Prayer

Martin Francis Connolly, my grandfather, passed away this evening after a very long journey through the valley that is Alzheimer's disease. He was in the company of his loving wife, loving daughter and son-in-law as he passed. Please keep him, and his family, in your prayers this week. I'm heading to work tomorrow and Friday, and will travel to the funeral this weekend.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom do I fear? The Lord is my life's refuge; of whom am I afraid? Psalm 27

Feel free to share your favorite psalm. I've spent a bit of time in the bible tonight looking for one mentioned in mass tonight and I invite all to rediscover old favorites. Love you all-

Week in Re...cough cough

I'm really really not happy with being sick right now. I have an unexpected 3 day weekend due to flexing a day to covering next Saturday, and I ruin a wonderful weekend of plans by being sick-o. And to make matters worse, I thought I'd recuperate if I just laid around, drank fluids and took massive doses of decongestents...not so.

If anything, my throat feels worse. So instead of sleeping in on my day off, I'll be walking over to the local doc-in-the-box and begging that they work me in. In order to insure the highest level of pity, and therefore the highest probability of actually working me in, I'll have to arrive before they open and look properply miserable. Not going to be hard since I'm not sleeping well at night and I"ll have to be outside by 8am. yuck.

I've been fighting it all week. I actually felt bad enough Friday to start wearing a mask around my patients. That's when the cough started for serious. And the sore throat was responding well to tylonel until this afternoon-- now it seems to thumb it's nose (or uvula) in the general direction of the pills I'm throwing at it and continue making its presence known. Everytime I swallow I am forcefully reminded that the back wall of my pharynx is unhappy. And everytime I open my mouth to speak I get a nice visual image of the vocal cords that must match such a low pitched raspy voice.

So here's to hoping the family clinic will think I'm sick enough to work in.

The rest of the week has been good, despite the slowly soring throat. I've discovered a cool little place called The Thirsty Dog that has wicked pizzas (healthy- I promise) with fresh spinach, tomatoes, and feta. And I ate at a ridiculously expensive place called Tio Pepe's that was having a $30 special for restaurant week. Their average priced plate is around $35 but they let us have a 3 course meal in honor of the special week. I missed dancing Wednesday because my fatigue level was a bit high, and then skipped gym Saturday because I was a bit comatose from the little pills I was popping in hopes of chasing all the nasty germs. Skipped church this morning for the same reason, though maybe St. Jude could have helped in this hopeless cause.

Received info about London from good friend Ayzair and am in the works of setting sleeping arrangements into stone. Bought a $200 backpack for $54 (last seasons pack, apparently) and now am thinking it may be a bit on the small side. We shall see-- I'll have to practice pack it once soon and see if it's do-able. Looking forward to the trip and trying to ignore the friends I'm going with rattling about their plans to tour the world next year for 3 months. I told them I have to take one adventure at a time, and there's Alaska this summer hopefully so my mind is already a bit overwhelmed. I may have to meet up with them a week, depending on what direction life takes me. Right now, my plans don't extend past 6 months, thank you very much!

Anyone who is bored tomorrow feel free to call me. :-) Monday will be a long day as I sit on the couch for the 3rd day fighting a killer of a cold.

Week in Review

Monday- Weight lifting class
Tuesday- ate at Captial City Grill with friends and picked up tour books at B&N
Wednesday- went dancing at Club 1 (learned how to dance the salsa)
Thursday- Beer and Shepard's Pie at Mick O' Sheas and desert at Donna's
Friday- Blockbuster run with a friend and my first Matthew's Pizza (I'll never accept anything less again)
Saturday- Weight lifting class, walked to Mount Vernon and climbed to the top of Washington Monument, resisted temptation to eat at cafe (reminded myself of the 2 lb increase in my weight according to this morning's gym scale), came home and took a very nice nap. Entered into my "just say no" campaign agaist eating out and forced myself to eat healthy home-made soup instead of hitting a restaurant with friends. Afterall, superbowl is tomorrow and there's eating involved there.

I'll post some pictures of the Washington Monument as soon as I have my battery recharged for my camera.

So, still having a great deal of fun. Trying to incorporate gym into life, as well as keep up a social life. The dancing was a nice mix of cardio, flirting and fun. Apparently, you can salsa with strangers without conversation-- must have danced with at least 10 guys between class and dancing afterwards! The only real conversation was with a fellow named Paul who's a banker. Hopefully he doesn't have a girlfriend in a coma somewhere....

Movie reviews from a few recent weeks- (I'm gonna keep it short and sweet)

The Queen-- unexpectedly good. I'm not "into" the whole royal saga over in England, but this was a well-put-together and entertaining exploration of a few tumultous weeks in the life of British government. Well worth the $7 I paid and maybe even something I'd have felt okay paying full price for. There's a great moment when the queen mother warns Blair that the tide of public opinion will turn on him eventually- because it always does- and it fit quite ironically with the current events. The "Blair" on screen blinks a few times and then smiles-- obviously humoring the queen. Nice. There's some real news clips sprinkled into this movie- but not annoyingly so. It's worth a gander, IMHO.

Step Up-- not worth a rental. There's a few good dance scenes that would make me pause if I was channel surfing, but otherwise it's a cookbook "person learns an unknown and/or underappreciated talent and lives happily ever after". And there's the always fun tear jerking unnecessary death as well. Don't pay money for this. I'm sorry I even threw in $5 for this video set. Luckily that covered "Little Miss Sunshine" which I'm hoping to watch tonight and enjoy greatly (PLEASE????)

Princess Bride is on TV right now. Must go watch. "I will never doubt again." "There will never be a need". Sigh. I need a masked man in my life! Wesley? Diego? Bruce? Anyone? :-)