Date: Sat Sep 28, 2002
To: jon@hellpie.com

Your mother is going up to see her after work, today. She gets out of work at 2 PM so she took the car. She still has the colon operation to go through, but that is not bothering her as much as the hip was.My knee is feeling a little better today so I may tackle the front lawn before the rain from Isadore arrives this evening. We stand to get quite a bit of rain out of this storm. We need it, but I hope there is no flooding. I do not want any water in my cellar. I just had a call from L____. She wants me to get her some chicken at Sahr's since she is working a lot of hours at St Clares. I will pick it up tomorrow and get it to her before she gets out of work at 3:30 PM. She goes in at 7 AM.

This coming Sunday is my 81st birthday, and your birthday is the very next day. There the month ends. I already have the October calendar done, without many of your mother's hours on it, but I will send it along as soon as I recheck it for errors I am sending a revised copy of the Sept calendar with this e-mail. I am still trying to simplify sending the calendar, but this is the best I can do without mailing it out by postal mail.

Hi,

Another weeks is coming to a close, and it has been a busy one. On Sunday, we went to a pig roast at Lakeside Farms with the [FoHs]. that was our big event for the 57th Anniversary of our marriage on Sept 8, 1945. It was a nice day and the food was good. Then on Wednesday, we went to the monthly Retirees' luncheon at Da Vinci's Ristorante. Your mother really likes that Italian food there. We had thirty-two persons attending that event. Today at 12 N we go to the Colonie Elks Club for the annual NABET-CWA clambake which is free to us retirees. I was a member of that union until I retired (41 years). I still have my gold retirement card which is a metal one. The event goes until 6 PM but we come home earlier than that. We wait until the last door prizes are given out and then we go home.

The last time we were down there was the year that the tornado went through Mechanicville- I think that was about five years ago! I do not like the drive down to New Jersey.

Not much to report. Your mother just called up the stairs and said she is going to Price Choppers.
I have to shower and get dressed for the clambake and she wants me to put on fresh clothes, not to wear the ones I had on yesterday.

Yesterday we went to Lakeside for lunch with the [FoHs] and then to Glenville to see [another FoH]. From there we went to see [more FoHs]. He is getting blood transfusions to correct an anemic condition and she is recovering from a gall bladder operation. We picked up some food for them from the Lakeside Farms Restaurant. We got home around 4:30 PM, having left for the luncheon around 11:30 AM. I was tired last night. I have a little cold and that is making me feel tired.

A busy week, but next week your mother goes back to work and then things quiet down again. It is everything at once.

Subject: Update on my colonoscopy

I guess this means that all is well in the colon department.

(couldn't make this up if I tried...)

Your mother and I went to Lakeside Farms for a pig roast, but they also had chicken, and roast beef. Along with that came baked potato, corn, a biscuit, and apple dessert. There was whipped cream on the apple dessert, optional. All for $9.50 per person. The (FoH)s went with us.

(re some photos we sent)
I see that they are printed on regular Kodak paper so it must have been a film camera.

Tuesday your mother is having some of her girl friends over for lunch. she spent yesterday cleaning up the house for their arrival. Then, Wednesday is the Retirees' luncheon that we go to once a month. Since she has this week off for vacation there is no problem with getting the day off.

(Monday I flossed my teeth...)

this showed up in my Inbox last night...

Subject: Holiday Report.
Hi:
Well, your mother is at work and I am sitting here waiting for the clock to get around to 5 PM when I will start taking the medicine for cleansing for my colonoscopy tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM.  I will be fasting from now on until after the procedure, so I will probably be pretty hungry by tomorrow.  I am allowed to take my medication, however.

... followed by this:

Subject: Colonoscopy
Hi:
Well, I had the colonoscopy procedure this morning at around 9:30 AM and I was on my way home at 11 AM. I had three small polyps which the doctor says he believes to be benign that were removed. I can eat anything I wish today but no driving a car. Or operating any other machinery until tomorrow. Your mom says that the doctor told her that I have diverticulitis,but I will get all the information on September 17th when I have my follow up consultation. I feel fine.
Just wanted to let you know.

we'll keep you posted on the status of Herb's ass....

 

The Lexicon of Herb, part 1

Some words and phrases to help you better understand Herb. At least, so far as Herb can be understood:

• job: a bowel movement. frequently appears in Herb's speech and writing, as in, "He's doin' a job," in reference to his 1-year-old grandson straining to poop.
• Caucasian: Herb is Caucasian. Herb is dismayed that some people are not.
• a-yup: uttered by Herb on many an occasion. no idea what it means.
• progrum: a software application package that Herb has installed on his computer and possibly copied to a disc, not one of those floppies, ya know, a floppy disc, which doesn't look floppy, it's actually a hard plastic thing, but the magnetic disc inside, that's just a thin piece of plastic, and if ya take it out of the hard plastic case and wave it around, then it's floppy. 'course, you'd have to break the case to get to it, probably have to use a hammer, a claw hammer or a ball peen would work best, not one of those rubber mallets, but then the case'd be useless, and what'd be the point of that. so it's not a floppy disc, it's a compact disc. a CD-ROM they call it, except this one's a CD-W, which stands for Writable, because you can write anything onto it, well anything up to six hundred and fifty megabytes that is, becasue that's how much it can hold, so you can even put a whole progrum on it and even have room for some pictures from a digital camera, as long as you don't take up too much room with them because they can take up a lot of megabytes those pictures from a digital camera can.
  a-yup.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Herb. He lived on a farm with his mom and dad and half a zillion little brothers. All day they would do farm stuff with cows and apples and stuff and then come home and eat bacon. Herb liked bacon.
One day some bad men dropped bombs on a faraway island. Herb joined up with a bunch of not-bad men and went to the ocean and saved the world from the bad men. Herb and his friend Bob did most of this world-saving stuff, which did not involve cows or apples or eating bacon.
Then Herb was sent to a place with a very long and funny name to do some complicated stuff that had nothing to do with cows or apples or world-saving, although it was a Big Important Thing and he did get to eat bacon. While he was in the place with the big funny name he met a lady who cooked him some bacon. Mmmm, bacon. They got married and had some kids and Herb ate more bacon.
One day, Herb got a fancy machine called a computer. The computer could talk to all of his friends and family, who by now were living in towns with funny names of their own (but not the same funny-named town where Herb lived). Herb told everyone he knew about the computer thing, and about how his body parts were working, about the bad men from sixty years ago, and anything else he could think of. Anything.

Now it's time to let Herb tell the rest of the story...