More Wine?

Our friend Gena is here visiting us, and it's been pretty damned fun. Although I've been working like a fool this past week, so I haven't been able to hang out with the ladies (The Jeanners and the Geners) as much as I would've liked. Especially yesterday, when they spent the entire day sleeping and waking up only to eat ice cream. And then we had a tasty home-made shrimp enchilada dinner last night followed by a wicked kitchen dance party. Anyway, it's been nice having somebody else around for a week.

One bad thing that's happened this week is that all the piping underneath our kitchen sink drain is basically falling apart. We've got a temporary fix set up and will attempt a more permanent fix after our guest departs, just in case things don't go well and we end up completely sodomizing the whole drain line.

So my dad spent a lot of time as a kid out in the sun, and he's always had lots of freckles on his back, and as he's aged the freckles have turned into some pretty wicked-looking, scary cancerous-looking spots. On his back and his face. And he's very stubborn about going to the doctor, so he'd never been to a dermatologist to get them checked out or anything. Well, after getting goaded by my Mom's sister ("I've never known anyone who is as smart as you to be so dumb"), he finally made an appointment with a dermatologist to get them checked out and, sure enough, all the really bad-looking spots are all basal-cell cancers. Which is not a huge surprise (he had pretty much figured that they were all cancer anyway), and is actually good news (basal-cell is the less-dangerous type of cancer; melanoma is the really bad kind), but is still pretty shitty. So for the last couple of weeks he's been going and getting a few of the spots removed, including the big one on his temple, right next to his eye. Basically, they either cut or scrape it off, and then burn and sew it closed. Yuck. He said for the one next to his eye, they had to put in like 20 stitches to close it up. And he's awake for the whole thing. And then his eye swelled shut the next day. And then he's been going and getting the ones on his back removed, too, which isn't as bad because they're in a less sensitive location, but still the same shitty procedure. And so anyway, now when I've been calling my parents for the last couple of weeks it's been weird, because my dad, who is usually fairly upbeat or at least stoic about hard situations, sounds depressed. He sounds like he's been almost beaten by this. And that sucks. I hope going to the doctor was the right decision. I'm going to call them today and hopefully he's doing better. Right now I'm wishing that I wasn't so far away and that I could go over and visit every couple of days. (audible sigh).

Been doing some shifts as a real manager-manager at work. It is strange because on those days I end up running around like crazy and actually doing work. As opposed to standing around and waiting for the clock to tick tick tick, which is what I do on most other days.

Tonight: Faidley's crab cakes (the best in Baltimore!) and possible karaoke! You are jealous!