It blooms!

Three years ago, we yanked out all the nondescript, random plants the builder had put in front of our house, and we replaced them with flowering, lively plants. Two of those plants are crinum lilies. And for the past three years they have grown huge in the front flower beds, but have not bloomed. This year we bought another one from a plant sale. This one I presume is older than ours, and it is blooming. This gives me hope that the others will bloom one day. The crapper of it all is that Jeni is up in Ohio with her dad (where she should be, doing what she should be doing) and is missing the blooms. So I took pictures...


Look at all these blooms ready to burst.




It really is a dramatic flower. I'm hoping it will still be blooming when Jeni gets home. If not, at least there's something to look forward to next year.

Don is home

I'm very happy to be able to post that Don left the hospital and is home. This is a good step. He's certainly doing better, although he is still having a good bit of pain (after all, they did cut his chest open). Jackie is up in Ohio to help Jeni out this weekend.

Book recommendation, and a brief rant

Just so I don't lose my note, a patient said Jeni should read Jen Lancaster.

Also, while I'm making brief notes, I just need to get this off my chest: "worser" is not a word. It's "worse". You can't get more worse than worse and make it worser. It doesn't work that way.

Example:
Incorrect: My low back pain is worser than yesterday.
Correct: My low back pain is worse than yersterday.

Thank you.

Volcano eruption viewed from space

The astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured a picture of a volcano erupting. It is pretty amazing. This link came from the Space Weather website.

Don update

Don is out of the ICU and in a room, and Jeni should be staying until Wednesday next week, if plans hold true. He is dealing with some pancreatitis right now, which is just aggravating on top of everything else. Hopefully they'll get all that under control so he can head home and recover away from the hospital.

Don in the hospital

Well, since Jeni's birthday things have been a little wild. Jeni's dad had to have quadruple bypass surgery on Jeni's birthday, so we rushed up to Toledo, Ohio the next day to be there. He was in the ICU for six days, and finally moved into a step-down room today. He had some blood pressure, blood clot and kidney issues that needed to be resolved before he could be moved from the ICU. Chris flew up Wednesday night, so he was with us from Thursday to Saturday night, but he had to fly back home Sunday morning. I drove home Sunday -- 11 hours, most of it on I-77. I looked at a map and saw that I drove all but 17 miles of I-77 in Ohio and 21 miles of I-77 in South Carolina.

Jeni is staying up in Ohio to help with Don. Plans are just day-by-day right now. Please keep Don in your thoughts and prayers as he recovers, and Jeni and Chris too.

Happy Birthday Jeni!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENI!

We had a blast last weekend with Jeni's roller derby birthday. Nikki and Todd came in from Atlanta, and Lisa and Brian came over, and Tiff, Bill, Barbara, Tish and Susan all joined in going to watch the QuadSquad. Jeni got some great kitchen stuff she'd been wanting ... some square pans from Nikki that she needed, and an ice cream maker from Tiff and Lisa that she'd been wanting for a long time. Now we have homemade ice cream -- YUM!

Tonight Jeni and I are going out for a nice dinner for her birthday.

Thanks to everyone who joined in to make Jeni's birthday a fun one! I need to upload some birthday pictures to Flickr and I'll post those soon.

Zoo membership

Jeni and I joined the Riverbanks Zoo back on Memorial Day. It was a great day at the zoo with great friends. Today, our membership information arrived in the mail -- ironically the same day a gorilla escapes from it's habitat at our zoo. Yikes!

Bone marrow donation

Jeni and I put ourselves on the national bone marrow donor registry about 10 years ago when we were living in Davenport. And then nothing happened for a long long time -- almost to the point that, if not for a patient who was involved with the donor program, I would have forgotten we were on the list. Then a few months ago I got a call from the National Marrow Donor Program. It turned out that I was a possible match for a sick five-year-old boy. I donated some blood for additional testing. It was a hurry-up-and-wait situation, and it felt like I waited forever to find out if I was an ideal match. Well, we got a letter in the mail last week ... it was vague on details, but for one of a variety of reasons, they don't need me as a donor right now (the boy could be doing better, he might be ill, it might not be the right time). Still, it was pretty humbling to think that I could help this boy, that a little bit of me might help him live a better life. I really can't think of a better thing to do than give a little of myself to make someone else's life better. I hope he's getting better, wherever he is.

A couple of links

I start each morning with the Year of the Fett -- a daily photo set project on Flickr. Thursday's is one of the best ... Boba Fett getting carried away with his new Wolverine claws. A true crossover of the geekiest kind.

And speaking of the geekiest kind ... have you been to the Awkward Family Photos website yet? It hasn't been up long, so you can go all the way to the beginning pretty quickly, with breaks for uncontrollable laughter.