Loren and I have big news this week… we have made plans to begin traveling again. We have been in the San Francisco Bay Area for seven and a half months now, staying at an AirBnB two minutes drive from Loren’s Mom’s home. Our main reason for being here has been to help Loren’s sister, the primary caregiver for their Mom who is 93. Both Loren’s Mom and sister are doing better than when we first arrived – after his Mom’s bout with pneumonia, and we will be going again with their support. We depart on March 2, to travel back to Australia, where we had cut our visit there short to return to the US in June. This time however we will not be away for anywhere near as long…

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A couple of weeks ago Loren had had an incision on his arm to remove a squamous cell carcinoma, and last week we had been pleased that the lab reports confirmed it had been fully removed. Around the same time though we had been concerned at what looked like an infection at the wound site during a re-bandaging, so we returned to the doctor. As a precaution Loren was prescribed antibiotics. This week, we learned from another lab report that it actually had been a staph infection, so we were grateful that our quick visit to the doctor to inspect it had been the right action to take. 

Loren was able to go about most of his normal his routine during these couple of weeks. That meant he could take his Mom to nearby Lake Chabot to enjoy what had been beautiful weather at the beginning of the week. They actually went two days in a row. After that the weather changed, not unusual as this is our normal rainy season, and given the past several years of drought, is much welcomed. As for me, with not teaching so many Bikram Yoga classes, I have been able to pick up more of my own regular practice again. One day this week, I found myself going deeper in some of the postures, which is always a wonderful experience when I notice that. Alas, I have neglected to take photos this week, and Loren too overlooked taking a photo at the Lake with his Mom. 

We spent another day this week in San Jose, taking care of some business, and catching up with a couple of friends. At least I did capture one photo that day…

We also attended a performance of Frost/Nixon that evening. Nixon’s is the one US Presidential Library that we had intended to visit during our US travels, but had not made it there, and I would like to add, “as yet.” This show was not a replacement for seeing the Library, but certainly informed us more about his administration. 

We finished our week – well ok, this post is late so we started our next week with taking dinner to Loren’s Mom and enjoying watching the Super Bowl with her and Loren’s sister together. It was interesting in that it took so long for the first team to score, and remained such a low scoring game for so much of the time. Congrats to New England.

Tomorrow evening we look forward to celebrating Chinese New Year with friends…