The un-wired generation

Hi, there. How's things?

As you may know by now, things have been more than a little crazy in my life lately. First, it's the busiest time of the year at my job. Then, of course, my mom's situation.

During one of my many long drives lately, I got to thinking about how wired much of the world is ... and how UNwired the rest of it is. For instance, my mom's friends and relations want to keep up-to-date with the latest news--obviously, they're concerned. And I am the point man, in charge of all this, making the big decisions.

Now how would you do this? Of course: You'd write up an e-mail message and send it out on occasion. Maybe create a mailing list, for one-touch updates. Just write your message, enter address(es), think of a catchy subject line, hit send, and there you are.

Alas, NOBODY I need to update has e-mail. For all I know, none of them may have computers, either. This is the last gasp of the un-wired generation, and this is a situation many of you may eventually have to face, too. What I'm doing is relaying a message or two a night and asking them to pass it along. Sort of like the old "Telephone" game.

I've got a bunch of errands I have to do and things I have to arrange for. They range from arranging for a funeral to such mundane tasks as getting someone to come in and clear away all the leaves on her lawn--and there are a lot of them. I've been forgetting to call the guy who does that. I've got to try to make that call tonight.

Might as well try now. 'Scuse me for a few minutes.

OK. I talked to the guy's daughter, who promises to pass the message along. We'll see. The way she giggled once makes me suspicious.

I had to drive out of town yesterday for a very different reason: It was time for me to get my heart tested. One problem is, the place is 90 miles away, and I had to leave home about 6:45 a.m. for a 9 a.m. appointment. So I was getting somewhat hungry. I got there a little early.

First, they did an echocardiogram on me--for which reason I was forbidden to either eat or drink anything after midnight. Then they put a thingie in my arm that they use when injecting intravenous drugs. (Impressed with my astute knowledge of medical terms, aren't you?) They injected some radioactive substance. Then they gave me a glass of water and a breakfast bar. Well, it was about 10:30 a.m. by then (oh yeah, I also crossed over into a different time zone along the way).

Then they had me lie on my back on a table. A thingie with flat panels passed over me that, I assume, were taking pictures of my heart thanks to the radioactive stuff injected inside me. What happened is that the flat panels slowly made their way around my chest, hovering for about 30 seconds, then rotating a few degrees, then hovering for another 30 seconds, etc. They told me to lie real still for 12 minutes. So I lay real still for 12 minutes.

Then, back to the waiting room and play the waiting game. Maybe 15 or 20 minutes. Then, they got me had me get up on the treadmill. Walk slow. Walk faster. Walk still faster. Walk real fast. I did OK. Heart rate got up there, above their target rate, but my blood pressure did not, and since I'm doing this because of HBP, that was good. No pain, no pressure. A little short of breath, but that ended quickly. I just don't walk really fast very often--if the need arises, I run. A little.

Then back to the waiting room. The yakky loudmouthed woman who was solving everyone else's problems was gone by now (yay!), and I could relax. I relaxed. In fact, I must have dozed off. Yeah, I was really uptight about this.

But I reacted the second time they called my name, and back to the machine with the flat panels, where I lay down and had to lie real still for another 12 minutes. So I lay real still for another 12 minutes.

Then I was freed, and started driving home. Except I drove down to my mom's nursing home. I visited with her for a while, ate dinner with her and then left for good ol' girls basketball. Then, finally, back home, at the end of a long, long day.

Today, I had to get up real, real early again, but this time it was just for a meeting here in town. Tomorrow, I can go back to my normal morning rituals, which culminates with my wife and I sitting on the couch, eating toast (usually rye bread) and watching The Weather Channel. It gives us a little time to sit next to each other and relax before beginning the stuff we have to do. One of our little rituals.

But it's been so crazy lately--I won't say stressful, though it is at times--that it's been hard for us to relax and have fun together. It's been hard on me, and she knows that. It's hard on her, too. So we're just trying to take things easy, letting some things go. I'm really looking forward to the end of this stressful time, when life returns to what we define as normal. We can go back to the routine parts of life that make our friendship strong and keeps us happy.

Complicating things further are the baseball playoffs, now about 2/3rds over. I really love baseball--I'm watching the Cards and Astros now as I type on my laptop--and she cuts me some slack for that. She knows I'm missing many of the games, both because of all my job and driving back and forth to the hospital or nursing home. Tonight, I got to stay home, so that's what I'm doing.

I'm also looking forward to the end of the World Series, where we can stick a disk in the DVD, snuggle up together and watch something inspiring for what we'll be doing a little later. Feed the kitties, go upstairs and shut down the computer. The computer goes to bed early ... as do we. Time for what we refer to as "a good night's sleep." ;)

Crazy hectic times

Just a couple of free minutes while I wait for a coach to call me back. It's the start of what is going to be an extremely hectic weekend.

Having made another three trips to the hospital in the last week, I'm behind schedule on a busy work week. I've got a football game to cover this afternoon (and writing up last night's game), and my older son will be arriving here later in the day (from Detroit, about 520 miles away). On Sunday, we're all going down to visit my mom, who was put in a nursing home on Friday. I've got to find time to write an editorial and maybe a county board story. Am I having fun yet?

My mom is not feeling as much pain as before. They did a procedure (Thursday) on a compressed vertebra in her back, in hopes of relieving pain from a pinched nerve. I have not been able to see her since about two hours after the procedure, but it seems to have helped--maybe a lot. I won't really know until I see her on Sunday. She's now got to eat more and get her strength back.

That's as far as I'll go for now. I'll try to write more on Monday night, after deadline and after my son heads back south.Besides, the phone is about to ring. ((Ring!!!)) "Hi, Bill ... "

Finally! Cheap gas!!!

Tired of expensive gas? Who isn't?

So you should have been with me last week as I was driving home from a girls basketball game...



Seems the local gas station that recently installed one of those fancy electronic signs has been having a wee bit of trouble with it. It read the same from the other side, too, so I went around the block to capture the image for all the world to see.

When I drove past the next day, it was back to reading $3.10. Bargain shoppers--never mind!

After 3 1/2 years ...

Oh, hi there. How've you been? It's been a while, hasn't it?

What?? Three and a half years since we last met??? That was back in, what, 2002?

OK, enough hokum. Hi, it's me, and yes, I'm back. The interface isn't as challenging as it once was, so I'm going to give this another try. That's one reason I'm back. Another reason is that ModBlog, where I put my first blog that lasted for more than a few days, has gone dark since Monday morning--over three days ago. Their website apologized profusely for all the downtime and promises on their honor that they'll get it together and won't have a problem like this again. Or words to that effect.

For their sake, I hope they can. I really enjoyed ModBlog for the "community" feeling it had. You had regular visitors and friends that you got to know from all over the place. I've made friends from different places in the U.S. as well as Australia and England. We joke with each other when times are good and try to solve each other's problems when times aren't.

I started writing on ModBlog in May--over four months ago--and it became a part of my life. But it's out of order, at least for now, and it's frustrating. I'd like to know what my friends are doing, what they're getting into. My mom, who is 83, is in the hospital, and I've been spending a lot of time there recently--my wife and I were there about four hours today, not counting the hour-long drive each way. The story has gone out all over the world, and many of my readers have said things to cheer me up and encourage me. And I'm really grateful.

As I wrote, the Blogger interface is a lot easier than it used to be (way, way back in 2002, almost before the printed word, almost). Last night, I wrote something that was a lot like what I'm writing tonight, on the built-in post hole digger. But when I went to publish it, it asked for my username and password again, and when I backed up to the post writing page, all my beautiful words were gone. Vanished. Poof! Lost in cyberspace.

This is for shit, I said to myself, and shut down for the night.

But tonight things look better. I tried to copy all my writing before posting it, but Blogger doesn't seem to want to do that. Grrr. Anyway, when I posted, it did was it was supposed to, and my wonderful, thrilling writing now appears on the blogpage.

By the way, to judge by the interval between my first blog entry here and my second, the next blog entry will appear around June 2009. But somehow I don't think it will be that long.

I love ModBlog, and I hope they can get their act together. But by writing this entry here, I think you can see that I'm hedging my bets.