Blogblah

Seems like a pretty good day here at St. John’s Infirmary. For one thing, I didn’t have to go to morgue and see my old lady laid out all cold like at St. James.

For another thing, I went to the doctors’ office today and came home with a wildly happy report. “Remarkable” and “Very Fortunate” were some of the words they used. Seems like the little walks I’m taking are better than anyone expected of a skinny old man like me.

All my tests are coming back clear including the chest x-rays and my scars are all healing nicely.

In fact, the surgeons released me and I won’t have to go back and see them. They refused to express an opinion on chemotherapy except to say it depends on what I work out with oncology and the amount of risk I’m prepared to take that the cancer will show up again somewhere else.

The “morgue” reference isn’t totally off the wall. My mighty hunter and self-appointed security guard raided a bird’s nest yesterday and it was my sad duty to interr a couple of featherless fledglings, to the howling displeasure of Sinatra. To say he’s “pissed” (not in the British sense of the slang word, but the American one) is a distinct understatement. My own sense of trying to coexist peacefully with our feathered friends has taken a blow, but I was out of the house too early today to catch the mockingbird. I hope the fledglings weren’t mockingbirds, because I would hate to think of feline sin.

So, I’m just trying to enjoy the purple Rose of Sharon (gosh, I hope for Woody Allen’s sake they’re not from Cairo since that was one of his worst films) presently blossoming in my back yard.

Hope everybody blows something up real good for the holiday and happy birthday Tuesday for me. I’m giving up on trying to do anything for the next four days since everyone I called this morning was already on their way to their four day holiday weekends, presumably at the lake.

Blogblah

Pretty exciting morning here at St. John’s Infirmary.

I went outside to the back patio to enjoy my morning coffee in the cool of the day and was escorted by my personal feline security, Sinatra. Cunning predator that he is, he checked beneath all the nearby shrubs and bushes for any threatening squirrels, birds, crawling things or other evildoers. As cool breezes greeted the (7 a.m.) dawnings, he scampered and cavorted in the dewey grass, making sure I was safe from the swarm of gnats that hovers over the lawn. When he came to my ankles for his obligatory scratch between the ears, I knew it was safe to go in for a second cup.

Ordinarily, I’m serenaded by a particular male mockingbird in the mornings and again in the evening, but as I settled in with my second cup I noticed he was down the block today. Instead of his melodious morning concert, my yard was invaded by a raucous bluejay mafia making the territory their own. These four thugs of the sky didn’t need no stinkin’ badges, I’m tellin’ you. They clearly had no fear of me — one took the high lookout while the other three scoured the ground for anything that moved, each trading places from time to time. Later, these same four took notice of one of their second cousins twice removed, a crow much bigger than any of them, and they chased him from the entire neighborhood’s sky like World War II spitfires strafing a bomber. The bigger bird hadn’t a chance against these four blue ruffians.

I don’t drink as much coffee as I once did and I went inside for a true pleasure: I got to take a shower, wash my hair and shave myself all by my lonesome, just like a big boy. Even dried myself off with my own towel. Yep. Just like a grownup, I’m telling you. Big advance over just a couple of weeks ago, so I’m pretty proud of that landmark occasion.

Before it got too hot, I went for my daily walk. I’m up to 8 blocks now. Continuous blocks, mind you, not four 2-block walks or anything like that, a real walk for eight straight blocks without stopping. Gosh, there’s no where from here but up, right?

I closed out the early part of the day with a rousing read of an international best seller of a thriller called … er … something or another by someone I’ve never heard of.

Well, that’s the day’s dispatch. Don’t want to keep up this pace since I know some of my older readers must already be feeling the angina from the excitement.

Blogblah

Update:
This makes me feel more secure:

The Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, who chairs the counter-terrorism sub-committee, said the mistake had left the Sawers family “extremely vulnerable”. Referring to Miliband’s suggestion that the incident was not significant, Mercer said: “If that is the case why has the site being taken down?” He also pointed out that military chiefs had warned that the Taliban get 80% of their intelligence from Twitter and Facebook.

Anyone who gets eighty percent of their intelligece from Twitter and/or Facebook is a foe I think can be outsmarted.

apres l'deluge

l'deluge

BLOGBLAH’S BEEN AWOL?

shut up, he explained

THE WOMEN, A BLOGROLL

In the blog links, you’ll see I’ve added a couple, and both are blogs by women I’ve run across at random. Megan Barry started following me on Twitter because I “tweeted” that I’d turned misanthropic. Any woman that young living near Seattle who is already misanthropic is good enough for me. Also randomly, I noticed a comment by a woman named Maggie May on my daughter’s blog and went to see who she is; well, it turns out she’s “Flux Capacitor” and she’s a married mom and writer and lots more. Blog love to both, although I hate them along with everyone else. You go to their sites and decide for yourself, even though I hate you, too. Since there has to be three (Right, Skip?), I also want to recommend you go see someone’s site who has long been on my blogroll, deShan. She recently sold out a show in Australia she called “100 days, 100 drawings.” Gee, don’t you miss her fairy wings? Well, don’t you miss her walking her pussy around Paseo? Well, I don’t like you, either.

Chairman of the Bored

I think I speak for all cats when I say that what we most want to know about humans is: Do they have tail envy?

Sinatra

Eating ham & beans to build strength for bashing Bush

THE BUSH BASH INAUGURAL BALLZ

Well, dear readers, I’ve reached some conclusions about my Inaugural Ballz party, having been too exhausted to do much else but contemplate my bellybutton since then.
One conclusion I reached quickly: the beans and ham must have been pretty good because six quarts of the stuff and a dozen cornbread muffins plus a 9″ pan of “cake” cornbread was consumed in a relatively short time. I generally like stews and especially beans and ham on the second day even better than freshly cooked, but there were quite simply no leftovers from this effort.

BECAUSE I SAID SO

SINATRA SPEAKS

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

Muffy, he’s lost his mind. First, I have no idea why he would have such a fixation with “Ballz”. I’ve done quite nicely without mine for sometime now and his only seem to make him more crazy more often. There wasn’t a room in the house to hide where there weren’t people with dog smells on them. What really mixed me up, though, was some guy in the flickering noisemaker room who smelled like at least an entire pride of lioncats. There were wonderful smells and plenty of people in the food room and no one, NO ONE!, fed me even once. I can only guess they were all out of their minds. Now that it’s all over, I’m in a real dilemma: when I stake out the water hole in the back yard, the birds stay in the trees; when I climb the trees, they go to the water hole. I’m trying a new strategy, Muffy. I’m sitting on the fence.