October 20, 2019

Dear everyone,

It’s a beautiful October day out, and I’m writing this in between my Sunday aikido class and the Bears game at 3:30.  The Bears didn’t lose last week; they were off.  We’ll be at 1261 today for the second half, driving out after we feed Robbie.  We are bringing some chili I made last weekend, the main ingredients are about a pound of tomatillos, and one-half of one ghost pepper (the remaining half is drying out in our refrigerator waiting for Jasper to come home; it is HOT!)

Last night we went to the Walloch’s for their annual Halloween party.  Cindy reached into the bag of hats and pulled out a witch’s hat for herself, while I wore a woolen skull cap with a pair of big red demon horns.  Some people were wearing very elaborate costumes:  There was a young woman who surrounded herself with pink balloon tubes (she was an anemone), one of Jami’s daughters went as Violet Beauregard and was wearing a giant inflated blue costume, while her boyfriend was Willy Wonka.  Jami was some evil doctor character from the TV series American Horror Story.   He was wearing a white coat and had shaved his head.  His wife Caroline was some kind of specter with white make-up and a white costume.  Barbara Krueger had a complicated witch’s costume with big black feathered wings, and her partner, Mike, had a zipper opened up along his face’s center line, exposing flayed muscle underneath.  I missed out taking pictures of them, but I did take some static shots of the decorated basement, swimming pool, and backyard.  I don’t know where they store all of the Halloween objects that seemed to decorate every square inch of their house and yard.

haunted swimming pool

People and pet graveyard

Scary pool table in basement 1

Scary pool table in basement 2

I was on call this weekend, which is all right now, but I was at the hospital until 8:30 Friday night.  It was a long day, because I had worked through lunch (there was an ENT operation going on, and we had to do about 15 frozens from 11:30 – 1:30, afterwards there was a breast case, and then a brain case…) The late case was delayed because I think the anesthesiologist took a dinner break - - I wish someone had told me I was free to get some food.  I was kept waiting in the frozen suite, every time we called to find out when the specimen was coming, we were told ‘twenty more minutes’.  Then Saturday morning I went into work, and there were over 90 cases to be read out.  Fortunately, one of my partners came in and did about a couple hours of them with me. I definitely will not miss these aspects of my job.  Meanwhile, we may have a lead on a replacement for the partner who is leaving in January - - one of my old residents from Loyola who has been working at Rush for the last ten years.  My guess is she will take a few years decrease in pay if she moves over here to buy into the partnership, but her commute will be dramatically better.  Her husband is also a pathologist in the Chicago area, so they can probably afford the temporary financial hit.

Our calendar will be pretty busy over the next month.  We’re going to our first Blackhawks game this Thursday (I was in two seat syndicates this year, I have seats for three games on the ‘100’ level about ten rows off the ice, and five games on the 300 level in nosebleed seats).  Then the opera on Sunday (the Barber of Seville), whereupon afterwards I will immediately go to Midway and fly to New York for the annual investment junket.  There are a bunch more events in November, including Thanksgiving, but I will cover them later as they come about.

Love H.