1.  Worst. Antique. Show. EVER.  Oh well.  I didn’t have high hopes for it but just the same.  geesh.  Now I’m glad we didn’t find anything on our buying trips because I bet it would still have been a bad show and we’d be out more money.  Great show…just evidently not for us.  I don’t think Ernie even bothered to get a contract for the next one. 

2.  The boys missed their father terribly even though it was only one night and two days.  They have planned a celebration for after school today to celebrate him being back home.  I believe it involves baking cookies so it may be somewhat self-serving but just the same…it’s gotta be nice to have a celebration planned for you when you were gone all of roughly 40 hours….

3. Judi’s appointment with his surgeon went well although it was exhausting for her.  She had an exhausting week all last week between scans, blood transfusions and going to Atlanta.  Here’s is Gina’s update:

Thought I would let you know that the appointment in Atlanta with Dr. Kooby was good.  It wasn’t without one little "hold your breath episode" however.
 
We started out the day by stopping at the Cancer Center in Anderson for Judi to get another shot–the kind that helps her blood count.  By this time, she was already beginning to feel a little bit better as a result of the two transfusions the day before.
 
Then off to Atlanta we went with lots of time to have lunch at her favorite restaurant near Emory, the "Flying Biscuit".  Our waitress brought our drinks and never came back.  By now we’re getting a little edgy because we’re down to 50 minutes until her 1:45 appointment.  We called a second waitress over who went to look for the first and was gone so long we thought she, too, had gotten lost.  Turned out the first waitress had to go to the bathroom really bad; the toilet at the Flying Biscuit was blocked, and she had to go across the street.  Waitress #2 took our order and turned it in.  All ended well–they even offered us free dessert–but a tad rushed.
 
We zip over to Emory, check in, and are told Dr. Kooby had been called in to surgery.  No biggie except that Judi has a 3:00 appointment with Eric, her meditation instructor who is in Atlanta for the weekend.  Dr. Kooby showed up a half hour later, so we’re still thinking 3:00 is doable.  After these two do their "hugs and how are yous" (this is quite fun to watch by the way!), he gives her a quick check.  We’re still on target for 3:00.  Then he says, "There’s a little ‘bump’ here that I don’t think is anything, but the right thing to do is check it out."  So 20 minutes later a pair of cytopathologists (say that fast and it comes out sounding like "psychopathologists") whisk us off to another room for an aspiration of the "bump".  There went the 3:00 appointment.
 
Two needles, 30 minutes, and a dozen slides examined under the microscope later, they report that the "bump" is just a fatty deposit resulting from trauma to a cell during surgery.  At this point, we let out the breath we had been holding for the last 50 minutes.  Dr. Kooby comes back in, more cute hugs, and a promise to come back and see him in six months because he likes to keep up with patients on whom he does these major surgeries.
 
OK, by now 3:00 is long past, but we go to where Eric is so Judi can get in line and wait to see him.  This was well worth the wait because Eric is very dear to her.  Somewhere around 6:00 we head back to Clemson.  Thirty minutes later we’re on the interstate enjoying Atlanta’s typical Friday afternoon traffic and celebrating all of Judi’s good news this week.
 
We finally rolled in to Clemson at 9:00, pull into Judi’s driveway, and there is not a light on anywhere.  She has no power.  An earlier storm evidently knocked it out.  We report it; by 11:00 she has power back on.  This morning, I go over to drop some groceries.  She has no heat.  Her furnace is gas, so we don’t know why this is off.  It’s not all that cold so she opts to wait it out until Monday when the repairman is coming to put in a new air conditioning unit.  He also repairs her heater.  And the last straw, the cable TV is knocked out, too.  Not sure if the storm did that or the power company did that when turning her power back on.
 
Life is good………we’re all going to Sardi’s Den for ribs tonight……….they have lights, heat and cable TV.
 
Love to all,
Judi and Gina

4.  I finally started reworking my blogroll but of course when I actually sat down to do it I went blank on some of the people I meant to put on.  So if you have a link to me and would like me to do the same just let me know.

5.  By the way….my weekend wasn’t all stress and chaos.  I had some nice quiet time playing on my computer (see above) and listening to the boys play with Lego.  I wandered my yard admiring all the green that is popping up.  I watched two cardinals flirt OUTRAGEOUSLY.  I had some interesting dreams—seeing Cheap Trick in a club with Brad Steakley and another one that is too complicated to go into but involved my parents hosting an inaugural reception for the newly elected president (it was Bill Clinton but he had a different wife) and my father wanting to make fried eggs for 150 people for brunch.  I kept saying ‘I wish you’d let me know about this sooner.’  I changed the menu to biscuits with mexican slow cooked pork and fruit on the side. Sort of an odd menu but would probably taste good. When I woke up I actually started worrying about which cookbook that recipe is in.  It’s a great recipe—I really should post it. Anyway…sometimes I write about all the stress and the negative stuff here but despite all that there are still wonderful moments in my life.