So this week has been wild. After saying the battery needed to be replaced in my dad's pacemaker/defibrillator before my dad could have the gall bladder out, the cardiologist has now decided that his heart had stabilized enough to go on with the surgery and that the pacemaker had enough juice to last for a couple of months. So my dad's scheduled (again) for gall bladder surgery tomorrow. All this backing and forthing makes me wonder about the doctor's judgement, but the surgeon is apparently very cautious and agrees with the cardiologist. So that's something. Anyway please send some surgery_ma my dad's way tomorrow.

Goodness, Sue. Surgery~ma, for sure.

Wow, Sue- surgery ~ma for your dad!

Happy Birthday Son of Laura!

I hate that "To Build a Fire" story. I feel like all we ever read in high school were short stories by Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Bret Harte. All of which I hate. But I did like "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (Hemingway) and "The People of the Abyss" (London) so maybe I just hate short stories? But even though I didn't have the term at the time, my whole high school English curriculum made me annoyed at "blah blah blah manpain" And yet, still, I was an English Major. But seriously, both the Old Man and the Sea and The Pearl made me want to shoot myself in the head!

Surgery~ma for your dad, Sue.

Thanks everyone.

Sophia, I hate The Pearl too, That and Lord of the Flies, the only assigned book in HS that I refused to finish.

Surgery~ma for your dad, Sue.

My high school definitely hammered home the idea that Great Literature had to be depressing. I'm glad I found Wilde and Donne on my own, or I might have thought I hated English, in spite of spending every spare hour with my nose in a book.

I like Steinbeck, but mostly for Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday and Tortilla Flats. And his version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I think I like Bret Harte, but I don't remember why. And I might like stories about Jack London more than Jack London stories. I didn't hate Old Man and the Sea, but I have no fondness for Hemingway.

The thing I liked in To Build a Fire is the bit where he gauges the temperature by whether his spit freezes before or after it hits the ground.

I also hated The Pearl.

Surgery~ma for your dad, Sue.

It's the practical details that make the Fire story feel so very, since of course London really had been to Alaska.

One detail I'd love to work into a story of mine is how the housewives used to tell if the oven was hot enough for baking: hold your hand into it, and count out loud until you couldn't stand it anymore. Through practice, you'd determine that the oven was hot enough say when you couldn't count beyond ten or whatever.