Pulled from the Starting Rotation…By the Musician…And a Tribute to A Nephew (Monday/Tuesday, August 27/28, 2012)

Monday was a quieter day in day 1 of our empty nesthood status. Con and I got a morning walk in early along the river in Harry Rich Forest before I headed into to get some updated blood work (which showed my HMT red blood cells move back up) and then in for a lunch with Gordon and a couple of our former board members that had served with Gordon for a long time. It was a pleasant walk down Nypro memory lane. I got home mid afternoon and the lawn needed mowing. Readers of the blog will recall that I got the nod three straight times to do this task after being discouraged against it for a couple years. So I like to think of a baseball analogy that I was handed the ball to do the starting pitching assignment for three starts. Seemingly the starts were productive and the lawn looked great. But the manager of the team decided not to give me that fourth start. She felt the fastball had lost too many miles and the slider wasn’t sharp enough. So she took the assignment herself and as the picture below shows, she seemed most happy mowing and listening to her book on tape. I was relegated to cooking another roast chicken on beer can. After completing, Con decided to come in and entertain me playing some songs on the piano- hence the reference to being pulled from the rotation…by the musician as I handled cooking assignments and R&R duties. Maybe I’ll get another start in future days.

Tuesday was mostly a Nypro day for me as my best physical days are the ones just before the new dose dense round, given I am furthest removed from the prior cycle. When I got home, dinner was a big steak as I now need to religiously follow doctor’s orders and bone up on protein laden steaks. Great corn on the cob and a Connie salsa of pluot (combination of plum and apricot), with tomatoes, shallots and herbs rounded out the dinner. Sorry no pictures. Lastly on a more serious note, we also had a toast as we did for Michy. We lost our nephew, Geoffrey Kyle Lapres, oldest son of Geoff and Donna suddenly back in June 2006. Today would have been his 29th birthday and even though 6 years have passed, all of us continue to feel the loss of  a wonderful kid, devoted son, caring brother, nephew, grandchild and friend to so many. So a toast to Geoffrey, a wonderful person who died way too young.