A horrible mistake has been made

...and I’m not talking about the recent career antics of Miley Cyrus.

I made a mistake in yesterday’s post.

Yes, I did.

I realize that you probably find that very hard to believe and it is indeed a very rare occurrence, one that usually coincides with the return of Halley’s Comet, but stay with me for a minute. In yesterday’s post I stated that I have a lipoma in my ilium.

That is not correct.

Not by a long shot.

Hear me out.

I do not have a lipoma in my ilium. No, indeedy.

I have a lipoma in my ileum.

Big difference.

The ilium is a bone in the pelvis. This is the ilium:

How green was my valley?

Blogger uses a map like the one below to show you your/one one’s readership. The more readers you have/one has from a particular country, the darker green the country appears on the map:

And even though my Feedjit Recent Visitors thingy over there in the sidebar shows that I do indeed have readers from Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand, apparently there are not enough of you to make a difference on the green map. In spite of comments left frequently on my posts by the likes of Katherine de Chevalle, Carol in Cairns, Helsie, and Elephant’s Child, according to Blogger’s green map nothing much is happening down under.

Which brings me to yesterday and my long-awaited enteroscopy.

Smooth segue, huh?

I had been told that the entereroscopy (which turned out to be of the single-balloon variety rather than double-balloon or spiral) was like a “long colonoscopy.” Instead, the good doctor decided to go in from above first (a “long endoscopy”) and enter from the other direction only if he couldn't reach the ilium from above. Turns out the “from above” approach was successful, so even though the previous evening I had prepped diligently for a colonoscopy, no colonoscopy was necessary.

Afterward, the good doctor showed me lots of pictures of my innards (esophagus, stomach, duodenum, jejunum, ilium -- I won’t make you look) including a mass (2 cm) in the ilium that he said could be a lipoma. They tattooed it so that they can find it again easily in case they need to go back in and remove it at some point in the future. A biopsy was performed to be sent to the lab for analysis, but for now the good doctor believes the mass/lipoma/tumor/whatever-the-heck-it-is is benign.

Snow and others of his persuasion should stop reading now. The rest of you may continue.

Thanks be to God.

I have not blogged much of late

...but that doesn’t mean nothing is going on. Life goes on, constantly, until it doesn't any more. Mine is still a work in progress.

Mrs. RWP and I went to see the movie Saving Mr. Banks.

Mrs. RWP and I went to see our granddaughter in a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance at her school.

Mrs. RWP and I made a trip by automobile to our daughter’s home in Alabamistan and stayed a few days.

Mrs. RWP and I attended the NCAA Signing Day brunch put on by the Cherokee County School District for graduating seniors (12th-year students) from the six high schools in the county who have committed to participating in a college athletics program for the fall. Our oldest grandson was one of 56 students recognized this year. His sport is baseball. About 250 parents, grandparents, and little brothers and sisters attended the brunch.

So we have been able to visit with all of our children and grandchildren in the past couple of weeks.

In between times we have been treated to endured two snow and ice storms that paralyzed the region. Perhaps you heard about them.

I have also been preparing myself mentally and physically for another (and, it is hoped, the last) “procedure” to be performed upon my person by the gastroenterology segment of the medical profession. Two days hence I shall be undergoing an enteroscopy (which my spies tell me is like a colonoscopy, only longer, the enteroscope going all the way into the small intestine). My old friend Wikipedia tells me that there are three types of enteroscopies -- single-balloon, double-balloon, and spiral (don’t ask).

In December I underwent a wireless capsule endoscopy in which one swallows a camera and waits for something interesting to develop, the main result of which, since it is a diagnostic tool only, was the scheduling of the forthcoming enteroscopy so that the aforementioned gastroenterologists can obtain a biopsy of something they thought they saw.

The fun and games continue apace.

I will spare you the details of the final preparation process except to say that I should emerge lighter, but wiser, on Friday.

Nothing much. You?

The clickable part of this sentence (the part in blue) should give you a pretty good idea of what commuters in Atlanta have experienced lately (3:49).

In spite of our having contributed to the mirth of nations, it’s really not snow that does us in around here, it’s ice covering our hilly roads.

Here is a view of my snowy patio this morning:

No man is an island, but some of us are rivers

From Wikipedia: “The Brague is a river in France in the département of Alpes-Maritimes and the région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. The Brague takes its source near Châteauneuf-Grasse and ends in the Mediterranean Sea near Antibes.

“Between Valbonne and Biot, a 9 km long path follows the river. Part of the Brague Valley is covered by a Park called the "Parc Départemental de la Brague".

“The Brague is 21 km long.”

If, like our friend Vagabonde, you would prefer to read it in French, there’s always this article from the French Wikipedia.

The best-known person named Brague alive today may be Rémi Brague (1947- ), a French historian of philosophy, specializing in the Arabic, Jewish, and Christian thought of the Middle Ages. He is professor emeritus of Arabic and religious philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Romano Guardini chair of philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Ancestry.com says it has 1,832,877 historical documents and family trees with Brague, and 793,114 of them are births, marriages, and deaths.

For a name that I have always thought was not a common one, that’s more Bragues than you can shake a stick at.

I don’t think the Bragues in France rhyme their name with plague. I think if they rhyme it at all they rhyme it with log or cog or jog or hog or possibly even polliwog. Perhaps the Bragues in the southern U.S. rhyme their name with plague to remind the locals not to confuse us with U.S. Confederate General Braxton Bragg (1817-1876), after whom Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was named.

I have been called Bragg and Brah-goo and Brah-gay and even Brah-gah.

If you’re ever in our neck of the woods and feel like dropping in, the troops at Fort Bragg will show you how to do it properly.

Some of them may even help you locate our house:

Just be sure to pronounce our name correctly.

If this post is not to your liking, go find a river and shake a stick at it.

Mixed messages

Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who lives at Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, saw his shadow when he left his burrow this morning, which means Pennsylvania will have six more weeks of winter and the folk there will not enjoy an early spring.

On the other hand, General Beauregard Lee, the groundhog who lives at The Yellow River Game Ranch in Lilburn, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, did not see his shadow when he left his burrow this morning, which means that Georgia will not have six more weeks of winter and the folk here will enjoy an early spring.

There is just one thing wrong with this annual prognosticative nonsense, meteorologically speaking.

It is much too late in Georgia to have an early spring.

I remember a year when the forsythia bushes and jonquils burst forth in golden splendor (Brit., splendour) in early January. If you would kindly check your calendar before proceeeding, you will discover that it is now February.

Talk about locking the barn door after the horse is gone.