it's a bad sign

when the blog's front page is limited to the side rolls.
Sorry folks. It has been a long few weeks. Every time I think that I have a few minutes to blog, I discover that I need to go with John to Menards to buy some essential bit of houshold hardware. Or to Home Depot. Or somewhere. And of course, sitting in an office 40+ hours/week takes up its share of the time. It's a busy practice. But it has its perks!

Last week, Saturday, I went with John to a chili cook-off sponsored by his new employer. That took up pretty much the day.
Friday night (the 13th) I went with John to a party for one of his new co-workers. Turns out that one of the things these folks like to do at parties in play cards. I like to play cards. Not as much as I like to play Scrabble, but darn close. Well, they like to play poker. My grandpappy taught me to play poker when I was knee high. When John and I were first married, we spent many a Friday night sitting around with friends drinking wine and playing penny ante poker. Remind me to tell you some time the story about the next door neighbor and the flaming pork chops.
Well, these folks play Texas Hold-em. Its a version of poker that I hadn't played, but I was figuring that when in Rome shoot Roman candles, so I said sure, I'll play. Then it turns out that they play for real money - not a lot, but everyone puts in ten bucks and starts with the same number of chips - and usually the one with all the chips at the end takes home the whole pot. But this time there were enough folks playing that the pot was divvied up $50 to the winner, $20 to second place, $10 to third. I ended up, after several rounds, being one of the last three players, then it was me against the guy that I later found out was the most frequent winner, and at the very end, I wagered my entire pile of chips in an all or nothing move - and won. Beginner's luck? who knows. But it was fun. And it paid for a few hardware items!

Yesterday was the Breast Cancer walk. My office has a tradition of trying to raise more money than the other OB offices in town but hasn't so far managed. But there was a strong encouragement to show up and walk. So I showed up. I did walk part of it but I found that my knees and back were not being co-operative and my asthma kicked in (I hadn't been truly prepared for just how COLD it was!) and so I wussed out about 1/3 of the way. Maybe next year. One thing that helped a little was that some ladies were selling scarves as a fund raiser - boy did I need that! And John ended up also buying and wearing one (real men aren't afraid to wear pink)
some pics - a little over exposed because I was using the Palm to take them!