Say What?

Last week was a full week. My aunt Eva passed away on Monday, the 16th; her funeral service was last Friday morning. Eva was just shy of her 92nd birthday and by all accounts was ready to move on from this life, wondering why it's so hard to die and why was she still here. She was a part of every one of our summers growing up as we'd vacation near her and her family in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I can easily hear her voice in my head with her Yooper accent filling her kitchen. I had so little contact with her in the last 45 years but still, she will be missed. Visits to the U.P. won't be the same without her sweet presence there. My aunt Maria flew in from Florida and kept me company on the 6-hour drive to Winona , near where we stayed. It had been more than 11 years since I was last in the U.P., and being there made me realize how much I miss it. We only stayed 2 nights but I was able to manage to get in 18 holes of golf at the local course where I'd spent many ...

The leaves have been piling up fast in our yard and rather than wait a week between mowings to vacuum them up, I've been out there every 2 to 3 days. They're a lot more manageable that way. I love fall but not this aspect of it. Two more metro area courses were added to the PCC membership I have for golfing, bringing the total number of courses I have available to me to 57. The two newest additions are courses I'm familiar with from when I was a boy: Hyland Greens and Dwan Golf Club , both in Bloomington. Dwan is an 18 hole course but not particularly long while Hyland has gone from an 18 hole par 3 course to 9 holes, all still par 3. They removed the inside 9 holes and turned them into a driving range. I went out to Hyland Thursday afternoon to play it for old time's sake. I remember the last time I played there—it was 22 years ago and I was with my former stepson, Dave. I returned home to a message from my sister on my answering machine that our dad had died. It...

It's been more than a week since the largest modern-day mass killing in the United States. Republicans were all on point in the days after the shooting, stating that now was not the time to talk about any sort of meaningful gun control legislation. They were apparently too busy organizing their thoughts and prayers. People of all political stripes were posting their favorite memes on Facebook -- memes which best aligned with their convictions about what to do, or not to do. The meme to the left is a good example of what conservatives were posting. I couldn't help but notice that the examples used in that particular meme all resulted in stricter controls for each of the methods listed. Timothy McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb to kill hundreds, and the government responded with much tighter controls on the sale of the kind of fertilizer he used to make a bomb. The 9/11 terrorists used box cutters to commandeer aircraft and fly them into buildings, and the government responded wi...

I've completed tapering off prednisone and I'm steadily seeing glimpses of my old self. There were a few difficult days last week where I had to force myself to get out of bed but I can tell that my adrenal gland has awoken from its prednisone induced slumber as the color slowly returns to my world. I'm still struggling to push hard on my rides but that will come. The headaches have been done for more than a month but I'm reluctant to send my oxygen bottles back for fear that another phase is just around the bend. I've been absent here for more than a couple weeks. I tried to sit down several times to tap out an update but every time I did it felt like I was forcing it and I never like to approach this hobby of mine with that mindset. And where do I even begin with so much of what's happening in our world with Trump* behind the wheel; threatening to destroy North Korea and its population of 25,000,000 while his evangelical followers cheer him on ; his continua...

I'm in a bit of a funk as I complete my taper from prednisone, a drug I use as a prophylactic to minimize the disruption of my life from cluster headaches that I recently wrote about here . Prednisone is both a godsend and a curse. I'd be lost without it for those weeks and months when I'm desperate for relief from severe headache pain but it comes at a price: irritableness, aggression, mood swings, shakiness, sleeplessness, and lethargy bordering on depression. Those are just some of the more obvious side effects for me. There are other, less noticeable but more adverse reactions that come with the prolonged use of the drug. But still, I readily take it for the relief it provides. Prednisone suppresses the body's adrenal gland and its ability to manufacture natural corticosteroids (especially cortisol). It shuts it down completely. Weaning off the drug is important to allow time for the adrenal gland to once again begin its own cortisol production, and that takes tim...

And just like that, another decade races past! I struggled more than ever when faced with turning 50. There was something about that number that was unsettling to me and it took me a while to come to terms with it. Funnily enough, I'm not feeling the same sort of concern about having just turned 60. I'm embracing this new decade! After all, 60 is the new 40, right? Rachel bought me a fun gift for the garage—my own parking spot saver! It's perfect! A closer look . The USS Fresno was the ship I served on when I was in the Navy in the mid to late '70s. And Rachel celebrated another birthday as well. She turned 26 on Thursday. Drew hosted a party for her at his home in Rochester and it was  such a nice time! Well done, Drew! I attended my 2nd annual Red Eye Open golf tournament this past week at Fountain Valley Golf Course in Farmington. It's a tournament for retired controllers. I didn't play as well as I'd hoped to but I had a lot of fun. I'd like ...

Bucket List: view a total solar eclipse. Check! What a fun adventure and experience that was! I first made mention in my blog of wanting to view the eclipse from a position of totality back in March and then proceeded to cement our plans to make it happen by booking a room in Lincoln, Nebraska. We left late Sunday morning and joined the steady flow of traffic on I-35W as we made our way south. Traffic was heavy but it was moving along at a good clip. Eclipse fever was building! We chose Lincoln for its proximity to where totality would be occurring, knowing that we'd likely be viewing it from some other city nearer to totality based on cloud cover. All of the forecasts indicated we'd need to drive west in the morning to improve our chances of a cloud-free sky. We didn't mind. The extra hours spent on the road to make it happen were all worth it to us. We chose to drive toward Grand Island, Nebraska and possibly a little beyond. We eventually settled on Ravenna, Ne...