April 5, 2025

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 5, 2025, jailed for winning.
Five years ago today: April 5, 2021, “journaling”.
Nine years ago today: April 5, 2017, it’s a cannonball.
Random years ago today: April 5, 2013, silver glare.

           Are you as bored with this medical episode as I am? Today I squash the situation report into the addendum. Thanks for putting up with my constant attention to health, worse, it won’t change until I have a return to some level of activity. I see now that building boxes was a sign of a longer and more gradual decline. As always, it is comparative. Some people naturally do nothing. A.I. will be most helpful to such types.

           The project being considered for now is a mini-table saw. It’s past my endurance, so all I’m after for now is gathering the materials. Other than box lumber, I have placed an embargo on most purchases. I think by the upcoming weekend, I’ll be able to gig. Looking over Steve’s list for anything I missed, there it was. The correct name is “For What It’s Worth”, from 1966. One of those tunes nobody listened much to the bass line. I could not play blues-jazz fusion back then, but I’m about to give it a whirl.
           Mind you, this morning was better, the more after a fortifying breakfast. Hotcakes and fried sausage, coffee, and seven meds next to the mouse. Face it, except by luck, I cannot make proper hotcakes. This has never stopped me from trying. Let’s get something done today and I don’t care what—it is almost dawn already. I am committed to accomplishing something, even if it is invisible knowledge.

           Today’s off to a good start, I heard tractor noises. Howie has the old John Deere apart, and confirms the two-piston design explored here recently. The explanation was and is: pure simplicity. Here you see the two piston shafts and the radiator that works on convection only. No pump. Howie has seen a 1 cylinder, a Porche model A111. Runs smooth, he adds, due to near-perfect counterbalancing.
           Um, when he checked on me last day, he rang the doorbell. I did not hear it, only aware when the phone rang. He knew I was in and he could hear the bell. Since my hearing is fine, I’m planning a possible flasher in the back room. My explanation has to be those new pills, though none of them are mood-altering. Anti-inflammatory and blood thinners, mostly.

Picture of the day.
Ford factory, S. Africa.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           I got all the way downtown, which cost me $90 plus another $60 for 3/4 of a tank of gas. The haul includes 46 pounds of doggie food, which the passersby who helped me load it said was “not that heavy”. By noon, it was sweltering. I have allocated $400 for gasoline this month, almost 7 times my usual budget. Checking the news, I see MicroSoft has issued the same warning I did years ago: don’t trust Copilot. Oregon reports a “dangerous” 25% increase in measles death this month. From 3 cases to 4. One of my search criteria is for authentic equipment and I found an old movie called “Sea of Sand”, dated 1958.

           Cranking the volume so I could work and watch, there was a scene where the navigator takes a sextant sighting. Dang if it didn’t click. We don’t know what star he shot, but the reading was 36°41’18”. We know the latitude is the Sahara and they are, dead reckoning, east of Greenwich. No luck, even assuming the star was overhead, this plots them off the coast of Somalia. But I had to know.
           The blog that dares now brings you the potato video, as usual safe-for-work no sound. I may not eat much, but it is the best. Here is supper and breakfast. Not shown are the carrots and lots of gravy. Thick biscuit gravy. It’s not just for breakfast any more. Just think, a once-proud cross-county motorcyclist, reduced to peeling spuds—but hey, I made the effort to record it. Hungry? Help yourself, there is lots.

           Later. I rekindled the bass line to “For What It’s Worth” and I can play it. It’s a guitar riff but I’ll fix that. This time I have the Songsterr notes and I see why that was so tough to learn when I was barely a teen. It has octave double-stops on the lower strings, a very sparse technique. As usual, playing it live is a real treat to an audience who never quite listened before.
           The heat crept to the low 90s, so I settled in and parsed this old song, now 60 years old. I really don’t like those guitar-like bass fills. In tunes of this sort, I usually amalgamate the best parts of each verse or chorus. This time, I think I may play the drum part, that is, follow the drum pattern but with bass notes, my specialty. Later, I got it, but not the passing notes and that is a tremendous amount of work in that particular song.
           This was a nothing afternoon though I may have broken the hospital three-hour sleep routine. I stayed up 17-1/2 hours without dozing. How about unexplained events in my work shed? It was not that windy, yet I found a dozen pint paint cans on the floor. Pieces of wood seemingly flung around. And some of my best tools lying in the dirt. No animal tracks and if it was wind, nothing lighter was disturbed.

ADDENDUM

           This is now the 9th week of recovery, I had planned for a total of 12 weeks. But I will not meet that deadline. I’ve had memory lapses after the anesthetic. The gasoline to Miami is a frightful expense. Food remains bland but I get a distinct and encouraging “knotting” feeling as my chest bones repair. I can play bass and I have been, up to an hour per day. I’ve never spent so much time sitting at home; it is a behavior I associate with study and driving. My inability to see close-range objects on end is now become a significant problem.
           Here is a typical medicine bottle, I noticed that this amber liquid had condensed inside the sealed glass. Shown here, the metal flange is removed to remove the top. It emitted a horrid smell, which I instantly plugged and took this photo. To think just days ago the contents were injected into my bloodstream.

           I’ve picked April 26 for a big review. It would seem I’ve beat the odds. But no dancing yet. When I say memory problems, I mean like taking five minutes to recall my own e-mail passwords. I feel fully mobile but with the restriction of fatigue. Notably I can now raise my arms past shoulder-height. My leg has nerve damage but does not interfere and both my hands still feel numb. Full recover, they said, will take a year. Are you prepared to wait that long before I can report any adventures?

Last Laugh

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