Our World’s Been Shook Up
December 10, 2025
This summer, while driving in France, Jim noticed his hand shook as he gripped the wheel of our rental Peugeot. Seemed odd. When we got back to Davis, Jim checked in with his primary care physician who suggested he keep an eye on it and let him know if it intensified. He did, it had, so Dr. Ho referred him to a specialist.
Three weeks ago (on November 20th), Jim and I saw Dr. Mense, a Kaiser neurologist. He did some simple in-office, observational diagnostics and concluded Jim has Parkinson’s.
Not the diagnosis we were hoping for.
So that is the bad news. The more positive news (it’s all relative) is that he’s got a subtype of Parkinson’s called tremor-dominant Parkinson Disease. The neurologist was quick to say that Jim would live a long and active life and that PD would not be what gets him in the end. His subtype is characterized by a resting tremor (as opposed to a tremor that activates when engaging one’s hand or arm, for example) which is annoying, but largely addressable with a medication called levodopa. He will not experience the other symptoms of PD.. rigidity, bradykinesia (slow movements), loss of balance, dementia. At least not anytime soon.
For the last three weeks, he’s been titrating levodopa, and is close to arriving at a dosage that will settle his jiggling right forearm. Aside from taking this medication a few times a day, and dealing with a mostly manageable tremor, it’ll be business as usual … we hope for a very long time.
Nothing in life is certain (how’s that for a platitude!), but we are feeling generally optimistic as we feel our way along this new path.
Here’s my otherwise healthy, fit, good lookin’ guy chillin’ on a Dolomite mountainside a year ago this past summer:
At 60
November 20, 2025
In a chair.. on the deck.. of a cabin.. on a lake.. about 12 years ago…
Just came across this pic. Good lookin’ guy.
Bendy as a Gumby
October 23, 2025
Caught Jim performing his morning footwear switcheroo .. from tennis shoes to work boots. Looking pretty good there, Jim!
Jim in the Wild
October 15, 2025
Always fun to be out on a walk and run into Jim being a surveyor. Janet and I were cutting across campus on our way to the Arb and Janet spotted the orange hat in the corner of a loading dock. I snuck a pic.
Colorful guy.
Have a Good Day
September 9, 2025
I like this photo. It’s a wee slice o’ morning life as Jim heads out to work. I’m not sure what prompted me to take this picture (well… what doesn’t prompt me to take a picture.. asks the person with 106,202 photos in her photo library).. but I’m glad I did.
Things to notice:
:: It’s early in the morning.. the house is slightly dark and it’s quiet. I can see the quiet in the photo.
:: Jim’s setting his “lunch pail” by the door. It’s actually not a lunch pail (it’s some sort of survey instrument, probably a data collector) but I get a kick out of calling it his lunch pail.
:: Jim’s still gotta change out of his crocs into those grey tennis shoes, and then he’ll stand at his truck and change into work boots. So many footwear changes!
:: Jim knows how to set down a heavy object w/o hurting his back; good job, Jim!
:: Tucked under his right arm is his briefcase (not sure what goes in there.. but sure it’s important because he never leaves for work w/o it) and he’s likely holding his giant water cup.
This is our version of the Ward Cleaver Goes To Work scene with June hovering at the front door to send him off with a kiss. She usually had on a nice dress with a neatly tied apron around her waist. I was still wearing the tattered grey Grinnel Tigers t-shirt I’ve been sleeping in lately. No apron. And yes, of course a kiss.
As Seen on Today’s Walk
August 13, 2025
Janet and I set off on our weekly Wednesday walk around the Arboretum. We turned the corner at A and Russell and who should we see? Jim in the Wild!
He was on the job… surveying at the Sigma Nu fraternity just one block from our house! It may be the closest-to-home job Jim’s ever had. He coulda loaded all his stuff in his silver wagon and just walked to work today (but he didn’t). It was fun to see him working. Look how happy (and cute) he is:
This is Jim doing surveying things:
We thought it best to leave him alone.
~~
Our next exciting sighting was this….
This was very sweet. It’s a dad and his two young kids. The dad has pulled a crawdad out of the creek to show his kids what crawdads look like. He pointed out to us a number of them, surrounded by hundreds of tiny fish. The crawdads were all fighting with each other — thus the loss of an entire left claw on the one in the tub. We talked about crawdads for a while, then were on our way.
For the record, the injured crawdad was returned to the water. There he was going to have to fend for himself against some worthy foes. I hope he fared well.
A Full Complement
May 22, 2025
Finally, after over a year (this go-round), Jim’s back to a full set of choppers. Poor guy’s been through implant hell. It started many many years ago (I want to say 10?) with a cool plan to address his top front teeth that involved implants, bridges and I can’t really articulate the whole scheme, but Howard the dentist was the mastermind and it all seemed like a good bet. Then sorta one by one, the implementation fell apart and it just seems that for years on end, Jim’s been dealing with one failure after another, solutions spread out over time in a piecemeal fashion. Then a final solution to the mess was devised and Jim was at a new beginning of the end phase of the drama… so everyone thought. This resulted in a 3 tooth gap in the dead center of his smile, filled in, gratefully, by a flipper, but hooboy was that a big hassle. And then, after the requisite time had transpired and the final step had arrived, the oral surgeon fellow detected a problem and it was back to the beginning again. The last beginning, that is. I’m sure my explanation is missing a few details and a few steps, and I’m surely misstating a thing or two, but suffice to say, it’s been a slog.
Jim’s been a trooper, I must say.
At the ripe old age of 72 + one month (man.. we’re getting old), Jim’s teeth (and tooth facsimiles) are all solidly in place, fully functional and presentable to the world. Some things take longer than others.
After this photo, he took off to get a haircut. My guy’s all ready for a 3-week + European vacation, starting in three days!
Jim’s Latest
May 13, 2025
A small, flat package arrived a couple days ago for Jim. I didn’t give it much thought.. it was probably something for the garage, which means it was probably destined for some project or another.
I was right!
He’d ordered a couple-three dozen large key rings, which he turned into this:
Were this a video (it actually is a screen shot of a video I shot yesterday), you’d see that when you isolate a ring at the top of the string, and then drop it, it passes down the length of the string and comes to a stop at the bottom. However, it doesn’t do that at all. In fact, it just looks like it does that, when actually it simply flips over, which causes the ring below it to flip over, which causes the ring below that to flip over.. etc. It’s an optical illusion designed to look like something it’s not.
The video is far better at conveying this than a still photo! Go to my Facebook for the action video. LOL.
Jim saw this illusion on a video on Youtube .. a place he spends a fair amount of time. That funny guy.
Speaking of that funny guy… his rocks came out of the tumbler today, after a week of spinning and grinding. However, they are going right back in, where they’ll tumble for another week (with added grit). Then they’ll get more grit and tumble for another week. Total: 6 weeks of tumbling with increasing grades of grit to achieve maximum polish. It’s a long process.
Here’s where the process stands today…. the BEFORE and AFTER.
In a week, he went from 5 pounds of rock to 3.5 pounds. Smoothness ensued. But more to come!
(If you zoom in on a rock in the middle of the BEFORE pic, you’ll see a rock in the disgusting image of His Orangeness. Orange face, square hairdo. Thankfully, all that tumbling rubbed him out. What our country needs right now is a human size tumbler.)
Rock Tumbler
May 6, 2025
Jim. I’m tellin’ ya. The man makes stuff.
Exhibit A:
This is a rock tumbler. I don’t know impetus for this, but apparently having a rock tumbler was high on Jim’s wish list. Or maybe it was just about finding a use for the motor he stripped out of an old lawn mower. Neato either way, right?
I must say, this is really clever. He’d do a better job of explaining how he came up with this implementation, but for my part, I’m just impressed with the ingenuity. I would have not the first clue about how to convert a lawn mower motor to something that powers a rock tumbler, never mind how to construct a spinning vessel strong enough to run continuously for 7 days and endure tumbling *rocks*.
Check out these belts and other gizmos:
Here’s the set up in the storage unit off the garage, right next to Jim’s Stairmaster (he says it’s so loud it drowns out NPR… the station he listens to while working out and working in his garage). You see bottles of grit, spare cylinders of various sizes, the motor and rack upon which the tumbler spins, maneuvered by those belts. I think. What you can’t see is the heat/fire sensor which is mounted nearby and which sends a signal to Jim in the house somewhere if all that energy gets coverted to fire! He’s an industrial designer who thinks of everything. 🙂
The rocks are supposed to be “ready” on May 13. Jim’ll do an unveiling and I’ll post a picture, no matter how they turn out. Stay tuned.
Happy Seventy Tooth Birthday Jim!
April 30, 2025
Jim’s 72th.
Jim got fitted today for the crown that will screw into his implant, ending a year of implant bridge hell. Won’t go into detail, but it’s been a long flipper-frustrating year and in a few weeks he’ll finally be at the finish line. Best birthday present ever (“All I want for my birthday is my three front teeth.”)
Life of Wry 