Semi-retiring as a Blogger

 Those of you who check in now and then know my posts have been fewer and farther between this past year or two or three. Thanks for reading and for your comments. I will be reviewing past posts from the bottom up and likely will be deleting things as I go along...though even that seems like an ambitious project and one that will probably fall by the wayside.

If I do any new posts, they will more often be photos as I no longer have much to say about anything. 

I spend way too much time on JMG (Joe My God) reading depressing news and comments that range from childish and trite to intelligent and informative...but as all the readers and commenters are "preaching to the choir" the commentary is basically for naught. So another ambitious goal is to spend less time reading news and commentary.

I do get into the YouTube cooking and gardening videos but even there I find some good and some very confusing info. 

And I may have to start cooking LESS... Less food, not less often. Even though we are pretty much on a "Mediterranean Diet" Leon and I both need to lose weight.

I had to take Leon to the ER early on Tuesday morning as he wasn't feeling well when he got up at 4:30 AM to get ready for work. Long story short, 2 EKGs and he was carted off the the Cath Lab for an angiogram. He now has 2 stents in his descending anterior artery. They kept him in the hospital for recovery and likely due to his history of A-fib scheduled an echocardiogram for yesterday morning. He had a bad reaction to the dye they injected into a vein (for the echocardiogram) and a scary A-fib attack as a result. They got everything under control very quickly and he was doing very well after that. They are tweaking his medication and he should be discharged this afternoon. It was a scary ordeal, but hopefully all is well now.

To put this in perspective, we were out in the wilderness on Monday, Memorial Day, with friends. If he'd had the heart attack then we would have been hours away from medical care. And on Tuesday, the day he went to the ER, had he gone to work, he would have been working on a scouting out a new section of the Continental Divide Trail and likely hiking 6+ miles. And there would be no access to medical care there either. So, thankfully we were at home and I was able to drive him to the ER. (Emergency 911 where we live would have likely taken longer).

So back to the Mediterranean Diet...I need to cook less of a good thing. We eat lots of veggies, moderate amounts of pasta...no I lie. Lots of pasta when I make pasta which is sometimes twice a week. Chicken, pork, rarely beef and fish at least once a week, which, living in the desert means frozen fish grilled or sauteed. No processed or pre-prepared food. A bit too much ice cream and frozen yogurt. And I do have a sweet tooth (but hey, if you've been to Italy you would know that the Mediterranean Diet includes plenty of delicious things like tiramisu, canoli, sfoliatelli, cornetti, gelato, etc. So that's a diet I can stick to...but cutting down the portions might be tough.

Anyhow, that's the update until we meet again.

Ranger Leon - Last Monday