October and fall temperatures have arrived in St. Louis. It is nice to have the windows open. Lately, Steve and I have noticed a lot of train horns sounding throughout the day. We thought it was because we had our windows open. But, when we attended a Holly Hills meeting Monday evening, we learned that it is because St. Louis failed to comply (for many years, mind you) with the Federal Railroad Administration requirement of updated signs and pavement markings at crossings necessary for a quiet-zone designation within the city. So, the horns are tooting until the city fixes the issues. Wow, this city's government disfunction continues to baffle me. Now, this problem was ignored by the previous mayor (who was a disaster) and our current mayor is terrific and a go-getter. But, it is hard to repair decades of bad management all at once. Well, enough about the city of St. Louis....
Joe and Vicki pulled away early Monday morning to drive back to Massachusetts. We fed the sister missionaries that evening.
Steve had a colonoscopy Wednesday afternoon. The doctor reported that Steve's colon looked good.
I had the opportunity to substitute teach a middle school orchestra class on Thursday. Here's how it came about....Jayne is a cellist in Civic Orchestra and she has an exercise class with Bonnie, the director of Fine Arts at a private school in Ladue. Bonnie knows Jayne plays cello and she asked if she knew someone who could substitute teach an orchestra class. Jayne suggested me so Bonnie reached out and, because I had free time Thursday afternoon, I agreed. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the teacher I would be substituting for was Ethan, a former Rock Bridge high school orchestra student of mine who I also taught private cello lessons to before he headed off to college! Pretty crazy. It was a fun teaching job - I enjoyed being behind a baton again - and I agreed to fill out the paperwork to substitute again (although, I hope it is not very regular!)
I finished my round of antibiotics last Saturday morning for my UTI and all seemed well until yesterday (Saturday morning) at 2:00 am when I was awakened from a sound sleep with another UTI! And this one was definitely more "assertive". I was very much looking forward to a quiet weekend watching General Conference sessions and now a UTI threatened to derail that plan! But, as soon as I woke up and showered, I went to my medical portal and set up an e-doctor visit right away for 7:30 am. She prescribed an antibiotic and put in an order to get a urinalysis at Quest labs. As soon as I signed off with the doctor, I logged on to the Quest website and set up an appointment at the closest lab that was open on Saturday. Appointment times were either 8:00 am or times in the afternoon so I clicked on 8:00 and dashed out the door to make the 15 minute drive down to the lab. I got there at about 8:05 and tried to log in at the kiosk but my appointment was not in the system!? Then, a lab tech came out to the waiting room and informed everyone that, unless they had paper orders, they could not process any lab appointments because their computers were down (all around the country!!!). Ugh! So, I went back to my car and set immediately up an appointment to go to an urgent care near the house. I drove right there, saw the physician, peed in a bottle (they did a quick check and it was definitely a UTI). Then, I drove home to pick up a portable breakfast and left again for Walmart to pick up my antibiotic. I did all this before 10:20 in the morning! And, phew, my Saturday was NOT derailed and we had a lovely, peaceful Saturday listening to conference talks. I worked on marking 60 tea towels with our new Christmas design.
I did a lot of movie watching this week. I watched In The Blink of an Eye while preparing tea towels earlier in the week. It was an interesting, kind of quiet film that featured three families spanning millennia and tied them together. I also watched Big Hero Six (seen it before) as I waited for Steve's colonoscopy procedure. He and I caught two episodes of Star Trek Strange New Worlds this week. We watched Flight of the Phoenix Friday night and Edge of Tomorrow Saturday night. Two pretty intense movies. Steve had never seen Edge of Tomorrow but I had. However, with our memories so bad these days, it is like watching a new movie! Steve and I pumped up our bike tires and took a bike ride around the neighborhood last night. With more agreeable temperatures, we hope to do that more often in the next few weeks.
Happy October, everyone!
