To the Doctor

So, the other day, being back from vacation, I went to the doctor for the first time in incredibly many years. Actually had hit the clinic a few days previously for them to collect blood and urine samples.

The good news is, I'm not going to drop dead any time soon. And there are a few health items in which, despite family history, I'm in wondrously good shape.

But there are a few other items in which I'm not in such wondrously good shape. Numbers higher than normal. The kind of numbers which, if we hadn't caught it, could've led in the long run to, well... real trouble.

So, the doctor prescribed a few different kind of pills for me. (Pills. Am I the only person who rebels at that prissy neologism, "meds"?) And we will be spending the next few weeks or months bringing readings down into the normal range, adjusting dosages if necessary, and all that good stuff.

I find myself unexpectedly feeling a sense of relief: now I know. And it's all manageable. Somehow I'd expected to go reeling from the doctor's office in dizzying panic. No, I feel like now I know where I stand. A few emotional ups and downs when I first got up this morning, but that's par for the course.

Though... on pills at last, for the first time in my life. I'm not bulletproof after all. Memento mori, and all that.

Summer's End

Where has the summer gone? To me, summer ends with the end of August. Or with the coming of Labor Day weekend. When I was a kid summer ended when we went back to school. By any of these yardsticks summer is now drawing to a close.

And already -- in the waning days of August, even -- we've been seeing lows at night which have been unheard of now for months. Before long the leaves will start turning color. Indeed, at this point we could be only a couple of months away from the first snowflakes of the season.

Summer has always been my favorite season of the year. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Back Home

Back home from two weeks of vacation which were also to some degree a vacation from blogging. Actually I'm not due back on the job till tomorrow, so I'm taking today as a much-needed day to decompress from the rigors of vacationing.

As in, you know, it was good to visit family and friends but it's also good to be back in my own home, and back to my own quiet, peaceful, slow paced way of life.

The latter part of vacation I discovered Firefly, got the series on DVD, and watched it clear through in the span of a few days. Aha! My brother says he hasn't seen it yet; so I do believe one piece of my Christmas shopping has fallen into place.

Got up this morning and drove in to town to visit the doctor for the first time in over 20 years. Or rather, the nurse collected some samples from me (ah, me and my fear of needles!), and later this week I'll be heading back to the doctor to find out just how far off the beam my health has gone over the past two decades. I mean, I feel fine, but at my age...

Computer

Of course I have my trusty laptop along with me on vacation. After a friend introduced me to Hulu the other day, I've been watching TV episodes on my computer, and having to resist mightily the temptation to run out to a store and pick up a couple of series on DVD. Of course at home "running out to the store" for such items is not ordinarily on the agenda, as the nearest such store is nearly 60 miles away from where I live! Instead I order over the Internet, and wait a few days.

Though in several ways I'm finding that my computer experience, here on vacation at my folks' place in the city, is quite different from out on a gravel road at home. It was only back around Memorial Day that I achieved wireless capability in Linux for the first time, and only at the beginning of July that my small rural ISP upgraded my DSL connection to the point where most online video material is feasible. Then it was only about six weeks ago that I got a new laptop battery so that I could take practical advantage of the mobility that a laptop and a wireless router ought to afford a body.

However, at home I have a particular spot where I am accustomed to sit and use my laptop, so...

It was not until I arrived here in the city, at my folks' place, on vacation -- here where I have no customary "spot to use my laptop" -- that I've been really blossoming in the "use your computer anywhere at any time for anything" department. And it really does leave me feeling sprung another few degrees free of my ordinary connections in time and space, or time and meatspace.

And More Vacation

So last week I went to see that old college buddy and his wife. We had a great time together, talking, dinner. Plus my old friend introduced me to Hulu, which I've heard of but had never looked into before -- until recently my DSL bandwidth out there in the countryside wasn't adequate even to think of it. Also he introduced me to Pandora, a music service which I hadn't heard of before. As you might guess, I've been tinkering with both ever since.

Went one day to visit my grandmother, which meant a long drive beyond the city where my folks now live. My grandmother, well past the century mark, and still just as clear in the head as anyone. It's sobering to think that she's one of the last people around who can tell you not only about the days back before radio. She also can remember the first time she ever saw an automobile: she was well into grade school at the time.

And out with my folks to a restaurant the other day. And was on the phone this morning with another friend of mine who lives here in the city. He was my supervisor at work for a few years back in the 90s, back before I fled the city for deep rural America. We're going to get together later this week, eat at some kind of offbeat ethnic restaurant, maybe hit a live music performance.

And I've been napping, lying around, vegetating. Amazing how I shift into such a fallow mode when I'm on vacation.

Vacation

On vacation, visiting family in the city far away. This afternoon am going to go see an old college friend.

I have my laptop with me, and my brother has a wireless router. Which is not to say that I'm otherwise feeling very much like blogging at the moment, thank you. It's feeling way too much like vacation.

Mousetrap

Three nights in a row I set out the mousetrap, with peanut butter, in a corner of the living room. I'd seen that mouse streaking across the floor. So three nights in a row I set out the mousetrap.

And three mornings I found the mousetrap, peanut butter eaten, sitting there with the trap unsprung. This morning for the third time I found when I got up that the mouse had eaten the peanut butter without springing the mousetrap.

Though this morning, after checking the trap, I was making breakfast out in the kitchen when I heard that loud snap! Went and checked and sure enough. The mouse had come back to the trap, I suppose to check it for more peanut butter. It didn't find any peanut butter, but this time it did set off the trap.

I can't imagine what a mouse is doing in the house in the middle of August. Strike that: was doing in the house.