Colds?

This has been our lives for the past week. Roger had some post nasal drip last week that led to congestion in his lungs. And I guess I caught his 'cold' Monday of this week. So he's going on a week of the junk and I just started. He kept us both up every night coughing. I'm keeping him up coughing this week. This week his lungs seem to be working on getting all that junk out. Lovely. Roger stayed home from work two days last week. But he's plugging away regardless. Poor thing. I've had to cancel about three engagements I was participating in this week and one birthday party. Boo. That's no fun. I hope it doesn't last long. We have lives to live. We don't have time to be sick. I feel like I'm not getting anything done. We do have some good news to share and I'll get to that soon. When I have more energy.

Catching Up With Friends in LA

We had a pretty darn-near perfect day yesterday! I’ve got a head cold thing going on here, so it took me a while to get started, but we eventually did. Greg and I motored down to Norwalk to pick up Cassie and we ate lunch at Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine in downtown LA. Greg has always wanted to try it and since we’ll be headed to Hawaii soon, it was a good idea. In my younger years I never ventured into downtown and walked around! I remember there not being a whole lot down there. I understand that over the past few years they have been trying to revitalize the area with housing, shops and restaurants. It was nice to see things from a different perspective after all these years. I had mostly seen downtown only from the freeway and never on foot. So, after lunch we walked around downtown and checked out the kinda’ new Walt Disney Music Center. It is a structure covered with wavy curly sheets of metal. Check out the pics to see what I mean. Then we ventured over to the San Antonio Winery for a little wine tasting. With the cold my taste buds are way off and it wasn’t that great of an experience. But some wine was bought and we were on our way back into the traffic.

We headed back to Norwalk to drop Cassie off and then we drove back out to West LA to meet a few friends for dinner at Guido’s Italian Restaurant. We met up with some friends from High School, Joanna, Irene and Quynh. The weather was so nice that we sat outside and had a nice time catching up on all our adventures over the past fifteen years (eeeek!) Dinner was tasty and it sure was nice to see them again.

This morning my nose isn't as bad, but I'm coughing a lot and I'm looking forward to a hot shower and some meds. Tonight I am going to hang out with and also stay with my cousins in the valley. I'm looking forward to spending some more time with them.

Home Bitter-Sweet Home

So I flew back to Texas on Monday. Thank goodness my flights were uneventful. Roger and I had a great visit. Roger signed us up for a yacht trip through MWR at Walter Reed. We spent the day on a 49 ft luxury yacht. Talk about the life. There's no way I'd ever be able to or spend $572,000 on one of those, but man, what a life. The captain and crew from The Yacht Center were so nice. It was a lot of fun. I didn't know what to expect at first because yachts are defined differently by many people. My only knowledge of what a yacht was is from Puff Daddy and Jay-Z videos. Turns out the yacht we were on was a baby compared to theirs. After the cruise around Kent Island with a short detour to Annapolis, we were treated to an awesome lunch at a local seafood restaurant called The Jetty. It was truly unbelievable. We ate so much seafood. I was in heaven. What's so funny about that is Roger and I went to Annapolis the following week for three days and we ate so much seafood there, I was sick of seafood. We walked by a restaurant in Bethesda later that week that served crab and other seafood and I thought I was going to throw up from the smell. I couldn't believe I was sick of seafood. I love seafood. Proves the point, too much of a good thing...

So we went to Annapolis and had a great time. We toured the city, the Naval Academy and all the shops. Roger was exhausted after it was all over. We stayed at a bed and bagel on Main Street over a delly called Chick & Ruth's. You'll have to read about them to understand how unique they are. It was great and we highly recommend staying there. This place was way cool. The Saturday before we went to Annapolis, we had the honor of observing our friends Charles and Deborah get married in Warrenton, Va. Pastor John performed the ceremony and it was absolutely beautiful. One of the most personal and sweet ceremonies we've ever witnessed. The town of Warrenton is a quaint town with lots of history. It was really neat. The reception followed at a local country club which was a lot of fun. We had to leave early enough to make the hour and a half drive back to DC to make it to church the next morning before we left for Annapolis. Our friend Allison let us borrow her car while she was visiting family in Indiana. We wouldn't have been able to get away without her generosity. Thanks Allison. You rock!

We only had one week left together and poor Roger got progressively sicker. Turns out he had an upper respiratory infection. So he spent most nights of our last weekend hacking all night. We were both exhausted. And on Saturday we went swimming with John & Tamra to which Roger thought he jammed his ring finger while we tossed a football in the pool, but he actually fractured it. Poor thing, he was all messed up this weekend. A good friend of ours, Alev, gave Roger a photo safari she couldn't get to for Sunday afternoon and we didn't think he'd be able to focus a lens with his finger wrapped up like it was. But he was able to and we had a great experience in Georgetown learning how to take better pictures. It was really neat. I'll get Roger to post pictures from all these events soon. He'll be visiting his friend Ryan and his sister Marie this weekend at the community house. He's already feeling better and not coughing at all through the night now.

But as always, going home is bitter-sweet. Living at Walter Reed is not the most comfortable so although I love being with Roger and going through this experience with him, I really miss the comforts of home while I'm there. And although I look forward to going home to my nice big bed, my own private bathroom, etc., I sure wish Roger was coming back with me. Walking into an empty house all alone doesn't make those conveniences any better. I can't wait for Roger to be home. I really miss him.

Really... I mean REALLY sick

Holly’s sister’s kids woke us up this morning as they got ready for school. I decided to get up for a while and Heather was nice enough to make me a small breakfast. The kids left, and I went back to sleep around 8am and woke again around 11:30am. I decided to take a shower but my stomach felt bad. I took some Pepto and showered anyway. An hour later I felt even worse and took more Pepto. Then it hit me… hard. I must have gotten food poisoning from something at breakfast. Heather said her stomach was upset too and we were the only ones that ate eggs. I felt bad and Holly ran some errands with Heather. While they were gone, it got worse. From about 2pm to 7pm I think I threw up three times and had to use the restroom for other duties maybe ten times. Anyway, I haven’t had to visit the restroom for about three hours now, so I had a little bit of 7-Up, Jell-O and saltines. My stomach doesn’t feel 100% better, but I think the worst is over and if I can keep that little bit of food down, tomorrow should be better. So, our leaving tomorrow for Austin hinges on how I feel. I haven’t had much to eat today so I have no idea how I will feel tomorrow. We have another four hours of driving ahead of us and a stop halfway in Bryan to visit Holly’s dad. If we decide to head out, I hope this doesn’t reoccur on the road. Please pray for me and our safe passage to Austin. I’m going to brush my teeth and try to get some sleep.

Feeling Slightly Better

I’m feeling much better today. I slept through the night without waking up. My head is still congested, but I’m going to work tomorrow. I think my doctor did the right thing with my treatment plan. Thanks doc!

So, while at home today I uploaded tons of pictures from the past few months. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting links to sets of pictures for you to peruse. The first set is from just a few weeks ago. My sister, Mirna; brother-in-law, Joey and cute as a button niece, Ariana, came to spend the holidays with us. They got here on Dec 23 and left Jan 2. Initially, they were going to come just for New Years weekend and we were going to sit Ariana as they were going to go to a wedding in PA. But after they decided that they could not drive to both TX and then to DC within a week, they decided to just come here! We really enjoyed spending time with them. And it was so fun to be able to spend some quality time with Ariana because the next time she’ll be so much bigger. I’ll have more pictures from Christmas Eve and Day up soon. Enjoy!