I had my appointment with Dr. Andrus this morning to remove the cyst on my back, which had returned after four years. It was a little more involved than I thought it was going to be. He really scraped deep in there, noting, “oh yeah, it’s always a lot worse the second time around as there is all that scar tissue from the first time around in there.” Midway through the procedure, I had to ask him for more local anesthetic back there.
We had a good chat about the Tour de Friends, and riding for charity in general, as he had ridden in the past, I think he said, for MS.
When it was done, I looked at that fascinating glob that was on the tray, which had just previously lived in my body. It looked like a tiny little octopus, less the tentacles.
I got to work at about 9:45, a little too close for comfort to my 10:00 call with Alan and the SAM team for their Quality Plan review. It was a good meeting, from my perspective. Poor Mack had to call in from the beach to take it, and then was stuck knowing he had a lot of work to do on it when he returns to the office. I don’t think that helped his vacation any.
At about 4:40, the cable folks called saying they were on their way to my house. They were supposed to come between 8 and 12 this morning, but 1-5 was my preferred time, so that worked out good.
When I got home their van was still there, parked in T.J.’s spot, which made me smile, it was running, but empty. There was a sign on my door, “Sorry we missed you. We didn’t find anything wrong on the outside. If you’re still having trouble…”
I went into my house and out on the deck to find it empty. I went back out front, and one of the guys was coming around from behind the townhouses, and was looking at each unit, counting them.
“My buddy’s working out back.”
“Oh. I didn’t see him.” I went back through the house and outside again, and found “the buddy” messing with the cable at my next door neighbor’s unit. No wonder “no trouble was found.”
They ended up coming in the house, connecting a meter to my cable, going back down, and doing something down there. It started working after a while, and they came back up.
“It working now,” they said, “but you have a real strong signal downstairs, but a real weak one by the time it comes out this outlet up here, so it may go out again at any time.”
I told them this wasn’t acceptable as I have no TV, am on here all the time, and I work from home sometimes on here, and I can’t have my service crapping out in the middle of a meeting or something.
They said someone had to come back and replace the wiring from downstairs to upstairs. “Fine,” I said, “let’s schedule it now.” I followed them out to their truck and they used a laptop to schedule me for next Wednesday afternoon.
They left; I went back into the house, was on the computer for about 20 minutes, and I lost my service again. I called Time Warner and told them that I cannot wait until next Wednesday to have my service back. They moved my appointment up to Monday morning, between 10 and noon.
I took a nap from 6:30 until about 8. I got up, dressed, and went to K-Mart to get my pain medication prescription filled. While there, I realized I didn’t get my bottle of bourbon to take to the party, so stopped back by after leaving K-Mart. I was early for the party anyway.
I got to Santiago and David’s right at 9:00, and was, of course, the first one there. David was still in the shower. They had had their kitchen redone since I was there, and it looked fantastic! I love their appliances, all in stainless steel. Once David came out of the shower, a couple of other folks had arrived, and he gave us a tour of the upstairs. They’d done some repainting, and it really looked good!
More folks came, and it turned out to be mostly guys from the ride. I don’t know why, but that surprised me a little. We had idle chit chat for a while, and then Santiago passed out a sheet of paper to everyone instructing us to cut it up into 16 pieces and to write down the name of a famous person in each piece, and then fold it up. We put all of those into a huge bowl.
Next, they handed out one folded piece of paper to each of us, with a number from 1 to 9 on it. We opened those, and then partnered up with the other person who had the same number as us. My number looked like a seagull, and I later found out it was a 5. “Who has the other seagull?” I asked. It turned out to be Lenny.
This game was a lot of fun. You took turns, in your pair, picking one of the folded pieces of paper with the famous name on it out of the bowl and gave clues to your partner trying to get him to guess who it was. You had one minute.
At about 11:30, my phone beeped that I had four messages. Robert, a little frustrated, and I don’t blame him, had been trying to reach me. He was at Snoopy’s, and I asked him to bring me two hot dogs home, and told him I’d be there shortly.
The time just flew by. They had hardly any mixers, so after a little while, I was drinking my bourbon on ice. I left there around midnight in a state in which I shouldn’t have been driving.
At home we MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmed.