Lately..

Life has been busy the past three weeks. I plan on blogging about our happenings in separate posts, but until I find the time and energy to do that, here's the short version.

We enjoyed a quiet rainy 4th of July at home and then headed off to Maine for a family vacation week. We rented a rustic cabin on a lake in southern Maine near the border of New Hampshire. It was an awesome week spent on the water, fishing, swimming, hiking and enjoying the outdoors.

We got home on a Saturday and I flew off to San Diego the next day to attend a week long international GIS conference (photo: esri). It was huge and totally a big deal for GIS nerds like me.

Meanwhile, the day I landed in San Diego I got a phone call from James saying he was in distress and on the way to the ER. He was there for a night and was diagnosed with diverticulitis. It was hard hearing how much pain he was in and being 3000 miles away. The good news is after a few days of antibiotics, he's fully recovered.

And then it was my turn. On my flight home, an overnight red-eye, I was suddenly struck with the worst pain I ever felt in my life. It was dibilitating. Turns out I had a sizable kidney stone attacking my left kidney. Of course I didn't know that at the time. In any case, long story short (I'll eventually get around to telling the long story, maybe) I never made it home that night. Instead I spent five days in a hospital in Pennsylvania, mostly by myself and mostly in incredible pain. I finally passed the stone four days later and am slowly starting to feel like myself again.

It's been a long few weeks. We are all looking forward to things getting back to normal around here!