MLB Channel and Rohm Mentor Present Tricky and Confusing Viewing Options

 Yesterday evening I was browsing back and forth with my MLB channel, trying to pick up a game that was ongoing.The Chicago White Sox, San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Angels figured into it all, producing the sensation of scoreboard dyslexia...that's when I get confused trying to mentally process the part of an inning in which the road team is up at bat.  For today's Sunday lineup, I anticipated their attempt to schedule all 30 major league teams with games.  For today's Bill Irwin lineup, I wonder whether I'll be able to surpass my physical limitations I am undergoing from my brain cancer circumstances.  I would truly like to sense that I am turning a crucial corner in my treatment and that the future actually represents  a real future that I can live through without  a foroboding sense that the END is near.  As for the two of us, we have postponed involved international family travel that is liable to impose undue stress and anxiety, especially on me with what I'm medically passing through. Right now I'm treating each day as an open, unscheduled block of time.  I'm free to read, write, rest, exercise and watch TV during this stretch without guilt that I'm not adhering  to the late Jim Rohm's dictates about how I ought to be living my life. Rohm, with all the good intentions behind his podcasts, comes across to me as sounding like some kind of a dogmatic ayatollah.He expresses the demeanor of someone who has lived out their lives successfully, being very careful to do uncomfortable things very, very consistently while telling me to follow his example...and don't stray from it!  I wouldn't want to find myself seated across from this type of mentor with him expecting me to dissolve my independence of personality just to let him lay his mandates all on me.  So here I am with another day facing me...may it work out well for the both of us.  Hope I don't make any mistakes...

Approaching Weekend, Its Rainstorms and Depot Parkrun

This morning I woke up around three, but decided to return to bed after making a bathroom visit. Melissa paid a Dunkin Donuts visit to pick up some coffee and breakfast, something I really appreciate.

Now it's mid-afternoon on this Friday "May the First" be with you, and I'm sitting here at my dining room table Chromebook writing this entry.  It took them long enough to start their day's major league baseball schedule, but now it looks as if the solid-hitting Arizona Diamondbacks have just begun their road contest in northern Chicago against the Cubs  the MLB channel is doing a good job carrying the day's load of games.  Both teams have winning records so far, and are known for their hitting.  I enjoy watching them go through the innings.  Today I have a little more exercising to do before I settle down to rest before tomorrow morning's Depot Parkrun 5K near downtown, Gainesville. Looks like another pot of coffee is in the works for now.  Neither of t best behavior, even for picture-taking. The two of us didn't have any appointments or meetings planned for today, so I suppose we'll be taking it easy for a while.  Tomorrow it's supposed to be raining...even possibly storming...later on into the afternoon and evening.  Maybe some precipitation will help to counteract the drought and wildfire danger...or so I hope.  At the Parkrun...assuming it goes off well and the weather doesn't interfere..my overwhelming goal will be to walk it through to its prescribed finish (and stay on my best behavior).  Then at worst, at least tomorrow's story will be that I showed up and followed through to an extent... 

Wednesday's Final Book Sale, Mentally Preparing for Upcoming Parkrun 5K

 Retirement for me has given way largely to a lack of time management structure in my daily life, with medical appointments providing a sense of having to be somewhere by a certain time.  Otherwise the day has opened up...that is, until the day before yesterday.  The Alachua County Friends of the Library Wednesday  finished their twice-annual used book sale, hopefully (for them) clearing out their warehouse offering books for a dime each.  Melissa drove us down there near Main Street and downtown Gainesville, and we walked an uncomfortable distance from the car and back.  The foreign language book section had already been completely cleaned out.  I quickly found some Junior-level novels and a copy of Marilyn Ferguson's 1980s' fad best-seller The Aquarian Conspiracy practically lept up at me from the display...it sure has declined in influence and availabilityover the years.  I remember once going to the public library decades ago, picking up a copy, and comfortably sitting down with it, reading for a few hours.  Now it's again in my possession...no telling where I'm going with it.  Tomorrow morning will be the weekend again, Saturday and (at 7:30) time for yet another Depot Parkrun 5K event.  If things go according to design (that is, Lord willing), we'll be there as I try to cover, mainly walking slowly, the park's four-lap course and then get scanned and posted.  My main aim is to show up and give it all a good effort while maintaining civility among the event staff and participants without trying to "beat" anyone.  Just enjoy listening to the loud, silly birds and keep trudging on ahead.  I exercised a bit today, but feel that progress at improving my endurance hasn't been as forthcoming as I have hoped.  Recognizing that there is a huge mental component to giving up during races (Martinus Evans and Andrew Huberman concur), I have decided to take it all one step at a time and to extend my efforts tomorrow long before my mind convinces me to stop.  Well, sleep a bit tonight, get up early enough tomorrow, and keep a positive mental attitude toward things.  And you, too...

Early Rising, Day Planning

I woke up and got out of bed this morning a little past three...did ten minutes of running in place while brewing coffee.  Now I'm sitting here looking ahead to the coming day, just a little past four.  One item on my agenda is to go down to my local public library branch, update my card and account, and check out one or two interesting books.  Unlike the case with 2nd and Charles a few weeks ago, I have no intention of picking out books out of desperation because I'm too tired and can't find a place to sit.  i do know that this is now post-Easter and we're now back on the regular calendar. It's a foregone conclusion that further exercise for me today will tax my ability to accomplish it.  If i do more back-yard inner perimeter laps, then I know what to expect.  And my eating will be measured and recorded., with the notion that spacing of meals and snacks is to be recommended. Yesterday evening i did watch a YouTube video listing and explaining 7 simple habits I could easily adopt...probably would be better off writing them down and implementing them, 1 by 1.  i want to install and begin using a smartphone app that identifies wild bird species by their songs...this afternoon on the back porch sounds like a good time to get that going.  And hydrating a lot more, that sounds good. Life is good, and I am a person in charge of my own happiness...

Memories of Historic Past Iran Conflict "Color" My View of the Present

 There's nothing like getting up a couple of hours before sunrise and getting started on the day.  Brewing a nice pot of flavored coffee works well with a ten-minute session of running-in-place on the living room rug floor.  My reading and studies seem to be morphing into more passive, visual and mental undertakings, and my little habit changes are becoming more directed toward the more manageable, less supremely ambitious sort.  Today is Monday, March 9.  Were I going to the 9th grade at Nova, I'd get my homework worked and gathered at the dining room table, setting the final morning alarm to give me a reasonable amount of time to clean and dress for school. As it actually is at this moment in time, I can sip my cup d K-cup flavored and brewed coffee and move over to watch a little YouTube TV.  And after a brief bathroom visit I can return to Jim Rohn's stoic personal development podcasts. Then it's back to bed for a while.  I'm getting sick and tired of the war news going on, with Trump trying to constantly insert himself in the press meetings.  

This Iran thing brings to memory when I was first going to college in the mid-to-late 1970s when the two campuses I attended became loaded with Persian overseas students.  To me they seemed to enjoy a promising, privileged existence (although none wanted to talk with me) and the idea that their home country was an autocratic police state that imprisoned and/or tortured dissidents seemed far-fetched...why, the Shah was our buddy, wasn't he? It wouldn't be until the violent rioting in 1978 eventually  kicked Shapour Bakhtiar out and brought in Khomeini for his long brutal, murderous reign.  And then came the hostage crisis.  After Khomeini began to crack down on the nation's socialists, I got a knock on my apartment door from a couple of Iranians who wanted me to sign on with their cause.  What's that, you go to town loudly running down me and my country to the world, and now we're all suddenly friendsy-pindsy because we think we might have a common enemy? In politics, trust is a difficult thing to build and only too easy to destroy...never again, Iran and Russia.  I honestly don't understand how most of our so-called allies can trust us to any degree after our current president's behavior toward them, espcially Ukraine and Denmark with its prized Greenland that Trump wants to add to his personal map of territorial conquests..  Now let's see...I look ahead right now for the next several hours, noting the potential for a a nice wide-open time span devoted to modest personal projects...A little attempt at walking endurance looks like a good option...  

High School Public Speaking Memory, Today's Early Morning Plans

 I remember, looking back on my high school times at Nova, how one of my female blonde classmates one day suddenly "saw the light" and underwent a speedy transformation into a glib, smooth public speaker.  She even got on the closed circuit school television and delivered a five-minute monologue to the school about how good and easy public speaking was, and that folks like little-old "almost subhuman" me had no excuses for not dazzling the world with my oratory skills.  A little later on ,we were introduced by a mutual friend, on whom she definitely had her eyes set.  I smiled and tried to look and sound nice, but she only came across as a rejecting snob who was fending me off...not that I was even remotely interested in her on the slightest level.  I could have tactfully (or brutally) put her in her proper place by interjecting that good speaking is only part of the equation, and that good listening skills are at least equally as important as well .  You can either esteem (or insult) your counterpart based on your attitude toward them as people, hopefully encouraging them in the process. That one speech I heard was special in one way: afterwards, and I could have brought this up to her, I couldn't think of a single section within the presentation that was of any use.  Oh well, I dealt with the snub in a dignified manner by henceforth avoiding her like the plague...I could see that she was grooming herself to be a finger-pointer later in life...probably launched into tr  ashing me soon after our greeting. So I arose at 3:30, brewed coffee, ran in place, and wrote this article. It's now a little past 5 and the day (March 8) lies ahead (we 'lept' ahead into Daylight Savings Time).  I'm still frustrated by my lack of endurance when it comes to going on modest walks. I want to continue hearing and implementing Jim Rohn YouTube podcasts, read a flawed fantasy novel by Josh Khan and study foreign languages.  And, now that I have that connecting cord, do some journal writing on my wonderful oldAlpha Smart processor before I nod off into an afternoon nap..

Cancer Treatment Prospects After Radiation Rounds

 Today was one of those days that for me have been split up into appointments, mainly medical, in which I underwent a few minutes of radiation therapy to hopefully target and zap any glioma blastoma malignancy holding fort there.  Tomorrow should be the final time for my six-week prescribed radiation rounds.  Then I get to ring the bell.  I don't think for a moment that, with this, I will have thoroughly eradicated this extremely aggressive and dangerous pathogen, known to shorten life spans down to as few as a few weeks.  So I'll be entering the year 2026 with a great feeling of uncertainty, doubt and mistrust: do the oncologists there assigned to my case really know what they are doing, and do they practice their ptofessions proactiively to aggressively combat my afflictions?  I guess I'll just have to see about that.  In spite of the gloomy doomsday prognosis laid out before me after brain surgery, I have continued with my cardiovascular exercise, on the rug in our living room.  This evening I covered 5.1 virtual miles while watching a virtual ideo on YouTube of the 2022 NYC Marathon.  Now it's up to me to get myself comfortable on the couch and see whether I get some decent sleep tonight...

Unstructured Sunday, Exercise, TV Football

 Today is Sunday, one of those unstructured days that depend on me to stake out a kind of personal schedule.  Still, over this day's span, time seems vast.  Yet it's only inevitable that the afternoon will creep on through, culminating in evening.  I took advantage of the early morning hours to exercise with virtual running in the living room, to a YouTube video of 2024's New York City Half-Marathon.  Later in the day I did a brisk (for me) 3.3-mile walk though my home neighborhood.  My daily mileage total for today came to 9.9 miles.  I followed some NFL football on TV, highlighted by an entertaining contest in Southern California between the Los Angeles Rams and Detroit Lions.  I'd like to see both teams make the postseason playoffs, but I have my doubts about Detroit's prospects this time around in 2025.  Tomorrow it's back to UF Health cancer treatments and doctor consults...with a lab blood draw to top it off...