A new blogger

This is my first ever "blog"...amazing what your kids can teach you. Thanks Dave. I sort of feel like that thing that circulated through our office years ago with a picture of a weird looking guy that said "before I couldn't even spell enjiner, and now I are one".

We, Dave's mom and I, just spent eight days with Dave, Frances, Tim and Erica at their house. We arrived on Sunday August 12th and left the following Sunday. It was the day after my 78th birthday so shortly after we got there Frances and the kids appeared with a birthday cake with candles...not 78, that would have been too much of a fire hazard. I loved it. Thanks Frances and the kids...I'm pretty sure Dave didn't bake it.

We went down to be with them during Dave's surgery. We didn't go there to be with Dave the scientist, or Dave the engineer, or Dave the world traveller, we were there to be with Dave, our son. We knew it meant a lot to him for us to be there during the surgery...we wouldn't have been anywhere else it the world.

I think everyone knows about the surgery from Dave's blog so I won't dwell on that. He's covered that very well. I will say that we are very thankful that things turned out good and the future looks great.

This was kind of like a "mini-vacation" for us. Frances had to work so we spent a lot of time with him and the kids. He isn't allowed to drive so Verma did all the driving in his car. She drove because she is much younger than me...she's only 75. With Dave navigating, and Verma driving, I felt perfectly safe and comfortable in the back seat...why not, I taught both of them how to drive. We ran a lot of errands, made trips to the hospital and medical centers for various tests and ate lunch out a couple of times. This was probably the most time we spent with Dave since he was a kid.

Before and after the surgery we spent a lot of time just being together talking about his sisters and their families, cousins and other relatives, reminiscing about trips in the non-air conditioned station wagon in July, when the kids were little driving across the country to visit my family in Illinois.

I love the things we have in common, only different. Dave is studying classical guitar and doing very well. I love guitars and have owned several. At around 15 I learned to play a few basic chords on the guitar and with a few friends in the "hood" we learned to sing country songs with me playing the chords. Many a summer night we sat on the front porch singing songs we learned on the radio. We didn't have TV or electronic games to play.

I have always been a woodworker of sorts and I was very happy to find Dave had found this interest also within the last few years.

And there's engineering where we are miles apart with his scientific research and my (long ago) designing plant facilities for an industrial plant for 30 years.

That's about it for my "first" blog. Good luck tomorrow Dave with the doctor.

Dad

http://webs.directcon.net/goodvg/index.html