Schedule

Sat 31: 9-5
Sun 1: 2-cl
Mon 2: 3-cl
Wed 4: 9-5
Thur 5: 9-5
Sat 7: 3-cl

Break Of Light

If I can say anything about Kanye West overall, I will admit the man makes some rather visually arresting music videos. And what I especially enjoy about the video to his icy, wind-swept chill of a song "Flashing Lights" is that Kanye himself is nowhere to be seen.

Unless of course, that's him in the trunk.

Brrrrr...

It Was Inevitable, N'est Pas?

This was the sign at the Golden Corral on the corner of Volvo Parkway in Chesapeake today.

I really must have Mike email me that one picture that he took of the Golden Corral down near my house one night where the sign read PLEASE EAT POO FOR BARBARA. As well as the hairy penis guitar that came into his store for repairs one time. Aaaaand pretty much everything else he ever took with his PalmPilot around town. That man is somehow always there for the most hi-larious shizzy that goes down in Hampton Roads. Damn yo, I just wanna be him.

Speaking of um, sirloin, I guess I'm trying Atkins again. I went for three carb-free days of stomach aches, incontinence, and vertiginous sugar rages before I fudged a little today and had some Chinese food. But like Scarlett O'Hara once said, tomorrow is another.... um, eh, fiddle-dee-dee. Time to watch the season finale of Lost.

Four Flies On Grey Velvet

Kinda enjoying this song and video today. "Sheen Is A Parasite" by The Horrors. Sheena is played by actress Samantha Morton, is case you couldn't tell from all that juicy calamari on her face.

Heading off to brunch with the fellas today, and hopefully will be back to catch the last bits of the Indy 500. My final day of largely stress-powered freedom before I'm back to full-on huckster mode once more. I do look forward to human interaction again. Perhaps I'll get more done this week than I did this past week that I took off specifically to get more things done.

My Sentimental Melody

The Friday Five:

1. What were some of the smells and tastes of your childhood?
For some reason the wood panel walls of my Nana's kitchen back in her house in North Carolina. Had this amazingly distinctive woody tobacco smell when I pressed my little nose against it that I can still pick up here and there when the atmosphere is just right. As far as tastes, uh, I'd have to go with the walls as well.

2. What did you have as a child that you do not think children today have?
An Atari 2600.

3. What elementary grade was your favorite?
I pretty much hated them all, as far as I can remember. School in general was either a whirlwind of merciless bullying or flat-out exclusion, and I dreaded every year that I had to go back. Although I think my 3rd grade year was probably the funniest. Star Wars had just come out, and I just started reading MAD magazine (the Star Wars issue was passed around under our desks during class). We had this brilliant little Asian boy in our class who was the most hilarious kid I had ever met, and to this day I still remember over half the things he did and said that made me laugh out loud in class. And my best friend Sheryl who was the prettiest girl in school was in my class, even though she was in second grade. I remember when the little Asian boy was crying in class one day and the teacher excused him to go to the restroom to dry his eyes, and he walked in on Sheryl with her pants down who broke the class silence with her "AAAHHHGETOUTOFHEREGETOUTOFHEREAHHH-AHHHHHH!" shrieks and he walked back into the class, eyes still red and streaming with tears, but now with a sly, knowing smile on his face and the whole class just roared.

4. What summer do you remember the best as a child?
Probably any summer spent at Hilton Head Island. I remember being fifteen years old and staying there with Sheryl and our other mutual childhood friend Jeanne, and the three of us sneaking out to the condo association swimming pool in the middle of the night while our parents slept. Jeanne had brought her boom box and the cassette to Duran Duran's Rio album and I remember the three of us where enraptured by the hypnotic track "The Chauffeur" (mostly because we thought the video was super funny at the time with the hot topless chicks in lingerie doing a silly dance with their hands). We floated on our backs and listened to that song, and I just stared up into the starlit sky with the swirling silver clouds, and I noticed a lone, perverted old man standing in his condo window watching us with binoculars.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to your younger self, and at what age?
Do not lick my Nana's wood panel walls.

Proverbs for Paranoids

I finally managed to coerce a roofing contractor to come out to my house this afternoon and make an estimate on the damage done from the storm. The insurance said it shouldn't be much, and it fact it's minimal to where I don't have a claim because my deductible will cover it. All I care about is having it fixed before the next rain fall, which luckily might not be this weekend since it's looking to be sunny and nice. Needlessto say I'm feeling wonderfully assured right now. Someones coming to fix it, and I might just have enough to cover the whole shebang. Go Team Melp.

I tried to blow off some steam by going on an old-fashioned power walk last night with Joe's iPod, which I haven't done in ages and it was one of the many things I had planned to do this week as part of my attempts to regain my former grip on my heath regiment to lose weight again, and boy to say that I am out of shape is an understatement. After 12 minutes down the street and back I was suddenly seized with a dizzy spell that was so severe I would up returning home and sitting in the living room chair for over an hour with my eyes closed, and still the world would not stop spinning. I couldn't understand it. I mean, I'm a shell of my former self athletically, but I'm running on my feet 8 hours a day five days a week at work until my stems are ready to snap. Twelve minutes of walking shouldn't give me the vapors as I repair to my fainting couch as it felt as if I had last night. Then again I wasn't walking so much as.... well, dancing, I suppose. I had a little bit of a butt-wigglin' moment when Ram Jam's "Black Betty" popped up on the shuffle, but at least my casual-walk-turned-obnoxious-iPod-commercial was done under cover of night where the neighbors couldn't see me. Unless I passed under a street light. Then it's showtime. I think one passing guy could tell what I was listening to since I was lipsynching along to the rudimentary lyrics into my fist at one point. Still, no reason to get all swoony after. Or during. Maybe that's why Ram Jam never had another hit.

Speaking of good weather weekends, my old friend Lee is turning forty tomorrow and his girlfriend invited Joe and me to a barbecue at their new house out in Greenbrier. Wow, forty. That's gonna be me in a little over nine months myself. And it's funny how I met Lee just a few months shy of my own 21st birthday back in 1990 when we were all hanging out at Friar Tucks bar when Joe was DJing his "alternative night", which back then was one of the only clubs in town where you could hear punk or ska or techno, or anything that wasn't what was popular back in 1990 by and large. Tuesday nights at Tucks. Back when we used to dance to Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana almost year before the rest of the world had even heard of them. Happy little pretentious Dadaists were we. I think I still have a photo of Lee dressed as an old man, and me in a tool belt trying to break into a public telephone outside of the club. And Mike was there too. And I remember Alvin showing up a few times as well. My God, does everybody I know really date back to 1990? Is my life still comprised of hopelessly stunted music nerds still living out our romantic rock star dreams?

Rock stars probably don't have to wait a week to get the holes in their houses fixed. Which I've just been told is probably how long it will take. And it's going to rain tonight, too, I've just discovered.

So much for being wonderfully assured.

Schedule

Mon 26: 3-cl
Tue 27: 4-cl
Wed 28: 9-5
Fri 30: 4-cl
Sat 31: 9-5

Ghost Mouse

A very nice neighborhood kittie came up to me and m'rowed at me pleasantly. He let me pet him and then he wandered on his way towards the side of my neighbor Brenda's house, stalking some mysterious unseen prey only visible to his predatory eye. Either that or he's batshit insane. I went ahead and left him to his psychosis.

It just occurred to me that all this tramping around my 'hood taking pictures and enjoying the only real sunshine I've had during this vacation so far (hard to believe we had such a bastard of a storm just two days ago) that I really should post something appropriate music-wise, having not done so in a damn long while. And for some reason, the way I feel now, David Byrne's "Neighborhood" keeps drifting between my ears (replacing the hollow seashell sound that normally rocks me to sleep every night) and lifting me off the ground in that distinctive way that a good song and a glorious day can affect.

Oh, and in case you couldn't tell, it was produced my Philly soul legend Thom Bell. Enjoy.

"Neighborhood" by David Byrne (M4a file available for 7 days)

Living Beneath The Mudd

First 20 tracks on my iTunes after taking pictures around my neighborhood on this astonishingly beautiful spring afternoon...

1. "Satisfaction (I Can't Get No)" - Devo

2. "I Live In A Nice House" - Thelonious Monster

3. "Manifesto" - Michaela Melian

4. "Some Of Us Never Learn" - Merle Haggard

5. "I'm Shakin'" - Little Willie John

6. "Robot Rock" - Daft Punk

7. "Fun Day" - Stevie Wonder

8. "Crimson And Clover" - Joan Jett & the Blackhearts

9. "Agua del Pozo" - Alex Cuba

10. "Hurt" - Nine Inch Nails

11. "Come On Over" - The Cold

12. "Sloth" - Katy Rose

13. "Mudd Club" - Frank Zappa

14. "Space" - Prince

15. "Macho Macho" - Falco

16. "Flashlight" - Parliament

17. "Here Comes The Rain Again" - Eurythmics

18. "Innocence" - 8 Eyed Spy

19. "Neighborhood" - David Byrne

20. "The Call Of Ktulu" - Metallica

Termites From Formosa

This is me hanging out of the window to my second floor guest bedroom behind my townhouse, snapping a shot of my neighbor Brenda's backyard, post-storm bruhaha. I spoke with her today, telling her that I'm glad it was just her gazebo top that came uprooted (and tried to scale our shared fence) and not her enormous trampoline, also in her backyard. And she explained that her trampoline had actually lifted straight up off the ground, crashing over the back of that wooden fence, some of which got knocked over in the process.

And you see those tall iron gate posts immediately behind us? That's our community swimming pool, and she told me that the trampoline sailed right over that iron gating, over the pool, and landed in the trees on the other side. Amazing. She said it took her, her husband, and her son to carry that thing into the back yard when they bought it, and that one 30-minute storm yesterday lifted it like a dried leaf and set it adrift across a swimming pool and into those trees in the far distance. "No more trampolines for us" she said. If the wind had gone the other way that thing would have come crashing through her glass french doors. Or heck, even mine. Yikers.

A field claims rep from my homeowners insurance company just came by to take pics of the outside, as well as in my bedroom where water stains are beginning to appear in my ceiling, since my bedroom is directly beneath the attic where the siding tore free. She says she doesn't think it should be too expensive, although I already have a $1,000 deductible so either way I'm pretty sure this is all coming out of my pocket. All I'm concerned about is my bedroom ceiling not caving in again, like it did at my old residence a few years ago after a Nor'easter took shingles off my roof and flooded the space over my apartment. I was renting back then so it was all taken care of. But I'm a flippin' homeowner now. Oy vey. The things we gotta do to keep a roof over our music collection.

I was a bit weathered myself so I headed down to work to buy this used copy of The Residents The River Of Crime CD which came in last week but I've been holding onto it for when we have another 40% off used deal, but after the last 48 hours I seriously needed some instant gratification. The River Of Crime is a collection of 20 character-driven podcasts of a film noir style true crime 1940's radio show tribute of sorts, and I always meant to keep up with them but never did, despite my well-known love of all things Residents (guess I need to let Randy borrow this too). One of the girls at work told me that it was insane at the store during the storm, where the entire staff was trying to hold the giant glass doors shut from the wind, and they kept getting pushed backwards from the force of the gusts.

The road down Princess Anne through Kempsville was a disaster in many spots. The claims rep told me that she was surveying all about Kempsville today and she thinks no other area besides mine was hit as hard, and she wouldn't doubt that a tornado had whipped through without our knowledge. Nevertheless, I picked up Issue #3 of Terry Moore's new comic Echo while I was out there (at least Trilogy is still standing, although by nearly noon they hadn't even had a chance to put out the new comics yet, and I had to get Jerry to go dig it out of the stock box for me).

So is anybody else out there keeping up with Echo? I mean besides Al and me? It's Moore's first original story since he finished Strangers In Paradise, and so far appears to focus on a young woman named Julie who wound up accidentally too close for comfort during a secret nuclear experiment in the Arizona desert and is suddenly growing a mysterious metallic breast plate that shocks some people when they touch it, and others that don't. Anyway, nice to see Terry back doing his own thing again. He can be both so gosh darn frustrating sometimes, but still a wonderful weaver of character-heavy storylines. Especially about women. Which is what I seem to be gravitating towards a lot more these days than usual.

Anyway, drop me a line sometime, iffin' ya'll wanna discuss amongst ourselves.

Christ. I hear more thunder.

Damage Report

Holy cats! We just got super clobbered outside! This is what I get for sitting here in my underwear ogling Isabella Rosselllini bug-porn and not paying a lick of attention to the outside world (hey, it's my vacation and I'll ogle all the Isabella Rossellini bug-porn I want).

What started out as a lively thunderstorm turned into insane amounts of banging against my bedroom windows, as the light in my house switched to Armageddon black to match the shade of outdoors. I flipped up my venetian blinds and was met with blackness, speckled with white. The white was mothball-sized hail, coming down at a volume I had previously never experienced.

During moments of clarity, when the winds died down low for seconds at a time, I could make out my street, and my driveway, and my Taurus rocking back and forth as hail raced down the windshield in like someone spilling white marbles. Unseen in this photo is the neighbor's garbage cans rolling out into the street, flailing trash, and a mysterious bit of aluminum siding that I was praying wasn't mine (more on that).

As the storm receded to a mere thunderstorm and the winds dissipated, I slipped on my raincoat and combat boots and trudged out into the flooded backyard to survey the damage. For such a brief flash of a storm, I seem to have suffered more damage than I had during the last two hurricanes combined. Although my neighbor Brenda's lawn furniture looked to be trying to make a break for it. That's her patio umbrella straddling our shared fence. Hey, at least her trampoline didn't make it over.

A large branch from my pear tree snapped off about halfway up the trunk and took down a few slats from my fence that borders my neighbor to the left.

And the place where my branch once was. Sorry, Tyler. I know how much you love to be "treed" like the bear you are. :(

Venturing out front, I see that my neighbors have taken the fallen siding and moved it to just outside the front of my doorway. Hey! How do they know it's my siding, anyway? The front of my townhouse looks fine! No lost shutters. No missing slats...

Oh. Oops. Okay, that totally looks like my attic up there, and those siding pieces totally look like they'd fit up in that top corner for certain. And it totally looks like my attic is exposed to the elements, which by the way, is directly above my bedroom. Well, shazbot. Time to dig out the ole homeowners insurance after all.

I am worried that Joe isn't home from work yet. I wonder what the damages are from where he is to where I am. I have heard nothing but sirens for the last hour, and I saw a fire truck speed right down my dead end road. I called my parents, and even they didn't get this kind of damage out in Great Bridge. But I must say that I consider myself extremely lucktastic. So much could have been destroyed, considering how sudden this was, and how none of my hatches have been battened down. Again, it sounds as if Suffolk got the worst of it, and is seeing possible tornadoes out their way.

Locals... how are you fairing? Anything to claim? (Anita, what's the report out in Franklin?)

Sleep Is For Sissies

I admit I have always had a crush on this lady, but some things just cross the line in my book. Like inserting insects into the mix. That's my biggest no-no. Still, I got a boner.

Isabella Rossellini does "Green Porno".

I Never Post These, But...

more cat pictures

My week long vacation starts today after work. A full of week of yard work, housecleaning, and hopefully getting myself back on track to health and good spirits. And not being at the store for a spell should do wonders in that department.

But tonight, I plan to sleep.

Precious, precious sleeeeeeep.

Yesterday...

6:30 am: Woke up. Brushed teeth. Got dressed.

7:14 am: Took Joe to work, then headed down to Norfolk to pay for the work on his car and pick up the keys at the transmission shop so that we can fetch it later in the afternoon.

8:17 am: Mechanic out test driving Joe's car and won't be back until after nine. Drive back to Virginia Beach where I stop by a Farm Fresh for a donut and eat breakfast sitting in the car.

9:08 am: Return to transmission shop, where mechanic has returned. I pay for the car and he feels so bad for making me have to drive all the way back to Norfolk he gives me $10 for gas out of his own pocket.

9:48 am: Return home with Joe's car keys and slip back into bed again fully dressed. I'm out as soon as my head hits the pillow.

11:09 am: Wake again to the sound of phone ringing, but they do not leave a message. I feel drugged from the sugar I had in the donut this morning. I take a metformin and jump in the shower.

1:19 pm: Check my email and Myspace quickly, heat a Lean Cuisine for lunch.

2:00 pm: Dress for work and leave. I'm early, so I head over to Barnes & Noble. Bought The Education of Hopey Glass and a cup of coffee and read and drink it in the car.

3:00 pm: Clock in to work.

4:23 pm: Swamped with buybacks right when I need to leave to pick up Joe from work. Get Bekah to take over and I bolt to the parking lot, fighting traffic all the way to Dam Neck Road.

5:02 pm: Pick up Joe outside Geico. Joe makes several phone calls to Mike and Al on my cell phone discussing plans to meet up for dinner and seeing Iron Man at MacArthur Mall. They arrange for Joe to pick up Al at his place in downtown Norfolk while he changes out of his work suit.

5:38 pm: Drop Joe off at transmission shop and watch him turn on his car before taking off. Al calls my cell and yells to stop Joe from coming straight to his place because he's not ready yet. I tell him that it's too late and I hang up, giggling.

6:03 pm: Stop at MacDonald's to use the restroom because my bladder had reached critical mass. Grabbed a burger and fries for dinner. Took one bite and remembered why I don't eat at MacDonald's anymore. Blech.

6:44 pm: Get back to work.

11:45 pm: Close up the store with Stacey and agree to meet up again at Liz's 21st birthday party immediately after I run home and pick up Joe.

12:03 am: Arrive at Liz and Mary's at the same time as Stacey. Lots of people from work there, including several who no longer work there. I spend most of the time sitting on the couch because I am too tired to stand and my trick knee is killing me. The young lady who made me the Portishead CD offered to take me to the Radiohead show in New Jersey with her this summer, but she had a little bit to drink and she may have forgotten the whole thing by now. :-)

12:59 am: Left party. Went home. Joe crawled into bed and I stayed up a bit watching Adult Swim in the darkness of my living room.

1:25 am: Turned in. Finally.

A Ten-Point Lead In My Poll

That's Vance DeGeneres second from the left during the first scene, but he is featured throught the entire video in his latest internet news parody project called Hardly News. Please enjoy "The Hardly Boyz" and the dulcet tones of the "Michelle Obama Song".

Sure, boy band parodies have long since gone the way of Fingerbang, but I'll take any opportunity one throws my way to leer at Vanceypants in a suit again. Yowsa.

Here Come The People In Grey

A really sweet music blog of pre-war blues MP3 files:

Honey Where You Been So Long?

My sentiments, exactly.

Content Whore

Let's lighten the mood again, shall we? :-D



The Moving Sidewalks were a band out of Houston, Texas founded by Billy Gibbons in 1966, whom we all know would later go on to form the considerably more famous ZZ Top. With Gibbons on guitar and lead vocals, the band held the distinction of opening for Jimi Hendrix when he toured Texas in 1968, and their 1969 full length album Flash is considered a minor psychedelic masterpiece and highly sought after by collectors. Anyway, it's all there, right in the video for their terrific 1967 psycho-garage punk single "99th Floor", posted above. Enjoy, my friends. Because I love you.

And Happy Mothers Day, all you muthahs!

A Soul At Ease...

Just got a call from Dad. He's home, at last. Sounding reasonably sore this time, and the cardiologist said everything should be fine.

I want to thank everybody for the emails and messages I got these last three days, expressing their concern and good will. If I could make each and every one of you a mix CD I would. You folks are Tops.

Schedule

Sat 10: 9-5
Mon 12: 3-cl
Tue 13: 3-cl
Wed 14: 9-5
Thur 15: 10-6
Fri 16: 3-cl

Somebody Told My Story

A very sweet girl from work procured me a copy of Third, the brand new Portishead CD and their first release in almost a decade of silence. A return to form. Beth Gibbons' voice is perfect for such a darkly alien-looking morning of heavy rain, where the grass outside my window bears the same color as the album cover, and the veins under my white skin look like blue cheese under its light. Good morning, everyone.

My father was in considerably improve spirits last night after waiting all day for word on his release from the hospital. Seems that most of yesterday morning he was left in bed with no one offering to help him out of it in order to walk around, and when the next nurse came on duty at 3pm she was outraged that he had been left in bed moaning in agony ever since his surgery so she helped him get up and taught him how to walk around and shift his weight, and with the help of some oxygen he was able to do more than shuffle two steps and collapse like his last feeble attempt by himself with no assistance. Once he did that he felt a thousand times better, and my mom (who by that point was becoming frustrated and stepped outside the hospital for a cigarette and cool off a bit) returned to my dad's room to find him sitting up without his CPAP mask, smiling and cheerful and, as he told me over the phone last night, "filled with hope again." Amazing what a little exercise will do for the body, no matter how much the body may resist it (once again, a lesson I should have embedded in my forehead by now).

I remember when I had my gall bladder out, Thanksgiving 1993. The day after Thanksgiving, actually, but I was in the hospital Thanksgiving Day watching The Planet Of The Apes marathon and eating Jell-O, with my grandmother one floor down from me who was in for her "dropped foot". The day after surgery the nurse was hounding me to get up and walk down the corridors and I was insistent that this would be an impossibility with the pain I was in on that side of me (which is hard to describe for anyone who has never had surgery but best imagined as someone sticking a long stick into your guts and going swishwishwishwishwissssss -- which is pretty much what they did to me anyway since my gall bladder was discovered somehow wrapped around my liver, so they had to move a lot of junk around to get to it). But the nurse was like, "Oh no, missy. You're getting up right now and marching right down that hallway and back, so up-up-up!" and there I was grumpily shuffling up and down the corridor in my half-opened hospital gown and dragging my little IV stand with me for about 10 minutes before I trotted back to bed pouting the whole way. But I have to admit, the more I did this, the better I felt. The tight soreness in my side loosened over time, and by the time I got home I would get out of bed and wander around the house until Mother would turn me around and march me back to bed again. I remember lying precariously on the edge of my bed reading Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas and MTV was premeiring the Weezer video to "Buddy Holly", which at the time made me laugh so hard I actually rolled off the bed and plopped down onto the floor, which left me howling through most of the song until my mother rushed into the room to help pick me back up again.

Just called the hospital. Still no word on being discharged, and he still hasn't been seen by a cardiologist yet. Man, so little communication at that place. I've so often heard not good things about all the Sentaras in town. I was there once in 1994, when I had the Death Cough and I hacked so hard driving around the parking lot over at Military Circle I pulled the cartilage off my rib and Joe rushed me to the nearest hospital -- Sentara Leigh. They were all very nice and competent people, just like it seems they are now. Though I may be wrong but they may have just been Leigh Memorial then (locals, how long has Sentara owned Leigh?). All I remember was being grouchy that I had to miss seeing Alice Donut at the Kings Head Inn that night.

Everybodys Got Their Something

First 20 tracks on my iTunes this chilly, overcast morning grateful for the things I have.

1. "Rollin'" - Kid 'N Play

2. "Working Day And Night" - Michael Jackson

3. "I'm A Little Dinosaur" - Jonathan Richman

4. "Mama Tried" - Merle Haggard

5. "Miss Freelove '69" - Hoodoo Gurus

6. "Time Seller" - Spencer Davis Group

7. "Rock 'n Roll Star" - Oasis

8. "My Sweet Lord" - Edwin Starr

9. "Eruption" - Van Halen

10. "Freight Train Blues" - The Louvin Brothers

11. "Hello" - Lionel Richie

12. "Tokyo Storm Warning" - Elvis Costello

13. "All Fours" - Fini Tribe

14. "Black And White" - The Raincoats

15. "Starfish And Coffee" - Prince

16. "Autumn Into Summer" - Pelican

17. "My Life In The Knife Trade" - Boysetsfire

18. "You Treat Me Bad" - Jujus

19. "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)" - Looking Glass

20. "I Got A Little" - Rising Sons

All's Quiet...

It's been an unsettling evening, after hearing that my father's heart nearly stopped completely during his routine gall bladder surgery this afternoon. While under anaesthesia his heart rate had dropped to about forty, I think, and the anesthesiologist -- who admittedly was young and had only been practicing for about six years -- kind of freaked out, having never seen or dealt with anything like that before in his relatively short career. They managed to get the heart rate back up again, but he was describing to my mother how they were all watching the heart monitor, nervously... and I'm sitting here thinking, they're telling my mother this? Are most doctors this forthcoming about the honest-to-goodness goings-on behind the scenes during a loved one's surgery? I was enough of a basket case several years ago when the doctors told me that Joe had a hard time breathing when he was coming out of his anaesthesia. But Mother said that the doctors were calm and optimistic, and my father is currently resting comfortably in the "heart wing" of the Sentara Leigh with round-the-clock heart monitors and his CPAP mask strapped to his face (for his sleep apnea, which he sleeps with at home too) and he was out of it enough to where he didn't even remove it when I called to talk to him so he was sounding very Darth-Vader-on-quaaludes -- then again none of this sounds like he's resting comfortably, does it? But I do know what he's going through. I had my gall bladder removed in 1993 and I was pretty darn grumpy in the hospital to be sure. Nothing like being woken up every hour in the middle of the night with a nurse prodding your abdomen with an ice-cold stethoscope and exclaiming "Myyyy... your bowels are sounding simply wonderful this evening!" Mmmhm yeah, good to know, sister.

Still, what can I say? It's my daddy. My heart breaks every time he's in pain. And my heart sinks every time I hear that his heart stopped beating, for whatever reason (flashing back to his heart attack about seven years ago). Anyway, he sounded too tired and groggy to visit tonight so I'm going to try and see him at home tomorrow if they decide to discharge him in the morning, after the cardiologist gives him a clean bill 'o health. If they let him go home tomorrow.

It is unsettling, watching our parents grow old right before our eyes.

Laff 'O The Day

Schedule

Fri 2: 3-cl
Sat 3: 9-5
Sun 4: 2-cl
Tue 6: 3-cl
Wed 7: 9-5
Fri 9: 4-cl
Sat 10: 9-5