An Important Chinese New Year Message

Well, it's a new year, there's a new president, and I'm a new uncle. That's right, uncle, like all those Disney castratos. Michele's sister gave birth to a boy last week, making me an uncle, except we're not married so I don't know if that's an official title or like a gray area. Anyway, to go along with all this newness, I guess I owe a new post. Or at least a new-ish one.

Tuesday I was at Harvard Vanguard Kenmore for most of the day. When I made the appointment in early December, they set up a blood test, and two ultrasounds; one for my heart and one for the abdomen.

Hold on, quick question: What do you call a snowman body without a head? highlight for answer
the abdominal snowman

Sorry. I needed to fast for the abdominal one, so I made the appointment for 11:00 AM, then I could have lunch, and go to the cardio scan at 1:30. That way I get get it all done and out of the way in one day. Less to remember that way.

It turns out that somehow, even that was too much to remember. I left work at about ten minutes to eleven, thinking that my first appointment was at 11:30. I did get a voicemail reminder from Harvard, but after I heard the confirmation DATE, I deleted it without confirming the TIME. Or for that matter, which appointment came first.

I got on the train, found a seat, and waited for the Fenway stop, which was about five or six stops away. I don't know what it is about those trains, but if I'm not reading the paper, I'm out like a light after a few minutes. I already read the morning Metro, and before I knew it, we were at my stop. I got up as fast as I could, just as the doors closed in my face and we took off. I got off at the next stop, crossed the tracks and got on a train headed the other way. I got to the building about ten minutes late, which I didn't think was too bad. Except I was still under the impression that the appointment was for 11:30, so I was in fact forty minutes late. I went up to get the blood test first, because that's why I hadn't eaten since six the night before, right? After the blood test, I went to the front desk and said I have two ultrasounds scheduled, but I wasn't sure which one was first. The woman directed me to Imaging, so I went there, checked in and said I have two ultrasounds scheduled, but I wasn't sure of the order. The guy at the desk took my card, looked me up on his computer and said I need to go up to Cardiology on the second floor.

So I went to up Cardiology, checked in, and told them I had two ultrsounds scheduled, but I wasn't sure of the order. The woman at the desk took my card and looked me up on her computer. She said my appointment was for 1:30. I asked about the second one. She said she didn't see anything scheduled and asked me if I was sure it was for today. I said I was, and she checked again. She found out that the abdominal scan was canceled, and it was canceled today. Crap. Then it all came back to me.

I told her that when I got there, I went right up to get the blood test rather then checking in at imaging. Since I wasn't there thirty minutes after my appointment time, they canceled the ultrasound.

So I went back down to Imaging, told the guy that I went to get the blood test first instead of checking in at Imaging (I conveniently left out the part about sleeping through the train stop and thinking the appointment was half an hour later than it actually was), so he checked the computer again, and found that I did have an appointment which was canceled. He didn't have any openings right away, but he got up and went down the hall for a few minutes to see if there was anywhere they could fit me in today. He came back, asked if I had eaten yet, then asked it I could come back at quarter to three.

The original plan was to have lunch at noon, but I'd already waited this long, so why not wait a little longer. I pretty much hung out in the main hallway for most of the day, reading about the inauguration on my cell phone. At 1:30, I went up to Cardiology, took of my shirt and had this weird goo smeared on my chest. The doctor or whoever administers these things ran this roller thing all over me, and every once in a while, I'd hear my heartbeat, which sounded more like when you shake thin sheets of metal then a heart. When she was finished, I wiped the goo off, put my shirt back on, and went back to the main hallway for another hour. Having not eaten since the night before, and losing a bit of blood in my arm, I was feeling a bit woozy. But I got back to Imaging, filled out some paperwork, and waited for the final test of the day, which was actually supposed to be the first.

two women called me into a room, I took of my shirt, one of them rubbed more weird goo on me, but it was different goo then the kind they used in Cardiology. I had to lay on my side for a while, and one of the women rolled a thing all over my chest and stomach, at some points mentioning how she was trying to push the intestines out of the way. It's totally non-evasive, obviously, but that's still kinda gross if you think about it too much. Anyway, she finished up, but asked if it was okay if the other one tried. I'm assuming she was a medical student. Or that was a really weird Make-A-Wish request. I'm not about to turn away a young person in the pursuit of knowledge and/or the guilt-free opportunity to have some anonymous chick rub a roller thing all over me when I'm covered in gross translucent goo, so she did her thing I wiped the goo off, put my shirt back on, and had lunch.

I don't know why I can remember all that to the most insane detail, but I couldn't remember the simplest thing like the time and order of the appointments. I blame Marfans.

Read more »

Obligatory Catch Up Post

I've been a little distracted lately. It's been known to happen. But I'm back now, and nothing is going to, holy crap, what's that little music icon? Is that a new Blogger feature? Oh. Nevermind, it's a Foxytunes feature. I can now insert current track as my signature. But I'm not currently listening to anything, And since you most likely can't see the icon I'm referring to, this entire paragraph probably hasn't made any sense to you. Suffice it to say, if you use Firefox and have Foxytunes, you'll see a little G-clef icon just below "Preview" when you're creating a post in Blogger.

I actually almost posted something over a month ago, because something happened that scared the crap out of me. Or, I thought something happened, but it turned out to be nothing. It's sort of embarrassing, actually. Maybe we should move on to something else.

A lot has happened in the past few months. Michele finally got the new job she's been trying to get for nearly two years. Some places have very strict rules about blogs; some say you aren't allowed to have one, even if only post during off hours; some are so strict that you can't even have one in your household. I don't want to get Michele in trouble at work, so I won't say where she is now. But it rhymes with Barvard Bedical Bool. There. Let's see them crack that code.

We're also without Brianna for the summer. She stays with her grandparents in South Carolina during summer vacation, but with Michele just starting her new job, we weren't able to go down there to drop her off. So her dad suggested we take a weekend trip and meet them halfway, in Maryland. We stayed in Hanover, which has this enormous mall with a Medieval dinner place and a 24-screen movie theater shaped like an Egyptian temple, with a giant Anubis statues and everything. We weren't there long enough to actually go to any of these places, but we'll be back Labor Day weekend, and we should have an extra day, so maybe we can go check them out.

One week after we got back from halfway-to-South-Carolina, Jose packed up and moved all-the-way-to-South-Carolina. Before he left, we got together one last time at my parents' house (my family went to Maine and we were watching the dog, the birds and Glenn's iguana). We didn't really do much, except talk and watch something about 80s songs on VH1, but that was enough. Even Hedie showed up, and explained a cryptic text message I'd received a few days earlier. (By the way, come down to Hajjars in Weymouth for wiked [sic] [expletive] awesome karaoke night) It was kind of sad, (Jose leaving, not Hedie's text message) especially since we could have at least gone with him half way if he had left a week earlier if if Michele's parents were able to take that weekend off from work, but he's happy and I'll probably still end up seeing him as much as I have been recently anyway. And I'm assuming we'll be doing Fantasy Football again this year, so I'll be beating his ass from eight states away. I think it's eight. Do you count the state your in? Well, anyway, I'll be beating him from as few as seven or as many as ten states away depending on your counting system. I think.

What else happened? Oh, over the past few weekends, Michele and I had some mini-vacations, just the two of us. It's been great. Weekends are that much more enjoyable when you actually go out and do something instead of sitting at home catching up on your DVR and recuperating from five days' worth of Joeisms. And we haven't had to spend too much because we saw The Dark Knight for free (two complementary tickets when you buy ten General Mills products, thank God we love cereal) and last week we went to the Harvard Natural History Museum, which was all free because Michele is an employee of um...Barvard. We walked around Harvard Square and took a nap under a tree in Harvard Yard. This weekend we're going on a sunset cruise on the Charles River.

Sunday was Michele's birthday. It was also annual Black and Orange Flying Bug Thing Orgy Day. There was a big group of them on the walkway leading to our house, all clustered together. At first I thought an ant was bringing in a big haul. You know how ants can lift many times more than they're own weight, and sometimes I've seen them carrying of much larger insects. But this group, they were all black and orange beetles. And a few inches away, there was another group of them. Still a bit further away, one black and orange beetle all by himself. That's rough. I got to the car, and two more orange and black flying bug things were on the front windshield, one on top of the other like on the Discovery Channel. Another exhibitionist couple was doing it on our back windshield. Michele doused the ones on the front with washer fluid and tried to flick them off with the wiper blades, but they were just out of reach and kept going at it like champs. Then it rained. A lot. And all the orange and black sex beetles most likely all died. I think that might have been Asop's lost fable.

Well that's it for today. Come back tomorrow to see if I can keep this going. I'm sure I have at least three more in me before I lapse again.

Read more »