OK

Yesterday I wrote about a few visits to the dermatologist this year, where I got zapped with a cold ray and was told I had 'scaling'. After the second round of cold ray treatments the doctor said that using the cold ray felt like playing whack-a-mole with my scales. (Though I imagine it a very fun variation of whack-a-mole to be suppressing a reptilian metamorphosis with a cold ray.) So she also gave me a cream, Fluorouracil, to rub on my forehead at home for two weeks.

That last appointment was 10 weeks ago now. I put off starting use of the cream for 8 weeks. I had other medication changes going on, plus travel. I wanted to minimize risk by not starting multiple new things at the same time and not starting something just before leaving home for two weeks— like when a head wound burst while I was 2,500 miles from home. So starting the Fluorouracil cream got put off until the start of this month. And it was a good thing I put it off— because there were definitely issues with it!


This picture (above) is after 8 days of treatment. This is worse, way worse, than my skin looked before treatment. If you want to picture what the "scaling" on my forehead ever looked like, imagine if just 3 or 4 of those, like 30 sores, were visible. And weren't as red and irritated looking.

I knew the cream would make things worse to make them better. Fluorouracil is a chemotherapy treatment. Chemo is a game of deliberately poisoning your body but doing so in a way to target the poison at the bad parts of the body more so than the good parts.

But still, I wasn't sure if this reaction was within bounds. I texted the doctor, and her MA called me the next morning to set up an urgent telemedicine appointment. I rearranged my schedule to see her same-day.

As I explained to the doc at the start of our call, I was looking to answer a triage question. Was this a situation of:

1. Normal results. Buck up and keep going;


2. Slight concern. Pause or make minor course adjustments and keep going; or


3. Major concern. Hang up and get to a clinic.

Long story short, the doc said it was totally "A", results as expected, and urged me to keep going to 14 days. And she warned that it was going to get worse. "I'm sorry it's so gruesome," she added.

And yes, it got worse.

( See how gruesome it got... )

A few months ago I visited a dermatologist to look at a few skin issues. One was a lump that was growing on the back of my head, the other was little sores, kind of like acne, that would occasionally appear on my forehead. The acne-like sores the doctor zapped with a cold ray to kill off whatever they were. The lump required surgery to remove. Oh, and I had a few skin tags. She zapped those with the cold ray, too. A few days later they died and fell off.

I don't have a photo of the cold ray, but here's what AI suggests it might have looked like:



I left in the AI tells, like the incoherent text in the caption box. At least in this rendering everybody has a totally appropriate number of hands and fingers.

The occasional sores on my forehead did what occasional problems do. They came back. Actually, I think it was different ones that emerged. Sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not. It's like a noise in your car that doesn't rattle or squeak when the mechanic takes it for a test drive. When I saw the doctor for a followup a few months later she introduced me to a new term. The occasional bumps/sores on my forehead were scaling.



Scaling. "Great," I thought. "I'm turning into a lizard."

She also used another term that was scarier than turning into a lizard. That term was pre-cancerous. 😰 The scaling on my forehead was actinic keratosis (yeah, that's another new term, too, but it sounds boring). It's a skin condition caused by long term UV exposure. If left untreated it has a 5-10% chance of turning into skin cancer. Thus the term pre-cancerous.

When the doctor understood how my scales appear and reappear she changed her treatment plan. Rather than keep playing whack-a-mole with the Cold Ray— though she did zap me with it in three more places for good measure— she gave me a cream to apply to my forehead for two weeks. The cream would hopefully kill off the pre-cancerous cells.

BUT WOULD IT STOP THE LIZARD METAMORPHOSIS?
WOULD THE PATIENT SURVIVE?
STAY TUNED FOR NEXT TIME...

I've continued my streak of using the pool every day. It occurred to me last night that I started on June 1. That means with today being the 15th... I'm halfway to a month of #PoolLife. I didn't plan it that way, though now that I've spotted the pattern I'm motivated to see it through.

Today the water was warm enough again to enjoy doing laps and floating in the main pool for at least 45 minutes before going for a soak in the hot tub and finishing with sitting on a deck chair in the shade.



(Yes, I've used this pic from the pool a few times now. I don't want to keep uploading new pool pics every day. It'd be repetitive like when my little sister was a kid, shooting 35mm film, and my dad would come back with the photos from the drugstore and complain, "I just paid for a roll of pictures and 22 of them are the damn cat!")

This afternoon we went out for a hike/walk in Byxbee Park. It's part of the City of Palo Alto nearby and is a park we've been to many times. We like it because it's nearby, so easy to get to, and is a mellow location on the edge of the bay.

We had planned to go farther afield today, specifically about Russian Ridge up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We've been putting that off for several days now, as something keeps coming up. Something came up again this morning when Hawk was feeling a bit ill and decided to lie down for a nap. So Russian Ridge goes back on the stack— we're talking about going as soon as tomorrow— and Byxbee became our activity for today after lunch.



One thing we noticed right off was that Byxbee recently got a "haircut". Actually, the first thing we noticed right off the bat was that Byxbee fuckin' stinks today. There's a wastewater treatment plant right next to it. They don't always stir the shit, but apparently today was a let's-stir-all-the-shit day, and the wind was blowing right past it, too.

But, hey, I mentioned the "haircut". The wild grasses have been mowed recently. It makes some of the displays, like the fence with the no-trespassing sign in the pic above, look pretty silly. It's not a scratch 'n' sniff pic, so you can use your imagination for the smell of sewage wafting over it.

Now, as if it weren't bad enough that the smell of sewage and shit wafts over the park, while you're in it you're standing atop garbage.



For decades up until 2011 Byxbee Park was a garbage dump. I mean, it wasn't called Byxbee Park back then. It was probably called "Palo Alto Dump, downwind from the sewage treatment plant". Lots of cities nearby all had dumps right up against the bay. There are similar spots in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. In the late 20th century they all realized that was kind of bad, and they started taking steps to convert the dumps to parks. They stopped accepting new trash then spent years covering it up, letting it simmer down, and monitoring it with pipes and gauges to make sure the methane and other gases from rotting garbage wouldn't explode. Then they called it parkland. Because the best parks are the ones built atop explosive poisonous garbage gas.



Another thing we noticed was different this visit is snails.There are snails on all the signs in the park. I wonder if trimming the grasses has driven them to other places. The sign in the pic above, BTW, is an identifier for one of the making-sure-this-shit-doesn't-literally-explode monitors.



It's not really wildflower season anymore; we've had a few months of dry weather now. But some of the hardier plants up here are still green and flowering. Plus, this garden area is actually watered. You can tell because there are purple colored utility chests (not shown in the pic) that indicate pipes with recycled water. Mmm, probably fresh from that sewage treatment plant!

Yesterday morning was like the school book fair for me. Though instead of it being 5th grade me figuring out the best combination of books I could buy with my $7.35 saved up from allowance, it was today me (well, yesterday me 🤣) booking flights for trips over the next few months.

Visiting my inlaws in July

The main impetus was that Hawk and I were planning our next visit to her parents. Her mom is currently doing better, with her cancer treatments still on hold (though that's not really good news). We'll go out to visit her mom and dad in late July, catching them while MIL is still on an upswing in health (fingers crossed) and being there with her for the next string of doctor appointments when she gets assessments of what'll happen over the next few months.

Planning this trip was made more complex by the fact that prices for travel are going up. Prices on everything are going up, of course, so it's no surprise that travel is getting spendier. But oddly it wasn't flights that were so expensive. It's the cost of a rental car that's obscene. I spent easily 3 hours exploring different ways of getting to her parents' place to try to keep the car cost to something merely very expensive, versus holy-fuck-is-that-a-mortgage-payment expensive. 😨

Southwest Status Chase / Wild Goose Chase

Regular readers of my blog know that when it comes to travel I've always got multiple plates spinning at the same time. I'm solving simultaneously for cost, and time/effort, and... points and elite status. 😅 In particular I've been working on renewing Southwest A+ and CP elite status.

Going into yesterday's book-o-rama I needed 3,000 more points on Southwest— in addition to everything I already had booked/forecasted— to cinch both statuses. That's just one good, paid one-way trip on Southwest. But the flight I booked gave me nearly 6,000 points. That's 3k more than I needed. The optimizer in me thought, "Hmm, maybe I can change another booking from cash to points and still hit the numbers,." 😅

So I crawled through all my other Southwest bookings, looking for places I could rebook or make other tradeoffs. I found one. On a flight home from Charlotte, North Carolina in August I could cancel a Southwest flight with a poor schedule and book a nonstop flight on American for the hideously low price of 10,500 points per seat. Ooh, I had to jump on that 10.5k fare. They don't make 'em like that anymore. But canceling that Southwest flight pulled 5,000 points off my forecast. That swung me from 3k over target to 2k short. Oh, no, what do I do now? 😰

Southwest Plan Locked In

Last year I faced the problem of, "Dang, I'm a little short"— in December. It being late in the year my options were limited. Southwest offered a deal to buy status outright, but it was ridiculously expensive. I ended up flying a mileage run. I thought it would be drudgery but ended up mildly amusing. I thought I was flying to LA for dinner. Instead I flew to Los Angeles just long enough to take a piss and got back in time for dinner with my spouse.



As amusing a story as that December jaunt turned into, I don't care for a repeat this year. That's why I'm working to lock in status earlier in the year. That last 2,000 points I needed to make up after yesterday's bookings and rebookings? With several months left to go in the year I have lots of options. I decided yesterday I can do it with credit card bonuses. I just need to shift some big expenditures I was going to put on another card over to my Southwest card— et voilà! I'll now cinch both A+ and Companion Pass by mid-September.

Lately I've had an earwig of The Chattanooga Choo Choo, the 1941 song performed Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. Y'know, the Big Band Sound classic that goes

Pardon me, boy
Is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?
Yes, yes (Track 29!)
Boy, you can give me a shine

I'm not sure why this song has been stuck in my head the past few days. I've never been a fan of Big Band music. My partner's dad was, though, and she has some of the classics from that era loaded on her music player. Maybe that's where I heard it.

Anyway, I was singing the lyrics to myself the other day, and I choked after the second stanza.

You leave the Pennsylvania station about a quarter to four
Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore
Dinner in the diner
Nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina

So the first few lines of this stanza are okay. ...Though from Pennsylvania Station— which is in New York— to Baltimore (where the main station is also called Penn Station, BTW), likely with a few stops along the way, via 1940-era train, it's about 3 hours. So that must be a pretty engrossing magazine. 🤣 But the real problem comes with breakfast (presumably, for ham and eggs) in Carolina. That's where I choked on it.

You see, I lived and traveled the first 25 years of my life in the mid-Atlantic region. I was picturing the route on a map as I sang the lyrics to myself, and I was like, "WTF? You would not travel south from Baltimore to, say, Raleigh (or even Durham), then west to Chattanooga!"

There are two big problems with routing that way. One, that's way longer than traveling down the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and crossing directly into Tennessee at the state line town of Bristol. I fully understand that rails don't always traverse the shortest route between two points; costs of construction and operation matter a lot. But that's problem number Two: the route described in the song requires rails crossing the steep Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina. Not only is that route 200 miles longer, those miles are way more costly to traverse.

A quick Google search confirmed my objections. The actual train service from NYC to Chattanooga, TN did pass through Baltimore but then jogged west, over to the Shenandoah Valley, then followed that southwest through Virginia and across the border into Tennessee. It followed the same route as modern day interstate I-81. It never entered North Carolina.

As a historical note, the original interstates were often built along the same routes as railroads through mountain passes. That's why the route the rail followed in 1940 looks a lot like the route you'd drive today. That's also why I-40, which does cross through the mountains of western NC, was one of the last of the originally planned interstates to be completed.

BTW, this breakfast-in-Carolina lie isn't the only falsehood Glenn Miller peddled in his famous song. 🤣 That "Track 29!" call-response in the first stanza? In 1940 Pennsylvania Station had only Tracks 1-21. And among the three trains that went to /through Chattanooga, none departed at 3:45. 💩

Last week I quipped that with my next planned trip not until August  I had nowhere to go... except the pool. Now I've extended my streak of using the pool from 5 days in a row to 10 days in a row!



Today the weather was hot again so I spent awhile in the pool, doing walking laps and then just floating to rest, before moving over to the hot tub for a soak. When it's not warm enough for the pool, like the several days beforehand, I just use the hot tub.



Here's a pic from a few days ago I've been waiting to post. Oh, and yes, I bought a pack of Coors Banquet beer to enjoy on these warm summer (technically almost summer) days. And on days when it's cool outside but it's summer in my mind. Coors Banquet is a survivor from the bad ol' days of American macrobrews that's actually reasonably good. Of course, in the really bad ol' days it was so amazingly good that it inspired a blockbuster movie that became a cultural touchstone for years.

I've been a fan of Coke Zero since it came out 20-some years ago. In a can or a bottle I'll pick it 💯 over my #2 choice, Diet Coke. Yes, the taste is that different, and I prefer it. But in a soda fountain, the stronger taste of Coke Zero hits a bit too hard. I mix it 50/50. Finally, recently, I ran across a soda fountain that gets me.



Yes, this fountain had my two favorite flavors side by side. Is that so hard? There's absolutely no reason why it should be, but for whatever reason I've pretty much never, never in those 20-some years, seen the two choices on side-by-side spigots like this. Fairly often they're on opposite ends of the row.

Boomers have long been derided as technology-phobic. That's not really true anymore. Nowadays most Boomers (and even many of the Silent Generation) use modern technology such as mobile phones and the internet on a daily basis. I mean, these things have been around for 20+ years now. That's long enough for even reluctant learners to become familiar with them. The gap is they're often clueless when things don't "just work", as any Gen Xer or Millennial who routinely has to play tech support for their elder relatives well knows.

Where Boomers remain technology averse it's generally no longer because they're afraid of technology but because they don't see it as solving a problem. That's familiar to me, as I've long asked the question of new technology, "What problem does this actually solve?" The difference, though, is that I come at it from the perspective of a tech insider. But one net result is the same: We're frustrated when poor technology, technology that doesn't solve our problem— and perhaps creates new ones instead— is forced upon is.

Here are some Boomer technology opinions I agree with:

1. Give me a real menu, not a QR code

In the depths of the Coronavirus pandemic 6 years ago, driven by hygiene concerns, restaurants started swapping out printed menus for QR codes you scan to browse a menu on your smartphone. That never solved a problem for me as (a) I didn't dine out in restaurants for over a year until I could get vaccinated, and (b) I adopted— and continue to practice— the discipline of washing my hands after holding a menu. The problem it created is that it's a nuisance having to doomscroll though a tiny menu that can only list a few items per screen. Imagine if restaurants offered a printed menu that was the size of your hand and 53 pages long. Bring back nice, big menus where I can see lots of options at once.

Closely related to that....

2. Turn on the damn lights in the restaurant 

Turn up the lights in the restaurant so we can read the dang menus! I'm not that old, mid 50s, and my eyesight is still better than that of most people my age, but more and more I have to use my phone's flashlight to read the damn menu.

3. I don't want to create an account to buy something once 

Look, I get the importance of accounts to secure information. I have had computer accounts (name and password) since 1985. I have been buying things online since 1993. But if I'm just going to buy one thing, once, No, I don't want to have to make a new account. Just take my credit card number and let's complete the transaction.

4. I don't want to download an app

If I own something that's physically in front of me, I don't want to have to download and install an app to use it. If the controls are that complex that they can't be managed via a small number of buttons or switches on the device, you can damn well put a lightweight web server in it and let me manage it through any common browser— like the way routers have worked for more than two decades now.

For example, a few years ago I bought some LED light bulbs with selectable color temperature. They required an app! I returned them and bought another brand that features a simple, physical, 4-position switch on plastic housing at the base of the bulb.

5. Give me knobs and buttons in my car for commonly used controls

"This car has too many buttons and knobs on the center console" is a valid complaint... but worse than that is a car that has too few physical controls because everything has been disappeared behind a touchscreen with a menu tree that goes 5 levels deep. I'm fine with infrequently used controls, like audio balance L/R and F/R, being in menus. Give me simple, physical controls for things I need to adjust frequently like audio volume, radio station presets, air temperature, fan speed, etc.

This is a safety issue as well as a convenience nuisance. A driver can learn & use good tactile controls without taking their eyes off the road. Navigating menus is a dangerous distraction.

6. I like physical media

I have a library of 100s of music albums on CD. Partly that's because I started collecting it long before digital downloads and streaming existed as music-listening alternatives, but partly also it's because I prefer to own the copy of music I buy, not just rent it. With streaming and even downloads, your right to keep listening to the music is retained by the distributor. They can take it away. Or they can raise the price. So when I want a complete album of something new, I check the price for a physical album vs. a download. It's almost always the same. BTW, I rarely play the physical CDs I own. I've digitized most of them into my pocket-sized supercomputer. But the copies are mine and nobody can take them away or raise the price.

7. My TV, my refrigerator, my toaster do not need wifi

There are some useful use-cases for wifi connected appliances. The TV might be the strongest use case, as a wifi TV can connect directly to streaming services— which in the 2020s are what having cable TV was in the 1990s. But an inexpensive device like Roku TV can do this, too. And having wifi directly on major appliances is often not primarily for your benefit as the consumer; it's for the vendor's benefit, as they use the connection to spy on your habits, sell your profile data to advertisers, and cram ever-more advertising into your limited attention span. Wifi-enabled TVs already do this. Friends of mine who've bought TVs with wifi have chosen to disable it— to prevent intrusive advertising— and fall back to earlier gen solutions like plugging in a Roku, Amazon stick, etc., to an HDMI port.

The use case for the consumer is even weaker for wifi on other appliances. What's your fridge going to do? Text you, "Fam you outta OJ"? What's your oven going to do? Your toaster? And of course you'll need an app to set them up. The fact is that wifi on these devices is a Trojan horse. It's all about two things: 1) Advertising... and 2) Charging you more to use your damn device. Manufacturers build in features but turn them off when you don't pay your monthly subscription. Like a convection oven that will stop... convecting... without a $4.99/month fee. Screw that!

$6/gallon gas is here. I snapped this photo of a local gas station a few days ago.



It shows the cheapest grade of gas is just $5.999, if you pay cash. Add 10 cents to use a credit card, add 50 cents if your car needs premium fuel. And look at those diesel prices.... Diesel could soon be over $8/gallon.

Nationwide it's reported that gas averages $4.24/gal, with diesel averaging $5.39. Prices are always higher here in California because of real estate costs, taxes, and market dynamics. Of course, the national average was much lower before President Trump's wasteful and illegal war on Iran. Earlier this year gas averaged just $2.98 across the US.

Fortunately I'm paying less than the prices in the photo. Currently Costco gas at the nearest Costco is a whopping $.84/gal cheaper. Independent gas stations in the area have prices in between that and this brand-name store. But some other brand-name stores are more expensive. And, for whatever reason, Sunnyvale is one of the cheaper cities in the area for gas. So plenty of people out there in the SF Bay Area are paying over $6.