Insurance Cards and Sleet

The insurance finally issued my updated card with some new numbers etc.  I'm guessing this would be why the clinic up in Portland has had a difficult time getting my appointments approved.  I guess in most situations where people go on Cobra, they're not waiting for PET scan appointments and such to be okayed...

I'll be calling tomorrow to update the oncology clinic with my new digits so we can confirm the coming Portland hospital trip.  Things in general are hopefully close to being normalized again in terms of knowing that all my t's are crossed and i's are ... well dumb i's... you need a dot if they're lower case and none if they're grown up and stuff.  (Okay a so-so attempt at humor... likely not a solid one as I just saw John Carter of Mars which was a C + movie and has perhaps left a lingering creative gulch in my funny bone.)

Probably a good sign of my expectations for continued health is my appointment to have Direct TV installed tomorrow.  You have to make a contract to get the good deal, and I guess I was putting off switching from cable to the less expensive, yet equally satisfying service, was a lingering doubt that I would need it for the full 2 years.  Frankly that's a pretty lame thing to realize, but it's also not such a surprise.  This entire last year has pretty much forced me to think, "okay, what's next" after each step has been taken.  So while I have been stedfast in not allowing prolonged doubt as to my survival, it's been something that is somewhat an inevitable specter.

The timing for that paragraph is nice as the sleet and snow bits that were falling have just stopped and the blue sky is pouring into the 2 skylights here in my music room.  So while I'm not taking things for granted, I do feel fairly optimistic about my current direction.  Maybe I will get a kitty with my next PET scan!

So this is a short and sweet update - no real drama, and general optimism would be the current state of things.  I'll post a shot from my trip back in 2005 to China from the Great Wall (where I stupidly took the wrong way back to the parking lot and wound up on the opposite side of the mountain from the group... and somehow convinced a man with the narrowest van EVER to drive me to the parking lot, with him not understanding English and me knowing zero Chinese...).  Sadly I appear to have saved the bulk of my photos from that China trip to a location that is no longer within my grasp (meaning I've lost all of the original pics).  That pretty well stinks, but fortunately I still have about 10 shots that I had saved elsewhere to play around with at a later date.

Keep on Truckin' ya'll...

Love the One & Fight the Power

Thanks to Cameron for the oodles of old fun tunes :)  I'm listening to the Isley Brothers play Love the One (you're with) leading into Fight The Power.  Makes a pretty funny title combo.

So it would appear my Cobra account was finally paid for Feb and March (at least the company doesn't show either month's payment as due).  I'm still waiting for confirmation for my next appointment and PET scan which if all is in place will happen on April 2nd and 3rd.  The scan is slated for the 2nd, cause it wouldn't do much good to meet with the doc before ya know...

Ya know... Fight The Power is a lot more groovy of a song than Love the One... just sayin' ya know...

So in the meantime I've been immersed in a handful of fairly mild adventures over the last few weeks.  I've sold 3 guitars (goodbye old stringed friends) and a fairly substantial digital mixer all of which are very welcome sources of fundage for a variety of needs and wants ... ya know...

          WARNING THE FOLLOWING IS BASICALLY A RUN ON STORY WITH OCCASIONAL PUNCTUATION AND PARAGRAPH BREAKS... NOT MUCH TO DO WITH THE HEALTH STUFF OTHER THAN THE OCCURRENCE OF A RATHER LONG NAP AS A RESULT.

One of those needs may be a new set of tires for my car.  You always think it's totally rad to drive around in a nifty car with 18" wide and flat tires until you have to replace them... could be worse I suppose, but when I do bite the bullet and replace them it'll be around $600 (or whatever more I wind up paying...).  I seem to remember that was the lower range I could spend for the tires last time, and the look the salesman gave me when I asked what kind of mileage warranty I would get is still with me 2 years later ... (hint... the more expensive the tires, the less chance they'll give any warranty - I mean it's not like people tend to drive fast and aggressively with such fine inspirations to cautious driving right?).

I got to test my physical resolve last weekend while up at a cabin in the snowy mountain lake area close by known as Hyatt Lake.  A couple of close friends moved back to Oregon (yay for Daniel and Greg coming back!), and had a celebratory hang over a few days up there.  Of course me and my brilliance didn't think my Volvo might not be the best choice of vehicle to take up the steep hills where the snow on the road had only been lightly cleared into a single lane... (if my tires weren't pretty done for after so many trips to Portland and back - 13 last year - I might have fared better).  So after sliding backwards a bit I decided to retreat and park at the Greenspings Inn where the owners were amazingly kind and allowed me to leave my car.

Daniel came and picked me up (might have had something to do with my having the components for dinner that night in my car... and Greg getting all hungry and tipsy lol), and then he, Steve and I found another friend who had become lost, and guided him to the Greensprings Inn.  Well he (the friend who will be anonymous lol) wasn't quite into leaving his vehicle and since he had all that snow driving experience from So Cal, decided to try to make it over the hills. You can see where this is going... ya know...

So between him and the surrogate driver (Steve who is from the Susanville area in the CA mountains near  to Reno) the car just wasn't going to make it over the icy hill where I had slid backwards.  And there was even a moment of the car sliding downhill with Steve (read - snow expert) driving and said anonymous friend jumping out of the passenger door :)  hehe - I can say that with the hehe and smily thing as no one was hurt...  ya know.  And it was funny since the snow which the car slid into was thick enough to keep it from anything harmful.

In the end the car wound up stuck in the snow, and we had to push it out in a sideways fashion to get the front wheels able to point downhill and able to drive again.  This is probably the ONLY instance where I was glad to be carrying the additional convalescence weight... cause it was totally the reason the car was able to be pushed around on the hill in the snow and ice.  So back to the Greenspings Inn, and then to the cabin.

Moral of the story... drive to the Hyatt Lake area via Dead Indian Memorial hwy rather than the Greensprings hwy when you have bald tires and a modicum of caution (hello Greg), particularly if you are coming up after the hill has had all of the snow cover roasted down to ice by someone with a rear wheel drive who had been stuck, became impatient, and then raced over the hill almost hitting the folks coming to save him ... (see last driver reference ;).

Any way... I was tired enough from this deal and a walk the next day (to attempt to drive the cars over in the day) to sleep most of Sunday afternoon at home.  Which was very nice.  A little exercise never hurt.

And that snowy goodness would be why I'm sharing this lovely shot from a trip to Kauai a handful of years back.