It's A Bird... It's A Plane... It's Sciurus carolinensis

First take a look at this picture and see if you notice anything:

Enlarged:

We had fun this spring watching an Eastern Bluebird couple raise a brood in what is actually a squirrel feeder on one of our sweet gum trees. They are long gone but I noticed someone else in there recently. He was so cute and hung out in there for several hours but haven't seen him in there since.

Back Yard Changes

My yard boy has been working steadily on our yard for years. I had to go back to find a few pics of the back yard jungle so the difference could be appreciated.

First you must admire the lamp post he put up. I was complaining that coming home at night the sidewalk to the back door was too dark, leading to possible falls or snake surprises. Saeed did a nice job of installing this with an electric outlet box at the base.

He also wrote in his name (Baba) and Cyrus' name in the cement. Sorry Kai, you weren't born yet. Next time Baba has a cement project your name will be written in.

A series of shots of the back yard...

...

...

... and our then neighbor's dog walking on the stone "path".

After much planning the project began in the summer of 2012. The underbrush was removed...

... and the land was flattened and sloped more evenly.

The edges were carefully placed...

... and the cement carefully poured.

Ta da!!!

Shortly after the concrete dried we had some little visitors:

The next step was to cover all the areas with black landscaping material to prevent overgrowth once again. This is the Amazon after all.

Looks like someone's back hurts. :- (

I don't have a picture of the back yard once the chips were down but in March I video taped some snow falling and you can see the finished product with the two different colored wood chips.

And this is how it looks today. The black borders still need to be finished and the leaves need to be blown but it's nice. Very nice, yard boy.

Dr. Greger's Newest Fan

I love Dr. Greger and his mission to disseminate the latest accurate medical information regarding the role of nutrition in disease prevention. I've sent many of his videos to my family members over the last couple of years and they, in turn, have shared them others. Someone recently told me that food is for enjoyment, not to be used as medicine referring I think to Hippocrates' statement "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

Why can't it be for both? I usually enjoy healthy food and don't think it has to taste bad just because it's good for us although I'd give Dr. Greger my right arm, the one with the stitches in it, if he'd say potato chips and ice cream were healthy foods.

So I was happy to come home from work today to find Obi watching one of Dr. Greger's recent videos. I had to help him understand some of the terms, but he really seemed to like it.

Here's today's video:

I'm Glad He's Back

My better half has been gone for 10 days visiting family on the other side of the country. His trip home was a bit too eventful. After one and a half hours in the plane on the ground it was determined that the malfunctioning pressure gauge couldn't be fixed and they had to go back to the terminal. The only sure way to get home by the next day was to reschedule on other flights which in this case involved three flights with two fairly big layovers. He ended up flying (or waiting to fly) all night and got back here at 9 the next morning. Needless to say he was toast. He ate a little bit of something and then took an eight-hour nap. Four hours later he was ready to go to bed at the normal time and slept all night.

Today when we woke up the weather was gorgeous so we went to the Riverwalk to commune with nature and allow Mr. Vacation to get back on his exercise regimen.

 The Catawba River runs along the walking trail.

Although he's been walking at the "Y" he hadn't yet done the Riverwalk since his back surgery. The walking path has some fairly noticeable inclines and the fact that we did over 2.5 miles is quite the testament to his recovery. Prior to his surgery his feet would have been numb by mile marker 0.25.

A little bit sweaty but feelin' GOOD!

He insisted on snapping my pic too.

When we got home we were both famished and together we made tabouleh with quinoa instead of Bulgar wheat and tofu steaks coated with Bragg's and nutritional yeast. Yum. I eat so much better when he's home; it's a group project. I'm glad he's back.

My Ten Little Stitches

I took a look at my incision for the first time this morning and decided it wasn't too bad. It's been a bit sore but certainly not painful. It's about 1 1/2 inches long and his stitches look so neat & tidy and evenly spaced. I owe my thanks to the drunks he practiced on all those years ago.

Excision Of Squamous Cell Carcinoma

I had an area removed from my right arm today; the procedure went really well. My derm is a graduate of MUSC and was chief resident. As he was numbing, excising, and

stitching I told him the story of my daughter in vet school trying to practice suturing on a sponge. He laughed and said he did all his practicing on live humans. He worked in the ER during med school and volunteered to do all the stitching of the drunks who came in with lacerations so he could get as much experience as possible. The advantage was that they didn't need quite as much Novocaine because they were already "feeling no pain" (I think he was kidding about that) and the disadvantage was that they would sometimes move involuntarily and compromise his sterile field. His supervising assured him that the gin bottle that sliced open the patient's hand probably wasn't sterile either and he would be getting antibiotics anyway, but my doc said he wanted to do it perfectly. I'm glad about that. I won't get to see it till tomorrow night when I change the bandage and hopefully it won't look like he took a machete to it (ha ha.) I go back in two weeks to get my stitches removed.

I decided not to share with him that Jerry Seinfeld thinks dermatologists are just pimple popper MDs. :-)

Seinfeld References Have Taken Over My Brain

Sometimes funny things happen during patients' exams, things that you absolutely cannot laugh out loud about. Today it wasn't anything the patient said or did; it was just that it reminded me of a Seinfeld episode.

The patient was very plain looking, I mean very plain, like the stereotypic librarian in a sitcom: straight medium-length mousy dark blonde hair, no makeup, pinched nose, bookish glasses... you know the look.

So it really threw me when I saw that she was sporting a shiny metal stud ring in an area that would seem very painful to me, if you know what I mean. I thought of that Seinfeld episode where he can't remember the name of the girl he's dating. He tries to find out by asking surreptitious questions like, "Did people ever make fun of your name?" and she answers, "Are you kidding, they were merciless, what do you expect when your name rhymes with a part of the female anatomy?" Jerry and George spend the rest of the episode trying to figure it out - Bovary? Gipple? Mulva?  - and only at the very end does he realize what it must be and yells out the window "Deloris!"

I guess that old saying is right, you can't judge a book by its cover. My librarian had a stud in her deloris!

Gloating Over Gas Prices

My sister doesn't envy much about me living in the South, but she does wish she could have our gas prices.

Two days ago $2.93

Today $2.88

Ya'll come back now, y'hear?

Tropical Storm Ingrid

I don't like that they've named a potential hurricane after me. I want to be associated with the image of a nice Scandinavian girl with blond pigtails in a dirndl serving mugs of hot chocolate, not floods and death and destruction. (I do have a dirndl very much like the one seen here except mine has a rosy pink bodice and a blue apron. I don't fit into it any more but I'm sure I have it somewhere.)

I've only recently begun to like my given name. As a child it felt embarrassing to have an old lady's name like Olga, Helga, Gertrude, or Mildred. As a young adult some of that feeling lingered but added was also the feeling that it was so not exotic and beautiful. Now I like it. It sounds like all the good things about northern Europe and has actually really fit me all my life. My understanding is that my father chose that name for me in part because of the beautiful Ingrid Bergman. It could be worse, right?!

For some reason I am beginning to embrace my ethnic origins. I would like to relearn German and learn more about the two countries my parents came from. I'm still not a fan of the boisterous Germanic band music associated with beer and good times, and I've never been a fan of heavy Germanic foods (even less now that I'm mostly vegan) although my mother's Wienerschnitzel might make me reconsider. This does not mean I am giving up my love of things Middle Eastern or my status as a honorary Persian, but I am Ingrid... Ingrid of German and Austrian heritage, genes, and identity.

Auf Wiedersehen!

I'd Like To Start Blogging Again...

... the question is why? I'm not sure I have to answer that question but it might be good mental exercise to come up with a response.

Writing is a way to put my thoughts and ideas down on 'paper'. Other people probably write in private journals, but it's rare that anything I'm thinking about is too sensitive to put in this blog. Nobody reads it anyway, so I'd probably be safe even with the touchy stuff. The worst thing I might do is offend a reader with my vitriolic vegan sentiments. I enjoy photography and perhaps some of what I post would be nothing more than sharing images that strike me to be worth sharing. Sharing our family gatherings is also a nice blog topic. I'm never as fast as my first born at posting those to the web; I may leave most of that to her.

Obstacles to blogging? Time, with a capital "T". Now that my husband is retired I have more time to spend with him (yay!) and less for personal, solitary activities. Blogging means sitting upstairs on my PC since that's where I store my photographs and where I can be alone with my thoughts. Spending time with him will always win out over time with my keyboard. Time should also be spent on personal improvement: exercise, learning, reading, and cooking healthy foods. Time. One of the few things we still haven't learned how to manipulate.

So here I go again... I hope.