Jeni's off again

Jeni is heading back to Toledo to check on her dad. He's been recovering from his bypass surgery OK, and his blood clots in his legs have dissolved, but Jeni needs to go and meet his doctors, and check on a few things. She'll be gone for about five days. This'll be a chance for me to get caught up on some of the things around the house ... the yard in particular. This last month has been very hard on the grass, but we've had rain almost every day this week and it's starting to grow again. Unfortunately, so are the weeds. So I'm going to work on getting the weeds pulled and the grass cut. Most of Tiffany's stuff is out of the garage, maybe all of it, so I'm going to probably straighten the garage some too. I like to make the house look good when Jeni's away so she can come home and be able to relax and not have the stress of projects undone. (But there's always a project undone...)

Back from the beach

Jeni and I went to Garden City with Lisa and Brian and the kids, and Tiff. It was nice to get away for a long weekend and just relax and enjoy the waves and the sand. Sadly, the places that got the most sun were the tops of my feet, my scalp, and my elbows (don't ask me how...). We got to play some Skeeball. Jeni came 20 points away from the big prize, and I was 60 away. (They cheated us!) But it was still fun. I could have one of those in my house and have house of fun. But then would I have to have tickets and cheap prizes, too? I could definitely live at the beach. We took tons of pictures so hopefully I'll have something to post tomorrow.

The Fourth Plinth webstream

I saw on the Flickr blog a post about the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. The plinth is usualy reserved for statues, but is currently empty. So there is a project where, for one hour, 24 hours a day, for the next 100 days, a person will be standing in place of the statue. Sort of live art. There's a live webstream so you can see what's going on at any time. Apparently they had 22,419 applicants for the 2400 available spots. Poor guy right now is standing in the rain, but his hour is just about up...

Weird somber feeling

I found out this morning that one of my patients died of a heart attack yesterday. He was 54 and lived alone. He had an appointment yesterday, and had never missed an appointment until then. We had left a message checking in. A friend, who he referred to us as a patient, was in this morning and told us the news. It's left me with a weird somber feeling today. He was a very kind man, very genuine and thoughtful. A few weeks back he had brought me a plant -- a pregnant onion -- that we had discussed one day. He had made such a turn-around in his care, going from crutches or a cane and barely able to walk, to walking briskly and returning to work. It's just sad.