I would so love to be reporting that 2009 has smiled down upon me in an abundance of health and prosperity, but so far that just hasn’t been the case. My job on this website is to merely chronicle the events in my life and call them as I see them. I understand perfectly that some of the ‘bad luck’ I’ve experienced so far this year pales in comparison to many of those who are less fortunate. I point this fact out lest you mistake my documentation and commentary as whining.
So the run of bad luck began on January 22, right where I last left off after my meeting with my old friend Chris Runck (which incidentally has been one of the three highlights of 2009 so far, the others being the birth of my niece Megan and the additional reunion I’ll be discussing). On that Thursday at work, I exhibited all of the symptoms of having another kidney stone…with the exception of one: there was no unbearable pain. The pain was certainly there, but it wasn’t the excruciating pain of stones past. I left work mid-day that day and took the next day off in a flurry of drinking my weight in water. Eventually the pain went away. My hope is that it was a small one (hence the ‘minor’ pain) and I passed it without knowing it.
That weekend began a series of some of the laziest weekends I have ever spent, glued to the couch, computer, and TV. The TV show on DVD that I have been watching through for the past month has been Will & Grace, while trying to catch up on movies as well. Dad came by for a visit on Sunday, January 25. He brought along a couple of extra Christmas gifts that had arrived: a Hudson show t-shirt that he had designed, and a DVR of Wendy and Me and The People’s Choice, which unfortunately we couldn’t get to work in the DVD player.
The last week of January saw a tremendous snow storm come through Dayton and Cincinnati. I was stuck working from home on Tuesday the 27th and Wednesday the 28th. I decided to drive to work on Thursday the 29th and it took me three and a half hours to get there. I no sooner got there that I turned around a couple of hours later and headed back home. This was the worst job the city of Cincinnati has ever done at getting the roads cleared.
Some of the fun to be had in 2009
On January 31 and February 1, I spent another lazy weekend at home. This one I call the ‘Lost Weekend’, named so because I watched the entire fourth season (13 episodes) of Lost. Super Bowl XLIII was on that Sunday as well and although I only watched the last quarter and didn’t like the outcome, it was truly a fabulous game which ultimately saw the Steelers victorious over the Arizona Cardinals, 27-23.
Naturally, Groundhog Day this year indicated the six more weeks of Winter. So I took the next weekend to be mostly lazy again. But on Sunday February 8, I did have a good day as I met up with my old friend from camp Kim Littlejohn at Olive Garden for lunch (seen here) and then at Red Lobster to celebrate Mom’s birthday (which would be the next day on the 9th) with her, Bob, and Ashleigh. There were only a few hours between meals, but that didn’t stop me from scarfing down the Red Lobster. I gave Mom a gift certificate to Olive Garden so that she and Bob would have an excuse for another meal out.
Bob and Mom doing a shrimp toast to commemorate her 59th year
Bob, Mom, Ash, and me at Red Lobster
I had hoped to break out of the winter doldrums that following weekend. On Valentines Day, February 14, the Hollywood Collectors Show in Burbank looked so good that I decided to fly out there for the weekend. There were going to be about 30 celebrities that I had plans to meet and get autographs from, followed by a sushi dinner, and a play starring Marvin Kaplan. I would be meeting up with my friends Bob and David. It sounded like just the getaway that I needed and the plans were all in place.
Unfortunately, after arriving at the airport at 5am for my 6am flight, they announced at about 20 minutes until 6:00 that there were mechanical problems with the plane and the flight would be postponed until 10am. I knew that this would put a serious crimp into catching my two connecting flights in Chicago and San Francisco. As it was, I wasn’t going to be getting to Burbank until 1:30pm, which would only leave me about three hours at the show.
I hightailed it to the ticket counter to see if I could be re-routed, but the only choices were to arrive in Burbank at 4pm, or to get to Burbank at the same time after having only a six-minute layover in San Francisco. Or there were other possible options that involved driving at the speed of light to the Columbus or Cincinnati airport. I decided to just get a refund on the flight and nix the whole trip. Quite a bummer.
Although upset by the cancellation, I am always of the mind that there might be a higher reason that things like this happen. Could a tragedy of some sort have been waiting to befall me in California? Was I needed at home? Turns out, I was needed at home. Ashleigh had a bad sore throat that weekend and I had to take her to Urgent Care in Fairborn on Sunday. Although they only gave her antibiotics her throat continued to get worse and more swollen. On Tuesday, February 17, she went back to Urgent care with Christi while I was at work. They sent her immediately to an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist, Dr. Balazs, and he diagnosed her with an abscessed tonsil, and I went home to take her there. He sent her right over to the Emergency Room at Grandview Hospital.
Ashleigh and her sore throat. No fun.
I sat in the room with her while Christi sat outside with Creed as the doctor performed the painful and disgusting procedure of cutting into her tonsil through the mouth and draining the 50 cc’s of fluid from the swollen tonsil. We waited in recovery after the procedure and within about two hours, Ashleigh started feeling better. I stayed home with her the next day to make sure that she was okay. The good news is that she can expect a full recovery once the incision heals. The bad news is that I’ll be immediately faced with a new round of medical bills just a month after paying off my kidney stone operation of 2007. Did I mention how much I despise our health care and insurance system in this country? Is it any wonder that I believe in socialized health care?
Okay, I don’t want to get too political, so we’ll wrap up this miserable installment with just two additional – and more postitive – updates. You may have noticed that this website is now located at www.catsafterme.com. Thanks to Jimmy, I now reside on my own server away from The Wax Apple and the Way Out West Tent website. There aren’t a whole lot of new features for the reader, but I’m sure you have noticed a few. And finally, I found a new wiki website called The TV IV located at www.tviv.org. It is still in its infancy, but I have found this the perfect outlet to write about my favorite sitcoms in a very easy-to-read wiki format. You should check it out and see the work on the It’s Your Move section, which was wholly completed by me. Hopefully the site will continue to grow, but for now there is so much still available to contribute!
So hopefully I will have more fun and fascinating times to report when we meet again – and then of course at the end of March, the trips will begin. Those always brighten my year. Signed, Remaining Hopeful.
Ah 2009, or Tut-Haus-Und-Nein!….which literally translated from German means:
Poop-House and Negative.
HMMMM, I think they may be onto something there!
Dave Chasteen
February 22nd, 2009