Year In Review - February 2023 thru February 2024

As I've (more or less) successfully managed yet another trip around the sun, so lets discuss what happened. This should be similar to what I did in 2022 and 2023, so if those bored you nearly comatose you should be warned that this will be more of the same.

Photographic evidence that I exist. (Almost certainly not an AI generated image of a random old guy.)

Health: It wouldn't be a year in review without a passing mention about my left knee. Although I don't recall it swelling up like it used to do, these days I'll sometimes get a fairly sharp pain if I bend it weirdly (which is harder to avoid than you'd think it would be). Still, I go jogging most mornings ... so how bad can the knee really be?

I hurt my back this summer. I attribute this to stupidity. At Duke Farms we were cutting down (mostly invasive) plants that were tangling into or just very close to some of their fencing. Since we were cutting on both sides of the fence but were only collecting the debris on 1 side of it, there was a problem getting cuttings on my side of the fence over to the other side. The fence was probably 9-10' high and many of the cuttings were non-aerodynamic branches with leaves. I kind of developed on my own a technique of whipping the branches over the fence. This meant I was 1 of the only people consistently able to throw these branches over the fence. And this worked fine the 1st week (around 3 hours of throwing), but there was some torque involved in doing this, and about 1 hour into the 2nd week I hurt my back fairly badly doing this.

Initially it felt like my back could buckle even walking a few steps, though within a week I was hobbling around pretty well, and had more or less resumed most activities within about 2 weeks. Still, the back was never quite right the rest of the summer/autumn, and I'd feel back twinges doing activities that usually gave me no difficulty. I'm hopeful that the more leisurely winter has allowed the back issue to settle down, though I probably won't know whether this is true until spring.

Late summer into autumn were a busy time for vaccinations. In early September I finally checked with Costco to see exactly what the shingles vaccine would cost me, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the answer was: nothing! I'm suspicious that the ACA requires some vaccines to be free with an approved market plan, though it's possible that insurance companies cover this vaccine because treating shingles would be more costly. The shingles vaccine is a 2-doser, and while I had only a slight reaction to the 1st dose, the 2nd dose in November was kind of similar to most of my COVID-19 vaccination shots: fever/chills overnight, some fatigue and headache into the next day. The reaction wasn't awful but was at least unpleasant. Had I known this vaccine wasn't going to cost me anything, I would have gotten it sooner than in my early 60s. (I now wonder if the vaccine would have been free when I was getting my insurance through Nokia. Who knows?)

I also got quadrivalent flu and bivalent COVID-19 this autumn on the same day, with the requisite fever/chills/headache reaction that the COVID-19 vaccines routinely give me. (Usually I get no reaction to a flu vaccine so I doubt that getting them together was a factor.)

Finally, after 4 years of pandemic and despite regular vaccinations, I contracted COVID-19, with the 1st symptoms appearing on the night of January 26. I experienced around 3 days of fever, chills, head/body aches, and fatigue though as early as January 28 I suspected the symptoms might be abating. When I woke up on January 29 my fever was gone and I only had some signs of a headache. I continue to have some congestion, but it's sort of what you'd expect from a fairly mild cold. (I'm suspicious it's due to the COVID-19 bout, though I'm not certain of the connection.)

It did take me 3 days before I actually tested positive for COVID-19. I took the test in the morning of the 28th, and 24 hours later I was either cured or nearly cured. This is why I didn't even try to get treatment of my COVID-19; I couldn't confirm what it was until Sunday morning, didn't like my chances of getting a Sunday doctor's appointment, and by Monday morning it seemed to be a moot point since it was obvious I was cured or pretty darned close to cured.

Teeth: Since Health was getting a little long, I'll discuss a tooth issue here instead. Years ago I had a root canal procedure done on a tooth. When the pandemic quieted down a bit I asked my dentist about a lump near the gum of that tooth. That seemed to culminate in a visit with an oral surgeon who tried (presumably unsuccessfully) to clean up an infection there. Though a lump returned, it wasn't as big and didn't cause any discomfort so I kind of assumed that maybe that's just the way it was going to be from here on out.

But this year during regular X-rays my dentist saw an infection in a tooth and sent me to an endodontist for an evaluation. Before the appointment I checked my old records and discovered this was the same tooth that the oral surgeon had worked on. Between his fancier X-rays and the (long, possibly tedious) history I provided, he and my dentist determined that a dental implant was the way to go. My (somewhat vague) understanding is this consists of:

1. Demolition of the original tooth.
2. Cleaning up the infection surrounding it.
3. Attaching an implant to the remaining bone.
4. Letting this heal, and then attaching attatching an artificial tooth to it. (I'm not sure how similar this step is to getting a crown.)

My dentist originally hoped (or maybe it was a "stretch goal"?) to accomplish steps 1-3 all in 1 visit, but it sounds like cleaning out the infection took longer than hoped and the infection had destroyed too much bone to attach an implant. He injected something intended to foster bone growth, and currently I have a gap in my teeth; it's a little too far back to get noticed by others, but I know it's there.

There were some surprises:

• I was surprised how much bleeding I did. I'm told that it looks like way more blood than it actually is when it gets mixed with mouth saliva, but I was (gently) spitting blood out of my mouth and replacing bloody gauze until bedtime. Fortunately the bleeding had at least slowed by bedtime.
• My dentist gave me real antibiotics, but he also prescribed a homeopathic gel and rinse. You don't need to be a scientist to think that homeopathy, where you dilute stuff to supposedly improve efficacy, is highly questionable as a treatment for anything. I chose not to confront my dentist about this (who wants to risk going to an angry dentist?), but I suspect any gel and rinse that are sterile would have provided similar (and cheaper) results.
• I was instructed to kind of scrape the teeth on each side with cotton gauze to remove tartar. I guess that with so much of the teeth exposed to the environment of the mouth, that's suddenly a bigger problem than usual. For a couple weeks I'd routinely find some blood on the gauze after doing this.
• I had to chew on the other side of my mouth for a couple weeks, and was told to stay away from spicy or acidic food/drink. (It turns out this was mostly because they could have been painful.)

At the end of this month I'm supposed to go back and have my dentist rule on whether there's enough bone in there now to which an implant can be attached. I have no reason to think there won't be ... other than this tooth has been inconvenient and expensive so far.

Finances: When I retired I wasn't sure what to expect as far as health insurance goes. I knew I'd be dependent on private insurance for approximately 6 years and was a little fearful it might cost me $1500-2000 per month. (In early 2026 I'll be eligible for Medicare, so that's still a ways off.) My guess is that the ACA has prevented such an onerous insurance as I'm paying far less than that for a "silver plan", but there is a side effect. To drive down the cost, I need to ensure my income isn't very high. And since my income consists of some capital gains, a smaller amount of interest, and whatever I withdraw from my mutual funds and IRAs, I have a fair amount of control over my income. 

Basically this system seems to reward me for being cheap. If I live frugally, I don't need much income, and with a (somewhat) low income I get a fair amount of subsidy on my health insurance payments. Fortunately I have frugal tendencies, so the system tends to work for me. (I could see it working far worse for people who spend a lot of money in retirement.)

Volunteering: As I'm wont to do, I once again did a fair amount of volunteering at Duke Farms, most of it being as a Stewart Volunteer. I suspect that this was initially conceived as doing trail maintenance, though it's probably evolving into 1) Clearing out invasive species of plants, and 2) Planting native species in their place. Clearing invasives is a fairly continuous job since many of them are very good at growing back. I also did some Outdoor Educator work there, which is a fairly easy/fun position where you basically just talk to visitors about 1 topic or another. I also helped a bit with their RRSPP (Raritan River School Partnership Program); this is a harder job where you need to try and focus the attention of kids K-12, with far different challenges depending on the grades. The general idea is to work with 2 of the smaller/poorer school systems in the area so that each grade will visit Duke Farms once/year where some nature/conservation theme is discussed. These tend to be fairly intense programs where it's easy to lose the attention of the kids. (I don't consider this to be something I'm really good at.)

While I used to do more Program Assistant volunteering at Duke Farms, these opportunities seem to be getting rarer, and are probably being filled more with interns and other staff. It also sounds like the RRSPP program is really going to be where Duke Farms focuses most of its educational efforts, so there probably won't be a lot of opportunities here. Although when I started volunteering here I could get lots of hours on their bird watching, tree hike, and mystery walk programs, those days seem to be dwindling.

Despite volunteering quite a few fewer hours this past year, I still finished 3rd overall in volunteer hours, netting me a gift package from The Chocolate Factory at the end-of-year dinner.

Partly to make up for this, I started doing some volunteering at Raritan Headwaters Association. Probably the best programs for me there were the 1s where we'd attack some invasive plants (especially things like Autumn Olive in their meadows) and the watering of some Swamp Milkweed that they're trying to (more firmly) establish at Fairview Farm (which, similar to Duke Farms, isn't really a working farm these days). On 1 occasion I helped with some setup and garbage collection at a Shedfest, which is a fund-raiser they do at/around a large shed on the property.

Sports: Historically when I watch UConn basketball their women's team is a perennial national title contender while the men are more likely to be in the conversation for a conference championship. A funny thing happened recently; the women's team has been decimated with injuries while the men's team has developed into a national power. Last spring the women won the Big East regular season and tournament championships but lost (relatively) early in the national championship, while the men's team struggled in the Big East Conference but cut through the NCAA Tournament like a hot knife through butter to win a National Championship. So far this season seems to be a continuation of both those trends, as the UConn women's team already has 5 out of 14 scholarship players out for the remainder of the season while the UConn men's team looks like 1 of the best teams in the country.

Social: As has been the case in recent years, I still get together with some of the people I used to play softball with; this is approximately 1 lunch/week. This usually occurs on Tuesdays, and alternates between Chimney Rock Inn and Green Knoll Grill. And I still get together with some of my old Service Delivery colleagues for dinner approximately every other month. This traditionally occurs at Foccacia Pizza & Pasta. (I probably should be scheduling 1 of those right now.) Other than that, I do see people in the course of my volunteering, and have met a few dogs as my apartment complex has (greatly) loosened its pet restrictions, but I wouldn't consider myself to be an extremely social person.