Category: Personal

Day-to-day life and other ramblings

Everything Takes a Little Longer

While I’ve been staying at my Mom’s house, I feel like I’ve been perpetually late. Everything takes longer than I expect, or at least it did for the first week. This was partly because I didn’t know where things are kept around the house (which I haven’t lived in for over 20 years, and didn’t have anyone here to ask), and partly because there’s been a lot of cleaning and organizing to do.

Here’s the best story of things taking too long:

So I decide to do some laundry. Turns out I’d do lots of laundry during my stay, but this was the first time. Dirty laundry sits in a basket in the second floor hall, while the washer and dryer are in the (unfinished) basement. So:

  1. I go upstairs, get the laundry basket, and come downstairs.
  2. I open the door to the basement, and – oh, ick! There are cobwebs at the top of the stairs! And, it turns out, all along the path to the laundry! Most of them are a little higher than my Mom is tall, but I’m taller than she is. So I put down the basket, grab some paper towels, and spend 15 minutes clearing away cobwebs. And then wash my hands.
  3. So I take the laundry downstairs. At this point I had the impression (which turned out to be wrong) that due to her bad knee Mom hadn’t used the laundry for a while, so I decide to run the washer empty for one cycle to clean it out.
  4. Once that’s done, I separate out the colors from the basket and run them through the washer. I don’t have enough whites to do yet, so I take the basket back upstairs.
  5. When that finishes, I put the colors in the dryer, but I can’t get it to start. Once upon a time there was only one power outlet in the laundry room, and you had to switch plugs to use each one. Now there’s a power strip, and everything seems to be working. Eventually I figure out that I hadn’t closed the door all the way, and I start the dryer.
  6. When the dryer’s done, I go to get them, and realize that I don’t have a basket to bring them up in. I don’t think Mom separates whites and colors. So I go upstairs and hunt around for a while to find another basket. Eventually I find one, so I bring them upstairs.
  7. I fold the laundry, and bring it and the now-empty basket upstairs and put them away.

That was the silliest one – especially because of the “ick” factor of cleaning out the cobwebs – but there have been plenty more:

Sorting through sheets to find a set for my bed. This motivated me to get the linen closet cleaned up and organized.

Taking out the trash, then looking all over the place to figure out where the garbage bags live.

Cleaning out the toilets, which both really needed it.

Looking for paper towels, which live in an unexpected place.

Going through the kitchen to see what ingredients were on hand to bake cookies (which I took down when visiting Debbi’s family on Wednesday), and what utensils were available. (I ended up buying a new cookie sheet and a container to hold them.)

Looking for canvas bags to bring stuff down to visit Debbi’s family. Turns out they’re at the top of the stairs to the basement, but this was the day before I had my laundry adventure above.

Turning on the TV and being confronted with a screen that said, “Press MENU to watch Verizon FiOS, or turn off your television.” Pressing MENU did nothing, and I couldn’t figure it out. Eventually I unplugged both the TV and the cable box, and rebooted them, and then it worked fine.

By this past weekend I’d gotten into the routine of pretty much everything I do regularly, but it took several days. And I never did get to the point that I’m eating many meals at home (which means figuring out where to eat out when not meeting up with someone for dinner). So that takes time, too.

It’s been an interesting time. This must be what it’s like for people who house-sit for other people regularly, a week of getting oriented to each new house.

That’s Entertainment

So most of my trip east has involved visiting Mom, taking care of Mom’s house (including doing a lot of cleaning and organizing), and working. But outside of that, I’ve been trying to keep myself entertained – mainly because otherwise I’d just be sitting in this big house by myself.

I eventually figured out that the NPR station to listen to here is WGBH, but once they finish the morning newscast I don’t find the rest of the programming that interesting. Plus, I’m spending a fair bit of time in the car, so I wanted to find a music station to listen to. Unfortunately, it seems like almost all of the music radio in Boston sucks: Faceless pop music, and endless classic rock stations playing stuff I’d listened to hundreds of times before. Very oddly, one station has a program hosted by Alice Cooper, who I’d always associated with hard rock bordering on metal, but after an hour of listening to his show I don’t think I’d heard a song harder than Boston (the epitome of AOR).

What I really wanted was a station playing current rock music, which I’m out of touch with. I eventually settled on WBOS (a.k.a. “Radio Ninety-Two Nine“), which isn’t quite what I wanted, but does play some current releases. Unfortunately they seem pretty stuck in 90s rock, with the usual assortment of bands with singers with lousy voices (R.E.M., Green Day), or who wouldn’t know a melody if it bit them on the ass (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam). Still, it’s the best I’ve found. I even heard a song that I liked enough to download from iTunes! (“Some Nights” by Fun. I’m a sucker for vocal harmonies. Alas the rest of the album isn’t more of the same, so I grabbed only the one track.)

A big part of my distracting myself has been visiting Debbi’s family: Her sisters, her brother-in-law, and their kids (and two dogs!). They have a house on the beach on the south shore, and I drove down each of the last two Sundays and on Independence Day. I got to swim in the ocean, and we all had dinner together. I contributed some food, too, since I didn’t want to just mooch off of them. It was a lot of fun.

I’ve also had dinner with Dad a few times. And Saturday we drove for my annual pilgrimage to one of the larger comics shops in the area, Web Head Enterprises in Wakefield, where I found a bunch of stuff. There was a huge accident on the freeway on the way back, so we took the longer route through Waltham where we went to The Outer Limits, where I found some more stuff.

Thursday night I got together with my friend Bruce for dinner in the North End, and this week I hope to have dinner with my friend Charley as well. It beats sitting around the house (after I’m tired of cleaning).

What’s fallen by the wayside compared to an actual vacation has been reading: I read most of a book on the flight out (mostly waiting to board due to the 2-1/2 hour delay), but only about 60 pages since. Ah well!

And the Red Sox certainly haven’t been entertaining me, as they’re having a pretty weak year.

But watching them beats silence when the sun goes down and I’m all alone in the house. All-Star Game tomorrow!

Away-From-Home Care

This summer has not been turning out as originally planned. The reason is that my mom had knee replacement surgery a little over week ago, so last Saturday I flew out to stay at her place and do anything she needed me to do while she’s recovering.

I spent last week setting up my laptop to be able to work remotely. Not only did I not want to take a bunch of vacation time, but I anticipated that there would be long stretches where I wouldn’t be very busy and I’d want to work to keep me occupied. In the end, it didn’t exactly work out as planned, but it’s worked out okay.

I took the Friday night red-eye from San Francisco to Boston. My flight left over 2 hours late – it’s always fun to not take off until after midnight! – and Boston was at the end of a heat wave when I arrived, so I nearly melted when I got off the plane. I took the subway out to my dad’s place and we had lunch. Then we dropped my bags off at my mom’s house and went to see her at the hospital.

Well, more accurately we picked her up from the hospital and took her to a rehab facility, where she’s been since. I’d wondered if a rehab facility had been in the cards, but didn’t find out until Friday. Getting her there was a bit tricky – I guess most people get transported there in an ambulance, so having us show up in a car was unusual. But she got to her room and got safely settled in. I then came home and picked her up a bunch of clothes and a bunch of books and brought them over to her.

Mom’s surgery – which occurred before I arrived – went very well, from everything I’ve been told, and as the week’s gone on she’s gotten brighter and more cheerful. I think she was really hurting before the surgery, and though she’s still working on walking, I think she feels a lot better afterwards. I’ve been going over to visit her every day, and I’ve been doing her laundry (the center doesn’t have good laundry service), as well as doing things like bringing her mail, and taking care of her cat (Maggie, who I think really misses her). What’s going to happen going forward is still uncertain – it basically depends on how quickly her rehab progresses. Although I met her physical therapist today and she says it’s going quite well.

My routine otherwise has involved getting Dunkin Donuts for breakfast (their coffee is as good as ever, but their donuts kind of suck now; I’ve switched to muffins instead), working in the morning, getting lunch, working some more, then visiting mom, and then working until quitting time. Being 3 hours ahead of my cow-orkers is really strange. Working remotely is, well, not what I prefer. My internet connection is okay, but not great, and working on a laptop is a pain in the ass with the smaller screen and less powerful processor. But I’m getting some stuff done.

Staying at mom’s house by myself is kind of weird. It’s a big old house in the suburbs, so at night it’s dark and quiet, and all I have is Maggie to keep me company. (To be fair, Maggie has been fairly affectionate, and mews at me when she feels it’s time for me to go to bed.)

When not working or visiting mom, I’ve been keeping myself occupied. I’ve been doing a bunch of cleaning around the house, as I think mom was having trouble keeping up with it because of the pain in her knee prior to her surgery. And for a few days everything I tried to do took three times as long because of various factors (cleaning out cobwebs in the basement to get to the laundry, figuring out where the garbage bags are, etc). So I feel like I’m constantly running late. But it’s getting better.

Debbi and I both miss each other a lot – this will be the longest we’ve been separated since we started dating! It’s also thrown a wrench into our summer plans (which included starting to look at getting kittens this month). But, y’gotta do what y’gotta do, and I do feel like I’m doing some good here. It’s not as critical as I’d expected when I first made plans, but it’s still useful, and mom appreciates having me visit and take care of things at home, I think.

More details in the coming days.

Assembling

Quite a busy Memorial Day weekend we had.

OSH was having their we-pay-the-sales-tax weekend, so we went over and bought a bunch of stuff. The big items were a patio furniture set (replacing our nearing-the-end chairs that came from the townhouse), and a small shed. That meant I spent a bunch of the day putting stuff together, but it’s all done now. We also picked up an umbrella for the patio, so now it’s looking pretty spiffy. Plus we bought some cheap solar lights to accent the back yard.

We tried putting together a couple of events this weekend, a poker game on Friday night, and a barbecue today, but didn’t get enough responses in time for either one. On the other hand, we did host dinner with four of our neighbors on Saturday, which was a lot of fun. Though we ended up with way too much food as usual during these parties.

Besides that, Friday night we went out to Indian food for dinner, had brunch in Campbell and did some shopping there. Plus we’ve watched the two Iron Man films which we hadn’t seen before. Good stuff – I’ll probably write more about them this week.

I’m pretty tired now, and I still have some work to do up in the study, but it’s a good tired. We got a lot done this weekend, and had fun, too.

Newton & Blackjack Update

Since I know people are interested, here’s the latest news on Newton and Blackjack:

Newton went in for a blood test yesterday, a month after his last one. I got the call from the vet this afternoon and she says all his blood work is basically the same as last month, which is good! His indicators are all in the normal range or very close to it. She wants him to continue on his current regimen of drugs and subcutaneous fluids (which is a bit of a bummer since I’d hoped we could cut back on a few of them) and we’ll re-check him in 3 months if he remains stable.

He’s also gained 0.4 lbs since last time, which means he’s up at least a pound since he had his hospital stay (to about 6.5 lbs). He’s also generally happy and has some more energy lately. On the downside, he threw up this morning and didn’t want to eat his wet cat food (which he gets to give him one of his drugs in powder form), but I’m hoping it’s just a bit of an upset tummy and nothing serious. (He wolfed down the food last night.)

Blackjack has been diagnosed by his vet as having Horner’s Syndrome, and has shown the first three symptoms on that page (Small pupil size, protrusion of the third eyelid, drooping of the upper eyelid) in his right eye. I’m pretty sure he can still see out of that eye, but I’m not an expert. Right now, the third eyelid is rarely protruding, which makes us feel a little better because it looks really weird. But the eye is half-closed most of the time, and he doesn’t seem able to fully close it, so it waters a lot sometimes (he shakes his head and tears fly around).

I think he’s a little frustrated by it, but he seems to be in pretty good spirits otherwise. He’s back to taking his steroid (prednisolone) every day now, I think to try to suppress whatever’s affecting the nerves to his eye. His body doesn’t seem to have gotten any worse, and he’s been more inquisitive and even more talkative over the last week. So we don’t really know how things will progress, but at least he’s stable and happy for now.

I guess it’s not fair to talk about Newton and Blackjack without mentioning Roulette. She’s been high-energy lately, running around the house and meowing as if she has spring fever or something. She’s delighted to have the windows open and the sun streaming in in the mornings. But I think she misses having someone to play with, since neither Newton nor Blackjack is really capable anymore (though Blackjack is occasionally interested and follows her around at a slower pace).

So we’re starting to think about getting some kittens. Going to five cats in our household seems like a lot – well, we used to have four, so it is a lot – but not knowing how much longer Blackjack and Newton will be around, we wonder whether we should get some playmates (and snooze-mates) for Roulette while she’s still young enough to adjust to them (and, as Debbi says, she kind of deserves it, given the hard sell she put Jefferson and Newton through to get them to accept her). We don’t have any immediate plans, but we’re thinking about it.

Impromptu Weekend

We had a pretty busy weekend lined up this past one, and then it got even busier with some sudden plans (“sudden plans”? Is that a thing?) that came up.

Saturday morning Debbi had an appointment with the hair stylist (on Saturday morning as the result of her schedule getting jumbled up during the previous week), so I spent the morning finishing up some work on the study (okay, mostly I was filing Magic cards, but also paying bills).

When she got back we went to lunch and then to the hardware store.

See, a couple of weeks ago I inadvertently fertilized part of the lawn. (Well, I was planting some new seed, with a mix that included mulch and fertilizer.) I noticed last week that that patch of lawn was growing much better than the rest of the lawn – which has gotten a bit brown despite all the rain – so I determined to fertilize the rest of it. I bought a fertilizing machine from OSH and spent some time on Saturday doing the lawn. I had to run back to OSH for more fertilizer, having probably over-fertilized part of the lawn (but it probably needed it). Whee! Now I’m trying to keep from checking the lawn every morning and night to see if it’s looking greener and lusher. 🙂

We also picked up some new solar lights, and a new hose and a box for it. Home improvement! Well, yard improvement.

(Wait until I buy a shed and see how much I write about that!)

As I was finishing up, I got a call from my friend Syd, who was in town for one night and was inviting some of his friends out for dinner. So on fairly short notice Debbi and I got our act together and joined them. It was good to see him, as I’ve missed him since he left.

This was in lieu of our usual Saturday plans of going to Cafe Borrone. We’ve been down on Borrone lately because the variety, prices and portion sizes of their entrees have all been going in the wrong directions, and they’ve eliminated some of our favorite desserts. So going elsewhere wasn’t unwelcome (we’d planned to have dinner elsewhere anyway). One of the desserts they’ve eliminated was the chocolate rum cake from The Prolific Oven, so after dinner we went to that establishment and got a couple of slices of cake. In theory I guess we could consider hanging out there on Saturday evening from time to time. (We’ve tried the coffee chops in downtown Mountain View, but they all tend to have bands on the weekend nights, which puts a damper on our desire for a quiet reading evening.)

Friday night we got an invitation from our friends Chad and Camille to visit on Sunday for swimming and a barbecue. So Sunday morning we went to the grocery store and Debbi made potato salad to bring. Chad and me and the kids spent, what, an hour or two? swimming in their pool, and then we had dinner. We hadn’t seen much of them since last year, since we’ve all been busy, and we had a great time. Camille tells us that their daughter has upgraded us from “friends of their parents” to “cousins”. 🙂

Monday was my and Debbi’s 11th dating anniversary, and we went out for our usual anniversary dinner. Where have the years gone?

Since then I’d like to say things have been quieter since then, but yesterday I biked to work for the first time this year, and boy did my butt hurt afterwards!

Dad Visits Our New Home

Dad came for a visit last week. (And it’s getting hard to come up with entry titles that are just variations on “A Visit From Dad”.) He flew in on Thursday and left on Wednesday. By this time we’ve gone to see most of the things in the Bay Area I know about, so it was a visit mostly of re-runs and hanging out, although he did have a couple of new things he wanted to see.

This is the first time he’s seen our new house, which we’ve now been in (hard as it is for us to believe) for 11 months. Mom saw it on her visit a year ago, but that was before we’d even closed (we were doing a walk-through with the seller the day she arrived), so it almost feels like it doesn’t count, since it was completely empty. Dad had to wait a little longer, but he got the full experience, since it’s well lived-in by now.

The day he arrived we walked down to the nearby Safeway which has a Starbucks in it, as he has been in the habit of walking out in the morning on his visits to get coffee, and his previous place, the 7-11 near our old home, is rather farther from the new place. I think he walked there every morning but two during his stay.

One place he wanted to visit was the campus of University of California – Santa Cruz, because it’s on a list he saw of the 10 most beautiful college campuses in the world (I think he saw this one). Although I’ve been to Santa Cruz many times, this was my first trip to UCSC.

I gotta say, it’s a very unfriendly campus for visitors. Apparently you are supposed to buy a parking pass to park most places on campus, which isn’t a bad thing, but they don’t tell you this. I saw no signs driving in to this effect, the booth where you buy the passes is not marked at all, and none of the parking lots we drove by or through have any indication that this is so. We only figured this out because most of the cars in one lot had things hanging from their rear mirrors, and we asked some people and they confirmed this. It’s like it’s a big trap to issue tickets to the unwary. Bastards.

We didn’t buy a pass but rather just drove around to see the place. Is it stunningly beautiful? It’s not bad; the buildings set in the redwood forest are pretty. The regions in the nearby fields look a little more generic. The architecture didn’t seem especially noteworthy. (Then again, Stanford is also on the list, and its campus has never impressed me either.) The campus is very spread out and I bet students spend a lot of time on buses or bikes to get from place to place.

We also visited the arboretum, which is quite impressive, large and varied. It’s the place I’d suggest visiting if you go to the campus for the scenery.

Saturday we drove to Livermore wine country, having lunch at Garre (nice restaurant, but their wines are not our thing), and then dropped by a couple of wineries for tastings. In the evening we went to a new restaurant that I discovered through a cow-orker, Bistro Vida, which we all enjoyed.

We came home from dinner to find that the power had gone out. We lit some candles and Debbi and I walked around the neighborhood a bit; it was a failure that covered several blocks, and it didn’t come back on until after 11, by which time we’d gone to bed. Our neighbor Juan said the power goes out from time to time – I think it only went out twice in the 10 years I was in my townhouse, so hopefully it won’t go out much more often than that! Apparently it was because of a equipment problems rather than due to the heat we were having on Saturday.

Sunday morning we went to the Moss Beach Distillery for their Sunday champagne brunch, and were pretty disappointed compared to earlier visits. They weren’t playing the classical music that Dad remarked on at his last visit, and worse, they had taken both french toast and pancakes off their brunch menu! Since I don’t eat seafood or egg dishes, that left hardly anything on the menu I would eat. Fortunately they were willing to make pancakes (for Dad) and french toast (for me) as a special order, but they were pretty ordinary compared to the more elaborate forms they used to have. I don’t know what they’re thinking, how can it be brunch without at least pancakes? I guess they’re trying to go more upscale? But they’re likely to lose me as a patron if this is the way it’s going to be. Pity.

Sunday evening we drove to the east bay to have dinner with my cousins, both of whom live out here, but neither of whom I’ve seen much of. Cousin L and her husband have a very nice house, and cousin K came from the city to meet with us. We had a good few hours visiting with them, and perhaps when their parents come out to visit next we’ll have a chance to meet them, too.

Monday we had a pretty quiet day, mostly driving around the south bay. Tuesday was a little more ambitious: We dropped Blackjack off at the vet about his eye, then went for breakfast, and finally up to San Francisco. We went to SF MOMA, which sure enough is an art museum. (I’m not really into art museums.) Then off to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream sundaes, and finally to Golden Gate Park. Strybing Arboretum – formerly one of my favorite place to wander around in the park – is now charging non-residents for admission. If nothing else that will eliminate any motivation I might have for donating to them.

Along the way we also watched some episodes of classic Doctor Who that I’d bought on DVD (used, to avoid the ridiculous prices the BBC charges for them): “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”, “Pyramids of Mars” and “Logopolis”. “Talons” was better than I’d remembered, while the other two were not as good (though still enjoyable). In particular “Pyramids” seemed to suffer from the limited (though very good) cast.

Wednesday it was a morning drive to drop Dad off at the airport, followed by meeting Debbi at her workplace for coffee, and then an afternoon of chores around the house. As always, it was a nice visit with Dad – and the cats enjoyed his company, too!

Blackjack’s Eye

Blackjack can’t catch a break with his illness, despite having responded to treatment quite well. This past week we noticed that one of his pupils was more dilated than the other, something Debbi says she’s noticed before. The next day we realized that it wasn’t that one eye was more dilated, but that the other eye was less dilated, and that his inner eyelid – the one that closes sideways from the side of his eye near his nose – was partly closed.

While he didn’t seem disturbed by it all – I did some informal tests and he can see out of both eyes – we contacted his vet who’s been treating him for his lymphoma, and she said this is an indication that something may be impinging on his optic nerve, that it may be related to his lymphoma, and that there may not be much we can do. But to keep an eye on him in case he develops symptoms that indicates it might be something else.

Other than some watering from his eye, he’s been behaving pretty normally, so we’re just keeping an eye on him for now.

It’s pretty frustrating, since he’s otherwise been showing signs of getting stronger and more stable lately, and an indication that things might be getting worse is pretty upsetting. But at least he’s still happy and comfortable. He’s been cleverly finding new places to sleep in the unusual heat we’ve had this weekend (he’s the only one of our cats who bothers to find cool places to sleep – Newton and Roulette seek out the heat).

Right now he’s lying on the couch next to me while we watch an old episode of Doctor Who. I think his watering eye bothers him from time to time and he shakes his head to clear it out. But otherwise he still seems pretty happy. Hopefully this will just be a cosmetic incident for some time to come.

He’s a sweet cat, and he really doesn’t deserve all this at such a young age.

A Week Under the Weather

So last Saturday Debbi and I started our weekend by going to Half Moon Bay (breakfast at the Main Street Grill!) and walking along the coast. When we got back, I went out and mowed the lawn for the first time this year. It took about an hour, because I bagged the grass rather the mulching it, since it had grown quite long in some places. I really should have mowed 2 weeks ago, but it’s rained the last 2 weekends.

By the time I finished and showered, I had the beginnings of congestion and a sore throat, harbinging four days of illness.

Sunday we tried to get a few things done, but we discovered (really, re-discovered) that many places are closed on Easter Sunday, so we didn’t make much headway. We did go across the street to visit our neighbors for their Easter party. By the time we finished, I was running out of energy, so we called it a day.

Monday morning I couldn’t see myself sitting at my desk all day, so I called in sick. Time was I would try to power through a cold, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned that it’s best to lie low early to knock the illness out of me. My cow-orkers appreciate me not coming in to make them ill, too.

Fortunately this was not as bad a cold as the one Debbi had for the better part of two weeks (which was so nasty that I kind of wondered if she caught two different colds), and I felt much better on Tuesday. Unfortunately I felt worse on Wednesday, mainly very congested and with a nasty cough. I didn’t realize until the afternoon that I really did feel worse, so I had taken my car in for maintenance and gone in to work. Oh well.

But I felt much better on Thursday, and have gotten better since then. So I seem to have finally shaken it.

On a happier note (well, for me, anyway), we had a series of showers and thunderstorms in the area this past week, which I enjoyed immensely. After a bone-dry winter, we’ve gotten a fair bit of rain over the last month, which we really needed, and I loved since it breaks up the otherwise eternal mild weather around here. I think the south bay is still below average for the year, but hopefully these storms have helped build up the snow packs in the mountains (melting snow is where most of our drinking water comes from).

After a long week, we now have a long list of chores to do at home and errands to run around town, partly in preparation for my Dad coming to visit soon. Fortuitously, we won’t have to go out in the rain to do them.

Gas?

I had a pretty rough night last night. The evening went fine, but…

Around 2:30 am I woke up and needed to pee. While doing my business in the bathroom, I reflected that I still have a mild pain in my neck, probably because the pinched nerve there still gets pinched from time to time. I imagine this will be an issue for the rest of my life, but it hasn’t been anywhere near as bad since I got it treated three years ago. However, it has been a little annoying recently. It might even be something unrelated – maybe my ergonomics are bad and I need to work on my seated posture (again). I dunno.

Anyway, as I was thinking about this, I started to feel kind of ill. I went back to bed, but soon felt even worse, and realized I was breaking out into a cold sweat. I got out of bed and my stomach felt really upset, so I lay down on the floor. Debbi woke up and asked if I felt okay, which I didn’t. Then I felt like I might throw up (maybe food poisoning again?), but I didn’t feel well enough to stand, so I crawled to the bathroom and lay there for, I don’t know how long, maybe 10-20 minutes. Debbi gave me a cold wash cloth which helped a bit. (The cats also came in to check me out, which didn’t really help.)

After a while, the pain went away, and thankfully I never threw up. I went back to bed, and still felt cold, so I bundled under all the covers. And fortunately I felt like a log for the rest of the night. (Debbi, unfortunately, did not, and she gets up a lot earlier than I do.)

Debbi conjectures that I had a bad case of gas in my stomach or elsewhere in my digestive tract, which if true would be a new one on me. We did have a dinner last night which included cabbage, which Debbi thought might have given me gas (apparently it can), although I didn’t have that problem when I ate even more cabbage at our pot luck dinner a couple of weekends ago. Debbi ate the same thing I did and didn’t have any problems.

I feel tired and a tad weak today. But that’s about all. Even my neck feels better! Hopefully it was just a flukey one-time thing.