The View From 96---January

View96Jan

The View From 96---January

     The main event of January was a leftover from December and I’ve chronicled this in the Epilogue to The View From 95.  However, to recount it again: I’d had a broken tooth that month and my dentist said the best thing was to have the remains taken out so as to avoid any further complications.  I’d gone through this before and so made an appointment with the same oral surgeon place and as before it seemed a lot of people were getting their teeth pulled out as it took a while to get an appointment so it wasn’t until early January for me.

     It was the same oral surgeon but I didn’t have the same dentist and I should have been forewarned when as he was getting ready this one dropped some instrument, which broke.  Then, although he managed to extract the rest of my broken tooth this klutz also knocked the crown off an adjacent tooth, which happened to be an implant.  He retrieved the crown and said it could be glued back on.  I hoped so.  Luckily, this was on a Friday and I got an appointment with my dentist on Moday.  Luckily also, my son M--- could again drive me there.

   So, on Monday it was off to my dentist again, with me carrying the dislodged crown in a plastic bag.  Gluing, or cementing, it back on wasn’t that easy.  It took quite a while and my mouth felt it.  Finally it was done and I was told to eat carefully so as not to knock it off again, just what I wanted to hear.  The cost was $40.  I was not happy about the whole affair.

    The main event for the rest of January was putting together another Potpourri, which would be a coillection of my writings over the last year or so, short stories, autobiographical bits, some essays and my monthly column, “Observations,” for the Sun Senior News.  This would involve a lot of copying and pasting and as always doing this apparently easy task was not so easy as the copied piece didn’t always get copied where it should have been.  Eventually, I managed to get everything in place and did a Table of Contents and a Foreward.  Then came the task if getting the resulting book, an e-book, Potpourri VIII, onto Amazon from where it could be bought for $2.99 and put of Kindle.  This too was not easy but eventually this also was managed and there it was.

     Another accomplishment in January, this in the first week, was getting in a new fridge filter, which again, when you’re 96, is not that easy to do, but eventually I managed.  Come to think of it, when you’re 96 nothing is easy to do.

     There was a lot of sports to watch on TV in January as the NFL playoffs were going on, the NBA season had started and, for us old tennis players who watched that sport, the first major of the year, the Australian Open.  There was a brief moment of hope for us 49er fans as they beat the defending champs, the Philadelphia Eagles, in their first playoff game.  Unfortunately, they then had to play the Seattle Seahawaks, whom they’d lost to in the last regular season game, and this time it was an even more convincing loss,41-6.  Seattle returned the first kickoff for a touchdown and this was a harbinger of things to come.

     In the Aussie Open, Djokavich beat, one of the two best young players, Sinner, in the semis but then lost to the other one, Alcaraz in the final.  This gave

Alcaraz all of the majors and who knows, he may go on to top even Djokavich’s 24 major wins.  Too bad I won’t be around to see if this happens.

    The Sacramento Kings got off to a so-so start and there were already signs that this might be a disastrous season with a bunch of injuries on top of poor play, no defense, but I didn’t know then how bad it would be.

     And speaking of disasters, there was our political scene, with the governor of Minnesota and mayor of Minneapolis pitted against the ICE agents who were trying to round up illegal immigrants in that city.  Unfortunately, two persons were killed in the conflict, justifiedly according to ICE and murdered according to the anti-ICERs.

     The other big political event was the US in a daring raid capturing Venezulan dictator Maduro (and his wife) and transporting them back from their palace to a jail in Brooklyn to face drug charges.  Quite a change in fortunes.  Of course the Trumpsters hailed this as a masterstroke while the Dems condemned it as an illegal kidnapping.

     I was still watching old movies on TV, the latest being “Midnight Cowboy” with Dustin Hoffman as a grifter named Ratso Rizzo and Jon Voight as a comboy named Joe Buck, a hustler who comes to New York to be a gigilo.  I’m not sure if I’d already seen it but I knew that Dustin would be killed off at the end and yes, he dies on a bus taking the two to Florida.  I also watched the final finale of Downton Abbey, which ended with everyone having a happy conclusion except possibly Maggie Smith, whose character, like Dustin’s, was killed off.

     So it was on to February and trying to complete my other writing project, The View From 95, before I finished being 96.