Been Too Busy To Blog

I know...I've neglected my blogging--and you'll just have to live with that!

First, I spent a few days putting together a relatively modest website for Alison in order to display her designs. You can visit it here I think you'll find it interesting if you have never seen my wife's work. I am amazed by her talents and by her ability to create such varied images. (Officially, her site is alisonstein.net. Unfortunately, .com was already taken, but these days there are so many "dot options" that it really shouldn't matter.)

Then I flew to Virginia to visit my brother and his family and my mother (where I stayed). They live in Winchester--a historic city with a lovely "old town" comprised of restored buildings, a pedestrian mall, shops and restaurants. Some of that city has been made less attractive by overdevelopment along its I-81 and US-11 corridors, and which seem to choke the adjacent streets with traffic worse than here in my "freeway-close" town of San Juan Capistrano!

It was typically hot & humid in Virginia, but not as unbearable as I had feared. Instead, upon my return to SoCal, I was slapped in the face by 100 degree weather and higher than normal humidity. I'm not complaining: this has been one of the coolest, most pleasant summers in our 20 years here, and it's only in the past two weeks that we even turned on the air conditioning.

This week promises to be equally busy, with deadlines looming on some projects.

Plus, I will be having eye surgery on Wednesday (yeah, yeah, I know you can't wait to hear all the details about that). At the young age of 54, it seems that I have cataracts. I found that a bit odd, but when the doctor asked me if I'd ever had asthma and used inhalers (I did), he said that there has been a direct correlation drawn between the steroids in those medications and early onset of cataracts. I guess to assuage my unhappiness, he added that cataracts are also congenital, and that he has operated on children--even infants--with cataracts. My mother had cataract surgery when she was in her 70s, but my father never needed his eyes done, so while I'm mystified by it all, I'm not losing sleep over it (there are better things to lose sleep over). At least, I'm told by everyone, cataract surgery is not only painless and fast and with an almost instant recovery period, but you wind up with near-perfect vision afterwards for the rest of your life. Having worn glasses since the age of 7, I'm looking forward to that. Actually, though, I lied: the "perfect" vision only applies to distance, and I will likely need reading glasses.

There's always a catch.

Until next time...

Rick