Prophecy

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
Upon those who lived in a land of gloom
a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing;
They rejoice before you as people rejoice at harvest,
as they exult when dividing the spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
the rod of their taskmaster,
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.
For every boot that tramped in battle,
every cloak rolled in blood,
will be burned as fuel for fire.
For a child is born to us, a son is given to us;
upon his shoulder dominion rests.
They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.
His dominion is vast
and forever peaceful,
upon David’s throne, and over his kingdom,
which he confirms and sustains
by judgment and justice,
both now and forever.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this!

Merry Christmas.

The new gig has begun

Started today. Will be there for 18 months. I have a lot to learn, but I am thrilled to have the opportunity.

Thank you for your support and your prayers. A lot of my former colleagues are still looking, so I feel fortunate indeed.

Update/Good News

Barring anything unforeseen, I have a new gig. Will start work on an 18-month assignment for a medical device company on 7/29. I expect to learn a lot.

The blogging may still be lighter than it used to be; my pattern in the past was to get up very early in the morning so that I could write something before I headed to work. At this point in my life, sleep deprivation is a very poor idea, so I'm not going back to that schedule. But I'll stay awake.

I am grateful for your support. A lot of people were praying for me and I appreciate those prayers and well-wishes. While this is an era of low unemployment, it's not easy to find a job at a senior level, so your prayers have lifted me throughout this period of transition.

Post 6000

Another odometer flip, as we've reached 6000 posts. This feature started in December of 2005 and, on average, we've averaged about 455 posts a year, although lately the pace has slowed a bit. Generally, we don't post much on the weekends any more, and there have been more open threads lately than I'd prefer, but it's still a lot.

Blogging isn't as big now as it was back in '05, primarily because social media and Twitter have swallowed up most of the potential bloggers. There's a fair amount of overlap between our readership here and my friends on Facebook, although the content here is substantially different. I do my best to stay out of politics on FB, because it's not a particularly tolerant place and many people I know who are decent and respectful in real life turn into flying monkeys when they log in to Zuckerbergia.

Is that cowardly? Shouldn't I let my freak flag fly there? I don't think so. I make a point of "liking" pictures of my FB friends, or funny things they post, but in the main I just scroll by the political rants. It's not worth engaging people on that level. But sometimes I wonder if the intemperance and intolerance of social media doesn't creep in here, at least a little bit. It seems to have creeped in everywhere else. When I look back at things I wrote, say, 10 years ago, the tone was different. I'm not always comfortable with that, but generally this is still a reasonably calm place, except when Benster is in the house.

Some, maybe most, of the people who come here these days have been coming for a decade or more. I consider most of my readers to be friends. As Gino has pointed out, friendships are still the best reason to stay in the game. I am grateful for the wisdom and good humor I receive here. Thank you for sticking with me, and the rest of us, as we continue on the eternal quest to sort things out.

Three-peat

As regular readers of this feature know, I grew up in Wisconsin and experienced the majority of my childhood in the 1970s. As a result of that timeline, I didn't get to see too many winning performances or experience too many championship seasons. I have vague memories of the Milwaukee Bucks winning their only championship in 1971, and I have better memories of the magical run of Marquette in 1977, as they won the NCAA men's basketball championship and sent Al McGuire out as a winner. Most of the other entities I cared about didn't do so well, though.

The world of marching band wasn't on my radar in those days, either. My high school, Xavier, did not have a marching band program. When we had our homecoming parade, they would have the pep band sit on folding chairs (with their music stands, of course) on the back of a big flatbed truck and play their songs as the vehicle rolled slowly down College Avenue. It was (a) ludicrous and (b) really, really unsafe, but that's how we did it. I knew the marching band was a big deal in college, but it wasn't anything that mattered. The band at Appleton East marched in the Orange Bowl parade in the early 1970s, but that was about it.

For the past four years, Fearless Maria has been part of the marching band program at her high school. And on Saturday night they won their third consecutive state championship:

3 in a row

Irondale High School competes in all the typical high school sports, occasionally doing well, but they aren't known for great success. They are great in winter drumline. Up until the last three years, I'd never had a chance to experience what it's like to be a state champion. Xavier won some state championships during my high school career, but that was at arm's length. Fearless Maria and her fellow drumline members are a full-on dynasty now and it's been a real education for me to see what it really takes to win a state championship and, even more importantly, what it takes to stay there. These kids put in an amazing amount of time into their shows. The other high schools that compete successfully in drumline in the state are mostly other metro schools, and the schools that Irondale will face in the WGI championships in less than two weeks span the gamut from small town enterprises to huge high schools. It's been an amazing experience and while we're ready for the next stage of her life, we'll miss these seasons.

Unidentified Flying Object

I was on my way home from work yesterday. I had just crossed the Minnesota River. Then it happened. I have no idea what it was, because I never saw it hit my driver's side window. But the sound was loud and sharp. What the hell was that, I thought, as I continued on my way, northbound on 35W, heading for home.

After about a minute, in the time it takes to travel from 106th Street to 98th Street, the broken glass began to tumble onto me. Then more glass, then more still. As soon as I was able to work my way across the four lanes of rush hour traffic, I exited on 90th Street. I have lived in the Twin Cities for about 25 years, but I don't believe I've ever been on 90th Street before. I drove about a half mile to the east, past Lyndale, where I found an auto body shop. I pulled my glass-strewn car into the driveway and stopped. Fortunately, they were able to take a look at my vehicle, give me a quote for the repair and put a plastic wrap over the now-missing space where my window once was. I will be able to get the window fixed on Thursday.

Had I arrived at the point of impact a tenth of a second earlier, the object might have hit my windshield and the story would have potentially been very different. Had I arrived two seconds earlier, I'd have been on my way and some other dude might have taken the blow.

I could feel sorry for myself. It's an inconvenience. I might feel lucky, but good luck is not getting hit by something flying through the air in the first place. I could complain about it, but then I turn on the news and see the death toll continue to mount in Mexico, and watch the latest hurricane take aim at Puerto Rico. It can always be worse.

Milestone

There are now 5,501 posts on this blog, counting this one. Thanks for reading!

Aw, that's a shame

OPEC has issues, and Walter Russell Mead and friends have noticed:

The oil cartel roped eleven other petrostates into an agreement to curtail production in 2017 and are currently working on extending that deal, but the output cut’s ultimate goal of eating away at the oil market’s glut of crude is being undermined by the actions of suppliers outside of OPEC—U.S. shale producers chief among them. Now, OPEC is revising upwards its estimates of how quickly supplies will grow outside of its membership this year by a whopping 64 percent. 

Why is this happening? Primarily because of the frackers:

By cutting costs and boosting efficiencies, U.S. shale has made itself capable of profitably producing $50 per barrel oil.

The only way cutting production makes sense for OPEC is if they can subsequently get $75 per barrel, or thereabouts, to make up for the lost amount of production. And meanwhile frackers are gearing up elsewhere:

Vaca Muerta, which is Spanish for Dead Cow, is a shale gas and oil formation the size of Belgium in the heart of the region of Patagonia and is essential to Argentina being able to become self sufficient in energy.

President Mauricio Macri hopes a pact he has negotiated with unions and provincial authorities will jumpstart investor interest in developing the field.

Argentina won't be in the game for a while yet, because labor and transportation costs are still obstacles to profitability, but it will be in the game eventually. The price of a barrel of oil was $115 as recently as 2014. It's been less than half that price for a long time now:

Frack you

OPEC cut production last year and while prices rose for a time, they have been essentially stable for over a year. I have paid as much as $4/gallon for gas around this time of year in the past; I have not paid more than $2.50 in a long time, except in places like Chicago where they tax the crap out of gasoline (and everything else). While we worry about bread and circuses in Washington, we don't have to cringe every time we approach a gas pump. I'm grateful for that.

A nice move, Jiggly Boy

I've met John Sweeney, but I don't really know him, other than having beers with him in Madison one time maybe 30 years ago now. He's a good friend of my brother Pat, and I'm pretty sure that our faithful correspondent Crankbait is also a friend of Sweeney as well. Sweeney is the successor to the legendary Dudley Riggs and runs the Brave New Workshop, the Minneapolis-based improv group that has been our version of Second City for many years. He's also been known for dancing shirtless at Timberwolves games.

Since he's taken the helm at the Brave New Workshop, Sweeney has sought opportunities to simultaneously help his franchise and help people in the community, and his improv classes for seniors manage to achieve both goals, as the Star Tribune reports:

At the Brave New Workshop comedy school in Minneapolis, [Diane] Fuglestad, 69, is one of 30 senior citizens who have been learning improvisational technique for years. It’s about more than getting a laugh: The classes give these elders new skills to think and act quickly, speak up and, most of all, be seen.

Improv forces you to think on your feet and to react quickly, but it's mostly about joy. I recommend the linked article. We need more joy these days.

Ten years ago

At this time ten years ago, I was in the hospital. I wrote about it at the time:

Monday night into Tuesday morning, I had probably the worst headache I've ever had, requiring a trip to the doctor. Because of the additional symptoms I had that morning (blurred vision, slurred speech), I was given a series of tests and I have learned that I have a pituitary tumor. I will be returning to United Hospital next week for surgery to remove this tumor and will likely be in the hospital for the next week. 

If you're going to have a tumor in your brain, a pituitary tumor is better than most. While I've had a few issues over the last ten years, the debilitating headaches that were wrecking my life have largely disappeared. The loss of vision I'd experienced is no longer an issue. I've been fortunate, really.

At this point, I'm still taking medication, but less than we'd envisioned at the time. My endocrinologist is still my primary physician and we do tinker with things, so I'm not certain what the future brings. What I do know is that the last ten years have been much better than I'd expected they would be back in 2007. And I am grateful for that.

Confirmation Day

Fearless Maria gets confirmed at the Cathedral of St. Paul:

Right in front of the bishop

If you've never been to the Cathedral of St. Paul, you really should visit it if you get a chance. It is a magnificent Beaux Arts structure that was completed just over a hundred years ago, mostly the product of the persistence of Archbishop John Ireland and the wallet of James J. Hill, the railroad magnate whose mansion home is down the street.

I've lived in the Twin Cities for over 23 years and I've only been to the Cathedral three times -- once for the ordination of a family friend, another as part of teaching a Boy Scout merit badge, and yesterday. As a symbol of the majesty of the Church, the Cathedral is unsurpassed, at least in the Midwest. It's a subjective judgment, but to my eye the Cathedral of St. Paul is a significantly more impressive structure than Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. It certainly has a better location -- Holy Name Cathedral sits on Wabash Avenue and is part of the grid pattern of streets in the area, while the Cathedral in St. Paul has a commanding perch on top of Cathedral Hill.

Confirmation is a hugely important sacrament in the Catholic Church, as those who are confirmed are full members of the Church. The issue for many Catholics is that they don't take that membership as seriously as they ought to. Following Jesus means putting aside your own desires and listening to something other than the sirens of the larger world. It's never easy to do. In his homily, Bishop Cozzens spoke of his own challenges as a young person and how he struggled to hear God's voice. It's possible that someone in the group pictured above could have a religious vocation some day. It's a path not often chosen, but as we've seen throughout the past year, lay people within the Church play a large role in faith formation as well. The challenge in the bishop's message is to listen more closely and find the role God plays in our lives.

I was confirmed a long time ago, back in 1979. In those days, the practice in our diocese was that Bishop would come to your parish, instead of traveling to the cathedral. I'm glad that we go to the Cathedral now; it serves as a reminder of the glories of the past, along with the challenges ahead. We don't have to rehearse the many scandals that priests and other religious have caused and the tremendous pain involved; it is an ongoing challenge and represents a stain that is impossible to remove. We build cathedrals to celebrate glories of God. We emerge from the cathedrals to find a world where God is always present, but also a world where it is often difficult to see the hand of God or the workings of the Holy Spirit. Those who were confirmed yesterday face that challenge today. Those who love and support those who were confirmed have the same challenge.

Post 5000

This is the 5000th post on Mr. Dilettante's Neighborhood. We've been at this for over ten years. It's a lot of blogging.

My original tagline for the feature was "a befuddled suburban dad tries to make sense of the world." Ten years on, the world makes even less sense. I've made my peace with befuddlement.

It's easy, too easy, to fret, to live the words of a certain musician I fancy, recorded way back in 1971:

Hang ups, let downs
Bad breaks, set backs
Natural fact is
I can't pay my taxes
Oh, make me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands
Yea, it makes me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands
Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God knows where we're heading

God does know. And while this feature has been, from time to time, an exercise in hollering, and while the issues that Marvin Gaye sang about some 45 years ago persist, we can't throw up our hands.

Ten years ago, I was in the process of losing my job. I had two young children and we weren't quite sure what would come next. Now I know. A commenter wrote something back then:

Better things are in store for you. Stay encouraged.

And indeed, better things were in store. And yes, better things will come. Stay encouraged.

Song of the day

Ten Years of Blogging

Things can change substantially in 10 years. Amazingly enough, I am still blogging and somehow, after over 4,800 posts, here we are.

It all started as a bit of a lark. I missed the heyday of this ephemeral genre, which was really around the time of the 2004 presidential election. That was the time when bloggers like the guys at PowerLine could actually lead the charge to stop the corruption of the mainstream media. I got in the game at least a year too late to join in that fun. Can't say that I missed it, though.

When I set up the blog, I was in the middle of my lunch hour at Bank of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. That same lunch hour, two of my colleagues also started blogs. Those blogs are probably still out there someplace, in the vast expanse of the World Wide Web, but they went moribund a long time ago. I never would have guessed that this blog would still exist a decade later.

At the time, my family faced a dilemma. My job was moving to Portland, Oregon, and I had to decide whether I wanted to go there, or remain in the Twin Cities and find something different. As it happened, I decided to stay here and blogging became a way to cope with what became a frustrating job search.

For the first 18 to 24 months of this enterprise, I did not seek an audience. As I learned more about blogging, I decided that I could get into the game and reach a wider audience. I joined the MOB (Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, now also moribund) and did reach a wider audience, but I never pursued one with a concerted effort. Although I have had some posts that had over a thousand page views, the audience for this feature has rarely gone much beyond a few hundred readers. Many of my friends, and nearly all of my coworkers, are not even aware that I have a blog. In some respects, this is a secret enterprise that is hiding in plain sight. And that's okay.

The point of blogging, as I have learned, isn't necessarily to make a name for myself, or to become a recognized authority in politics, or sports, or music, or any of the other topics we have covered here over the past 10 years. It sure the heck isn't to make money. The point of this enterprise, the one thing that has really mattered the most, is that it has led to some wonderful friendships that would not have been possible otherwise. I have met great people and had remarkable experiences.

The example I used, very early on, was to compare blogging to dropping a penny into a well. The idea is to listen for a splash. We've dropped a lot of pennies over the years. We've also heard more than a few splashes. As the old song says, you don't miss your water until the well runs dry. I think we have a good well here. Thank you all for drawing from it.

Saga -- Part Four

It was about 7 a.m. when we left the hospital. My wife drove the car out of the parking ramp onto Thompson Street, then turned left onto Grand Avenue. The sun was about to rise, but it might as well have been midnight. Sheets of rain were hitting the windshield. As she prepared to turn from Grand Avenue onto Smith, my phone let out an alert.

“What’s that?” my wife asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ve never heard my phone do that before. Let me look.”

It was a warning from the National Weather Service – Ramsey County was under an urban and small stream flood warning. A severe thunderstorm was moving through the area. Heavy rain would fall throughout Ramsey County and localized flooding was possible.

I thought about our house, about 20 minutes away. While it's been a mostly beautiful summer, we’d had a number of torrential rain storms over the course of the year and water had overwhelmed our gutters and downspouts, causing a small amount of water to leak into the basement. We’d been able to avoid major damage, but this storm didn’t look promising. We are getting things repaired, but the problem remained.

“We’ll have to see what things look like when we get home,” I said. "I hope the gutters aren’t overflowing.”

The rain and the regular rush hour traffic turned a 20-minute drive into a 45-minute slog. As we arrived home, we could see that water was coming over the gutters, but just a trickle. The rain was coming to an end, though.

“Looks like we dodged a bullet,” I said. “I’ll have to check the gutters later on, but we need to get some rest.”

Neither of us had slept since the previous morning, so we were exhausted. We went to sleep. By this point, the medication I'd received from the hospital had kicked in and my blood pressure had returned to normal levels. I was breathing deeply and freely. About three hours later, it was 11 a.m. and the phone rang. It was the heart clinic -- they wanted to see me at 3:30 that afternoon for a consultation with a cardiologist. I wrote down the information and headed back to bed.

Not 20 minutes later, I could hear thunder and heavy rain. I put on some workout clothes and looked outside the front window of the house. Water was coming over the gutter -- a lot of water.

A few days before, we had set out a series of containers in front of our house to catch any rain water that had come over the roof. The containers were full and the water was starting to splash on the landscaping in front of our house. I grabbed the ladder from the garage, climbed up the ladder and looked up into the gutter. It was filled with water and leaves from our ash tree. I tried to fish out some of the leaves from the gutter, which helped a bit, then I carried the ladder to the downspout area on the end of the garage. The downspout was filled with leaves as well. I fished out what I could from there, all the while getting soaked by the rain, which was coming down in sheets. 

I put the ladder aside, then grabbed a pail from the garage and started bailing the water out of the plastic storage containers that were catching some, but not all, of the water. I filled the pail about 20 times and tossed the water out onto the lawn, bailing water like I would if I were on a leaking boat. That helped somewhat, but it wasn't a promising way to start my recovery. The rain started to slow a bit and I got somewhat ahead of the water that was pouring over the roof line. After about 10-15 minutes of this, the rain started to slow.

I went back into the house and turned on the computer to check the local radar. We had a brief respite, but more rain was coming. I grabbed a tarp and tried to rig up a barrier in front of the house, but the wind was howling and made it almost impossible to keep anything in place.

About 20 minutes passed and the second wave of rain came in -- this time, a torrential downpour. It took only a minute for the water to start coming over the roofline again and splashing all over the front of our house. I tried to hold up the tarp to keep the water from flowing back toward the house, but it was too much. By then, my wife had awoken and understood what was happening. She came out and helped me to hold up the tarp, but the water kept coming.

Over the course of the next 20 minutes, we received over an inch of rain, part of a total of about 3 inches of rain that we would receive that day. We alternated between trying to keep the water out and bailing what had collected in the storage containers. We could see that water was getting into the window well behind us, so we bailed out that water as well. Some water would get into the basement, but we managed to forestall disaster.

Finally, the rain slowed. We were drenched and exhausted. I had feared I was having a heart attack less than 12 hours before, and now I was still standing, drenched, but alive.

A little bit of water had dripped through the window well into our family room. We also had a little bit of water in the back playroom. A short session with a ShopVac would clean it up. The rain was over and the storm had moved on.

After I pulled off my wet clothes, I posted a cryptic message on Facebook:

A fair number of people who read that post were puzzled by what I meant. Now you know. 

About 90 minutes later, I was able to drive myself to my appointment with my new friend, the cardiologist. He told me about the stress test he was scheduling for me. I will take that test in a few days from now. I have little doubt that the stress my heart will receive from the test will not be any greater than what I had experienced. Bring it on.

Saga -- Part Three

We continued to wait. Every 10-15 minutes or so, the blood pressure cuff attached to my right arm would start up again, taking another reading. The numbers remained too high. It was now approaching 4 a.m. The emergency room doctor arrived, with the nurse and with a woman furiously transcribing every word of the conservation.

"Well, we've got some good news for you," the doctor began. "We've looked at the CT scan and we don't see any evidence of a blockage, so you're not having a heart attack."

"That is good news," I replied. "So what is going on."

"We don't know, actually. We're going to have to get your blood pressure down and I've got some medicine to do that. That's the easy part," the doctor said. "What we need to find out is why this happened. Have you ever had a stress test?"

"No."

"Well, you're going to get one. We'll have that set up for you. Can you walk on a treadmill?"

"I've been doing it for a while now -- I have a membership at Snap Fitness and I use the treadmill when I go," I said.

"Well, good. The test will last about 3 hours. We need to find out what your heart is capable of doing and then we'll be able to figure out how to treat things going forward," he said.

The nurse then gave me two pills to take. "We're going to have you stay here until your blood pressure starts to go down," she said. "My shift is done, so there will be another nurse coming in to check on you in a little while."

I wanted to rest, but that wasn't coming easily. The second nurse came in. She told me she was from Pittsburgh and we talked about going to baseball stadiums. I've never been to Pittsburgh, but it's on my list of parks to see. The blood pressure cuff started up again. The number was lower, but still not where it needed to be.

"If we can get your blood pressure down below 140, you should be ready to leave," she said. As she said this, the cuff began to deflate.

"Do I get my 'get out jail free' card?" I asked.

She laughed. "Not yet, but soon."

By this time, it was now approaching 6:30 a.m. My blood pressure was now at a normal level; the medication had worked. I had instructions to see a cardiologist later that afternoon. It was time to go home.

As we walked to the car, we could see that it was raining heavily. That would matter quite a lot later that morning, but for now, it was time to go home and rest.

Next -- the rain keeps coming

Saga -- Part Two

The blood work had come back and nothing was amiss. "There are markers that we see in the blood test that indicate a possible heart attack, but we don't see them," the nurse told us. "The CT scan should tell us more. We should be able to get you in for that in a short while. We're still trying to get you into a room as well for more observation, but it's taking a while," she added.

This wasn't surprising. A big city emergency room, even if it's cleaner and less chaotic than what you see on television, is still a busy place. The public address system called out a similar message with regularity --"ambulance on the way, six minutes out." There were more patients like me in the waiting room and the staff at the hospital was doing its best to get to everyone, but I would have to wait.

That I was waiting seemed like a good sign. "If I were in real danger, they would have wheeled me in right away," I said to my wife.

"That's true, I guess," she said. She had been steady all night, never once betraying a sense of panic. We didn't say a whole lot -- this had already been a very long day for both of us and we were starting to realize that we weren't going to get an answer right away.

After nearly an hour, the doors of the emergency room opened and another nurse came out with a hospital bed. It was my turn. "We have a room now for you. We'll have you go there and we'll be installing an IV port so they can put the dye into you. "Have you ever had a CT scan?" the nurse asked.

"Yes, I've had a number of them, and several MRI tests as well," I replied. "About eight years ago, I had surgery here for a pituitary adenoma and they took a lot of pictures then."

"Well, this won't be as extensive as all that," the nurse said with a smile. "The CT scan will only take about three minutes. They will put some dye into your veins to see what's happening and then take the scan."

I was wheeled into the imaging area of the hospital and saw the machine. It was familiar, but had been updated and was, for the most part, open sided. "Well, this isn't an MRI tube," I said.

The nurse in imaging laughed. "No, this isn't nearly as bad as all that. We are going to put some dye in your IV port. It will feel warm, and then you'll feel like you need to pee, but you won't really need to. Can you make it up onto the bed?" she asked.

"I think so," I said. I managed to do that with a little difficulty, then it was time to enter the scanner. The familiar feeling of warmth and then slight burning was there, just as they predicted. And as they'd promised, it was done within a few minutes.

"Okay, we're going to take you back to your room now," the nurse said. "We should have these read in about 30-35 minutes. The emergency room doctor will see you then and let you know what's next."

So it was back to the room. My wife was waiting. They put me on the monitoring equipment and tested my blood pressure. It was still quite high, over 175. "We'll be giving you some medication to get that blood pressure down," the nurse said. "It's very effective."

"I hope so."

"It is. How is your breathing," she asked. "It looks better."

"Yes, it does seem to be better," I responded. "I'm trying to rest, but I'm not particularly good at this sort of thing. At least I'm trying not to yell at you like some of the other people do."

The nurse laughed. "Yes -- we hear all sorts of things in the emergency room. Sometimes the patients don't like me very much."

"Well, we like you," I said. "Don't know if that counts for much, but I want you to know that."

"Thank you. The doctor should be here in a few minutes."

Next -- the doctor arrives and the results come in.

Saga -- Part One

I came home early on Wednesday and went to the dentist for a routine cleaning, then I went home. Not long after that, I started to feel, well, a little off. We have a standing phone call with the Benster every Wednesday evening and we discussed his latest adventures, then we had a quiet dinner. I then went downstairs and turned on the presidential debate.

As the evening went on, I could feel that something was wrong. I started to perspire and, as the evening went on, it became more difficult to breathe. When my wife came down and we watched the news. She looked at me and could see that I was laboring.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. Do I feel warm to you?" I responded.

She put her hand on my forehead. "No, not really."

"I feel warm. I've been sweaty and I don't know why," I said.

As the newscast went on, I was starting to have difficulty breathing. "Something's not right," I said.

Upstairs, my daughter was getting ready for bed and had just retired for the evening when we came up the stairs. At this point, I was having difficulty breathing and getting frightened. My family has a horrible history with heart disease and while I wasn't having any chest pains, something was clearly not right.

"I think I need to go to the doctor," I said.

"Urgent care is probably closed now, so we're going to have to go the hospital," my wife said.

"Yep."

"Okay. Let me get my keys."

It's about a 20 minute drive from our house to United Hospital. As we were going along, my brain was going into overdrive. This can't be happening. I have so much to do. I have to reject fear, but how do you do that? I tried to pray, but my mind was racing so fast it was difficult to focus. As my wife took the turn from 280 to 94 east into St. Paul, lightning flashes were visible and vivid in the eastern sky.

We got to the hospital. "Can you walk to the door?" my wife asked.

"I think so," I responded. "Go park the car and I'll meet you in there."

I found a triage nurse. The modern emergency room is a lot more corporate than what I remembered in the past. The nurse was sitting at a work station with a computer, but she had a blood pressure cup nearby. She started getting my information and then took my blood pressure. It was over 200.

"That's very high. Are you experiencing any chest pains?" she asked.

"No, not really, but I'm having a difficult time breathing."

"We'll get some blood taken right away. We'll also give you an EKG. We'll be able to see if you're having a heart attack pretty quickly. Have a seat and we'll have someone out to see you right away."

By then, my wife had walked in and I sat with her. Within about three minutes, they had taken blood and done an EKG. The EKG looked normal. But things weren't right. "We're going to get you a chest x-ray and a CT scan," another nurse told me. We have to get your blood pressure down and we can do that, but we need to find out what's happening."

"If I'm not having a heart attack, what would be causing the difficulty in breathing?" I asked.

"I don't know. It could be a number of things. It could be a pulmonary embolism. The X-ray and CT scan will be able to tell us that," she said.

Pulmonary embolism. Two of my least favorite words. A pulmonary embolism is when a blood clot formed elsewhere in the body travels through the body and reaches the lungs, making it impossible to breathe. My father died in the hospital because he developed a pulmonary embolism during his recovery from surgery. These days that rarely happens, but a pulmonary embolism can develop in a variety of ways.

I had taken a tumble over the weekend, while walking in the darkness of the vast expanse of land at Eastview High School. We'd been there to see my daughter's marching band compete and the only available parking was about a third of a mile from the stadium. I hurt my ankle a bit and got a few scrapes, but other than being sore the next day, I thought everything was better. Could that have caused a clot to form? I would have to await the answer.

Next -- a long night in the ER.

Dad's been gone for 25 years

A big smile and a big stogie

My dad passed away on August 30, 1990, now 25 years ago.

I'm fond of this picture of Dad, because it reminds me of who he was. Dad had a big smile and he displayed it often. He liked a glass of Scotch and a big cigar. He was a trusted professional and a hell of a raconteur, a generous soul who never lost his sense of wonder about the world.

Dad wasn't around as much as I would have liked when I was a kid. There were reasons for that -- his job required him to travel and our family situation was less than ideal. Like many men of his generation, he did what he had to do to provide for his family. While he wasn't around all the time, he was never absent. The years haven't changed any of that.

Dad has missed a lot of things in the 25 years since he passed away. Since that day, four of his six surviving children have married. He now has 8 grandchildren. He would have loved to bounce these kids on his knee.

Since I've become a father, I've thought about all the advice my Dad could have offered me. I've thought about the wisdom he would have shared with my son and daughter. I've thought about the delight that they would have had in each other's company. I've thought about the moments that he should have seen.

In the end, you can't worry about advice you don't get. You can remember the wisdom you receive. And when I think of Dad, as this unfortunate anniversary comes and goes, I'll try to smile the way he did. It seems like the wise thing to do.

The boys

Four well-meaning Catholic boys

I went to Wausau yesterday to see my three best buddies from childhood. The faces you see on the picture are Pat O'Connell, John Gosling, yours truly and Mark Miller. I've known these guys for 40 years or more, which is hard to believe, but the calendar says 2015, so it's true.

We are all graduates of St. Mary's School (1977) and Xavier High School (1981), four Catholic boys from middle-class families in a prosperous town. We had our struggles growing up, but in general it was a pretty good circumstance to come of age in Appleton, Wisconsin, in the 1970s. You don't always realize your good fortune when you are in the middle of it, but we had it pretty good.

We don't get to see each other as much as we'd like, since we all live in different places, but we all are greatly blessed in our own ways -- all four of us have been happily married to our respective spouses for 25 years apiece, give or take a year. All of us have two children apiece, who are all coming along nicely. We have our health, for the most part, and our wits about us.

I spend a lot of time writing about misfortune, perfidy and stupidity. There's plenty of that going around. We need to be thankful for what we have. And I am greatly blessed and especially thankful that these gentlemen are my friends.