All seems fine with my brain. Spoke with my neurologist today, he got the results back from the radiologist and no tumors or horrible stuff like that. There is a dark spot next to the skull, the radiologist is 99% certain that it is a normal cluster of blood vessels, the neurologist wants to repeat one test in four months to make sure it doesn't grow or move or burst out singing Ragtime Gal.
So I'm going to pursue things with my naturopath, I'll be seeing her Saturday.
And not a moment too soon! I left work a bit early today because my head and torso started vibrating in a very annoying fashion. My left arm joined the chorus a bit later. Right now things are reasonably well, though it is making my breathing a bit jerky.
Had a great (almost) three hour long lunch with an old friend, Phil, at George & Dragon, an English pub/restaurant owned and operated by an Englishman. We worked together at Flying Buffalo back in the mid 80's then again at the State in the late 80's. He's now living in Prescott, his wife is working in Phoenix so they bought a 5th wheel trailer and live in it here during the week then go home to Prescott over the weekend. Excellent lunch and lots of fun talking all over the place.
Whilst driving home from the MRI yesterday, actually while driving to, my Rodeo started running kinda rough. When I left Tempe, the Check Engine light came on, so I made arrangements for Audrey to pick me up at Firestone and take me to work. Turns out it was the EGR valve, it is part of the engine and exhaust system and it vents some of the exhaust gas back into the air intake for a second burning to reduce pollution. Unfortunately they couldn't get the part that day. Well, it's quite convenient living next door to an Auto Zone. I walked over and got a new air filter and the EGR valve and got the shock of my (recent) life – the stinkin' valve was $130! I've been spoiled over the years by these little $10-20 valves that mount on the air cleaner. It would seem that they have gone electronic and gained considerable sophistication. Installing it was no big deal, I think it took me a total of less than 45 minutes to walk to Auto Zone, buy everything, go home, get out my tools, replace everything, put everything away, and clean up. The price would probably have been doubled if I'd had Firestone replace it.
It's nice having some skill at auto repair.
Interesting thing happened at Firestone. I owed them some $50 for the diagnostic and an oil change, so I told him to put it on my Firestone card as it gives me 90 days same as cash. I'm a little tight on money right now, no surprise, and I didn't want to put it on my only credit card as it had already eaten over $700 for the MRI.
The Firestone card was declined.
The guy wrote down the number, so I pulled out my cell phone and called. The woman told me that I needed to make six consecutive on-time payments to be in good standing. But I didn't have a balance. And I couldn't charge anything to it in order to get a balance so that I could pay it off in six months.
Sigh. Talk about a real life Catch-22. And BTW, if you haven't read this fine book by Joseph Heller, you really owe it to yourself. Very amusing. Especially when you meet Major Major.
I guess that's enough bloggage for the evening. Need to do some online work via VPN to bring my hours up. I'm hoping to do 8 hours over the weekend so that I'll have a full 40 next week even with not working Friday.
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