Sign on the wall outside a Breakers, a convenience store, near Marion, SC.
Four for four on Friday. Thirteen for 14 with one change of heart on Saturday and we can cross off 4 more counties and four more DeLorme pages.
I haven’t blogged much about the actual reason we are in the hospital for several reasons, Donna isn’t as excited to share the intimate details as I would be, the spotty internet connection and the lack of free time allotted the assistant lay nurse of a sick person. But I will shared my favorite story of the past week. Treatment for her type of colitis is the steroid solu-cortef. The steroid amps you up and in Donna’s case on the second day kind of turned her into a 5-year old kid with a case ADD. To counter act this the doctor proscribed Xanax, an anti-anxiety medicine, and it has calmed her some, but not entirely.
While on the clear liquid diet she was drinking all sorts of fluids, but she always kept her favorite three at hand on the bed table, water, cranberry juice and diet ginger ale. Each fluid had its own little styrofoam cup which she would have me write the fluids name in three or four places along the top edge of the cup. She would line them up in a straight line formation. Directly behind the cup marked water was the large hospital supplied plastic mug which the staff kept full of ice and water, directly behind the ginger ale was the small 8oz can of soda and lastly right behind the cranberry juice glass were stacked the 4oz plastic containers of juice. Each cup had its own separate straw. After each drink from the cups, sometimes one right after the other, she carefully arrange them back in straight lines.
This morning after we got all the cups arranged and filled with the appropriate combination of fluid and ice she looked down at the row of drinks and frowned. When she looked up at me I asked, “What’s wrong?” She looked at me and said, “My straws don’t match.” Sure enough, there were two yellow straws and one white one. I went over to her neatly arranged bed stand picked out a matching yellow straw.
You already seen my two favorite snow day pictures, but because I can I posted most of the rest of them in a new gallery online, Aiken’s 2010 Snow Day
The doctors have made their pleas to Big Insurance, we remain admitted and inside staying warm while a freak (for Aiken) snow storm dumps the white stuff outside.
Every year the city lights up the nearby Hopeland Gardens and tonight was one of our semi-frequent visits to the event. We just went ahead and walked the 1-1/2 mile, one way trip over, which makes more sense than driving a mile to park the car and ride the 2 miles on the mandatory shuttle bus. I took along the camera using my walking stick as a monopod. It is amazing how hard it is to hold that combination steady for the 3 to 4 secs of required exposure, even with propping it against the something. To overcompensate I tried some intentional movements with only a couple of minor successes.
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Sure hasn’t upped the quality here….
Taken April 17, 1995 at a Master’s Tournament Practice Round. The sureal look is courtesy of Seattle FilmWorks. You mail them a roll of their film, they develop it and send you back prints. For a few dollars more they digitize the photos and send them to you a 3-1/2 floppy disc.*
*Not anymore. Seattle FilmWorks stopped doing this kind of thing around 2001 and then changed their name to PhotoWorks. In 2008 American Greeting bought PhotoWorks and now they are like any other company that lets you upload photos and have them developed or turned in mugs for gifts…
Back in the day we used to take pictures, get them developed and place them in photo albums. When we first went digital, a step was added to the process, upload them to an online service. Somewhere along the line that extra step was eliminated and the consequence of that is now there are no physical images to bore your friends and neighbors. All the photos are mere ones and zeros on a hard drive.
A couple years ago I found an online place that mashes up the photo development and photo album into a full color bound book and we have made several of them from our vacations.
We took a 2 week trip back in April and I just now got around to making a photobook from the pictures. I made it for us to put with the rest of our vacation memories, but you too can own those memories, buy one for yourself for Christmas. Or if you are cheap, just check out the gallery here on mr-miata.net.