Excellent news

Good tidings regarding the pathology report! Head over to Mrs. Random's blog and read her post about it. Lots of relief here! In the meantime, she still has to wear the uncomfortable chest binder and get her fluids drained (by me) 2-4 times per day, for at least another 2 maybe 3 weeks. So it’s still a slog in recovery, but the excellent news gives everything a better feeling.

Today I got to watch a real live (on TV) baseball game, as the Cactus League kicked off with the Cubs vs. the Dodgers. Those same two teams will inaugurate the official beginning of the 2025 season in Japan with a two-game series, March 18-19. Meanwhile, spring training will proceed for the rest of the majors (as well as the Cubs and Dodgers when they return from Japan) until March 26. It was interesting to see the new ABS challenge system in play for the first time at the major league level. There were two challenges of pitches called balls. One got switched to a strike after review.

I’m cooking chicken cacciatore tonight. It’s smelling good! 

Contributing to the economy

MacBook Air M3 15.3" (photo from a glowing Macworld review)

Nearly 26 months ago I bought a MacBook Air (M1 chip, late 2020 model), and I must say I’ve been very pleased with it. Fast, light, elegant, compact—it’s been my daily driver couch computer all this time. It’s the laptop I’m typing on right now. I love it!

But time marches on. Apple has iterated its Air computer a couple times since I bought mine (M2, M3) and added a larger model (15.3” screen vs. the standard 13.6”). Last night I succumbed to the buildup of extreme gadget lust and ordered a 15.3” M3 Air with 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD. That’s three times my current RAM and twice my current SSD. The gadget fund was just sitting there. Now it’s contributing to the economy!

I’m thinking that my M1 will be relegated to dedicated Radio Free Random studio work and the M3 will become my new daily driver. Unless it feels too big for that. I’ll know more next week when I have it in hand. I'm particularly looking forward to using the M3 for audio production using Ableton Live; the larger screen will help my aging eyes deal better with all the little bits and bobs in that software. Moving into a new computer takes some time and effort, and usually produces a few headaches. Here’s hoping for a smooth move-in process!

Doing very well

Yard art, chez Random

Post-op Day 5, and Mrs. Random is doing very well. She’s been getting lots of steps in walking around the house, and finally got to take a shower yesterday. We were a little unsure of certain things taped to her chest, what all should come off and what should stay. But we figured it out. All good now. Drainage amounts are trending down and fluid color is getting lighter. She has an appointment next week to see the surgeon so he can check her healing progress and give her some exercises to do. We were hoping to get the pathology report today (analysis of the removed tumor and lymph nodes), but nothing yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Still in the medical vein… I took Betty to the vet for her annual exam and vaxxes today. Clean bill of health except for the need to lose a couple pounds—and a little thing in her mouth that the doc wants to look at again in a month to check that it isn’t growing. He’s pretty sure it’s something minor, but wants to be certain.

I’ve been transmitting quite a bit on Radio Free Random lately. If you’re interested in listening to the recordings, they can be accessed, along with track lists, at radionot.wordpress.com.

I hit a wall with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and couldn’t get through my re-watch of Age of Ultron. Oh well, maybe later.

We might try to get out for a gentle hike later in the week when the rain lets up. Mrs. R needs to figure out how to manage her drain bulbs. They are rather awkward!

Recovery phase

February 14, backyard chez Random

We’re on the other side of It! Mrs. Random’s surgery went well, and now she’s in the recovery phase. Weather added some spice to the ordeal for me. I had to chain up due to icy roads on my way back home from the hospital Thursday after she had gone into surgery. I haven’t had to deal with that little chore for a couple decades!

Mrs. R stayed overnight for observation, scoring a room in the quiet and well-staffed maternity wing. She was discharged yesterday afternoon after I got a lesson on how to empty her two little drain containers, which are connected to tubes inserted into her mastectomy wounds. I’ll be doing that probably thrice a day. We are keeping track of the drainage (mostly blood) on a DIY chart I made: date, time, side (R/L), and amount (in milliliters). We’re told that she’ll be draining for up to two weeks. Fun!

I’m making meals and helping her with random things she can’t do right now. She can’t raise her arms up very far, and she has a 15-pound lifting limit for two weeks. To prevent any blood clots, she’s supposed to get up and walk around the house at least three times a day. I don’t think that will be any problem—she’s normally an active person. She’s also on pain meds, and so far over-over-the-counter drugs are doing a good job, so she hasn’t needed anything more powerful.

So, the stress of anticipating surgery has been replaced with the slog of recovery. We’ll get news on what they found in the tumor and lymph tissue early next week when the surgeon receives the pathology report. Fingers crossed for all good news!

Visualizing dry safe roads

Mrs. Random, Arlie Park, Feb. 9

Fingers crossed for good driving conditions early tomorrow—we need to get to the hospital at 5:30 a.m. Possibly icy, so I got out our never-used tire cables to make sure they are indeed the correct size, and familiarized myself with installation instructions. Visualizing dry safe roads, but also preparing for freezing rain. This morning’s forecast for Thursday early a.m. is a little better than the one I saw last night. May it improve even more!

It’s been hard to focus on anything creative with Mrs. Random’s impending mastectomy. So it’s been mostly escapism for me. RFR counts as that, and I transmitted for a little over 4 hours yesterday morning. Last night I re-watched another MCU film: Guardians of the Galaxy. Quite entertaining. Introduces the Thanos character as well as the Guardians. I can see why cultural interest in cassette tapes surged after the release of that movie!

Yesterday we went to lunch at Claim 52 Kitchen, and I pigged out on a house burger with added guacamole plus tots. Both of us were still too full by early evening to want dinner, so we punted that planned meal to tonight.

Please wish us good luck driving tomorrow—plus successful surgery and quick healing for Mrs. R. Thank you.

Blahs aside

Studio B is set up again and back in action as of last night’s Radio Free Random transmission. Didn’t get any internet listeners for that broadcast but Mrs. R and I enjoyed the tunes here downstairs. Catch the archived recording anytime here.

I watched Iron Man 3 last night. Good stuff. That’s number seven in the MCU series checked off for me re-watching this time around.

Doing some catsitting over the weekend, which is getting me out of the house and garnering my gadget fund an always-welcome infusion of cash. But I don’t have anything on the gadget front that I really want right now. Yes—strangely, there is no gadget void to be filled at the moment. And the Christmas gadget (OM TG-7 Tough camera) is not making me happy. I think I’ll sell it on MPB when I get the motivation going.

We seem to be in a bit of a hiking hiatus, with a list of excuses basically boiling down to lack of ambition, I suppose. I haven’t taken a meaningful aesthetic photograph for what seems like weeks. I think we kind of have the blahs, kind of combined with admittedly un-zen-like pre-stress around Mrs. R’s approaching surgery.

Blahs aside, we do have a very good life. And we’re enjoying our Sunday morning hang-out with kittehs and fireplace and awesome brutal black coffee. Looking forward to pamcakes ’n’ eggs brunch in a while. Life is good in the Now.

Before we know it

Oh right. I have a blog.

Escapism lately. Baseball, watching archived games—I’ve already mentioned, right? I’m into the seventh game of the 2023 season. Some interesting things so far. Giants franchise-first: two back-to-back home runs twice in one inning. Saw a pitcher penalized twice in one plate appearance for letting the pitch clock run out—penalty being one ball per violation. Saw a batter step out of the box assuming he was granted a timeout—nope, steeee-RIKE! Saw a ball hit so hard it that it ripped through the webbing of the first baseman’s glove and sailed into the outfield—scored as a hit, then later changed to an error, probably appealed later by both teams. Baseball is always interesting, always something new.

More escapism. As of last night, I have watched the first three films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe series: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2. Thor is next. In IM2 (2010) Larry Ellison of Oracle and Elon Musk both have brief cameos. That was cool. Iron Man is cool. I really like Robert Downey Jr. in those films. Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson, too 👀!

Congratulations to friend, local writer (and former KWVA DJ!) Vanessa Salvia for scoring a correspondent position with the soon-to-launch Lookout Eugene-Springfield digital newspaper! Should I be italicizing that? Lookout is looking to fill the shoes of our sold-off, remotely-operated and much-diminished local daily, The Register-Guard. Read the FAQ. Notably: “Our journalism is completely local, nonpartisan and factual. We believe all communities need robust, trustworthy news sources – covering all the ‘beats’ that the best daily newspapers used to. We carefully hire and fairly compensate experienced, professional staff to earn and win community confidence.”

We met with our insurance agent for a little “Medicare 101” consultation yesterday. Very interesting and informative. I feel a lot more confident in making a decision. Leaning toward Medigap rather than Medicare Advantage, for various reasons. But first, we’ve got a Zoom-based webinar on the same subject coming up later in the month with a Selco rep. Final decision and enrollment will come in March.

Mrs. Random’s long-anticipated surgery (bilateral mastectomy) is coming up next week. I’ll be cooking meals and playing a major support role (draining and measuring post-op fluids, making the bed, and other mundane chores). It’s a big scary thing looming now, but we’ll get through it and be on the other side in the recovery and healing phase before we know it.

P1320267.JPG

 (1 Feb 2023)

 

Never say never

"The Catch" by Willie Mays, 1954 World Series

My oh my, it’s come around again. I suppose, deep inside, I never truly doubted that it would. It’s like an irregular but inevitable comet returning to the solar system. What am I talking about? In a word: BASEBALL. Since childhood, I’ve had years of total engagement with Major League Baseball (and my San Francisco Giants—and my Seattle Mariners in the 1990s), alternating with years of total disinterest. Reignition of the flame happens with little warning. After nearly a decade “on” (and three San Francisco World Series titles) my passion for the game completely disappeared with “pandemic baseball” in 2020. Cardboard cutouts standing in for fans at stadiums and the disappearance of the batting pitcher (i.e., switching to the designated hitter rule) in the National League were two aspects I had little stomach for. My head went elsewhere and MLB assumed total irrelevance in my life.

Five years later, I should have had a premonition—an inkling at least—of enthusiasm returning, but I didn’t. It started innocently enough: I watched the first two episodes of Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary series (1994) over the last four days. It was like a virus snuck in. A sneaky, fast-acting virus! I didn’t realize how serious the situation was until last night when I found myself shelling out $30 for the MLB Off-Season Package, which lets me watch or listen to any game played during 2023 and 2024—as well as this year’s spring training games (February 20 to March 25).

Before I went to bed, I watched the Giants 2023 season opener in Yankee Stadium and totally enjoyed myself—though they lost 5-0. I found myself not minding the rule changes I’d been snarling about: pitch clock, limit of two pick-off attempts per at-bat, etc. I’m even okay with the universal DH, and I’m pretty sure I’ll get used to the most egregious change: starting a runner on second during extra innings. If you’d asked me even as late as last year, I’d probably have said “I’m DONE with baseball—for good!” Well, how does that adage go? “Never say never!”

Hopefully it’s the good guys

Jan. 27, Trail 4, Howard Buford Recreation Area aka Mt. Pisgah

Hoopla, the free library-based streaming service, has some cool stuff. Like Ken Burns’ nine-episode 1994 baseball documentary series—I’m in the second inning, which covers 1900-1910, the decade that saw the birth of the American League and the World Series.

Last night on Hoopla I watched Kamikaze 1989, “a 1982 West German cyberpunk thriller film co-written and directed by Wolf Gremm, based on the 1964 novel Murder on the Thirty-First Floor by Per Wahlöö. It stars Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a detective investigating a string of bombings that lead to a corporate media conspiracy. The soundtrack was composed by Tangerine Dream founder Edgar Froese.” Good stuff! I’d watch it again. It was Fassbinder’s final acting performance. He died in the director’s apartment (overdose) in June 1982.

Also last night on Hoopla, I watched a good chunk of a bad movie, The Philadelphia Experiment (1984, dir. Stewart Raffill). I mean, it wasn’t completely terrible, but it definitely wasn’t good.

This morning I woke up with partly stopped up ears, giving me different frequency responses on either side, and a bit of ring modulation on the left side. Annoying. Not a good day to mix recorded music, if I were inclined. Also, a low hum on the right side joined my normal cacaphony of tinnitus pitches. I like to imagine that aliens are communicating with me subliminally via sonic data streams. Hopefully it’s the good guys.

Happy February. Peace out until next bloggin’.

Sleep impossible

Two cats (well, mainly bad little Fleur!) managed to make sleep impossible for me past 4:30 this morning, so I got up and made coffee and ate some of Mrs. R’s granola with half & half. Then I activated Studio A (after a hiatus of several weeks) upstairs and initiated what turned out to be a 5+ hour transmission. You can listen to the recording and view the track list here. I can't think of anything else to say, but I'm using a different font ("Pacifico") for variety. If I come up with more bloggable material today, I’ll be back later. If not, we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Happy weekend!

A spare in my pocket

Yesterday: teasels in the sun at Suzanne Arlie Park (shot with Canon S120)

Took my Lumix G95 (+100-300mm lens) to Arlie Park yesterday. After only 45 shots the battery died, but no problem. I had a spare in my pocket. Changed batts. Um… No camera power. What?? Argggh. I hadn’t charged the spare. Doh! “Luckily” I had my little Canon S120 along, too, so I was still able to get photos, just not superzoomed birds, etc.

Yes, I always have my phone along on hikes, too—and it can take photos, of course. It’s just not as fun as a “real” camera. Using a traditional camera form factor makes me feel like a photographer. And that’s the important thing. Just like using a typewriter makes me feel like a writer. Subjective experience rules!

While I was changing batteries I thought of a Garry Winogrand anecdote: “When asked how he felt about missing photographs while he reloaded his camera with film, he replied ‘There are no photographs while I'm reloading.’” There are no photographs while I’m changing batteries. And there were no photographs for that camera yesterday after I changed batteries. Har har.

Time displace the cat on my lap and make oatmeal. Thanks for reading. Have a nice day.

Oh, wait! Sparks released the first single from their upcoming album today!

Panic or euphoria

Frosty leaves on Trail 4, Howard Buford Recreation Area (Jan. 27)

Eight per cent. That’s how much of the year will have gone by as of late tonight. But measuring time by percentage points seems largely inappropriate. Sometimes time is very dense, and other times time is very porous—and differently for different people, and possibly differently simultaneously for individuals. There’s a brain-bending concept! Quantification goes only so far in the temporal realms.

I’ve got two separate appointments to get tutored in Medicare 101—one is a Zoom webinar offered by a local credit union, and the other is an in-person meeting with our agent. It turns out I already have a Medicare card with my official number—found it because I just opened a big DHHS envelope that’s been sitting on the dining room table for a few days. What can I say—I’m an avoider. Now reorienting to action mode to deal with the impending deadline coming up in May.

In other news, I am practicing emotional distancing from the news. It’s easy to give in to instant reactions—negative or positive, panic or euphoria—when big and loud headlines break. But that doesn’t feel healthy. It’s giving in to manipulation and allows entities who don’t care about me to jiggle and jerk me like a puppet on strings. The strings are in my head. I can cut them—make them disappear—by withholding my emotional attention. Thanks for reading.

It will behoove me

Trail 4, north end of Mount Pisgah, Howard Buford Recreation Area (Jan. 27)

Mrs. Random has a surgery date now, coming up in a couple weeks. “Shit’s getting real,” as they say. We’re still taking things one day at a time, but one of these days soon will carry more disruption than encountered previously during the entire chemo slog.

We’ve been enjoying the current spate of sunny weather, cold though it is. Yesterday we accomplished what we call our “figure eight” hike, on the north end of Buford Park/Mount Pisgah, logging around 8500 steps and tackling more elevation than we’ve done in weeks. That felt good!

I turn 65 in May, and am looking forward to obtaining Honored Rider status with Lane Transit District, our local city bus system—I’ll be able to ride FREE anytime and anywhere on LTD buses! Another thing that comes along with that magic number 65 is Medicare. Every other day, it seems, I receive another piece of mail from some insurance provider offering to help me through the application process and, of course, pitching its own brand of Medicare Advantage, Medigap, etc. The Medicare mail is stacking up! Not since my senior year in high school, receiving recruitment pitches from colleges around the country, have I felt this targeted by institutional mail. As is typical, I’ve been in avoidance mode, but it will behoove me to get on the stick soon and figure out what plan(s) would make sense for me, and make some big decisions.

Jump and run like kittens

Random photo from a random street hike last October

    Luckily I don’t need the internet to write a blog entry. I’m using Scrivener, which is like a kind of pumped up word processor slash content management system for writers. But I will need the internet to post. Our 5G home internet is experiencing a rare “down” episode. If you’re reading this, it came back up—or I turned on my phone hotspot.

Before the net outage this morning I saw two stupid headlines. Well, maybe one stupid headline and one stupid story. The relative stupidity levels probably depend on your own attitude and perspective, but here you go: 1) THE BEST PHOTOS OF TAYLOR SWIFT AT AFC CHAMPIONSHIP, and 2) ASTRONOMERS RED-FACED AFTER MISTAKING MUSK’S TESLA ROADSTER FOR AN ASTEROID. I probably just haven’t had enough coffee. I also read a Forbes story that totally sounds like it was written by an AI. I wasted one of my four free articles on that dumb fluff, damn it. Well, fuck Forbes lol.

It’s Solensia week for the Tinycats. Fleur’s appointment is today, and Griffin’s is Thursday. That stuff gives them superpowers, overcoming their old-age arthritis and letting them jump and run like kittens. Well, that’s probably exaggerating a bit, but the effects are dramatic. Through December they had been getting monthly shots, but this year I’m going to stretch it out to five-week intervals. I spell it $olensia.

Yesterday we hiked at South Eugene Meadows. We’ve been avoiding that park for a few months because last time we went there we encountered No Parking - Maintenance Vehicle Only signs, three of ‘em, in the tiny parking lot. From a couple phone calls I made last fall, I learned that the reason for the parking lot closure was hazy, something to do with the city cancelling their permit with the county (the lot is on a county road), but the “why” of that being rather confusing. Anyway, those signs are gone and the parking lot was full after we pulled in. Excellent! We can add that hike back to our our recreational menu.

Internet is back! Have a nice day. Thanks for reading.

Clean images

Fleur and Griffin watching big screen TV (front window)

We have a lot of jazz CDs. Maybe a hundred? Maybe more? I haven’t counted. Over the last couple weeks, we’ve been playing them on our main hi-fi stereo system, at least one a day, sometimes three or four or more. Lots of great music! Most of our collection is from the bebop and hard bop eras, I reckon. But there’s also some big band and some west coast smooth and some free/out/improv and a few other subgenres (e.g. “gypsy”). Also I’d count our ragtime albums, since that genre was an immediate precursor to jazz. After we get through the jazz CDs, maybe we’ll go through the jazz vinyl albums, of which there are also quite a few. Also: jazz cassettes. But many of those are dubs of what we have on CDs and records. Not all, though.

Sunny cold weather is on hand for the next few days. Good opportunity to get out and hike without worrying about rain and mud. Photography should be good, too! I need to clean the sensor on my G95. Looking at images from last Thursday’s Fern Ridge Reservoir hike, with “Dehaze” dialed up on open sky shots, I noted many little blurry blobs, which result from dust specks on the surface of the digital sensor. Ugh. I thought I’d got them blown off with the air puffer. Nope. Need to use the cleaning solution and one of the little wiper blades that came with the sensor cleaning kit I bought a few months ago. I always get nervous doing that. The sensor is a very crucial and sensitive part of a digital camera. But I’ve done it with success before. It’ll be fine, and I’ll have clean images again.

Instant quote

January book of the month

A “kit lens” is a camera lens that is included with a camera when you buy it. Generally not top-of-the-line glass, kit lenses usually come in standard focal lengths and are intended to get you started with a camera quickly. My (micro four thirds format) Panasonic Lumix GX85 came with two kit lenses: a Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 and a Lumix 45-150mm f/4-5.6. While the former has come in quite handy as an all-around daily carry zoom lens (24-64mm full-frame equivalent angle of view), the latter just hasn’t proved very useful at all, especially after I purchased the Lumix 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6. In fact, I haven’t used the 45-150mm in over two years. So yesterday I finally got off my butt and asked for an instant quote from MPB.com, the used photo gear buy/sell site based in the UK, with a branch in Brooklyn, NY. I self-rated the lens as “like new” because it really is, and got a quote of $48. For a mediocre piece of gear I’m not using, that’s not bad. I went ahead and boxed it up, printed and taped on the required shipping labels, and drove it down to our favorite shipper, Pak Mail on High St. near 13th Ave. It will go out with FedEx on Monday. Boom! Now I wait. But it’s out of the house, and that’s the main thing.

Finally got around to ordering my January “book of the month”—Mrs. R and I both allow ourselves one book per month “on the house” that doesn’t come out of our gadget funds. Ramit Sethi would call gadget funds “guilt-free spending”—an essential part of any conscious spending plan. Anyway, my January book is The Unseen Saul Leiter, edited by Margit Erb and Michael Parillo (D.A.P., 2022). Blurb quote (from the Amazon page):

Now firmly established as one of the world’s greatest photographers, Saul Leiter (1923–2013) was relatively little known until the 2006 publication of Saul Leiter: Early Color, when he was already in his eighties. Choosing to shoot in color when black and white was the norm, Leiter portrayed midcentury New York’s street life with a gorgeous painterliness that evoked the sensuality of his Abstract Expressionist contemporaries Rothko and Newman. His studio in the East Village, where he lived from 1952 until his death in 2013, is now the home of the Saul Leiter Foundation, which has commenced a full-scale survey of his more than 80,000 works. This volume contains works discovered through this project—specifically, color photography from slides never before published or seen by the public. It is edited by Margit Erb and Michael Parillo of the Saul Leiter Foundation, and is embellished with texts that describe how Leiter assembled his slide archive and how it is being catalogued and restored.

Read my friend Blake Andrews’ review of The Unseen Saul Leiter at the photo-eye blog here.

Be the flow

Yesterday, Fern Ridge Wildlife Area

I just read dangerousmeta!’s post musing on 25 years of blogging. I started my first blog in the same month—December 1999. Garret is an interesting and passionate writer. And he’s a serious guy. He gives a bit of advice in that post: “[N]ever write because you feel you have to. Never use AI to compose posts.” Hah! Guilty on both counts! ($RANDOM coin anyone?) But that’s okay. We’re different people living in different reality tunnels. I personally have no advice to give beyond breathe and be yourself (but only if you want to!).

Random notes, as they arise as thought bubbles….

Radio Free Random is apparently on a slight hiatus. There’s an area where I know I can’t force it. DJ Mr. Random will be back on the air sooner or later. Meanwhile—and I know you know, but there’s a huge archive of transmissions linked here and here and here. Yeah, you can’t chat or make requests while listening to a recording, but you can still get that magic RFR vibe, man!

The Tinycats (Griffin and Fleur) pile onto the bed every night and take up a significant number of square inches, forcing us humans into sometimes rather contorted positions to accomodate their furry little bulks. But Betty stays off the bed and usually sleeps in another room. However, last night she slept most of the night on my “nap blanket,” which is folded and placed on the bottom shelf of the bookcase next to my side of the bed. I thought I heard somebody down there in the middle of the night and reached down and felt fur. Then a loud PURR started up and went for ten minutes. Maybe that’s her overnight place now.

I made a Bluesky account yesterday just to see what the buzz was about. I probably won’t be any more active there than I am on X. Bluesky is really just “blue Twitter,” rather like a self-defined mirror image to X, I suppose—if you see X as “far-right.” Although, truthfully it just depends on who you follow. I refuse to go exclusively with one “side” or the other in the Great Bifurcation. I’m not here to fight! It’s all very interesting and indeed full of potential edutainment. One’s experiences all depend on who/what/where you are—on the role(s) you find yourself playing, on what scene(s) you happen to find yourself in. “All the world’s a stage” and all that, you know. We are going through huge cultural shifts right now, and I don’t think it’s wise to grab on to anything for dear life. I say breathe and be the flow. Thank you for reading.

Options are good

Seasonal creek, a few days ago at Mount Pisgah Arboretum

Mrs. Random has been making granola lately. I think yesterday was her third batch this year. I love it! And it gives us another breakfast option. Options are good because they allow easy avoidance of ruts. I mean, some ruts can be fine, but it’s hard to be random without the possibility of variety!

Today we go in for her pre-Keytruda blood draw and a consultation with the oncologist’s assistant, prior to tomorrow’s infusion. Yes, “chemo” is finished, but this is an “immunotherapy” drug. I mean, since it goes into her port and the infusion happens in the chemo room, it still feels like a chemo visit. But I don’t believe there are any significant side effects, which is great.

We’re still waiting for a call from the surgery scheduler for Mrs. R’s mastectomy. Last word (over a week ago) was that they were waiting to get a pre-authorization from the insurance company. Because insurance companies (and their AI algorithm robots) rule the world, of course. (Grrrr.)

How are you doing? Remember to breathe! And remember that what is inside you and beside you right now is far more real than The Spectacle out there. Thank you for reading.

Pictorial update to this morning's post

Porch Stranger's belongings, triple-bagged against easy rupture. Will she return? Or has she cut and run?