Holiday Greetings & A Progress Report

First, Happy New Year to all who will read this blog, wherever you may be. And I hope you all will have a healthy and prosperous 2013.

Second, I hope all of you had a merry Christmas/Hannukah/Kwaanza/Yule/Saturnalia/Festivus/whatever you celebrated earlier this month. I had a decent one. I spent Christmas Eve at my older brother's house with his family, his wife's family, my younger brother, his wife, and their son. 

Food was served, but I filled myself with appetizers and ate only one ham sandwich and no turkey sandwiches.

I also got a $5 gift card from Sears at part of an exchange.

Since Dec. 25, I've stayed around here and mostly gone out for errands and runs to the local library. I plan to stay in tonight because there is a weather advisory until 7 a.m. Tuesday; from 1.5-4 inches of snow could fall.  

It also will be amateur night for those who drink when intoxicated.   

But starting Wednesday, I plan to become more active and get out of my apartment and my city of residence.

One notable thing has happened between the last time I posted and now. I was awake around 1 a.m. Dec. 16 and had just peed when the phone rang. I thought Oh fuck what is THIS about? The only thing I could think of was that one of my brothers or a member of their families were in critical condition -- or worse.

Calling was a woman looking for a man with my true name. She asked me, "Are you X------?" I said yes.

She asked me if I had a sister named Michelle. I said I didn't. (By the way, I don't have a sister.) 

She also asked me about my cousin Philip Falls. I told her I don't have a cousin with that name.

She apologized about calling me at that time of night, but added she had bad news that he had to be told then.

I wonder if she ever contacted the man she was looking for.

I've also been trying off and on to delete some of my posts, but Blogger has changed the ways the posts are made and deleted to a more complicated process than the one that I was using when I was actively writing here. So I'll leave a lot more posts that I thought I would.

I've established on the net a site where I can let it all hang out as loosely as I want. I've posted a few things and have yet to post what I truly want.

So, goodbye until the next post, whenever that will be.

Farewell, More Or Less

After I thought about it for a day I decided to more or less stop posting regularly in this blog. My reasons for stopping are in the post below.

I plan to go through some notes that I had for some stories, write/organize/edit them, and then post them here; I just need to review them.

I also will keep some of my past posts, because I'm proud that I wrote them and someone might come across and read them. But I will delete many of these posts which will leave a small and reduced blog.

So, farewell for now. If you ever read this blog or any of its posts, thank you. I only wish you had left some comments. The comments I got after four of my posts were spam.

 I only told one person about this blog: An old friend who looked at it about a couple of years ago and liked a few things about it.

I Don't Even Know...

why I bother to post at this blog, let alone keep it active.

This post will be the 43rd of this year that I've made. Last year, I wrote 59 posts. So it's not like I've been burning to post. I've just lost the desire. At least here. I've found another forum to post things and I get some readership, even though it's not a lot.

So I'll start another hiatus. This time, though, it might just be the end. 

If I stop this blog, I'll let you know. I'll make it formal with an announcement.

In the meantime, watch this space.

one man's life in a peanut shell

nothing to say. many things to do.

i’ll start now…

time passes...things done...

well, i'm rich!

and i have a family!

My Health, Lately

Well, I give thanks that I'm relatively healthy when more medical problems hit.

On the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 24, I felt tired and fatigued as I had when the battery of pacemaker had run down. I thought: Oh damn another malfunction -- and so damn soon!
and went to the local hospital's emergency room.

Seems that I had some internal bleeding that was being discharged in my stools. Out of a hemoglobin level of between 13.5 and 15, I had 5. I had noticed my stools were a different color -- dark black with a reddish tint -- but thought they were that way because of a food I had eaten.

I started to received the first of three units of blood (a unit = a pint plus) and was admitted Saturday night. I stayed until Wednesday morning, and I'm sure it was one day more than necessary because it was during the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Doctors inserted a camera through my windpipe to the end of my stomach/beginning of my small intestine. They found no bleeding there. The next day I received a colonoscopy after I received a liquid enema. I drank some foul liquid and spend about half the night on a portable commode. Even then I wasn't clean enough so I recived two quarts of soapy water to complete the cleansing.

During the colonocopy, the doctors found no bleeding.

I was released Nov. 28 and was told to eat a lot of iron-rich foods as well as take 650 milligrams of iron a day and get a lot of rest. I have had no relapse of any symptoms and my hemoglobin levels were at 10.9 on Thursday -- up from 8.9 on Dec. 1.

A follow-up appointment is scheduled for Dec. 17, a week from this coming Monday.

ADDENUM, JAN. 23, 2013: At my follow up appointment, my doctor told me to eat iron-rich foods, such as spinach and apricots. I'm lucky that I like both foods.

He also told me to keep taking the iron twice a day until April 1. Damn. I take them after I eat breakfast and inner because they leave a mildly nasty taste in my mouth.