Walked Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K This Morning

It's been a little more than three weeks since my prostatectomy surgery, and although my physician does not want me running until a few more have passed by, he has encouraged walking.  So on this Saturday morning I walked the four-lap course through Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown.  It was 60 degrees at the 7:30 race time with a 90% humidity.  My intention was to do a brisk walk, but not try to set any personal walking records either...after all, I'm still recovering and healing.  As it was, it was relatively easy to cover the distance this way, finishing at 44:52...enough to pass Stephen King's standard of 4 mph in his dystopian novel The Long Walk but more than six minutes slower than my 5K fastest walk. It's been a while since I last did a Parkrun...six weeks ago was the previous time.  There were a lot of people in the park today, and not just for our event.  But although it could be annoying at times with some other participants carelessly crossing my path, making me pivot to avoid colliding with them, I did enjoy getting back to the old routine.  I did not sweat a single drop during the walk nor did I experience any pain or fatigue.  Until the "okay" to resume running comes my way, I guess this walking will have to be the theme of my Depot Parkrun participation...unless, of course, I choose to volunteer some Saturdays there instead.  Click HERE to view today's results...

Major League Baseball Regular Season Now Underway

The official opening day for Major League Baseball's 2025 regular season began yesterday...although more than a week earlier it actually started in Japan with a two-game series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs.  Baseball is one of those sports that I can have on the TV and watch, with it not being important if I find myself distracted with another activity.  I find it interesting how the broadcasters show an imaginary virtual strike zone for each pitch...and how, just as often as not...on the close pitches the plate umpire calls it wrong as a strike or ball.  I think at this juncture that I'm pretty much cured of the notion of having a favorite team to follow...just get a game going and I'll figure the rest out for myself, and it doesn't matter how lopsided the score gets.  Baseball is a game that I have never personally played, although in physical education class in high school we did softball...I was a pretty decent singles hitter but never had any training with fielding or pitching.  In those classes I always had, as an "instructor", jock coaches who just got games going without teaching anything about the sport...and the kids who played in leagues outside school naturally dominated (and got higher grades). I remember back in the late 1970's and early 1980's how the "Superstation" WTBS, under Atlanta communications tycoon Ted Turner, would show every Atlanta Braves game live.  Now, though, that sort of service is solely reserved for paid premium subscribers and if I want to see baseball, I have to accept whichever matchup that they feel like serving up.  No problem, but I do get a little tired of seeing, for the overwhelming part of 2-3 hours that make up a typical game, all these multimillionaires just standing around doing nothing, the only consistent workhorses being the pitcher on the mound and the catcher behind the plate...

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...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 7

Well, this month it hasn't exactly been weekly short stories on this blog...the last time I wrote this Wednesday feature was exactly three weeks ago...the day before my prostatectomy surgery.  But here it is again, and I'm picking up where I left off by discussing the next tale in the book I'm currently going through: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, edited by the late Gardner Dozois and featuring his picks of the best sci-fi from the year 1999.  Once again, I encountered a novella, this one by the renowned writer Frederik Pohl...

HATCHING THE PHOENIX by Frederik Pohl

Pohl was a major figure during the fabled Golden Age of science fiction in the twentieth century, a contemporary of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein.  Like them, he tended to write in a plain, easy-to-follow style that also reminded me of writers in other genres like Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King...this has sadly become more difficult to find in the genre of science fiction.  Hatching the Phoenix is just one of many stories in Pohl's fictional Heechee universe, in which an alien race, thought extinct, has bequeathed to a future space-faring humanity its advanced spaceship technology.  This story is told in the first person by its protagonist Klara, a super-wealthy investor/entrepreneur who reminded me of a more human and less fascist Elon Musk.  Klara is sponsoring and overseeing a special project, using black holes and gravitational mirrors, that has sent a ship, the Phoenix, to the original star system that was the site of the supernova explosion in 1054 AD creating the Crab Nebula.  The intention behind the project is to determine whether intelligent life had evolved on any of this system's worlds before the supernova wiped it out.  There's a lot of interpersonal relationship stuff in this story, and Pohl managed to slyly inject a bit of humor in it all.  But what impressed me the most was his prescient depiction of "shipminds"...similar to Clarke's 2001 Hal...that eerily predicted where we all seem to be speeding willy-nilly toward in our present times: near-total dependence on artificial intelligence.  Hatching the Phoenix was long, but an enjoyable read.  Wish I encountered more stories written this way...

Next week: more science fiction from 1999...

Little Victories in My Recovery

I'm plodding on ahead with my recovery from the prostatectomy surgery on March 6, savoring little victories as I go along.  For example, although I'm not supposed to run for a few weeks as this would interfere with my healing from the operation, I can walk...I'm encouraged to do so. Still, I'm not trying to speed-walk like I was doing before entering the hospital.  No, but I still try to maintain at least a moderate pace although if I'm walking with others, I'm only too happy to follow their pace.  This morning I decided to go out into my home neighborhood and walk my 3.3 mile loop course.  It was 71 degrees with 61% humidity...not quite as cool and dry as I would have liked, but I realize that as spring progresses it's just going to get worse.  I had no problem finishing the course (at 54:18) and never felt any pain or loss of energy.  It was fun to get out in the sun and go down all the familiar streets, greeting others as I passed by them.  Little victories, I think, are indeed important in a recovery like the one I'm experiencing...

Just Pick a Side

Hard Rock, the entertainment/resort company that is prominent in my home state of Florida, has recently been airing a slew of TV commercials, some featuring recording artist Post Malone, that tout their online "service" allowing players to gamble on sports.  I suppose that if you're into that, then good for you...it's just that much easier to put your hard-earned money on the line.  So in this vein I see a company responding to a demand within the population that satisfies them.  I see other companies likewise doing this.  For example, many addicted cigarette smokers welcomed the advent of vaping, which did away with the carcinogenic tobacco elements they would breathe when "lighting up",  but which still provided them that craved nicotine effect.  Again, a demand met by companies' innovations...good for them, again.  Where I have a problem, though, with both of these examples is when the companies go out of their way to create new "needs" among the potential consumer pool that previously did not exist.  Making vaping seem cool to young people who never touched a cigarette in their lives is like this.  Or go back to Hard Rock, expanding the gambling to generally ignorant folks who don't know enough to at least make an educated guess about who will win or lose a sports contest.  With them, their latest pitch is a gimmick they have on their app whereby participants can still lay down their money and bet by simply "picking a side".  It all sounds so fun and inclusive, or at least that's how the ads make it look: come on and join the party!  But here again is a company expanding its consumer base to create a need that simply wasn't there before.  I guess, though, that's the essence of advertising, isn't it, to make the fool targeted potential consumer feel somehow inadequate or less than acceptable if they don't climb aboard with the company's agenda...  

Update on Pathology Report After Surgery

The pathology report on my surgically removed prostate and lymph nodes was posted on my medical portal online Friday evening...supposedly, the urologist who performed the surgery on March 6 is going to call me on the phone tomorrow to discuss it and my path forward.  Melissa, who is a registered nurse and understands the often arcane jargon presented in laboratory reports and summaries, concurred with me that this pathology report had some very good news.  The prostate was substantially compromised with an aggressive form of cancer: this was expected...and obviously, not the good news.  The good news is that it is now out of my body and the lymph nodes...the first destination of such a malignancy on its way to metastasis...have been analyzed and determined to be clear.  Now I'm a cautious person in many respects, and I would rather hear this all straight from the doctor's mouth.  So that's where I'm at right now, waiting for that call.  In any event, I will be having a blood test to determine my PSA (protein-specific antigen) level before my follow-up visit to this urologist in late May.  The PSA level has with it a relatively high correlation with the probability of cancer, so that test will be pretty important with all of us hoping and praying that it will be very low... 

Unsportsmanlike Behavior Among Professional Athletes and Coaches

I have been watching sports on TV of late, mainly golf, tennis and basketball.  I have to tell you, it kind of grates on me whenever I see an athlete or coach get overly angry about something and begin to act like a baby in front of the camera.  Not naming anyone specifically, but these are top-level figures who have achieved a reputation for quality in their respective areas.  It's one thing to pitch a fit on the court or greens because your shot went wide or you didn't get the call you wanted...sometimes that kind of behavior is rationalized as a way to motivate oneself or teammates to play with more passion.  But I've also seen how some of these, after the match or game has ended, refuse to participate in the traditional congratulations with the other side and/or attend press conferences.  I know that, in at least the professional sphere, athletes and coaches often have the responsibility of making themselves accessible to the press written into their contracts, and as such should consider this as much a part of their "game" as what transpires during the competition.  So, no, I don't like to see folks lose their composure while playing, but that's a lot more understandable...in the midst of heated, intense competition...than just storming off in a huff after it's all over...

A Week After My Prostate Removal Surgery

It's now been eight days since I underwent anesthesia and surgery to remove my malignant prostate at UF Health here in Gainesville.  Since then, my recovery has been a bear, but I'm making good progress so far in spite of the pain, discomfort and limitations on my bodily functions and mobility.  After discharge the day after the six-hour operation, which employed laparoscopic robotic surgery to remove the prostate and some surrounding lymph nodes, I've been at home with an established recovery routine...and my dear Melissa to care for me.  We're also grateful for the well-wishes and food train donations from some of our cherished friends.  This procedure requires the temporary insertion of a Foley catheter into the bladder afterwards...very annoying but so far I'm withstanding it well.  It's scheduled to be removed this coming Monday, and afterwards it will be another fork in the recovery road as I use Kegel exercises...and time...to eventually regain my ability to control my own bladder.  The prostate and those removed lymph nodes are in pathology now, with the latter being tested to confirm that, indeed, the cancer had not spread to them.  If it has, though, they have a treatment program with that, too.  I guess my two main concerns during this phase of recovery have been the restoration of digestion and excretion, shut down during surgery due to anesthesia and inserted CO2 gas, and dealing with pain and the agents used to alleviate it.  I feel I'm now finally at the stage where I can rely on over-the-counter pain relief like Tylenol and Aleve without needing to ingest the prescribed drugs that can have their own side effects.  So far, so good with all that, but of course I have to take things from one day to the next.  Ever since the morning after surgery I have been ambulatory, with no difficulty in walking.  Of course, anything like running or resistance training is a matter to be delayed for a few weeks.  I thank everyone for your concerns and prayers, and I am indeed grateful to live in such a time, place, and circumstances that would enable me to enjoy such high-level medical treatment...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 6

This past week, as I continued reading through the annual retrospective anthology series edited by the late Gardner Dozois titled The Year's Best Science Fiction...this volume covering 1999 material being the Seventeenth Annual Collection...I managed to get through just one story.  Tomorrow I'm having surgery and see possibilities for a little more reading time in the week to come as I recover.  That's good, because the next story after this relatively short one is a long drawn-out novella...

WRITTEN IN BLOOD by Chris Lawson

A Muslim man is taking his daughter with him to Mecca as he is fulfilling Islam's Fifth Pillar by going on a pilgrimage there.  Told from his daughter's perspective, "Da" is a trained biologist who is in remission from cancer.  There they encounter a vendor selling a special product: the Qu'ran encoded into one's own blood.  Da takes him up on the offer, and as the story's ending reveals, most likely suffers the consequences of that action.  I felt that this story was sensitive to Islam and its believers, and I learned a few things about their prophet Muhammad in the process.  As for imprinting a document...or pictures...onto one's own DNA or blood is concerned, the author raises the point that while doing so might be done as a gesture of faith or  personal preference, it could also eventually be used against the person to identify them as being part of an group in disfavor, exposing them to persecution down the line.  In an allegorical sense, I think all the trails of ourselves that we leave in the Internet are doing something similar, don't you?

My intent for next Wednesday is to keep on reviewing stuff from the Dozois anthology...

Another Jigsaw Puzzle by Thomas Kincade

I just finished another 500-piece jigsaw puzzle by artist Thomas Kincade.  I like the scenes he depicts...this one is definitely a place I'd like to hang out at!  On a completely unrelated subject, I'd like to briefly bring up the widespread outrage I'm picking up on in social and mass media over what our current, thoroughly disgusting president has been doing on a wide range of decisions.  It's not that I don't generally agree with the criticisms I'm reading and hearing, but rather that the main problem, as I see it, is that American voters are responsible for the mess we're in.  THEY voted the jerk into power.  I have only one vote.  People had all the information they needed FOR YEARS to vote otherwise, but that didn't change anything.  So go ahead and spill out your outrage, for all the good it will do...

Podcaster's Episode about Toxic People

Personal development coach and podcaster Rob Dial sometimes has shows I'm interested in...some not so much.  Today he had a good topic: toxic people and strategies to escape their harmful effects.  His first piece of advice was to identify the toxic people in your life, and that doesn't necessarily mean folks who are annoying.  Toxic people are manipulators who can be aggressive in trying to establish control, often by expressing personal interest and then twisting the information they gather against you.  Dial suggested that, once such a person is seen for what they are, you then assume the role of a "grey rock", that is, be boring and uninteresting, giving the offender nothing to grab hold of about you.  Well, I gave it a thought and I think I came up with my "Number One" toxic person: Donald Trump.  I certainly would be a grey rock to him should the opportunity arise, but I doubt that the two of us will ever cross paths.  My strategy concerning this despicable, evil soul that my fellow Americans were foolish enough to elect is to follow Dial's final piece of advice: avoid the toxic person.  That's a bit of a challenge, since part of Trump's obvious strategy is to be in the news headlines each and every day, making provocative actions and statements that deliberately offend and frighten people.  Yet I would never wish harm for this individual, who I regard as an asset to Putin's Russia and the furthest thing possible from being a patriotic American...more a convicted felon and traitor who should be locked away in prison...   

Staying Positive Through Life's Complications

In the midst of a number of complicating interruptions to the intended flow of my life into retirement, I am still building a foundational structure on which to live out each day in a way that nurtures my competency, intellect, physical health and social relationships.  It does help for me no longer having to adhere to a 40-hour work week while being in a location under the authority and restrictions imposed by others, not to mention being freed from making the 17-mile round trip each day through often treacherous traffic.  My closest relationships, by far the most important of which is with Melissa, are supportive and want me to be strong, healthy and happy.  I think I'll try to satisfy them by being just that, whatever distractions happen to come my way.  And the recent prostate cancer diagnosis and my scheduled surgery this Thursday to remove said prostate is one of the major ones...

My Daughter Gets Married

Today my daughter Rebecca married her partner in Lakeland.  Melissa and I attended the ceremony, held there at Lake Parker.  Rebecca's spouse's family was also there, and we enjoyed their company, celebrating this important change for my daughter's life.  May their relationship bloom into something strong and enduring...I love them both...  

My Running and Walking Report for February 2025

For the first three weekends in February I participated in three races, speed-walking a 5K and the running the other two, one for 5K and the other for 10 miles.  My workouts were going well, that is, until February 19th when I suffered a bout of inflammation in both legs, especially in the calf area under each knee.  Two days later I had pretty much recovered, but to this day still have aches in the area and am not at 100%.  It feels a bit like arthritis, and my shoulder areas suffer some twinges as well...I had been doing push-ups to develop my upper body strength.  As far as races are concerned, it's over for a while not only because of that inflammation, but also because I am scheduled for prostate removal surgery (prostatectomy) on March 6th because of diagnosed cancer there.  I will need recovery time afterwards, and, besides, it's just going to keep getting warmer outside.  Later on in the spring I'd like to go back to trying a modest swimming routine mixed in with walking and a little running, but my more athletic efforts will be taking a back seat to surgery and recovery...

My Songs of the Month for February 2025

I didn't listen much to my music channels this past month, but I did hear some songs I liked more than others.  The preferred genre is Indie-Rock, and much of what I liked in January slid over into February.  My favorite song of the month was on January's list: Starburster by the Dublin, Ireland group Fontaines DC.  Number Two on the list was Besties by Black Country, New Road.  And the third favorite is January's song of the month for me, Everyone Out by DIIV...

Weekly Short Stories: 1999 Science Fiction, Part 5

As I continue to reflect on stories from 1999 I 'm reading from the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection, I find myself a little "unstuck in time"...as Kurt Vonnegut might put it.  For me growing up and into early adulthood, the year 1999 was a far-off future time, science fiction in itself. Not only did it figure in Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's space exploration classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, but we even had in the early 1970s a syndicated sci-fi TV series called Space: 1999 that starred old Mission: Impossible stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.  This was long before Prince enshrined the year with his 1983 hit 1999.  But now the year 1999 is more than a quarter century into the receding past.  Anyway, let's take a look at a couple of those stories...

GREEN TEA by Richard Wadholm

A "hard" science fiction tale about revenge, I found the technical descriptions of spaceship hardware and arcane narratives about chemical/physical breakdowns of exotic, dangerous substances hard to follow as the story's narrator describes, as an obvious survivor, the heavy loss of life and destruction as a ship transporting dangerous cargo must scramble against all odds to avoid its own destruction...and possibly that of the star system it has entered.  I did make it all the way to the end, for which I'm very proud of myself.  This isn't a story you can rush through, and I felt the author went out of his way to make it a difficult read...

THE DRAGON OF PRIPYAT by Karl Schroeder 

The nuclear reaction meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986 is the basis of this tale, set twenty years later in the "future" 2006 (you know, our "past" 2006).  It seems that the supposedly secured site is emitting toxic radiation, a "release", and an investigator is sent there to, well, investigate.  Is a terrorist group behind the new danger?...I enjoyed reading about how the surrounding environment responded to the Chernobyl debacle over the years.  The author added the twist of virtual reality here as an alternative lifestyle...

Next week I continue looking at 1999 in science fiction...

Miss the Good Old "Boring" Days

I'm looking forward to attending my dear daughter Rebecca's wedding this coming Saturday...it will take place in Lakeland.  My wishes and prayers are with the two of them as they stake out their lives together.  I will always miss and grieve for my son Will, who passed away last summer.  My wife Melissa's sister is now a patient in the same hospital where I'll be undergoing my prostatectomy surgery on March 6th...we are likewise praying for her successful treatment and recovery from her afflictions.  Some folks get restless and discontent over what they perceive as their boring lives.  I, on the other hand...other than my daughter's marriage...would be very happy with a vast sea of relatively eventless days stretched out before me.  But that doesn't seem to be in the works anytime soon...

Latest Jigsaw Puzzle

 

Here's a pic of the jigsaw puzzle I just did over the past weekend.  It's one of four in a box of scenes by the artist Thomas Kinkade that I picked up at my nearby Wal-Mart. Every puzzle has its own challenges, and consequently puts me just enough outside my perceptual comfort zone to serve as a nice little exercise.  Now on to the next one...

Political, Media Manipulation Will Only Get Worse

A few weeks ago, while surfing through YouTube in their section devoted to running, I "ran" across a couple of Canadian middle-age brothers who decided to tackle distance running and triathlons in order to get themselves fit after undergoing some health scares.  They're really a couple of top-notch athletes, it turns out, and they have their own channel committed to their ongoing efforts and accomplishments.  These two are, however, a bit insufferable with their self-promotion and putdowns of those they don't feel measure up to their standards...I felt early on that they held themselves to be on a higher plane of existence than me.  That's okay, they have their thing and I mine...to each our own: I don't HAVE TO watch their videos.  I cannot say the same regarding our recycled president and his musky wingman.  It's clear that the convicted felon that my own country saw fit to return to office has, as a centerpiece of his strategy, the notion of keeping himself the focus of media attention EVERY DAY with some new outrage to say or someone to offend.  Sadly, I think he's on to something...America is hopelessly hooked on reality television and celebrities: the more off-the-wall they are, the better. Some folks think that all they have to do is outlast this president and then things will return to normal, but I think the change is permanent.  From now on future candidates, on both sides of the political divide, will apply the lessons in mass manipulation they're learning here to their respective campaigns. If you think it's bad now, wait 'til AI and quantum computing attain their full realization and seamlessly merge into our mass and social media, forever blurring the distinction between fact and fantasy. Hell, it's already happening.  At least those Canadian brothers are real (I think).  On the other hand, it seems to me that the American voter doesn't even care anymore what is real or not: they just care about how it all makes them feel...