Sabbatical Update: A rash of things

The past week plus some has been a blur — or more accurately a rash — of things. Mostly, it has been the rash of undetermined origins, that blurred and occupied the time between work shifts.

It is amazing how a severe rash can have you lying still, or in a slightly tossing state, for a couple of hours as you acclimate to the sensations coursing through your nerves. Activity can distract you from these, and lessen what you notice, but you cannot just move through it forever, and when you do, the collected exhaustion makes the resignation to immobility just that more definitive.

The fact that the doctor could only diagnose Poison Ivy by the looks, when the symptoms didn’t match, nor that anyone in our medical community was able to advise where to send a biological plant sample to confirm if it might be the actual source of the reaction, wasn’t the most comforting part of the process. Then again, so  much our medical community does, while professing to be a scientific process, is actually the work of practical artisans and craftsmen making decisions based on anectodatal evidence rather than any real scientific attempt and deducing what is going on.

That said, the week has concluded with the rash subsiding, work continuing on without any apparent interruption, and last night with the construction of a grill for our deck.

We found an excellent sale at Target for a two-burner grill for less than $80 before final discounts. It only took 3-plus hours for the son and I (actually he did more than I did) to assemble it based on the instructions.  He is much better at deciphering the diagrams than I am.  But now it is assembled and waiting for us to pick up our first canister of bottled gas for it .  Since these are the big bottles, and not the quaint two-pounders I am used to, I will need to learn an entirely new process for the gas bottles. Like where you purchase, how you exchange, etc.

So now we will see how soon I actually use it for the first time. Father’s Day? Maybe, but most likely not.