Dear Mr. President,

The launch of the Aries X-1 is a great opportunity to get our kids interested in math & science again. During the space race, kids had great enthusiasm for science & math. There is little that we can do to promote education in these fields greater than a manned program with a new and exciting goal (Moon and Mars). This is very important to our country and I would encourage you to put your full support behind it.

Additionally, during this time of economic troubles, this program employees many people. Continuing this program is another way of supporting jobs in this country.

And, of course, there's the scientific interest in the additional exploration.

It's time to motivate our kids to be interested in science and math so that we can be competitive in the world market again.

Please support manned exploration of our solar system to the fullest extent possible.

Thanks!

Your long-term supporter,
Bob Laurent

I had the post-surgery visit today. The surgery took more than twice as long as expected (6+ hours instead of 2-3 hours) both because of the size and the location (close to my esophagus) of the hiatal hernia. The patch they used to plug the hole in my diaphragm was 4 centimeters by 7 centimeters.

The good news is that I no longer have to crush pills (many medications taste vile when crushed) and I can start eating small quantities of fruit again. The nurse practitioner felt that I was recovering well given the complexity of the surgery.

Interestingly, it seems that this may have solved my back pains that I've had for the last 30+ years. It's early to be sure, but the signs are good.

The remaining question is whether this will have solved my anemia issues.

The surgery apparently went well yesterday. I'm still in the hospital, but expect go home tomorrow. Sometimes tha pain goes away; sometimes it's really interesting.

One doctors description of my hiatal hernia: "that thing was huge" - surgery took a lot longer than planned because they needed to pull my stomach back through so it's on the correct side of my diaphragm (about 1/3 of it was in my chest and about 2/3 in my abdomen.

Am I avoiding being scared about the surgery by worrying about living on half pay for a month+ after the surgery? The last couple of weeks, I was worried about the post-surgery diet. Now I'm worrying about money. Are these real worries, or is it a way of avoiding worrying about the surgery itself?

My surgery finally looks like like it will happen on Wednesday. It'll be a hiatal hernia repair and a Nissen fundoplication ( http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/surgery/specialties/gastro/esophag.html ). I've had my pre-op appointment, my insurance (at a mere $10K per year) has agreed to cover it and UC Davis' financial services is satisfied. The post-surgery diet, however, looks really unpleasant. One to two weeks of liquids only, followed by 4-6 weeks of no raw vegetables, no raw fruit, no onion, garlic or anything in the cabbage family, no frozen deserts and meat must be finely ground...lots of other restrictions.

We got to pick up our first CSA share yesterday. It's a small farm that sold 12 shares this year. We got chard, arugula, lettuce, potatoes (about 6 servings), basil and a small bunch of assorted herbs. They said that later in the summer, the haul would be much larger.

As a reward for turning 50 later this month, my medical insurance rate went up by about $140 per month.

And my Congressperson says that our healthcare system is working just fine...

As most of you know, my (step) daughter is attending college in Switzerland. We had planned to pay for next year's tuition from the sale of the house in Wells. We've had 3 offers on that house fall through, and it hasn't yet sold.

So, we need to come up with alternatives to cover her tuition for next year. She's discovered that it is difficult to transfer to somewhere cheaper as a sophomore, so she kind of needs to make it through her sophomore year there.

If any of you are able / willing to contribute to her tuition for fall, please contact me (e-mail is first name @ last name . com). If you know of non-traditional sources of help, I'd be interested in hearing about those (other than student loans and financial aid that her school's financial aid department would already know about).

Thanks for your help!

I buried Spot today. He died a while ago and we'd hoped to have the money to cremate him. Today was the first day when the weather, my emotional energy and my physical energy were all up to the task at the same time(just barely on the physical energy - we have red clay for soil).

He used to trill when he purred (vocalized purr).

I miss him.

A question for those of you who use CPAP machines. What do you do when you have a stuffed up nose?

It may be relevant that I use a nasal mask and a chin strap (the latter is to prevent mouth breathing).