morning babble / Sunday 07-25-21
I cannot believe that next Sunday is August – just want to state that loud & clear. I’ve already seen the candy corn in stores – probably leftover from last year, but it’s there. You can almost smell the Pumpkin Spice in the air.
I haven’t run yet. #206 will be on the trails. I did cold-shower last night. 7 more cold showers to go and the 31 Days of July Cold Showers has been accomplished!
So, last night I was having a wonderful talk with my son, Elliott. Lots of laughing and that’s good. You see, recently he was part of a study that was done at Nemours Hospital. My wife has been a part of these different studies but this particular one was for kids our son’s age. He got paid money to answer a ton of questions but also had to have an MRI. He was excited about the money, while my wife and I were excited to have all these results to simply see what’s going on in our little boy’s body. He’s 12. Not too little anymore. Anyway, the study occurs again next year, but they reached out to us afterwards and notified us that the MRI showed that our little E-man has a Chiari malformation – which basically means the brain is too big for the skull. We had to get him to his doctor. And we did. Elliott is going to need another MRI (that’s Wednesday) and then there’s a discussion about surgery (takes place on Friday). It’s all still very scary. Back to last night’s talk, I’m so happy that my son and I could laugh about it. I know it’s not funny, but we are enjoying the now – there’s no point to worrying and ruining what you have right now His smile was awesome last night. Anyway – it made me joke with him about the Pulp Fiction scene about the “Big Brain on Brad” and yes, I showed it to him. Watch the video below!
Check out the big brain on Elliott. We’re all smiling here at the Evans household and know that are little man is going to take on whatever he has to with a positive outlook.
Books!
- Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Great book so far. Currently in a chapter about Teddy Roosevelt. Received a telegram about his daughter being born. Then, a 2nd one came through about his wife not doing well. He got home and then learned that both his wife and mother were dying. At 3am (the day after his daughter was born), he was by his mother’s side as she passed. Less than 12 hours later, his wife died, too. His famous quote at this moment was ” The light has gone out in my life.” This was all prior to him being president, so many more stories are to be told, but this one . . . I don’t ever want to imagine needing to overcome that.
- Eat A Peach – A Memoir by David Chang
- The Boys – Omnibus Volume 4 by Garth Ennis
- The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson (listening to this one). Heard him on podcasts talking about this book. It’s the story about 2020 Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna (dowd-na), who developed the gene editing technology CRISPR. One of the stories he told on the podcasts as well as within the book is when Jennifer went to her guidance counselor for advice about her future and what she wanted to do. The counselor’s advice, “Girls don’t become scientists.” Reminded me of my daughter and her “Hold my Doll” moment.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“If you act like you can do something, then it will work.” – by Walter Isaacson