I have no idea if this morning's x-ray will be ready to review by then, although this is a brand new facility with all the latest equipment and they're able to have everything packaged and sent out lickety split. And the doctor's office is in the building next door to the lab. And I should have gotten the thing done Friday so this wouldn't be a question. Not unlike the way many of his other patients behave I would suspect.

So we'll get in a walk a little latter and we'll practice our guitar. I almost have the Star Spangled Banner down pretty good. The “plink, plink, plink” version, not the Jimmy Hendrix version, I might add. But then I suspect you understood that without my needing to mention it.

William Leavitt's A Modern Method For Guitar they talked so highly of in the Amazon buyers’ reviews arrived just now, some of the comments mentioning it might be difficult for a rank beginner like me to just pick up and start, but in going through the first few pages it looks reasonably straightforward. It doesn't go into any detail about fingering and such the way the Hal Leonard Guitar Method instruction book I'm currently using starts you out, but once you've gone through Leonard you really don't need to have Leavitt cover the same ground.

They were saying it will take a year to go through Leavitt (there are three books in the series and I don't know if they mean a year for this first book or for all three) and that year won't be altogether easy, but when you finish you'll know something about playing a guitar. I'm realizing a year isn't all that long anymore and I'm looking forward to getting down under its hood. (“Please pass the Strat.”)

Later. A bus ride downtown to watch the Wednesday noon hour band setting up, a picture or two just because I can't sit and watch without taking a picture or two, and then a walk over to Peet's to have an iced coffee and a Cranberry scone. I was hungry, but settled on the Cranberry scone as the only thing I could fathom eating. Such is life.

A walk back up Broadway to Grand and then a bus all the way to the breakfast place to see if I could talk myself into something more for lunch. A grilled cheese sandwich, more because it was small and something I could get down than anything else. I have no idea why my appetite and taste buds are gone, none of the doctors have yet had a theory, but it does keep the weight off. Not a bad trade has been my thought. I doubt my ideas on that will change.

The pulmonary doctor's appointment is coming up late this afternoon, about an hour from now as I'm writing. I have no idea how it's going to turn out, but I've just filled out more paperwork than I've ever seen before, paperwork that includes three or four statements saying I've read this, I understand I'm liable for that, it will cost me if I don't cancel an appointment at least forty-eight hours in advance, all this arriving Thursday with the paperwork for the three lab tests they wanted. One of which was a PET scan. So, who knows? All for a nagging congested chest and occasional cough that's been bugging me over these last eight months.

And that's not enough to make an appointment?

Over eight months it's been enough.