The amount of daylight is definitely increasing and I’m happy about that. Having some sunlight for a while after I get home from work makes the workday seem shorter and going to work in real daylight is a good start to the workday. Today’s sunrise was at 7:26 a.m. and sunset was at 6:02 p.m. That works out to be about 10 and a half hours of sunlight. In another a month we’ll have more sunlight than non-sunlight and that means the snow and cold will be gone soon as well. I’m right ready for some springtime!
I visited with the gastrologist this afternoon. He showed me pictures of my esophagus and the scar tissue from the acid reflux problem both before his procedure and after the procedure. The opening certainly appeared to be larger and rounder. The tissue samples he took were also completely benign — simply confirming his diagnosis of acid reflux induced dysphagia which is a fancy way of saying difficulty in swallowing. Previcid will allow the esophagus to heal in about four to six months by keeping the acid production down. The literature with Previcid says that it is for the “short-term treatment of erosive esophagitis.” Quite comforting. I don’t need to go back to the gastrologist. I’m to see my normal doctor in about six months to see if further treatment is necessary. Meanwhile, I’ve had no issues or problems since the procedure, no side effects from the medication, and I’m a happy camper. His only comment was that I should have come in to see him earlier and gotten rid of the problem sooner. That’s a hard call to make. How do I make the right decision about when to take a possible health problem to a doctor? It takes time and money to see the doctor as well as his time that could possibly be better spent with someone else. I’m certainly not as stubborn as my dad about going to see the doctor, but perhaps I should be a little less conservative. Perhaps.
This weekend Nina and I are off to Phoenix, Arizona. Our daughter Jaelene has the week off from work and we can use a short vacation and, in particular, a grandkid fix. We’ll fly to Phoenix on Saturday morning. I’ll return Tuesday evening and Nina will come home the following Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to some warmer weather. Phoenix will have a low tonight of 45 degrees and will warm up to 68 degrees tomorrow. Contrast that with a low tonight of 5 degrees in Pocatello and a high of 36 degrees tomorrow. It’ll be shirtsleeve weather for us in Phoenix while all the natives will be wearing coats, hats, and gloves! I’m sure that’s how the locals pick out the snowbird visitors.
Someone asked me the other day why I never talk about work in my blog. The easy answer is that few people would really be interested in my work. The more complete answer is that companies take a very dim view of employees who write about their work. Some have lost their jobs because of content on their weblogs. The courts have upheld the precept of “employment at will,” meaning a company needs no particular reason to dismiss an employee. While I don’t think I would have anything particularly interesting to say about my employer, it’s just better to leave the company completely out of the picture. There’s plenty to blog about without including my work!
A few weeks ago as I was in the Brussels Airport, I saw the latest Robert Jordan Book, New Spring, in paperback and decided to read it on the flight back home. It turned out to be a very good read, so much so that I actually read it twice. The book is set about twenty years before his first book in the Wheel of Time series and provides a very rich background for the series. I enjoyed it so much that I just continued with book one (The Eye of the World) and today I started book five (The Fires of Heaven). The last time I read the series, I got bogged down and never finished book 8 which was quite disjointed and seemingly caused the whole storyline to come unraveled. Since then books 9 and 10 have been published. My sons have told me that book 9 was much better and book 10 was back to the clear writing and tight storyline that the earlier books in the series contained. I’ll soon know. I spend most of my spare time reading now rather than sitting on the computer reading e-mail and surfing the web. It’s a great series of books overall and I’m enjoying reading through them once again. The unfortunate part is, since I’m spending all my time reading, I don’t write so much in my blog anymore….