacted to Michigan, the two state North Carolina schools went at it, and Florida State took umbrage at "my" Florida Gators for planting their flag on their sacred football field in Tallahassee.  My first impulse in writing about this was to chide the flag-planters for poor sportsmanship...you're supposed to be gracious in victory, right?  But the thin-skinned nature of the losers is also poor sportsmanship.  Florida Gators coach Billy Napier went out on the field to meet and greet his counterpart on the FSU side Mike Norvell...the latter refused to shake Napier's extended hand and instead went on a bitchy rant in his face about the flag-planting: that's got to be more humiliating to Seminole fans than the actual so-called "offense".  People, sports is entertainment...please keep it all in context, okay?

Congratulations to Florida Gator Football Team

The University of Florida football team has been through a lot of ups and downs this 2024 season with head coach Billy Napier on the "hot seat" in this, his third season in charge.  They played poorly against Miami and Texas (or maybe those two teams played extraordinarily well against the Gators), but have also been very competitive in the other contests.  And in the last two weeks they have beaten favored ranked conference opponents LSU and (today) Mississippi...I'm sure being at home helped a little.  The defense has improved immeasurably and they seem to have found a star quarterback in freshman D.J. Lagway.  So Florida is now 6-5 overall and finished their Southeastern Conference schedule at an even 4-4...they're qualified for a post-season bowl game this year even if they flub up against a clearly struggling Florida State team in their final regular season game.  Go Gators!

Walked Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

Today, on another Saturday morning in Gainesville and the third week in a row for a UF Gator home football game...with the accompanying crowded streets and coffee shops...I did my periodic speed-walk during the Depot Parkrun 5K, held at that park a few blocks south of downtown.  It was a steamy and foggy 74 degrees with 100% humidity, but that never bothered me with my walking.  Before the race they were celebrating the 250th Parkrun here in Gainesville...that's pretty cool.  A lot of people were out there, and even another speed-walker, a middle-age woman whom I had never seen before.  She passed me early on and I managed to keep pace with her until, after three of the four required laps, she finished...either tired or mistaken.  In any event, I wish more participants tried walking the course at a fast pace, but, alas, there I was pushing hard through the final lap alone.  I finished with a time of 39:15, not my best for walking but I had slackened off of my training this past week because of a doctor visit and anticipated testing...you can view this week's race results by clicking HERE...

Gator Football Saturday Performance Not to Many's Liking

Well, after the University of Florida football team convincingly bowed down to Miami in their Gainesville game yesterday afternoon by a whopping 41-17 score, it's not surprising that clamors are circulating for third-year head coach Billy Napier...who has yet to produce even a winning season, much less contend for any title...to be replaced, and soon.  I predicted this, as well as the same for a substantial number of colleges across the country after their teams lost their opening games.  But for the Gators, people have come to expect elite teams each year, and what they saw on Saturday was anything but that.  I think it's reasonable to have moderately successful seasons, going say 8-4 or 9-3 and getting a nice bowl bid at the end.  But that doesn't line up with the viciously competitive and professional turn the sport of collegiate football has reached.  For too many, if you don't win it all then you're a failure: lighten up, folks.  Still, I don't think Napier has a grasp on his own team, which played very sloppily...

Congrats and Condolences for UF Men's Basketball Team

In a bittersweet roller-coaster day for the Florida Gators men's basketball team, they culminated their long run in the Southeastern Conference postseason tournament with the championship game against heavily-favored Auburn.  Already pretty much guaranteed a spot in the NCAA championship "March Madness" tournament, they still had the Tigers as an immediate hurdle.  Bowing to Auburn 86-67, the Gators' greatest disappointment by far, though, was the loss of their starting center, Micah Handlogten, to a broken leg as he was coming down for a rebound only two minutes into the game.  We all wish him a full and speedy recovery, and as he was a sophomore, a good return for next year.  Florida was awarded in the South Region as the 7th seed...they are scheduled to begin their tournament action next Friday in Indianapolis against the winner of the Boise State/Colorado contest on Wednesday, currently sporting a 24-11 overall W/L record. Todd Golden, the Gator coach, seems like a fine young man who just might be the next Billy Donovan that fans have been looking for.  I wish him, the Florida team...and, of course, Micah, the best in the next few days and weeks.  Should they advance past Friday, they will play the winner of Marquette/Western Kentucky game on Sunday in their question to make the "Sweet Sixteen" of remaining teams...click HERE to see the interactive tournament bracket...

Weekly Short Story: 1995 Science Fiction Short Stories, Part 3

Today I look at yet another "long" short story, a novella-length tale that editor Gardner Dozois seemed to love including in his anthologies, this volume covering 1995: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirteenth Annual Collection.  1995 was special to me in the world of passive spectator sports.  The Florida Gators football team went undefeated in the regular season and won yet again the Southeastern Conference championship...only to get thoroughly crushed by Nebraska in the national championship game.  And the Atlanta Braves, which I had been following since 1979, finally pulled off a World Series title, this one against the Cleveland Indians.  But back to that story...

DEATH IN THE PROMISED LAND by Pat Cadigan

Virtual gaming, something that seems to be finally catching on, is taken to its logical extreme as a detective investigates the murder of a young man whose throat was physically...and virtually...slashed while playing an extremely popular and violent game.  To solve the puzzle, she enters the game itself under his identity...and the fall down the rabbit hole begins.  This story came out a year before Tad Williams' brilliant four-volume series Otherland began about the same subject.  In both scenarios, players become addicted to the virtual environment, essentially abandoning the real world and placing their hopes and dreams on virtual success and adventure.  In this sense it isn't that much different from what happens to humanity in the late Clifford Simak's wonderful novel City, written way back in the mid-twentieth century...

Next week, I'll see if I can't review more than one story...a little cooperation, please, Gardner!

Some Sports (Especially College Football) Comments

Three different college football polls have come out following Saturday evening's University of Florida 29-16 victory over Tennessee in Gainesville.  The Volunteers were strongly favored to win, by something like a five-point margin, but the Gators proved the better team at least for this game.  Following Saturday's contests, ESPN, the Associated Press and the Coaches each came out with their new rankings and Florida actually made it to #25 for the first two pollsters.  Yet in all three Tennessee was ranked higher, at #23, #24 and #20 respectively.  This slighting in the polls of UF in favor of their conference divisional rival reminds me of the years during Steve Spurrier's reign as head coach when the Gators would handle the Vols in their early season contest, only to see UT with their easier late season schedule surge ahead of them in the final polls.  The only thing Florida can do now is play well...especially in their upcoming conference games, starting against Kentucky two weeks from now in Lexington following a home game next week against small college Charlotte.  I kind of liked watching college football this weekend, in particular the FSU-Boston College game and some of UF-Tennessee...yet I'm still not yet on board with NFL pro football.  But the season is young.  Yesterday, though, I had other stuff to do besides watching sports, although I did check out a golfing tournament taking place out in California that Saith Theegala, won, his first PGA victory...

Give Billy Napier the Time He Needs to Restore Winning Gator Football

I was just discussing with a coworker how he felt about University of Florida football head coach Billy Napier after his first season, going 6-7.  We both agreed that Napier had replaced previous coach Dan Mullen because Mullen was perceived to have done poorly with his recruiting...basically, the team that Napier was forced to deal with in his first season was Mullen's product.  The sports gurus who others think are knowledgeable about this sort of thing have just ranked the Gators as #12 in this year's recruiting, so maybe the new coach is performing as hoped.  Only real games, starting next year, with reveal the trend as my friend and I feel inclined to give Napier the time he needs to build up a higher quality football team.  After all, I reminded him, Charlie Pell went 0-9-1 in his first year coaching UF (1979).  As for my expectations for Florida football, I don't expect a national championship or SEC conference title every year, but I do want them to at least be in contention for the title game late in the regular season and finish with a higher than 2:1 ratio with their win-loss record.  If they accomplish that, then I'm happy...even if many of my prima donna fellow Gator fans aren't...

Florida Gators Get Bowl Bid, But Without Season's Starting QB

The University of Florida football team somehow managed to finish their 2022 season bowl eligible, with a 6-6 record reflecting erratic performances.  They surprised the football world early on with an upset 29-26 opening day win over favored Utah...the Utes went on to win their Pacific-12 Conference championship.  And they delivered impressive 41-24 and 38-6 wins over Texas A&M and South Carolina, respectively...the latter went on to upset Clemson.  But the Gators also went flat in other games, nearly losing to a very weak South Florida team and actually bowing to lowly Vanderbilt.  First-year coach Billy Napier gets the customary rookie season pass on the 2022 edition's efforts.  After all, one of the chief criticisms of previous head coach Dan Mullen was that he was coming up short with recruitment...the real season for Florida football is about to begin as "Billy Ball 2.0" is set to go into high gear...will our new coach be another Billy Donovan?  Only time will tell. But first they have one more game in '22: the Las Vegas Bowl in that Nevada entertainment city on December 17th against an exciting Oregon State team that just recently knocked cross-state rival Oregon out of Pac-12 contention with a massive come-from-behind victory.  Since Florida's talented, but inconsistent quarterback Anthony Richardson has decided to enter the NFL draft, they will be hard pressed in that position...apparently many transfer and draft decisions are depleting other football rosters in advance of the upcoming bowl games.  Still, I'm looking forward to the Las Vegas Bowl, which will air on ABC at 7:30...and it will be on a Saturday, so I'll most likely be off from work then...

Beach Instead of Football Planned Today

As Melissa and I head out of town to Daytona Beach on this stormy weekend, many other folks are pouring into Gainesville to partake of the festivities of the University of Florida Fightin' Gators football team as they try to beat Kentucky this evening.  Everyone's excited because they won their first game last Saturday...if only by the skin of their teeth.  But confidence morphing into cockiness abounds...sooner or later they're gonna lose and that will be tough for some to withstand.  I've been to three UF home games since 1977...all of them due to others inviting me or handing over their tickets due to other commitments.  The only time I "enjoyed" the experience was the time during Muschamp's last year as coach when it was homecoming and Missouri humiliated Florida...that was all right with me: I was sitting with Melissa in the front row in the end zone cushioned chairs instead of those bleachers.  With bleachers, you come to an early conclusion that you have a simple choice: either stay seated and only see the backs of the people standing up in front of you or stand up yourself and block the people behind you...no thanks!  No, we'll be out on the oceanfront, most probably ignoring the Gators and other sporting events.  Hope the truckers aren't out there...they really screwed up our Labor Day weekend visit there a couple of years ago...

Looking Forward to Gator Football...Kind Of

College football season will be starting back up soon...is this something you care about? I say this having lived in Gainesville, site of the University of Florida Gators, since 1977.  As sports go, college football is interesting enough...but I don't get overwrought if UF loses a game although I usually root for them.  By the way, I'm a University of Florida alumnus.  But having said that, in spite of living for so long in the same city as my alma mater, it isn't football that has tied me to that institution over the years.  It's their incredible medical system, from Shands Hospital where both of my children were born and the Cardiovascular Hospital where I had my open-heart surgery last July to their city-wide network of offices, after-hour clinics, emergency rooms, and labs...one of which is just across the street from my workplace.  Both Melissa and I worked at Shands as well.  On the other hand, the main campus of UF seems to be an isolated city-within-a-city that I have rarely visited over the decades, except to ride my bicycle through or as part of the Five Points Half-Marathon (I've run six of them).  Now both my children work at the University of Florida in different capacities...UF has been good to my family, to say the least.  But when it comes to football...or basketball or any other sport, I'm more than a little taken aback at the fanatical, sometimes ugly following I've seen from other Gators fans.  Former football coach Dan Mullen even once suggested that UF "pack the Swamp" in the middle of the Covid pandemic, a scourge that killed a wonderful, retired married couple that I worked with for years.  Enough is enough: root for your team, but don't let yourself get carried away... 

About This Year's NCAA March Madness Basketball

One of the problems with championship playoffs in various sports is that, unless you walk away with the title, your team's final game is bound to be a loss that will get under your skin for the entire off-season.  In each of the men and women's "March Madness" NCAA basketball championship tournaments for 2022, after so many teams struggled for so much in the latter part of the regular season just to "make" the tournament, the initial fields of 68 have been brutally whittled down to 16 in the span of five days...this weekend it will go down to 4.  I remember in 2014 when "my" Florida Gators, then under head coach Billy Donovan, made that Final Four and had visions of yet another championship.  But Connecticut, the eventual tournament winner that year, got hot and eliminated UF in the semifinal...I hardly ever hear of that wonderful season spoken in happy terms...why?  Because the Gators didn't win it all!  I for one did think of it as a glorious season...folks just have to get a better sense of perspective about what winning means...

On the women's side Florida bowed out early, 69-52 to the University of Central Florida.  But they had a great turnaround season with their new coach Kelly Rae Finley...I'm happy for them.  The men's team didn't make the NCAA championship tourney but were invited to the National Invitation Tournament, losing to Xavier in the second round...good for them, too.  Their coach, Mike White, left the team after their conference tournament to work for Georgia...Florida just hired San Francisco Dons coach Todd Golden to replace him after he led them to their first NCAA tournament appearance since 1998.  The Gators men's team, I strongly believe, has had issues for years about poor shooting...2022 was no exception.  Maybe the new coach can emphasize this need in his upcoming recruiting.  As for the remaining teams in the tournament, for the men my favorites North Carolina, Miami and Kansas are still in there...with the women the TV coverage is not only poorer, but there is much less parity between the elite teams and the rest of the field that has made the men's side more interesting to watch: sadly, it's always seemed to be that way. Well, come Thursday we will see the games resume with the Regional semifinals...