The Gimp

I had a benign glomus tumor removed from my right pinkie finger last week because the random pain over the last several years finally was too much. Alisha has taken to calling me the gimp because I have been able to contribute very little to the house rehab projects we started before the surgery 7 days ago. I thought that I would walk out of the surgery center with a band aid on my pinkie and instead they immobilized my entire right hand! I will, hopefully, get my hand back in a couple of days.

In the process of learning about the bandaging technique and the reason for cuffing me, I have found out that there is a band called Bandaged Hand. Not bad from what little I heard online. Just one of those random bits of useless information.

One of the upsides of all of this, aside from the obvious absence of pinkie pain, has been the the DeLorean is running great. Before the visit to the room of masked people with sharp knives and debilitating, paralyzing drugs, the old stainless steel car was running really rough and blowing black smoke. I knew that it would be some time before the Doc would want me to get my hands all greasy so I did a tune-up and leaned out the fuel mixture. Now it runs better than it ever has, although my assistant, Eric, managed to drop a 7/8 inch deep socket into a virtually inaccessible part of the Lotus frame and I am imagining that I will hear it rolling around forever.

Typing this small post left handed is very slooow, although my speed is up to maybe 10 words per minute now after my week of practice.

Accounting Hell

I have disappeared this last week into the undesirable portion of our universe in which one must account for every penny of cash flow so that our government may take, yes take, what Congress considers their fair share. I have been entering the last three months worth of income and expenditures into the accounting system that almost every small business owner is slave to – Quickbooks ®. Amazingly it finally all balances with the bank statements, so if I keep it up for the remainder of the year, at the end I will be able to punch one button and generate the information our CPA needs to pay Congress once again. Whoopee!

Now I am going back to the DeLorean to take care of some maintenance issues in preparation for our big city wide party in May known as the Rhododendron Festival. It is a blast and I have come to really enjoy the relative insanity of it all. Thousands of Harley Davidson owners, as well as hoards of gawkers, show up for our two days of car show, flower show, slug races, small street carnival and general fun, topped off by our parade down Highway 101 and Old Town Florence.

Photo from 2002 just before the Rhododendron Festival parade.

Oh, drizzle!

We had to return to Florence some time, if for nothing else than to pay our taxes. So here we are with the first truly northwest drizzle that we have seen for 2 1/2 months, unloading the truck and doing laundry. The kiddos, Eric & Alisha, are glad to see us and we are all enjoying getting caught up on events. More on that at a latter time. Alisha has agreed not to use any of the handguns on me for giving her all of our mail and bills to deal with, and Eric is just glad to have company and the rest of the family to grieve the loss of our Bungie (our 15 year old best buddy).