Bridge Brain

It's a condition brought on by trying to learn bridge at an advanced age. My wife and I took up an offer by the Essex County Bridge Club for six free lessons. We've taken three and our homework is starting to boggle our brains.

Never mind what “convention” (I think that's the word) they use to teach bridge here. You still have to count points and learn how to bid and respond. It's hard to remember all the combinations of points and numbers of cards in your hand to do either. That's about where we're up to.

But we've decided to work at it. We either laugh hysterically at our own stupidity or start to raise our voices when trying to explain something in the lesson book to the other.

I don't know how many times I've said: “Wait a minute, I'm trying to understand what this means. Help me here.” Sometimes I get a blank look when I'm trying to explain something I DO understand. When the light dawns, we laugh and move on.

Did I say this was “FUN?” Well, believe it or not it is. I'm told it's good to exercise the brain by learning something new. They didn't say it would hurt.

Is there an ace (four points!) bandage for a brain sprain?

Under Treatment

I've joined that vast army of men of a certain age who have contracted prostate cancer. I started radiation treatments for it this week. I've taken three of 44 scheduled doses. I feel fine and the treatments are brief and painless and given at a great facility 10 minutes from home.

I found out about the condition in a circuitous way. My orthopedist sent me for an MRI of my hip, which had been bothering me. Turned out the hip was OK but the person who read the MRI (bless him or her) saw something on the prostate that needed checking. So my urologist checked and here we are.

I've scheduled the treatments at 4 pm. each day so as not to interfere with my golf or tennis games or our bridge lessons. Or any of our other normal daytime activities. So far it's working out well.

My biggest problem is the diet the oncologist wants me on. I'm supposed to eat gas-free foods. Intestinal gas blocks the radiation from reaching the prostate and when I get on the table and they spot gas, I have to get off, walk around and get rid of it before they can proceed. That happened to me the first two days and I actually felt guilty about it. Like I had failed to do my homework or something

But today was a perfect day. No gas, a smooth treatment and home for a welcomed glass of scotch. (I can have that on the weekends since the treatments are Monday through Friday).

Relatives, friends and acquaintances who have gone through this have offered encouragement and good wishes. I thank them and muddle on.

By they way, if you're interested in knowing what foods cause gas, just Google “gassy foods.” You'll get a belly full.

What's In Your Google?

I'm thinking of having a Googlectomy. Not that I don't use Google. It is my home page and it does host my blog. It's just that I'm getting tired of the media cooing and gooing (googling?) over every new gizmo the Googlites come up with.

Today's media gushing was over Google Wallet. It's an app to your smart phone that acts as your credit card. It's supposed to save you all the hard work of taking the card out of your wallet and signing a credit card receipt. Wow! How many hernias will that prevent?

The Wallet is a free Google app which, at the moment has limited exposure. I'm sure it will be ubiquitous in no time. Well, some time. It has to sign up many more merchants and many more mobile phones that will run it. Early adapters will no doubt be flipping over Wallet.

Not here. So far these old bones have no trouble extracting a credit card from my leather wallet and signing a receipt. In fact, my wife, who saves every store and credit card receipt we get (in case of errors or returns), surely would not be happy with Google Wallet.

Not only wouldn't she trust it, she'd want that piece of paper that says she bought something that day and how much she paid for it. Then it would go into her files, which is her version of Google Search.

That's about as geeky as we get.

Remember This?

It's a question we always ask when looking at our picture albums. For those of us who took pictures with film cameras we saved the prints in albums. We have a closet full of them in addition to the digital pictures now in our computers.

Rather than throw out the albums, we've been giving them to our grandchildren, one at a time, whenever they come to visit. Some time in the future they and my son will have to decide what to do with the rest of them.

Meantime, whenever I have free time I go through the digital photos and delete them. I have to believe we've seen them often enough and since no one else is interested in them, it's time to hit the delete key.

I think I mentioned previously that we have many pictures on Picasa, by Google. I'm still trying to figure out how to delete entire albums from that service. Right now I'm doing it one picture at a time and that's very time-consuming (and boring).

The kids will be here next week. I'm sure they'll figure it out for me.

We'll see how it develops.  

I've Got Mail!

It was an email from Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix. I don't know the man but I've been a Netflix subscriber for many years so I suppose that's how he got my email address.

Turns out it was a long-winded letter explaining their rationale for separating the DVD disc and streaming video services and charging separately for each. Even though I had bought a Blu-ray disc player for the express purpose of sampling streaming video, my wife and I were appalled at the poor selections available. So it was a no-brainer to quickly cancel the streaming part of our subscription.

Obviously I was not alone in my unhappiness at this Netflix corporate decision. I read today that the company has received more than 17,000 comments so far from disgruntled customers like myself. I didn't bother to comment on their blog page because I prefer to comment on my own blog.

We all have our own reasons to be unhappy, of course, but mine are simple: too much money for too little choice.

There's no sense chewing a rug over this. We'll all move on in our own ways and Netflix will muddle through this crisis of disaffection.

Welcome to my world, Reed.

And Now It's Rice Cakes

Having recently reintroduced myself to white bread (doctor's advice) I am now also feasting on rice cakes (same doctor).

I had forgotten how tasty a rice cake could be when shmeared with peanut butter. So now, instead of a bagel and cream cheese for my mid-round snack on the golf course, it's two rice cakes & PB. Yummy. No kidding.

This strange, retro way of eating has had unintended consequences. I've lost weight. I didn't have to lose weight but I dropped five pounds in a week. I've stabilized now, thank goodness.

Don't laugh, but my wife is now trying to fatten me up. She went shopping today and came home with two varieties of dark chocolate for me to snack on. I love dark chocolate but try to limit myself to one piece per day. (Full disclosure: once in a while I might have a second.)

Bon appetite!

The Muddler's Progress

With apologies to John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, I’m reporting today that I took a few more steps from the old world toward the modern one by eliminating some of the leftover issues I wrote about last week.

Ben, my grandson tech support guy, helped me eliminate the need to enter a password every time I opened this computer.

I still do not get Outlook Express on this unit but since I installed Microsoft Office 2010, I get something called Outlook which looks different but does accept email. Here’s the catch. What I get via Outlook doesn't appear in Outlook Express on my old PC.  And vice versa. Does the later version pre-empt the older version. And why don’t my emails appear simultaneously on my Verizon Webmail page?

Quite by accident I just discovered that I can make the print larger while typing and reading. However, since it was an accident I don’t know how I did it. But I’d like to, since the default font size in too small for me.

And now for the most important new development: Thanks to my wife, I can now print wirelessly from the laptop to the printer. What did she do to solve this perplexing dilemma? She said: “Why don’t you read the printer manual?”

Does Man stop and ask for directions when lost? Does Man attempt to fix household appliances or plumbing mishaps he knows nothing about? Who has not?  Read the Manual? Ha!

Swallowing pride, I read the printer manual, followed the instructions for enabling the printer to be wireless, and lo and behold, it works.

The proof is in the printing.

White Bread

Out of the radio speaker bursts the pounding strains of the William Tell Overture...the breathless announcer sets the stage...”from out of the past come the thundering hoof beats of the great horse Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again...”

Brought to you, of course, by Silvercup, the white bread of choice for every 8-9 year old fan of the program, including me. And what triggers (sorry, Roy) this memory? I'm on a special eating plan for a while under doctor's orders and since I can't stomach gluten-free bread, his bread of choice, I've been given special dispensation to eat white bread.

Rye, pumpernickel, bagels, whole wheat, etc., all that good stuff is off the table for a while. So we went shopping recently and discovered that white bread is still for sale in the supermarkets, all brands available in their bright, multi-colored packages. I guess lots of folks still buy them. Until now, I wasn't among them.

Now I am and I have to confess that without much thought we bought Wonder Bread. I have no excuse for my disloyalty to a boyhood hero. It just happened. Then I faced the test of how to eat it: plain or toasted? No contest. Toast it was and darn if it wasn't pretty good.

My wife says she'll even make me white bread French Toast.

Yummy!

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Correction:

I recently wrote a blog titled “24 Steps.” Today I discovered there are 25 steps leading to our workout room at our gym. Sorry for the error. It will be corrected in the original.