Category Archives: Personal

1/29/2020 – web project, work, tennis

Wednesday 

Spent too much time working with a plugin to add tables of contents to web pages here and on AmericanDelusions. Decided in the end to drop it here because of a conflict with Timeline. Also talked with Karen about my spreadsheet of travel events. She added some I had forgotten back in the early ‘70s.

FaceTime with kids in Leiden
M 

Tentative travel list without Karen’s edits:

June 1982 Karen, Jonathan & Mark take Green Tortoise bus from Harvard Sq. to Los Angeles
September 1983 Mark and Karen cross Canada by train
November 1984 Karen and kids go to Virgin Islands
March 1986 Puerto Rico
April 1986 Mark in Milan (work), Paris w Harvey Meyerson
May 1986 Karen to Dueseldorf (work) then Rome and Paris
March 1987 M & K in Jamaica
August 1987 Mark to Taiwan (work) then Melbourne
February 1988 M & K Big Bend National Park
June 1988 Family in Southest
December 1989 Karen in India
June 1990 M&K Washington DC, Virginia and West Virginia
March 1991 K&M Mexico
September 1991 Karen hikes White Mountains
June 1992 K&M travel with Ed and Meredith to Glacier National park
October 1992 Karen and Andrea trip to Southwest and Albuquerque Balloon Festival
March 1995 K&M go to Paris
April 1996 K&M got to Florida, east, west Everglades
October 1998 Karen and Mark travel to blues festival and elsewhere. Helena Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Memphis
December 1999 Karen goes to Vietnam
April 2000 Karen Jackson Mississippi wi Linda Larson
June 2002 Karen Mississippi w Linda Larson
May 2005 Singapore
May 2005 Korea wedding
June 2005 Jon and Nan wedding Cambridge
April 2008 K&M Savannah and Charleston
February 2009 K&M Florida, cousins’ dinner
December 2009 K&M Hong Kong & Vietnam
February 2010 K&M Florida, cousin’s dinner
February 2011 South-Alabama-Texas-New Mexico-Oklahoma-return
December 2011 HK – Bali
December 2012 Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Penang
February 2013 California and Arizona
December 2014 Australia with Jon, nan, kids, visit Torry and Jane
August 2015 Northern CA and Sapoznick wedding
December 2015 West Coast w AJL & kids
October 2016 Road Trip – Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago
February 2017 Florida road trip by car, cousins’ dinner
March 2017 Leiden, Utrecht, Maastricht, Barcelona, et al
August 2017 Phillip Johnson House
August 2017 Art Exhibit Rogers
October 2017 Leiden, Cologne Freiburg, Brussels, Antwerp, et al
February 2018 Road trip – Florida, New Orleans, Gulf Coast, cousins’ dinner
May 2018 Netherlands-Lisbon visit with Torrey and Jane
June 2018 Bus Trip – NYC – Atlantic City – Cape May – Philadelphia – NYC
October 2018 Netherlands – Sicily
February 2019 Superbowl Cambridge, Florida Cousins
April 2019 Philadelphia and Washington DC
December 2019 Leiden, Vienna, Morocco

Met with Erin Marshall and Ryder Cooley at UTMH. Lengthy discussion of document standards and user roles and permissions. Have asked Troy Web for a roles and permissions matrix. They should be able to produce this easily. 

Seth and I talked with SOMML. After what seems to be more than a year of preparatory work they have actually started to sign up patients at Albany Med. Also spoke with David about upcoming meeting with CEO candidate Leon Greene next week.

Rare completely clear sky behind the Catskill Mountains on the way to tennis about 5:30pm.

Doubles at Total Tennis. Played quite well excepting serve which featured way too many double faults. Left knee bothered me towards the end of the session.

1/24/2020 – web work, tennis, movie

Friday

Spent several hours working through photos from 2018 to make a list of events. Also extended the project on ValuEdge history. Cleaned up a few family finance issues.

Karen’s new 27” iMac arrived. Got it started installing from Time Machine backup. Still working on it as we went to bed.

Played tennis with Ted at Old Chatham Tennis… only got one hour of court time. Worked on new grip for backhand. Ended set at 3-5. 

Went to TSL to see Parasite (IMDB link), the Korean movie much talked about recently. Interesting, strange movie….

1/23/2020 – Doctor, UTMH, Tennis

Thursday

Doctor appointment with Marilyn Miller. Talked about right wrist, left knee – minor pain there – and shooting pains occasionally in legs. Left with appointment to Dr. Shin at Fish and Game Rd for wrist and knee. Blood work for leg pains. This may either resolve or narrow that issue. Rest of test results in good shape.

More work on the marketing brochure and other. 

Tennis lesson. Saif now wants me to hit the backhand with a grip that very nearly mirrors my forehand grip. Instantly drilled lots of balls into the net, as he predicted. This new grip will greatly increase the top spin. More work on serve. Tossing the ball really high to slow down arm motion. Also keeping left hand pointed to ball for as long as possible.

12/10/2019 – more prostate action and tennis

Thursday

Went to see Dr. Subudhi at CMH. PSA value now 5, up from 4.7 8 months ago. This is following a trend over the last few years of rising PSA numbers. He repeated a DRE and found that he could still feel the small (~1/8 in bump). But given negative results of the August biopsy I am no closer to a conclusive result. He suggests another blood test, 4Kscore. This test provides a good assessment of risk of aggressive cancer versus “indolent”.

Tennis lesson with Saif. Lots of work on backhand and volleying. 3 ball drills coming to the net.

8/1/2019 – prostate biopsy

Thursday

Went up to CMH and met up with Dr. Subudhi, the urologist. Karen went with me. The biopsy was moderately uncomfortable, but as expected it only took perhaps ten minutes of so. Went home and spent the rest of the day snoozing, reading, doing very little. Watched more videos about prostate cancer topics. Results of my biopsy should be available in a week. Then we’ll see what decisions need to be made.

I’m really annoyed with Seth because he told everyone at UTMH about the biopsy. I’ve received notes from Wexelman, David, Ole…. But maybe I should not be so annoyed since I also told David rather casually the other day in an email about scheduling some meeting.

Saw a video about making a drop down work bench for the barn. I can use the dining table we retrieved from the alley.

Made a tofu dish for dinner. Onions, green peppers, red pepper, bok choy, chopped tomatoes (canned), tofu, tikka masala sauce. Combined with leftovers. Bulgur, meatloaf, cauliflower and cheese.

7/30/2019 – HAL, clean up, tennis lesson

Tuesday

Did some of the standing exercises with the exercise bands….monster walks….These Indian clubs showed up in the mail:

Ducked out of the UTMH team meeting today. Cannot stand the blather…. Caught up on HAL stuff. Set up meetings with board members…looked at ellenliburt.com website in advance of tomorrow’s meeting with Ellen. Spent time getting ready to transfer the new UTMH website to the domain. Also watched more videos about prostate cancer and treatments, especially robotic prostatectomies. Updated my exercise protocol pages.

Sudden, quite violent thunder storm with hail descended at about 1pm. Power went out. Took Karen to library on the way to Saugerties. Tree limbs and trees down over in Catskill.

Tennis lesson at 3pm. Worked on hitting backhand crosscourt. Spent a lot of time on crosscourt rallies, both forehand and backhand.  Ended with serve. Saif seemed pleased that my toss is finally high enough to slow down the swing of the arm and racket. Ted Dewsnap showed up for Saif’s next lesson as I was leaving.

Put a big pile of recycling out. Got rid of many computer boxes that have been upstairs in the barn for ten years. Started working on new motion detector light over door to office. Will come in handy when the shorter days return in a couple of months. 

Karen made a real meatloaf with a mixture of veal, pork and beef. Excellent.

More Boston Legal

7/29/2019 – exercises, puttering, HAL, nonfiction book group

Monday

After breakfast did exercise routine. Puttering. Created some questions for the book group meeting on White Trash. Karen was off in Cambridge at Soup Group. Greeted one of the 50 photographers in the gallery to see her work. Read more of Stalingrad.

Broke up the many computer boxes I had brought down from the 2nd floor of barn. First step in a clean out. 

Met with Emily Chameides at the library at 5pm. Talked through lots of issues. 

Nonfiction book group at 6 pm. 8 people attended despite promises from four or five more to show up.  Two new people: Anna Maria Assevero and Peter Daley. She has joined the library board. He is a friend of Erika and Nick from another book group. Good discussion. 

7/24/2019 – PT, work….

Wednesday

Corey Smith, physical therapist and sports trainer who I have worked with at CMH PT on Fish and Game Rd. several times over the past three years, showed up for a private session. I wrote him earlier about what I felt my objectives are:

Here are a few thoughts about what I’d like to accomplish.
 
Get into an every other day morning routine of exercises focused on balance, flexibility and strength. 30-40 minutes would be sustainable. I want to use a floor mat and simple tools like rubber bands and small weights. Develop a set of routines that will hit the major components of the body in a rotating cycle.
 
Do these objectives fit with your private practice? I might guess that I would need three or four sessions to get started. Then occasional tune-ups. Obviously I am open to your direction and expert advice.
 
So we got right to it. We used the exercise bands I had purchased earlier and he brought along a couple of extra toys, Indian club and exercise balls. I took notes and we took pictures so that I can remember what to do. I turned these into a document:
Now I just have to actually carry through on this exercise program.
 

UTMH

Met with Seth to prep for the meeting at 3pm with David and Cameron. Two topics: Troy Web and Ole Breuning (see Friday 7/19/2019). But, first, Seth needed to talk about his conflicted feelings about spending so much time at this point in his life endlessly working on things that may not interest him so much any more….. This is a conversation we seem to repeat regularly now. Then we got to the Troy Web mess. David and Seth confabulate the need to move on in development work with the earlier contractual commitments they made to TW for a share of revenue. At any rate I got Seth to come up with a framing statement to contain the discussion. This will be especially valuable for Cameron who is not up on all the details.

Met for an hour withSeth, David, and Cameron. Finally resolved to pay TW what UTMH owes under the contract and initiate the SaaS development project. Also, importantly from my perspective, they agreed to retain Michael Queralt and the Nicaraguan guys for the work on a future state map. David never brought up Ole. Don’t think he forgot. He and Seth are avoiding the unproductive situation with Ole. Perhaps there is also a deeper relationship between Ole and Cameron than I know about. I kept quiet.