Today Is ...

From husband Bill, January 16, 2026, at home

While my taste has mellowed over the years, I still enjoy spicy dishes, specially Indian, Thai, and Mexican. I still occasionally sprinkle red pepper flakes on my Italian dishes.

From husband Bill, January 16, 2026, at home

I am (still) in the preliminary stages of compiling 75 of my more than 300 self-penned poems for self-publication as a soft-cover book. Also, I am (still) in the process of writing an autobiographical novel loosely based on my four years (1992 - 1996) as a reporter, writer, editor, and researcher for an international weekly magazine on the financial and technical aspects of the chemical industry (based in the financial district of New York City). I am including and elaborating on, and partially exaggerating various aspects of my entire life so far. I hope to have it self-published. (I was a journalist from September 1982 to April 2017.) I was sidetracked by medical issues, including eight surgeries between March 2022 and November 2025. Because of that, I have more to write about. 

From husband Bill, January 16, 2026, at home

I have had eight surgeries between March 2022 and November 2025. I wish they could have been done without scalpels. Then again, I now have cool, long incision scars in my chest, back, and legs.

*March 2022: quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery (broken sternum required)

*May 2022: 1st chest surgery (open chest to remove loose screws/sternal plate and clean out infection within my chest)

*May 2022: 2nd chest surgery (a week later to close my chest)

*September 2023: 1st spine surgery (remove abscess from infected disk)

*October 2023: 2nd spine surgery (placement of titanium metal rod to hold my spine together due to bone infection causing my spine to "collapse")

*April 2024: right ankle surgery due to 2 fractures (bone biopsy, deburring of bone, draining of fluid)

*November 4, 2025: artery bypass surgery (3-foot-long blockage in the main artery in my left leg; removal of 3-foot-long vein in my right leg, which was inserted within my left leg to bypass my blocked artery)

*November 8, 2025: left foot surgery (3rd and 4th toes of my left foot amputated due to artery blockage) ... I also have a wound on the heel of my left foot due to the blockage.

From husband Bill, January 16, 2026, at home

I do like figs, especially from my maternal grandfather's fig tree when I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, but I have never been all that fond of Fig Newtons.

From husband Bill, January 16, 2026, at home

My Initial Religion: Roman Catholicism

My Current Religion: Gaudiya Vaishnavism (Hare Krishna), a sect of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism)

From husband Bill, January 16, 2026, at home

"Nothing is real." - John Lennon

The day is to celebrate nothing.