The annual Kickball challenge between University of Iowa Department of Psychiatry Residents and Faculty is coming up in June. You know what that means.
Losers suspend the winners’ trophy in Jello. Somebody did that when we played Matball several years ago. If you need a recipe:
Matball was the forerunner of Kickball in the department. I think the Kickball rules are here. Federal law says you have to play in 95-degree heat with insane humidity driving the perceived temperature to slightly above that on the surface of the sun. Other rules:
If the ball melts, faculty wins.
For every point the residents score, faculty automatically score 5.
Faculty may tackle the base runner at any time.
If it rains, faculty win by 10 points.
The thing to do is to recruit Sasquatch for your side, who will always boot the ball into the next county. Bring many replacement balls. Sasquatch will bring the beef jerky.
The games are fun to watch. Residents jumping over faculty; Faculty collapsing from heat stroke.
I never played.
I’m trying to recall whether faculty ever won a game. I don’t think we ever did. I think that’s why the trophy ended up in Jello.
We were out on the Terry Trueblood Trail and saw a lot of different kinds of birds doing the things that birds—and humans do. Looking for mates, mating, nesting, hunting, feeding. We’re a little more romantic about it, at least sometimes.
Often, I wonder. Who are the real bird brains around here?
Recently, we took a walk on the Clear Creek Trail in Coralville. There are always a lot of birds out and they all have different songs. We hear more birds than we see because the trail is crowded with trees.
On the other hand, the highlight of the afternoon was stopping for lunch at the Wendy’s drive-thru. They’re selling that $5 Biggie Bag. We ordered a couple of those and the cashier who took the order asked what we kind of burgers we wanted. She rattled off the choices so fast.
I guess we weren’t listening. I think you get 3 choices for burgers (although I cheated for this post by googling it): junior bacon cheeseburger, crispy chicken BLT, or a double stack. You also get chicken nuggets, fries, and a drink.
Sena said, “I want a vegetable hamburger, two of them.” I had to laugh when the clerk was silent for a long moment—and repeated “vegetable hamburger” in a puzzled-sounding voice. But I give her credit; she made a quick recovery and said “Oh, do you mean you want the junior bacon cheeseburger?”
Sena just said, “Oh yeah!”
I’m pretty sure the cashier was having a moment about the “vegetable hamburger” bit. It’s likely a dated term and many younger people might think it means a meatless sandwich.
In fact, when I did a quick internet search asking “does anybody know what a vegetable hamburger is these days?” I got all kind of hits for plant-based burgers. No hits for a real meat hamburger with tomatoes, lettuce, onion, and pickles. A veggie burger nowadays is defined as a “burger patty that does not contain meat.”
And that reminded me of the Wendy’s 1980s ad campaign with the “Where’s the beef!” lady starring in the commercials, which I’m pretty sure nobody but baby boomers remember either.
And then there’s the Wendy’s new Biggie Bag commercial. It’s the one where a bunch of Wendy’s workers are singing about the Biggie Bag and a customer asks, “Is that a real song?”
I couldn’t understand the lyrics in the jingle and had to google the YouTube video. Only one of the commenters almost nailed it, but I think it’s:
“You got that bag; you got a biggie bag.”
People really want that jingle to be a real song.
Okay, so that’s a long way from the walk on the Clear Creek Trail. So be it.
Well, the jumping worms are making Iowans jumpy lately, even though the critters have been reportedaround here since at least 2018 by the Iowa Department of Agriculture & Land Stewardship. All of a sudden, they’re alien invaders, slithering like snakes and jumping into your gardens.
Iowa State University wants us to take pictures of every jumping worm we see, so you have your cameras ready. They’re as popular as aliens from distant galaxies, but said to be far more destructive of the land, gorging themselves on leaf litter, and according to the Iowa Department of Agriculture,“…exposing the land to compaction, increased water runoff, erosion, and clears the way for invasive plants to take root on the newly cleared soil. This results in less diversity of native plants, and thus less diversity of animals.”
They thrash around and look pretty mad. There’s even a YouTube video of them whipping around in a frenzy.
I wonder if we could control them with Canadian Geese. They eat earthworms. I don’t know for sure if they eat jumping worms, but I don’t see why not.
There are a couple of problems with using geese, though. They hiss like snakes when you get too close to their young. Their long necks even remind me of snakes. And they like to spread their poop all over sidewalks and driveways.
Maybe the jumping worms would be great for fishing. They’d whip around in the water so wildly they’d be sure to attract any hungry fish.
Here’s something ironic. Maybe we could use the jumping worms to catch snakehead fish, which is another invasive species. Catch the snakehead with snake worms and serve the snakeheads for dinner. Yum. I’ll have an egg salad sandwich, please.
For the first time we watched a total lunar eclipse on the night of May 15, 2022. It was a cool night. I used two cameras in an effort to make the most of my first effort in getting pictures of the event. I’m a novice and I’m sure it shows, of course. We had a lot of fun.
I used a point and shoot Canon Powershot SX610 HS, a small camera we’ve had for years. And I used a Nikon D3400 on a tripod. I started taking pictures shortly after 8:30 PM.
I’m not used to the night noises outside and could not make out what sounded likely raspy growling. At first, I thought it was Bigfoot and actually thought I got a shot of it stalking across the moon where it teleported along with its luggage. Bigfoot is actually an interdimensional critter. And they don’t travel light.
Bigfoot on the moon before the eclipse
On the other hand, Sena thought the noises were made by White Tail deer and she was right. I found a YouTube that showed them making exactly the same noises we heard. Later I heard a Barred Owl hooting.
I have a couple of questions about the total lunar eclipse that’s occurring tonight. First, where’s the best place to observe it? If you consult the best advice on how to watch it, you learn that the first phase (which in Iowa City, Iowa happens at 8:32 PM) is visible in the Southeastern part of the sky and at 3.4 degrees altitude.
Great, it sounds like I need to be where there are no trees or buildings and lying on my belly. The next phase is at 9:27 PM, which is not much better because the altitude is only 11.4 degrees, at 129 degrees azimuth. I’m still learning this jargon, but again, do I need to be able to fly above the tree line to see the first couple of phases?
Should we climb up on our roof to see the lunar eclipse?
Any suggestions are welcome. The next question involves the well-known strangeness that happens during eclipses. Insects and other animals can get goofy about their diurnal cycles and, oh yeah, aliens get really gassy and develop uncontrolled farting.
The Alien Flatulence Syndrome (AFS) is well-described in the scientific literature. No, I’m not going to have a list of references at the end of this post, and it’s for the same reason Beetlejuice won’t tell Lydia his name:
“Because if I tell you, you’ll tell your friends, your friends are callin’ me on the horn all the time, I gotta show up at shopping centers for openings and sign autographs and shit like that and it makes my life a *hell*. Okay? A living hell.”
You can ask anyone on the Ancient Aliens crew for all the evidence you want that Blood Moons cause aliens to fart, then the bowel gas eruptions levitate them to the Blood Moon—where they open used flying saucer dealerships. And that’s the reason why you see so many UFOs.
Which leads us to the explanation for aliens shape-shifting into humans in order to live among us, and do things like play baseball like Exley in the historically accurate X-Files documentary “The Unnatural.” The real reason is they want to be able to buy Beano without being mobbed and forced to show up at shopping centers for openings, sign autographs and so on. Aliens hate lunar eclipses.
I may have to update this post as the lunar eclipse drama approaches tonight—if I can stay awake. This thing gets pretty close to our bedtime.
Just to update us on the total lunar eclipse Blood Mood tonight, we can see the livestream on timeanddate if we’re yawning around the time it starts. Or you can wait for my snapshots, similar in quality to my previous shots of the Worm Moon and Snow Mood in 2021 (I’m just kidding, don’t do it!):
I got a nice surprise recently after my one-month follow-up postop clinic visit following my retinal detachment surgery. The scheduling desk clerk gave me a pair of post-dilation sunglasses. That was the first time in years that I’ve been offered them after getting mydriatic drops for eye clinic exams.
The last time I got mydriatic drops, I didn’t get a pair of post-dilation sunglasses and I had to drive myself home. It was pretty uncomfortable and I almost stopped along the way to just park somewhere. I was really light sensitive and I don’t have a regular pair of sunglasses. My eyes were tearing and I had a strong urge to squint so tight, I’d have been driving blind.
That experience was the inspiration for my blog post “Mydriatic Madness” on March 16, 2022.
The eye clinics I’ve been to in past years always used to hand out post-dilation glasses after eye exams in which pupillary dilation was done. It was automatic.
However, in recent years it seems this practice has been abandoned—until just a couple of days ago. The scheduling clerk offered me a pair, for which I was grateful.
Ironically this was after she gave me a form to evaluate whether any of the nurses and doctors had washed their hands before examining me. For the life of me I couldn’t recall if any of them had! I felt embarrassed for them because the rating form was a yes/no format. Essentially, I had to say “no” across the board.
And yet the pair of dilation glasses was the first such courtesy I’ve encountered in years after an eye examination. It’s really more than a courtesy. It could be a safety issue if you’re driving after the exam. And it was the scheduling clerk’s responsibility, evidently. The glasses are kept in a little slot and if you’re not standing in just the right place, you wouldn’t even see them.
I’m not sure if the scheduling clerk ought to be the one offering the glasses. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for a health care professional to do that? I guess I’m quibbling in a situation where nobody offers them.
Maybe the patients should learn to just ask for post-dilation glasses. They’re even a little stylish. Mine look like what you can buy on Amazon (Scheaffer-Vicron Slip-in) for about $16 for a pack of 25. That’s about 64 cents each so it’s not breaking any eye clinic budget to offer them for free.
And hand-washing should be automatic—or at least noticing when it’s done in front of you.
Okay, so I’m nobody’s personal trainer, but I have an update on my exercise routine, which I’m doing daily for the most part. I spend about a half hour on the “workout” which starts with a floor yoga warm up. I get on the exercise bike for 5 minutes. Then I do 3 sets of body weight squats, dumbbells, and planks. I finish off with another 5 minutes on the bike.
Obviously, my goal is not to be ripped. I just want to keep my bowels moving, to sleep OK, and stay reasonably fit for a geezer. I also do daily mindfulness meditation.
I still have a lot of work to do on being more well-rounded. And I mean a lot.
This is just a reminiscence. I know the word “wherefores” in the title is old-fashioned, but I’m an old guy and so what? When I was a young guy living in Mason City, Iowa where I grew up, I could not afford to rent an apartment. Shortly after I became an emancipated minor, I was lucky to be able to rent a dormitory room at the YMCA at 15 North Pennsylvania Avenue. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.
Reference: M, Ben and Clio Admin. “Mason City YMCA (1926-200).” Clio: Your Guide to History. September 30, 2021. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://theclio.com/entry/140366
I guess that makes me sort of historic too. It was built in 1926. I think it rents out apartments now. I recently read a Globe Gazette article about the beginnings of the YWCA on 2 South Adams and it was built in 1918. The current Mason City Family YMCA is located on 1840 S Monroe Avenue.
There is a local legend that bank robber John Dillinger and his gang stayed at the YMCA while planning their robbery of the First National Bank in 1934. Track star Jesse Owens stayed there briefly in 1937, starring for a basketball exhibition.
I recently read a Globe Gazette article on the web about the beginnings of the YWCA on 2 South Adams. As I said, it was built in 1918, but I don’t know when it closed. The YWCA sat empty for years until a couple of artists got a loan from a local realtor. They’re renovating it. (Zachary DuPont. “Old YWCA building takes strides toward renovation,” Globe Gazette on line, 10/29, 2021, updated 1/18/2022).
They plan to build artist studios on the 2nd floor, performance space where a basketball court is presently, a community area and art gallery on the first floor, and make single apartment/dormitory rooms cheaper than regular apartments (maybe similar to what the YMCA had many years ago, up to 12 units on 3rd floor). My wife, Sena, stayed there briefly and that was very helpful.
The YWCA is not on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s not clear why. The artists have raised some money with a GoFundMe campaign toward the renovation project. The website is titled “Save the Historic Mason City YWCA.” So why is it not on the National Register of Historic Places?
Anyway, I moved into a very cramped room at the YMCA on either the 3rd floor in my teens. I was working as a draftsman and surveyor’s assistant for WHKS & Co., a consulting engineering company. It was mainly a place to sleep. Most of the time I was traveling, working on out-of-town jobs such as relocating Highway 13 between Elkader and Strawberry Point (really more like straightening out all the curves in it), land surveys and the like.
Portrait of the legacy blogger as a young man
I also have a distant memory of learning how to swim at the YMCA when I was a kid. I was terrified of even putting my face in the water and used to get fierce headaches just getting into the pool. I’m not sure how I got over it, but I did.
There were a fair number of eccentric characters who lived at the YMCA back in my day. I didn’t consider myself one of them and that’s probably why I didn’t end up staying there for decades. I could have worked in Mason City for the rest of my life, having breakfast at the café in the old Brick and Tile Building on East State Street, and eating all of my other meals in restaurants along Federal Avenue until I was too old to do much more than sit in Central Park.
But I didn’t. I’ll get to that.
There were a number of guys who stayed long term at the YMCA. It was kind of uncomfortable for that. There was only one communal bathroom and shower. There were no kitchens. There was barely enough room for a bed, a kneehole desk and chair, and you had to listen to the cast iron heater radiator clank most of the night. They were just sleeping rooms, but it was a little too loud to sleep sometimes because of the banging noise from the radiators.
I found out one of my neighbors was building a motorcycle in his room. He was very proud of it. It was a large machine and took up a lot of space. He kept it very clean. The Director of the YMCA at the time was John Calhoun and he’d been involved with the YMCA since 1943. He had a reputation for being pretty strict about the rules, which likely included one prohibiting the building of motorcycles in your dormitory room. We kept the motorcycle a secret of course.
There were some guys whose wives kicked them out of the house. They were always going out for coffee. They could drink a lot of coffee, smoke a prodigious number of cigarettes, and talk non-stop about how bad things were in the world in general.
There was an old candy bar vending machine on the floor. I got what must have been an ancient Butterfinger. I bit into it and found what I thought was half a worm wriggling around. Finding a worm was bad enough, but half a worm alarmed me. Where was the other half?
I even telephoned the local hospital emergency room to ask if I were in danger of some kind of poisoning. There was only a pay phone available at the YMCA, even for the guys who lived there. The ER doc couldn’t stop laughing long enough to say more than I’d most likely be just fine. “Fine,” he said. I haven’t eaten a Butterfinger since.
I met one guy who kept saying basically one thing over and over: “So my ancestors came over on the Mayflower. All well and good…” Then he would sort of trail off. His expression didn’t change at all. In fact, he looked flat most of the time. I didn’t know it at the time, but he probably had a chronic, severe mental illness.
I don’t remember who told me that the athletic director was gay. I don’t know if he was or not, and it didn’t matter. He treated everybody with kindness and respect and we treated him likewise. I remember he gave me sound advice about the safest length of time to spend in the steam room after I almost blacked out after sitting in there way too long.
I learned the dollar bill jump trick from an older guy in the weight room. He didn’t call it that, but it was a similar challenge. The idea is to bet you that you can’t bend over or squat, grab just your toes and jump over a broomstick—without letting go of your toes. I think he actually showed it to me and another youngster. We tried over and over. All we did was fall and laugh. It’s a good thing he didn’t make us bet.
There wasn’t much to do around there except play pool. There was this underfed-looking guy who used to play a deadly game of call shot eight ball. He amazed me because he worse eyeglasses that were as thick as pop bottle bottoms. I didn’t understand how he could even see his own hands. He won every game.
I know it sounds a little dull, living at the YMCA. On the other hand, I’d have probably been in a tight spot if the YMCA had not been there when I was young.
I read a Wikipedia article about the song in the late 1970s, “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People. The author noted that in the early days of the YMCA, the single room occupancy dormitory rooms were for guys who moved to the city from rural areas to find work. Later, YMCA tenants tended to be youth “…facing life issues” or the homeless.
And I met Sena there. She switched jobs from working across the street at a school administration building to work at the YMCA.
I never hung out at the front desk as much as I did after she showed up. I pretended to read the newspaper a lot. She probably wondered why I was always there. We played bumper pool. I don’t remember who won the games, but I had trouble concentrating on my shots.
She does everything. There must be a God because she is God’s gift to me. I guess after all, I did just fine after eating half a worm.
Well, Sena ordered a new Sharp calculator and we just got it. It’s a Sharp EL-M335. It has a bigger, easier to see display and larger keys than the vintage Sharp ELSI MATE EL-505. We stuck with the Sharp brand because it’s durable and reliable.
I’ve mentioned the old Sharp EL-505 in previous posts, mainly to highlight the idea that vintage doesn’t necessarily mean useless. It served well for over 30 years believe it or not, and we didn’t change the two double AA batteries for more than a decade. You can call me a liar or demented, but it’s the truth.
I’ll probably use the new one to do things like total up our Scrabble game scores to find out how badly I lose each time we play and to spell words on it. It’ll be used for other tasks.
And an added plus—the words I spell on the new calculator are larger and easier to read than on the old one.
I remember buying the old one shortly before we moved to Ames, Iowa so I could start college at Iowa State University. I got the Sharp ELSI MATE EL-505 because it had special scientific functions on it because I was planning to study engineering.
I quickly found out I didn’t have the head for the mathematics necessary to get through an engineering program. So, I ended up using it for things like—scoring Scrabble games and spelling words.
The Sharp EL-M335 actually uses a solar cell and a backup Alkaline manganese battery. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that unless I used a magnifying glass to see the operation manual’s tiny print. It’s a good thing the display uses bigger characters.
However, replacing the battery in the new calculator will require using a very tiny screwdriver to remove 6 very tiny screws. It’s a good thing we have a very tiny Kobalt screwdriver set with Phillips and flat head bits that you can store in the handle.
So, there you have it. We have a brand new, modern Sharp calculator. And it looks sharp. But we don’t plan to throw away our vintage calculator. It’s been good to us.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 