A Grateful Day

I left my iPad on the airplane.

I gathered my bag from the overhead, jostled for my position in the aisle, and walked out of the terminal with my iPad still stuffed in the back pocket of the seat in front of where I sat!

Later that night, I reached into my carry-on bag, where I had carefully kept the device during the entire trip, and my heart dropped through the floor when I realized what I had done! It was about 1:00 in the morning at this point; we didn't arrive until 11PM, and there were long waits at the baggage claim and for the shuttle. I frantically called the 24-hour number for Southwest, and the lady there - who no doubt had fielded many such calls - calmly told me what to do and who to call and urged me to have "positive thoughts" about the outcome.

I did as instructed and called the local baggage office, which was closed, as expected, and left a message about the missing iPad, flight information, my name, etc., and I also called a second number which was the official "lost article" number, and another kind lady took down the same information for the official lost item record in the computer. Then I went to bed and dreamed about missing iPads.

At 7AM the local Southwest Baggage Office called and told me that they had my iPad.

Never. Never, was I so grateful to be wakened by an early phone call! There was great rejoicing, because that which had been lost was found!

It's now later in the morning, all is well in iPad land, and I'm checking email. One message is from the Circulation manager of the American Statesman, stating that they would resume delivery of the newspaper today, as requested. Only problem is, they never stopped delivering the paper while we were gone, as I also requested! After a few days, our neighbor noticed the build-up of papers and began gathering them, but for a while they lay in the yard and loudly declared our absence.

"Boy, am I going to give someone at the paper a piece of my mind!" I said.
"No you're not," my smart wife said. "Today, you are going to be grateful. This is going to be a grateful day."

At this time of year especially, those words really struck home. In fact, I'm going to make that my resolution for the coming year. My only resolution. "Today, I am going to be grateful."

• So, instead of sending a snarky email to the Statesman Circulation department, I'll politely point out that while I'm grateful that they restarted the paper on time, I would have been even more so if they had stopped it as requested.
•  And if service at a restaurant is slow, Ill be grateful that I will eventually have something good to eat; that doesn't happen for everyone.
• Or if the rental car was a fiasco, I'll be grateful that we traveled safely, with no roadside trauma, and I'll send a letter to some VP in the company, pointing out how helpful the counter manager was.
•  And if those about me upset or disappoint me, I'll be grateful for their love and friendship.
• And when I really mess up (hard to imagine, isn't it?) I'll be grateful for the opportunity to improve and become better.
• And when problems and troubles pile up, I'll be grateful for a Father that sustains me far beyond any setback.
• And I'll strive to recognize daily the goodness and blessings that I receive, and be grateful for them.

So that's my resolution, and I'm grateful for the unfolding of a new year to allow me to practice this gift.

How about you?

The Dr. said what?

Okay, I had a little sinus surgery in mid-December. I'll spare you the details, but this was a repeat performance of a similar surgery performed waaay back in 1999. I expected that my recovery would be the same as then. Couple of days rest, then right back into a regular schedule. Somehow it didn't happen that way.

Our first clue came when I was still in recovery and the Dr. came out to talk to Barb. He said everything had gone fine, and he wanted to see me in his office on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. 

Barb said, "Uhh, we are leaving for California on Tuesday."

The Dr. said, "I think not."

Barb said, "Then I suppose you don't want him going to Ft Worth on Saturday, either?"

The Dr. said, "Absolutely not. Have him in my office on Monday."

Barb said, to a friend, "There's no way I'm telling Bob about this until later."

But she did, and my response was, "No way I'm missing those trips!" So I went home to recover and bounce back and prove to the Dr. that this was no big deal. It was a big deal. After surgery on Tuesday, I got out for a bit on Thursday and discovered I was, to put it mildly, shaky. I tried again on Friday with only marginally better results. Where was the old vim and vigor? Where was the stamina? Surely I have not grown... old. 

Friday I cancelled the trip to Ft Worth and fretted a great deal about the trip to California. Airline tickets had been purchased; deposits had been made. Someone else would have to meet Jana and the kids in San Jose. Worry, worry, worry. Saturday I did not move from the recliner. Sunday morning I went to church and that was it. Monday, I went to see the Dr. 

I debated long and hard about not saying a word to him about the trip, hoping that he would have forgotten about the post-op conversation. But I had read some scary things about flying and sinus surgery, and decided that if I was going, I needed to know what the potential problems were. So after he confirmed that I was healing very nicely, I kind of happened to sort of slip in a little mention of the planned trip.

"You're going where?"

"Uh, flying to California tomorrow."

"Will you be close to a hospital in case you have problems?"

"Absolutely!"

"Okay. Promise me you'll take it easy, and I'll see you in 3 months."

"Yesss!"

Monday Meanderings - 12.26.2011

I'm still awash in the sea of Christmas. I hope that you and yours have been as blessed as we have been. 

I did surface long enough to note that at about 3pm on December 20th, the 10,000th visit to this blog took place. I don't know who it was, but they use RoadRunner (Time Warner) as a service provider, and they use a Mac. Who would have thought?

There have been a lot of Meanderings over the last week - so many that I'm going to have to sort it all out before writing about it. 

So, take a breather, as I must, and we'll get back together later.

Bob

The moose story - stories for my grandchildren

I mentioned my Grandmother Anderson's brother from Canada - the one who brought fermented cranberries to the family dinner - and promised more, so here's the moose story.

Great Uncle Jess (I mistakenly called him Virgil earlier; though he is named Jessie Virgil, he went by Jess) went with his dad to Canada when he was seventeen years old (he was born in 1896).  Canada was the new frontier at the time, and it suited Uncle Jess just fine. He stayed, living most of his life in primitive areas of British Columbia, became a Canadian citizen and married a young woman from Norway, Mariene Carlsen. Together, they lived in the backwoods, hunting and trapping for food and engaging in the fur business as a livelihood. When civilization encroached, they simply moved further back into the wilderness.

Years later, on one of their visits to Texas, my brother Jim thoughtfully taped several hours of conversation with the pair, and the stories they told were incredible - the stuff of the wilderness adventure novel, but true. Like the time they were out running their bear traps. One of the traps had a bear and Uncle Jess was busy skinning it, when he said that he heard the snap of a rifle and the next thing he knew a 400 pound bear came crashing down the hillside and rolled right over him. When he freed himself from under the newly-deceased bear and stood up, he found that Mariene had seen the bear up the trail, and just as it charged, shot it with a small caliber rifle and fortunately pierced the bear's heart!

On another occasion they were moose hunting, but had seen no prey, so stopped to prepare their meal. They had but one rifle with them, and Uncle Jess leaned it against a rock and turned to build a fire. Almost immediately, he heard the gun go off, and he thought, "Oh No! The rifle fell over and when I turn around I'm going to be a widower." What actually happened was Aunt Mariene saw a young bull moose on the trail, picked up the rifle and shot it between the eyes! But I digress.

The moose story happened right at home. At one point, the couple lived by a navigable river and depended on a boat operated by a mining company up the river for supplies. In return, they provided the company fresh meat. It was late in the season, and bear meat was all that was available, so Uncle Jess was delighted to see a pair of moose swimming across the river to their bank. He shot and killed one, but missed the other. The moose he shot was floating down river, so he jumped in the canoe, chased down the moose, put a rope on it and began towing it back to their dock.

In the meantime, Mariene, having heard the shots, came down to see what was going on. She saw a moose struggling to get up on the steep bank out of the river; it only had its front hooves and nose on the bank at that point. Thinking that Jess had shot and mortally wounded it, Mariene picked up a hatchet from the nearby wood pile, walked over to the moose and dispatched it with a stroke between the eyes!  When Jess got back with his moose, she asked him what he wanted to do with the other moose. What moose? The other one you shot. I only shot one moose. You mean there was nothing wrong with that moose I just killed with a hatchet?

And that's the moose story.

The Jesus hat

I have fun wearing my Santa hat during this season. It's always neat to see some little kid's eyes get big when I walk in a store or restaurant. And when I wear it some place I regularly go, like the recording studio, or the dentist's office, there is a lot of comment and joking about being naughty or nice. Occasionally there's even a photo op. The other evening I wore it into Chuy's and an elderly gentleman (all things are relative) came over to the table and thanked me for wearing the hat. He said it brought some joy to the place, and he just liked seeing it.

But there are some places and circumstances where the hat makes me a little uncomfortable. Like when I pull up to a stop sign wearing the hat and there's a panhandler standing on the corner. Now, it is not my custom to accommodate panhandlers. You may disagree with me on that, but that is my position. So there I sit, and the dude is looking at me, and looking at the hat and I know he's thinking, "You're a phony. You ain't living up to the hat."

So the other day, after one of these experiences, it occurred to me, "What if - instead of Santa hats - we all wore Jesus hats?" You know, hats that clearly and loudly identify us as followers of Jesus. Hats that proclaim we have chosen a life as a follower, a representative, a servant.

Where would we be uncomfortable wearing a Jesus hat? Almost everywhere? Who would look at us and say, " Phoney!" Excuse me while I try to slip onto the back row here, where I might be less noticible.

Join me as I reflect on the reason for the season and ponder my choice of wearing apparel for the coming year.

Monday Meanderings - 12.19.2011

Santa came early and brought an iPad. Apple, the original minimalist company, included these instructions - and only these instructions - for using the iPad (the pen is to show you the scale of the information card):

Now here is the 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of instructions for the cover!

More than twice the amount of information for attaching and using the cover than for the device itself!

And now we have the problem that confronts all of us media-savvy, socially-conscious,  cyber families - where to plug in all the charging stations?

Formula 1 is back on the agenda for Austin. However, in order to fund it, now they are going to set it up as a toll road. All the cars stop at toll booths once a lap and pay a fee.

I was wearing my Santa hat at the recording studio the other day and one of the regulars came in and said, "Santa, I've been very naughty. But of course you knew that, didn't you?"

It's been raining off and on for a week now. That's not a bad thing in Texas, mind you, but it reminds us of how fickle we are when it comes to weather. It even makes one think nostalgically of those days of summer. Those 80 days in a row of triple digit summer. Okay, maybe not yet, but I sure would like to see some sunshine.

Surprisingly, there is now more color in the leaves in this area than we have seen in several years. It seems late in the season for that, especially considering the drought conditions all year. But they are beautiful, unless they have all fallen off - like the leaves in my front yard.

I'm really hoping for a good breeze to come along and blow these in my neighbor's yard, as usual.

You can't pee until you go home.

I posted some months back about some of the strange things that can occur during a hospital stay. In this case,  my wife was the patient and I was just the observer. This time around, I was the victim patient, and it wasn't a hospital as such, but rather a "surgical center" - one of those places that provide only out-patient services. For the record, I had a bit of sinus work done; it was no big deal and I'm fine, thank you.

When my ENT doctor set up this procedure, he gave me a packet of information which included a brochure from the Grace L. Furguson Surgical Center and Storm Door Company, and I dutifully read through all the information. One of the first things to catch my eye was a prominent section about Advanced Directives - a fancy term for "do not resuscitate." Since I was to be the resusitee, in this case, I read the section closely. In brief, the surgical center insisted that you bring a copy of the DNR orders, but that you should be aware that they would ignore them and resuscitate you to the extent that they could push you across the street to the real hospital next door where you could happily pass on to your reward! Really?

Next in the brochure was the requirement that you spend the better part of an hour filling in the online patient history and medical information. It was, to say the least, extensive but doing that online is preferable to trying to juggle one of those little clip boards they give you when you get there. So guess what was the first thing that they had you do when you arrived for check in? "Just these few questions, and review this page....and this one... and..."

The brochure also proudly proclaimed that the surgical center was a WI-FI  hot spot, but signs everywhere said cell phones were verboten.

Hospital gowns have long been the butt (pun intended) of many a joke, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that they gave me some pants along with the gown - and this was no flimsy paper gown - it had an inner lining and a cardboard "portal" that allowed them to attach a flexible tube and blow warm air into the liner portion of the gown! How cool warm was that? I wonder what that cost me? Along with the disposable blood pressure cuff?

Okay, I'm prepped and ready, and off we go - down this corridor and that, turn this way, turn that way, back and cut to get around this corner and here we are at the operating room where the door is apparently too small for the bed I'm on! So I hop out of bed and walk into the OR! I wonder if they drug me out when they were done or had me walk out on my own?

And you know how when you are dismissed from a regular hospital there's all this waiting around for forms to sign and more waiting around for someone to come get you? Well, there's no waiting around at the Grace L. Furguson Surgical Center and Storm Door Company. I guess they needed the bed. "Sorry, you'll have to do that when you get home. Time to go. Bye."

That's okay. I was ready to come home anyway.

Health Day

Maybe that should read "Mental Health Day."  

See you on Friday.

Monday Meanderings - 12.12.2011

I wore my Santa hat into the allergist's office the other day - none of the nurses wanted to give me my shot.  "Uh-uh! I'm not sticking Santa Claus. Not me. Go get Dr. Goldstein - it won't matter if he hurts Santa."

Well, I'm on another round of steroids, and as I mentioned, that's mostly all on the up-side for me. It must have a cumulative effect, or I'm just getting used to how good food tastes when you are on this stuff and the good smells just keep on coming. That, of course, tends to interfere with my new life-style, eating-wise, and I admit that there have been a few days of disappointments on the scales, but I am proud to say that I  reached a milestone this past week - down 20 pounds! Thank you.

Weight loss is not without its issues. For instance, my pants keep slipping down. I got some new jeans and I needed a new (shorter) belt, so we stopped by a men's store on Friday. I needed to try on a belt, but as soon as I removed the old one, my pants started toward the floor. I grabbed them just in time, thank goodness. It would have been awkward to explain to the clerk why my wife was collapsed on the floor in the middle of the store, laughing her **** off.

Speaking of tasting good, we were walking through an HEB the other evening and saw a gingerbread house kit. The gingerbread is already baked and cut in the needed shapes, and all the icing and other goodies are included. Barb said, "We could get one of those and put it together. And then we could eat it." I suggested that we might consider just eating it without going to all the trouble of putting it together.

The question is: was this fraud, practicing medicine without a license, or good customer service?  My doctor sent me for some blood work, but when I handed the lab technician the order, she took one look at the medical code and said, "What? There's no way they will pay for this under that code!" So she called the doctor's office and talked to several people in order to get the right number. But when she put the new number in the computer, it was came back invalid as well. "Okay, I know the number this should be...let's use this one. There you go!"

The power went off the other evening after some poor soul plowed through a major power line pole over on Cameron Road. We are properly prepared for contingencies like that, though; we got out the battery-powered lantern that gave us enough illumination to get around safely, and then we settled down foe a quiet evening at home. No TV, no stereo, no phone, no distractions. Just Barb and I in the quiet companionship of a time together with no interruptions- she with her Kindle, and me with my iPad. Nice.

And there is no truth to the rumor that we have not decorated the house for Christmas. See?

People are the strangest folks I know

Okay, here's a confession. It's after midnight and the Blog muse turned in hours ago, but I simply cannot disappoint my faithful readers (neither one of them) so I turn once again to News of the Weird. Somehow that fits the week I've had.

A New Hampshire woman who brought her mother's ashes to bingo games for good luck is hoping for their return after the urn containing them was stolen. Police say the urn was stolen from Diane Bozzi's van Tuesday morning in Rochester by someone targeting unlocked cars. Bozzi says the urn was in a bag that she was planning to take to her bingo game later in the day. She and her mother loved playing bingo together. Before her mother died in 2002, Bozzi promised her she would take some of her ashes with her to play. Her mother agreed, saying she would bring Bozzi luck. For everybody but Mom, I guess.

Rhode Island residents have complained for weeks about foul odors wafting from the state's main landfill, so state lawmakers are pledging to investigate and see where their noses lead them. The General Assembly announced Wednesday that a commission that will try to put an end to the rotten-egg smell at the Johnston landfill. The odor has prompted complaints from as far away as Attleboro, Mass., about 14 miles away. The agency that operates the landfill blames recent rains for the smell and has installed vents to trap gasses coming from it. Okay, let's see if I get this straight. The county dump smells bad. Really?

A Utah bird hunter was shot in the buttocks after his dog stepped on a shotgun laid across the bow of a boat. Box Elder County Sheriff's Deputy Kevin Potter says the 46-year-old Brigham City man was duck hunting with a friend when he climbed out of the boat to move decoys. Potter says the man left his 12-gauge shotgun in the boat and the dog stepped on it, causing it to fire. It wasn't clear whether the safety on the gun was on at the time. Can I take a guess? Potter says the man wasn't seriously injured, in part because he was wearing waders. Just be glad he wasn't out hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney.

A Georgia man preparing for the Christmas season spent a night in jail after he was arrested for shooting at mistletoe outside a Decatur shopping mall. William E. Robinson, 66, was charged with reckless conduct and discharging a firearm on someone else's property after he opened fire on a tree that held a sprig of the plant, which is commonly used as a Christmas decoration. Robinson said that he was merely following a holiday tradition when he used his double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun to knock the plant out of a tree outside the North DeKalb Mall. "Every year I go somewhere to get some mistletoe to decorate the house," Robinson told the station. "I get some for my friends that can't get mistletoe. The best way to get it is with a shotgun." And how glad we are that he was not in the Mall shopping for an X-Box?

A 31-year-old Florida man allegedly attempted to shoplift four steaks and a pair of candles by hiding the items in his trousers. Officials arrested Naples resident Dannial Ashley last week after grocery store employees spotted him stuffing the meat and candles -- unlit, of course -- into his pants. When one store worker confronted Ashley, the would-be thief ditched his stolen goods and attempted to escape on foot; an employee reportedly chased down Ashley and convinced him to walk back to the store. Is that a romantic dinner in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

But the story that wins this weeks Weirdness Award is:

Zany experiments testing scientific theories in real-world settings have earned the TV show "MythBusters" a devoted following, but a stunt gone awry met with an unhappy audience when an errant cannonball went shooting through a California family's bedroom. Sheriff's deputies are still measuring how, exactly, the cannonball flew from a bomb range in the rolling hills flanking a suburban San Francisco Bay area neighborhood and rocketed into the front door of a home and through its master bedroom before landing in a neighbor's parked minivan.

Hosts for the Discovery Channel show fired the cannonball Tuesday as they filmed an episode testing whether other types of projectiles shot from a cannon would pick up the same speed and have the same impact as the steel ball. Later, the production team plans to film flying stone cannonballs at a rock quarry in Northern California. Instead of hitting a string of water-filled garbage cans, however, the cannonball passed over the barrels, crashed straight through a protective cinderblock wall and careened off the hill behind it, said Alameda County Sheriff's Department spokesman J.D. Nelson. "It missed the target and took kind of an oddball bounce," Nelson said. "It was almost like skipping a rock on a lake. Instead of burying it into the hill it just went skyward."
 
So see? Your day is not going so bad after all. 

The 5 best toys of all time...

File this under the heading "Blog ideas that I wish I had thought of first." But I didn't, so I'll just do what I always do and blatantly steal  shamelessly borrow  graciously credit Wired Magazine's GeekDad blog and writer Jonathan Liu for condensing the all-time great toy list down to the essential 5. Mr, Liu's take -

"All five should fit easily within any budget, and are appropriate for a wide age range so you get the most play out of each one. These are time-tested and kid-approved! And as a bonus, these five can be combined for extra-super-happy-fun-time." 

1. Stick
Almost, almost, the universal toy, sticks come in all sizes, from slender twigs to oof! can't pick this sucker up! Easily available everywhere, it's almost as if they grow on trees. And with such a wide variety of shapes and sizes, the right stick can become almost anything - as long as it's a weapon. Traditionally, a stick's primary use is for hitting something. And that something is anything that's within reach, including one's sibling if he or she is not smart enough to stay out of range.

Once hitting grows old, or becomes forbidden in this household, almost any stick can quickly become a gun, or a spear! Or a knife! Or, or, SWORDS! The possibilities are limited only by the child's imagination and the parents absence. And while it is true that more boys play with sticks than girls, I still have a mark where, in the 3rd grade, Ida Jo Waller stabbed me with a pencil, which is a stick in church clothes. That, by the way, is not the only scar given me by Ida Jo, but rocks did not make the list.

2. Box
The bigger the better! Sometimes you get really lucky and find a box that is so big there's almost no way to get it home. Almost, but where there's a will there's a way. And once you possess the box - any box - it can become a rocket ship, or an automobile, or a club house, or a cave, or a ship, or a table, or (usually unsuccessfully) a chair, or a castle, or, or... What can't you do with the right box? And cardboard boxes also incorporate the thrill of sneaking one of your mother's sharp (until you get hold of it) knives, so that you can cut portholes or windows. And other things. See? Right here on my left index finger. A scar that Ida Jo was not responsible for.

3.String
Another toy that comes in all sizes and infinite lengths. It can be used to connect other toys and small furry animals, though that didn't work well in my case. Or it's great to string between two tin cans to make a telephone. It's almost always associated with other objects of play, such as tops, or big buttons (to make them spin) or if it is of sufficient girth, tied around other playmates hands and feet. As mentioned, cat's tails are not recommended. Nor is the neck.

4. Cardboard tube
Also known as a "doot de doot" in its smaller sizes for the noise they make when you hum or sing into them.  The smaller ones can also become wonderful drum-like instruments that make a really neat, annoying bonking noise when you hit them on other things, such as other cardboard tubes, or your sibling's head. See number one, above. Believe it or not, Chet Atkins released a rock and roll song in the '50s called the "Boo Boo Stick Beat" that featured - cardboard tubes being hit together. Hey! I was a disk jockey then. I actually played the song on the radio!

Cardboard tubes, if large enough, assume the properties of an artificial stick. Flimsy tubes, such as those found in Christmas wrap make wonderful swords, in that it's really hard to significantly hurt one another with these. The downside is that after a few whacks they tend to break apart and return to ordinary strips of cardboard and are quickly abandoned. Occasionally, you find an industrial strength tube, and then you become the baddest dude on the block.

5. Dirt
Now we are talking the quintessential toy! Available anywhere, in infinite quantity and multiple consistencies, dirt comes in a rainbow of earth-tones. You can work with dirt in its dry state, but to really appreciate the stuff, you also need water. Digging holes is a wonderful dirt pastime. Filling them with water is even better. Sitting in water-filled holes you have just dug tops it all. Girls appreciate a good mud pie now and then, but if you are patient and get the consistency just right, you can used dirt as - that's right, a weapon! Push it around, pack it into any container, throw it up in the air, track it in the house, even eat a little of it. There's just no end to what you can do with dirt.

So, as you brave the malls and prepare to pepper-spray your fellow shoppers so that you can grab that last X-Box, give some thought that maybe, just maybe, you can't top the top five.

Monday Meandering 12.05.11

Before the end of the year some visitor will log the 10,000th visit to my blog. Note that that's 10,000 visits, not unique visitors. But that's all the more amazing since there are only three regular readers out there - you guys are really doing a good  job! And I noticed that this is my 615th blog entry. I'm amazed that I've stuck with it to that long. So here's the deal: you keep visiting, and I'll keep writing. We deserve each other.

We've been watching with interest a construction project up the street. The house on the corner of January and Braker - the one that burned a while back - was on a double lot. Some previous owner put a swimming pool on the 2nd lot and for a time, an RV was parked there. But all the sudden a construction crew scraped the ground in front of the pool, poured a foundation on the tiny space left, and in a matter of a week framed a house on that lot. A big house. Almost a McMansion. Curious.

And further up the street the Valero station is messin' with my head. I'll drive by on the way to run an errand and the price for regular gas will be $3.06. When I come back a few minutes later it's $3.08. OK, gas is going up again. But a few hours later Barb and I will drive by and it's $3.06 again. What? Then that evening it's back to $3.08! Three times in one day? and this is one of the signs where someone has to come out and change the numbers manually. I got the last laugh, though. I bought gas at Costco for $2.90. Take that Valero!

My ENT doctor sent me to Austin Radiological for a scan. Walked in for the appointment and was met by a hostess! She took my name, directed me to a seat, asked if I wanted coffee, then went to get my paperwork. She brought that, took my insurance cards, traded them for my filled-out forms, asked if there was anything she could do, or if I had any questions. In a minute she came and got me and handed me off to the radiologist, who was equally solicitous of my well-being. Really not my usual doctor's office experience. Wonder what that cost me?

Had to eat a big helping of crow the other night. My spouse and I were in disagreement about whether the limbs of Christmas trees grow up or down. I was finally able to persuade her that I was right, with just the teeniest bit of gloating after she came around. Then later in the evening, I realized she was right. Hot sauce really helps make the dish edible.

And Barb was the one who pointed out that the cows in the Chik-Fil-A commercials are actually dairy cows, and as such are seldom eaten.

We picked up a couple of DVDs in the Wal Mart bargain bin, movies I thought suitable for watching-while-walking. Opened the first one and the disk was totally blank - no title, no verbiage of any kind. Put it in the drive and the first thing up was a little message about staying alert for pirated DVDs. Like those with no printing on them. Huh?

And here's a billboard between here and Waco:

Do you smell what I smell?

The sense of smell is an interesting phenomenon. If you have one. My sinus problems have diminished my ability to smell for many years. Most of the time, I wouldn't be able to smell gasoline if it were squirted up my nose. And then, after some medical intervention, I'm acutely aware of the odors around me, and for the most part it's sensory overload!

Most often, the difference-maker for me is steroids; a few days into a course of Prednisone and I can detect strong odors. A few days after that, the more subtle aromas become evident. Opening a container of coffee becomes a heavenly experience. Walking into Chuy's is almost more than I can abide. It's a whole new world.

Of course, there is a down side. Not all aromas are pleasant, but let's talk rather about the association between smell and taste. It is well established that smell is the larger part of the taste experience and significantly affects appetite. So I've always said, if I could smell, I would weigh 400 pounds. I wonder if that is why steroid users usually have significant weight gain. They can smell, or smell better than they could. What I find is that things taste differently to me when I'm able to "smell good." And interestingly, not all things taste better. It's what you are used to, I guess.

There's also the issue of lingering smells. Sometimes they linger because that's normal. I fried a slice of bacon the other morning (47 calories, okay?) to go with my scrambled eggs (120 calories). The house smelled of bacon the rest of the day! Good thing I wasn't trying to hide it. Jana commented the other day about the unmistakable aroma of an Allsups that clung so, she felt she would have to burn her jacket to get rid of it. And sometimes my "smeller" gets stuck on a particular odor. Just a short exposure can trigger a lingering smell that stays with me the rest of the day, no matter where I am after that.

I'm due for a second round of steroids soon, so I'm expecting my sense of smell to be elevated to a new level. Think I'll go to the Candle Factory. They may have to drag me out by my heels when I OD on aromas.