Wednesday night (my church Outreach Council meeting having been canceled) I went to the hospital to get a computer-assisted tomography (CAT) scan of my pelvis. Two years ago I had a hernia operated on and after the area started hurting again after I lifted something heavy that I shouldn't have lifted my surgeon suggested I get the scan. I spent an hour drinking a liquid, watching the news and Michael Jackson features, and reading a magazine before going into for the scan. The scan itself was a little more arduous than I had expected. I got an IV, a blood test to check my kidney function since I'm taking blood pressure medication, and felt a little woosy after all of that. The scans themselves (with the equipment below) went quickly, but the technician would say nothing about the results. Results will go to the surgeon shortly.
While I was at the hospital, Vincent and his friend Samantha were engaged in some drama, her from the Atlanta airport. They went from him supposedly spending the night with her to him not going to the airport to meet her at all - her final position - but he ended up persuading us to take him anyway, supposedly to see his other friends returning from Denmark. The flight was delayed twice. First we visited with his friend Sadie's parents (below).
Samantha's sister - once a fellow senior with Vincent who will be attending one of Louisville's Catholic college, Bellarmine, in the fall - Sharon, Vincent, and Stephanie (below) talked.
Sharon and Samantha's father, Mike, and I talked. I used to see him at least every other night when I was picking Vincent up nightly at their house. He just finished a stint with the Census Bureau and it turns out was an industrial engineer for 37 years before being laid off.
Finally, the half a dozen Brown-associated folks - on their unofficial exchange trip - returned. Notice Vincent started out (below) talking with Sadie and Pablo, a former Crescent Hill church kid who dropped out/got kicked out earlier in the year than Vincent and Vincent and he started hanging out a lot.
Vincent lurked below.
Vincent (below) visited with Sharon and Pablo below. It turns out Samantha got involved with another person while she was in Denmark and explained this to Vincent on the phone Thursday. They may be involved in some complicated love quadrangle with Vincent's Danish host from last summer and an old Brown friend (recently estranged) of Vincent. Vincent and Sam talked a little at the airport and some more on the phone Thursday but he still hasn't been over there.
Below is Eydie, the one adult on the trip who I became Facebook friends with partly to see pictures of the trip. Eydie is a former Phoenix Hill neighbor of mine - broadly construed. She said at this point she had been up for 24 straight hours, after just getting back Monday from the Woodstock-esque four-day outdoor Roskilde music festival (in Denmark) which Vincent missed last year because they came back several days earlier.
Sharon, Vincent, and Sam talked below. Sam is camera shy and given the circumstances (and Vincent's request) I tried to be subtle about taking pictures.
Hours before going to the airport, Vincent had started moving back out from his temporary bedroom - the computer room/Grandma Martha's room/Tim's room/Simon's room (below). He also quit using his crutches on Wednesday (and walked through the airport) - after staying home and on crutches for almost 10 days. He has gotten much less on-line school work done during the month Sam was gone and during the 10 days of his convalescence than we would have liked, but he has picked up the pace somewhat. Stephanie ended up going with Vincent to counseling - right before going to the doctor to get the stitches out - and the counselor (who I'm sure won't be surprised - or disappointed - if Sam and Vincent break up) and Stephanie pushed Vincent to get more school work done. They talked with him about finishing his English class within the next week. Stephanie has said Vincent can only keep staying with us at home if he finished both his English and math classes by the end of the month (and Vincent is supposed to be away - in Ohio? - while we're gone in a couple of weeks). Vincent in principle like English better than math - and is better at it - but the English class involves lots of reading and writing - some of which Vincent complains about and which he must wait a little for it to get graded after he completes it. Right now Vincent is reading the "Canterbury Tales." Stephanie has a copy she's never returned to the St. Paul (MN) library. This is hard - and Thursday we found some on-line resources (including some fun) for it. Math is harder for Vincent but the course is set up more like the initial on-line classes Vincent took (math and science) with problems and instant feedback (including literally bells and whistle - sounds). We've kept the math textbook we bought Vincent if he needs help. I'm not sure that he'll choose to work hard enough to get these done. Recall that both of these are dual-enrollment high school/college classes and both of these are classes he took - and failed - fall semester - which means he's at least already set through class time on these - although they aren't covering exactly the same things of course. Ironically, Vincent also spent some time Thursday filling a couple pages of a notebook that Sam's mother had given him after his hospital stay started in February with thoughts about the Sam situation. I got annoyed with Vincent late Thursday because he went off to our neighbors' house - overnight, it turns out - but left the front door wide open and the dog in the back yard, which he's not supposed to. Vincent and Evan have belatedly become friends, four years after I tried to introduce them. Evan's parents were the first people on the block who spoke with me, and we've been over to their house in connection with his mother's art show. Although Evan totaled a family car two months after getting a driver's license, he graduated from high school and has a job (in the neighborhood) and as far as we know hasn't been charged with attempted murder or making terroristic threats. It's his uncle John who played drums and sang "Heart of Stone" in Cadillac Shack last Friday night.
It turns out that the mid-year review meeting I was nervous about at 2 p.m. Thursday is NEXT Thursday. I finished some projects and went in there to talk with my manager and he said: Do we have a meeting? He offered to go ahead and do it but said he wasn't ready and so I said I'd be back this coming Thursday at 2 p.m. In the interim I may have time to finish one more big project, though that's going to be tough. Below I was in the bathroom right before what I thought was going to be the review meeting.
Thanks to Mom, earlier this week we took the Nissan in for what turned out not just to be an oil change but also finally replacing the tires and the struts. You might recall that my father gave us the Nissan eight years ago, with 100,000 miles, but after a few months I turned it over to Penny and Serge. Two years ago I reclaimed the Nissan, now with 200,000 miles, on my way to Guatemala, but we didn't drive it - even though it was eventually our only air-conditioned car - until a year ago. Several thousand dollars of repairs later - including fuel injection work a couple of months ago - our mechanics tell us it's now almost as good as new - maybe so much so that we could drive it on trips - except for the fact that the speedometer rarely works and the trunk doesn't open or close. The mechanics thought we had the original struts on the car, which should last about 60,000 miles. The struts are part of the front end suspension. For probably six months now, I've had to drive very carefully because the car bounces a lot and when it hits really bad bumps suddenly, it sounds like the world is going to end. On some choice potholes on streets and over bridge-to-freeway brakes like the one pictured below I had to try to remember to slow way down. Quickly in the two days since I picked the car up I've started to forget about this caution - no bouncing any more! - although some measure of caution is still a good thing.
Since Thursday morning Vincent wasn't at Samantha's house - having spent the night - or rushing to go over there - before in fact she confessed on the phone - Stephanie took Vincent over to the Yum! Brands headquarters for his Kentucky Fried Chicken taste test. He had two pieces of chicken and earned $20 - first time like this? - while Stephanie ran an errand. You have to be 18 to do this and the first Yum! called he told the truth and said he hadn't had KFC recently. Then, last week, we had some at home, and this week he could pass the screening question. On the way, Stephanie talked about her jobs and earning Social Security credits. Amazingly, when she got home there was her annual Social Security credit statement. Stephanie showed it to Vincent, showing him how her income went up a lot each time she completed an educational step and how she made $600 the year she was 16 when she worked at her first job (Dairy Queen) (and how much she would at this point draw in Social Security if she retired at various ages). She told Vincent that - no - while he was not working - he was not accruing Social Security credits - and - no - he probably could not currently qualify for unemployment compensation since he's never had a job. (The fact that he hasn't applied for a job for a couple of months could be a roadblock too - then there's his hair and injury.) The Target a half a mile from us closed in January for massive rebuilding and is slated to reopen in the fall, and I found that Target is already taking applications online for this store (with in-person applications also, later). Hopefully, Vincent will apply this weekend. Below, Stephanie was looking over her statement (along with my Presbyterian Board of Pensions statement, which also came Thursday) after I got home.
While Vincent was eating fried chicken, Stephanie raced down to the south side Jefferson Mall, which we'd never been into, and went to an old-fashioned Walden bookstore to buy a book for her book club, which an e-mail had informed her about that morning. The book turns out to be on the summer reading list for local schools so no free copies were available for borrowing at the public or university libraries. Thursday afternoon Stephanie managed to read the first third of "The Book Thief" and showed up early to an unusual book club event at a restaurant. Our friend Sarah - currently on a mission trip in Taiwan - got Stephanie in this book club (like the one she and Grandma Martha used to be in) about a year ago. A couple of months ago, you might real, Stephanie hosted the club. Often during the year, however, Stephanie manages to read the book - if not all on time - but not make it to the club event. Without Sarah there, this time the club folks there dealt a little less with the book than Stephanie would have liked (and of course gave away some of the plot). But Thursday night Stephanie continued to plow through the book, as she usually does after the club event (whether or not she made it).
-- Perry
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