Lungs & Friends

I went home last Tuesday afternoon from work sick, and didn't go back last week at all. I swung by quickly on Friday to grab my mail and few more things to do, but didn't spend any time in the office. I thought I had a bad cold, which I thought was getting better. But Thursday morning I woke up with back pain, and I rarely have back pain, like nearly never. By yesterday afternoon, it was constant pain and severe spasms. Holy crapola, it hurt! Yesterday early evening, the 4 of us were on our way into town to visit our friends that just recently moved back from Hong Kong, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it... but the bottle of wine I split with Canice sure helped! Anyway, it was still bad today, and Joycie's eye was worse again because she wore contacts yesterday (her eye turned red and was hurting earlier this week, but was looking better), so she & I spent most of this afternoon at the urgent care facility. Joyce has an eye infection related to overwearing of contacts, and I have pneumonia, possibly pleurisy. The doc is going to have my chest xrays reviewed and he'll call me. We both got drugs. Joyce is off contacts for a week. And I need to call my boss, because I'm home for a few more days yet. Ugh.

Seeing our friends, John & Canice, and their 4 beautiful kids last night was wonderful. They lived in our town ages ago, then moved to their home state, from there to Hong Kong, and now back in town. We have missed them, and it was great getting together again. They bought a big, gorgeous house in town with a beautiful backyard that is actually quite large (for town living). They've spent the past 5 years in a big highrise with no backyard, so it's perfect for them all. Canice said it's like her 2 youngest kids, both boys, don't know what to do when she tells them to "go play outside"!

I loved seeing all their stuff in their new home. They brought back with them lots of furniture and interesting items, & artwork. Some really striking paintings. From HK, China, Taiwan, Australia, Viet Nam, Thailand, all over. It's very interesting. Beautiful pieces. Some really old things, too. They have a wooden church pew from an old church where they attended some kind of programs or something (I can't remember what Canice called it, they're Catholic, we're not, & I think it was a Catholic term I'm unfamiliar with). Anyway, this church was taking out the old pews from one chapel and renovating it, like for classes or something, I think (this was after all the wine, by the way), and for a "donation" you could obtain a pew. John said during WWII, the Japanese had taken over the church and used it as a communications center for their Pacific activities (or something like that). So now there is this ancient church pew, that so many different people have sat on through the years, come half-way around the world to sit in John & Canice's new home. Cool.

I'm really glad they're living here again now.