3 Topics of Discussion

As most of you know, we've had some family medical stuff going on for about 6 or 7 months that has kept us on on our toes. Brenda's brother has needed a liver transplant, and for the last 6 or 7 months, we have anxiously waited for this to happen. The most common question I get these days by far is what's happening with Brenda's brother? Any news? When is this going to happen? Etc... My email's, texts, and phone calls generally all start the same way. Since we are all good friends here, I'm going to share a little bit of news. Last night, Brenda's brother got his new liver. For us, this is the best news we've had in years. It's really exciting.

The second most common topic of discussion that I've been having is generally some sort of question about when Brenda and I will be reunited. We've been apart for over a month now while Brenda has been spending her days in Seattle at the hospital with her brother and I have been hanging around Bend, Oregon being your normal run of the mill ski bum. I definitely got the better end of the deal as a ski bum rather than hanging out in the hospital all day.

I'm not really scared of many things, but I can tell you three things that top my list of terrifying. In no particular order, they are sharks, bears, and hospitals. I had planned on helping out and being part of the hospital rotation, but after my first 5 minutes visiting in the hospital, I just about passed out. I have never been able to hang out in a hospital. They give me the heeby-geebies. For some reason I get the cold sweats, light headed, and I can't touch anything or sit down because I'm sure that I'm contracting some form of cooties that is incurable. Brenda gave me a pass because I'm sure she didn't want to have to look after me as well as her brother.

To all of you medical professionals out there, thanks for doing what you do. I couldn't even come close to doing your job. Mostly because I couldn't ever make it to work because I wouldn't be able to walk through the front door of the hospital. And lets be honest here, I can't handle the sight of blood either.

As far as us being reunited, well, that's not something I have an answer for yet. Her brother will have a few months of recovery and Brenda will be a big part of that recovery team. We should know what that means in the next couple of weeks, but realistically, either she or I will be taking a series of planes, trains, and automobiles to visit each other for the foreseeable future. Her brother is going to have a tough road ahead of him but we are sincerely hopeful that he will have a full recovery and be able to live a long, healthy, and happy life.

The third most common topic of discussion coming my way has been the weather. I know it's not as important as the last two things but hey, it's what I've been dealt. I have been getting reports from friends and family around the country that it's been unseasonably cold just about everywhere. Just so you are aware, it's winter. It's supposed to be cold. However, I actually got up yesterday morning and noticed how warm it felt. You heard that right...how warm it felt.

The surprising thing about my new found warmth was that it was only 34 degrees outside. But like I said, it felt warm. It felt so warm that I just wore shorts and a T-shirt as I walked across the RV resort to go to the gym. Normally when I walk to the gym, I get bundled up with wool socks, long john's, fleece pants, 14 shirts, a huge puffy coat, ear muffs, and thick gloves. Once I make it across the resort and get inside the building where the gym is at, I strip off all of my layers, put on my shorts and T-shirt, and start pumping iron. Now, I know what you are thinking. You just had it in your head that I was naturally this buff. Well you are wrong, it takes lots of hard work to get a body like mine...lots and lots of work (and cookies...cookies are the real reason why I look like this).

Normally 34 degrees isn't a number that you would associate with warmth, so I thought I should try to figure out why it felt like such a balmy day. A simple math equation would surely answer why all of my normal layers weren't needed for my walk across the RV resort. If we take our starting temperature of 34 degrees, times it by the square root of 89, add E equals MC squared (don't forget to carry the one), divide by 422, and then subtract all of that by the temperature from the morning of a few days ago, which was -6 (you read that right...that's a 6 with a minus in front of it...brrrrrrrrrrrr), then I'm sure you come up with exactly the same result as me. It's because just a few days ago, it was 40 degrees colder.

Holy Crap! 40 is a big number. I know how big 40 is because just a little over a year ago I turned 40 and panicked. I don't know if you have ever left the gray and rainy skies of Seattle and gone to Hawaii in the winter time, but if you have you'll know what I'm talking about. When you arrive in Hawaii, you'll step off of the plane and get hit with a wall of warmth. It's an almost unbearable heat wave that feels like you just stepped into a microwave oven. That's about 40 degrees of difference.

Now, I'm not comparing the 34 degrees in Bend to the 80 degrees in Hawaii, especially since we've had a pretty good layer of snow and ice covering just about everything for the entire month that I've been here, but I will tell you that 34 feels a lot better than -6. It's so nice that my walk across the RV resort in shorts and a T-shirt felt pretty justifiable.

Well, that's about it. I mainly wanted to share the news about a freshly installed liver and answer the reoccurring questions that seem to come my way daily. As always, we'll report more when there is something to report. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Happy New Year!