Year in Review: February 2022 - February 2023

I've recently completed yet another trip around the sun. While this would be extremely notable if I did it in a spaceship, I did it the easy way: I stayed home and let the Earth do the work of making the journey for me. Similar to last year, I figured I'd update people with the (modest) events of the preceding year.

Caveats: Let me set expectations. I'm never going to be confused with that Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World. (I'm actually probably on the other side of the boring/interesting spectrum.)

Health: Like most people who've been kicking around for 6 decades or so, it's always something. The foot problems that had troubled me in previous years didn't cause much in the way of problems last year, perhaps due to a simple foot-stretching exercise I started doing. On the other hand, my left knee got very achy late last winter. Sometimes it'd feel like my knee was going to buckle on me even doing fairly banal activities like walking down a sidewalk. While a normal person would have gone to a doctor, I decided to curtail my morning jogging for a while to see if it would improve on its own. For about a month I hobbled around places with good level footing (much of Duke Farms and Duke Island Park fill the bill), then began doing a "brisk walk" in lieu of a morning jog. Eventually (I forget if it was around Memorial Day or Independence Day) I restarted my morning jogging, though as a precautionary measure I've been taking a somewhat shorter route (3.2 miles instead of the 4 miles I had been doing pre-injury). Although the knee isn't 100% healed, it now seems to tolerate most of what I'm likely to want to do in a given week [1]. It's not as flexible as I'd like, but it's mostly functional.

Our generally warmer winters have enabled me to go jogging most of the winter. When I 1st started my morning jogging in the mid-90s, I would frequently try jogging through snow and on ice, but I probably wouldn't do that today; the risk of falling is higher, and so is the likelihood of having a serious injury if I do fall. But I've gotten almost no snow this year, and only very rarely has ice been a hindrance. Some people move south when they retire; I'm staying where I am and letting the south move up to me.

COVID: AFAIK I still haven't caught it. I got 2 vaccine boosters last year, 1 Moderna and 1 Pfizer. I also ordered one of those free COVID testing packs that the government was encouraging, though I only used 3 of the 4 tests for precautionary reasons. I've been inconsistent about masking. I've tended to wear it more at busy places like Costco or when we seemed to be getting a bit of a surge from a variant. My impression is that free COVID boosters are now over, and with my high deductible insurance plan I'm not sure what a COVID booster is going to cost. Still, I'm expecting that, similar to flu vaccines, these are going to be an annual thing to take care of going forward.

Volunteering: I think this was all done at Duke Farms this year, and similar to last year it mostly consisted of:

• Trail Stewart - We go down trails to trim plants intruding onto the trail, and we go a little off-trail to cut back invasive plants like Multiflora Rose, Japanese Barberry, Japanese Honeysuckle, Wineberry, and Burning Bush.
• Outdoor Educator - Here I'm usually working with 1-3 of the Education staff, and we basically try and engage walkers-by in conversations about vultures or turtles or spiders.
• Program Assistant - When Duke Farms has programs for the public, it's not unusual for 1-2 volunteers to assist with the program. (It sounds like Duke Farms will be doing less of this to concentrate on programs for schoolchildren.)

I also participated in the annual Duke Farms butterfly count. With COVID less of a threat, most of the Duke Farms Educational Staff participated this year, making it a much larger group that was involved. (My recollection is that despite the extra participants, we didn't find a lot more butterflies than usual; the counts suggested an average year for our lepidopteran friends.)

Although my volunteer hours only increased slightly last year, I finished 2nd in total hours, allowing me to get this corduroy Osprey hat from Duke Farms.

I'm thinking of increasing my volunteering a bit this coming year, possibly with another organization, just to give my week a little more structure. Stay tuned.

Animals: I got my 1st picture of an American Beaver and my 1st picture of a Virginia Opossum; I'll probably be devoting posts to these guys soon.

Social: I generally get together with what I'd describe as "the remnants of my old Fun League Softball Team"; there's generally 3-5 of us that meet about once a week, usually at Chimney Rock Inn or Green Knoll Grille. Now that COVID appears to be less of a threat, I'm wondering if I should be restarting monthly dinners with another set of old colleagues (mostly from Service Delivery), but thus far I haven't followed up on that.

I suppose a waning COVID had something to do with it too, but I had more trick-or-treaters this past Halloween. In recent years I've ended up buying quite a bit of candy only to have a handful of kids show up. This past Halloween I taped one of the candy packages to my door to signal I was distributing candy, and I actually had quite a few stop by.

I spent Thanksgiving at the townhouse of an old colleague of mine who routinely hosts Thanksgiving dinners; he's moving to a less convenient part of NJ, so it's possible this'll be the last time I spend Thanksgiving this way.

[1] I participated in a stream wading program at Duke Farms last summer, and this seemed to be a bad activity for my knee. This wasn't ideal for me since the combination of rocky and potentially slippery footing and my inability to see either of them ahead of time forced me to walk very slowly/carefully.