A Calendar of Tales

Neil Gaiman is working with Blackberry on a project, which included 12 short stories ... A Calendar of Tales. I need to take a moment to read these, and didn't want to forget. So, if nothing else, this is a reminder to me to come back to these stories when I can focus on enjoying them, and not just read them to get through them.

Nice story

I had a very touching day today. First, one of my long-standing patients came in and his wife lost her battle with cancer. She had pancreatic cancer, and had been a patient a while back. She stopped coming as her cancer worsened and it was hard for her to leave the house, and she had so many other doctor's visits. But her husband continued to come, and we were able to help him out as he dealt with all the stress he was going through. But it's such a hard way to start the day, when you ask, "How're you doing?" "Well, I lost my wife..."

But then I got this nice story from another patient that made me smile. She works with bone marrow donor drives, and there is a local church that has been working real hard to get a donor for one of their pastors. Well, a lady who has leukemia has been involved in the drives and the meetings. She's not a member of the church, but they want her to attend because she's become like a member of the family. She has lost all her hair, and wears a baseball cap, and she declined an invitation to attend church because she said she wouldn't feel right wearing her ball cap in church. So the church members are organizing a ball cap day at the church where everyone is supposed to wear a ball cap to church so she will feel comfortable and welcomed. What an amazing gesture -- it just gives me chills.

Flying Umbrella of Death

It's cloudy and raining on the front side of the house, but sun shiny on the other. Seriously, our house is not that big!

Now, back to the umbrella story. Let's see if I can tell this right...


We had a little rain when we first got to the beach on Saturday and Sunday (scattered showers), so Monday was the first real day to drag all the goods out to the beach. The beach umbrella is my savior because the sun starts to take its toll on me, but I want to stay out, so it gives me some shade. The last time we were at the beach we bought this really cool PVC pipe with an auger on the bottom that screws down into the sand to secure the umbrella so the winds won't blow it away. So first thing, I screw the anchor into the sand and we sent up for a day at the beach.

After we'd been out for a while, these four foul-mouthed 17-ish-year-old girls come down and sit just behind us and to the side. They're sitting back there in their string bikinis with the strings of their tops undone to not get tan lines when a sudden wind gust comes, grabs the umbrella, pulls it out of the sand, anchor and all, and sends it somersaulting toward them.

So as the "Flying Umbrella of Death" comes hurling toward these girls, they are left with one of two options: jump up to avoid the umbrella and risk losing their tops, or face possibly getting impaled by the point of the umbrella. Well, they all four chose impaling, and luckily only one was struck, slightly across her shoulder, as the umbrella fell in front and slightly on top of them.

They didn't sit near us the rest of the week.

It was really something you'd expect to see in a sitcom.

Two Minutes Project

I followed a link to another link to one more that led me to The Two Minute Project, a site publishing super short stories. At a quick glance these are very brief stories, some that string together into longer stories. What is cool is the author's effort to exercise his writing, stories constrained to 100 words exactly, and to still write something that catches your attention. In our quick, no-time-for-anything lives, this is a good chance to actually read and use our imagination, if only for 100 words.