The 24 hour all Emma news channel

The 24 hour all-Emma news channel is still going full bore.  The channel is dependent on fresh content from our typical insider sources – Ellen and papa Tim sending iPad photos and updates – but the news feed has slowed in the last few days.

This past weekend Reid made an appearance in St. Paul, in part to see his new niece.  As the photo shows, Reid has apparently not found his comfort zone when it comes to holding babies.  He’ll need to master that if he’s ever to be a politician.  Hopefully, his career won’t come to that.

Our weekend was spent camping and trout fishing along the North Mill River near Asheville.  An unwitting and apparently food starved 2.5 lb. brown trout somehow found my poorly cast caddis.  More on that next week.

Reid experiences two firsts in St. Paul: an up-close experience with his niece, Emma, and no doubt receiving off-camera assistance with the fine points of holding a baby. Reid’s dad didn’t fare much better when he first held the little wonder.

But for now all things Emma remains the dominant news in the weekly letters.  It’s amazing, at least to me, to think how the letters have morphed from the the original purpose 11+ years ago (a moment’s worth of light reading when the kids were in college) to today’s more family oriented tinge.  Not to worry, the pendulum will swing to other issues.  But not right now.

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May 21, 2012

Ellen/Reid: The calendar shows a 3 day weekend coming up, but who’s noticing?  There seems to be a long stretch between the faux-holidays like President’s Day and now, but it will be good to have a Monday off.  The plan down here is to head to the western side of North Carolina and maybe camp or do a bit of fishing.  The last time we were up there, Felicia saw a fat, shirtless Bubba-type nutcase spying on us from the bank as we were fly fishing.  He was trying to stay low in the underbrush, but we skedaddled out of there in a hurry.  We won’t go to the same spot but there are yahoos like that traipsing through the woods.  We’ll take the car rather than the bike.

Emma is just more adorable by the day.  That iPad is going to come into some good use, Ellen.  The video was just incredible.  She does seem to be filling out her newborn outfits and it’s good to hear that you are getting around better.  It will just take some time.  We still plan to get up that way sometime in July once all the hubbub has gone away a bit.  We will be good visitors and come in Friday and leave on Sunday.  I’m excited to get back up there to see how the little wonder has grown.  I laughed out loud when Tim sent a picture early, early, early Saturday morning of wide-eyed Emma wishing us a good morning.  Momma obviously was still in the sack.  Tim’s a good dad.  I’ve heard a lot of ‘congratulations, grandpa’ from folks in Des Moines; the Fisher-Freeds, Kenyons, Willits, Allens, et all.  The news seems to have spread quickly.

As you may have heard, North Carolina, in the infinite wisdom of our elective, scared-stiff populace, voted in an amendment to our constitution that bars same-sex couples from tying the knot and denies them couple’s benefits.  It’s unfortunate that a state like this, which will defend gun owner and polluter rights to the teeth, even bothers to vote on such a minor issues because it only demonstrates our widespread, pervasive stupidity.  For all its natural beauty, this is a state that time forgot.  I mean, honestly, what does homosexuality have to do with jobs or anti-terrorism or health care or an educated populace?  If I won the lottery, which no doubt I won’t, I would announce an immediate plan to ship my winnings out of state because the state doesn’t deserve to benefit from whatever money I would spend here.  My guess is that the prejudicial vote will hinder economic growth a little, too.  What employer would want to come here only for nice weather and the proximity of the ocean or mountains?  One step forward, three-four steps back.  Maybe more.

Published the 42^nd edition of my church newsletter out over the weekend.  It’s online at caldwellpresby.org.  The production schedule was hampered this issue by a severe case of writers block.  I mean really severe.  If it weren’t for photos that take up lots of space, you could put the entire written contents on one 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper.  It’s pretty much an under-the-radar effort and literally it comes together at the 11^th hour.

Got my ticket for the Bridger last Thursday.  The connections will be uber-tight and since I have two stops on the way out, I may ask FedEx to ship my backpack for me to Jackson Hole.  That way I won’t have to mess with it.  If FedEx will ship golf clubs, they’ll ship a backpack, too.  The attendee totals for the trip are still in a small state of flux, but 4-5 seems pretty reasonable at this stage of the game.  That’s enough to still be fun.  Felicia won’t go for fear of the mosquitoes.

Okay, I’m outta here.  This will be a big week of work and I don’t want to wear out my welcome.  You guys have a good, restful Memorial Day weekend, and I wouldn’t mind it if you reported in to me now and again.

A compendium of small things…

Some weeks its just hard to find something to pontificate on in the fatherly sense.  It could be accurately chalked up to a lack of strong coffee or that nothing reveals itself at the moment of creative conception.  I am ramping up on red-red-red North Carolina politics that set our state back, our shunning of environmental issues and the like but nothing has jelled as of yet.  So I fall back on my PB days (the Pre-Betsy admonition to write something of depth so as to be of interest to her that in tandem would show my personality to the kids) and thus a letter becomes a compendium of the small things that went on the week before.

Last weeks letter was a definite throwback to the PB days.

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June 6, 2011

Ellen/Reid: Well, if you like heat and humidity this is the place for you.  Blast furnace hot but damp at the same time.  Go figure.

Here’s the update on Felicia.  Her surgery is set for the end of this month.  That nearly 30 day delay would absolutely drive me more bonkers than I already am.  Why in the world they wait that long on such a terrible disease is totally unfathomable to me.  I lectured her this weekend, more than once, to call her physician’s office this morning to see if she can light a fire under the operating doctor so we’ll see if that does any good.  There was a related article this morning in the paper about some new drugs specific to melanoma.  Advances, yes, but not a cure.  This comes at a time when she’s wrestling with other issues in her life, notably her son who has veered onto another path she’d rather he not take.  I don’t know.  I’m glad you guys are who you are, but it is very hard to see her have to endure another bout of the same situation she has already endured for years.  I’d rather that she take the time to tend to herself but the mother’s instinct to nurture, or at least care for, her offspring is awfully strong.  She needs to worry about herself for a change.  I plan to be with her at the surgery and be available for whatever else she needs between now and then.

Ellen, I’ll need to tap into your teaching expertise in the next couple of weeks.  My class on freelance writing is filling up at the local community college (it will probably top out at about a dozen or 16 students) and I’m starting to get nervous about it.  It’s not the content that is vexing but the presentation of things.  The class will be in a high-tech lab setting loaded with capabilities for PowerPoints and other sort of splashy gizmos.  My class outline is done but that’s all it is; an outline.  I’ll head over to the college later this week to familiarize myself with the ins and outs of the learning laboratory.  They say to teach is to learn twice so maybe that’s good.  All in all, this probably is something of an odd time for freelancers.  The pay scale has dropped like a stone (at least in the newspaper biz) but the availability of work is probably pretty good in that in this economy firms may not keep full time staff but instead farm the work out depending on their situational needs.

Your uncle lifted his cell phone to your grandmother’s ear this weekend but I couldn’t understand much of what she said beyond “I love you, too.”  I just don’t know what to make of it.  I wish I could be there a lot more often.  Her health seems to have stabilized for the time being.  I’m dependent on your uncle’s reportage of what’s going on and he’s around her often enough he sees the ebb and flow to her situation but he’s not sounding any alarms as of late.  It looks as if Joe is going to buy your grandparent’s house.  I have some mixed feelings about it, largely because he’s being influenced by your aunt and uncle (the house design is a bit staid by young person’s standards, I would think).  He’ll get a sweetheart deal on the house but I suppose when you do the math in terms of what it might sell for minus the real estate agent’s commission it’s probably not that bad an overly bad thing.  Joe and Ally will have their baby at the end of this month.  Ralph and Gayle are pretty excited about it.  Their third grandchild.  Guys, I’m in no rush.

That’s about it for this installment.  Working out for Wyoming (there’s a long way to go physically) and just trying to keep cool in this oppressive heat.  Reid, the offer of a ticket to CLT still stands, and Ellen, watch for news about a trip up to see your swanky new kitchen.  The pix of the gutted interior are cool, but for your sake I hope the contractors get a move on so you don’t have to live in a pile of dust and debris all summer.  An end-of-June timetable seems nice.  I hope they can live up to those terms.

“No letter?”…

The string of letters was broken last week for the first time in I don’t know how long.  A long, long time.  It was chalked up to equipment malfunction but it was probably closer to ‘operator error’ in that I moved my office to the house and I couldn’t quite figure out the new printer.  But that’s been cleared up and the presses are rolling again.  Ellen was first to pick up on the lull in mailbox activity with a quick text “No letter?” so I guess there is some assurance that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

The lapse gave me some time to think about the unfolding details of a new development for Felicia.  The kids have both known about her melanoma for a week or so, but the details and scope of the issue weren’t yet fully known.  They are now and we’re ready to move ahead.

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June 1, 2011

Ellen/Reid: I’m up on the third floor of the townhome this morning, typing away in my new home office.  Although it is in theory an ‘office’, your grandmother’s old twin bed is nearby and I have to fight the urge to lie down for a moment to rest my eyes.  I’m officially a MyWorker.  That’s bank parlance for someone who works from home or a satellite office.  I’ll work from home three days a week and make the reasonable drive to one of the outlying offices the other two days.  There’s only one other person in town who is on my ‘team’ and I’ll see her often enough.  There was no earthly reason for me to drive the half hour each way, plus the parking space and other expenses.  As it turns out, I actually start the day much earlier – about 6:30 – than I might otherwise.  A guy could get used to working in shorts and a t-shirt.  I wasn’t able to write last week because the printer was on the fritz.  The string of letters was broken by a technical malfunction, to quote Janet Jackson.  You probably didn’t miss much.

Today Felicia goes to her surgeon to find out what must be done to eradicate the melanoma which is on her left calf.  It was discovered a few weeks ago during a routine examination, and it was determined to not be very deep (which is how they measure those things) and that is a good thing.  She’s an outdoors person but had also frequented tanning booths (which she stopped going to last year) but the damage was done.  She’s shown the patience of Job in not riding her doctors to get her taken care of sooner.  That the disease had not shown signs of progression probably influenced their decision to make her wait for a few weeks, but it would’ve driven me totally nuts.  We’re not sure when the surgery is scheduled – we will find out today – and they will likely carve out a chunk of her leg to make sure the beast is eliminated.  I’ll be with her when she goes through that, just as she was with me in February.  She’s been a trouper through all of this.  It reminds me of your uncle’s situation, which is going on 10 years now in terms of a clean bill of health.  He had a significant melanoma taken off of his left arm, and even now he goes through an examination every three months just to keep on top of things.  I can’t recall if he underwent any chemo or radiation but the lesson here is that you guys ought to make sure a regular dermatology exam is on your medical radar screens.  I say that at the very moment my face is peeling from broiling in the sun this past weekend on the golf course and the bike even though sunscreen was applied and re-applied.  There’s probably more to protection than wearing hats and lotions.  Since this runs in the family, please make sure you get checked out at least once a year.  That’s why you have insurance.

Had a brief scare last week on my situation that had me hustle back into the doctor’s office for a few hours but all is well.  Just part of the healing process, so there’s not much else to report on that score.

Not much new on your grandmother’s situation.  Still in Wood River, still getting by.  Her health seems to have evened out as of late although it appears she will make the move to a Veteran’s Administration facility because it’s simply less expensive.

My workouts to get ready for the Bridger have started.  After a couple of minutes on the elliptical machine, it became very clear that whatever was gained over the years has been completely lost.  It means essentially starting over from scratch, but there are about 7 weeks for me to try to regain some level of fitness.  We arrive in Jackson Hole on Thursday, July 21 and head back to Charlotte on July 28^th, if memory serves me correctly.  Lots of planning to get down before the trip goes down.

Okay, guys, have a good start to your summers, stay in touch (that means you, Reid) and wear your sunscreen.  Hope to see you sooner than later.  Keep your Thanksgiving plans open.

Dad checking in…

There just wasn’t a hell of a lot going on last week.  For the most part, the best I could do was really just be a dad checking in.  That was about all the energy I could muster.  I doubt any complaints will be heard from Ellen and Reid.  But from what went down these last few days, today’s letter (which you’ll read next week) will be a far different matter.  There will be a return to events of some real gravity.

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May 16, 2011

Ellen/Reid: I came into the office this morning and the people and their things are gone.   Row upon row of cubes sit empty.  The herding of staff occurred last Friday when a mass exodus was made to one of our spiffy new buildings where, if your entry pass doesn’t work, they can double check your retina scan to allow admittance.  I opted not to go that direction, in part because of gas costs ($4.10/gallon) and it would add another 10 minutes to the walk from my open parking space.  Instead, I chose what’s called the My Work program where I can work from home and spend two or three days a week in satellite space on the south edge of town.  The bank buys a phone and printer, a shredder and a chair for my convenience that will go up in the three floor bedroom which is my new home office.  If I needed to come uptown I could but I don’t know of any earthly reason why that should be so unless I wanted to see Betsy or my friends Tom and Mike.  I have no co-workers in the downtown, and only one in the metro area so it’s not like my presence will be missed up this way.

Ellen, I hope the fine china made it in one piece.  My box did not.  It came, crushed, as if thrown off the UPS truck.  The big red “Fragile” sticker must not have been noticed by the caring UPS handlers.  To my dismay, literally everything inside was broken, most notably the glass lid to the roasting pan your grandmother got as a wedding gift in 1948.  I was just crushed.  Of all your grandparent’s possessions, it was one of two or three items that I really wanted.  I thought the packing job was good, but the vases and other assorted stuff were in pieces.  That’s why I need to know if the china is intact.  If it is not, then I took out insurance on your box which, while it won’t nearly be enough to replace everything, will at least be some salve.

My health, knock on wood, has seemed to improve these last few weeks.  No small maddening setbacks which make me second guess the operation (just a little).  My next check up is in just over a month and that will be the real litmus test.  That has in part contributed to my desire to work at home, which will be easier on me physically.  This sitting in a chair for hours on end is for the birds and is one of the cautions they gave me at the doctor’s office.  But I’m feeling one hell of a lot better as of this writing.  Came through a 200+ mile ride with Felicia this weekend in good shape, too.  If an old Harley doesn’t rattle your innards, nothing can.  I need to start some serious cardio workouts to get ready for Wyoming which is now only two months away.  I’m worried about that part of it and don’t want to drag the group down to my level.   I’ve always said we will hike only as fast as the slowest person, and that may well be me.  We head into the back country on Sunday, July 24.  The trip still seems really exciting but there are a ton of loose ends to bring together, notably getting all the gear (the old MSR stove could not be found in DSM) together and packing all the food.  That may wait until Jackson Hole.  Reid, hopefully we won’t be sleeping in the car the night before the trip.  Jeez, what a night that was.

Ellen, thanks for the photo of your barren kitchen.  Nice job by Tim.  There’s no turning back now, but you’ll finally have a kitchen you can really sink your teeth into and be proud of.  In terms of recouping your money, it’s not a bad investment.  I’d love to get up there sometime to see the end results.  The one caution I’d give you is if they say the project will only take three weeks, double that estimate.  Nothing ever seems to wrap up when they say it should wrap up.   It’s going to be an endurance test of patience and dust, dust, dust, especially when that wall comes out.

Well guys, I have to go.  Its ghost town up here right now, but they left the office coffee pot here, and I think I’ll go make me some.

Bridger update…

Things are moving ahead on the July trip to the Bridger Wilderness in Wyoming.  A group of eight of us from Charlotte are on board (there is room for plenty more hikers).  Most will fly into Jackson Hole, about 75 miles from our spot in the Wind River Range.  We assemble in Pinedale on Saturday, July 23 and after all the gear is straightened away and the food is packed into ‘bear barrels’ we head into the high country on Sunday the 24th for three to five nights.

The locals met for an update a couple of weeks ago and I’m relieved a die-hard and experienced hiker has decided to join our little band of outdoors people.  He knows his stuff.  I told the group this will be far from a forced march; rather, it will be the original pleasure cruise of backpacking.  Three or four miles by foot per day, frequent stops, lots of fishing. If this holds a smidgen of interest for you, climb aboard.  No experience necessary.

Alas, Ellen and Reid likely won’t make it.  Reid is talking about walking the Oregon coast with a buddy, and Ellen will likely opt to spend her time in northern Minnesota.

If there’s a high point for the trip, beyond the peaks themselves, it’s that my friend John’s two daughters, ages 11 and 14, both Carolinians to the core, will get their first taste of the truly wild-and-wooly outdoors.