Company Girls Coffee 110212

Lots of coffee needed this morning. I managed to stay up considerably later than usual last night, partly because of a television show (Elementary - love Jonny Lee Miller), partly due to cleaning in advance of having dinner guests Saturday.

Half a dozen coeds from the university at which I work are coming for dinner. Faculty and staff volunteer to host students, who are randomly matched up with hosts. They even have a "reunion dinner" for everyone who participated on campus during the second semester.

These kinds of events may be why our alumni are pretty passionate about staying connected to and volunteering for the school after they graduate.

So, cleaning...the condo is generally pretty neat, but it is the "extra" cleaning, the kind you do when strangers are coming, that takes a bit of time. That is exactly why I try to have guests over every four to six weeks; it makes that extra cleaning easier when it is done fairly regularly.

Last weekend I made two different soups for the freezer, one chicken with wild rice (broth based, not cream based), the other vegetable beef barley. One is stovetop, the other crock pot, so they cooked more or less simultaneously. The challenge was making room for twelve individual containers in the freezer. Pumpkin soup is up next, once I chop up and cook the pumpkin. It's the chopping that is the difficult part.

Half day of work today, then off to the grocery store for dinner supplies. We're having an italian country stew (crock pot recipe), a green salad bar and hot whole wheat rolls. The guests will help to make dessert, an easy apple crumble served with frozen yogurt.

After the grocery run and a couple of other little things, it's off to the quilt shop for a sewing machine computer lesson. It's been so busy I haven't had time to play with my new toy, though I have read the manual almost all the way through. The parts I've not read concern the embroidery module, which we won't get to for at least the next couple lessons.

If you have the time, please send up a prayer or two on my behalf. On Monday I've a scan that will show whether a worrisome, mysterious spot on my lung has grown in the last six months. A life-long nonsmoker, the appearance of a spot, no matter how small, is disconcerting.

Have a great weekend!

Company Girls Coffee 110912

Good morning almost lunch time! Obviously, even coffee didn't help me this morning.

It's been a busy week, and it is not quite over. Highlights:

- A CT scan on Monday proved that Rover - the spot on my lung - is stable and pretty much nothing to worry about, at least until it's scanned again in a year. Praise God!

- My car passed the emissions test; I love my little Civic. It may have helped that in the last month I've made the 60 mile, highway driving trip out to the quilt store six times.

- The 'Supper for Twelve Strangers" last Saturday was a lot of fun. Home cooked meals are a delight for students, and it's always nice to cook for an appreciative crowd.

- My crockpot has had a real workout this week: an unheard of three separate dishes have been left to simmer all day. Last night's pot roast - a mid-week impulse - melted in your mouth. Paired with previously frozen but home made twice baked potatoes, I was able to give a friend a "Sunday" meal on a Thursday night.

- Good news from friends, including a child coming home from the hospital (though a long road ahead; he has just been diagnosed with ALL Leukemia, but is progressing through chemo like a champ), a new job, a long-sought promotion and a new home. Lots to celebrate.

- The painter came over last night to measure everything in order to provide an estimate. Depending on where he comes in, I may not get a second. A neighbor had her place painted by a different company recently, and has been kind enough to share with me her recommendation and her costs. Now comes the hard part: nailing down colors. Eeeck! The painting will be done while I'm on vacation over the two weeks around Christmas - can't wait.

Other than a short visit to see friends' new flat and going to church, I have nothing on the slate for this weekend. At least not anything other than whatever the heck I want to do. Depending on energy level, that includes taking a load of cardboard to the dump (have I mentioned it rains every.single.time I could put it out for recycling?), cleaning up the patio and covering the table for the winter, emptying a few boxes in the sewing studio and setting up the new machine in there.

This may be our last unseasonably warm weekend of the fall - highs in the low to mid sixties and pretty sunny. It just might be warm enough to spend an hour or sitting on the patio reading, prior to packing things up for the winter. Now that would be a great way to spend the afternoon Saturday...

Polka dot

"You have a five millimeter spot on your right lung."

Not words you expect to hear, particularly if you are a life-long non-smoker. The urgent care center took a chest x-ray in order to rule out pneumonia as the cause of my hacking cough, and in the process, discovered this less-than-quarter-inch spot.

Lungs, unfortunately, do not look good wearing any size polka-dots.

That was the first week in March. Now, after almost two full months and a series of comedies of error and ineptitude (not by my doctor or his staff), it's been determined that the spot is "stable, and doesn't appear to be suspicious". It is most likely scar tissue from a previous pneumonia I didn't know I had; short of an actual biopsy, absolute certainty isn't possible.

X-rays or scans will be done at regular intervals: as long as it doesn't grow, nothing else needs to be done.

It's a relief to know that it is essentially nothing. But if it had been something, it wouldn't change the foundations of my belief in God. We live in a fallen world; bad things happen, but it doesn't mean that He is no longer in control. He works His purposes through the good and the bad.

Yawn...what time is it?

Gah, I hate these stupid time changes. I never did change the car's clock last fall; now that it reads the correct time, I'm still used to subtracting an hour from the reading.

Changed the bedroom and bathroom clocks, one of the two timers on the living room lamps and the thermostat. The rest - eh, I'll get there. The phone and computers (except, for some reason, the one in the sewing machine) change themselves, fortunately.

Thanks to the never-ending head cold, I slept most of the weekend, including an actual eleven hour stint Saturday to Sunday. Still, I'm fading fast here. Having to get up at four-fifteen instead of nine or ten really makes a difference.

At least when I make a quilt, doing the nonsensical thing of cutting big pieces of fabric into little pieces, only to sew them back together into a big piece, the end result is both pretty and practical. You can't say the same about the shifting of time involved with DST.

After more than two weeks of tooling in to work in the brightening daylight, I had to make my way in the dark today. Urgh. Still, the temperature was above freezing, which is a vast improvement over last week.

Spring is kind of peeking around the corner of Winter's skirts, teasing us by stepping partway out, then pulling back. Flirt, always promising a little more than she is ready to follow through with.

In spite of hacking up a lung, I managed to make a really, really tasty chicken soup Saturday. The pot was big enough to last through lunch this coming Wednesday (I don't mess around when I make soup). A while back I picked up a package of little pasta stars (truly little, like an eighth of an inch across) specifically to use in soup. Why? No reason except they make me smile.

I'd better get in line to heat it up.

Walking the dog

It's time to take Rover to the vet for a check up.

No, I didn't get a dog; Rover is my name for the 5mm spot on my lung.

(It only counts as gallows humor if you are actually dying, right?)

It's been six months since the original MRI; they will do another one now, comparing the results for changes.

Change is baaaaad.

Unlike the first go around, where the MRI place just "forgot" to call me for over two weeks after receiving the order and authorization from the insurance company, this time, they called me seconds after my doctor contacted them. I wouldn't have gone back to this place, but in for the test results to be truly comparative, we need to use the same testing place. Bah.

At least this dramatically shortens the "freaking out inside my head" period, from the almost three months between the initial sighting and the first MRI, to the four days between now and the second one, scheduled for next Monday.

Tim Challies' post today discusses the "discipline of adversity" chapter from Jerry Bridges' book The Discipline of Grace. A couple of the quotes Tim chose to post:

 “It is true that we often cannot see the connection between the adversity and God’s purpose. It should be enough for us, however, to know that He sees the connection and the end result He intends.”

“This is the design of God in all of the adversity and heartache we experience in this life. There is no such thing as random or chance events in our lives. All pain we experience is intended to move us closer to the goal of being holy as He is holy.”

Rejoice always,  pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:16 - 18