Birth of a Notion

You can look at this one of two ways:

Either I am becoming a complete geek.

Or I am using my retirement to get "with it" - adapting to the 21st Century by embracing new media.

OK, I know the answer is A. But I am so impressed with my newfound techie skills that I am beginning to think I should be called Don 2.1.

About six weeks ago I had my first Facebook chat buddy - Megan - while I was in the US. Now Sandy and I regularly type to one another. Although I still don't understand why people don't just use Skype.

And now (fanfare, please) I have made my first web site. I did it so we could share more of the pictures from our trip, and the first part I have put up is of our US road trip. If anyone wants to check it out here's the link to what I am calling Across the Great Divide.

Anyhow, I spent way too much time putting the site together, so a short post today and a promise that there will be BIG NEWS next time.

What's Up, Doc?

My doctor fired me. And she didn't even tell me.

Because I have diabetes, I go to my endocrinologist every four months where he takes a half a gallon of blood to send to the lab, tickles my feet to see if I can feel it and curses as he looks around for the XXL sleeve that goes with the blood pressure machine. For the last several years, all signs are good.

The blood, bp and cholesterol all come in the normal range and he usually tells me to just keep doing what I am doing and not start eating cheese and drinking a lot. I don't tell him I never stopped eating cheese and drinking a lot.

While I was waiting to see him, the office manager asked me if I had a new GP. Nope, I told her - same doctor I have had for 15 years.

That's odd, I was told. Her office called and said to stop sending your reports because you were no longer her patient.

Wow. I've been dumped. And she didn't even bother to let me know, but relied on some other doctor's staff to give me the news.

It was so odd to hear she didn't want me to be her patient any more. Sure, I haven't been to see her for a couple of years, but then again I haven't been sick for a couple of years. I hadn't realized that your doctor gets to dump you if you aren't sickly. I mean, if my car doesn't break down for a year I don't expect my mechanic to dump me. And I really was surprised that I had to find out from someone else.

But I need to be honest. My reaction was exactly as if I was being dumped by a girlfriend (or as happened too often with me, a wife). My first thought was "How can you dump me?" and then it was "Why are you dumping me?" and it ended with "You're going to wish you hadn't dumped me."

I even started feeling for myself the way you do when you get dumped. My endocrinologist - a man - seemed to sympathize with my confusion. "You would have gone to her if you got the flu, wouldn't you?" he asked. "Sure," I said. But then I forlornly added, "Well, I guess not anymore. She doesn't want to be my doctor." He nodded. If we'd been in a bar, he would have bought me a drink.

My mind has already moved through the predictable stages. Is she seeing other sick people rather than me? Wasn't I sick enough for her? Was she bored with my illnesses? Should I have sent flowers on the anniversary of my initial consultation?

But then I reached the inevitable stage where I thought: I will show her. I'll get really sick this year, and she will be soooo sorry that she's not the one taking care of me anymore. Some other GP is going to be prescribing for this guy from now on.

I don't know why this preoccupied me so much today, but it did.

Oh, maybe I should tell you that the GP who dumped me is named Linda.

Cute As a Pumpkin

Lily has lost her two front teeth and appears to have ended up in a spot of bother trying to get a new pair.

Matt took that picture when they were at the museum today before they came over to see us. After 10 weeks, I was definitely ready for a major Lily fix.

My first impression was that she has grown about a foot since we last saw her in July. My second was that it is incredible to me that a little girl can lose her two front teeth and still qualify as the most beautiful girl in the world.

She's now three months past her seventh birthday, and yet most of the rituals we have established when she comes over are the same ones we've been doing since she was 2. Dinner is Kraft macaroni and cheese, apple sauce and chocolate milk. (She is now happy to consider other dishes, but only if they are in addition to mac-n-cheese and apple sauce.)

I suspect that in her mind this is what she eats at Armagh and Bampy's, just the way Americans eat turkey at Thanksgiving and anything else just wouldn't seem right. Or maybe it's just that she absolutely loves Kraft mac-n-cheese and we are the only chance she has to eat it

She also has this great territory marker. Within the first hour of coming here, she goes into her bedroom, closes the door and takes out every toy, doll and whatnot and spreads them on the floor. I realize it's her unconscious way of saying "This is my turf and don't forget it" and I guess we should be grateful her instincts haven't led her to spray the room like a cat.

Another of our staple rituals comes at Halloween, when Lily comes over here and trick-or-treats with some of her friend using our house as Snickers Central. Today Linda asked her what she was going to dress as this year and Lily said a witch, but she really wanted to be a pumpkin. She was thinking back to the pumpkin costume she had when she was many years younger, which actually is a hand-me-down, having first seen the light of day with Jordan. (That's when Dave called her, as I recall, "the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life." Unlike me with Lily, Dave is definitely biased about Jordan.)

Lily has now well and truly grown beyond the pumpkin suit, and I thought I would try to get her to change her mind. "Lily," I said, "a pumpkin costume is cute, but it's not very practical. It's big and round and you can't even sit down when you're wearing it."

She got up from her chair and came over to me. She patted my belly and said, "You're big and round and you're sitting down!"

Ten weeks away. I seem to have forgotten that you don't try to con Lily.

Anyhow, lots of hugs and kisses and several hours with the most beautiful girl in the world. Yep. It's good to be home. Ain't nothing better than a Lily fix. And I'm not biased.

Communication Skills

It's so good to be back in town and reconnecting with friends and the family here in Oz.

There's this odd legacy thing in my head that somehow thinks that phoning people is related to distance. This makes no sense, of course. I use Skype and can call other Skype users for free, and it costs only cents to make a call to someone's regular phone. Yet I don't call people when I am overseas and then spend the first week back calling up my friends to see how they're doing.

It's odd, really, since it would sound so much more impressive to say, "Hi. I'm sitting in the harbor of Sarande, Albania, and was thinking about you so I thought I would call." But, no. I wait till I am home to say, "Hi, I'm back. How ya doing?"

And let me be honest. A tiny part of me is hoping that after 10 weeks away, when I call my friends up at least a few of them are going to say, "Tell me about your trip" or, in the case of my friends who really need more happening in their lives, "Can I come over and look at your photos while you tell me about your trip?"

But instead I keep hearing, "I've been reading your blog and I know you've had a great trip, so tell me - are you jet lagged?" No one I've called cares about hearing all the little things we've done since they have already read about it. (Except for one friend I spoke with this week. He doesn't care about what we've done, either, but he doesn't read my blog. I'm pretty sure he doesn't read it because he doesn't care all that much about all the little things that happen to me.)

That's not a judgment about my friend, by the way. I really do understand that you might not wake up every morning wondering what happened to Don yesterday. Unless you're my mother, but she doesn't count in this discussion. It's more about the fact that I am so surprised at how much all of us share with one another nowadays.

Every day I check out Facebook to see what is happening to my friends. I know that Sandy went to Rio Tomatlan Friday night, that Megan is overdoing the exercise at rehab, that Jeff drank a bit much at the Rutgers game and that Davy has become a Powerpoint expert (I have given him a goal to which he can aspire!). I know Heidi found a big leaf in her toilet, that Glen had the kids for the weekend and that Hannah spilled the baby's bottle on herself.

Is it too much information? Actually, it's not - and it's not even close. It takes seconds to read, and if I wasn't interested I wouldn't have added them as Facebook friends. I enjoy knowing what's going on in the lives of my family and friends.

No, I really am happy to know about the little things going on in my friends' lives. The only negative about it all? Well, despite the fact that they write about some of the most minute parts of their lives, I have noticed that none of them seem to have written that they read my blog. Hmmm.

No Worries, Mate

All my life I have put off till tomorrow everything I possibly could. But in preparing for our long trip, LK and I actually did some things right.

I went to the Greenwich Newsagency and paid the total amount owing. I then asked them to cancel all deliveries until I told them to restart them because I was not going to be home. No worries, he said.

On the same day I called up Ageless Gardens, the people who mow our lawn and tend to the garden. I told them I wanted them to continue to do the lawn while we were away, but that I wouldn't receive any of their bills. Could they instead e-mail them to me so I could pay online from overseas. No worries, they said, and they took my e-mail details promising to send them to me.

LK also talked with Boulter and Partners, the accountants who handle her company's taxes and filings. She explained that she needed to pay any taxes due before we left on the 17th of July. No worries, she was told. Everything is well in hand and nothing would come due before we returned.

We went through a pile of mail last night and this morning.

We are sixty days past due for part of our Greenwich Newsagency bill, since they continued delivering them throughout our holiday.

We are getting overdue notices from Ageless Gardens. The notices are pink, designed I am sure to let the postman know we're deadbeats and not because they thought they thought it would be nicer for us if the third notice were on colored paper.

And, of course, LK now owes several hundred dollars in penalties for not paying the taxes due in late July.

In this blog I don't normally give names when I write about somebody stuffing up. But this morning, I just thought to myself, "No worries, mate."

Home Sandy Home

We finally got home after nearly 10 weeks away but not without a delay. The record sandstorm in Sydney prevented us from landing as scheduled, so we had to re-route to Melbourne to get more fuel. After about an hour's wait, we were cleared to leave, getting into Sydney 3 1/2 hours late.

We had a great little episode in Melbourne. The pilot had refueled and had everyone stay on board so we could leave as soon as he had clearance to get into Sydney, which was backed up with all the morning's flight. The crew was doing their best at improvising what to do with such an unexpected addition to their work day when we all heard the engines rev as they do before takeoff.

Oops. Looks like the captain forgot to tell the crew we were actually getting ready to go airborne again. One attendant chased down a little girl who was screaming that she didn't want to sit down. A couple of others seemed to be running up and down the aisles to make sure the seat belts were on and the doors secure. And, as we were already rumbling down the runway one very brave soul ran to shut an overhead bin door that had popped open. He didn't even have time to get back to the crew seats but grabbed an empty passenger spot just before the wheels left the ground.

Well, it turned what had been a fairly boring hour's wait into quite an exciting minute, proving that an action-packed ending can make up for lots of dull preamble.

We missed the spectacular views of the dust storm, but once home we saw what it had done. A thin - and sometimes thick - layer of sand covered almost everything outside. Inside, Caroline had left us a spotless house and a great casserole of Syrian chicken. Nothing to do inside the house and a yummy meal. She's a star.

We're both winding down tonight and can only hope that we sleep through and end up more or less on Sydney time. Vacation's over. Tomorrow there's stuff to be done.

Day 67: Closing the Circle

One night in Bangkok, and the world's your oyster.
The bars are temples, but the pearls ain't free.
from Chess, lyrics by Tim Rice

Well, we are only going to spend 10 hours in Bangkok, and our flight leaves at midnight so I don't think I will get in any trouble here today.

It's a terrible layover, but even back in the first week of April when we bought our tickets, the flight leaving 3 hours earlier was booked full. It takes so long to get into and out of Bangkok - and then you are never sure if the cab is going to take you where you want to go - that we had decided to tough it out at the airport. Not that tough, really, since the Thai Air lounge is one of the best we've been in. And to confirm our decision to stay here, right now the clouds have burst and it looks pretty much like a monsoon outside.

And just to make it a bit nicer, Thai Air offers passengers in the lounge a free massage while they're waiting. Which really contrasts with the customer service we've been getting from Lufthansa on this trip.

Lufthansa seems to have abandoned its heritage and can't seem to do the simple things right. We have been on three legs of this trip with them. On two legs, they couldn't quite figure out how to give us boarding passes where we would be sitting next to one another. And on last night's long leg, despite our booking more than 5 months ago, they put us together but in the back row seats next to the kitchen.

Which meant that when we were looking to doze off at midnight after leaving Frankfurt, we had roughly as much noise as a factory just behind our seats. And besides the clatter of all the dinner trays, the crew seemed to be having a good old time, laughing heartily for at least the first hour I was trying to sleep and showing typical Prussian compassion for tired old guys.

It all sounds a bit petty, I guess, but I do get cranky when I want my zzz's.

Anyhow, the circle is complete tomorrow. Due to arrive in Sydney at noon - assuming the forecast of gale force winds doesn't make the plane change plans.

Both of us are feeling a sense of unreality that we will be home tomorrow after being gone so long. LK has started putting together a list of things we need to do. And she's thinking a party would be a good idea to catch up with everyone.

But first, this night in Bangkok.