James Knudsen, ready for AARP
Entering the second half-century of one's life means certain things happen. You become eligible to join AARP, certain manufactured home parks are now open to you, and your doctor recommends that you get your baseline colonoscopy done. Guess which one I did on April 30, 2015. I'll give you a hint: I ate bologna sandwiches on white bread for two days. No, I did not move into a trailer park, and I have yet to receive an AARP discount because I'm not yet a member.
One of the world's great mysteries is why, when the medical professionals want to start looking around the last place I would consider looking for...ANYTHING, why do they insist that you eat the stuff you should not eat in order to remain healthy. Why?
From the instructions I was given by the VA:
THREE DAYS PRIOR TO PROCEDURE: stop eating nuts, seeds, whole grain breads, popcorn, raw vegetables, raw fruits, salads, corn and beans...White bread, white rice, pasta, noodles, and meats...are ok.To make things more confusing, there actually is an RV parked in front of my house.
I am doing very okay, naturally in good health. Just busy. Moving out of my upstairs apartment [over in Nevada] into a downstairs apartment but hopefully only temporary. Seriously looking for a place near my house [in South Lake Tahoe]. Will be staying in my house till the middle of May, when vacation rentals pick up. Many projects there: fix the fountain, curtains, paint the hot tub deck, etc. Currently the annual Arizona group are in the house for a week of partying. I'm not spending much time at my computer these days....
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| Courtesy the World Wide Web |
In the spirit of the recent observation of Earth Day, I am offering this video link for my April character update. It describes a simple technique for reducing the amount of paper waste we produce when drying our hands after washing in public restrooms. I shared this easily-applied concept with our editor-in-chief, Morris, earlier this spring. Joe Smith's April 2012 TED talk:
Also, in the spirit of Earth Day, I finally purchased a bicycle. My previous bike had been stolen quite a while back, and I have been saving funds to invest in a good new one. In the last two years, Memphis has suddenly become a very biker-friendly area. It went from having only a few places to bike when I lived here before [while earning my master's degree], to adding bike lanes to numerous avenues all over town (Memphis has the greatest number of wide streets – both major arteries and neighborhood side streets – that I have seen in a city), creating multiple "greenlines" that provide biking trails through urban forests connecting various neighborhoods and the expansive Shelby Farms Park Conservancy, and adding "touring" bike routes all across town. These new opportunities will likely continue to expand in the future with more bike lanes and trails being added.
Am recovering from a very intense period of calving and foaling. We gained a few more calves, lost a colt, and gained a beautiful filly. Farming isn't always emotionally easy, the loss of the colt was difficult. However, the farm must go on.
Beginning to plant roses, lavender, sunflowers, and fruit trees. Adding new fencing for horses. Raising and enjoying a few new ducklings! Enjoying the green grass on the farm, and the horses have ascended the mountain till next winter. It is certainly spring on Franklin Hill Farm!
Can't find the camera with all the photos. I think it's out in the barn. Use the attached. The cell is taking hours to upload photos for some reason. On the end of being swamped for weeks on end. Glad foaling season is over. This farmer is tired.
As Tom Hanks said in the movie Apollo 13, “the earth is getting pretty big in the window….” It certainly does feel like things are “getting closer.” The end of the school year is almost here, and my students are definitely starting to act like they want out. It’s funny because it always reminds me that C.S. Lewis once described Heaven as that feeling you get when you are released for holiday after a long school year.
I’m also starting to work through the paperwork for a marriage license with my fiancé. I’m sure [wink] that every married couple fondly remembers that bureaucratic process. We recently signed our lease agreement for the guest house in which we’ll be staying. Things are really starting to come together! Right now it feels like there is just so much going on and not enough time in the day to do it all…Pray I keep things together well.
I'm doing fine, but am in the throes of selling my house – closing soon. And in a tight spot on an IBM project, so I'm afraid nothing new [of more interest than this] this month.
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| Courtesy the World Wide Web/td> |
We have the rainy season coming along with every kind of bug in the world, I had a guy put up a screen door but he said he could not screen the windows because they opened and closed with a handle (I think they call it louvered windows). Anyway I had to build my own screens to cover the windows. Took longer than I had expected (I think age may have played a part in the time line).The Midyetts, watching the sun set
Now I have one more project. The breezeway at the back door. I need to enclose it with screen as that is where we get our air flow from and need to keep the door open during the day. I'm hoping to finish it before we leave for the States in June.
There are a lot of people who come to Costa Rica and leave or sell everything they own with the idea it would be cheaper to replace it here than pay $10,000 to have it shipped. However, they don't take into account the fact that everything in Costa Rica is shipped here. And because of the cost of shipping and import taxes, everything costs twice as much as in the States. So if everything you own would cost you $5,000 to replace in the states it would cost $10,000 here, and not be of the same quality. I bring this up because we had to buy a stove the other day. It's a nice looking stove but not full-size. It'll work nicely for our needs. It would cost around $300 in the States; we paid $610 for it here, but when in Rome and so forth.
It's funny but down here: just a few drops of rain hit the ground and plants start to pop up everywhere – it's like they know the rainy season is on the way.
I'm taking the day off. Will try and catch up on the blog and Janie is going to break in our new stove with a banana pudding.
Oh, we had a snake chase a mouse into the house. So I need to get the back screened off as fast as I can so Janie can get off the couch.
Yet another late sunset pic taken from our site on the estuary [described on April 21, with more photographs]:
Where are you? I need Copy! Sayeth The Editor.Morris Dean, thanking my lucky stars
Well, I’ve got lots of excuses. In my last normal moments, I was preparing two big choral concerts. There were to be two performances of the Mass in B minor with the Boulder Bach Festival, followed by three performance of “Queen Christina” with the Seicento Baroque Ensemble, all accompanied by two weeks of long daily rehearsals. During the first Bach performance, disaster struck; I came down with a brutal cough, so bad I had to cancel out of the rest of the season. The doctor said “pneumonia,” and threatened to throw me in the hospital if antibiotics didn’t work.
Fortunately, they did work. I then told her that plan A included an immediate departure for Guatemala, and could I go anyway? She said “Why not? The humidity will do you good.” I spent a couple of weeks lying around recuperating in a lavish tropical garden, overeating at Ristorante Don Pablo, the gourmet pizza joint run by my old hippy buddy. A tale worth detailing!
While lying about, I finished The Imitation Game, the biography of Alan Turing on which the eponymous movie was based. Guess what: Turing was a very different man from the barely functioning autistic portrayed in the movie. Another worthy column. Also read Jared Diamond’s The Day Before Yesterday, about the realities good and ill of the hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Also 1491, which alleges that pre-Columbian Native Americans were all organized into high civilizations.
Shortly afterward, I left for darkest Utah with my boon companions, the Usual Suspects. We camped on Muddy Creek, a pretty place about a hundred empty miles southwest of Green River. After two days of pleasant hiking, a Great Wind arose, flattening the kitchen tent and filling all our worldly goods with dust. Then it rained. Then it snowed. Two days later we drove back across Colorado in a fearsome downpour. I am still cleaning and repairing gear. Another column-worthy epic.
Meanwhile, one morning the stone comprising my waterfall fell into the pond with a mighty crash, having been destabilized by the rains of the Great Flood of 2013. We’re in the pricy business of rebuilding, and correcting some design mistakes by the Sherpas who built the original. I dream of a bridge made from a single might slab of stone. All this is on hold at the moment, as a three-day rainstorm has filled the new pond to its muddy brim.
Meanwhile, I’ve been practicing hard, trying to gain control of Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata. It’s a bucket-list project I’ve been working on for more than two years. The big moment is next Saturday [the Saturday just past?], right after my (mumble...)eth birthday. I’m also in rehearsals of Mozart’s Coronation Mass.
And meanwhile, last weekend was dedicated to an abbreviated B Minor Mass by the Bach Festival; the Dvorak Cello Concerto and the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra by the Boulder Philharmonic; and a new work by a composer on the Colorado faculty and Franck’s piano quintet by the Tacacs Quartet.
Soon, I hope, all those columns will become reality! [His editor's dream!]
Wow, reading our characters' updates just gives me a thrill. James... Jim... André... Bettina... Kyle... Ralph... Ed & Janie... Vic & Shirley.... And maybe the same lucky stars I'm thanking will give Chuck less "meanwhile" to have to deal with so he can write those columns! Lucky you, too, our readers!
And after Ralph has sold his house and gotten out of that corporate tight spot, some more of his poems! Maybe we can excerpt a few from his new book, which the publisher told us about last month.
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
Wonderful read!!
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