Tuesday, November 10, 2026

A worry

Some of my pills are very small.  Some are reasonable size.  A few are capsules but most are hard and about the size I find fairly easy to handle and swallow.  When I am going to be scanned by one machine or another, I may get special temporary instructions to skip some pills.  My wife sorts our medicines and vitamins into four pill containers every Saturday morning.  She seems to be able to look at a small chunk of this or that and recognize which of about a dozen of my meds it is.  Fortunately, she loves me and accompanies me when I meet with physicians.


I have a high school buddy from years ago who is a retired pharmacist.  He seems like a nice, well-educated man but I have been worried that pharmacists will establish a criminal gang and impose impossible conditions on us all, just to conquer.  I guess artificial intelligence will take care of itself but how about pharmacists?


Monday, November 9, 2026

One place

We have a house with many windows.  When we knew we needed a house, we bought a book of house designs.   We looked through the book separately but we both selected the same design.  We asked our magical son-in-law to build it and he did.  Each of the two of us moved many times as a child but we have lived in this house for over 30 years.

Sunday, November 8, 2026

Trying to be both neat and economical

For a week or so, my desk and nearby areas have been a mess.  I have many wires for charging devices, so many there are two large tangles of wire. I have two large crates of wire, plugs, covers, etc.  I spread lots of junky stuff out, trying to check on old devices to see if they still have life and function in them.  The desktop computer and an Apple tablet are steadily in use but older models of several types are still waiting for final throwing-away.

Saturday, November 7, 2026

Repeated post

Thursday, March 12, 2026 (not today’s date!)

In this age of artificial intelligence, it is often worthwhile to ask Google whatever is on your mind.

 They could ask me anything!

A friend of mine said that the day of her doctoral oral exam, she thought "They could ask me anything!".   That might be correct.  Some clown or provocateur might ask for some outlandish knowledge.  What was Mozart's mother's maiden name?  Other members of the orals committee or the candidate herself might counter with Why do you ask that?  Or What is the relevance of that question?


As I age and think, I find more and more subjects that I don't know about.  New subjects are invented, including those that I have never heard of. Items I did know include many that I have forgotten.  Most of several courses I used to teach and some science and social studies units even for 5th graders I could not teach now without a serious review of lessons and facts.


By the way, if a candidate for a doctor's degree, like a PhD, gets asked something he can't answer, he will just calmly say "I don't know".  Doing so is much more acceptable than guessing or bluffing.


Friday, November 6, 2026

My understanding of talk

My wife and I have had good communication between us so it is painful for both of us that my hearing is getting worse and worse.  I can tell when she speaks but I can’t understand what words she said.  I know many other avenues of communication remain but I don’t think any are as quick and handy as talking.  She can understand me when I speak and with a repetition or two or more, I can understand her.


Thursday, November 5, 2026

Two deer

I was looking out into our backyard when a doe and a fawn walked into sight.  The deer remind me of church go-ers with their graceful, slow, cautious walk.  The two animals lay down not far from each other.  Our yard is the next-to-last one in a string and those neighbors have two dogs.  I think the deer can smell their presence and are not attracted. They laid there for a couple of hours before walking off somewhere. 

Wednesday, November 4, 2026

Shared content

When I looked up a woman I met, I found she was an influencer.  I watched the comedy “Best Medicine” and saw that a New England physician has a secretary that is also an influencer.  I email a copy of my blog to about 100 people and the contents of each post appear on the page of “Fear, Fun and Filoz”, a Google Blogspot page. Google gives me statistics on “page views” and on the number of page views of each post.  The numbers of page views from countries around the world are big enough that I imagine content-hungry bloggers sometimes share my content with their readers. 


I have seen that many people start a blog with a description of some exciting event that happened but on days without an exciting event, they completely skip writing a blog post.  Often, the posting dates are stretched out over greater and greater intervals until the blog simply stops. 


Tuesday, November 3, 2026

Watching again

I have certainly enjoyed re-watching “Anne with an E” on Netflix a 2nd time.  It is a tv show based on the book “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Montgomery (1908).  This is the second run-thru of our watching the show.  I highly recommend watching in a sympathetic mood, appreciative of human experiences, sensitivities and quandaries.

Monday, November 2, 2026

I finished "Theo of Golden"

We often jump to a Victoria Houston book.  They are about Loon Lake, a fictional town in northern Wisconsin, lumber and sport fishing country.  We have quite a few in our Kindles and have read many.  We are old and sometimes fail to recognize a book that I have already read aloud.  This book, “Dead Spider”, may be one.

Sunday, November 1, 2026

What time is it?

So, I think I have adjusted the clocks that need it.  Lynn’s brother’s social worker got him a Mitoart clock that shows the day of the week and adjusts itself for today’s end of daylight saving time.  Our laptop computers and some other time-telling features adjust themselves.  That seems to me a very handy feature to have.  That clock also has “Morning” or “Afternoon” on its face at the right time.