Are You Lonesome Tonight?

Our family website has a fairly nice chat feature...when it works. I feel it has brought our family members close together. We get a chance to chat once a week about just about anything and everything. The biggest problem is that chat has been down for about 2 months now. I've emailed the webmaster and called them on the phone, but they still haven't fixed the problem. I'm starting to have withdrawal now. Talking on the phone is an option, but limited two calling just a couple of people at a time. Maybe we should all get shortwave radios. Maybe we can organize a conference call. Or maybe they'll get the website fixed again and everything will get back to normal talking about our parents and our brother who doesn't join in on chat. (Just kidding J.)

Esophagastroduodenoscopy

Esophagastroduodenoscopy. I think I spelled that right. I just had one done this morning. A persistent pain in the pit of my stomach prompted me to get a checkup and one thing led to another until that procedure this morning.

I proudly told the nurse I could pronounce it, but she said, "Oh, we never try. We just call it an EGD."

Whether they gave me regular anaesthetics or milk of amnesia, 10 seconds after they put it in my IV the world went peaceful. I slept longer coming out than they would have liked, but when I got home I slept some more. I think that was the best part of the whole procedure. That was even nicer than the color pictures they gave me of my insides, which showed that most of my stomach is inflamed. No ulcers, but just sore all over.

The doctor prescribed prevacid. I had started taking some about 2 weeks ago and the pains have gone down quite a bit already. I asked for some sleeping pills to take the pain away. The doctor said that wouldn't help a bit, until I explained that all I would need to do is put one in my 16 year old daughter's drink every night then we could both get a good night's sleep and I'd quit worrying about how late she stays up.

Instinct

Our dog has been expecting puppies. She's a shih-tzu and about 7 years old. This is the last time for puppies for that old. Labor started and I expected 3-4 tiny puppies by the morning. The father is a yorkshire terrier. By 10am she was still in labor and my wife took her to the vet for a c-section. Quite a bit of $$$$ later 8 ^ ( the only puppy was delivered stillborn and there was a little question about the survival of the mother.

That was a day ago and the mother is doing much better. She would be the dog to adopt a litter of kittens, rabbits or any other baby, but in mid-January there aren't any around our house. I figured that she's just a dog, doesn't know what was happening and would quickly forget the whole matter. What she did though, is start carrying a small stuffed squirrel with her everywhere around the house. She's careful carrying it and sleeps with it next to her. Is it instinct or do animals think more than we think they think? I asked her about it, but couldn't understand the answer through the mouthful of stuffed squirrel.

No Work Today

I'll tell you what... It's sure nice (occasionally) to work for the government. We closed our offices on Monday for MLK. I contemplated all day the "I have a dream...." Ok, actually I did a little more dreaming during the day than usual. I spent part of it installing a new cd player in my truck. Add the ham radio in it and I may have doubled the value of the truck. Anyway, it was a good day off. All days off are good.

I got a call around 6AM today to let me know there was no work today and it had nothing to do with the fact that the water heater two floors above my office broke over the weekend and flooded the whole building, possibly ruining thousands of dollars worth of equipment. That may be a reason to close again tomorrow, however. No, what prompted this closing today was the fact that a Blue Northern blew into Austin, a city 320 miles away, with freezing rain icing up the hill country of Texas. You may think people in West Texas don't know how to drive on snow and ice, and you'd be right, but let me just say that folks deep in the heart of Texas are positively panicked about having ice they only see once in about 5-10 years at a time.

It is still cold here, but somehow I'm enjoying it more thinking about all those frozen politicians further south. And yup, I've already have my gourmet hot chocolate this morning with Tabasco sauce added to warm up my day.

No Church Today

We had an ice storm hit last night, no not as bad as what the midwest got. Ok, not as bad as anyone got, but we still got almost a quarter of an inch of ice. NOW you may all start playing your violin. Unfortunately, we didn't get any snow with that so the panhandle of Texas has just been turned into a skating rink. The locals seem to prefer doing their skating in their cars. A main road just two blocks away has a car in the ditch right now.

The main roads did get a little relief yesterday as traffic wore down the ice, but not the Church parking lot. The Stake President went to the Church to determine conditions and couldn't park straight in a parking space. He got out of the car, but couldn't let go of the car to go in the building. That's when he started the calls to cancel Church meetings.

The most wonderful news of all ...not... is that my oldest daughter and her family drove off in the ice storm Friday night to a town 150 miles away that is in the far side of the storm path. That means they will have to cross the whole ice field to get home carrying the most precious cargo, our two adorable grandsons.

I think I'll go make some hot chocolate with Tabasco sauce in it.

Twist

Gettin' Started

After I finally remembered my user name and password, I was able to sign on again. Funny thing is that since I set this up, I have not been able to concentrate hard enough to write. This is just to let folks know I will.