Dear everyone,
This should have been a more exciting letter. It is Sue Ellen Ganz’s (our friend from
Pittsburgh) birthday. Her husband Lenny surprised
her with a weekend trip to Chicago, where she was joined by her daughter
yesterday. This afternoon - - another surprise:
tickets to Hamilton. Cindy and I also bought some secondary market
tickets to join them at the show, and then reservations at Mercat a la Planxa. Sadly, I woke to nausea this morning, and
have suffered through GI distress. I
decided not to go, and we couldn’t induce Lucas to use the fourth ticket. Cindy
drove downtown on her own, and I am sure she will have a lot of fun. I can’t say I was super eager to see this performance
(I am not generally a theater lover of any type), but still, I am pretty
disappointed - - I sat through the soundtrack four times over the last couple of
weeks so I wouldn’t be totally lost (there are virtually no spoken parts in the
musical). Sue Ellen’s daughter’s friend ended up being able to use the ticket,
so it did not go to waste.
I have no idea why I have GI distress - - yesterday was
pretty standard - - tai chi in the AM, proctoring an aikido exam, and then
weightlifting at Jami Walloch’s house.
And dinner was also pretty simple.
Just one of those things, I guess.
I do have some other health issues going on: for the last couple of
weeks I have had a scotoma (a flashing blind spot) in my right eye. I thought maybe I was having an optical
migraine, but it wouldn’t go away. I
went to the optometrist on Friday, and they were able to discern focal traction
on my retina, probably caused by the drying up of the vitreous humor (the
jelly-like substance that fills most of your eye). Vitreomacular
traction is a pretty common age-related change in people’s eyes. Right now
it’s just annoying, especially since the area involved is in my macula, which
is the area we all use for better vision.
I am seeing a retina specialist in a couple of weeks to see if anything should
be done, and if so, what. They can give
me an injection of Jetria, a chemical that can dissolve the attachment about 40%
of the time. The next step, if
necessary, is a vitrectomy, where the surgeon physically cuts the attachment. Hopefully I will not need anything, but
leaving this alone might not be a good idea.
Anyway, at worst I will be able to tap into my partnership’s long term
disability insurance!
As I emailed the book club previously, I did find a novella
of about 120 pages called Mrs.
Caliban. Even though this is an obscure work of fiction, it is highly
rated, and was listed by the British Book Marketing Council (whoever they are)
as one of the great works of fiction of the 20th century. I think interest in this book has been
rekindled because of similarities to Guillermo Del Toto’s new film, The Shape of
Water. I haven’t seen this movie
(nor do I know if I will, despite its glowing reviews), but I doubt, for
commercial reasons, it is anything but superficially similar to the
novella. By the way, Nicola read this
book and enjoyed “it’s good, but weird”. You can get this book for under $2 on
Amazon for the Kindle. Otherwise I have
been reading as usual. Right now I am in
the middle of a Rob Reid’s latest book. His second? third? book, Year Zero, a
science fiction book about the music business was hilarious, and I recommend it
highly. This new one, After
On is about Silicon Valley, social networks, and artificial
intelligence. Not as outright funny as Year
Zero, and it’s a topic that has already been well plowed (going back to Heinlein!), but it is fun if
you like that sort of thing. Kind of
funny Neal Stephenson like.
A new thing at work is the announcement of a proposed merger
between Advocate and Aurora. The latter
is a sister health network that has about 20 hospitals in southeast
Wisconsin. ACL, the laboratory for the
pathologists has already long merged the Illinois and Wisconsin business. Unlike the proposed merger of North Shore
University Health System a couple of years ago, there isn’t any significant
geographic overlap between these two health systems (and already a lot of informal
convergence), so my bet is that the SEC will approve this. I doubt it will have any effect on my
practice. By the way, I went to the
annual partners’ financial meeting a week or two ago, and we are still running
in the black.
I will see many of you in Mexico.
Love, H.
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