Living on the frontlines

These are images of the crowd in the lobby gathering about a half hour before we opened the doors. I was on the table in front of the main doors. It was hard keeping the crowds back! Some had come early to ensure a good seat and they were irritated we wouldn't let them in early. Our band, however, needed to complete sound checks. We'd had trouble with the sound system in rehersal all week, so these sound checks were especially important. It wouldn't have been possible with a crowd in the auditorium.

These are the Mulloys. Dennis was Superman at last year's conference. He did a great job. I love Dennis because he's so fun to kid around with. He's a very loyal HPS volunteer - one of the first I met when he picked me up at the airport for my first HPS conference. Dennis has been teasing me that I "disked" him by putting Spiderman on the cover of the last HPS Newsletter. He told me at the concert he's expecting a centerfold. I'm thinking of cropping this image and making a mock centerfold and sending it to him. What do you thiink? Ha ha ha ha........ Really - there's a formula to choosing covers for the Newsletter. Here's how it works. First off, the images have to be high resolution (greater than 3oo DPI) at 8 by 11 size. That rules out most images I get as most are set to be high res at 4 by 6. Next, the composition of the photo has to allow enough room for the HPS Network News logo at the top, and enough room on a side area with adaquate contr...

Ashley gets a re-assuring hug from her mom as we ate in the kitchen before the concert started.

While in New York I visited Dr. Seward. He is always so gracious and I appreciate his willingness to see me even when I live so far away. It isn’t that I don’t love my local doctors – it’s just that I’m the only HPS patient they’ve seen. Someone who sees HPS’ers every week just has a different perspective. We are changing some of my acid reflux medication to see if that helps my cough. I’ve had a hard time exercising lately because every time I get to more than a regular walk, I start coughing. It could be that my asthma medication needs to be raised as well, but since I complained that my acid reflux has been so much worse – Dr. Seward wanted to adjust those meds first and see where we were. If you did them at the same time, it would be had to assess where things really were at. I did notice being more out of breath quite a bit while we were preparing for the concert. I would get out of breath going up and down the stairs from the HPS office or out of breath trying to help load and un...

At the Friday night show, we served lots of cookies, cakes, sweet breads, and punch. Some of it was baked and donated by volunteers, and some of it was donated by area bakeries. It was quite an offering! Here's the activity in the kitchen getting it all organized, as well as snagging a quick bite of pizza for dinner.