Pesky Godson is darn unpredictable, and both his mother and I agree, way too laid back about how often he posts, but he’s always worth reading.

Brunch today at smiling Dan’s prepared by Linda.

I shouldn’t be writing about Diane without her permission – lord knows she fusses when I post a photo without her approval – but I’m going to anyway.

On our way way home from Kansas, I noticed Diane ejecting herself from the van in the very same manner Brian adopted during his one and only eighteen hour drive with me to Indiana. Flick the door open and fall out with palms and knees flat on the pavement. By the time Diane had arrived in Acton, her back wasn’t just stiff, it hurt.

Even though I’d subjected my lower L’s to the American health care system in the mid-nineties, with eventual success, Diane assumed hovering to be the best medicine. The one man whose opinions I most trust, and whom I’d hoped would steer Diane to her doctor, affirmed her plan. I simply shook my head.

Diane, like an Olstein acolyte, knew she’d eventually feel better -except she didn’t – instead she devolved. Picture those charts that chronicle man’s gradual evolution from fish, to gorilla, to Lucy, to Neanderthal and finally to fully upright, only in reverse. Even with her inverted golf club for support, I figured she’d soon be looking up at her mother.

Diane’s new posture flowed from her pain. It hurt her to turn, to get out of bed, to bend down, to walk, and even, or mostly, to sit. All of this seemed acceptable for weeks, until last Wednesday when she crawled out of bed, and struggled to use the toilet. It’s funny how one word – bedpan – can focus a woman’s attention.

Yesterday, after Thursday’s office visit, where her internist diagnosed her “ligament strain” (again, I shook my head), and offered a plethora of pills, she lurched to her first physical therapy appointment. With a fairly-firm new diagnosis of a slipped disc, Diane blissfully endured an hour of electrical stimulation, heat and massage.

Jennifer, what’s with this green crescent that is not visible to the naked eye?

From Jen: Hahaha

Someday words will come back to me and I’ll again post actual sentences. In the meantime, here are three photos I took the day of the snow storm as I walked along the Charles River. When I say “I” I mean my brother Brian.

Photos from last night’s dinner at our house.

(Feb – Mar 2007)

Hi Mike,

Thought you and the blog would like to hear about daughter Katie’s amazing experiences in Americorps. I’ve put together a slide show using a bunch of Katie’s photos. (It was done with jalbum, which we all have come to know and love.)

Americorps has paired up with Habitat for Humanity in doing their re-building projects on the gulf coast, which explains the first slide.

Katie started Americorps training in Denver (first 13 slides), where Americorps has taken over part of Loretta College, formerly a women’s college, and now owned by a Japanese corporation. She and her team members took buses to downtown, so some of the shots are of downtown sights.

After training, her team drove down in vans to NM, then TX, and finally LA, where they were to work. Along the way they saw the ruined homes of New Orleans (5 shots). Then they went further south to Thibodaux, which wasn’t quite as damaged as New Orleans. At least the homes are on higher ground. (7 shots show her new digs, and 8 show food that was provided them by a local church congregation).

The last 14 shots show the actual reason they went down to Thibodaux. They built a house from the foundation on up. Katie specialized in hammering studs and putting roof trusses together.

Now that they’ve finished roughing out one house, they’ll go on to another, and maybe a third, before Katie’s team returns to Denver.

–rakkity

Our backyard

Adam,

I know you don’t normally relax in front of movies like the Zodiac , but wouldn’t you agree with me that you and Fincher have much in common?

“Just the facts: two homicide detectives, a crime reporter and a political cartoonist spend decades knocking themselves out to catch a serial killer who never (officially) gets caught. Careers, marriages, even sanity fall victim to obsession. That’s Zodiac, a meticulous, mind-bending, nonstop mesmerizer of a movie that needed another die-hard fanatic to make it pop onscreen.

And who better for the job than the brilliant, driven David Fincher, a director known to put his actors through more than 100 takes to get the nuances he wants.”

How about your review of the DVD version?

Michael