Tests and Dear Friends

I hope I pass my tests today; I didn’t study at all. (OK, really bad joke, but I take advantage of every opportunity to cast a little humor at the situation. It’s my blog, I can make bad jokes.)

Today I’m having a bone scan and a CT scan. In preparation for the CT scan I just drank the first of two bottles of “Readi-Cat 2 Barium Sulfate Suspension” (450 ml, 2.1% w/v, 2.0% w/w). And hey, it was the Berry Smoothie flavor! Tastes a little like a berry juice that’s just on the edge of going bad, you know that little tang you get that makes you think, “I probably don’t want to finish this…”

On the bright side, I’ve been celebrating Visitors-From-Away-Days. My dear friend Candace was here from Missoula, MT. Her company was recently acquired by a firm in, of all places, Wakefield, MA, and she was here for her maiden visit to the new home office. I hope this means she’ll be out here every now and again because I so enjoy any time I have the chance to spend with her. She brought a lovely gift of three wishing rocks from Flathead Lake and I’ve added them to the Wellness Shrine I’m creating with Sally and my Mel’s Bracelet (when I don’t wear it, it’s draped around Sally’s shoulders).

(What’s a wishing rock? A rock that has a natural band that circles it, like a ring. It’s obviously a vein of some other material or kind of rock that was pressed into it sometime ago in history, perhaps when the dinosaurs stomped across the glaciers. I have memories of looking for wishing rocks with my mother when I was a kid roaming on the beaches.)

And later today my dear friend Laura will be here. She gets the “distance traveled” award; she’s a Reading native who transplanted to Seon, Switzerland, a few years ago. She and her partner Monica are touring the New England coast with two friends. I can’t wait to see them.