Caffeine Headache

One evening after work this month I came home and immediately took two Tylenol. I had a sharp headache, the kind that made me wince every time I moved my head. Jenn asked if I had my coffee in the afternoon, and incredibly, I had not! I got distracted from having my usual coffee after lunch. 

As an antidote, on top of the Tylenol, she suggested I have a soda. To my surprise, I learned that Diet Pepsi has caffeine in it. It says so right on the can: 35mg! In contrast, a cup of coffee contains 100mg of caffeine. Somehow, my afternoon coffees were enough to keep the headaches away.

Later on, I learned (or relearned) that caffeine is an addictive substance. When you stop taking caffeine, your body produces withdrawal symptoms: headache, irritability, fatigue, low energy, depressed mood, and others along these lines. I had never correlated headaches with lack of coffee.

I don't intend to give up coffee any time soon. It's too delicious! But my body has developed a sensitivity and expectation for my two cups a day: once in the morning and once after lunch. It's rare for me to forget my post-lunch coffee, but the next time I have an evening headache, I'll at least know one thing to check!

Generated from NightCafe AI

Dwayne Wade's Statue

Like so much of the Internet, I reacted with some glee at the pictures from Dwayne Wade's statue ceremony in front of the Kaseya Center in Miami, FL this past week. Dwayne Wade is a well-decorated former basketball superstar, a three-time NBA champion. He played thirteen seasons for the Miami Heat, and the organization decided to make a bronze statue in his likeness to honor him.

Unfortunately, the face on the statue did not resemble Dwayne Wade. The Internet was abuzz in mockery, and I was laughing at all of it. How could the artists of this statue, Omri Amrany and Oscar León, get his facial features so wrong? The face is mildly contorted and you have to work really hard to see the resemblance. 

The next day I read a piece on The Athletic following up with Wade on the reaction. He was not defensive about the statue's initial impression. "I don't know know a lot of people with a statue. Do you?" I admired the defiance in this statement. In an interview on the Miami Heat's YouTube channel, he seemed completely humbled. He recognized he was being immortalized.

I am on an email list from artist Danny Gregory. In one of his essays ("The art spirit"), he reminds us that artistry exists in everyone, and that every artist sees the world differently. It took Omri and Oscar ten months to create this statue, and even though everyone can like or tweet a criticism, none of it can diminish the meaning of this statue to its creators and its subject.

It's pretty fun to joke, to mock, to pile on. But after reading and listening to how much the statue means for Dwayne, after learning about its many personal details, I think I'll stop laughing as hard. Years from now, people will look at this in wonder. They will look up his records, watch his plays, and learn what he meant to his team. They'll look at this statue in awe.

 

Music from Foreign Lands

One of my favorite albums is "Julio" (1983) by Julio Iglesias. On a long family vacation, this was one of the albums we played, and we played it constantly. It was filled with non-English songs. He sung in German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and a bit of English. The songs became ingrained into my musical memory, and made me open to hearing non-English music. 

Here are five foreign songs which I've heard recently and highly recommend. Check it out on my Spotify playlist.

5) Rammstein - Feuer Frei! - German 

Back in February 2020, I paid for the second Tyson Fury / Deontay Wilder heavyweight fight. In one of the early fights leading up to this main event, a boxer walked out to "Feuer Frei", a menacing piece of metal. When I caught the lyrics, I guessed it was in German, and confirmed it when I looked it up later. Metal doesn't have to be in English for me to enjoy it!

4) Gigi D'Alessio - Ma si vene stasera - Italian

While watching the movie Gomorrah, about the Camorrah mafia, there's a scene in which two kids were celebrating a recent heist. This pop song was playing on their boom box and one of them was dancing and gesticulating in elation. It's a catchy and fun song. I spent some time trying to determine if it was sung in Italian or Neapolitan. I leave it to any Italians out there to tell me!

3) Grupo Limite - Te Aprovechas - Spanish

I loved Solito, the memoir by Javier Zamora about his immigration. In it he talks about the music that he and his family and neighbors loved to listen to. Grupo Limite was mentioned, and I put on a playlist of their songs. Te Aprovechas caught me with its playful accordion and Alicia Villareal's unique voice. The song and her delivery becomes more forceful as the song plays and it's irresistible.

The line I like: "y te odio y te amo, muy a pesar de mi." Google Translate gives me "And I hate you and I love you, despite myself." 

2) Erasmo Carlos - Dois Animais Na Selva Suja Da Rua - Portuguese

I happened to catch WMBR's "The Hot Rat Sessions" and DJ Abby Lyda ended her set with Dois Animais by Erasmo Carlos. The song has a driving beat, a swelling chorus, wailing guitars and a fantastic scat. The live version of this song that I found was sung by Erasmo Carlos in his 70s. The scat wasn't there but the guitar in its place worked for me.

The line I liked: "Eu não nasci pra viver mentindo" which Translate says "I wasn't born to live lying". Strong!

1) Celine Dion - "Hymne A L'Amour" - French

The 2024 Olympics in Paris introduced me to this beautiful love song. Even without knowing the words, the emotion of the song was immediate thanks to its arrangement and Celine Dion's commanding voice. Later, watching it alone, I felt the familiar lump in my throat and the tears forming in my eyes. Google Translate told me why. This: "Si tu meurs, que tu sois loin de moi... Car moi je mourrais aussi." translates to: "If you die, may you be far from me... Because I would die too."

This song is an Edith Piaf love song from the 1950s, and it has a tragic history. This, paired with Celine Dion's own return to the stage, underlines the song's theme about the endurance of love, and the possibility of love reunited. It aches, but for me the French language makes it a beautiful ache. (The Spotify playlist is Edith Piaf's version, but I am partial to Celine's version.)

Send me your favorite non-English songs!

Spotify Playlist: Music from Foreign Lands

My Pill Box

I now use a pill box (aka pill organizer). You may have seen these devices in drugstores: a long thin plastic box with seven small compartments. Each compartment has a lid with a label for each day of the week. If you're taking maintenance medication on a daily basis, the pill box keeps you organized. You always know if you've taken your pills just by looking at the box!

I started my regimen of daily medication back in 2010 for cholesterol. Another pill was added to this one in 2016. I take these pills in the evening. Amazingly, without fail, I've always remembered to take this medicine. But in the last several months, I'd be in front of my pill bottles in the evening, wondering if I had taken them already. 

Nothing bad happens if you forget to take them, or if you take them twice. I'd get mildly annoyed by my forgetfulness, but around the fourth or fifth time of me being confused, I realized a pill box would help. I've seen my parents use these pill boxes. It's a definite solution to a definite problem.

I've since learned that you can buy fancy ones: steel-finished with sliding containers and even detachable ones. There are even boxes that accommodate day and night dosages. I hope the number of pills I take won't change, but if it does the pill box will help me remember!

My Quiet Phone

I run my iPhone with nearly all sound and lock screen notifications turned off. 

That's right. For every app I go into the appropriate settings and turn off anything that produces a notification. I have enabled a handful of apps to display items in my lock screen. I even go so far as to disable the "badges", the little red number that appears at the corner of an icon indicating there's stuff to look at. This has greatly quieted my phone.

Also, unless you are my wife or daughter, your text won't alert me. I turned off all text notifications, so I'll only notice your message when I look at the phone. (I do look at it regularly enough.) If you really needed to convey an important message to me, you can call me.

Of course the one thing I can't turn off are work notifications, but I try to set limits there too. For Slack messages, my phone makes a noise, but I have disabled nearly all the social channels and some of the direct messages as well. I also make use of the "active hours" feature. After a certain hour, I'm not reachable via Slack. If you really needed to reach me, you can raise a PagerDuty incident to my cell.    

I try to remind myself that before smart phones and flip phones, we were pretty much not reachable unless you were near a phone, and it had to be a landline phone at that. Instead of attending to every beep and buzz of our smart phones, we used to have to walk with our head forward, looking in front of us and around us. 

All this is in-line with my low-information diet, but it's also a way to control distractions. Turning off the notifications helps me remain somewhat present. I have noticed people making good use of the iPhone's "Focus" mode. This is probably something I should explore but my current system works for me.

My Favorite Boston Championships

Since moving to Boston in 1991, I've experienced championships in the four major professional sports leagues. Boston is a modern Title Town, a Championship City.  In the middle of this month, the Boston Celtics won the top trophy and I attended their parade. It was a bright sunny day. The crowd was lively and the members of the team (in individual Boston Duck Tour boats) looked happy and delirious.

On social media, Boston was beating its chest: 13 Titles Since 2001! 6 Super Bowls. 4 World Series. 2 NBA Championships. 1 Stanley Cup. It's a remarkable run. Here are my favorite four championships ranked from these 13 titles:

#4: 2014 New England Patriots - The Patriots have played in ten Super Bowls, and won it six times since I've moved here. Going into Super Bowl XLIX, the Pats had lost their two prior Super Bowls, both against the NY Giants. I'm not sure I'm really past the loss from 2008, so when I saw that circus catch by Jermaine Kearse, I was ready to turn off the TV. Instead, very shortly after the Kearse catch was the greatest interception I've ever watched. Chills!

#3: 2024 Boston Celtics - I was dazzled by the 2008 Big Three: Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. But the last few years of watching Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum develop and grow in front of my eyes since Brown's draft (2016) and Tatum's draft (2017) has been amazing. They are an incredible pairing! With their latest team the Celtics have become elite again!

#2: 2011 Boston Bruins - When Patrice Bergeron scored the third goal short-handed in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, it looked like he pushed the puck into the goal with his hand. I remember going into my kitchen to life face down on the tile, hoping for a favorable non-call. After a moment, Boston got their call and it was 3-0 Bruins. I fully embraced hockey when I moved to Boston. It's my favorite sport to watch, live or on TV. This was the only other championship parade I attended! 

#1: 2004 Boston Red Sox - The most pure moment I ever felt as a sports fan. I cried. "Don't let us win today," said Kevin Millar in the epic Game 4 of their ALCS against the great New York Yankees. That comeback wiped away the terrible memories from that Aaron Boone homerun in 2003. The Red Sox sweep of the St Louis Cardinals was almost just icing! The Red Sox have won the World Series three more times since then, but their championship in 2004 is my favorite Boston championship!

Boston Celtics 2024 Duck Boat Parade

 

Gordon Street

From March to September 1991, I lived at 80 Gordon Street, in Brighton, Massachusetts. This was my first time paying rent for my own place. (I moved to Boston in January 1991, stayed one night with family, then was conveniently invited into house sitting at a co-worker's friend's place.) Gordon Street reminds me of the simpler though lonelier lifestyle I had back then. 

The apartment was simply a place to sleep, nothing more. Despite that, I didn't have a bed. It never occurred to me to buy one. I had a sleeping bag, and I slept directly on the floor. Word got around the office and a few months later a co-worker offered me a mattress he was getting rid of. I remember driving that used mattress in my tiny car from some North Shore town and being genuinely glad for it.

My apartment had two rooms, but because I didn't buy furniture one could be confused by their function. In the one room was the sleeping bag/mattress. In the other room was a folding table that had some books and an old computer. I rarely used that computer though. Instead, as a young workaholic in high-tech, I spent most of my waking hours at the office where there were far more interesting computers. Someone joked "Rick has more rooms than furniture." I laughed at the absurdity.

There was a small kitchen in that apartment. However, the one time I thought to cook something on the stove I was met with the reality that you have to call the utility company to turn on the gas. I had not done this. My diet in 1991 was served by national fast food chains and local fast food chains. And sometimes, a high-end restaurant. That's right: if co-workers were headed to nearby Michela's, a gorgeous and fancy destination restaurant, I'd sometimes tag along, somewhat out of place in casual clothes but solvent enough to mostly not care.

The mattress on the floor was soon accompanied by a beach chair I had bought. I'd sit in that chair to read or to write in a paper diary. There was a door that led to a tiny balcony. It overlooked a parking lot which I didn't have a permit for. In the kitchen the window overlooked the air well between the surrounding apartment buildings. Sometimes, if I saw someone across the way, I wondered if they were as lonely as I was.

When one of my co-workers asked if I wanted to join up with two other people in a larger apartment in downtown Boston, I leapt at the chance. I needed this invitation at that exact moment in my life. I must have broken my lease with the landlord immediately, but left all my moving plans for the absolute last minute. The morning of August 31, a loud knocking at my door woke me. When I opened it, I saw two parents and some children. They were the new tenants, and they were here to move in.

I hurriedly gathered my mattress and folded up my table and chair. I marveled at their furniture and their unpacking of kitchen implements. I stuffed my car with my meager belongings. I must have given this new tenant my key, though I don't remember. I then drove a few miles to the Back Bay. In that new apartment I had the smallest of the four rooms. My mattress and beach chair fit perfectly. 

80 Gordon Street (Google Maps)

 

Song: Starless (King Crimson)

Earlier in the month, I went to see "Children of Men" at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square. I love this movie and in preparation for the rewatch, I listened to its sound track. One of the songs is "In the Court of the Crimson King" by the band King Crimson. This song got me listening to some of the band's other songs. I eventually stumbled on "Starless."

This song is so incredible, so good. It's a track that is a bit over 12 minutes, so give yourself time to enjoy its epicness. The song features a build up of tension that is exquisitely released in the song's closing seconds. The foreboding bass, the funky mellotron, and the dark lyrics ("Starless and bible black!") make the song mysterious yet alluring.

When I like a song like this, I'll often go to YouTube to find covers. My favorite one is a music school's production from 2018. It was for their "Prog Rock" show. Prog rock does away with verse-chorus-verse and instead embraces complexity and multiple sections. Kind of like metal, I think.

I was happy to learn of this song, and amazed that it's been around since 1974. I like to think this song would have captured my attention when I was younger. Who knows? All I know is that old music can be new music if you are willing to open your ears.

King Crimson (Red)

 

COVID-19: Paxlovid

COVID-19 finally caught up with me last weekend. I woke up feeling sore and weak and achy. I had a mild fever. I was going to start a juice and rest routine when I thought: could this be COVID? Sure enough, I saw my first positive test result. My wife encouraged me to call the doctor to see if I could be prescribed Paxlovid, the antiviral medication for COVID-19.

The next morning, a Monday, I learned that Massachusetts has a free telehealth "clinic" that can determine if Paxlovid would help. I logged into the website, answered some questions, then waited for an online call. Within a half-hour I was talking to a Family Nurse Practitioner. She briefly discussed my answers, declared that Paxlovid would help, and confirmed my closest pharmacy. I had a box of Paxlovid within an hour. (Thanks to insurance, this was $25.)

I took the pills right away. Within a few hours, my soreness and achiness went away. I felt a bit better though my fever persisted. The next day, my fever began to subside. By day three I was feeling about 70-80% normal. This medicine felt like a modern miracle. The only side effect I experienced was a metallic taste in my mouth. Drinking water and taking cough drops helped with this.

The world has moved on from the state of high alert regarding COVID. By now I know maybe 6-12 people that got sick with COVID. During the early months of the pandemic, most just rested and let the virus run its course.  It's only in the past year did I start to hear about effective antiviral drugs. I have a feeling taking Paxlovid early in my illness helped with its efficacy.

This whole week I stayed home, though state guidelines suggest I could have returned to my office to work as early as Day 4 of my five-day Paxlovid regimen. For at least another week I'll be wearing a mask and carefully monitoring for a rebound (something that does occur with people who take this medicine). I highly recommend Paxlovid if you get sick with COVID. It's fast and effective.

Paxlovid

Unlit Stall Thoughts

A few weeks ago I was in a bathroom stall at work, playing some Freecell, passing a little time and a little gas. Not much else though. Suddenly, the lights went out. 

After that split-second of low-grade confusion, I realized that I was the only person in the bathroom, and the facility's motion detector must have shut off the lights when it didn't detect anyone moving. I certainly wasn't doing much moving (in more ways than one).

My thoughts went towards how you might add sensors in the stalls or even the toilets. Those sensors could communicate to the lights that there were people inside who couldn't move but were nonetheless present. It could do double-duty by tracking stall usage.

But then my thoughts went towards the ancient times. How did people go to the bathroom at night before there were lights? Did they just stumble around their unlit homes? Did they fire up a candle? What about prehistoric times? Did people just wake up in the night then wander nearby to relieve themselves? They would likely be concerned about predators.

My thoughts finally settled back towards mid-2021, back to when COVID was starting to fade away. Nearly four years later, my office building is a small fraction of its former population. How long before someone else walks into this bathroom? I waved my arms, but that didn't trigger the lights. 

Just as I started to think practically about finishing up in the dark, someone else walked in. The lights came on. I thought about how this person might have calculated he had the whole bathroom to himself, but then  realized another person was here, sitting in the dark. He went into anoter stall, and then I made my way out, into the light.

Bathroom from Post

My 2023 Books and Movies

In 2023, I read 25 books (LibraryThing) and watched 66 movies (Letterboxd) (24 were rewatches).

My favorite book: Solito. I won't ever forget the gentle bravery of the little boy in this immigration story. Another favorite that I read in that same month was Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Its maximalist style jumps off the page and I greatly enjoyed it.

My favorite movie: The Holdovers. I so loved the sweet sadness of this movie. The fact that some of the movie takes in place in Boston only adds to it. Other new movies from last year that I liked: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,  and No Hard Feelings.

Some books I read in 2023