OK, so I forgot about my blog for a while - I have been busy - sorry!
I took a weekend trip to my cousin's in Tennessee, and had a nice relaxing weekend. I went down to hear the Kingsport Symphony's Jazz Concert, but the entire weekend was one long "You might be a redneck if".. joke. But I certainly knew I was in Tennesse when:
1. Directions to her house involved "turning off the paved road".
2. There was a toilet on her front porch when I arrived (ok, in her defense, they were remodeling the bathroom)...
3. I saw more cows than people (I am not kidding, I swear.....)
4. Everyone at Wal-Mart was sweet and polite, but kept giving me wrong information....
It was hilarious, though. During the Symphony, her husband kept discussing the music with me, which sounds wonderful, except, of course, that it consisted solely of telling me what cartoon it was from... Of course, he would be quick to point out that Karen and I drank a bottle of wine nearly every day I was there...
Not much else is going on in my boring little life. A few weeks ago I went up to see my friends at Walsh and went to Cleveland for a day; I am trying to get ready for Christmas, and am very excited b/c I bought Cora a gift from FAO Schwartz (see link for her gift). At least the poor CT tech (see last entry) can now rest easy - she has my test results. I am nearly done with my promotion project at the office (I will be so glad when that is done!).
13 October 2003
Here's a story... (It is always something with me). On 3 October (Friday) I had to be at Miami Valley Hospital for a CT Scan. So anyway, the tech puts an iv in with saline, and they run me through the machine and take a couple of control pictures; then they pull me out of the machine and put dye through the iv (so it will show up on the pictures). Just as the technician is doing this, the plastic cathetar holding the iv bursts. So there is blood and saline solution and dye everywhere - all over her, all over me, all over the floor and the CT machine - everywhere.
I had to laugh - it was funny. The dye was so sticky - I guess there is a lot of sucrose in it, and it was just awful. I am just laying there, and the tech - she was pretty nice - had to clean it up and wipe off me and my face and herself and it was a huge mess. Then she had her supervisor - the radiologist (MD) come in and put a different IV in my other arm to get the dye in.
So anyway, a week later, I get a certified letter from the hospital, in compliance with OSHA regulations requesting me to come in for a HIV and hepatitis test because a hospital employee was exposed to my blood. Of course, I do not have to consent, but it's such a little soap opera. The fact that my doctors, in trying to figure out what is wrong with me, have tested everything already, a couple of months ago, is not likely to assuage her concerns (for all she knows, I have entertained the Navy in the last couple of months). I could make her sweat it out for six months and then get tested herself, but that would be evil, so I probably will humor her, and I know that I have nothing to worry about. But Good Lord!
6 October 2003
We Guide, We Follow
Like the blind for their seeing-eyes,
I have tendereness for you, my owed & owing
& would not see you harmed -
if not for your own good
then for mine.
- Elizabeth Scanlon
The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead
The dead do not want us dead;
Such petty errors are left for thye living.
Nor do they want our mourning.
No gift to them - not rage, nor weeping.
Return one of them, any one of them, to the earth,
and look: such foolish skipping,
such telling of bad jokes, such feasting!
Even a cumcumber, a single anise seed: feasting.
- Jane Hirschfield
1 October 2003
"You love a person with all your heart, but at times you are overcome with the suspicion that this person does not love you with equal warmth". - Baudolino, in Baudolino, by Umberto Eco, pg. 513