It Lives!

Well, if you've been periodically checking Troubles the past couple of months and are shocked to see it open for business today, you can probably guess what my New Year's resolution is. I'm giving this blogging thing another go. Around October I kind of just ran out of ideas and went on a little hiatus. Hopefully I can get back in the swing of things, because I do honestly enjoy writing.

I'd like to start on a somber note, by honoring my big orange friend Melbotis, who passed away one year ago today. I still miss my buddy every day and that's all I'll say on the matter for fear of getting verklempt and upsetting Lucy.



I don't have any Earth shattering news, other than Scout thinks she's in the Great Escape and has run off into the wilds of Grand Oaks subdivision twice now. She returned to us relatively unharmed once by the kindness of strangers and once by the tenacity of my mother in the pouring rain.


Sometimes I think I hear her throwing a tennis ball against the inside of her crate

The Dug and Kristen have a runaway of their own. Dixie the cat escaped through an open window a couple of days ago, and Doug has been busy combing the streets of Berkeley trying to track her down. I hope they find her, soon.

**UPDATE - Dixie came home! Yay!

We had a quiet and lovely Christmas holiday. Ryan has been off work for nearly 2 weeks, and while I think he is frustrated with not being able to accomplish all he set out to do, it has been nice just being able to spend some time with him. In all honesty, he did manage to bag and board all of his comics from the past year, which is no small feat.

We spent Christmas with the Steanses out at Steans ranch and it was lovely. Thank you for the hospitality and good food and much too generous presents, Karen and Rick!

New Years was also nice. We went with Matt and Nicole to dinner and then made an attempt to spend the rest of the evening at Austin's First Night celebration downtown. After walking for half an hour to locate the main festivities (which was, by that point in the evening, a scattering of kettle corn stands and a mediocre band with a sad, tiny grouping of freezing people) we made the unanimous decision to make a U-turn and high tail it back to the car. We rang in the new year in the warmth of League HQ eating popcorn and playing Mario Kart. Good Times.

Happy New Year everyone! Have a great twenty ten! (Doesn't that sound awesome and futuristic?)

Comments

J.S. said…
Glad to see you back at it! I miss Mel, too!
January 4, 2010 at 10:54 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

October Update

So. Today I went in for a couple of procedures that I have known were coming for a few months now. For those not up to date, I have long had cardiac issues stemming from my even longer-term kidney issues. For those who are up to date, forgive me for repeating myself a bit.  Luckily until this year I have not had any symptoms. This spring I started feeling bad.  Shortness of breath, a strange scratchy sensation in my chest, coughing, and just running on an even lower level of energy than usual. In July I had a left heart catheter. At that time my cardiologist determined that my lower left ventricle was working extra hard to keep blood out of the upper ventricle and by turn out of my lungs. This is referred to as Mitral Regurgitation . The plan was for me to pull as much fluid as possible at dialysis to relieve some of the pressure in my heart. I did start feeling a bit better due to this action in the past couple of weeks, but we still needed to go back in and check that pressu...
Read more

Fake Fun

Image
Last night on our way home from letting some furniture delivery guys into my parents' house in San Marcos, we stopped at T.G.I.Friday's * for dinner. Neither of us had a specific craving for Friday's, it was just on the way and we were hungry. It's going to be a good long while before we return, at least until I forget how sucktastic it is. We didn't have any of the big chain restaurants in Lawton when I was growing up, so eating at a Chili's, Bennigan's, or the OG ** when we were in Dallas or Houston was something of a treat. I remember thinking back then the food was actually good, maybe just because we didn't eat out all that often. Nowadays, Lawton is littered with all the favorites, with Outback Steakhouse, Applebees, and Chili's in the same block. There is even, after 20 years of it's rumored arrival, an Olive Garden. I haven't been to the Olive Garden in like, forever! Ryan and I were discussing this as we left the restaurant, tha...
Read more

Big Decision

Some of you may remember the series of tests I had done last year as part of my ongoing adventures in Coronary Artery Disease (which was brought on by my ongoing adventures in End Stage Renal Disease). To refresh your memory, my cardiologist felt it may be time to have a defibrillator placed on the off chance my heart should stop and I should not happen to be in the emergency room at that exact moment, though with me this scenario is not as unlikely as it sounds. The test results were a mixed bag. The big test, the electrophysiology study where they tried to get my heart out of rhythm, didn't turn out so great. Not only were they successful in throwing off my groove, they had to shock me to get my heart back into rhythm. On the other hand, I keep getting echocardiograms where the results are borderline. My heart function is clearly less than that of a normal person, but not yet to a critical level. So that's where I've been for the last few months. Data was collected...
Read more