Some actual news, not the usual fluff

Personal weblogs are made for this sort of thing.

Three weeks ago I decided to have a mole removed from my left shoulder. The mole was flat and had gotten a little bigger over the last several months, but was still no bigger than a bean. In general it was just giving me the creeps.

The trip to the dermatologist to have it removed took a grand total of 3 minutes (if you don't count the 45 minutes I sat in the waiting room). "No news is good news" is the last I heard from the doctor meaning they wouldn't call unless it tested positive for cancer.

Well, the nurse called last Monday and talked to Jamie, telling her it did test positive for cancer and that I should call her back that day. Unfortunately, we were left to out on a limb because I couldn't get her to answer the phone or return my call for 24 hours.

When she finally called back, I found out I had the most common and least worrisome types of cancers, basal cell carcinoma. She scheduled me for an appointment this past Monday to have the area removed with a procedure call Mohs micrographic surgery.

My initial reaction to the whole situation can be summed up with three words I won't use here. But now that I've had the work done (and I'm sporting a 2-inch set of stitches on my shoulder), I guess I should feel happy that I caught this as soon as I did. Now I'll just have to keep going back to get checked on, and I'm hoping everyone else is checking on a mole or two as well.

Evan the handyman.

Cheese...?

Back to work

Tomorrow is the first day back to work for both of us. Than means Evan will be back to La Petite full time and Aaron will spend his first day at the new baby sitter in Raytown.

After a hot week of band camp, sitting through a week's worth of meetings doesn't seem so bad. There'll be no turning back once students come a week from tomorrow.

This is not a good sign

We use a browser that lets us add a "weather watcher" component to keep us up to date on the current and upcoming weather.

As you might expect Accuweather uses a system of images that can quickly convey the weather: a dark cloud and lightning means rain, a bright sun means warm and sunny and so on.

I'm thinking the image used to display tomorrow's weather is a bad sign of things to come on the first day of band camp. I've helped identify the image for tomorrow's forecast on this screenshot:

A thermometer on fire does not sound pleasant to me.

Summer's over

With band camp starting next week, it looks like the summer of 2005 is all but over. Even though Jamie doesn't have band camp, she'll be juggling the boys all day while I'm gone so her summer is over too.

I'm sure band camp will be fun for me (what could be more fun than standing in the 100-degree sun for a week?), but Jamie might need your encouragement when it comes to dealing with two boys who have been known to go crazy from time to time believe it or not. I know I wouldn't trade with her!