We spent quite a bit of the day dealing with medical providers. Both Diane and I needed to get some images to bring to doctors who aren’t in the Stanford network – she’d found the right form on Stanford’s website, but it wasn’t clear where we’d have to go to pick up the images. Calling the phone number on the form and trying the obvious menu choice (“Medical Records”) was a dead end, but I kept going and found a way to leave a message. A few minutes later, the image librarian at San Jose called and said we could drive over and pick up a disk with Diane’s images.

I’m still waiting to get my images – it turns out that they aren’t kept in Stanford’s central records, but I’ve been trading phone messages with the ENT’s nurse, and I should have them tomorrow.

My allergist also wanted me to get a blood test and some chest X-rays, and I was able to do that late in the afternoon, going to both places just before they closed for the day. So I’m all set on that front.

This evening, we gave Quinoa and Kale Tabbouleh a second chance. We’d made it back in July and weren’t thrilled, but we had kale to use up and this seemed like a good option. This time, I added a little more pepper and we put some mandarin orange slices on at the end – that made the dish more colorful and definitely tastier.

We also tried a new-to-us cocktail recipe from the New York Times, a Watermelon Margarita, using Trader Joe’s Watermelon Juice instead of doing the work ourselves. It was quite tasty and not too alcoholic – it’ll be better on a hotter day, though!

The last time I visited the ENT, he recommended endoscopic sinus and turbinate reduction surgery to try to improve my sense of smell – he described it as “putting a Roto-Rooter up your nose”. That seemed drastic.

Since he’d also talked about allergies as being a probable cause of the sinusitis and nasal polyps he saw, I asked for a referral to an allergist before making a decision on surgery, and I visited him today.

I probably could have chosen a better day – the practice had just started using a new system for electronic medical records yesterday, and EVERY person I interacted with greeted me with “sorry, it’s our second day on the new system.” But we persevered and the session was worth the effort. It turns out that I am VERY allergic to dust mites and feathers (the doctor described it as “off the charts”), so we will be taking steps to reduce my exposure to them at home. They gave me a brochure about dust mites with lots of useful information on what steps to take – I was not surprised to find that it also had ads for allergen-proof pillow cases and the like!

The doctor wants me to get some bloodwork and imaging done before suggesting any other treatment. My next appointment is a couple of weeks away – by that time, I hope they’ve figured out how to use their new system!

Of course, Diane and I also took a couple of walks today – on the walk this morning, we saw a hummingbird enjoying some lantana.

If I’d had the big camera, I would have been able to zoom in more…but I might well have missed the hummingbird completely. Life is a series of compromises!

One year ago today I set a new personal record for a continuous span of days with blog entries. That day, I wrote about buying 3 kilos of coffee from Doka Estate in Costa Rica and wondering if I’d still be blogging every day when I finished it. I finished that 3 kilos a long time ago – these days, I’m buying 5 half-kilo bags from them every few weeks, and I’m still blogging every day.

There’s only one week left until California discontinues its “Blueprint for a Safer Economy” and relaxes almost all of the restrictions on businesses and masks – when that happens, I guess I’m going to need a new name for the daily entry! And who knows…I might even miss some days!

When I awoke this morning, I was in the middle of a dream. I was back at IBM – in a meeting, of course – trying to get funding for a project. I wasn’t having a lot of success – the person I was trying to convince went on and on about why it couldn’t be done (a far too-familiar occurrence).

I was happy when the alarm went off.

I culled, edited, and titled all of the photos we took in 2020 after returning from the Panama Canal. I started with 78 photos and kept 34 of them; I found one I hadn’t already put in the blog, showing a jacaranda that was blossoming last June (it is just starting to blossom again now).

And Apple announced the next version of their operating systems for Mac, iPad, and iPhone, but didn’t announce any new hardware, so I won’t need any new funding…for now.

We had a very quiet day today – a quick trip to the Farmers’ Market, then Diane chaired the Shir Hadash Book Group while I read the newspapers.

After lunch, we watched an episode of All Creatures Great and Small and the last 30 seconds of CBS Sunday Morning, which was a video of Muir Woods that was created by Lance Milbrand from my Toastmasters club (you can find a longer version here).

We also participated in the talkback for Shylock – they did a good job of including both the in-theatre and on-Zoom audiences in the Q&A. Those of us on Zoom were having a lively discussion before the in-theatre session was ready for us!

Muir Woods was a regular stop when we were coming out here for visits, but we haven’t been very often since moving to the Bay Area – the last time seems to have been in 2009! We need to go back soon!