re: #58 Anymouse

The atrium on our village hall is covered in scaffolding now (it is being rebuilt).

As for a lame joke about scaffolding, I’m all in on lame jokes. Since all I have to do is sit around on the High Plains and sweat that which I cannot do anything about until my appointment in another week, I’ll take all the humour I can get.

My mother was just in the hospital for a heart attack, my brother-in-law had bypass surgery after a heart attack, I could really use some humour. Fire away, lizards. I can take it, honest.

I can sympathize. My dad, who died in ‘91, had a damaged heart valve from a childhood bout of rheumatic fever. He got it replaced when high blood pressure started to create serious complications — like angina and stuff. :-(

So, when I got my physical to teach in China, my doc (actually LPN, but whatever) knew about my family history and was concerned about a blip in my EKG. She scheduled me for a stress test at a local hospital. The techs there were very pleasant young women, but boy did they give me a workout on the treadmill! A brisk walk on a slowly increasing incline. Got my bpm up above 175, then monitored how long it took to come back to normal. I passed.

Little did I know then that it was training for my life here. My apartment is a brisk walk up a slowly increasing incline — a 100 meter climb every day to a 4th floor walkup.

Boo-yah!