Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

I got to take a ride in the shiny red truck on Sunday night!

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while waiting for the FedEx truck:

** Sorry about the lack of posts for the past week, but it’s been eventful in a less-than-desirable way.

As detailed in the most recent episode of “The Owner’s Box After Dark,” I had my knee surgery last Tuesday. After the initial drugs wore off, it’s been a semi-painful recovery. Although it was just an arthroscopic procedure and there were just two small incisions, it’s still an invasive procedure and my 66-year-old knees don’t respond as quickly as, say, a professional athlete’s knees would.

That being said, I felt I was really getting over the hump by the end of last week, when I found I could walk almost a mile without significant discomfort as long as I didn’t overtax the knee. I was feeling pretty good about things — and then I hit Sunday night’s speed bump.

It wasn’t the knee that was a problem. It was my nose — that fine Sicilian appendage on the front of my face. Long story short, my nose was broken when I was 6 years old, and it left me a deviated septum that has caused breathing and other issues ever since. And one of those other issues is bleeding.

Just after 11 p.m., while blowing my nose and effecting the cleanup with a classic cloth handkerchief, I apparently irritated one of the blood vessels that runs over the broken base of cartilage at the bottom of my nostril, and it started bleeding like Old Faithful.

It’s happened before — once in Falmouth about 30 years ago, again on my 50th birthday 16 years ago, and once more five years ago when I moved into my house. The last one was blood-pressure related, but this one wasn’t. Still, it just wouldn’t stop — and after about 45 minutes, when I started choking on the volume of blood that was flowing into my stomach, I called for the ambulance and I was transported to Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro for emergency treatment.

Fortunately, this was an easy fix. I’ll spare you the details of the scene, which was pretty messy as I was wheeled into the emergency ward. By 2 a.m., my little scratches were treated and I was on my way back home courtesy of a drowsy friend. And by the way, it was the same nostril in which my COVID-19 test swab was inserted a week earlier, but I’m pretty sure that didn’t cause or contribute to my situation.

Today, all seems fine — although with my seasonal allergies in play, it’s a little frustrating to not be able to blow my nose for another couple of days. And I was pretty wiped out on Monday. Once I was able to go to sleep and stay asleep after the hospital visit, I was out like a light until well into the afternoon, and I missed the visit of the FedEx truck carrying my new computer. I expect it to return today.

Like everything else in this maddening year of 2020, I’m just trying to look at things under the premise that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Will high school basketball avoid
COVID-related postponement?

** We’re getting closer to big news on the front of high school sports here in Massachusetts, but it hasn’t arrived yet. So I will refrain from a lengthy analysis here until things go past the “recommendation” stage.

Yesterday, the MIAA’s COVID-19 task force crafted its recommendation for how the 2020-21 season should be conducted, and it included the creation of a “fourth season” wedged between winter and spring, during which football and other “high-risk” sports would be conducted. I wasn’t a fan of this until the recommendation established a start date for basketball as Nov. 30, ending at the end of February — time for a season of reasonable length, although presumably without tournaments.

I think it could work — but there are still a lot of steps to be taken before this could be enacted, so let’s see how things progress before I step on the soapbox to pontificate.

But if there’s any way we can get high school sports rolling again in a responsible manner, I’m certainly willing to listers.

** I forgot to share this before, but here’s a good example of what adjustments need to be made in the national psyche.

Just after I returned home from vacation, in the last week of July, I shopped for groceries at the local Stop & Shop and found an entire aisle devoted to ... drumroll, please! ... HALLOWEEN CANDY!

Yes, Halloween candy was on the shelves a full 14 weeks before the actual event, which will probably be curtailed this year for pandemic reasons. I was so outraged, I think it caused temporary amnesia as I typed several blog posts and filmed videos in the interim. But I raise the issue today to remind all of you of the insidious nature of subliminal advertising practices — and to remind you that if you buy Halloween candy today, it’s almost a certainty that you will eat it yourself long before you would be distributing it to others.

** See you in a few days or so with a new “The Owner’s Box After Dark.” Stay safe!