Through the Magic That is Pre-dating…

Booklovers…I give you the August 1st picture. Today (8/25) was another trip to the bookstore and I remembered the camera in the trunk this time. I picked up for paperback books to read, Donna snagged two and we bought a new book for the “Baby to be Named Later” out in Snohomish.

I had a good time rummaging through several boxes of books on the floor that were as yet unshelved. I even picked one I know I’ve read before, Rumpole’s Last Case, because we have been watching “A Touch of Frost” DVDs and that British show has left me with a hankering for Horace’s adventures down at the Ol’ Bailey.

How Was Your Day?

At lunch I needed to go fill up the car with gas, so the low fuel light wouldn’t come on while Donna was on the way to or way back from her radiation treatment. Donna just hates that light. I do too because she reminds me that it is one of my few jobs to keep the car adequately supplied with the necessary provisions and that light is a shiny reminder of my failure. It is not like I am ever far away from a place to refuel, there is a station at every other corner in town, but I always seem to find a reason to avoid it. So I popped out and ran just down the street from work to a station and filled up ($30 worth at $3.02 a gallon.) I used the lane marked Express Pay for people who use credit cards only. Swiped the card and pumped the gas and then my least favorite thing in the whole world happened, that’s right, the LED display said “RECEIPT INSIDE.” %$#&

I was supposed to mail out a box to someone today. I didn’t go at lunch because of the other above mentioned errand, so I stopped at the Post Office on the way home from work. The line was out the door. I didn’t have time, so I’ll try again tomorrow.

We went out tonight to get a couple gift cards for a co-worker’s upcoming wedding. First stop was Lowes where Donna’s department had decided to get their group gift from. Snagged a card near the front of the store and got in line. There were only two check-outs open and both lines were pretty long, so we picked one and waited a bit. It was moving so slow that the word glacial wouldn’t cover it. Peeking down the line you could see the trouble, the cashier couldn’t scan anything on the first or second swipes and if it happened on the third try she was lucky. We put the card down and exited the store in a huff.

We got back in the car and drove across the street to Target to get a card from us personally. When we walked by the check-out area there were only two lines open and they were pretty long. So we picked some greeting cards that we needed and headed back to the cashiers. We were about to leave here too when they opened a 10 items or less line that we managed to get in at the number 2 spot.

We zipped back across the street to Lowes to see if the lines had died down. Unfortunately we thought they were open until 10 PM, but Monday through Thursday it is only 9:00 PM. That point was driven home by the click of the front doors as the red vested employee closed them while we were still 100 feet away.

The FRS lost to Cleveland and the Yankees beat Toronto, so what didn’t happen last night, did 24 hours later, the Red Sox are percentage points out of the division lead.

Not a lot went right for me today, but at least my spouse didn’t die. I’m so sorry Lillian, we will all miss Bob and I know all the grief that all of us who knew him are feeling put together can’t equal what you are going through now…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 300

Hi, My Name Is Brian…

…and I’m a Red Sox fan.
(all) Hi Brian!

Trot Nixon strains an arm muscle last night. Jason Varitek comes out of tonight’s game with a knee issue. David Wells comes off the the DL and promptly gave up 8 runs in less than 5 innings. Geez.

The Yankees have the night off, so the worst that can happen when the FRS lose this game is they be in a virtual tie for 1st place in the Eastern Division. Actually they will be a few percentage points behind the Bronx Bombers, which is the way it usually works around this time of the year. The Sox have finished 2nd to the Yankees for the last eight years and in the past that has been good enough to get them in the playoffs. This year 2nd place will only be good enough for an early end of their season.

I’ve said it before, but this time I really mean it, I’m going to find a real winner to back. I’m kicking this monkey right off my back. I hear over in the National League that a team called the Braves have won 14 straight division titles, maybe I’ll start to root for them…

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 298

Not The Same Ol’ Sunday

The early morning, beat the heat, bike ride with a downtown breakfast stop was as usual today. The ride was different because we went for 16 miles instead of the usual 10 and rather than those fabulous New Moon Cafe muffins for breakfast, we went for the Veggie & Egg Quesadilla with the Breakfast Parfait. We did get a couple muffins to go for tomorrow’s breakfast though…

We ate out as usual with our usual friends today, but instead of our usual lunch it was for dinner. And in lieu of our usual Subway trip, we met at Moe’s, which may become our usual.

Tonight I’m watching the FRS get their butts whooped by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and although it seems to me to be something usual, the Sox have the second best record in Major League Baseball, so it really isn’t that usual.

And on a nice sunny day…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 295

Grand Prix Saturday

I bought the long awaited DVD of the movie Grand Prix last Saturday and finally watched it today, a week later. Donna had said she would be interested in watching it with me, but she is not to receptive of loud noises right now and with half the reason to see this movie being the sounds of mid 60’s Formula 1 race cars, I watched it by myself. On the laptop with headphones on. VRRROOOOM, VRRROOOMMM.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 295

Linkage Action

Decided to do a little housecleaning of the links on the left.

I removed a couple of OTM Blogs for cause, to wit, lack of posting. I then added a couple of replacements to fill those spots. One is called My Cancer and is the story of a news reporter’s day to day life with the big C. It is hosted on the NPR site and you can subscribe to his podcasts of his essays for Morning Edition if you are so inclined. The other is called Robservatons and I have been reading him for awhile now, but hesitated to link the blog because I had a hard time believing all the situations he wrote about were true, they seemed to have a Penthouse Letters feel to them. Maybe all that stuff does happen to him, either way the writing is entertaining.

While I was at it I added a couple more under the Miata Blog section, mainly because I can. Steve Speak is mostly tech talk from an Apple Cult member, but hey, he drives a Miata, so he ain’t all bad. The writer of In Case I Forget used to own a Miata (although she may have another because at one point I read “my first Miata” in a post) until it was smushed by someone who ran a red light. It is the story of her battle with the resulting brain injury she suffered.

On an unrelated note, today I got entry #21 in the My Favorite Miata Photo 2 Contest, so if you haven’t already sent in your entry, please do so Jame’s thumbnail won’t be lonely on page two. FYI, the winners will be chosen by popular vote, so buttering up this writer will not help any.

Started down, went up, down again, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 294

Radiation Treatment #4

Today I got to see first hand what those four little cross-hairs that are stuck on Donna’s chest are for. She asked the techs yesterday if it was OK to bring me in and watch a treatment so I would know what was happening and they said OK. Plus then I could describe the process to her, because she has to remove her glasses and then can’t really tell what is going on.

Upon arrival she goes into a changing room to swap her upper clothes for a hospital gown. After a short wait Donna gets called back into the treatment room where she lays on the a table that has her personalized molded foam pad on it. The pads are blue and everyone’s is hanging on a rack on the left side of the room like so many overcoats in a hat check room. The pad is probably the same technology as used in the custom seats F1 drivers use. At work we use something similar for packing things for shipping, a reaction between two chemicals in a bag makes a foam that expands to fit tightly around an object.

Once she is situated, they raise the table to shoulder height and move it into the center of the room. Here is where another familiar technology is used in a different manner. On two walls of the room are something resembling those fancy laser levels from Home Depot. Four bright green lines cross in the middle of the room and then Donna is inched and nudged so that these lines cross exactly through the cross-hair stickers on Donna’s torso. She is told to hold still and the tech leaves the room closing the one foot thick bank vault looking door behind her.

Outside two technicians sit watching two video monitors on their left showing the interior of the treatment room. On the right of their station are a couple of computer monitors that show what looks like a mainframe style terminal program (maybe DOS, but thankfully not Microsoft Windows) that controls the “ray gun.” I don’t know what else to call it, but it is nothing like you might imagine a ray gun in a James Bond or Flash Gordon movie to be. It is more like a giant doughnut cut in half or a big “C” surrounding the front of the table. One side has a little window in it where the focused radiation beam will exit. A simple mouse click and the treatment begins. The C-shape rotates a little, to get to the proper angle, so it is just hitting the breast and not any internal part of the body. Little numbers jump around on the monitors and 48 secs later it stops. Mouse click 2 sends the ray gun rotating 190 degrees on it’s axis, so the window is on the other side of Donna’s body aiming up and once again skimming the body and just blasting breast tissue. We countdown 48 more seconds, done.

The tech then opens the vault and calls in that they’re done. The table is retracted and lowered so Donna can hop off. Back to the dressing room to discard the gown and get redressed. The whole thing takes less than 15 minutes. Bye, see you tomorrow.

Only 29 more to go.