Years of learning tunes and ya go and lose the appendix.

Oh, I have that tune stored up there somewhere, but I can't find it right off...

So, what did you get besides the Subway Hoagie?

Also a bit late, but, best wishes, Nano/Jason, and sorry to hear you've been bad!

("Bad" is Wenglish for "ill", BTW, not a reference to immoderate sandwich habits......)

And no kits(ch) from me

Also late since I was at a festival where my wife got to spend three days in the hospital. Too bad you're already home. I might have had a chance to catch up with you in the hospital., Glad things are going well. They wouldn't let my grand-daughter take her kidney stoe home either.

Be well!

Chuck Boody

The knowledge that one should always have après-ABS evening wear in one's wardrobe, because the well-dressed post-op patient never knows when he or she will need to meet the public in more than skivvies or the usual bathrobe. My chauffeur just drove me to Kaplan's where I found the perfect pair of bib overalls. You may call me Jethro if you like. Everyone else is going to.

I always say if ya can't find it at FleetFarm ya don't need it.

My goodness but I dislike how body parts can have random blowouts.

Yes. Well. I don't have a FleetFarm within civilised distance, IOW not having to drive through three counties or to the next state to get to the nearest one. So nice idea, but thanks. For clothes Kaplan's is the local workingman's byword, with impeccable labor street cred, PLUS being properly in town rather than in some distant, godforsaken, suburban McBeige-o-Rama succession of strip malls, and has really, really good prices - as in really good - although it must be said that selection is down and it has become dowdy, its heyday having waved goodbye a while ago. Still, the true believer continues to shop there. Nobody worth his plaid laughs when you say "Kaplan's", unless they're ignorant.

Plus dressed as I had to be - which was pretty badly clownlike - Kaplan's was perfect. You know. Minneapolis. No one batted an eye.

Tell me about it. My next scheduled gigs come up in two weeks. I may not be 100% by then, but I expect to be able to fake it. Thank goodness for that, anyway.

Kaplan Brothers, I don't know why we ever first went there. It was probably because my wife wanted some xs Carhartt outerwear (and not their women's fashion stuff) or some such thing. I still will go there about once or twice a year just to replace worn out necessities.

Sorry that mess of roadways up there you people call a city looks all the same to me whether it's Oakdale, Brookyln(Park or Center), Maple Grove, St. Louis, Lauderdale, Coon Rapids, Richfield, Plymouth, Mendota, which is clearly a Wisconsin name...... A person could blow a gasket trying to figure out where anything is.

The way I was moving at first (doctor's orders: "Walk."), a motivated caterpillar could've caught up with me. Your chances would have been excellent.


These people are such party-poopers any more. Can't have any fun with your own God-given body parts. Tsk.

Hmm. Despite my bell-like clarity, the concept of what Minneapolis/St. Paul is, and is not, entirely escapes you. You still don't know which end's up and apparently you still haven't found your way into the city yet, have you, because every time we get on the subject you talk about spinnin' your wheels in the burbs like that. If ever you want to know what's what, gimme a shout. It's easy as pie so long as you stop listening to those shifty suburbanites. They're hucksters. They'll try to distract and entice you into spending your money - so long as it's at their local businesses - every time. And it sounds like they've been doing a pretty good job at it around you, too. Of course you're confused. They want it that way. They want you to think that it all looks like Shakopee or Eagan or New Hope, and that's all there is: one big contiguous wasteland of cookiecutter sameness punctuated by the occasional Perkins restaurant for a landmark. BTW, even people who live in New Hope call it "No Hope", in case that tells you anything.

Actually - and maybe I'm naïve - but this seems like a significant legal/ethical issue to me. If you don't "own" your own body parts, who does? Certainly not the hospital. If anything, it's the hospital who should need your permission to keep your organs, not the other way around.

In the case of a hinky vermiform appendix, the excuse is that they need to chop it up into little bits and look for other things like cancers or I suppose alien spawn. It's plausible deniablility of a reasonable fabrication. In the case of a kidneystone, however, I'd just love to hear them defend that one. They probably invoke the specter of horrible pathogens. Of course: the hospital's.

Anyway, I signed a release. You know how it is: "Here, sign this. Now this. Aaaand....this. It's to protect you. Trust me." And when you're in Emergency without your reading glasses (funny how they actually make a physical twisting-around-to-look motion every time you ask for a pair, and they all do it - which is kind weird when you think about it - and then nervously say they don't have any - hell, my bar has cheaters for people to use), you don't have a lot of choice. I lay odds one of those releases has a clause saying that the intervening parties get all rights to my body parts and can use them for chessmen if they like since I am in effect asking 'em to take something away from me if that's what it takes to make me better. Do I seriously expect to retain rights to the apple core I just tossed away? Fair enough. But OTOH an appendix in a jar is not the same thing. You can bring it out at parties.