If I were a practicing Bokononist I might know whether Mt. Everest is somehow either the waxing or waning wampeter of my karass.

You may remember, if you have known me for a while, that my friend Mike died a few years ago while attempting to summit Everest.

There is a woman that Lisa and I have started to get to know lately. This morning, on a whim, I googled her. And discovered that she was the second American woman (second by one day) to summit Everest.

*Busy, busy, busy is what a Bokononist whispers "whenever [he] thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is."

I just got off the phone with my friend Mark who works for MTV.
He has confirmed that Chelsea Clinton will not be the special guest next week on Pimp My Ride.

I had promised myself that I was not going to write about politics this year. There are many good political reads available. But I have to go back on my promise.
A friend of mine, who I like a great deal, has written (a few times) expressing dismay and fear about what is going on this year, and counseling people to be more realistic. This is, more or less, my response:

I don't think that I could possibly disagree with you more. Realism? I've lived through the last 16 years of it, and more, much more. I've been in politics, for a living. This time it's about more than politics. It's about America.

To paraphrase Archibald MacLeish, America is not a place. It is a promise, which is rarely, if ever achieved. But if you don't keep your eye on where you want to be, you will never get there. If you are not voting for the future there will never be any change. Change may come slowly, yes, but it will not come through fear of trying.

At Bobby Kennedy's funeral, Ted Kennedy used this quote, from George Bernard Shaw:

"Some men see things as they are and ask why? I dream dreams that never were and ask why not?"

It's karma.
And I brought it on myself.
You have all heard about the spy satellite which will come crashing back to earth in the next month or two. All of the scientists say we have nothing to worry about. That's because they know that I'm the target.
On January 9th, I posted this in my LJ:

Unless A Re-entering Satellite Falls On My Head...
...I just might live forever.

No matter where I am when the satellite falls to earth - the basement, Cheyenne Mountain, Tierra del Fuego, Cleveland, in the car...there is no doubt that it is going to be headed straight for me. So you're all safe. I don't mind taking one for the team now and then, but this is just ridiculous.
My bad.
You can't fool karma.

There are some events by which we date and measure our lives. Births, deaths, marriages, catastrophes. Our world changes, and we know at that moment that from that moment, we will never see the world in quite the same way, ever again.
Then there are the small milestones. We don't necessarily remember them, but in their own way they note our passage along the road. Small things, like naming an insurance beneficiary, making out a will, passing on a heirloom. Today was just such a small milestone for me. At work I filled out the paperwork officially notifying them that if anything happens to me, Mary-Kate Olsen should be called immediately.

I'm tired. It's my short work day, and I'm home alone. A perfect time for a nap. I could almost feel myself sinking into the pillow, just thinking about it.
I did not nap. Sam would not allow it.
Orange Neighbor Kitty was sleeping in the sunlight on our porch. Sam wanted to get his attention. He tried to get his attention by tapping loudly on the window. Over and over. When Sam wasn't tapping on the window, he was complaining to me. Loudly. I finally gave up, and got up.
At which point Orange Kitty got up, stretched, and wandered off. Sam, now having his choice of locations on the bed, hopped up, took my spot, and went right to sleep.
Coincidence? It seems to me that the entire episode was scripted, and probably rehearsed.

Memes are like sexually transmitted diseases.
You usually know who you got it from. If you know that person pretty well, you may even be able to figure out who they got it from. And you almost never know where it started.
I got this meme from both chaptal and foolishfiddler. Does that make me a slut?

Usually I don't do memes, but this one has the potential to be interesting because it will end up being about that most fascinating of topics - me, me, me.
And then you can do it, and it will be about you.
Here it is:
*************************

Use one word to describe me... just one single word. Leave it in my comments section. Then post this original message on your journal and see how many strange and interesting things people say about you.

There is no mechanism in place for me to call in sick today, since Nick is off visiting his sister in New Orleans. But today would be a good day not to go to work. Starting yesterday I had aches and chills. Then overnight it got worse. I must have been shivering a lot, because at one point I woke up and Lisa had four blankets piled up on me, and she had the heat cranked up into the mid 70s. (Yes, the furnace is working quite well, thank you.)
Since I get a flu shot every year, religiously (ha - do you know the prayer for flu shots?) it's not likely to be flu. Must be Ebola virus. If it is I have to think about where I can go to bleed out and do the most good. Perhaps Mayor Nickel's office.

One of the times in the middle of the night, when I woke up, I looked for Sam, the cat. He wasn't sleeping on the bed by my feet, where he usually spends the night. And he wasn't curled up on my side of the bed, by the night table, which is his alternate spot. I found him sleeping between Lisa and I. I thought that was strange, so I looked down at Sam's spot. There was a big, sad eyed Yellow Lab sleeping on the bed. I scratched his ears and he snuffled my hand. He had the saddest eyes I've ever seen. And when I woke up again, he was gone. Does he belong to any of you?

The other day I mentioned that I spend more time trying to come up with titles for my entries than I spend writing them, and I said that from then on I would just grab a book and use the first line as the title.
That is so not going to happen. I have just realized that I could easily spend three hours trying to find just the right book. I just spent an hour.
*****************

The Democratic debate last night.
The candidates were asked that most inane job interview question: "What is your biggest weakness?" That ranks somewhere below "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?"
Two of the candidates admitted that their biggest weakness is that they care too much. Wow, that's bound to hurt them.
Please. Wouldn't have been a lot more human to hear someone say: "anger management," or "internet porn," or even "rigid thinking."
No. They care too much. There is nothing I can possibly say.
*******************

Larry The Furnace Guy (really!) is down in the basement making lots of noises and finding out why the pilot light has gone out three times in the past two weeks. I can relight it just fine, but I am not a big fan on going down to a hundred year old largly unimproved basement at four in the morning. Even with my flashlight. And no, it's not Maine, where if the furnace goes out the toilet freezes over. Then again, I was a lot younger when I lived in Maine.

An unsolicited testimonial from Larry. When he got here he said that when the pilot keeps going out it often is a sign that the furnace will need to be replaced soon. Then he went to the basement and said: Oh, it's a Lennox. Probably just needs a cleaning."
********************

I don't know where we were, or what we were doing, but apparently Lisa and I are the only people in the Western world who have never heard of, let alone seen Dead Like Me. Yippee for the writer's strike. Old shows are getting recycled, and we get to watch it, from the beginning, as a new show. How did we miss this??? We have the DVR set to record each episode. Why didn't one of you tell me about this...hmmmm?
*******************

Double-agent has such negative connotations. Don't you think it would be better, and somehow more complimentary , to just refer to the person as having a second job?

I think that I spend more time trying to come up with titles for my entries than I spend writing them.
Many years ago The New Yorker would run, in the front of the magazine, a brief synopsis of the shows running on and off Broadway. The Fantastiks ran for so long that they really got tired of the repetition, and some bright editor came up with the idea of sequentially running lines from one of James Joyce's books (possibly Portrait Of The Artist...?) each week. Had the play run long enough you could have read the whole book there. Maybe I should just pull a book from the shelves at random, and use the first line as the title of the post. There could be a prize for the person who guesses the book.

Ok - today's title should have been:
It was love at first sight.

***************

One of the things that keeps me away from LJ is that I am really lousy at answering comments. I like getting them, but I am less than diligent about answering them. So rather than demonstrate that I am lazy and have bad manners, I just sort of stay away. I'm going to try not to stay away, but if I don't answer a comment please understand it has nothing to do with you. I'm simply lazy and ill-mannered, just like my mother always said.

**************

So, in my last post I was bragging about my health, and that I would probably live to be 95.
The very next morning, as I was leaving for work, I managed to totally miss the bottom step on the porch (in the dark) and fall down. This is not a good way to live forever. No real damage - a skinned knee and a sore neck. But as I was laying in the wet grass, bring rained on, and feeling like a minor idiot, my work cell phone, which was in my pocket, rang.. Insult to injury.
From now on, until it's light again in the mornings, I think I'll leave out the back door, where there is at least a porch light.

*************

Finally, they know me far too well at work. When I came in the other morning this was in my work email, with a note saying "Knew you would enjoy this."

Frank was a happily married man who had only one complaint. His wife, Myra, was always taking in and nursing sick birds. One cold November evening he came home to find a raven with a splinted leg sitting in his favorite chair. On the dining room table was a feverish hawk pecking at an aspirin. In the kitchen, Myra was comforting a shivering wren.

Frank put down his briefcase, and strode over to where his wife was toweling down the cold little bird.

"Myra," he said, "I can't take it anymore! You've got to get rid of these da..."

Myra held up her hand and cut him off in mid-sentence.
"Please dear," she said. "Not in front of the chilled wren."

**************

G'night Gracie.

...I just might live forever.

This should be the last health related post I have to do for a while.

Last month I had my follow up with Eric the Neurologist. Except for my strange, slow moving, hereditary form of MD, I am totally normal. No, he doesn't have any idea why my sense of taste and smell has changed, but he had a CT Scan done on my brain to rule out a tumor. We have ruled it out. Come back in six months.

Monday I had my follow up with Al the Otolaryngologist who did my surgery. (This will probably mean nothing to anyone not from these parts, but I passed the time in the waiting room chatting with Chip Hanauer.)
He made fun of how chubby I've become. Come back in six months.

Yesterday I had my regular annual physical with Randy the Internist. We did blood tests, including a complete metabolic panel and a PSA. I won't bore you with the results, except for these. Total cholesterol: 150 (anything under 200 is considered good.). Triglyceride 88 (target is <130).
HDL 40 (target >40). LDL 92 (target <130). Come back in a few months.

I did that on-line longevity calculator. It says I should live to be 95. And be a cranky pants as I get older. (Well, it didn't say that. I think maybe Lisa did.)

So I'm free to resume doing anything I want to do. Just so long as I keep one eye out for falling space debris. Now I just have to figure out how to fill my time without a dozen doctors who want me to come out and play. Guess I have no excuse not to be writing.

Passing It On
Yesterday, on my way home from work, the bus was really crowded. Standing Room Only. And, of course, the people who had seats engaged in long and detailed examinations of the floor and of their own footwear when someone who had to stand was in front of them. I had a seat.
I looked up to find a youngish man (late 20s?) standing in front of me, and he was carrying his daughter (age 3, maybe).
I am not terribly noble, nor am I patting myself on the back. It's just the way I was raised, and it was a no-brainer. I got up, pointed to the seat, and said to the youngish father - "Sit." He was very grateful, and I was awarded a big smile by the little girl. Reward enough. But...then the man who had been sitting next to me got up and gave his seat to an older woman. And out of the corner of my eye I saw this being repeated further back in the bus. No, not everyone did it, but even the scary biker-looking guy stopped sprawling over two seats and made room in the seat next to him.
It doesn't take much. People are really pretty kind, and are willing to pass it on.
But that has nothing to do with the title of this post.

Inside The Bok Choy Factory
I fell asleep early last night. When I woke up at 11-something Lisa was watching TV. I squinted at it (I do not see at all well when I wake up.)
**note**All dialog is actual. You can't make this stuff up, and besides, there's a writers strike going on.**

He: Who's that?
She: Mike Farrell.
He: Oh, from MASH. He doesn't look good, I don't think.
She: Well, he'll be dead soon...she's going to kill him.
He: That's not nice

Some time later

He: Why is Mike Farrell speaking Mandarin?
She: It's a different movie.
He: Listens for a while.
He: Oh, you're watching "Inside The Bok Choy Factory!" Wow, what channel is it on?
She: Silently stares at the back of my head. (I can feel it.)
He: It's a very dark film, flled with existential irony.
She: No it isn't, it's a comedy.
He: I think you're missing the point of the film. Is this the version with Afrikaans subtitles?
She: No, English. Besides, Bok Choy is a kind of cabbage. There's no such thing as a Bok Choy Factory.
He: Yes, they would like you to believe that.
She: Besides, you're just telling me this because you understand Mandarin and I don't.
He: I don't understand Mandarin, I understand Cantonese.
She: Then how do you know what they're saying?
He: I've seen it in Cantonese.
She: It is NOT called "Inside The Bok Choy Factory," and it's a comedy.
He: Is too far into sleep again to answer.

Some time later still

He:Why are they speaking French?
She:Because the film is in French.
He: Begins to answer, and then considers the damage that could be inflicted in ones sleep, and opts for silence.

I can be difficult to live with, but I do have one or two redeeming qualities.

It's sneaky of me to wait three days for my New Year post, so it doesn't gett lost in the shuffle of every other New Year post.

Since most of you who read this also read anoisblue's journal, most of you already know that Lisa and I were married on New Years Eve Day, at sunrise. I could be wrong about this, but I do believe that I am the only guy from Flatbush to ever get married on New Year's Eve day while standing on a point overlooking Puget Sound, and wearing bunny ears. And, as Lisa has already pointed out, we were married retroactively, so in addition to our marriage we just celebrated our 10th retroversary. (We've been together 11 years, but if we were married retroactively to then, at least one of us would be liable to arrest for bigamy.)

The date was preordained. On September 29th (as monkeyagent recently reminded me) I got a fortune cookie telling me that good things were in store exactly three months from that date. New Year's Eve was the first business day after three months.

In other news of the year:
I do not make New Year's resolutions. This year I'm breaking with precedent and making two.
The first is to be more of a presence here at LJ, rather than a sporadic visitor.
The second is to try not the have any near death or life threatening experiences in the coming year. I survived the year that's away. I would like better than that for this year.

So, hello again old friends. It's good to see you.

I'm making cornbread.
It's in the oven, and it smells good. Still, I'm concerned. It's been a couple or three years since I made it, and I can't find my recipe, so I've kind of improvised. The batter tastes good, but not the way I remember it tasting. I guess I'll know in about a half hour how it came out. I love knoshing on cornbread. How's that for an ethnically diverse sentence? I need to write a song called Knoshing On Cornbread. Maybe to the tune of Walking On Sunshine.

******************

Speaking of knoshing, since I was given the green light to resume eating two months ago, it seems that's all I do. I've gained thirty pounds in the two months, and I feel pudgy. I've weighed more than this at times. I'm right in the proper BMI range. I'm just not used to carrying this much weight. I've been telling myself that I should lose seven or eight pounds, but the very idea of "dieting" after what I went through seems somehow obscene. I suppose I could always revert to my old fail safe method for weight loss - smoking. (No, I won't. 19 and a half weeks so far.)

****************

We all get ear worms. I wake up with them at least half the time, though I don't remember what the dream was, if any, that precipitated the song. Over the last week, these are some of the songs that were stuck in my head when I woke up:
Afternoon Delight - Starland Vocal Band
It's Raining Men - The Weather Girls
Tell Him - The Exciters
Teen Angel - Mark Dinning

I'm not sure what this says about me. Maybe that during surgery they replaced me with a pod person. I don't even like two of those songs. You figure out which ones.

*************

But for the past two days I woke up to an earworm that I actually like, though it might be obscure. I don't know that it ever got airplay outside of New York metro. The song is Native New Yorker by Odyssey. I don't know why, but this song has always been an angst producer for me. It's a caught-up-short visceral feeling. No, it isn't that good a song. Actually, it's not a good song at all. It just hits me that way. Go figure.
Native New Yorker (Long Edit)
"You should know the score by now, you're a Native New Yorker."

While I was looking for Native New Yorker, I came across a really good hip-hop video from 2001, which uses Native New Yorker as an undersong. It's by Stripes and Fantastic.
Damned if it doesn't make me feel better!
You can see it here on You Tube, though there's a version here where the photography's cleaner, if you don't mind navigating to it.
I love new discoveries. New for me, anyway.

************

Cornbread's done.

Lisa just sent me an email. It says:

"Today I was thinking about you and I told myself to tell you as soon as we were together again this:

I trust you with my life.
I do."


I am awed, and humbled, and truly, not worthy.

I gave blood on Monday.
I had never done it before. In fact, I always was just a little bit creeped out by the idea. I don't know why, in retrospect. It was fast. It was easy. It was painless. In fact, after what this year has brought, it was almost not even worth noting. More like an afterthought. So, I'm thinking of becoming a matched platelet donor. I need to give it some more thought, because it's a serious commitment of time, and in some ways, of emotion. I don't make commitments lightly, or easily. Still, it seems like a small enough bargain with the gods, and a chance to do just a little bit of paying back. And a chance to do some people a whole lot of good, as well.

**************

I don't know if there's an antonym for hypochondriac, but if there is, I suspect that the word is Ken. The dictionary definition is most likely: "No, really, I'm fine."
Until today, that is.
I got home from work today and I could only hear out of one ear.
Did I think: "Gee, I must have gotten some water in my ear?" or "I must be coming down with a cold."
No, I did not.
I thought "I wonder if it's a drug resistant staph infection." And then when rational me decided that this was pretty far fetched, I went to the logical conclusion: "I wonder if it's a brain tumor?"
P.S. - The hearing in that ear is now fine. Must have just been a passing Ebola virus.

**************

The forecast for tomorrow is a windstorm. I love wind, above all weather, but Seattle doesn't do wind well. Last December we had a windstorm and half of the metropolitan area was without power for days, and in some places for two weeks. Let's hope that tomorrow is just a false alarm.

When I lived in Colorado Springs, at the base of Pikes Peak, a 60 mph wind was almost the norm. The wind would come whipping down from the mountains, and about the only thing you did to deal with it was to talk a little louder, and maybe lean into the wind when you walked. But all of the power lines were underground there.

Also, when I lived in Colorado Springs, I could just go down to the Mountain Chalet anytime my favorite tshirt wore out, and pick up another one. It was designed by my next door neighbor Dan, who has since become a photographer of some note.
But since I don't live in Colorado Springs and my current tshirt has seen better days, I ordered a new one on line. This is what it looks like:

It's my weekend. Last night I slept for eleven hours. Back in June, when I went into the hospital, I stopped sleeping for more than an hour or two at a time. I don't know what caused it, it just was. And it continued all through the summer and the fall. I guess whatever it was has gone away.

****************

This is my favorite time of the year. It always has been. Today, even Seattle smelled like autumn. Lisa and I were up by Greenlake early this morning, and it was a perfect Seattle morning. The sky alternated between silvergray and blue, and the air held out a promise of football and burning leaves and rain.

This is the time of year that I also miss New England. Early October in New England is very close to heaven. I don't miss what comes before (black flies) or after (near arctic conditions) or what comes after that (mud season), which is why I no longer live in New England. But I would love to be able to just fly off to Maine every October. I don't know how to explain it, but autumn is as much about the way it smells, to me, as the way it looks.

I've also been fiercely missing Colorado and the mountains. At 9000 feet, my head clears. Every now and then I tell Lisa that we should move there, and she says okay (she would go anywhere I said I wanted to, even Cleveland. Have I mentioned how lucky I am)...but we would have to get jobs there ahead of time, and that just isn't easy. It may not even be possible. I'm not in the preferred age demographic for recruiters at the moment. So we'll stay here. Which is really what I want to anyway, after all of my scheming and dreaming. I love it here. Autumn just makes me restless. I wonder what's over that hill, down that road.

And I wonder what I should be when I grow up.

It's all lolliejean's fault.
I was sitting down at the keyboard, preparing to write one of my typically erudite and serious entries, complete with rhetorical two and a half gainers and amazing logical feats, followed by equally amazing feets of tap dancing (pretty fly for a caucasian male of Jewish ancestry)
"But first," I said to myself, "first let us peruse the reading list."
And there, on lolliejean's page, I was attacked by a dreaded ear worm. An ear worm I won't even relate to you, lest it attack you as well.

Everyone knows that the only cure for an earworm (an aside - yes, clever reader, you have noticed that sometimes I make earworm one word, and sometimes I make ear worm two words. Why do you suppose that is? Go ask your father) is to replace it with another earworm. And so off I went, back into the 70s. God help me, this is what is now stuck in my head.

And you lied and I cried I was mystified
When I was 16 yes it's true
But there's one thing that I'm sure of
I'll never be as old as you

A prize to all those who know what it is, without googling. If you google, I'll know. (if you're under a certain age, and/or not from Long Island, you probably cheated.)

Now I think the only cure for this earworm is for me to put on Exile On Main Street and blast it at top volume for an hour or three. Actually, that's a good thing to do most anytime.

Oh, and yeah - I'll never be as old as you.

December 29
I have to remember that date, so if I forget, will one of you please remind me? Why? This was the fortune the fortune cookie of yesterday:
Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you.
I have never had a fortune quite like that. I can't wait for December 29th.

****************************

I've still had some discomfort from the surgery, so last night I took oxycodone. And last night I didn't sleep much.
This morning I had a Duh! moment, as I realized that I haven't slept much any night I've taken oxycodone. I'm one of those people who has reverse reactions to some drugs, specifically, any drug which makes most people drowsy is likely to keep me awake. Not just awake. Some drugs should come with a warning label that says:
"Caution: May cause drowsiness, except for you, Ken. This drug may cause you to hop around the house on one foot while chanting ancient Hungarian sonnets.

****************

Five days a week I am on call starting at 3:00 AM. Most days this is a moot point, as I have to be up and working at 3, but there are a few mornings when I can tell the night before that there's a good chance for some extra sleep. On those mornings I set my alarm for later (even though the phone is on my night table) and I am noted for sometimes being, ummmmmm, less than polite a rude jerk to people who call and wake me.

Today I had the alarm set for 5:30. That's seemingly a whole extra night of sleep (especially since I had a hard time getting to sleep.)
The phone rang at 4:10. Afterward, Lisa told me that she had never heard me be so polite, so sweet, to someone who called and woke me.

In this city, if an immediate member of the Gates family (yes, that Gates family) calls, and if you are doing business with them, it is prudent to be polite and cooperative, no matter what time of day, and no matter what they want. Just sayin'.

I'm off tomorrow. I'll make up the sleep then.

Today:
Low silver skies and red flannel shirts,
Giving way tonight to light weight jackets,
Blue neon signs and tenor saxophones
Reflected in slick pavement.
Tomorrow:
Showers early, followed by fluffy yellow towels.
Afternoon will bring hooded sweatshirts, wet slate roof tiles,
The thrump of windshield wipers.
Wind from the southwest with wood smoke,
Orange leaves lining the road,
A hint of cinnamon and distant oceans.
Melancholia probability - forty percent.

I want to save this and remember it. It's from Errol Morris, writing in today's New York Times:

"As I’ve said elsewhere: Nothing is so obvious that it’s obvious. When someone says that something is obvious, it seems almost certain that it is anything but obvious – even to them. The use of the word “obvious” indicates the absence of a logical argument – an attempt to convince the reader by asserting the truth of something by saying it a little louder."

This morning when I walked Lisa out to the car we agreed that it is an absolutely lovely September morning in the Pacific Northwest. Gray skies and light showers. We also agreed that it is far from perfect - the showers are too light, and there was a touch too much brightness and not enough silver to the gray sky. Good reading weather, but not perfect. My parting words to her were: "Here in the Pacific Northwest we have one hundred thirty seven words for gray, and only four for sunshine."

*******************

Yesterday was my final surgery. I reported to the surgery pavilion (doesn't that sound like something you would find at a county fair?) at 08:00, and was home a few hours later. They had promised that this one would hurt. They delivered on that promise. Oxycodone and sleep have helped some. If I wanted to push it I could probably go back to work on Thursday. I have no desire to push it.

I will have to see how the scar actually forms, but it looks an awful lot like a small caliber entry wound, just below my rib cage and a little bit to the left (my left.) Between that and the scar on my neck, I may cause fair young maidens to swoon on the beach. One can hope, anyway. And oh, the stories I can tell.

And so, it's over. Four months ago I was very close to death. Now, I'm not. That's a simple sentence and a complex journey.
I've spent a lot of time over the past four months talking about all of this, and I think I'll let it go, for now. I know I will have a lot more to say, to think, to ponder about all of this. But for now I need to let it simmer on low heat, until I see what develops. It was a life changing experience, I think. What remains to be seen is what the changes are.

*************

After fifteen and a half weeks of not smoking, part of my brain is trying to convince me that I could have one cigarette, or two or three and it would be fine. No, really, not a problem.
I know it's a lie. Just one, and I'll be back to two packs a day by the weekend.
Get thee behind me Satan! You too, Marlboro.

It's typical of the Pacific Northwest. As we slept, Autumn arrived. When I got up this morning there was a definite chill in the air, and the heat needed to be turned up to sweep the dark silver blue out of the corners before I could venture into the shower. From here until April we can count of more than our share of light gray days, punctuated by sun breaks.

Lisa and I will need to move again, sooner rather than later. We need two or three more bookcases, and we have no place to put them. It's time for a bigger place. If it were practical we would just light out for the provinces, whereever they may be, and open a cafe-cum-library in some small town. Alas, it's not practical, and I tend to be about practicality. Except when it come to books.

Even though we don't have room for all of our books, I want to buy more. I'm not into things. I don't care about the latest electronic devices, or fancy cars, or, well, almost anything. But I want more books. Maybe it's a throwback to when I was a kid. We were the only family of all of my friends who had a room that was just a library. Or maybe it's the comfort of all of the hours I spent in the library. Whatever it is, I love being surrounded by books, especially ones that I own. I hate giving them away, and I'm not even all that comfortable loaning them out.
People have asked if we've read all of the books we have. Of course not. You always need things to look forward to, surprises to find on a lower shelf, new adventures waiting to be opened.
One of my college roommates had a book he really wanted to read. He wanted to read it so much that he kept it for five years before he actually read it. He loved the anticipation, the untapped promise of the book. I understand that, completely.
All Lisa and I really need is a cozy room full of books and comfy chairs, and the sound of rain falling against the windows. It's a simple life, but it suits us.

Welcome Autumn.

My voice mails and emails and coordination have paid off. The best patient advocate is yourownself.

I just got off the phone with the gastroenterologist's assistant (which would be a great name for a play, I think.)

My next, and final, surgery will be next Monday at 8:30 AM. I'll be going home that same morning, and will experience some discomfort.

It's time to wake up from the long nightmare.

Hey Lisa - we can have our lives back now!
I love you.

I told Lisa today that I should be careful when I eat. It would be the ultimate irony if I were to choke to death on food.
Lisa was not amused.
Not even a little.

*****************

Thursday was a hospital day, for a follow up visit with my surgeon. I knew it was going to be a good day when the nurse who came out to escort me and take my weight and blood pressure kept raving about how good I looked. Then Dr, Merati came in, smiled, and said "Hi Chubby." And my favorite resident, who wasn't even supposed to be there that day, came in, took a look at me, and gave me a hug. I felt like the star pupil. All I needed was a gold star on my chart.
They don't want to see me again for four months. This is good, of course, but it also leaves a strange emptiness. My life has been inextricably interwoven with theirs for months now, and there is a tinge of autumnal sadness to the parting as well. You know, you never really do stay in touch with the kids from summer camp.

I do have the doctors whipped into line. The same afternoon I got an email from Eric telling me he had contacted gastroenterology, and cleared me for my last small bit of surgery. So now I just have to wait (again) for the phone call from the scheduler.

***************

I also talked with them, a little bit, about some of the thoughts I brought up in my post about Wrestling With Meaning. Mostly, I wanted to set the groundwork to email them for their thoughts on the subject, either for the record or off the record. I'm in the process of turning that small post into a magazine length piece. If I get off my (now somewhat larger) butt and get to work on it, that is.

*********************

It has been a very long time since I lived in New England. But in late September and early October I still have brief twinges (boxer twinges, perhaps?) of missing it. It isn't so much the leaves turning, though that's a part of it. Nor is it the chill in the air which is merely the younger cousin of the cold beast lumbering abound the curve in the road. I miss huddling against the darkening sky at duck as I walk home, while Tom Rush sings "Urge For Going" somewhere just behind my left ear.

Today was a good early fall day here in the PNW though. Silver gray skies and roads, light rain, and just cool enough to throw a shirt on over your t-shirt. (Today's tshirt: Colorado Avalanche Stanley Cup Champions 2001.)

Coming into the warming house from the metallic greens outside I was struck by one thought: I want a cigarette.
I keep discovering smoking triggers, and this was another. At least discovering them helps to defeat them, though I was hoping it would be easier by now.
It's been fourteen weeks and some change.
They say virtue is its own reward. I don't know who they are, but screw them. They're wrong. I want a real reward. How about drugs?

*************

I almost forgot. On Thursday - Juli (the speech therapist) told me that I'm free to eat anything I want to. She said: "I know you have been anyway, but now you have my permission."
I think they're all just a little bit afraid of me.

Everyone who's posted it seems to think it's pretty accurate. So here's what it came up with for me.

1. Director of Photography
2. Historian
3. Whore
4. Animator
5. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
6. Criminologist
7. Cartographer
8. Curator
9. Set Designer
10. Assassin
11. Writer
12. Glutton
13. Critic
14. Elephant Poop Shoveler
15. Public Policy Analyst
16. Artist
17. Archivist
18. Musician
19. Drug Addict
20. Composer

My older sister called me this morning.
"Guess where M.(her husband) is?" She said.
When I gave up, she said "Abu Dhabi."
"Why not?" I said, "All the really cool kids are spending Rosh Hashanah in Abu Dhabi."
M is an architect. His was one of a number of firms which submitted plans for a new (cell phone break up - I didn't catch new what) and last Wednesday three of them were called and invited to make presentations in person.
"Do they know he's Jewish?" I asked.
"Yes," said my sister, "That's not a problem in the Emirates. He checked that out right away."
So my brother-in-law is spending Rosh Hashanah in Abu Dhabi. Can Yom Kippur in Yemen be far behind?
Well - yeah, very far behind.

************************

Speaking of my older sister: her daughter (my niece) just had a baby, her second. They named her Grey (yes, that spelling.)
Previously, I had convinced Lisa that they had used Skye as the middle name, but I made that up. So I asked my sister what the middle name really was. She said that they had wanted to use Brie, but someone had finally convinced them that Grey Brie sounded like moldy cheese. (I don't know where they get their ideas. These are not people from exotic places, unless you consider Philadelphia and Detroit to be exotic. And they're both doctors. Which could explain it.)
I told my sister that she might want to suggest Poupon for a middle name, but she allowed as she didn't think she would do that. The way it is being left now, the baby won't have a middle name, just an initial. "B."
Eventually, I'm sure she will get over hating her parents.

**********************

In a response earlier in the day to a post by the lovely and effervescent lolliejean I took a guess as to how many doctors email addresses I have in my address book. But I was wrong. I've now checked.
I have 55 email addresses in my address book.
Not counting those who are related to me, and not counting a writer I communicate with who also happens to be a doctor, of the 55 addresses:
13 are the email addresses of doctors!!!
It's about time for this phase of my life to end, I think.
Though it could be worse. I could have 13 attorneys.

David Petraeus and Britney Spears

I feel bad for Petraeus. Not sorry for him, bad for him. There's a difference.
I'm not sorry for him, any more than I would be sorry for a Cardinal who had to make apologies for a bad decision by the Pope. Petraeus is a career soldier, and he knew the rules of the game when he signed up.
Still, here is a man who by all accounts is a decent human being, and a brilliant one at that. (Keep in mind that he had a PhD in International Relations from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School.) In addition, he seems to have surrounded himself with some very bright people who are not necessarily married to traditional military thought. But he is in a lose-lose situation, and will be the latest fall guy for an administration which is very good at deflecting blame. The failure will be his.
(I'm not interested in debating this. It's just my observation.)

*************

There is a lot that can be said about Britney.
She is immature for a fifteen year old. She is out there where the buses don't run. She has squandered whatever talent she had. She is about five ants shy of a picnic. All true.
But...she is not fat.
She looks damned good, especially for someone with two young kids.
Anyone who buys into her being fat has bought into an image of what women are supposed to look like that is not only wrong, but is pathological.

************

And now for some good news:
My efforts to coordinate all of the medical specialties involved in my treatment seems to have paid off. After my follow-up appointment with my OTO surgeon on Thursday, all I have to do is email Eric the head of Neurology, and he will schedule my final surgery with gastroenterology. I'm figuring that should take place within two weeks (it's basically out-patient surgery), and then Lisa and I can have our lives back.
This time there really is light at the end of the tunnel, and I can see mountaintops, sun, and rainbows.

What do you do with your change?
We have a beautiful ceramic bowl in the bedroom, the origin of which escapes me (Lisa, where did we get it?).
Every night I take the change out of my pants pockets, and put it in the bowl.
When the bowl is full, or nearly full, I take the change to a coin machine.
The money then goes to one or another charity or cause that we believe in.
Today there was $75.00
It's not much, but it's just enough to make a little bit of a difference. If everyone did it, it would make a bigger difference.

What is your change doing?