¡Buenos días a todos from the Old Pueblo! It is 8am and 65F (18.3C) with an expected high of 90F (32.2C) and sunny skies. I find it hard to believe that it was just a week ago yesterday that Pip, Diane, Cindy, Mile and I were touring the grounds of San Xavier. I hope Pip returns soon!
On Wednesday, my son-in-law, Curtis, had open-heart surgery for a genetic heart condition. The cardiologist implanted a pacemaker and defibrillator. I think I mentioned that the long-term would require a heart transplant; however, that is not an option in his case. The upside is that the surgery went very well, and within 24 hours, the nursing staff had him up, walking and coughing to reduce the chance of getting pneumonia. My daughter, in addition to being at the hospital and bedside for hours on end, has been herding Curtis’ daughters from a previous marriage, helping my grandson make sure he gets his homework done, and returns to her own classroom tomorrow after taking 2 days off to be with her husband and family.
Yesterday, I saw the pain specialist, who gave me an injection in the right gluteus for what has become a very painful torn hamstring. I have actually been able to sit for longer than 15 minutes at a time and got a great night’s sleep without my groaning from pain awakening me every couple of hours. I hope the injection last for at least three months. The office staff went all out decorating for Halloween (my very favorite holiday). Several of the staff members painted pumpkins and are having a contest for the patients to select which one is the best. There were eight pumpkins. One was a very clever ‘Cheshire Cat’ from the animated Disney Alice in Wonderland (with the pumpkin stem painted like the tail). Another was a ‘Tim Burton’ character. Two pumpkins painted a la Día de los Muertos. Another was a beautiful Halloween night scene (kind of like a ‘tagged’ pumpkin with iridescent colors). Then there was Tom Hank’s ‘Wilson’ from Cast Away on a hand-made Fed Ex box. Finally, a little pumpkin disguised as an avocado with a bleeding eyeball.
When I participated in the Thon earlier this month, I had the presence of mind to keep track of all the ‘Orphaned’ profiles I sourced from Cornwall. I went back this past week, wrote biographies, and included additional sources for some 170 profiles. At least two of them were WWI veterans and I found that two or three were Notables, so I added stickers and information from their Wikipedia pages. The lot of these orphans were listed in unsourced Cornwall profiles. They are still orphans; however, they have biographies, connected to parents, children, husbands and wives so they are only ‘orphans’ in the WikiTree sense. A number of them had no information, only that they were GEDCOMs added between 2011 and 2016. Perhaps WikiTree should sponsor a ‘GEDCOM-a-thon.’ It got rather irritating to see the number of profiles what were uploaded, particularly from Ancestry with nothing, nada, zilch.
Oh! Pip, Cindy and Diane when we were enjoyng 'fry bread', I mentioned to you that I found a box with all of my negatives from my 1978 tour (my first trip overseas) that took me from Glasgow to Inverness to Edinburgh, the Lake District, North Wales, Stratford, Plymouth, Salisbury Cathedral, and Stonehenge and into London. I never found the photos; just have the negatives with sheets of ‘proofs.’ Several of you made suggestions as to developing these negatives. Well! I stopped at Walgreen’s after leaving the doctor’s office yesterday. I will be getting 350 images developed from film and uploaded onto a ‘thumb drive’ to the tune of $240. That is just the images on the thumb drive. If I want to get them turned into 4x6 glossies, it will be another 39 cents each! Unless, of course, I hit a sale day for 10 cents each. It is an expensive proposition, but the memories will be worth it. In addition to all the landscapes, I took interior photos of Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott’s home, Llangollen, Highland reel performances, Greyfriar’s Bobbie Statue, The Stevenson House, Bowling on the Green, and so much more.
I think I remember where those photos went, though. There were to be three of us (Chris, Linda and Carol) on this tour in 1978 as a graduation gift from nursing school in 1977. One friend, Linda, was not able to join us because she became ill and diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Linda told us to go and make sure I took plenty of photos (with a borrowed Konica TC) so that she could ‘join us’ on the tour when we returned. I am sure I left the photos with Linda to reminisce. She died 5 years later of cancer at age 33 years. The misdiagnosis contributed to her early death. I believe that is what happened to the photos. Small price to pay now knowing the joy they brought to Linda at the time.