Greetings and welcome to the 378th issue of TLE!

We've been having lots of fun up here in the mountains. On Thursday two violent thunderstorms rolled through, knocking the electric power off for 15-hours, starting about 5:00 PM. That very same evening, my mother-in-law found she couldn't breathe if she lay flat, and while that was being worked-on, my wife had what appeared to be a gall-bladder attack ("The worst pain I've ever had" she described it—as have other gall-bladder victims). Our daughter and son-in-law were here visiting, and for a while there it was "let's load 'em up and head to the ER", but they both got to feeling better, so we changed that to "first thing in the morning load 'em up and head to the doctor's office", which we did.

The doc said "sounds like gall-bladder problems all right", but it turns out grandma did not have congestive heart failure, so there was some good news. My wife had a blood draw and in a few more days will have an ultra-sound to look for gallstones and such. Confirmation of gall-bladder disease will lead to surgery.

So my stress level is climbing. How's yours? At least I've been getting lots of practice with this home-nursing thing already. But maybe one of our kids can come back to help-out during surgical convalescence.

Just another day at 6,000-feet. Hot from that Globular Warming, moist from that raining, and awfully uncomfortable from not being able to run fans or take a shower (the well runs off electricity, of course!). Just another exciting day here at the stuffy offices of your favorite Reader-Supported On-Line Magazine. Speaking of which, Thank You! to all of you who stepped up and donated some of your hard-earned spare change last week. We Appreciate It!

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Ken Holder
Editor
editor@ncc-1776.org