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Hearing an Old Song
I have to admit that I’ve been mis-hearing some of the lyrics of one of my favorite songs, “Lean on Me” for the past fifty-odd years since Bill Withers wrote it. It stayed on the top of the charts for more than 3 weeks back in 1972. That was a special time in my life;…
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Coping with Old Farthood By Teaching Patience to Others
I get notices from the Iowa legislators about how great it is that I’m getting to be an old fart. An Iowa senator even reminded me: “Check your driver’s license to see if it’s time to renew!” That’s one of the few things I’m up to “speed” on—see what I did there? Other things remind…
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One Legged Clowning Again
I noticed the other day that I was having trouble doing the one leg stand. It has been getting harder to sustain it past 10 seconds even. It’s not like I’ve been laying off exercising, including the one leg stand. Hey, I can even do a one leg sit to stand (barely). I posted about…
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Certification of Old Fart Status by Iowa House of Representatives
Well, thank you very much, State Representative Adam Zabner, for recognizing me as an old fart as you prefer to call it, which is fine with me. I received a similar honor several years ago, from State Representative Dave Jacoby, who was much more prolix in his remarks on my certificate. A long time ago,…
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Feisty and So On
There’s this dialogue in Men in Black II between Serleena and Zed: Serleena: Zed, look at you, 25 years and you’re still just such a looker. Zed: Cut out the meat dairy. And you, still a pile of squirmy crap in a different wrapper. Serleena: So feisty. I’m becoming more aware of the use of…
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All About the Potato Salad
I recently got a checkup for my retinal tear surgery about 4 months ago. My surgeon was pleased with the outcome. Partly based on my good outcome, he shared that he was guiding his trainees on the wisdom of not necessarily always going with the new surgical procedures for the disorder, which happens not infrequently…
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Countdown to Hot Water Heater Replacement
Well, even though our hot water heater was temporarily fixed, there is no guarantee that it won’t fail again between now and later this week. That’s when we’re scheduled to have the new water heater installed That will cost approximately 10 billion dollars. This item will be the major selling point for our house because…
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Hey, How About Them Nielsen Surveys?
Hey, how ‘bout them Nielsen’s surveys? I can’t remember getting any Nielsen media rating surveys before I retired and I’ve gotten two of them since then. They send you a crisp, new dollar bill in the mail to entice participation. More likely, it elicits guilt. You’d return the dollar bill but not in the mail,…
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Spring
I’m coming up on my last 3 days for the academic year and reflecting now that my favorite season is upon us. Spring does that to me, especially now that I’ve been in the phased retirement contract for the last 2 years. I’ll be going into the 3rd and final year as of July. I…
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Patience is a Virtue Redux
This transition to retirement has me looking back at times to an earlier transition in my life—college. I wrote a blog post 8 years or so ago about a few of my experiences at Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University, a private, historically African American school) in Austin, Texas. We called it H-T for short. The…
Go Retire Psychiatrist 