Category Archives: Personal

1/14/2021 – Thursday Blood tests and tennis

Blood tests at CMH. No one there at 7:30am

Searched for post office receipts for book shipments. Karen is upset that it appears that the 12/31/30 shipments haven’t arrived. I threw them out earlier this week.

Finished up complete list of all significant travel since 1974.Doesn’t include brief one day jaunts. Updated Timeline on website.

UTMH work – doc team.

Tennis lesson. Surprisingly my achy knee doesn’t trouble much during the session. Knee problems greatly exacerbated by 30 minute video worko0ut session with Karen. Too much jumping up and down reptitively in the same position,

Showed Karen my Group Photos project. And the Timeline. Much work remains.

Chinese food from Red Chopstick.

More George Gently.

12/31/2020 – Thursday – News Year’s Eve

Went shopping early. Ended up with a surprising amount of food. Breakfast.

Mailed 16 Still Stepping books including one to Torrey in Australia.

Andrea says Noah and Nyla enjoyed yesterday’s chat. Spent most of day working on blog posts for 2003-4. Spoke with David Ackerman.

Tennis lesson at 4pm. Very strenuous drills serve and volley. Total Tennis continues to be overrun with city folk.

Karen somewhat depressed. More George Gently on TV.

11/27/2020 – Friday – Dermatology, walk, tennis

Drove Karen up to East Greenbush for a reading of the biopsy on her upper lip. Fortunately the results are fairly benign. A pre-cancer finding. Now hopefully successfully eradicated through a cryogenic procedure.

Drove to Papscanee Island Nature Preserve for a walk. This park is located on the Hudson River in New Castleton, NY. 3.5 mile walk. Flat with occasional muddy section on the trail. Nice to be walking in a new environment.
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There must have been a very strong wind storm recently. Whole trees blown down….


Tennis with Ted in the afternoon. Esther Hanig drink at 5:30 via Zoom. Post Thanksgiving debrief…..

4/30/2020 – 7/1/2020

I have not felt motivated to write much during this period. The pandemic and its associated tribulations interfere.

We’ve been quite busy with socializing mainly virtually but with warm weather outdoors chiefly people’s backyards. We’ve moved our drinks with Ted and Anne to our backyards on a weekly schedule. Dave Drake has come by for food a number of times. He is working his way through a myriad of curry dishes. Zoom meetings weekly with Esther Hanig, Ellen Feldman, Dave Drake, the Orton siblings, the Leiden crew. 

With less regularity Andrea and company have Zoomed and appeared here physically. Though we have seen Noah and Nyla twice now in the backyard once including Noah’s girlfriend Kiara Guyton. Andrea actually talked with us for almost two hours in a singe stretch. Probably my longest conversation with her in decades. Nyla wrote a great high school essay, “Aunt Jemima Ain’t Chure Mammy”

4/28/2020 – Tuesday – walk – neuroscience course – Dave Drake drinks

Breakfast w bran muffin, banana, and apple. Andrea called and spoke with Karen for a long time. Included me to look at pictures of a house in Sagaponick NY that Andrea has successfully bid $1.5 million. Fully furnished vintage 2002. 2 areas of land. Pool. Good rental property.

Standard walk. But 3.4 mph pace. Definitely the fastest yet.

Listening to lecture 10 in the neuroscience course – vision and visual perception. Also watched the new podcast from the HAL History Room. Gary Sheffer and Kelly Drahushuk on the cemetery. Worked on catching up on my diary on markorton.com.

Drinks with Dave Drake at 6:30pm…..

More Persons of Interest.

4/18/20 – Saturday – library, exercise……

Up early. Listened to Only a Game podcast.

HAL Board of Trustees mtg – active, happy meeting. Received $58,500 PPP money from SBA. Good for 2 1/2 months salaries etc. Lots of talk about new fundraising strategies. Emily made extensive report on our online library programming.

Went to Letterbox Farm to pickup order of eggs and greens.

Karen participated in Balance for Seniors from the library. I did my exercises for the first time in weeks.

Ordered grab bars and other bathroom stuff from Amazon. This will allow us to make the first floor bathroom safe for us to shower in. Short term fix without all of the work planned for a walk in shower.

Karen made meatloaf and sautéed spinach. We drove a portion over to Dave Drake. Had lengthy drinks with Ted and Anne.

Watched the first 30 minutes of China Moon (1995). Gave up at that point. Back to Person of Interest

4/17/20 – Friday – various and list of Zoom meetings

Sent notices out to HAL board. Spent most of morning doing digital housekeeping.

Also time spent learning new things about Notability. Interesting feature of recording a lecture or meeting while making notes. The notes are synced to a time stamp during the recording. So, you can tap on a note and it moves the playback to that point.

Bought lunch at Cascades.

Talked with Kim Bach outside her store Verdigris. She complained about lack of workers to help with her online business. Her part time employees are financially better off on unemployment than coming back to work for her part-time. Continue reading →