Still fighting with this strange fever: some days nothing, some weeks everyday at 3-5 degrees! Other days I can swing from -2.5 to +6 degrees from my normal - like a yo-yo! This is just plain weird! Just finished 5 straight days at 4 degrees above normal. I get to see the infectious disease guy this week - so maybe he can figure it out. I sure hope there is no more antibiotics in my future!
Then again, something in the back of my mind keeps reminding me there is some gland that regulates body temperature, if so - is that whacked now? Will have to research this when I am more awake.
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Last night I was thinking on movies and which ones do I think are my favorite these days?
Long ago, any one of the James Bond's would have merited favor, but no longer. Unless we are thinking of the intriguing character Daniel Craig plays ..... In the same vein, The Wildgeese, Das Boot, Die Schrechlieche Machen, Die Weisse Rosen. Seeing a theme there? Movies which have a bit of a dark worldview and innocence is corrupted.
Today ... the first movie after the beginning of the birthing of a new Kris was Hugo. It is still one of my new favorites. And the following step of creating a new Kris - a new movie even further removed from whom the old Kris was: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (w/Stiller). Movies of light and hope and completeness where innocence is protected and not destroyed. I still cry during each of these even after numerous viewings. Movies after the final creation? There in lay a problem, nothing has had the same impact on me at those movies from 2 years ago.
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I was chugging around the local shopping super store and a woman actually flirted with me! Really? Far more guys flirt with me than women ... this is Seattle after all, sigh. So, it has been over a year since any female even tried to catch my eye. We crossed paths numerous times over the next hour and each time was the same. I was beginning to wonder if now I look like someone famous or something. I almost burst out laughing but did not - a very broken 60 year old man on a scooter buying Nyquil, consumed by fever, is hardly worth the effort of batting an eyelash at! At least in my mind. I realize the new svelt Kris, down 50 pounds and 8 inches off the waist is oh so terribly sexy - LOL. As I tell people, if I lose much more weight my abdominal muscles' protective layer of fat will be lost and they will be exposed! HORRORS! (My father would have been all over her like a duck on a slug in springtime!) But, then again, she was probably strung out on drugs - that would be closer my luck, if I had actually talked to her. So wise to refuse her offer to drag race her down the isles ... LOL
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Made it to church again Sunday, which is MAJOR effort physically. Again, those whom I had thought friends before the surgery - avoid me and only one offered to have lunch with me one day. But three women, none of whom I have ever thought friendly in the least, stopped by me separately as I was sipping tea in the fellowship hall and wanted to know ALL about the surgery. They all burst into tears ... and I am supposed to react how? Seriously, how do you comfort someone when you are in mind numbing pain? It continues to amaze me at how 40 years of friendships were erased with just this one traumatic event in my life. I hear more often from my Aunts in Switzerland or my nieces in Australia than I do friends whom live just blocks away. As for the three, they went their way promising to pray (and one cursing a church where such injuries are not even acknowledged for prayer by the congregation!)
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Yet today, I think I have a pretty powerful testimony about what I have gone through/how God has brought me through this, and no one is there whom would care to listen.
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One of the elderly women at church, whom uses a walker, got all tangled up in the women's toilet door. Her purse had fallen and was blocking one of the walker legs from going past the door frame. And the door has a strong spring which was pressing her walker sideways into the purse! So, I rescued her purse with my cane but then the cane became tangled with the purse strap, during which she lost control of the her walker which then went down, throwing her into me, and I am balancedd on my left leg only by now! No she was not a small woman, just elderly! Eventually I got us both untangled and her back in her walker! eeeeepah! And this at the exact moment half of the women's bladders where setting off sirens! I took more than one punch, kick and body slam into the door frame as they roared past me, pushing the old lady out of their way as well. People! It was time for the ugly German to come out but I was too exhausted and could barely stand by then.
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A husband and wife in the fellowship hall were reading about the adventures of Albert Arthur Plattner, my father, on their tablets. Always snooping around what people are doing on their tablets. :) We had a good time chatting about the holocaust, war, today's events, etc. I was saddened to be reminded again of what a wasted life he had lived. I still cling to the hope he would have considered God in his last hours. I told him all he needed to know in 2003 as I drove him back from Alaska. Eleven days of evangelism in a small cab of a pickup truck ... :) It was all I could for a complete stranger - even if he was my father - it had been 30 years since we had spent more than an hour together.
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The local restaurant has one waitress whom is quite personable and either has discernment or can read me like a book. It is embarrassing at how she knows just what question to ask when no one is in earshot. It could be anything from job, to life, to personal issues. And she hit the nail on the head yet again this past week. She offers encouragement and I have to remind myself that if an angel used an ass to talk to Balaam - God can certainly use her to reach out to me! So, I listen and I ponder. It is always odd, always right on ... but never to any conclusion. And that is the issue of my life at this time - there are no conclusions - just wreckage behind me and nothing appearing before me. Sigh ...
And today at lunch, again, I was overcome with sadness and yeah I was crying, quietly, no body movement at all, just quietly sipping soup. She walked by and quietly told me all was going to be well. Anyone witnessing that would have been utterly confused because her words had meaning to me but no one could have seen my tears.
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Managed to do a class on "building your palette", but the instructor was a no show, so I just painted little samples of blues and labelled them. Hey, if you are going to offer paints, I will use them! I did end up buying several tubes of paint I liked and a video on how to paint snow. Time to get ready for Christmas scenes!
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There were hardly any garage sales on the way home but I did find some old books on archaeology and a 1975 Amplified Bible. The 1975 was my first Bible and later editions had subtle wording changes after Zondervan was bought out by the Japanese. So, now I can check my memory against that edition and prove it one way or another! Gotta have something to do!
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And with that, I will call it a day ...
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Enjoy a scene from Walter Mitty that touched me:
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