So, I had a follow-up visit with my oncologist today.  They drew the usual half-dozen vials of blood for various tests.  The key bit of data for today was my white blood cell count:  21K/ml.  A month ago, it was 24K ( Read more... )

So, ( Read more... )

For the third night in a row, I'm the Directorate of Logistics duty officer at the Redstone Arsenal operations center on the night (6:00PM to 7:00AM) shift. I've been promised that some other person will get stuck with this duty have an opportunity to excel in this job for Sunday night and probably Monday. It's kind of like a critically necessary ( Read more... )

Yes, I was in Huntsville on Wednesday when the storms went through. I am safe, and the house is undamaged. Everything tracked north and west of our location here. No power, but there is adequate water. TVA restored full power to the Huntsville water plant and both hospitals today. I have food, and was able to get 20 lbs of ice this morning for ( Read more... )

The last several weeks have been "interesting," in the same sense that the word "interesting" is used in the ancient Chinese curse most often translated as "May you live in interesting times."

Briefly, I had a physical exam at the end of March, which included the usual blood samples and such.  There was an anomaly on the blood tests:  an elevated ( Read more... )

...and for that matter, only in the South, will competing human imperatives interact with laissez-faire commerce and free enterprise to produce juxtapositions such as the signs shown below, which are visible from I-65 a few miles north of here:


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If you read the pagan blogosphere you already have a fair idea as to what I'm talking about here.  If not, I suggest that you read the the material here, and here, and possibly here.  Once you've done that, you may read the formal statement from CAYA Coven regarding this matter.

What follows is based on a comment I made to a post at Erynn Laurie' ( Read more... )

So, it starts with the fact that Carol and I like to read.  On a lot of different topics.  Yes, we both read science fiction and fantasy for fun, but we're just as likely to read  history or political commentary.  (Bought a t-shirt last month, which reads "History Buff:  I'd find you far more interesting if you were dead.")   And we do genealogy ( Read more... )

I went out to the lot about 9:00 AM Saturday.  They had finished the forms for the slab, and evidently had completed installing all of the various bits of house guts (mostly plumbing, but some electrical conduit, too,) that runs under the slab.


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The builder broke ground on our house this week, pretty much as soon as the nice people at the bank let them know that the mortgage had been approved.  We went out to the lot on Saturday, and this is what we saw:


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