Good luck with your day, Burrell.

Erin, we have tickets for mid-September.

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I spent thurs-sun at my parents helping to take care of my dad. He's due for a hip replacement in....9 days, but in the meantime, his hip has kind of given out. He can't stand on it without excruciating pain, and we've been with him pretty much around the clock. We can't really let my mom take care of him, either. (She's given him alcohol, even though he's on dilaudid, at least twice that we know of.) my sister has also had to battle with his jerk of a doctor for proper pain meds. He was only permitting Tylenol for this pain...they had to take him to the ER For stronger meds. Anyway, I have today and tomorrow off, which is nice, but I feel slightly guilty about not being home to help out. I didn't realize how much pain he was in when I booked my travel. I'm hoping that they'll hire someone to help out, but it will depend on my parents agreeing, which isn't likely. Ah, aging parents are tough.

Oof, that sounds rough, Sue. Good luck to all of you with everything. I hear great things about hip replacements, at least. And you have that trip to look forward to!

Good luck making it through, Burrell.

Oh Sue, that is tough. If it helps, I've heard the pre-op pain is so bad that the post-op pain doesn't seem so bad, and recovery from hip replacement is often easier than recovery from knee replacement for that reason. It will require more than tylenol however, so I hope his doctor catches a clue betwenn now and the surgery. Quick recovery~ma for him, and strength~ma for all of you.

Thanks guys. I think they're seeing the doctor today, so I hope some better pain mgmt is set up. I'm rooting for my dad to hang in there a few more days. I've also volunteered to go back for a while post surgery, if needed. I still have three days of family illness leave left (these last days were actually vacation as we were all meant to go to Newfoundland for my aunt's 90th birthday) and lots of vacation time.

Did she give him alcohol to help dull the pain?

Also, what is family illness leave?

Ugh, Panera -- who wants a side of bread with a sandwich?? NOT ME.

My parents have a drink before dinner everyday. Neither of them see narcotics as a reason to suspend it.

Family illness leave is a block of leave for taking care of dependent family members. Most people use it for kids. I used a couple of days when my dad had surgery in the spring.

I work in a unionized gov't environment. We have lots of leave time in lots of categories, if you know about them. We also have emergency leave. For thing like your house being on fire or your basement flooding. Though they don't actually advertise that one...I only know about it because my former was heavily involved with the union and could pretty much tell you everything in our contract. Since we report our own time, you have to know that it's available to use it.

Wow Sue, that leave thing is great, although I am sorry your family needs taking care of.

I never really know what people do here in terms of leave for family members. Since I am an only child and I have an uncle who has no children and no spouse and another uncle whose son is sort of estranged, I probably should check it out.

THis is a video of a man playing Lorde's Royals on the trombone for his cows: [link] It is pretty cute and weird.

At the very very very end of the video he plays this other little ditty that I remember the trombones playing all the time in marching band. Does it have a name?