A poem to share

I came across a poem today by Edgar Guest, a Michigan transplant, and the only person to ever be the poet laureate for Michigan.  This is his poem, "See It Through"

When you're up against a trouble,
Meet it squarely, face to face,
Lift your chin, and set your shoulders,
Plant your feet and take a brace,
When it's vain to try to dodge it,
Do the best that you can do.
You may fail, but you may conquer--
See it through!


Hope it brings some encouragement to you all.

Great Moments in Mustache History, Pt. 3, and an amazing cause

Welcome to another edition of Great Moments in Mustache History.  This time, it's another classic, and another Michigan native, Burt Reynolds.

This picture comes from the April 1972 issue of "Cosmopolitan" magazine.  

Also, I'm a little late on this, but if you check it out quickly, it might still be running.  There's an amazing group of people who play through what is possibly the most boring part of a video game ever, and they do it for charity.  The group is called "Desert Bus for Hope", and all of the money goes to a great organization called "Child's Play", which donates toys and games to children's hospitals.  It's really goofy, and a lot of fun, you can check them out at http://desertbus.org/ .  This is one of my favorite charities, and you can find out more information about their group and how they got started on their website.

Great Moments in Mustache History, Pt. 2

How could we get through this month without mentioning an absolute classic.  Tom Selleck, who I found out tonight is a Michigan native, and former minority shareholder of the Detroit Tigers.  Who can forget the thick luscious mustaches of Mr. Magnum P.I. himself?  That's why he's in my list of Great Moments in Mustache History.

Best Day Ever, Part 1

I was reading the latest National Geographic magazine the other night and came across an amazing picture.  The article was talking about whale sharks, and the picture was a man who had just jumped into water filled with these enormous sharks.  It turns out that the man was a local police escort who was so excited to see these sharks following the fishing boat that he just dove in.  The man has the biggest grin on his face as he's reaching out to touch this fish that is literally the size of a bus.  My brain decided that the title of this picture should be "Best Day Ever".

I was also recently talking to my therapist, Morry, and we were talking about leaving some sort of record for our loved ones.  Putting these two things together, I've decided to leave you all with some of my "Best Day Evers".  This will definitely be an ongoing series, as I've been fortunate enough to have had quite a few of these sorts of days.

First up is a day that might have appeared to be miserable, but is one that I will never forget.  This day was one of the days that Shepherd, MI was having their annual Maple Syrup Festival.  HB and I had only been dating for a month or two.  The weather was pretty abysmal.  The festival falls on the last weekend of April every year, and it's either sunny and 75, or raining and 40.  This particular year it was the latter.

If you've never been to Shepherd, it's a tiny town, and the festival is really the only thing that goes on during the year.  They take it pretty seriously.  Everyone in town has a garage sale, and at the high school, they have an all-you-can-eat pancake and sausage dinner.  For a guy who likes food, this is great, the sausages are homemade, as is the fresh maple syrup.  HB and I met Mitch and Wayne there to pig out on the delicious lumberjack fare.  The plan was then to walk around and go to the garage sales.  Also, on the other end of town, they bring in a small carnival, mainly with rides and games for kids.

After we had our fill, we decided to head out for the garage sales.  It was about this time that the sky decided it would be a great time to rain.  Hard.  We all walked around, still engorged from our delicious lunch, but most of the garage sales had closed up until the rain passed away.  We decided to make our way over to the carnival on the other side of town.

Shepherd is not large, so the walk isn't too long, but we were mostly impeded by the slowly flooding streets and sidewalks, not to mention the Little Salt Creek, which we had to cross with it's water slowly rising to near over-flowing.  When we did reach the carnival, it was as you would expect a carnival in the rain to be.  Everything was closed down, and there was mud as far as the eye could see.  We walked around and splashed in the mud, and it was fantastic.

By the time we decided to leave HB and I were soaked from head-to-toe.  I was an idiot (big surprise there) and didn't bring a jacket, but HB, being chivalrous, convinced me to take her jean jacket.  We walked back to her car, and then proceeded to have another adventure by taking just dirt roads back to Alma.  We got back to her parents house, dried off, and fell asleep watching a movie.

This was one of my best days ever.

The surgery

I was in Ann Arbor with HB all day yesterday to get the surgery done to move my catheter to a new site.  Well, that didn't happen.  My surgery was scheduled for 1:00 pm, and we needed to arrive by 11:30 am for pre-op. We arrived on time, and then waited until 1:30 for them to finally take me back to get ready for the surgery.  At this point, I hadn't eaten anything since 9:30 the night before, and I wasn't able to drink any liquids since 9:30 that morning.  That will make anyone's day a lot longer than it needs to be, but by golly, I just wanted to get this over and done with.  The surgery was supposed to take place a few weeks earlier, but was postponed because of the GI bleeding that I experienced a week before the original surgery date.  I had been in contact with the doctor at U of M for a few months at this point, so this felt like a tremendous struggle to begin with.

I finally get prepped for surgery, IV in, stripped down to nothing but a gown, and a sweet blue hair net on.  Everything was a go.  They wheel me back and I get moved onto the operating table, and they decide to do a quick CT scan to make sure that there is enough room in the left lower quadrant of my abdomen.  Well, it turns out my liver is there (for reference, the liver in a healthy individual lies just behind your lower ribs on the right side of your body.  Mine has grown to take over most of my abdomen at this point.  There's not enough room.  The doctor takes a look at the current site of the catheter, in my right lower quadrant.  She decides that the safest thing to do, is just leave things as is, and just keep a close eye on the site.  I have her email address, and am supposed to email her pictures of the site if I feel like things are getting worse.  To be honest, things have been stable at the site for a while now, but I'm using a lot of triple-antibiotic ointment.  It isn't causing the skin to necrose any further, but it has seemed to stabilize the site.  She told me that there is no harm in continual use of the antibiotic ointment, and to keep using it as I currently am.

In a way, I'm really glad to have not had the operation.  I was pretty apprehensive about it in the first place, just because of the GI bleeding before.  On the other hand, it's really annoying to have this problem still going on, and it's another thing to add to the stress pile.  It's super nice to be able to just relax this weekend, instead of worrying about recovering.  The recovery wasn't bad last time, but that was 6 months ago, and I have a feeling that recovery this time around wouldn't have been as easy.

So, HB and I are spending the day together, not with her having to take care of me recovering, but just relaxing and spending time together.  Currently, we're in our mud room soaking in this glorious sun and just having some quiet reading time.

Thanks to everyone who sent food to us for this.  I'm sorry that the surgery didn't happen, but your food is delicious, and I'll always accept some good home cooking.  Thanks for all of your support and thoughts and prayers.

Great Moments in Mustache History

Ah, Ron Swanson.  What is not to love about this character from NBC's "Parks and Recreation"?  This is probably the best mustache on TV.  If I could have the mustache of any Ron, it would be this one.  In honor of Movember, I'll be doing a recurring segment on some of my favorite mustaches of all time.  Send me some of your favorite mustaches of all time, and I'll post them here.

In other news, Friday is the day for my catheter surgery.  I'm not going to lie, I'm a bit anxious about this, although it's a simple outpatient procedure.  Hopefully the nerves will go away before Friday.  I'll probably be down and out this weekend, but will hopefully bounce back just fine.  I did when they did this same procedure before. I'll let you know how it's going this weekend or early next week.  Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Movember Begins!

Here's the picture as promised, I feel like a huge hipster.