From the Ground

My chess partner suggested, halfway seriously, that there could be a niche for a Mormon stand-up comic. I came up with a few gags, and I could create, or borrow, or steal more of them. I was more amused by the idea than anything else, but trying to come up with some good ones gave me a smile for a day or two.

I have an aunt and some cousins that live in Louisiana, so I was afraid they might have gotten hit by Katrina. Apparently it missed them; they got lots of wind and rain, but no flying roofs.

Ever since I took a US geography class about 5 years ago, I've considered New Orleans a disaster waiting to happen. Apparently it has, and I'm not certain that it will ever fully recover.

Like many other fans of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, I think it's gotten complicated enough that I have a hard time, sometimes, following all the plot lines. So, intermittently, I've been trying to go through the books and follow them up. Haven't got very far yet. One of my roommates loaned me a book on WWII, specifically accounts of the war in the Pacific, that I just finished last night. That and a game of chess finished off the evening, and today I've been back to my studies.

Last night I was supposed to go home teaching, but my companion called to leave a message and cancel. Later, one of my roommates wanted to know a little more about the Mormons, so I got a chance to tell some stories. That hasn't happened in a while.

Besides listening in on a couple of yelling arguments this morning, finding I haven't moved up on a waiting list for housing since last week, getting a haircut I've needed for at least a month, and having something in my left foot go wrong so I'm limping around, not much is happening.

Well, yesterday I got sung to, a cupcake, and a package of cookies from a roommate. All in all, it was better than last year's Bday, which I spent walking along a highway in Indiana. (check the archive).
Over the past few months I'm been having surprising shortness of breath on surprisingly moderate exercise; I don't think I would dare repeat last summer's walk. I'd get winded just picking up my pack. I finally got in to see the doctor at the health clinic, who ran a couple of EKGs. He said all it tells him for certain is that I've had high blood pressure for a while, which I already knew. It might be a heart problem, it might be a lung problem, or it might be just being out of shape. Which is not a great deal more than I already thought it might be. Anyway, I'm being scheduled for a couple more tests.
In the meantime, I practiced my standup-sitdown gags on the nurse who was doing the EKG: Did Dr. Frankenstein invent this machine? Where's the jolt of electricity that's supposed to wake you up? If she accidentally pinches me with the clamps that are supposed to go on the patches, does that mean I get to pinch her back? (That, it seems, would be a definite No!).

Had a normal day at church yesterday; no great changes. The ward here is large and robust. The semester starts at WVU today; that doesn't affect me directly, except that library hours are going back to normal. HBTM.

I've had a couple of comments from family members saying that I need to update my site here. I more or less decided that what was going on in my life wasn't particularly noteworthy, and concentrated on my other projects. The basics remain unchanged from last time I wrote...was it really almost five months ago?