Friday, August 28th
Thunderstorms and rain over the last week or so have cooled much of the heat off and its starting to feel a bit like fall. That's fine with me. I hate summer here. Someday I will live in a civilized climate again but I do not know when, where or how.
Work is a bit less painful. The powers that be have backed off somewhat as they have started to figure out that we may actually know our jobs a bit better than they do. We will see how it all comes out in the end. In the meantime, I've more or less reduced extracurriculars so that I have the energy to deal with whatever is thrown at me next.
Tommy and I are working on the basement in preparation for the redo. I am in the midst of cleaning out box after box of crap and sending a lot of things off to the dump. We will have a lot fewer possessions by the end of this process and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
There are a few fun things coming up. Tap has started for the fall. With the closure of Time Step Studio, I'm signed up with Alabama Ballet for the year and we shall see how it goes. I think my ankles will make it for one more year but you never know. The Men's Chorus and the Church Choir are also back in rehearsal after summer break. I am also in the Opera Chorus for Aida which performs in January as is Tommy. We get the music for that in a couple of weeks.
I'm performing in a fund raiser this weekend for a local children's charity as the emperor in 'The Emperor's New Clothes' which should be fun. Politically Incorrect also has a fundraiser gig coming up and I am writing a 1920s Chicago gang murder mystery for yet another so all is not lost for the fall in regards to things theatrical, even if I don't have a part in a musical.
Friday, August 14th
The trip is over and now in the haze of memory and we are back in Birmingham and doleful care, as the Bohemians say. Sometimes I think they had the right idea and I should just take a couple of weeks to frolic in the woods with way too much alcohol, but that will have to wait for another month. August is all booked up.
Seattle had a record breaking heat wave when we returned from Maui. Topped out at 103 with humidity. Given that no one in Seattle has air conditioning as the usual annual high is around 85, it was a pretty miserable week. There was not a fan to be found in the entire Puget Sound region (other than at Brookstone where we got a servicable desk fan that made the room we were sleeping in somewhat bearable) and the natives, unused to deep south conditions were all lying around on the grass barely moving. Tommy and I spent the hottest days in my parents back yard with a gin and tonic dunking in the hot tub which had been turned into a Japanese cool plunge bath for the occasion.
Work took off with a roar more or less my first day back. Lots of catch up, the usual administrative nonsense and the new med students sticking their toes into their first year. I gave them my usual lecture on aging, death and dying which always goes over relatively well and have settled in for a semester of teaching introduction to clinical medicine to a small group of them. I'm also doing monthly lectures on the structure and function of Medicare.
I've been rather appalled at the 'debate' on health care reform raging and I wish pretty much everyone on both sides would just shut up as they know not of what they speak. I haven't heard a single person who actually works in the front lines of health care be given a platform, not that they would have time to speak as the current system continues to crumble around their ears.
We're in the process of cleaning out the basement and getting it ready for gutting so it can be redone. When did I accumulate all this stuff and why do I own it?
