Sunday, September 21, 2014

Big City... Big City Nights

It is Sunday morning... 3:11am actually... here I am laying in bed with my lovely wife sleeping beside me, in our favorite room in the house.  Why not!  It's got a nice big TV, a fridge, bathroom's just around the corner, not much could make it better.  It's the first official day of fall for '14, I believe.

Now that summer's done, I can give a brief update on what we've been up to around here.  I look at that last post I entered, and yeah, a few things have actually developed since then.  But first, vacation.  It was fantastic.  Absolutely.  If you're a friend on facebook, you might have seen the well over 100 pictures we snapped while we were away in Boston very recently.  We love that city so much, we've pretty well pledged to go back every year now.  The big draw for us, of course, is our beloved Red Sox.  Last year's world champs, this year, not so much.  No matter, we're faithful Sox fans regardless of the win/loss record.  There's just nothing like seeing a game at Fenway Park.  We took in batting practice this time around and actually got to go on the warning track of the field, something I didn't realize was going to happen, so I was pumped!  It was pretty surreal being so close to the players and being on that sacred piece of real estate.  The game we took in had us wondering if we bring bad luck to our boys.  They lost quite badly actually, and played a sloppy game, par for the course this year really, but they do have a lot of real young guys on the team.  The last quarter or so of the season has basically been a tryout for who'll be with them next year.  Still, the place was packed and everyone was having a great time, especially us, and we're looking forward to doing it again next year.

We got to go on the Duck Boats this time, a vehicle from the older military that's a land/water hybrid, and we toured the city seeing the tons and tons of history.  What an amazing city.   You just don't know until you go there and go on one of the many tours there are there.  The history is astounding.  That might even sound boring or something, but you have no idea unless you've been there how stimulating it is to learn about everything that's gone on in that place.  We could go there every year for the rest of our lives, take two or three tours each year, and still never come close to learning all there is that Boston has to offer.  If you've ever thought about going, just do it!  One tip though, stay in nearby Attleboro or Mansfield; we stayed at the Red Roof Inn at the latter.  It's cheaper, but best probably to get a hotel rather than an inn or motel.  But hotels are real pricey in the city.  And bring a GPS.  Man, if not for that, I think we might still be in the midwestern States somewhere right now, trying to find our way back.  But that's me.  Never been good with the roads thing.

As we were doing stuff one day before the game, we checked out, very briefly, the science center, which Alexandra had absolutely positively no interest in, so we put it on ice till next year.  But what a massive building with tons of fascinating things there.  We shopped in a huge three floor mall, which had a Cheesecake Factory in it, the restaurant Penny on the Big Bang Theory works in (nope, she wan't working... DAMN).  Great food, greater cheesecake.  Ritzy but casual.  The next day, we opted for the far cheaper Jerry Remy's for our now-annual RemDawg, the biggest hot dogs I've ever seen.  You have to eat these things with a fork and knife, they're that big.

We walked the streets a lot there, and it was just nice to take in the atmosphere of the living space.  The people in Boston are ultra-friendly... until you get them behind the wheel, then they turn into rather grumpy, unintentionally hilarious impatient drivers.  "Fawk!  Where'd ya learn how ta drive a cah??!  There ain't no pawking at a green light dumbass!"  Just funny to us.  Those accents are everywhere, and it's really endearing.  To us at least.  Even if they're blowing a gasket driving.

The weather was great the whole time we were there, although driving in was questionable.  We'd never seen such a torrential downpour for such an extended period of time.  I remarked "this is the kind of weather you wind up getting tornadoes with."  Sure enough, we got to our hotel, and the desk clerk told us there were tornado warnings just outside Boston.  Whew!  Too close for comfort.  But it cleared up real quick.  Otherwise, the sun was out, the temperatures were comfortable, and all was fantastic.  We even got to see skywriters in the sky, five or six little planes spitting out plumes spelling 'Go Sox' over the city.

Coming back, we had to make our usual junk stops, get our funky flavors of pop and whatever.  We'd said we wouldn't get a lot, and wound up overfilling the trunk and half the backseat with Alexandra.  We laughed the whole trip though, and just had awesome family time.

So we get settled back in, in the middle of the week, and we spend the last few days at home before going back to work.  I signed on to social media places and saw a lot of drama going on, and thought, you know what?  I'm going to deactivate this stuff for the rest of my vacation, so I did.  With every intention to go back on, which I did.  Except that damn Twitter, which I just don't find interesting, despite giving it a second or third chance.  I find it impersonal and rather insincere, so I turfed it.  If you're among the very few that was my friend there, sorry about that.

There have been developments regarding my health, with regards to that last post I did here on Ragnar.  Turns out I'm not a hypochondriac after all, at least with my knee, as the surgeon I saw told me I do indeed have damage in there, a floating piece of my knee, that could end up getting lodged in the joint and locking up my leg.  Lots of pain involved in that I guess.  So he more or less said, get surgery done, or I'll be back one day at outpatients with doctors trying to unlock my knee, and then it'll just keep happening.  So surgery it is.  I guess the waiting list is very long... something like a year, but I agreed to be on the cancellation call list, so I could go in tomorrow for all I know.  I don't know what the recovery time is, but I'm assuming it's inside of a month?  We'll see when it happens I guess.   I remember my brother Rick getting his knee taken care of, and he wound up with a blood clot that kept him sidelined a lot longer.  Here's hoping I'm not as unlucky as he was.

In the meantime, the knee still hurts, I still limp, and the day before I left for my vacation, my knee actually gave at work, where I took a rather nasty tumble and cracked the back of my head on the hinge of a walk-in freezer door.  That didn't tickle.  I was lying there on the floor for about a minute before I picked myself up and went home, thankfully at the end of my shift.  Tylenol 3 was in order.

Alexandra has now officially graduated from her makeup artistry course, and is going to Fredericton Monday for an examination to get her license.  She'll have to do a few makeup jobs on a volunteer... in this case, her mom... to get her evaluation.  Obviously I'll stay behind.  I asked for the day off from my boss since I won't have the car so they can go.  Next time I pipe in here, I'll say how she did.  I've no doubt she'll do amazing.

Janice is doing good, still faithfully going to the gym, as do I.  She does a lot of extra cardio, though, and it's a struggle, because her multiple illnesses fight back at her battling to lose the extra lb's.  She's still not really fully recovered since the whole Bell's Palsy thing as far as getting the full effectiveness of her arthritic medication, being in considerable pain on a regular basis.  In spite of her illnesses, though, she never misses time at work.  Only when she suffered that bout of BP did she take time off, and she had to be told to.  Make no mistake, though.  Mess with her and she'll drop you like an Acme anvil on Wile E.Coyote.

As for me, I've got an appointment with an ENT in November, finally.  I haven't had a nosebleed since the last massive one last time I posted, thank God.  That doesn't mean things are fine.  I still get wicked sinus headaches, and I can't help but feel like my nose is a time bomb ready to go off any given night.  Still no word on a shrink appointment though, but all's good concerning those issues.

If something's really bothering me these days, that would be a friend of mine who recently got a diagnosis that she has a terminal illness.  We pray for her that something will happen to turn it around, and I don't believe in a no-win scenario when it comes to doctors anyway.  I've heard of way too many who bounce back from a dire prognosis.  But of course, it's heavy on my mind.

Before I sign off, I'd like to give shout-outs to those who I think might be reading....... my great friend Tim, whom I haven't see in a bit; Michelle, my lovely author buddy; another Michelle, going all the way back to '84; bros Rick and Pete, who both check in and see how things are at Ragnar every so often; of course, my lovely wife Janice; my good buddy Darren, whom I reconnected with not all that long ago, a friend since we were still in our single digits; and to everyone else that I don't know of that might be reading, thank you for checking in on me.  Your interest in my goings-on makes me feel quite loved.

Time to fire up the colortinis and watch the pictures as they fly through the air.

Good night.

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