20 posts tagged “updates”

I’ve been busy lately, too busy to write a report to wrap up my wife’s trip. I started one last week but didn’t have time to finish. And now fate has written a new chapter in my life.

On Labor Day, two days after my wife returned from her week-long trip (more on that later), we drove down to visit my mom. The highlight of the visit came when I brought out my cell phone and called my mom’s brother, who had turned 90 years old the day before. He and my mom (who is 87) talked for a while. She was very happy to talk with him again–it had been over a year since he last drove up from central Wisconsin.

All was well for a few days. And then …

Early last Friday morning, my wife woke me up at about 2:30 a.m. The phone had been ringing, and it was the nursing home. My mom had fallen and hurt herself. (It was five days short of the fourth anniversary of her first fall.)

She has had a number of falls in recent weeks and months, mainly because she is getting forgetful about locking the wheels of her wheelchair when she tries to get on and off. Usually, she is all right. Not this time.

There was no point in driving down there in the middle of the night–she would be in the emergency room for a while. We went back to bed, and I called the nurses station at the hospital when I got up about 7 a.m. She had suffered a broken elbow and a fracture of a cervical spinal process in her neck. They also discovered a urinary tract infection, but the elbow was the main thing. It’s her right arm, and she’s right-handed.

We drove down to see her late Friday morning. She was uncomfortable in the rigid collar they had put on her. She recognized me, but it was very hard to understand what she was trying to say–not unusual. I did hear her say that she didn’t know what happened.

We went home, and I went ahead with my plans for Friday night, which involved covering a football game out of town and spending the night with a friend. I drove back Saturday morning, did some work, and then we drove down to see her again. That day, Saturday, she was totally out of it. Maybe it was the pain meds. She didn’t seem to recognize me at all, and she kept calling out her brother’s name … and also “Mama.”

I knew what that’s about. Several times in recent months, she had forgotten that her mother died many years ago. She has been asking about her mom during many of our recent visits, and I have to explain to her again that she died long ago. In 1963. Almost 50 years ago. If her mom were still alive, she would be over 120 years old.

And now she was calling for her mother again. My wife speculated “Maybe her mother is very close to her now.” And I wondered, too. Later, I told her this isn’t the first time I have driven home, wondering whether I would ever see her alive again.

She was in deep sleep when we returned Sunday afternoon, but after an hour or so, she woke up–and this time she did recognize me. By now, they had put a soft collar on her. We were able to talk for a little while (as well as she could–she still is hard to understand).

I wasn’t able to visit on Monday (too busy at work and then a meeting at night), but I drove down again on Tuesday afternoon. This time, even the soft collar was down. She was sleeping when I arrived, but she woke up, I gave her some water, and we talked for a while. Then she started getting tired and said I can go now.

I’m hoping she will feel good enough to return to the nursing home in another couple days. They are still doing medical tests. Nurses told me she sat up for a while today and is eating a little more.

It’s rough, though, for me. I haven’t been sleeping well–getting tired easily since this happened. That Saturday visit, especially, was mentally and emotionally draining.

****

As for my wife, she returned to town recently, on a Saturday night. While she was happy to be back home, she was also glad she made the trip.

We had talked nearly every night (until she let her cell phone’s batteries get too weak). When I asked her if she was enjoying herself, she replied, “Oh, you bet!” The people on the tour were kept pretty busy each day, and she got achy at times. Aspirin took care of that.

She was happy to get home but enjoyed the experience. She showed me some of the brochures she got about the shows, some pictures she took, two pieces of jewelry she bought, and she told me about some of her experiences.

One highlight was that she won a “Bugsplat” game on the way home, earning about $15 in quarters. They make a grid on the bus windshield, and the first big bug that splats on the grid pays off (in death) for the bus passenger who selected that square. They also did lots of bingo to pass the time on the bus.

The tour company has gone to Branson, Mo., for several consecutive years. Word is that they will may go to Nashville instead next year. I’m sure she would like that. She said she had a good time with everyone, and she, her roommate and the two other women from our town usually did things together–meals, etc. Bottom line: The trip was worth it.

The cats, of course, were very interested in her return, and she and Maggie had a long bonding session almost immediately. She was moderately impressed that the kitchen was not in any worse shape than when she had left it, and that there was not a big stack of dishes remaining to be washed. (We have an automatic dishwasher, but my vast knowledge does not include how to operate that.) To make up for it, there was a big pile of unwashed clothes upstairs.

She returned on the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend. We took it very easy on Sunday, but on Labor Day itself we went off to visit my mom. She had her first quilting group meeting of the season that Tuesday. It seems that life is getting back to normal.

Charlie, my cat, loves me and would never hurt me. Intentionally. But things can happen, and they did earlier this week.

It was late at night, and I was on my desktop computer upstairs, looking at some websites or working on letters. I heard “Meow-wow!” as Charlie hopped up on the chair next to me and then stepped over into my lap, where she curled up.

This is standard operating procedure for Charlie when I’m on the computer late at night. She will sit for a while, then hop off and go elsewhere. Or she may stick around for a while. Or she may go into orbit around my monitor–climbing up onto the desk, then strolling around the back of the flat-screen monitor (picking her way through some of the junk back there), cycling back to the front and stepping back down into my lap. Or she may go for another orbit. Or another.

It’s rather distracting when you’re trying to concentrate on your writing. But she can get away with it. She’s got me wrapped around her paw, let’s admit it.

Anyway, I was just wearing shorts–it was late, as I said–when Charlie climbed up, as usual, then went around the back of the monitor, as usual, and climbed back down into my lap, as usual. But I may have moved my leg, and that startled her. She started losing her balance. Charlie doesn’t have front claws, if you don’t know, but the ones on her rear paws still work. As she battled to keep her balance, she dug in … and left two long lines at the top of my right thigh …

Me-ouch!!!

I didn’t swear or yell. Charlie fell to the floor and ran off, letting me alone to clean up the blood.

A few minutes later, I went to bed. Soon Charlie hopped up on the bed, next to me. Purr, purr, purr.

****
Outside of that misadventure, I have been doing pretty well while my wife has been gone on her trip. Since I am a novice in the kitchen, you may want to know about that.

On Monday, I baked some frozen twice-baked potatoes. (Does that make them thrice-baked potatoes?) Tuesday, I bought a foot-long chicken sandwich from Subway–had half of it for lunch and the other half for supper, before heading off to a volleyball match. Wednesday, I had got a pizza pasty for lunch from the pasty place next door.

That afternoon, I drove out of town to visit a friend–we had pizza for supper, and I stayed overnight, driving back Thursday morning. I had yogurt and some grapes for lunch–supper was taken en route to another volleyball match, another stop at Subway.

The kitties didn’t get their canned food while I was gone last night. Aside from tha,t they have been fed regularly and their dry food and water is kept in good supply.

As for my wife, she is having a great time, seeing the shows down in Branson. “Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked during our phone call Thursday morning. “Oh, you bet!” she answered.

We have talked every night except last night (no cell reception at my friend’s place). She has been updating me on her adventures, while I tell her about my day. Each day down there has been very busy. This is her last day at Branson–they start the long bus trip home Friday morning.

I will not have to drive to Ironwood to pick her up Saturday night–one of the women from our town who is also taking the tour will drive her home. That’s fine–we’ve got an early deadline because of the Labor Day holiday, and Saturday will be pretty busy for me.

Yeah, I miss her, all right. It’s too quiet at home, though I have managed to keep myself busy. The kitties miss her, too, especially Maggie. But she will be back home within 48 hours.

And she is having a good time, which matters most of all.

There’s no getting around it. It’s going to happen. It really is.

My wife is going to leave me.

Really.

She will leave me for one week–more like 6 1/2 days–when she heads off on her tour down to southern Missouri this weekend.

It’s … going to be different for both of us. For one thing, I don’t cook very well. Hopefully, I can get by. Also, she normally takes care of our three cats–both feeding them and “loving them up” from time to time. Like several times a day. Each.

That’s not going to be in my portfolio. I’ll do well to feed them and make sure they have enough water. So we are going over those instructions.

Beyond that, it’s going to get lonely. No getting around that. Keep in mind that we have been married for “well over five years,” and in all that time we have never been apart for more than four days at a time–ever. This time, we’ll be apart for nearly a week. Plus, she will be farther from home than either of us have ever been. In fact, she will be the first of us to ever leave the Upper Midwest.

(Yes, we have not led very exciting lives.)

We have been preparing for this as well as we can. She got a Tracfone, so she can call me from far away. I got an AC charger for her Ipod and filled it (the Ipod, not the charger) with her favorite kinds of music. She will also have a charger for the rechargeable batteries in her camera.

“Maybe you should take” this and that. Extra clothes. Extra money. A swim suit. A microfiber cloth for cleaning glasses. BreathRight strips. Various over-the-counter meds, plus her prescriptions. This and that. I have been recruited to record “Monk” while she is gone. We went for a shopping trip yesterday, where she got things like undies, bras and luggage tags.

On Saturday afternoon, I drive her about 90 miles west, to the travel agency–the bus leaves at 8 a.m. Sunday. After it heads south, I am on my own for a while. Monday, I’ll be busy at the office, laying out the paper. Maybe that night I’ll go to a bar to watch a football game. Or else a movie at home. Tuesday, I’ve got volleyball. Nothing on Wednesday–maybe I can visit a friend. Thursday, more volleyball. Friday, football. Saturday, writing at the office and then driving back to the bus station to get my weary traveler at the end of her trip.

You can come along, she told me. Yeah, sure. It’s like this. First, this happens to be the start of my very busy period at work. Her tolerance for country music is much greater than mine. She’s got the money, and she’s got the time. I have neither. So I’ll stay here.

Besides, I have had a few adventures in life, and I want her to have some, too. She has never been anywhere as an adult except where I have taken her. And her interests are different than mine. I don’t mind taking her to quilt shows here or there in Wisconsin, but this kind of distance is out of my league.

Before she goes, I will tell her to go have fun and live it up. If she gets the notion to do anything–absolutely anything–don’t think twice, it’s fine with me. No matter where she goes or what she does or who she does it with, fine. Bottom line is, she will be back home next week–so let her have some fun while she’s on her own. If she wants to be naughty, so what?

I do know one thing, though. When she gets Saturday evening, she’s going to be very tired. We will spend a very quiet Labor Day weekend, I’m sure.

****

We got some agonizing news at the office this week. Ready?

Our health insurance rates are going up sharply. The letter from the company says “We are facing an increase of 29.9% to maintain our current coverage.” Oh, is that so?

Well, in my case, right now I am paying $103.50 per pay period (twice a month) for my “healthy lifestyle” coverage. Starting in September, that goes up to $164.09 per pay period. So for me, it’s going to be a 58.5% increase.

That also means my take-home pay goes down by $60.59, and that’s a serious decrease, too. On top of that, the deductible has doubled: from $500 per person/$1,000 for the family to $1,000/$2,000. After we hit $2,000 of covered expenses, the copay starts kicking in.

And I know I’m doing better than a lot of others who are collectively known as “the working poor,” those who don’t have insurance or who work a batch of part-time jobs. It just doesn’t add up.

Now, compare that with a friend of mine who works for a university–one of their business offices. She tells me she pays $59.08 every two weeks to cover herself and her husband. The annual deductible is $250 per person/$500 per year family. (There are three different levels of care, and theirs is the middle plan.) On top of that, her husband is retired military, so they have coverage from the government, too.

When my wife and I went on our three-day vacation trips this summer, some of the places we visited were Wausau and Appleton, Wis. Both are the homes of a number of insurance companies, and we couldn’t help but notice the palatial/opulent corporate offices. My premiums at work.

Gee, do you think this is a sore point with me?

Health care insurance reform is looking more distant each day. Sorry to say it, but you can’t deny facts. The “big lie” strategy has succeeded in getting the policy debate completely off course. And now Ted Kennedy has died. He was a great man because he cared about the little people. Like me. There aren’t very many like him: on the endangered species list. And, as for him being an unapologetic liberal, that breed may have just gone extinct.

There have been a few blog posts about the health care debate over the last month or so, and they have ignited flame wars. More heat, less light is not going to solve anything.

I just wonder about those who read about the debate in other countries and how they must be rolling their eyes at this. I’m a proud American, and I don’t like it when my country makes a fool of itself.

But we seem to have this knack.

The month of July has been busy. With a capital B. It's been hard to find time to catch up with my thoughts, let alone digest them well enough to put them down for you to read.

Work is very busy in summer. Last week, we had the big high school football camp in town, followed by the firemen's tournament late in the week. That was a blast. Lots of fun. Article and photos to come soon, I hope.

I still am trying to find time to do an article and pictures about a visit to a museum in Rhinelander, particularly a one-room schoolhouse. Found some interesting stuff there, especially to those of you who are in the education field.

But that has to wait. Next week, my wife and I will be going on a trip to central Wisconsin, and we really need to work out a plan very soon. I'm hoping we can get together and plot everything out tonight. This is mostly a trip for her, places that she wants to visit. We're going to the Wausau area first and then to Oshkosh to visit S and her husband.

More things going on ...

--As you may know, we are trying to sell my mom's house. We have moved nearly everything out of it, but my wife wants a few of the remaining items for us--bedroom furniture, the kitchen table, an old sewing machine table. So we need to find a couple guys and a truck to haul it from one place to another. Along with that, I am tracking down various bits of information regarding the house for the real estate agent who is trying to sell it.

The house is costing me a lot of money--property taxes, insurance, upkeep, utility bills. All this money is coming out of my wallet, and the so0ner I sell the house, the happier I will be.

 --My friend B, whom you read about recently, is going on a trip. She is flying from Alaska to a major West Coast city (You'd recognize the name in a instant.), where she will meet a friend of hers. This time the friend is not me. She told me about it about a week ago.

The news came soon after she had to call off a get-together we were talking about in mid-August. I have one weekend off in August, and she was planning a flight to the Midwest so we could renew acquaintances. But someone in her office is getting married, and she has to cover for her during the honeymoon that week. (Her weekend with this other guy is the weekend before.)

It wasn't happy news, certainly, and B was worried how I would take it. But look at it this way:

1. B and I did meet just a few weeks ago. Not a long time but long enough to know that we enjoyed each other's company very much. It was a wonderful time--one of the best of my life.

2. B and her other friend are both parts of polyamorous couples. They have been writing each other for about a year. It's time they met, I think.

I'm not sad they are meeting and spending a weekend together. What makes me sad is that the door is rapidly closing on our chances for another visit for quite a while--fall and football are just around the corner, you know. And right after that: winter.

I am angry. Not at her. Not at him. Not at myself. But I have been muttering "this damn job" to myself a lot more than I ever have. Work increasingly is getting in the way of personal happiness. Think about it: The one August weekend I could get away is the one weekend she can't. I told B that I feel we are both tied down to our respective offices by invisible ropes we just can't break.

Anyway, B and I had a long phone chat last weekend, and we agree that we will be seeing other people because our next visit may not come for a long while. Maybe not until 2010. Maybe not until next summer.

Maybe somehow, deep inside, we knew that when we got together over the Fourth. Because we packed an awful lot of living into those four days and three nights.

--The last bit of news is about my wife. She may be going on an Adventure! With a capital A. Believe it or not.

She is considering taking a bus tour to Branson, Mo., for a week-long series of concerts and shows. This would take place the week before Labor Day. I would drive her to the bus station and pick her up again a week later. In between, the kitties and I would fend for ourselves.

She hasn't committed yet--no check has been sent. She seems to be leaning that way, though, and I am urging her to go for it and have an Adventure. I don't want her to get cold feet--I want her to get out and do something fun and different, maybe even a little selfish, for once in her life. It won't bother me that I'm back home--for me, frankly, a little country music goes a long way.

(She would like to go on long trips with me, too, but then I would lose much of my vacation time, which I want to keep for other opportunities. This damn job.)

How different would this be for her? It would be the farthest she has ever been from home. For that matter, it's also farther than I have ever been from home. And our time apart will be our longest separation since we started going together--just after the first footprints on the moon's surface. That's a long time.

But I think it would be a really good thing for her, and we are moving ahead. Maybe we'll invest in her own cell phone so she can keep in touch with me--cheaper than using motel phones, certainly.

Occasionally, I noted to her, her sisters take trips to Vegas, and that may be something she wants to think about--to go along with them.  Time will tell.

Oh, that was a big stone to pass!

That big stone was the spring sports season, which ended last Saturday with the track finals. Because of budget cuts here in the office, I couldn’t travel to cover much of it in person, and because of space restrictions, I couldn’t write too much or put in too many pictures. The shoe in pinching here, too. So the trick I had to perform was to squeeze in the same amount of information in less space. Just one trip per week. Write tight. Trim down the pictures and use fewer of them.

Anyway, now it’s over. The local sports scene should be a lot quieter now that high school is done with until next August, and I will have a more time for other things. The hockey playoffs are still going on, but that’s in the final lap, too. It may be over this Saturday night. It could go until next Friday. Either way, it won’t be long.

It’s nice and sunny today, with temperatures close to 70, but spring has been reaaaaaalllllllyyy slow to arrive up here. A couple days ago we never reached 50 all day. It’s a spring characterized by persistent chilly winds from the northwest. Lots of wind, too. We also have had freeze warnings from time to time, including last night. Sweet! Are we really in June? I’ve got a feeling that all of a sudden summer will hump on our backs, and we’ll go from brisk days in the 60s to muggy ones in the 90s–just like that.

Whatever the weather, my wife and I are going on a little trip next week, a mini vacation. We are going to the eastern end of the U.P. and then north, across the border into Canada–Sault Ste. Marie, specifically. We will be looking around town and taking a train excursion north into the interior–a one-day trip.

Yes, we know about the new travel laws, but we went to the post office about a month ago, filled out the forms and had pictures taken. A week or two ago, our brand new passport cards arrived in the mail. Neither of us have ever had a passport (or had any need of them), so this was a new experience.

The cards are only good for crossing into Canada (or Mexico) by land or sea. If we ever fly into Canada, we would need the familiar passport book. But we have never flown anywhere. Our vacations have always been short and close to home, and this one will be no exception.

In all, we’ll be gone four days, including two days of driving. We are hoping to be back home on Saturday, in time to go to a Baby Bison fest at a nearby ranch where they raise–you guessed it!–buffalo. Maybe that will have to wait for another year, but I hope not.

On Friday, I’m taking the afternoon off and driving my wife and son to Rhinelander–just for fun and to look around, maybe a little shopping. We haven’t been down there for a while. We were planning to there over Memorial Day, but my car blew a muffler (or so it sounded) on my way to Memorial Day events.

Meanwhile, B and I continue to fine-tune plans for our first visit and our trip to the neopagan event in southern Wisconsin around the Fourth of July. I sent in the registration forms and the check Wednesday morning. (In case you forgot my plan: I am driving my wife for a visit to her sisters in northwest Wisconsin, then continuing west to the Twin Cities airport to pick up B. We drive down there, spend three nights on the road (one in a tent, two in a motel), then I drive her back to the airport. Then, I’m solo as I drive back to the inlaws, pick up my wife again and head for home.)

We have been talking a lot about it, and we’re both really excited at the thoought of finally getting to meet each other.

See this photo?

Spring-clouds-5-09.jpg

It’s a pretty picture, but I almost didn’t see it. I did because I did something I haven’t been doing lately–I took time and looked up.

I saw these clouds as I was driving back from a boys high school golf tournament last Thursday morning. I had enjoyed being on the links, zipping around on a golf cart, trying to find some of our local kids. I don’t get out on golf courses too often–never have been a golfer. I enjoyed the sun and breeze and singing birds along the way, but I was too busy to be really aware of them.

Until I turned the corner on my way back to the office, when my eyes fell on these clouds, and I felt compelled to pull over and get out my camera for a photo or two. The squirrel escapes his wheel for a moment.

Otherwise, he has been in the wheel and running very hard for very little that seems meaningful. Work on the summer tourism section is over, and now we are in the crazy May spring sports season. It’s just one month long in the U.P., since spring usually is slow to arrive and everything has to be wrapped up by early June. That means lots of events are crammed into four poor little weeks, along with the graduation runup, special editions, Memorial Day previews, early deadlines and all that. Run, run, run, run, run. In June, we can exhale and get into summertime mode.

Plus the other stuff in my life, away from the job. Driving back and forth to visit my mom. The Stanley Cup playoffs, which I find entertaining but which sure can suck up many space hours. A bunch of other things. B and I have been writing back and forth a lot, and we even tried out Skype a time or two. A face-to-face, so to speak, thanks to the webcam on my laptop. The countdown to our first-ever meeting now stands at less than eight weeks.

Today, of course, is Mother’s Day. My wife and I decided to go out to a nice lunch and then take a nap together. Naps are fun! She got her flowers yesterday, at the same time we got my mom some–we drove down and visited her for a while. Then, on Monday, I go back into my wheel.

I’ve got one other thing in my life right now. It is a very major thing, one that would be great and wonderful news if it comes about. I’m not superstitious by nature, but maybe if I say nothing about it, it may enhance its chances of coming true. That’s how I’m playing it for now. It it comes about, you’ll know about it. Definitely.

****
I can tell you about a major project my wife recently finished. She was in charge of things for her church’s fellowship dinner last Sunday. It involved plenty of time on the phone and, during the week before the dinner, a special mission to ***-mart, where we raided their frozen food chests. Frozen green beans, to be specific. For a dish she wanted to make (100 servings), she calculated she needed 15 pounds of frozen green beans.

They didn’t have large bags of frozen green beans, as we had hoped, but they did have 28-ounce bags of beans. Hmmm, says my wife, let’s see. How many 28-ounce bags of frozen beans equals 15 pounds? She remembered that my phone has a calculator, so I converted 28 ounces to 1 3/4 pounds, then divided 15 by 1 3/4. Turns out we needed 8 4/7 28-ounce bags to get 15 pounds. But ***-mart only had seven bags, so we bought out what they had and got the remaining 2 3/4 pounds from one of our local stores.

We also got mushrooms and tomatoes. A bunch of other stuff. The final thing we got was frozen sherbet. Six half-gallon containers of that. All that stuff was taken to the church basement over several days.

Sunday came. It was a nice day, they had a big turnout and lots of food to feed everyone. The beans were very good, and so were the mushrooms and things other people made–ham, casseroles, salads, desserts, cakes, you name it. They even opened one of those six half-gallon containers of sherbet. But people were sort of stuffed by then and didn’t have much room left over for dessert. Don’t know what became of those five other half-gallons of sherbet (some rainbow, some orange).

This last week, I noticed, my wife was observed relaxing a bit more than usual. Deserved it, don’t you think?

Oh, I had such big plans for the weekend! I was really going to work on getting my new efx3.com site set up nicely, pick a new theme, write some really interesting posts and so on. But then things happened.

My Saturday turned out to be way too busy for creative stuff. Not that I did very much. I worked all morning at the office. Then I went home for lunch, and my wife suggested that we take a nap. But a nap was not exactly what she had in mind. Not at first. And actually, that's what I also had in mind. So two minds met and joined ... and then we really did take a nap after that. Slept well.

After we got up, I thought we'd have a quiet dinner at home and then maybe I could watch some hockey or else we'd agree on a movie. But she had other ideas. A while ago, we agreed that we would hold a special Victory Over Basketball dinner, to celebrate that I had covered my last basketball game of the season and will be able to spend a lot more time at home now. We don't go out for steak that often, but we agreed this was a special occasion worth celebrating. The question: When would we do it?

She decided this would be the perfect night for it, so we went to a supper club located just a few blocks away. It was the first time we had gotten steaks there, but they did a really good job. I opted for a tenderloin with a baked potato on the side. Yumm! That was good eating. The only problem was that the gift certificate I had gotten about two years ago expired at the end of 2008. Well, it was a nice, tasty meal anyway.

After that, I thought I would go upstairs and do some writing, occasionally glancing over to the hockey game on TV nearby. But that didn't happen because of my friend, B.

B (who lives in Alaska) and I recently decided to set up a DVD exchange program. Sort of like Netflix, only without the subscription, fees, inventory and annoying popup ads on your computer screen. I recently mailed her some films, and her package with a few films arrived in Saturday morning's mail. We looked them over and decided to try "Definitely Maybe." Once it was over, my wife was getting sleepy, so I took her up to bed and finally got to sit at the computer keyboard, fully intending to write something. But I quickly realized I was tired, too, and couldn't focus my mind. I gave up within 10 minutes and went to bed.

Better luck on Sunday? I worked at the office in the morning, then went home. But David was there, too, and he brought along the movie "Wall-E." He had gone to Iron Mountain with us on Friday and said he might come over. He did. So we watched "Wall-E." Or tried to. My wife conked out halfway through and soon was "purring."

When the movie ended, he went upstairs, and I started using the text editor on the Efx3 dashboard. I had been using it (instead of Google Docs) since the site started. But I bet you can guess the rest: I hit a wrong combination of keys and wiped out all my changes since last saving it. Lesson learned--I'm back to using Google Docs, because of its automatic backups.

****

Two big changes to report. First, as you have seen already, I switched to a very different theme at efx3.com. Actually, I was looking themes over this evening, and I hit a wrong key (which I seem to be doing a lot lately), and the new theme took effect. Actually, though, I like the way it came out. Plus, the picture at the top can be changed. How long do you think it will be before you see Charlie looking out at you?

Finally, it got a lot warmer here--the 40s, anyway, which is pretty darn warm for this area in March--and nearly all the snow is gone. The back yard only has brown grass, aside from a few leftover piles of snow where the plow dumped it. Those are disappearing, also, and this week we are forecast to get rain, not snow.

I'm sure we are still destined for one last major snowstorm, but the ground has warmed up a bit now, the frost is coming out of the ground, so any new snow won't stay around for long. Given how long and how cold this winter has been, it's only fair. Bring on summer!

I've got to be honest with myself. I've been a bad blogger. (And, by the way, that's "bad" in the traditional sense. I'm not hip enough to use "bad" in any other way.)

I've got my excuses, I guess. The big one is the pace of work, which has been horrendous. Yeah, I know, I should be grateful to have a job, much less one that I actually enjoy. But it gets a lot less enjoyable because of the rush of things.

Lately, it has been oodles of basketball. Three and four nights of basketball per week, after the normal day in the office. As you may know, basketball has limited appeal to me in the first place, and my nights have been focused mainly on free throws and dribbles and inbounds passes. And free throws. Or did I mention that already? There have been that many.

That plus several special editions (working on stories for them) have filled my work hours pretty thoroughly.

The end of the season isn't far away, though. A month from now, it should all be over.

I've been doing other things when I have spare time. Inspired by a recent movie I saw, I am trying to learn chess. To do this, I am following tutorials in the Chessmaster 9000 computer game. But some of the tutorials--mainly examples where I am supposed to implement the lesson I have just learned--take a lot of time to complete. If I don't finish it, I have to go back to the beginning when I try it again. Which doesn't sound right. I am on "discoveries" right now.

I have also taken the plunge and invested in a new cell phone. The cost of the phone isn't that astounding ($20 with a two-year agreement), but the leap in faith was opting for a monthly plan that costs $30 more than what I had been paying per month--in order to get data/internet/e-mails on my "phone."

The word "phone" scarely describes what these "devices" are capable of. In my case, I opted for a Blackberry Pearl, a jazzy red one. At least, in a concession to what the item is really for, I chose a ringtone that sounds a lot like an old-time telephone. How quaint!

My friend, B, and I have been writing a lot. She has become a good friend. Frankly, we are discussing the chances of us getting together some time. (I am poly, and so are B and her husband.) It won't be easy--for one thing, the distance between us is pretty impressive. For another, because of her job she can't take vacations in June and July, which are quiet months for me. Where there's a will, there's a way, of course. What that way is remains to be seen.

Anyway ... I suppose I should report on what I did for Valentine's Day. I worked all morning. After lunch with my wife, she and I did something together: We went grocery shopping! That included getting a movie at the video place. More on that later.

(By the way, you may be wondering how I observe Valentine's Day with the other women I am emotionally close to, S and B. The answer is, I don't. They don't even get an e-card. Valentine's Day is exclusively reserved to be observed with my primary sweetie, the way S and B should spend it with their primaries. S has been married to her husband for 20 years, and B married her husband 31 years ago.)

Back to my observance of the day: Late in the afternoon, my wife told me where she wanted to go to eat--a restaurant in town, where they serve steaks. But it was too late for reservations, so we needed a plan B. We went to the place just across the border (in Wisconsin) where we got for fish fries. They had a surf and turf available, but we were thinking steak.

In the end, neither of us ordered steak. She opted for broasted chicken, and I chose beer-battered cod. A nice meal. We agreed that we will hold off our steak dinner for about another month, to celebrate the end of basketball season (after the final team I cover has been eliminated from the post-season tournament).

As for the movie we chose, it was "Evening." We both read over the box at the video place and decided to go for it. Here is the link to the Amazon page and write-up, in case you haven't seen that one.

After watching it, she fed the kitties, and then we went to bed. She lit a couple candles, we snuggled up and started stroking each other ...

And then it was morning!

It's now late at night, not so far from midnight, so I'm signing off. Another busy day tomorrow. Better get some sleep.

The BIG change won't be happening for another 2 1/2 months, but it should be in motion after today. After four years of waiting, it's Election Day. Will America get it right this time?

Most of the states had some form of early voting. In Michigan, well, we're a little behind the times. Everyone votes on Election Day in Michigan unless they get an absentee ballot. After discussing it with my wife, we decided to do our voting in the mid morning, just as I was driving her to the church and the quilters' group.

Lovely weather. It's partly cloudy outside, and temperatures are in the mid 60s. Not bad for early November!

So how long did voting take? How long were we in line? It took all of 15 seconds before I got the little slip (signature, address, date of birth) that I had to fill out to get my ballot; I also had to show my driver's license. Then I went into another room with the little voting booths and filled out the ballot. Same with my wife. Studied the ballot proposals: medical marijuana, yes; fewer restrictions on stem cell research, of course. Fed the ballot into the optical scanner. (Our ballots have the ovals that you fill in with a black felt-tip pen.) The whole procedure took five minutes, if that. Then I drove my wife to the quilters and went back to work.

It was, I should mention, my first chance to vote for Obama. Ever. Many of you had the chance to take part in primaries or caucuses early this year, but Michigan held an illegal Democratic primary in January (10 months ago). Knowing the DNC wouldn't accept the results, many candidates, including Obama, took their names off the ballot. It raised a ruckus in the run-up to the convention in August. Eventually, they figured out a solution.

We have a little tradition here on Election Day: Pancake Day. The local Kiwanis Club holds its Pancake Day on Election Day, so normally we vote, and then we get pancakes. Except this time we voted earlier than normal, so I took her to the quilters--they took her to the church where Pancake Day was taking place at 11:30 a.m., and I met her there. Pancakes. Sausages. Milk. Butter. It made for a filling mid-day repast.

We had finished the winter tourism issue (final step: proofreading) this morning. Tonight (at 5 p.m.) I will be covering a district volleyball tourney; I cover one match, then go home for supper and to watch the returns come in.

The volleyball districts continue on Thursday and Friday. Meanwhile, our football teams will both be going for their district titles on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Both teams will be home. Both were home last Friday night for "sub-district" games. The weather was pretty decent: temperatures were in the 40s with no rain.

It wasn't so nice one week earlier, the final week of the regular season. The game I was at Friday night had some interesting weather. For most of the first half, it rained. Things got pretty soggy. Here's a picture of the action on the field during the rain ...

The rain eventually stopped during the second quarter, but during the second half fog started building. It went from soggy to foggy pretty quickly. Foggy conditions are hard for photography, especially action sports like football. Especially in a small, old stadium with poor lighting.

For a while, I tried using my flash like usual. But the light from the flash picks up all the water vapor in the air and you get something like this ...

Playing around with Photoshop can help some ... but it only goes so far ...

What was I to do? I finally tried turning off the flash and using available light. The trouble was, there wasn't much available light. This is what the field looked like from the sidelines with all that fog in the air ...

I wound up using one picture from during the rain and a shot of the reaction on the bench after our team earned a safety--I got the shot of the tackle in the end zone, too, but it was just too dark to use. You don't believe me?

The next day (Saturday afternoon), David and I went to the dome in Marquette for an evening game. It was just cloudy, so photography conditions were much better. Here's what the Superior Dome looks like from the outside ...

And here is what it is like inside ...

If our teams win this weekend, we'll probably by back in the Dome for the regional title games. As the playoffs move on, of course, the U.P.'s weather gets less football-friendly. We have been lucky so far, but good luck lasts only so long.

Everyone else is fine. The cats continue to adjust to each other. David came over last night--it was his birthday, so we had a favorite meal of his, and we watched some football. I bought him something he had wanted for a long time--a DVD recorder and VCR unit with a tuner. The DVD recorder doesn't have a hard drive of its own (like mine does; you just can't get them any more), but he wanted it mainly to copy some of his old videotapes, and the unit I bought will handle that with no problem (according to the box).

I know I haven't been around here much lately. What can I say? The World Seri0us captured my attention. The election, of course--I've been watching CNN and C-SPAN a lot. And I've been pretty busy with night assignments. It should start easing off fairly soon.

I've missed writing. I like to write at night, and there just hasn't been the time lately--because my wife likes it when we sit together and watch something. Or else when I'm upstairs writing, Charlie comes around. She hops up on the computer desk, walks around behind the flast-screen monitor, comes out the other side and climbs down into my lap. That's just the way she does it.

Then she's happy. Purr, purr. And I'm done with writing for a while.

Our area had a lovely day today. It started cloudy and cool, but then it cleared off and got into the low 50s. I celebrated it after work today by doing something I hadn't done for a while: I mowed the lawn.

Final rite of our rapidly disappearing summer. A cold front is supposed to blow through on Sunday. We may see snowflakes before Monday.

The grass had gotten long because I hadn't mown it for a while. Part of it is basic laziness, I suppose, but the long delay is partly due to the ankle I twisted in early September. We have a push mower, so when you mow the lawn you get some good exercise. I didn't want to push the ankle until it was feeling nearly back to normal. It is now. If I twist it the wrong way, it hurts a little. Otherwise, it's back to normal.

I had to run out for a picture this evening, and when I walked out to the car, I said to myself that the lawn is looking fairly nice. Better than it was, certainly.

The picture, by the way, was at a youth hockey practice. Yes, winter's on the way.

****
Geez, I've fallen behind on everyone's blogs lately. I've got an excuse. Maybe not a good one, but it's better than nothing.

At work, we have been working hard on our winter tourism issue. The official deadline is this weekend, and I fell behind on things last week. Suddenly it came to me--Eureka!--that nobody else is going to do the work for me. So I had to hustle my bustle. Like they say about the butcher who sat down in the meat grinder, "I'm getting a little behind in my work."

So no quiet time at the office this week. Instead, manic work to get a bunch of features written or updated. Meanwhile, I had a pair of friends I wanted to write to, and that took up my evenings at home. And I was already tired, from all the work I had done.

Also, Wednesday was my wife's birthday, and we wanted to visit my mom that evening. So we did. I got her a couple cards. Some of you may remember some of the infamous cards I get for my wife. The stock of clever ones seemed to be down this year. Still, I came up with this one.

Here is the front ...

And this is inside ...

****
On a recent trip to see my mom, my wife and I decided to get a scratch mat for Max. We put it out, and Max seemed to take to it ...

So did the other two cats. Maggie decided to give it a try. She thought it was good to sit on ...

And Charlie decided to give it a try. First, she worked it up with a paw to make a little tunnel out of it ...

Then the little feathery toy on it got her attention, and Charlie had a great time playing with it ...

Oh, she was having a great time with it ...

The cats are getting along a lot better. Still an occasional hiss or growl, but it's gotten a lot better. Last time I wrote, I wasn't sure it was going to work out. Now it's better.

Max's personality is coming out more. He likes to get petted but doesn't like to be picked up that often. But he comes around, rubbing against my legs or my hand when I put it down. He likes to get his head petted and scratched. Purr, purr.

Meanwhile, nearly every morning now, Charlie comes to visit me about 5 a.m., when I'm just waking up. I feel her walking up by my side. I try to lie on my back, with my arm to my side, so Charlie will lie down by my side, with my arm on the other side, so she can put her forepaws on my upper arm. Purr, purr. Sometimes she gets her middle rubbed. Other times, I drift back to sleep.

Did I ever tell you that Charlie likes crackers? Every cat is strange in some way, and Charlie seems to have a weakness for ordinary soda crackers. When I came out to the living room this evening with a pair crackers, Charlie hopped up by me. Meow? Meow? Urrrow? She starts sniffing the crackers and tries to lick them, so I finally break off a tiny corner and offer it to her. She sniffs and then eats it. You could hear a soft crunch, crunch. She had two pieces and was satisfied.

Ironically, my wife said she was sitting with Charlie yesterday. She had a couple crackers for herself ... and Charlie paid them no attention.