Time Bomb?

Before I launch into this entry, I want to inform my readership that Susie and company landed safely in Bucharest about 7:05 this morning Columbus time (2:05 p.m. in Bucharest).  I was planning to post during the night, but my attention would have been divided.  I sat in the living room with either Cat Stevens or Seals and Crofts playing on the turntable, and watched this site to track the progress of her Finnair flight from Helsinki to Warsaw.  I read a little, but could not stay focused.  I did attempt to write in my diary, but only got as far as taking the thick red and green book out of my knapsack and clicking the ballpoint pen.

When I neglect the blog for an extended period of time, there is often quite a bit of news to relay.  The front-page item in our household has been Susie's trip, and yesterday, I did not want to steal any of her thunder, so I focused exclusively on that.  I have some significant news of my own, and news that is quite worrisome: I am now the proud owner of a thoracic aortic aneurysm.

I learned this news totally by accident, and am wondering when it first started to develop.  Two weeks ago, on a Friday night, I went straight from work to the emergency room at Riverside Methodist Hospital.  (Susie was away for the weekend at a Senior High Youth Con at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Akron, so I did not have to worry her.)  Throughout the day, I had a sharp, almost electric pain in the right side of my chest, which spread up into my throat and jaw, and constricted my chest so much that I would go into spasms of dry coughing every time I drew a deep breath.  I was not worried about it being anything cardiac, since it was on the wrong side of the chest.  All I knew was that I was in pain, and had no idea why.

I won't reel off all the procedures and conversations I had in the six or seven hours I was in the emergency room.  I came early Friday evening, so I was there well ahead of the Knife and Gun Club activities.  They put me on a Dilaudid drip, drew blood, and hooked me up to a heart monitor.  (I now can understand how someone could develop a Dilaudid habit, by the way.)

The emergency room doctor ordered a CT scan, because he was suspecting that I had a blood clot in my lung.  I have had CT scans before, but I will never get used to the feeling when they inject the dye.  It only lasts about 15-20 seconds, but it feels like they're shooting you full of hot water.  For a brief terrible moment, I thought I was going to mess myself, but the technicians reassured me that was a normal feeling.

The doctor and nurse came to my cubicle three or four hours later (I spent most of the evening lying there watching reruns of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on USA Network) with the diagnosis.  The pain in my chest was an inflamed muscle.  He was prescribing hydrocodone and Naproxen, a painkiller and an anti-inflammatory, respectively.  Then he said, "But..."

That's never a good thing to hear from a doctor.  He followed up, after pausing for dramatic effect.  When he read the CT scan, he found that I have a thoracic aortic aneurysm.  It was totally unrelated to muscle inflammation.  The aorta is the largest artery in the body, and the aneurysm is analogous to a knot tied in a garden hose.

Apparently, this is what I have.  Look for me to be Centerfold of the Month in the next New England Journal of Medicine.

From my own research, I have learned that when the aneurysm is dilated 6.0, surgery becomes almost immediately necessary.  (Mine is 4.2, which is 70% of that.)  Steph pointed out that had it been urgent, they would have admitted me to the Cardiac Care Unit immediately.  Cynically, she brought up the fact that my insurance is good enough that they would not have hesitated to operate, since United Healthcare would be sure to foot the bill.

I followed the emergency room doctor's advice, and saw my general practitioner about a week later (as soon as I could schedule an appointment.)  I faxed her all the paperwork from the E.R. (including the printout for my EKG), and the following day Susie dropped off the two disks of my CT scan.  The doctor renewed my Naproxen prescription, but not the hydrocodone (since it is a narcotic).  She said that she was not a radiologist or cardiologist, so she could not look at the disk.  (I tried to look at it, but apparently do not have the software necessary to play it.)

So what's happening now?  First, I am going on record as saying I am not letting this condition turn me into an invalid.  I've been going to work, walking (although I am just getting over an unrelated pain in my left foot, probably because I've been wearing a shoe that is too old), and will be on the trike this weekend.  I worked at the bookstore after the diagnosis, which entailed 2½ hours at a time on my feet.  Again, I come back to Abraham Lincoln's attitude toward assassination, at a time when he had a file of 80 threatening letters in his desk:  "If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again."  I have kidded my supervisor (who is an R.N.) that if she assigns me a task I don't like, I'll do the "I'm comin', Elizabeth" routine Redd Foxx made popular in Sanford and Son.  She told me never to joke about that.

I have an appointment with a vascular surgeon at the OSU Ross Heart Hospital on Monday afternoon, to be followed by a stress test.  I'm not sure if it'll be a treadmill test, or by IV stimulation.  (Neither one sounds like much fun.  I have had the treadmill test, and do not have fond memories of it.)  I mailed the disk of the CT scan to the doctor earlier this week, and hopefully he'll have looked at it by Monday.

Oddly enough, I don't meet the usual characteristics of the typical thoracic aneurysm patient.  I do not have high blood pressure, and I have never been a smoker.  I do not have any connective-tissue diseases, such as Ehrlers-Danlos syndrome or Marfan's.  I am well aware that my cholesterol and triglyceride levels resemble zip codes, a byproduct of loving the fare at the Blue Danube Restaurant, I am sure.  My weight surely does not help, and the genetic factor worried my E.R. doctor--my dad died (aged 70) of congestive heart failure, and his father died of a heart attack at the age of 52, two years older than I am now.  My mother had a heart attack in her 60s, but made a full recovery.  Also, abdominal aortic aneurysms are far more common.

As a departure from this gloom and doom, I want to share with you the current view from where Susie is right now.  (I received a text message from her this morning, saying I had forgotten to give her the PIN number to the pre-paid Visa card I sent with her.  I replied, and told her that if it didn't work, I'd go to Western Union and send her money that way.)

So, I leave you with this picture from Romania:

Photo by Ben Iten of the southern Carpathian Mountains.  (Susie took her Nikon digital camera with her, with a memory card capable of holding about 1600 pictures, but we won't see those until she returns to the States.)

 

First Time Blogging Since Turning 50

Early onset senility has not been the reason why I have not logged into this blog in nearly eight weeks.  I won't waste my readers' (or reader's) time by listing all the lame reasons for why I have been absent.  I think I've been like many people who try to keep diaries.  They'll go to the bookstore and buy a blank journal, write in it like mad for a week or two, and then toss it in a drawer and never pick it up again.  As far as keeping this blog current, to paraphrase A. Conan Doyle, "I can but try."

I turned 500 (oops, one too many zeroes) on April 29.  Since then, I've done another stint at the Columbus State bookstore.  After a day trip to Cedar Point, Susie's sophomore year at The Charles School ended.  At the end-of-year assembly, she learned that she is one of 20 students accepted for the Early College program at Ohio Dominican University.

However, the big news for Susie right now is that she is, even as I type, en route to Romania.  She and six other teenagers--and three adult chaperons--left Port Columbus this morning for a 10-day Justice Trip, representing First Unitarian Universalist Church here in Columbus.  (This was the best expenditure of a tax refund in the 30 years I have been filing!)  Just before I started typing, I received a text message from the church's Associate Minister, letting me know they've all landed safely at JFK in New York.  (They will be there until late afternoon, before embarking on the longest leg of the trip, which is between New York and Helsinki.  There will be much tighter connections between Helsinki and Warsaw, and Warsaw and Bucharest.)

Susie is the first of our immediate family to journey outside North America.  My overseas travel was 15 minutes in Ciudad Juarez in 1987, where my sole activity was buying a bottle of tequila for $1.15.  Steph lived in upstate New York until she was nine or 10, which meant frequent trips in and out of Canada.  However, Susie journeyed to Costa Rica (for the "Winterim" trip at The Graham School), and now will be headed across the Atlantic Ocean to Romania.  (Although it is known as "the Eastern Europe of Eastern Europe," Romania plays a prominent role in Unitarian history, and is as important as Jerusalem or Rome.  The only Unitarian monarch, John Sigismund Zápolya, ruled Hungary in the mid-16th century (as John II).)  A Reader's Digest version of the Unitarian history of the region can be found here.

Our Associate Minister picked us up at 7:45 for the ride out to Port Columbus.  (The flight was supposed to leave at 8:30 a.m., but did not leave until after 10.  He called me, and the parents of all the other youth, around 2:15 a.m. to let us know.)  Before everyone headed to the TSA metal detectors and the American Airlines boarding area, they posed for pictures.  Here is the group, rarin' to go:

Just across from the American Airlines ticket counter, after checking in baggage and scanning passports.  Susie is on the left, in front of the Honda logo.

There were many planning meetings for this trip.  One of the adult chaperons wisely mentioned that they would be together almost constantly, and they would get on one another's nerves.  (There will be a buddy system to make sure no one is out and about alone.)  Susie told me that when the Graham School trip to Costa Rica ended, the plane had landed at Port Columbus, and was still sitting on the runway before the passengers disembarked.  One of the teachers in charge told everyone, "I love you all, but I don't want to see any of you for 72 hours."

 

I am taking the day off from work.  I thought about coming in to work once I knew Susie was airborne, but my sleep was spotty last night (Susie and I had considered staying up all night, but I caved a little after midnight, and she went to bed around 1 a.m.  I was just getting to sleep when my phone rang, bringing me the news the flight would be leaving later than expected.)  I foresee an early night for me tonight.  I am hoping that Susie and the others will take advantage of the long flight over the Atlantic Ocean to Finland, and get some shut-eye during that.

Squeaky Wheels and Swings

It looks like the vernal equinox may finally be settling in for the long haul here in Central Ohio.  Temperatures during the days since spring officially began have been so erratic that I have not delivered on my plan to ride the trike to and from work at least twice a week, but it looks like we're finally turning the corner.

There are some things you never outgrow.  When Susie was a toddler, and finally too big for the "baby swings" on playgrounds, I was very glad that she loved the swings, because it gave me the excuse of swinging with her.  I restrained myself and never showed her the playground practice of "bailing out," which I learned in elementary school, miraculously escaping any type of injury from it--even a skinned knee.

Susie retains her love of swinging.  Her favorite head-clearing, by-herself activity is swinging, which means that if I come home and she is not home, as long as it's still light outside, I can rest assured that she is at the Maynard and Summit Park, the little pocket park less than a block from our place.  If I turn off all music and TV, and listen carefully, I can be doubly assured that she is there.

Entrance to Maynard and Summit Park.

I will never call 311, the City of Columbus Call Center, to ask them to oil the swings in the park.  However, I am the first to admit that their squeak is gratingly annoying.  It is very similar to fingernails down a blackboard.  (I remember seeing Jaws in a theater equipped with Dolby surround sound, and the scene where Robert Shaw drags his fingernails down the blackboard creeped me out more than any scene involving the Great White.)  But, I do not want the City to correct this, because if the house is quiet when I come home, or on a weekend or holiday where I'm sleeping in, if I hear the rhythmic squeak of the swing, I know that's where Susie is.

Part of me hopes that my down-the-street neighbor in Somerville, Mass. reads this blog.  I don't remember her name, and I doubt that she knows or remembers mine, but she would be quite pleased at my change in attitude about the sound of squeaking.  I sublet part of a house from some students at Tufts during the summer of 1983, since I was part of the skeleton crew at The Harvard Crimson putting out the newspaper (publishing twice weekly during the summer) and working on The Confidential Guide to Courses at Harvard-Radcliffe, 1983-1984.  It was a two-mile walk from The Crimson's headquarters on Plympton St., which was a godsend to me, since I frequently left work after public transit had stopped for the night.

There was a family with a young boy, a toddler, who lived on my street.  During the day, the street was almost deserted, because all the residents were either at school or work.  (I was one of the exceptions.  Since I worked a graveyard-shift job, the exact opposite was true for me.  I would be gone most of the night, and sleeping for much of the day.)  The little boy could easily spend all morning racing back and forth in the street on his tricycle.  Had he been my child, I would have required him to use the sidewalks.  This street was no turnpike, but there was still some vehicle traffic during the day, such as utility people, UPS delivery drivers, etc.

Usually, I was comatose much of the morning.  And I usually slept the sleep of the dead once I fell asleep.  However, the squeaking of the kid's tricycle never failed to awaken me, whether he was pedaling toward or away from my place.  There was also no rhythm or pattern to it, so waiting for him to make the next lap was a lot like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I tried waiting for the squeak's Doppler effect as he went past the house, but it was futile.

One morning, I reached my limit.  I was both frustrated and exhausted (a very unpleasant combination with me!), and decided to be proactive.  I found an oil can in my basement, and when the kid pedaled by, I ran after him and oiled the wheels on his little tricycle.  Very silently, he pedaled away.

A few minutes later, his mother came marching up to my porch, where I was going through the mail.  She was not a happy woman.  This surprised me, because I thought the squeaking drove her out of her skull as well.

Quite the contrary.  The squeak was how she kept track of where he was.  He was restricted to going back and forth on the one-block stretch of our street, but she still wanted to know his exact location.  This was in the era before parents believed that pedophiles and rapists hid behind every car antenna and fire hydrant a child might pass, but she still wanted to have a bead on his whereabouts.

It took parenthood for me to realize the reason she was so unhappy with me.  When Susie was younger, and playing in the yard (or in the house) with kids in the neighborhood, I managed to bite my lip and refrain from chastising them about being too loud.  The only thing worse than a group of kids that are too loud, I realized, was a group of kids that was too quiet.

"Death is the Only Excuse!"

I first heard this line over the P.A. system in high school, when a teacher was announcing an after-school club's meeting where attendance was mandatory.  I did not care for it much at the time, but I'm finding it applicable to my current situation--my delinquency in posting to this blog.

My longtime friend Scott Robinson died unexpectedly last month, aged 49.  He had been a friend since shortly after my 1995 move to Columbus.  We knew each other mainly through Unitarian Universalism, and various political and social activities and organizations.  (I mention him several times in this blog, particularly our long walks.)  He died early on a Sunday morning, and I went to a packed memorial service for him at church the following Thursday.  (Scott took the picture of me that is at the title page of this blog.)

His death triggered a heavy, but barely functional depression.  I was able to keep going to work, although I'm sure my production was sub-par; I am not looking forward to my next quarterly evaluation.  After coming home from work daily, about all I wanted to do was sleep, so while Susie and I spent evenings in the living room, either watching DVDs of House or while she was online with her friends, I often slept for much of the evening stretched out (as best I could) on the love seat.

The downward spiral stopped because of something you would not associate with curing (or at least arresting) depression.  Even though it was the first day of the vernal equinox here in Columbus, the mercury was below freezing, and the heavy winds made it feel even colder.  Our furnace picked that night to conk out on us.  I had it up to 85 degrees at one point, and the furnace made all the knocking and whooshing sounds, but there was no heat coming up from the registers.  So, Susie and I sat around in sweatshirts and coats, and she kept a space heater close to her.  With my fingers turning blue and bent from the cold (okay, this is a little hyperbolic), I texted the property manager, and we made plans about his going in to look at the furnace.  All the while, I was hoping that the problem was relatively simple.  I was simultaneously expecting and hoping that the property manager would give me hell for calling him in to relight the pilot light.

As it turned out, this furnace uses no pilot light.  The manager said the furnace had a bad igniter, but he repaired it and we once again had heat.

I think the reason my depression lifted was because, once the furnace stopped working, I knew that it was from no ineptitude of my own.  Too many times in the past, if I came home to a house where the electricity didn't work or there was no heat, it would be because I had neglected to pay a bill, and the service was discontinued.  This time, I knew I was solvent with rent, that my payments to Columbia Gas were current, and so the lack of heat's cause was mechanical, not financial.

Susie is not looking forward to the end of spring break Monday.  She is back from a week in Florida with Steph, where they went clothes-shopping, and visited the zoo and bookstores.  Sometime in May, her drama class at The Charles School is performing Twelfth Night, so three afternoons a week she is at rehearsal.

During her week in Florida, I "indulged" in a "wild bachelor weekend."  The definition of "wild weekend" varies as you get older, or when you discard various pharmacological forms of entertainment.  When Susie was a toddler, she and Steph went for a week to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina.  I had used up all my paid leave because of Steph's first heart surgery and recovery, so I stayed behind in Columbus.  My "wild weekend" involved ordering in from Donato's and watching all three Godfather movies in a row.

So, what did I do this time, besides neglect the blog?  I laid out my fledgling collection of 78 RPM records on the living room floor and love seat, and did something a little OCD.  I made sure that Vocalion records were in Vocalion sleeves, that RCA Victor records were in RCA Victor sleeves, etc.  I had my laptop switched on, and the had the Online 78 RPM Discographical Project on the screen, but I didn't check my collection against this vast and exhaustive database.  In the case of my Columbia LPs, there were more records than sleeves, so--against the advice of the owner and proprietor of Vintage Fountain Pens here in town (also a vinyl salesman)--I put them in the binder albums that a record store owner gave me.

Just your typical Saturday night in my house when Susie is out of town--sorting out 78 RPM albums and putting them in the proper sleeves.

 Not the most fascinating way to spend the weekend, but the solitude made it easier.  Laying the records on the floor when there were two of us in the house risked someone stepping on them (I confess I lost two records this way.  It may be sour grapes, but judging from the titles, they probably sounded better being stepped on than played), so this was a project best done alone.

Once the weather is consistently in the 60s, trike rides are going to be the norm, and not the exception.  Even after a decent night's sleep, I am very slow in getting out of bed in the morning (a lifelong habit), so I really need to pre-plan when I would ride the trike in to work.  I restarted taking lithium this winter, but have stopped because it's causing me to gain too much weight, and regular trike rides should help bring down the excess poundage.

On the 29th of this month, I turn 50 years old.  I received an AARP card in the mail earlier this week, amist the other unasked-for mail, such as the MicroCenter catalog and an invitation to join AAA (as a non-driver, I have no need for it).

Time-Tested and -Honored Social Media

Several blog posts ago, I wrote about the SoHud Block Watch that my neighbors have organized in response to the graffiti, car break-ins, thefts, and vandalism occurring in our particular patch of Columbus the last several months.  Word of mouth worked well when the idea of a Block Watch first started to percolate, and this quickly progressed to closed groups on Yahoo!, Google Groups, and Facebook.

The latest meeting was last night at the Maynard Ave. United Methodist Church.  I was unable to be there in person, since I went to a parents' meeting at The Charles School at Ohio Dominican University, where Susie began classes last Monday, but I was able to play a part before the meeting occurred.

With all the cyberspace methods of spreading news now available to just about anyone, the SoHud Block Watch decided to spread the news the old-fashioned way.  When I came home from work Monday, there was a stack of leaflets and a roll of Scotch tape in between the storm door and my front door.  The organizer had assigned me territory as to where to hang these.  So, the following night, I went out with the little stack of leaflets and the roll of tape, and began taping them to the doors of houses.  My territory was east of where Susie and I live, short blocks sandwiched by N. 4th St. to the west and the Norfolk Southern train tracks to the east.

I needed the exercise, and it was not as brutally cold as it has been the past several nights, although it was icy and I nearly fell several occasions.  (Grudgingly, I am coming to realize that I am coming to an age when a fall can have serious consequences.  So far, I have imitated the Weeble: I wobble, but I don't fall down.)  I went up and down both sides of the block on Wyandotte Ave., E. Maynard, Chilcote, and Clinton, before I ran out of flyers.

One of the organizers of the Block Watch publicly complimented me on Facebook for a job well done, since several newcomers from the sections I canvassed appeared at the meeting.  While I was out in the night with my stack of flyers and the roll of tape, I felt a little like the town criers you see in children's stories about the American Revolution.  (I remember seeing a flyer in a supermarket that was called Town Crier, and its logo was a guy in a tri-corner hat, ruffles, tights, and boots, ringing a bell, and from his wide open mouth was a voice balloon shouting, "Hear ye!  Hear ye!")

My route was supposed to cover E. Tompkins as well, but I ran out of copies.  (Before I began distributing, I put two copies in my diary, so when those pages are studied by the historians of the future, there will be extant copies for all to see.)  Many flyers, whether for political candidates, bands, pro- or anti-abortion rallies, or store openings, usually end up in the trash within hours.  Sometimes, I have looked on eBay to see if anyone is selling original copies of the Hands Off Cuba! Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets that Lee Harvey Oswald distributed on the streets of New Orleans in the summer of 1963.  I have also looked to see if anyone has the original handbill for the Ford's Theater performance of Our American Cousin for the April 1865 night when Lincoln was assassinated.

Wonder how many of these were discarded before Lincoln went to the theater that night?

In 1960, Richard Nixon, who was then Vice President, made a campaign stop in Marietta when he was running against John F. Kennedy for President.  My parents, who were quite enthusiastic Kennedy supporters, went to see Nixon speak in front of the National Guard Armory on Front St.  I have always been irritated by the fact that my dad eventually lost much of his '60 Kennedy campaign memorabilia--his PT-109 tie bar, his Frank Sinatra campaign record ("High Hopes"), and his ALL THE WAY WITH JFK button, but he did manage to keep a little pamphlet called The White House--American or Roman?, by V.E. Howard.  It addressed the question of whether it was proper for a Roman Catholic to be President.  After reading two or three paragraphs, you can tell that the answer is a screeching "No!"  (I keep my copy inside the front cover of a 1922 book, The Suppressed Truth About the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, by Burke McCarty.  The "suppressed truth," of course, was that the Vatican was behind Lincoln's murder.)

When I arrived in Boston in 1982, I arrived pretty much broke, and was desperately searching for jobs that paid very soon after taking them.  Before I took my short-lived job as a dishwasher and busboy at a delicatessen in Brookline, I considered taking a job leafleting in Harvard Square.  These were small flyers for any business that paid to produce them, anything from shoe stores to tailors.  The pay was minimum wage, and it meant standing out in the weather and trying to press these into the hands of passersby who avoided you as much as they avoided the panhandlers, and also competing with people handing out other types of printed matter.  Women in hijabs timidly held out "paper against Khomeini," and Scientologists badgered people about taking a "personality test."  (I told one that I already took one, and it said I was obnoxious.)  Hare Krishnas endlessly tried to issue invitations to free vegetarian meals (I kept one of their brochures in my wallet, in case I ever needed a free meal), and Bridge Over Troubled Waters workers tried to get literature to runaways and kids living on the streets about their services.  I decided not to try to take this job, although the leafleting service would have hired anyone who could stay in one place and move one arm for eight hours.

I have searched eBay, so far in vain, for the WANTED FOR TREASON handbills that circulated in Dallas in November 1963, in the days before John Kennedy's assassination.  These featured front and side photographs of Kennedy, and was styled like the posters that hung in post office lobbies.  Many Dallas-area Democrats (and Republicans who were not on the far end of the political and lunatic spectrum) probably declined them, and tossed them into the nearest trash can, but their value skyrocketed from the moment the news spread that Kennedy had been killed.

Political extremists, both Left and Right, still cling to the art of the leaflet.  As recently as my last few trips to Washington, for peace and anti-fracking marches, I have come home with "9/11 was an inside job" flyers, poorly printed and typeset descriptions of chemtrails and how they're turning us all into zombies, and the evils of the Federal Reserve and the Trilateral Commission.

Evangelism learned the value of the flyer long ago.  Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, managed to condense his version of the New Testament into a short little work called The Four Spiritual Laws, which is short enough to be readable over a single cup of coffee and a sandwich.  And, there is Jack T. Chick, a Talibangelist who has published booklet-sized comic books to spread his own way-out-there version of the Gospel (along with other "little-known facts" such as that the Vatican was responsible for the Holocaust, that Dungeons and Dragons is a gateway drug for Satanic worship, etc.), and many of his tracts are given out at trick-or-treat (with or without razor blade-studded candy), left in Laundromats, or on buses and public restrooms.  One tract you won't see much anymore is Lisa, which is beyond question his most grotesque.

I'll make one brief segue before ending this entry.  I finally broke down and bought an external keyboard, since my keyboard has been DOA, when I tipped over a cup of milk on it.  The thought never occurred to me until this week, but tonight Susie and I went to Micro Center so she could buy a new power cord for her Acer laptop.  For a mere $4.05, I bought an Inland external keyboard.  It took less than 10 minutes to install, and now I am back in business.  It's not as easy to use as the regular keyboard, but it is much better than trying to use the onscreen keyboard!

A Continent Apart...

Central Ohioans are currently reveling in the unseasonably warm temperatures for January.  It is currently 3:38 in the afternoon, and the temperature is 53° F.  Susie, on the other hand, is in Costa Rica (on her "Winterim" trip with her schoolmates at The Graham School), and has probably been to the beach once or twice.  (She may be there right now, as I am typing this.)

Her "big" Christmas present this year was a digital camera, and I am hoping that she will come back with hundreds of pictures to share with her Facebook friends and others.  The only way I've managed to keep abreast with what she has done is through her rather terse Facebook posts.  (I let her take her Nook down, mainly so she could play Angry Birds on the flight, but did not want her taking her laptop on this journey.)  She has gone kayaking, played soccer with some kids at a school in Monteverde, enjoyed the best strawberry milkshake of her life, and gone horseback riding and zip-lining.  (She was determined to skip the zip-lining, but did it and, despite being scared to death, loved it.  I am glad I did not tell her that one of the synonyms for it is death slide.)

Susie is the first in our family to leave North America.  My "overseas" travel is 15 minutes in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in 1987, en route back from San Francisco.  I walked from downtown El Paso, crossed the Rio Grande, bought a fifth of tequila, and came back to the U.S.  (This was in the pre-9/11 days, when crossing to Mexico or Canada required no passport, and also before Juarez became as dangerous as it is now.)  Steph lived in upstate New York until she was seven or eight, and therefore crossed back and forth in and out of Canada with her family quite often when she was a child.

Susie's Graham School group left Port Columbus at 6:30 Monday morning.  Neither Susie nor I slept the night before.  She was too keyed up about the trip, and I knew the only way to be up at 3:30-3:45 was not to go to bed.  The mother of one of the girls going on the trip picked us up a little after 4 a.m., and we drove to the U.S. Airways terminal.  Columbus was dark and pretty quiet at that hour, and even the airport seemed to be more peaceful than I usually see it.  (My last trip out there was to buy $150 worth of colones for Susie's journey.)  The kids (and two teachers) going on the trip were full of energy and excitement.  Nevertheless, three or four of the kids went off en masse to Cup o' Joe to buy coffee and espresso.

Susie and Flannery after going to get caffeine.

I didn't stay to see Susie off.  Check-in at the baggage counter began around 5 a.m., a full 90 minutes before takeoff, and the teachers assured us they could take it from there.  I marveled at how efficient Susie had been with packing.  Her suitcase was still small and light enough to go as a carry-on, which saved me a $25 booking fee.  Flannery's mother and I left just after the attendants scanned and approved passports, and it was still dark when I fell into bed.  There was a text message from Susie on my cell phone when I awoke late Monday morning.  It was time-stamped 8:03, and it said In charlotte.  (They were changing planes in Charlotte, N.C., so I had asked her to text me once she arrived there.  I wasn't sure about her cell phone service in Costa Rica.)

Back here in Columbus, I've kept myself occupied by nights at the bookstore, since the winter semester at Columbus State is in full swing.  This semester, us "old-timers" at the bookstore have been blessed with some very sharp, very hardworking, and very fun rookies.  You always come away from some customers wondering, "Just what is this person doing in college?", but even they have seemed less than before.

So far, the most noteworthy event that has happened in Susie's absence has been the end of my years-long quest for a Cisler brick.  I posted an eBay alert for "cisler brick" last year, and finally received an email saying one was available.  (I have written extensively about the significance of this brick in this entry, when I still used LiveJournal as a platform.  This article goes into even further detail.)  I made the payment online, and yesterday, when I came home from work, there was a Priority Mail box on my front porch.  I knew what it was, and my neighbors were a bit puzzled as to why I was so happy about getting a brick in the mail.  (One of my Facebook friends did point out--correctly--that getting it in the mail is better than getting it through the front window.)

The much coveted Cisler brick.

We are heading into a long weekend.  Both the State of Ohio and the bookstore will be closed Monday, in honor of the Martin Luther King holiday, and today is supposed to be the only day with decent weather.  Although I went to bed around 11:30-11:45 last night, I tossed and turned until nearly dawn, so I called off working at the bookstore today, which will definitely be a blow to my pocketbook once that payday happens.

But I did not regret it.  I awoke early in the afternoon, and when I saw that it was in the low 50s, I brought the trike out of drydock (i.e., my dining room), since next week the temperature is not supposed to exceed the mid 20s.  I rode around Olde North and the Ohio State campus area, and ate lunch at Five Guys.  My infirm Dell laptop is not up to my typing speed, so I have made a pit stop at the OSU Library to type this blog entry.

Susie will be back late Wednesday night.  Her plane lands around 11:45 at night, and I will be at the U.S. Airways gate ready to meet her.

I Have a Right to Cry Over Spilt Milk

I did not make any New Year's resolution to post to this blog daily--although so far I have been batting 1000 on writing in my holographic diary (since I christened a new volume on New Year's Day).  I enter a plea of "guilty with an explanation" for why I have not posted an entry since Christmas Day.

On Christmas Day, I was sitting on the love seat in my living room.  The laptop was in front of me, and I was holding a bowl of cereal in one hand.  The hand holding the cereal trembled a little, and a little milk sloshed out, just enough to render the keyboard useless.  So, I sent out an SOS to a computer geek at church (I brought my overloaded and very slow Dell Inspiron out of retirement for the time being), and explained the situation.  He said I will probably have to buy a new keyboard.  At the moment, there is a dispute about whether the computer is still under warranty.  That is why I have not taken any measures to fix it yet.

The Dell is too slow for extensive typing.  Working on it is much like the situation that fast Linotype operators often faced in the pre-photocomposition era.  A fast linotyper would often have to stop working in order to let the machine catch up to him.  My Dell is so slow that I could not work on it for a long time without losing my patience.  So, I am at the Whetstone library this cold but pleasant Saturday afternoon, bringing this blog up to date.

I know I was speaking in tongues for many people when I wrote about the Linotype machine, so I've included this video so you can see one in action.

Our Christmas celebration was low-key, as it has been for quite a few years.  I am fortunate that Susie was here with me in Columbus this year.  She will be gone for 10 days this month (more about that soon), so she, Steph, and I decided it would be best for her to spend Christmas with me, instead of Susie going down to Florida immediately after school ended for the winter break.

Steph's gift to us was tickets to the premiere of Les Misérables at the Lennox 24.  We brought along our friend Ramona, and I almost needed CPR when the kid behind the refreshment counter told us that candy, popcorn, and fountain drinks for the three of us totaled about $37!  All three of us enjoyed the movie, and ate a large and delicious Christmas dinner at the home of Kittie and Steve, Ramona's mother and stepfather.

Susie's friends gave her My Little Pony stickers and two or three blank journals.  She gave me a Stephen King book that I did not own, and I presented her with her "big" gift--a Nikon digital camera.  Above, I mentioned that she will be gone later this month.  She is going on a "Winterim" trip to Costa Rica with students and teachers at The Graham School.  They will be leaving at 6:30 on January 14, flying U.S. Airways to San José via Charlotte, N.C., and will be back on the 23rd.  The trip is more nature- than history-oriented.  The kids will explore rain forests, visit an extinct volcano, and go horseback riding, kayaking, whitewater rafting, and zip-lining.  Susie is looking forward to all but the latter.  She will be the first in our immediate family to leave North America.  (Steph lived in upstate New York until she was in second or third grade, so she made several trips in and out of Canada during that time.  My only time out of the United States was 15 minutes in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on my way back from San Francisco in 1987.)

My other "big" present was a down payment for a youth pilgrimage to Romania, paid to the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council.  Our church is chaperoning several youths to see the key historical sites in Unitarian history and theology, in Transylvania and elsewhere.  (Susie is, of course, eager to see Bran Castle, which is the prototype for Castle Dracula--although I don't think Bram Stoker ever visited Romania.)  Trips to Romania are relatively recent events.  Especially in his last decade or so of power, Nicolae Ceaucescu did not make Romania a pleasant place to visit or live, and they are still trying to pick up the pieces from his legacy.

Once Susie is back from Costa Rica, other changes are on the horizon for her.  On February 4, she begins classes at The Charles School, which is a middle and high school in partnership with Ohio Dominican University.  Steph and I, in a long series of instant messages and Skype phone conversations, decided that Susie was not learning at a high enough level at The Graham School.  (This came to our attention when she took a placement exam at Columbus State Community College, so she could take a night or weekend class there.  Her reading and writing scores, as we knew they would be, tested way off the charts, but her math scores were below the acceptable level to take classes--and this was in material she covered, and received good grades in, while at Graham.)  Early in December, Susie and I took a tour of The Charles School, and met with the dean of students (Steph participated via speakerphone), and Susie will begin there next month.

The Charles School will be more labor intensive than Graham--or many other high schools, public or private.  When she graduates, she will have a high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree from Ohio Dominican.  It will mean an extra year of high school (there are "seniors" and "super seniors") at Charles, but it also means two years of college absolutely free of charge--no paying for lab fees, textbooks, or course materials.

That is quite important, because there is no way I can afford to pay for college.  Susie will need any and all scholarships she can receive.  From a practical standpoint, The Charles School will cover two years of tuition, and I have no doubt that if she excels with their program, she will have no difficulty getting scholarships to cover the remaining two years.  Also, education at Catholic colleges is more labor-intensive than most state, and many secular, colleges.  (My father is a 1952 graduate of The Catholic University of America.  Oddly enough, the only U.S. President to graduate from a Catholic college was Bill Clinton--Georgetown University Class of 1968.  The erudite and well rounded President Jed Bartlet in The West Wing was a Notre Dame alumnus.)

Having said this, some things are remaining the same here as we veer safely away from the latest non-Apocalypse (the most recent was supposed to be last December 21, per the many mental cases who have too much free time and unfettered Internet access).  On Thursday evening, I began my seasonal stint as a bookseller and customer service drone at the Discovery Exchange, Columbus State's bookstore.  The spring semester looms on the horizon, so I will be working most evenings and the next two or three Saturdays there.  I am grateful for this chance, since I am in no hurry to come home to an empty and quiet house while Susie is in Costa Rica.  I won't earn a large sum of extra money, but every little bit comes in handy, and I do need to exercise, and the 15- or 20-minute walk to the bookstore from the William Green Building is quite aerobic, especially with ice and snow on the ground.

The Discovery Exchange, 283 Cleveland Ave., Columbus, Ohio.