I'm Among the Living

I have the afternoon to myself, so I thought I'd pop in to say hello. I need to pop "over" to everyone else's blogs to say hello, actually. Andrew let Eler Beth tag along with him this afternoon to the mall and some other places, and Thomas is at work, so I have some time alone. I haven't had much of that lately.

I ran some errands and had lunch by myself at a little cafe downtown called Perkfections. I ate outside where I could people watch. Then I went across the street and up just a few yards to JeffBook, one of my favorite local book stores. I found a lot of treasures there, but managed to come away with only a few, among them a small Bible printed in 1826 and in remarkably good shape, a book by James Lane Allen called Flute and Violin and Other Kentucky Tales, published in 1899, and some P.G. Wodehouse.

Let's see. What has been going on here? Well, Thomas and I were both sick with a head and chest thing that we just could not seem to get rid of. We both went to the doctor, we both took two rounds of antibiotics, we both had pneumonia ruled out with x-rays, and we have both slowly recovered. Allergies are horrible this year!

It finally stopped raining log enough for us to get the yard cut and weeded. I was afraid I'd lose a pet or a loved one out back, the grass was getting so high!

Eler Beth got a new pet -- a flying squirrel. He is adorable, and she tells all about how we surprised her with it in her blog.

Thomas and I went to see Star Trek a couple weeks ago, and it was SO GOOD!! I raved about it to everyone I saw for a good solid week after seeing it. I really loved Karl Urban's portrayal of Bones. (He also played Eomer in LOTR and Kirill in The Bourne Supremacy.)

The first episode of the History Channel Expedition Africa series for which my nephew received an Emmy nomination for his work as Sound Supervisor airs this Sunday at 9 p.m. (I'll be throwing that into conversations for a while, you know! lol) The DVD is already available for sale on the web site, with some behind-the-scenes footage that I'm really looking forward to seeing. I still have something to tell about Jacob's experience while he was in Africa, but I'm not allowed to tell it yet! Oooh, I can't wait!

And my brother has surgery next week. I've written about him and his health problems before. He is having bypass surgery because of blockage. We were worried that they would decide not to do the surgery because his arteries are in such bad shape, but the doctor finally decided that there was more risk of his losing a leg from the restricted blood flow than there was of having something happen during surgery. My sister who lives in Florida is flying up for it. I will pick her up at the airport on Tuesday, then Wednesday morning he will have the surgery. Hopefully all will go well and he will be out of the hospital by Friday. She, I, Mom, his daughter, and two of my other sisters will all be there, so he'll have plenty of good vibes around him. (I wonder if he ever thought of his six sisters as being a source of "good vibes"? Ha, probably not!)

Well, that was a quick catch-up. I must go now. There are books and blogs calling my name. Can you hear them?