Still needed. Still fed.

Apparently, I have good answers to the questions that Sir Paul asked in a much older record than the one he released last week, back when he was a bit younger than even I just turned:
 

Watch on YouTube

 

It was a relatively ordinary birthday in the middle of a relatively ordinary week. The clients still called, I got several dozen Facegreetings on the occasion, and had the Joy of getting an extension on my paid account here fromdauntless_heart. So thank you, all, for all of that:)

I ended the day with a workout. They encourage you to organize a “birthday burn” for the occasion, but I didn’t know anybody there that afternoon except the staff, a couple of off-duty trainers, and Jessica, the coach  I picked a class for on the occasion. I’ve watched Jess grow from a staff person, to a studio manager, to a two-studio manager, and then to (after she joked about it in an April Fools post last year) actually taking the training and getting on the schedule as a coach herself. She’s also student teaching while she gets her degree, supervises a running group for young girls, and still runs most of the socials for two gym locations. She’s half my age and I feel sometimes that she’s already accomplished more than I have.

Still, I’m not the oldest coot  in the program anymore. One of the other locations just signed up a guy who is 80 years old. He’s widowed and was just lonely. I haven’t met him yet, but I’m looking forward to it, so that finally, when I go in there there will be somebody who can yell at me to get off of HIS lawn;)

 

Eleanor and I were both pretty tired by the time I got home from all that, dinner was pretty simple, but there was cake. There was also a very bizarre movie starring Jon Hamm called Corner Office. It’s apparently based on a Swedish novel called “The Room,” which would’ve made more sense as a title if it hadn’t already been taken as the name of possibly the worst movie ever made. This one is definitely better, but it’s turning out to be perhaps just as weird in its own way. We will finish it tonight.

I’m working a partial day today on a weird federal holiday. Apparently when Veterans Day falls on a Saturday, that’s the official holiday, and banks and the post office are open on the surrounding Friday on Monday. Still, a lot of offices are taking it off, so I’m just meeting a client who couldn’t get in yesterday and figuring out shit about my health insurance in what is now my final year before Medicare. I’ve asked my current provider to keep me on to the end of the year; any routine expenses will go on the new plan after December 1 to reduce its deductible, but if I get hit by a bus or something in the final month of the year, I can still get it covered under the current plan which only has about $900 of deductible left. I love how our Best Care Anywhere health care system basically amounts to legalized gambling.

Not that the alternative is necessarily better. I passed this place the other day around the corner from the Rochester office:



They had another sign on their driveway saying "VOLUNTEERS WELCOME."  Hmmm.... do I get to pick between “quick and painless” and “slow and agonizing” or is it just random?

DEATH is already keeping people busy around us.  Daughter of a longago client (as in a bankruptcy filed 10 years ago) called to tell me her mother had just passed. Mom had an annuity, that wound up being split between her and her bankruptcy trustee for all these years, and I needed to let the trustee know that the "income stream," formerly known as "her life," had now come to an end. Just before that, a friend let us know that his ex-wife, who Eleanor and I also were friends with, had also just passed. Even Emily remembered her from many years earlier before we'd met her: her daycare, close to 30 years ago, brought her and her guitar every Monday for a "singing with Stefani" session. By the time we made her acquaintance within the past decade, she'd fallen into quite a bit of physical disrepair and emotional neediness, and we hadn't heard anything out of her for months when Dave posted about her passing. She has a memorial service at a Uni church the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I think we'll go.

And that's a Day (or so) in the Life. Which I am still happy to have.