I really don't have much to say today. I'm just making a post because it's been a few days.

Good news - Mitch actually left the hospital last Wednesday! So he's home now and in rather a lot of pain because he's not hooked up to IV painkillers anymore. He's doing well though, considering, and recovering nicely!

I'm floundering in my motivation to work out. I want to work out and stay healthy, but I've become totally bored with my current workout routine. I do the eliptical trainer for 20 minutes and then a couple of weight machines. I think I just need to talk to someone at the gym and find out which of the other cardio machines would be a good one to try instead. For quite a while, I've been downloading sermons and listening to them while working out and it really helped the time pass quickly. But I've been doing it for so long that it's become part of the routine now and I need a change...

Mitch update - wow!

Mitch is doing wonderfully. He is acting his typical self, making everyone smile. The doctors are simply amazed at his recovery and are even beginning a study on him to find out how he has recovered so fast. Assuming all continues to go well, he is projected to leave the hospital this weekend. He plans to take some time at home with his family and return to work in a few weeks. Mitch and his family are grateful for all the flowers, cards, visits, and prayers. They hope to hold a party in the near future to celebrate his recovery.

Not much to say today. I can give you a kitty story. Cordelia especially has been a nut this afternoon. First, she *helped* me put clean sheets on the guest bed. Her job, while I am putting sheets on the bed and trying to get them even and tuck them in, is to run around on the bed and attack the "orbs" that have gotten under the sheets. (Charlie also helps sometimes, he helps by laying in the middle of the bed like a very large rock so that I have to make the bed over him)

Personally, I'd prefer to just let sleeping "orbs" lie (is that right? should it be lay?), but Cordy is a purist. No "orbs" in her beds! I even gave up and left the room for a few minutes so she'd get bored and go away. After I left the room, she whined at me to come back and then gave up and left. Unfortunately, when I went back to it, she came back too. Oh well!

A few minutes ago, while I was brushing them, she apparently decided that the brush was being extremely aggressive. I had to give her my hand to chew on so that I could finish brushing. Oy.

My cute kitties again. 

Medieval Times - sideways photo of castle 

My cute kitties. 

MT - Blurry picture during the games. 

MT - This is a pretty horse. 

MT - During the show, really not sure what's going on. 

MT - This was our knight, the Red Knight. He was a wimp. 

MT - Inside the arena. 

Medieval Times - ceiling 

Hello everyone! Here's today's Mitch update:

Mitch is making a miraculous recovery. He's talking, been moved out of ICU, taken a few steps, and he's even talking about work!! Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Doug and I were in Dallas this weekend and we went to Medieval Times on Saturday evening. It was fun! I wore a dress and heals and felt severely over-dressed. Although, I don't think I would have felt apporpriately dressed unless I'd been wearing Medieval type clothing.

Anyway, the food was wonderful. Vegetable soup, garlic bread, roasted chicken (1/2 a chicken!), half a garlic roasted potato, (one) delicious spare rib, soda, coffee, and a yummy apple something or other pastry! It was messy business with no eating utensils, but that was fun too!

I did expect the entertainment to be slightly more realistic, but it was still fun. :)

Today's Mitch update - good news! :)

He is awake, he is not able to talk, but is responding to doctors commands ........guys, thank each and every one of you for your blood donations, phone calls, prayers, visits, etc. More info later.

I want to share something with you that I just read. It brought tears to my eyes. :) This is from the book Jesus, the One and Only by Beth Moore.

"As we conclude [this chapter], please feast your eyes on [Luke] verse 32: 'Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.' What tender words. Do you hear the love? Do you sense the care? With one glance in the nearest mirror, you can see a reflection of the heart of God. For where His treasure is, His heart is also."

If I try to explain what that meant to me, I think I would just detract from it. So I'll leave it at that.

I'll keep you updated on Mitch once I get today's report. Please pray with me that it will be a positive report! And after today, I won't be able to update until Monday (even if i hear something).

Mitch update: Not great...

The biggest thing that Helen has asked for is continued prayer. The two specific concerns are risk of infection from surgery and risk of brain damage (due to significant loss of blood). As the doctors try to revive Mitch (so that they can remove the ventilator) they have not yet been able to establish coherent communication with him. At this time it is unclear if the non-coherence is a result of all the medicine/drugs or brain damage. There will be continued efforts over the next 24hrs to establish coherent contact with Mitch.

Here's an interesting news tidbit (courtesy of world magazine):

Lesson Learned
A 60-year-old Japanese man, on an Aug. 1 flight from Chicago to Dayton, Ohio, wrote down two English words he saw in a newspaper so that he could look up their meaning later. The words: "suicide bomb." An alarmed fellow passenger saw the note and alerted crew members, who returned the plane to Chicago. Authorities took the man into custody and searched the plane, finding no bombs. "He teaches himself English by reading newspapers," said police spokeswoman Alice Casanova. "It was all just a miscommunication."

I have no news on Mitch so far today. Doug did tell me yesterday evening that they'll keep him sedated until they have him off the ventilator. Hopefully that will be soon. Who knows how long he'll be in the hospital recovering though!

Here's the latest update on Mitch:

Surgery last night went very well...they were able to close Mitch up and he is breathing on his own this morning (still with ventilator). They have reclassified Mitch from Critical to Serious condition. At this point, if no infection shows up in the next 48-hours everything should be looking very good. Next step is to get him completely off of the ventilator.

Some kind of gross, but not bad, news about Mitch:

Jeremy went back down to the hospital this morning. They are going to do some minor surgery this afternoon to just go and make sure everything is still clean. He's apparently too bloated to close back up. They are keeping him unconscious until his body goes back down to normal size and they can close him back up. So, he's actually doing as good as can be expected.

Well, first of all, I have no new information on Mitch. I trust that he's still in ICU, slowly recovering. I'll let you know if I hear anything.

If any of you have not seen the movie Anchorman, and you are a fan of random and strange humor, I *highly* recommend seeing it. Doug and I went on Sunday evening and it was great! The whole theater was laughing through the entire movie. When it was over, I thought I was going to cry it was so funny. If you have seen this movie and you didn't think it was that great and you now think I'm a dork... um, okay.

My cousin, Meredith, graduated from Texas State on Saturday. Hooray Meredith! We went down for the graduation (which was at 9:30 a.m. on a saturday - what's up with that?!) and went out for lunch with the fam afterward. It was quite fun. I had a hard time not yelling Hook'em or something equally obnoxious during the playing of their school song though. I think my school spirit grows with every year that I'm out of college.

Most of you don't know Mitch Markow (in fact, i doubt that anyone reading this, other than doug, knows him), but please pray for him and his family. Mitch is a coworker and friend of Doug's (used to be his manager/ director). He had an accident this weekend and is still in this hospital. Here's the update I got on exactly what happened:

Mitch was cutting brush with his tractor, ran across a sapling that went under the tractor and impaled his groin area. He did have his cell phone with him and was able to phone the house for help. He was life-flighted to Breckenridge Hospital yesterday evening where he underwent 5 hrs of intense surgery.

He is still in ICU in stable condition. Mitch lost 13 pints of blood, he is not conscious, he is breathing on his own, his skin color is coming back, and his heart rate/blood pressure is coming down. His doctors will continue to keep him sedated for the next 24-48 hrs. The next 24 hours are the most critical.

Please keep Mitch, his wife Helen, and their children in your prayers.

So, I've mentioned that Doug and I are looking for a new church. I don't know where we'll end up (and wherever it is, that decision likely won't be made for a while yet), but I can tell you that of the places we've visited so far, the one we've liked best is Calvary Chapel. If you're interested, you can check it out at www.calvaryaustin.org. We've been to one Sunday service, one Wednesday service, and we'll be going back this Sunday. I've also been downloading their past messages and listening to them while I work out.

The weather today is beautiful, especially the way it felt this morning! We've actually had a really wet and relatively mild summer, so I shouldn't complain. But I don't like it when the temperature gets above 85 degrees, so... :o)~

Doug's planning to get adventurous and make some (hopefully) authentic Indian food this evening. He's even making (well *we're* making - i'll be mixing it ahead of time) Naan. Yummy!

I just pulled the most hideous creature I have ever seen out of my bathroom sink. It didn't have eyes or legs, but I'm positive that, on some level, it was alive. [shudder]

My sink has been draining more and more slowly for a while now and I knew why, but I was avoiding the issue. For reasons I do not understand, my sink ends up with a disproportionate amount of hair in it. And this hair ends up going down the drain. Or rather, just far enough past the sink stopper that it cannot be seen. This is where it builds its nest and begins to breed. I finally could not come up with any further excuses for not dealing with the beast, so I did. I cannot describe to you the disgusting nature of this job. I can tell you that I was on the verge of throwing up the entire time and I feel that I should now be allowed to retire from cleaning bathrooms for the rest of my life.

I am not, however, exempt from laundry. So I'd better go finish it.

Hello all! Well, it was a fun weekend, but now it's Monday. Not that Mondays are bad... they just aren't weekends. :) Doug and I went and saw Richard Buckner at the Cactus Cafe on Saturday. I was fachinated by him for the first couple of songs. He's a very interesting looking fellow. I finally decided he looks like the giant, rebel son of Randy Travis and an Oompa Loompa. You can find pictures of him at www.richardbuckner.com, but you'd have to see him live to understand. And his hair is longer now and dyed black. If you don't know or just don't remember what Oompa Loompas look like, go to www.oompa-loompas.net.

Anyway, the music was interesting too. I really liked it for a while. After a few songs, his 'experimental' use of the EBow (ask a guitar player) started getting to me. It was an enjoyable evening though and it was the first time either of us had been to the Cactus Cafe. In case you've never been there and you make assumptions based on names, like I do, it is not a cafe. :)

I have new conditioner that smells like Jester dormitory! It's not a bad thing, just kind of strange. If you've never been inside Jester, then you won't really understand. It's not like I just remember what the dorm smells like, but I put the conditioner on my head for the first time and the aroma surrounded me and I thought, "Hey, this smells like Jester dorm!" Weird, man, weird.

I also have new deodorant that smells like insect repellant. Actually, it smells like tea tree oil, but it's a similar smell. It's all natural stuff and it really works very well! And, thankfully, it doesn't smell like insect repellant once it dries.

And furthermore, I just participated in a survey with a mouthful of toothpaste. I got a phone call that was an automated 45 second political survey. Unfortunately, I had a mouth full of toothpaste when I answered the phone (i thought it would be a person that i could ask to wait). I still participated in the survey - I was just a bit muffled.

Top 10 Reasons I'm glad I was born in the late 20th Century:

10. Dental Floss with Wax
9. Bath and Body Works
8. Litter Box Deodorizer
7. Soft Bread (that stays soft for many days)
6. Dr. Pepper
5. Don't have to raise and kill my own meat
4. Barnes & Noble
3. Air Conditioning in public places
2. Air Conditioning in cars
1. Air Conditioning in the home

I do not want anyone to email me and tell me that "Number X was actually available to the public starting March 7, 1899" because I don't care. :)

First Dance 

About to enter the reception. 

Mr. and Mrs. Keith Peeler 

Keith and Megan at the rehearsal dinner. That is Irene, Doug and Keith's mother, at the table next to them and the side of Kristin Mains' head in the foreground. 

The beautiful inside of the beatiful dome of the beautiful church where Keith is Youth Minister and where the wedding was held. 

This is at the rehearsal. Like I said, questionable quality. 

Well, I have photos from the wedding weekend that I'm going to post (a few now, a few later when our USB cable comes home). Unfortunately, they are few and of questionable quality. It was hard to get good photos at the rehearsal because it was dark, but the flash didn't help much unless it was a close-up shot. I tried using no flash and it helped, but only if my hand was steady and the people weren't moving.

There are no photos from the wedding itself because... *sigh* ...I was ten minutes late to my own brother-in-law's wedding. I THOUGHT IT STARTED AT SIX, BUT IT WAS AT FIVE! If I hadn't been trying to get there early to help out with last-minute things, I would have missed it altogether. I felt so bad that I cried! Anyway, once the wedding had started it would have been obnoxiously loud for me to open the camera case to get the camera out. Then I tried taking some photos after the wedding, but the batteries (both of them) were almost dead. So we got just a few shots from the reception. Nuts!

Anyway, that's the story on the photos.

The other interesting news is that I went back to the sleep specialist yesterday and apparently I have Periodic Limb Movement/Restless Leg Syndrome. I wake myself up with leg movements about 8 times per hour!

Well, this weekend was Keith and Megan's wedding! (keith is doug's brother, for those who don't know) It was great and the whole weekend was like one long crazy party! Non-stop action - we were *so* worn out by the time it was over. Actually, we're STILL worn out! The bride was beautiful, the groom was grinning ear-to-ear, and the wedding and associated parties were too much fun to explain! We only got photos of the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner (and about 4 from the reception). I'd rather not go into the reasons for that right now, but once we get those photos transferred from Doug's laptop to this computer, I'll post some.

I'm having a hard time getting motivated today because I'm enjoying the peace and quiet so much that I just want to relax and soak it up. But, Doug's back at work and I need to get busy too!

When we left Austin, it was rainy and not too blisteringly hot. We've now come back to gross triple-digit highs and barely a trace of wind or cloud. Only six weeks till Europe where it will be cool and probably a little rainy!