An odd weekend thus far. Papaw Wallace is in the hospital and will be undergoing emergency open-heart surgery in the very near future, so I'm going to have some family at my house. I'm happy for the company but I wish it were under better circumstances.
When I first learned of the surgery the details were very sketchy. He'd gone in for stent work and apparently things were too far along for that to be effective. So, Friday evening I rushed to the hospital to pay him a visit. I never expected to find myself rushing to the hospital on a Friday evening. Life seems to enjoy throwing curve balls sometimes, I guess.
Anyway, things have been scheduled and now it's a matter of waiting. He was in good shape when I saw him, good shape for a man of 87. The last person I visited in that hospital had also undergone open-heart surgery, and though his death soon thereafter wasn't due to cardiac problems, there's a bad association there for me. We'll see how it goes.
The WV Book Festival started this weekend. I slept late and missed the novel-writing program I wanted to attend, but I went and browsed the huge selection of used books offered by the Kanawha County Library. Most of my selections were on Zen and Buddhism, subjects I once enjoyed but have gotten away from over the years. I added an introductory book on Kabbalah to the mix... something new to explore and learn about.
Generally, the Hebrew alphabet fascinates me lately — each glyph represents, simultaneously, a letter, a number, and a word. And, traditional Hebrew lacks vowels, so context and diacritical marks must be considered when these strings of consonants are encountered. So, is it a religious passage or a recipe? (Or both?) I'm not an expert at all, but the cover of this book is filled with that writing... which is what drew me to it.
I had a dream last night a plane crashed in Charleston. I saw it banking into Yeager but it was coming in too steep. At the last minute the pilot realized the problem and tried to pull up and correct it, but he overcompensated and stalled the plane. The plane's tail scraped along the runway, sparks started flying, and the plane flipped over and exploded. Turns out it was a cargo plane carrying, oddly enough, fuel for planes... so it was a massive explosion. Not a good dream at all, and hopefully not a prophetic one.
One last thing: We might get our first frost tonight. It's the beginning of everything that's to come over the next several months, and it's to be expected this time of year, but it's noteworthy for being the first one. In a matter of weeks it will probably be commonplace. After the seemingly non-stop storms last winter, I really hope this winter isn't too bad. Crazy-ass snow is lots of fun when you're a kid. When you have to go to work and drive in it, it sucks.