iTunes in the blender

I really don't know what I want to write about tonight. I put on iTunes, set it to Party Shuffle, so we'll see where it takes the music and where the music takes me. Right now, it's playing Ernest Tubb's "Our Baby's Book" from the 1940s.

I had a busy Tuesday. In the morning, I had an appointment with my cardiologist. More on that later. Then a photo. Then trying to catch up on things at the office. Then, my wife and I went to Iron Mountain. Near Florence, Wis., we saw evidence of how warm and wet the weather has been lately: a lake where you normally see ice fishermen and shacks on a thickly frozen surface. Like this picture, taken last February ...

Keyes Lake, Feb. 2007

Same spot, this week

Now, do you remember my adventures last September in getting my dad's guns into Michigan? (Short recap: My dad died in 1995. My mom moved into the nursing home in 2005. Over the summer of '07, my wife and I spent a lot of time cleaning out her house, and that's where we came across my dad's deer rifle and three handguns. Since I don't hunt or have any use for guns, I decided to have someone sell them to raise a little money.)

Here is what I posted at the time.

Just before Christmas, I got a phone call from the department where the guns were registered. Three months after the fact, they got a call from the Michigan State Police: They had handled it wrong. So I have to take the guns back in my possession, take them to my town and register them with my local police department. After that, I can drive them back to the gun dealer--right back where they came from--and transfer the guns to him. It's a lot of jumping through hoops.

(By the way, the deer rifle and one of the handguns have been sold.)

So on Tuesday, I stopped at the gun dealer's place, filled out a number of forms, picked up the two remaining handguns, put them in my car's trunk and took them home. On Wednesday, I took them to the local police department and registered them in my name again. Of course, that meant filling out more forms in triplicate; then the local PD had to call in to the federal authorities to make sure (A) that the guns weren't hot or wanted, and (B) that I wasn't hot or wanted. Or something.

Anyway, it took about an hour, but all that was completed. Next week sometime, I'll drive back to the gun dealer's place, and then we will fill out still more forms to transfer the guns back to the dealer.

Those should be the last hoops I'll have to jump through on behalf of the guns. I hope.

We also visited my mom. She was OK but in a quiet mood. It was a gray, cloudy day--typical January weather for the U.P., notwithstanding the fact that we were across the border in Wisconsin. From there, we had supper (Subway), went to a girls basketball game ( had to cover and then home.

Today, the weather was back below freezing, and all the water-covered ice has frozen. Walking is still treacherous though not as bad as earlier. My wife put out some salt on the walks.

****
Now, back to the cardiologist. As you may/may not remember, when I had my physical in October, he detected a rapid heartbeat--an atrial flutter. So in early November, I drove up to Marquette for some tests.

Everything went well. The cardiologist sent me a letter, and the last paragraph reads: "Given the fact that you do have good exercise tolerance with normal heart function and no evidence of coronary artery disease, your long-term prognosis remains excellent."

For years, I have had a problem with atrial fibrillation. Had--it's been mostly controlled with meds. At our appointment Tuesday, the cardiologist said he wants me to consider undergoing a Mini-MAZE operation. I won't go into what it all entails, but, he wrote in the letter, "The advantage of these procedures is they could eliminate the atrial arrthymias permanently with establishing sinus rhythm long term without the need for any antiarrthymic drugs or blood thinners."

I'd love to have the operation--the meds cost money, and one of them means the blood drives won't take my blood donations, something I did a lot before this. But it's not realistic. Our expensive Swiss cheese health insurance plan only covers part of the cost, and the doctor said the procedure would involve several days in the hospital. That's serious money, and the insurance would only cover part of the cost. Plus, it's elective surgery.

So I told him that I can't do it this year. Maybe next year or the year after that. Odds are, though, that tomorrow will never come.

I didn't tell him that.

****
Ernest Tubb was just on again, singing "Slipping Around." Great song, and pretty close to life. But it wasn't all E.T. on iTunes. I had some Hendrix, Zappa, the B-52s, The Who, Dire Straits and even Lester "Roadhog" Moran and his Cadillac Cowboys.

A more eclectic mix of music is hard to find.