Thursday

Sept. 27, 2001

count down

When I wake up, I don't feel too bad but I'm fuzzy from medicine and want to stay in bed. I don't though. I go in to the office, though and hammer down a few corners. I talk to one of the guys in UK and assure him that I'm ready to talk to his customers. But, he knew that. We know each other well. I tell him where we are staying Sunday night and he offers that the pub there has a fine selection of single malts. Like I said, he knows me.

I discuss some other tough issues with my buddies. I want to have all the answers but I most assuredly don't. Such is life in the fast lane. Why do I feel so overrun nowadays like one of those little old ladies doing 45 on the highway while people willing to push the speed limit by 10mph or more whiz around her?

I go home for a leftover lunch of salmon and vegies and get ready to go to the dentist. I'm prepared for it to be a long visit, maybe painful. I wish this were the end of the work, but I'm having more when I return. But this should be my mammoth dental work for this quarter of a century (I last did mammoth stuff in 1976, I think).

The dentist is pleasant and more pleased with his work than I actually am. It looks OK but feels weird.

My sore throat has abated and my head is only slightly stuffy...I guess my body is yielding to the drugs. I rarely take stuff, saving the effects for when really, really needed.

I talk to my mother. She's been telling me she was having a biopsy but her test sounds more like a cat scan. She isn't concerned about it, in any case, and doesn't have results yet. She is upset over a skin cancer just above her hairline. It may leave a cosmetic unpleasing place if cut out. The dermatologist is going to talk to her again on the 11th about it. It isn't going to be life-threatening, though. I worry more about her respitory problems. I did have a victory, though. A doctor in Mequite gave her an anit-depressant. Her doctors here just kept it up, but I convinced them to stop it especially considering she was getting skin rashes (apart from the surface cancers), a common side effect. It isn't a great time to have to leave her, but she does have my dad.

The night before flying. It's hard to know what to do. Should you go out? Drink? Repack your bag. Worry about your work?

FFP and I have a quiet dinner, reading books and exchanging passages. ("Just read this last paragraph.") At 34th Street. A bottle of wine. Gazpacho. I have some scallops on a salad. He has some fish.

At home I get a great foot rub. Read a little. Watch a little TV. Stuff I'll miss. My dog insists on sitting on my lap and giving me kisses. It's as if she knows I'll be gone for a while. Of course, FFP probably told her.

Bye now. You'll hold tight until I can post again.

We have temporarily lost the video portion of this program.

"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace..."

John Lennon, "Imagine"

Meta:
We'll just be keeping Lennon's radical lyrics here indefinitely. I'm leaving FFP, dog, and hearth and home tomorrow and I'm still reeling from allergies or whatever and I have to go to the dentist this afternoon to seat multiple crowns. So...who knows what updates from here?

JUST TYPING
Bye.
Be back soon.