Why SHOULD you?

... a LIKELY query to my requests for LARGE Donations to KEEP myself ALIVE until the Houston Veteran's Hospital Social Workers can help me to find a more AFFORDABLE place for me to LIVE!!!

Problem is repeated requests for such help have resulted in NO ONE trying to reach me.

I fear they consider me literally DOOMED, and there is NOTHING they can do to SAVE me! :(

BUT, I really DON'T wanna DIE, and HOPE you will Donate anyway, whether you think I DESERVE it or not (knowing FULL WELL that SOME of you have gone WAY beyond the call of duty in THAT regard)!

PLEASE!!!

Oh, GOD ... How EMBARRASSING! :(

Emergency room trip!  SOMETIMES, LIFE can SUCK!!!

For several days over the weekend, my visits to the bathroom (for # 1) grew VERY frequent. Monday the 16th, the urination was burning and I felt weak and feverish, so I went.  By SOME miracle, I made it there WITHOUT wetting myself.  Tests disclosed a urinary tract infection, blood in the urine, and I was told that some antibiotics would be mailed to me, which I would take for ten to fifteen days, after which I'd need to return for more tests.

I phoned the VA Hospital the next morning, learned they HADN'T been mailed yet, and arranged for them to be held at the VA Pharmacy, where I would pick them up the next day, Wednesday the 18th (it can sometimes take a WEEK for the Mail to get them to me, and I wanted to start the antibiotics as soon as possible.  

I DID, and am ON them now.

To be able to MAKE that trip WITHOUT a minor catastrophe, I got a ride to Walgreens and spent a fair chunk of a donation on ... DIAPERS (Depend Fit-Flex)!!!  AGGGGGHHH!!!  I'm not READY for THIS!!! 

I could Really, REALLY USE another DONATION; it's liable to be a long and painful couple of weeks.

GOD, how EMBARRASSING. Don't expect to see THIS on my blog! :(

THAT line above is how I ended the email I sent to friends.  Obviously I am DESPERATE enough to have changed my mind.

I'll almost Certainly have emergency taxi trips and purchases to make, for which I have almost NO money.  For God's sake, PLEASE!!!
-

Options ...

I'm gonna try sending a message to the VA Hospital to see if I can  get an appointment with Social Workers there, to see if they can find SOMETHING that I am CAPABLE of doing to earn extra money to SURVIVE on. 

I'd LOVE for them to check out this blog and see if it shows writing skills that would be EMPLOYABLE.  Have I gone through it to weed out anything that might set off all sorts of alarms with them?  Of COURSE I have;  to claim otherwise would be an insult to their intelligence.

 THIS stuff ALWAYS takes TIME (which I'm rapidly running OUT of), ANY help you can provide (via the PayPal "Donate" button) ...

... will be APPRECIATED beyond words.

THANK you;  and BLESS you!

-

An Open Letter to Creditors and Collectors ...

I am 77, and my vision and physical condition make me damned near UNEMPLOYABLE.  Other than a few donations from friends, who have literally KEPT ME ALIVE, my SOLE income is from Social Security.  

My assets amount to an apartment full of junk (SOME of which no longer even WORKS, but is difficult for me to take downstairs to the dumpster in my condition) that is WORTHLESS to anyone who would choose to SEIZE it ... and a 19 yr old used car that is UNDRIVEABLE and would take several thousand dollars to fix (I'd HOPED that the VA could fix my eyes well enough for me to be able to WORK again and start putting my LIFE back together;  but THAT was NOT TO BE).

If you choose to haul me into court, there is NOTHING in that process that will magically conjure up money THAT DOES NOT EXIST.

I am ALREADY being sued by ANOTHER collector, for a much smaller amount that is EQUALLY IMPOSSIBLE for me to pay. That process might well succeed in KILLING me via stroke or heart failure, but it won't PROFIT them in the least.

When things started GOING TO HELL two years ago (eye problems I thought were cataracts (but included permanent optic nerve damage from glaucoma) costing me the part-time grocery cashier income supplementing my Social Security) I stopped using my credit cards, DESTROYED them, and STOPPED PAYING ON THEM (as I simply COULDN'T).

For a LOOOONG time, I received emails and voicemails about this, from the creditors, and THEN from various collectors, but THAT was ALL.

I honestly DOUBTED they would REALLY do ANYTHING else;  I may have LOTS of various opinions about creditors and collectors, but STUPID ain't one of them.

So, before hauling me into court, I hereby URGE you to INVESTIGATE the Hell out of me.  If those investigators are worth even a fraction of what you'll pay them, they'll advise AGAINST pouring time and money into THAT rathole.  I have absolutely NOTHING that is WORTH A DAMN to you;  and THEY will CONFIRM that!!!

FYI

Paul Gordon
3433 West Dallas St, Apt 1102, Houston, Texas 77019
email: gordonp@airmail.net

2307
-

"... or something. :-)"

- Memories of Michigan - Spring of  '84.

In 1984, I left Houston to join an Air Force buddy, Claude W****, to manage the Data Processing unit of his Seismic Exploration Company in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.

I arrived on March 23rd (THREE days into Spring) ... STILL snow and ice all over the place.  

A beautiful blonde Data Entry lady, Jane R**********, took one look at the Bomber Jacket I had for Winter wear ...

... and just laughed, "PAUL!!! YOU'RE gonna DIE!!! :-)".  By the time Winter returned, I WAS much better prepared.

When I arrived, the bookkeeper, Ceile S*******, introduced me, "This is Paul Gordon - our new Data Processing Manager ... or something."  

That was not a put down;  it was just the way she talked.  BUT, I've often regretted NOT having that "or something" on my business cards;  it was such a PERFECT description of some of the positions I've held!  :-)

-

To ALL Veterans ... with LOVE ;-)

 Found THIS on facebook some time ago. ...

Paul Gordon - Ex United States  AIR FORCE.  ;-)

NOTE: I was BORN Paul Gordon Binkley (Legally changing it to Paul Gordon on 26 OCT 1966) and THAT is how I was known to buddies in the USAF ...

(Originally posted late November 2018;
 and reposted 2254 CDT 04 MAY 2019)

-

.44 Special ...

06 AUG 2019 UPDATE - After its seizure (noted in I'm sorry. We're closing now) - GOT it BACK!!!

In October of 2000, fearing a possible Al Gore victory over George W. Bush (Gore being a gun-control fanatic), and preferring something without a paper trail associated with it, I acquired THIS ...

That is an old model Charter Arms Bulldog 5-shot revolver, with a 3" barrel, in .44 S&W Special caliber.  

That target shows the first five rounds I put through it, at ten yards, firing double-action (a misnomer actually, but it's commonly used to describe firing a revolver without cocking it first; just using a long pull of the trigger*).

That flyer (the one furthest from the rest of the group) was the fifth one. With a .44 Special in such a light gun, the recoil is a very sharp slap that will sting the palm of your hand; not a fun gun to shoot. But it satisfied me that it should certainly get the job done.

As for my ammunition of choice, I favor ...

from smith-wessonforum.com

... because it's reliable, accurate, and falls into the "will get the job done" category. 

And before anyone warns me that "lots of indoor ranges ban the use of Blazer ammunition as unsafe, blows up guns (often showing spectacular pictures of blown-up revolvers)", well know this ...

A lot of police departments throughout the country use this ammunition, for budgetary reasons.  While the quality of their rangemasters may vary quite a bit, I suspect that most of those departments are very knowledgeable on lawsuits. That they keep using it is to me a pretty good sign.

I think that what indoor shooting ranges really hate about Blazer is that they sweep up the fired cartridge cases and reload them. The Blazer rounds use aluminum cases, which don't re-size as well as the brass used by most other manufacturers. They also use Berdan primers (needing a special two-pronged decapping tool) instead of the more commonly used (over here) Boxer primer that can use a single pin though a center hole for removing the old primer.

All that trouble probably keeps them from making a profit on reloading the Blazer cartridges.

I've never encountered an outdoor shooting range that had any problem with shooters using the Blazer ammunition. They probably don't collect and reload the cases because it may be more trouble than it's worth to separate and clean them from the dirt, rocks and other debris on the ground there.)

(* - Ok, then. What does "double-action" really mean? It means there are two ways to fire the weapon.

One: Cock the hammer first, allowing you to fire it with a light pull of the trigger, usually more accurate.

Two: Use a long (usually heavy and rough, although it varies greatly among different weapons) pull of the trigger, to raise the hammer and then release it in one motion. This is fastest, but not always very accurate. Mileage varies greatly among different weapons. Some Smith & Wesson models have very good and smooth trigger pulls when used this way, as does that Charter Arms Bulldog of mine.

So, one of the greatest misnomers is a weapon described as DAO (Double Action Only) when it in fact has just a single mode of being fired: by pulling the trigger to cock and release the hammer.

Ain't semantics wonderful? :-)
-

"... Time to die."

On January 23, 1944 in Breukelen, Utrecht, Netherlands, was born Rutger Hauer: an amazing actor, once referred to as "a Dutch Paul Newman". 

His IMDb page (linked to his name above) shows 173 credits, but it was Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange (1977), about the Dutch Resistance in WW2, that introduced him to me ... 

Cropped from image at https://www.filmlinc.org/films/soldier-of-orange/

In The Hitcher (1986) he was a chilling psychopath (more of an elemental force than a man), who seemed to have stepped right out of a Stephen King novel.  HIGHLY Recommended ...

From https://www.virtual-history.com/movie/film/8522/the-hitcher

But MY favorite of his many roles is the replicant Roy Batty, in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) ...

Cropped from http://www.teladoiofirenze.it/cinema-teatro/30-anni-di-blade-runner/attachment/blade-runner-rutger-hauer-as-roy-batty/

Although an adversary (NOT a villain), he is nothing less than the heart and soul of this movie about a soulless future; facing his (ENGINEERED) demise thusly ...

From https://et.glbnews.com/07-2019/52780338982960/

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.  Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.  All those moments will be lost in time ... like tears in rain ... Time to die."

27 JUL 2019 - Piece of trivia found on IMDb ...
Rutger Hauer came up with many inventive ideas for his characterization, like the moment where he grabs and fondles a dove.  He also improvised the now-iconic line "All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain".  He later chose "All those moments" as the title of his autobiography.

He left us on July 19, 2019 (age 75) in Beetsterzwaag, Netherlands.

RIP Sir; you WILL be missed! :(

-

I'm sorry. We're closing now.

Somehow, I had naively assumed that the HEADQUARTERS of the POLICE DEPARTMENT of the FOURTH LARGEST CITY IN THE UNITED STATES would be a 24/7 operation.

This earlier post (Incident # *******-19) ...
========================================
Houston Police Department - Central Station 
61 Riesner, Houston, Texas 77002
Attn: Officer *. ********** - Re: Incident # *******-19 

Dear Sir:

On Wednesday, 19 JUN 2019, because of fear of what a pending lawsuit could do to me, I asked my Primary Care Physician at the Michael DeBakey Veterans Hospital if they would STILL provide funeral assistance to an Honorably Discharged Veteran IF circumstances (that lawsuit) forced him to take his own life.

THIS resulted in his calling the Mental Health people, and YOU coming to my apartment to check on me and take me to the VA Emergency Room, where I spent the rest of the evening being physically checked, and then interviewed by a psychiatrist, until they were satisfied that I was NOT a danger to myself and RELEASED ME, with a two-week supply of prescription anti-depressants (Escitalopram Oxalate).

You seized my pistol, "for safekeeping", and left me a receipt.

I would like to know how I go about retrieving it.  I gather (from the receipt) that you would have to sign off on it.  If you are worried about ME, let me present these arguments ...

1) Come October, I'll have possessed that weapon for 19 YEARS.

2) It has ALWAYS been CLOSE and AT HAND.

3) Even SO, HERE I AM.

I have lived with weapons at hand (usually pistols; often more than one) for over half a century.  The 19 years I mentioned above is just for THIS one.  In all that time, I've had MANY ups and downs, emotionally;  yet STILL I remain.

Don't forget; AFTER after the VA people CHECKED me and their psychiatrist INTERVIEWED me, I was RELEASED!  If they thought I was a DANGER to myself, not only were they PERFECTLY CAPABLE of KEEPING me there overnight (or longer) for observation; they would have been LEGALLY OBLIGATED to DO so.  That they DIDN'T suggests they considered me a bit "down" at the time, but NOT serious enough to be KEPT there.

I Honest to God believe myself in GREATER DANGER from just WALKING (I've had SEVERAL falls;  some resulting in broken bones, and ONCE almost being run over in traffic) than I've EVER been from that pistol.

Paul Gordon
3433 West Dallas St, Apt 1102, Houston, Texas 77019

email: gordonp@airmail.net    phone: 713-***-****

-
======================================== 

... is a longer, more explanatory version (emphasizing my RELEASE) of a letter that I conjured up for the Officer who TOOK my pistol, and was mailed to him (via USPS Certified Mail) on Friday, 21 JUN 2019.

It SHOULD have been delivered Monday, 24 JUN 2019.

NEVER happened; an investigation by the USPS resulted in being told by them that it was irretrievably LOST.

I printed out another copy and took a taxi to the 1200 Travis Street  Headquarters building (having been told that the 61 Riesner location has NOT been PUBLICLY accessible since Hurricane Harvey in 2017) on Saturday, 13 JUL  2019, only to discover it CLOSED. One lonely uniformed Officer (probably just there to WATCH the place) informed me, "This is the WEEKEND; NOBODY'S here!"

He was kind enough to accept the letter, promising to get it to the Mail Department, who would see that the Officer the letter is meant for WOULD get it (probably sometime in the middle of the week.

POLICE DEPARTMENT CLOSED?!!!

NOT what I expected.

I couldn't help flashing back to Nicholas Meyer's WONDERFUL Time After Time (1979)  in which a young H. G. Wells (BRILLIANTLY played by Malcolm McDowell, in a role almost a polar opposite from the ultra violent Alex of "A Clockwork Orange") who has actually BUILT a time machine and shows it to guests, among whom is a doctor who turns out to be Jack the Ripper and uses the machine to escape to the future. When the machine automatically returns (as it was meant to do) Wells goes in pursuit, and the movie makes a few observations on MODERN life. including ...

MY reaction to the Police Headquarters being CLOSED.

:(
-

Shaking our tree.

- 04 Oct 1957 - SPUTNIK!!!

This little dingbat scared the Hell out of many of us then ...

from citizenship typepad.com

Nothing but a polished metal sphere of 585 mm (23 inches) diameter with a mass of 83.6 kilograms (184 lb) and carrying only a radio transmitter, it definitely got our attention.

THEY got there FIRST! Oh, Man!!!

You see, those were the thrilling days of yesteryear when the Soviet Union was ruled by Nikita "We will bury you" Khrushchev who, just the year before, had sent columns of tanks into Hungary to crush a rebellion there (just his way of stating "THAT is a NO-NO!").

The days of "Duck and cover" drills in public schools (not at all insane; if a nuke hit several miles away instead of on top of you, that could make the difference between surviving versus being shredded by glass blown in by the shock wave if all you did was just stand there and gawk at the explosion. Nukes are powerful, but not infinitely powerful. They can be survived, and have been. See reports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for hard evidence. (Although, in an essay on civil defense, Robert A. Heinlein advocated situational awareness (paying attention to what's going on in the world) and summed up surviving the bomb in seven words: "Don't BE there, when it goes off!" ))

That innocent looking thing was placed into orbit by ...

from on6wj-sputnik.blogspot.com

... the R-7 launcher (for a long time referred to as T-3), which evolved from an ICBM whose primary purpose was to transport a thermonuclear bomb from Point A (somewhere in the Soviet Union) to Point B (somewhere in the USA).

The local newspapers ...

San Antonio Light, 05 Oct 1957 - from newspaperarchive.com

... published times of when to see it in the morning or evening, when it would be brightly lit by the sun.

To read or hear about the Soviets (listening to the radio when they were stomping on the rebellion in Hungary was heart-wrenching) while they were on the other side of the world was bad enough, but a bit abstract.

To walk out into your back yard and actually see this bright little silver dot in the sky slowly moving overhead, and realizing there they are;  well, that's a whole 'nother story.

(Originally published  1239 CST,  03 OCT 2012)
-

Serendipity

noun - the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Through all my careers, I have become self-taught on slide-rule, logarithms, computers and programming.

I taught myself how to use the slide-rule while still in the USAF. It wasn't part of my training; someone had discarded one and I salvaged it, just becoming fascinated with what I could do with it.

Same with logarithms; after I became a civilian, with none of my Air Force skills all that useful, the unemployment agency sent me to a local junior college for a drafting course. A book we were given on mathematics for engineering had a chapter on logarithms at the back. Once again, it was NOT part of the curriculum, but I just thought it so cool to be able to perform fractional roots and powers with them.

The early part of my engineering career was in the slide-rule days. Give one of those to modern day engineers, and I'll bet you some would be trying to figure out, "How do you turn it on?"  ("With a really interesting problem.", I would respond. :-)

That particular career (before I moved into IT) was from 1964 to 1984, and during nearly half of it, the most modern tool we had was an electric adding machine.  I truly kid you not; we had one engineer who used an abacus (and was damned good with it).

It was the late 1960's before someone tried to interest us in a four-function electronic calculator, about the size and shape of an IBM Selectric typewriter, using a bank of tubes showing 7-segment numbers for the display and costing about $600.00 (at a time when that was one third the price of a brand-new Volkswagen Beetle).  We passed on the deal, at that time. 

A couple of years later, I bought a Miida calculator (still only four-function) for about $170.00 from Sears, making me the first in the company to have one.  It got popular very quickly.  I even worked out a three-step method of averaging to get very precise square roots from it (we used those a lot in electrical calculations) and felt pretty damned good about that (although slide-rule accuracy was actually more than sufficient for our purposes -- it was an ego thing for me, I suppose).

Of course, another year or so, and the same amount of money bought an 80-function calculator.  Since then, prices and sizes of those things have dropped so much that the only thing keeping them from becoming Cracker Jack prizes is fear of lawsuits if a kid swallows one.

Twice in 1972 and once in 1975 I had made trips to Titusville, Florida (12 miles due West of Cape Canaveral's launch pads on Merritt Island), to watch the launchings of Apollo 16, Apollo 17, and the Apollo-Soyuz missions.  (Be patient;  there IS a reason for THIS item in THIS post.)

I left the Air Force early, but honorably, and had no contact with any of my former buddies there until 1975 (I think) when, in a Sears department store here in Houston, a man stepping off the escalator behind me asked, "Excuse me.  Aren't you Paul Binkley?". 

I was trying to remember if he was an architect client of ours when it hit me that he had addressed me by a last name I hadn't used in nine years (another story, probably never to be revealed). He was one of the bunch I had been with, and was now living just north of Houston and working as an exploration geophysicist for Shell Oil Company.

I got back together with him and his family. That was a bit of a miracle. Have you ever run into someone that you knew from long ago, only to find so much has changed that you no longer have anything in common anymore?

A couple of years later he and his family moved up to Mt. Pleasant, in central Michigan, where he joined a seismic exploration company there. Another couple of years and he's broken off from them and started his own company (also seismic exploration).

In the meantime, several things had been going on. I'd been an electrical draftsman, evolved into an electrical designer (almost an engineer, but sans license and seal;  my work required approval from a Registered Engineer) and had been doing the same thing for almost two decades.

Into our engineering world arrived a micro-computer, in 1981, primarily for use by our secretary as a word-processor (A lot of her work was typing up engineering specifications, usually from existing boiler-plates;  this made her job enormously easier.) and an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) program in Basic, that never worked properly.

But, it had a professional grade level of Basic included, and I had found me a new toy. Soon I was teaching myself programming on it, and making programs to handle some of the calculations required in my work.

I had made several trips to Michigan, to visit my friend, and we had talked several times about the possibility of me moving up there to join him. After nearly 20 years of drawing circles and home runs, one gets ready for something new. (Any reader who has done electrical drafting, design and/or engineering knows what I'm speaking of.  As for the rest: Nyah, nan nan nan nyah! :-)

In September of 1983, one of the Space Shuttles was scheduled to go up at night. I could afford it, had plenty of vacation time available, and decided, "Let's do it!".

This time, it didn't go so well. When it was time to get rolling, I was asked to not go; our sometimes crazy work schedules had piled up too much (and this wasn't the first time by a long shot. Their recurrences was one of the reasons I had so much vacation time built up; I'd had several vacations aborted this way). So, I didn't go.

Watching the lift-off, on TV at home instead of the Titusville beach, I'd HAD it! I was feeling "G*D D*MM*T! I'm not the only one there!". After the lift-off, I made a long distance call to my friend in Michigan and told him that if he still thought I could do something up there, I was definitely interested.

As I noted above, he had started his own company. He was farming out the data to a data-processing company, was not real impressed with the results, and decided to set up his own data-processing center.

In early 1984, he called back and asked me if I would come up and manage it for him.

And so, because of what amounts to a hissy fit over not being able to go to that night shuttle launch, I was soon on my way to Michigan, a new career, and a whole new future.

Damn little of my life has ever been carefully planned; most of the time I seem to drift up on whatever shoals the current takes me to and I go on from there. The career change noted above is the closest thing to careful planning, and it resulted from an impulse; the only planning involved was that, when I left the engineering company, at least I knew where I was going and what I would be trying to do. Most of my odyssey has been far more random and capricious. I'm seriously considering a post on the utterly random and unpredictable events that have led me to where I am today.

And HERE it IS! :-)

-

A Matter of Scale - UK vs Texas ...

I LOVE this pic I found online, EXCEPT for the Irish rotation (which I NOTED on the pic) ...

Of course, it all depends on PERSPECTIVE.

Scotland looks so small HERE (and on most maps), BUT. seen up close, or as shown in the James Bond film Skyfall (2012), it just seems to go on FOREVER.

All a matter of perspective. ;-)

-

Don't Panic ...

...a phrase on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Last night (Tuesday, 12 MAR 2019) I discovered that a LOT of photos were missing from posts on my blog (at https://paulinhouston.blogspot.com/). "blogspot" means Blogger.com; which is part of the Google Empire.

A check of THIS site (https://downdetector.com/) showed ...

Google is having issues since 10:32 PM EDT.

Are you also affected? Leave a message in the comments.

So, I figured they were having issues with the server that photos were stored on, and (since Google is a multi-BILLION dollar concern, instead of an outfit operating out of a garage), they were ALREADY on it, would soon have that server FIXED or REPLACED, BACKUPS loaded and checked, and would soon be back to normal.

And SO it WAS!!!

Crisis OVER. ;-)

-

Can ANY of you SUGGEST ...

... LEGAL alternatives to my irritating ...

... PLEAS for DONATIONS via PayPal, as a way to get money by using my computer? 

(In my CURRENT circumstances, I am NOT all THAT resistant to ILLEGAL;  I just lack CONFIDENCE about BEING ANY GOOD AT IT.)

If you know something that is NOT a scam, and actually WORKS;  I'm LISTENING!!!

-

PHISHING:

noun

the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers. "an email that is likely a phishing scam"

You probably get some (maybe a LOT) of THESE in your email ...

NOT many WORDS this time; what's ABOVE is probably OBVIOUS to MOST of you.

-

Is long life hereditary?

As of TODAY (11 FEB 2019) I am 76.  May 25 of this year will make it 77.

My dad went at 70, but THAT was from complications after surgery.  HIS dad made it to 76.

Mom went at 88.  So, it would appear that the Binkley (Dad) and Williams (Mom) families have a fair amount of "long life" genes among them.

At THIS point, you may be wondering, "WHERE the HELL does "Gordon" come into the picture?"  Well, Gordon used to be my middle name (chosen by Dad in honor of a friend), until I went to court and had the family name lopped off.  I DID re-unite with the family later, but STAYED with the changed name.  ("What family doesn't have its ups and downs?"  ~Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine in "The Lion in Winter")

Obviously, mortality has been on my mind lately.  I could GO before I finish this, OR, I may have another DECADE left.  Equally obvious:  improvements in medicine and medical care have to be factored in.

MOST likely CAUSE of demise ...
1) Accident.  I am weak and fragile, and have difficulty with even walking.  In my current condition, a FALL could be LETHAL, depending on HOW and ON WHAT I land.

2) Heart failure or stroke.  I have a blood pressure problem;  had it off and on for AGES.  Being treated for it, but the financial pressures I'm under sure don't HELP any.

Mostly just rambling (and sharing) here.  If there's a POINT to this;  it eludes me. 
-

Fundraiser on facebook ...

I created THIS, to try and SURVIVE ...
  https://www.facebook.com/donate/748273218881025/?fundraiser_source=external_url

PLEASE!!!

-

Coming to terms ...

NOTHING lasts FOREVER.

At seventy-six and a half, I've outlasted a LOT of people;  some of whom I've known personally, and many others I've known of, greatly admired, and am saddened at their absence.

Not a bad  run at all;  could have been worse.  :-)

-

I'm gettin' too OLD for this sh*t!!!

- Yesterday (Tuesday, 06 NOV 2018) I had two appointments at the VA Eye Clinic.

To use Metrolift, one needs to make a reservation at least a day before. When I remembered (Monday) that I had NOT done so, it was already just past 5 PM, and the reservation office was closed.

Taxi fare would have been so expensive that I took a chance and used the regular buses (FREE with the special card I have because of my age and condition), hoping the new walker mentioned in my My NEWEST Toy ... post, would let me handle the bus stops (some of which had broken pavement) without injury.

It DID!!!

On my return trip, I switched to another bus which dropped me off at the polling station so I could vote (Normally, I would wade through all the different races, BUT;  because of the recent behavior of a certain unmentionable party, STRAIGHT REPUBLICAN!!!).

I then walked several blocks over to the Kroger near my apartment for some groceries, only AFTERWARDS using a taxi to get home (just TOO MUCH of a load to carry that far).

Yesterday was more walking than I've done in MONTHS, and that walker made it POSSIBLE.

BUT, it DOESN'T prevent FATIGUE.  Several times I felt about to COLLAPSE, even in my apartment afterwards.  I was so tired when I hit the sack, I really wondered if I WOULD wake up the next morning.

I suppose I'm just gonna have to EASE into it.

This may all be academic;  I'm STILL RUNNING OUT OF MONEY and find it NECESSARY to BEG for donations AGAIN.  PLEASE!!! 

I tell the folks at the VA about this;  that the ONLY thing that could SAVE me in the long run is to become EMPLOYABLE.  They nod and smile;  but I can SEE they do NOT really comprehend.

How COULD they?  This is BEYOND any experience THEY'VE ever had.  HOW could running out of money KILL anyone in THIS country?  

I hope they NEVER find out;  I wouldn't wish THAT understanding on ANYONE.  :(

-

My NEWEST Toy ...

... sometimes, LIFE just SUCKS!!!  :(

Today (Wednesday, 31 October 2018) I had a Physical Therapy interview at the VA hospital, and came home with THIS ...

They had noticed my DIFFICULTIES with walking on less than perfect terrain, and were DETERMINED that THAT simple act NOT result in my death.

It really DOES help (a LOT), but for SOME (unfathomable) reason, I feel it kinda APPROPRIATE that I acquired it ON HALLOWEEN.  Sigh ...   ;-)
-