Year in Review - February 2025 thru February 2026

As I'm wont to do, here's another of my yearly reviews. It's at least a weak attempt to stay in touch with many of you that I rarely see in person. As I explain every year, the main downside is that I really don't do very much. And much of what I do is not particularly interesting. If any of you nod off during this, at your age you probably needed the rest anyway.

If you're wondering, that's dinosaur ... wearing an Ankylosaurus hoodie

Health: Barring a knee replacement, I can't imagine I'll ever have a truly healthy knee, though my impression is that it was somewhat less troublesome this year. I have 2 amateurish theories about that:

1. Perhaps the collagen supplements I've been taking in recent years has mitigated the knee problems a bit. I've also wondered whether they've slowed down my hair loss a little. It's kind of hard to say.
2. Maybe, just maybe, I've done a better job of backing off my morning jogging when the knee starts to become a problem. I've replaced my jog with a couple days of "brisk walks" on a few occasions, seemingly giving the knee a little recovery time.

Last year I reported finishing off a dental implant in 2024. I had my 2nd dental implant last year. The 2nd 1 went a little smoother. My impression is that with the 1st 1 there was inflammation in there that made the extraction phase especially messy while the 2nd tooth extraction was more routine. Hopefully I don't have 1 of these every year; they're not exactly fun, and they are expensive. (They are a lot more convenient than heading towards dentures though.)

I did shots in November: COVID-19 and flu vaccinations. I've avoided sickness so far, though how much of that is due to the vaccinations and how much is due to the fact that I don't get out much in the winter is indeterminate. 

Eyes: Late last summer I also had an issue with my right eye. I think it occurred on an inconvenient day, probably Sunday when my doctor's office was closed. It felt like I had something small/sharp in my eye that wouldn't come out. Off and on during the day it'd hurt, but as much as my eyes would water up I couldn't seem to get rid of it. OTC eye drops were also ineffective. I planned on seeing the doctor on Monday.

I think whatever had been in my eye somehow worked its way out by Monday morning, but since the pain kind of "came and went" and because the eye was still pretty sore I made an appointment to see my primary care physician. As I was driving up to their office (maybe a 5 mile drive) the vision in my right eye got very blurry all of a sudden. As someone used to monocular vision (childhood eye problems mean that I basically use 1 eye at a time) this was more distracting than dangerous, and it made my decision to see a doctor sound like a good one.

Before seeing the physician's assistant that I usually see, I was being asked some questions by someone who might have been a nurse. Suddenly she got a scared look; apparently my right eye was actually bleeding! She left briskly; a few minutes later the physician's assistant was in the room looking kind of worried too. He said I should go to either an eye doctor or the emergency room, and that he'd try and get an eye doctor to see me promptly. His ophthalmologist colleague agreed to see me; his office was I asked him to bandage the eye so I wouldn't have to worry about bleeding on the drive over. (His office was near Raritan County Community College, about a 10 mile drive away.)

Fortunately, the ophthalmologist was far less worried than my primary care providers. He convinced himself that there was nothing in the eye now; his diagnosis sounded like a complicated rendition of a scratched cornea. He sent me home with a prescription for eye drops to ease the discomfort while lowering the chances of inflammation. He correctly predicted I'd start to feel better right away though I wouldn't feel normal for a few days.

Thus ended my worrisome eye adventure for the year.

Volunteering: It was another fairly busy year of volunteering, all of it at Duke Farms or Raritan Headwaters Association. For the 2nd or 3rd year in a row, I narrowly had the most total volunteer hours at Duke Farms. I also won a Belted Kingfisher Award for tree-planting from Raritan Headwaters.

It says "2024" but it really was for 2025

Besides tree-planting, my volunteering consisted of things like invasive plant removal (both places), litter removal (both places), weeding (Raritan Headwaters), assisting with educational programs (Duke Farms), providing information to visitors (Duke Farms), helping with fund-raising events (Raritan Headwaters), and counting birds and butterflies (Duke Farms).

The bird counting is done during the winter; it's basically the only volunteering I'm doing in the cold weather months. It consists of hanging out by a set of bird feeders at Duke Farms and counting the number of birds of each species that's present at 1 time. The highest count of each species in a week is reported to Project FeederWatch, run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Though it's not exactly volunteering, I also did 2-3 butterfly counts with the NJ Chapter of the North American Butterfly Association. The counting is completely different from the Project FeederWatch rules. For 1 thing the butterfly counts generally require a lot of footwork, going to various locations where butterflies congregate. Second, although there is an attempt to avoid counting the same butterfly multiple times, when both we and the butterflies are on the move it can be impossible to tell whether this is the same 1 we saw a few minutes ago. This probably makes the butterfly counts less precise than the Project FeederWatch counts, but it's still way more information than we'd have without doing the counts.

Other Hobbies: The volunteering probably qualify as hobbies, and do take up a nontrivial amount of my time. Other than that, I watch a lot of UConn men's and women's basketball, and help administer a subreddit on the teams. I've also been doing jigsaw puzzles, some of them donated by a friend, some borrowed from the Bridgewater branch of the Somerset County Senior Wellness Centers, and some done communally at the Bridgewater branch of the Somerset County Library System. I also like to start my day solving a Squardle puzzle.

Does jogging count as a hobby? (I mostly do it for cardiovascular health.)

I still have lunch most weeks with some old softball cronies. Our most common haunts are Chimney Rock Inn, Martinsville Tavern, and Stone Tavern. The picture was at a special holiday visit to The Rat.

The dwindling population of central Jersey Aardvarks

Less commonly, I also have dinner with old Delivery project colleagues. (I don't have a recent picture.)

Aging: As you read this, I'm now on both Medicare and Social Security. I chose to pay for a Plan G policy, 1 of the supplemental Medicare plans. I suspect that this minimizes the maximum insurance pain despite being 1 of the pricier options. I kind of wish I could have been on something cheaper right now and then move to something more comprehensive as I get older/sicker, but the rules make it at least questionable whether I'd be allowed to do that.

Ultimately, I decided to start taking Social Security mostly because it occurred to me that if I die my brother/sister can inherit my savings but not my Social Security benefits. By mostly living on Social Security - I'll still need to supplement it by withdrawing small amounts from my savings - I'll be worth a bit more when I eventually die (hopefully quite a while from now).

I'm fortunate to be getting on Medicare now. For the past few years, "enhanced premium tax credits" made health insurance fairly affordable, but the government eliminated those (for now? permanently? who knows?) starting this year. I couldn't go on Medicare until this month, so in January my health insurance cost went from about $510 to $1360 per month. I suppose I could have handled that increase, but I certainly would have been whiny about it.