Las Vegas, baby!

It has been since April 19 of this year since I have last been able to write something longer than a brief email. My surgeries have been successful - no more numb hands and no more trigger fingers. It has been slow, of course. The first two weeks of each surgery I was in a soft cast and was not able to lift more than a pound. After that I was limited to four pounds until I reached six weeks post-surgery. I am at that now with my right hand, but not with the left.

The first few days were painful and slow. I couldn’t do much that involved my right hand and I had to have lots of help - most of my phone calls were taken on speaker with my assistant next to me writing notes for me. The left hand wasn’t as bad, thankfully, and I was able to work a bit more normally.

In the middle of all of this, life has returned a bit more to normal. We were able to go to the last Warriors game in San Francisco and stay at a hotel for the first time in ages. Going inside the stadium was cool - we had to show proof that we are vaccinated and still had to wear masks, but it felt great to do something like that again.

We have had some health scares along the way - Van got pneumonia! That was not fun, but he got good care (kudos to Ukiah Valley Medical Center’s ER staff) and got over that after a few tough days. Unfortunately, that coincided with my second surgery, so I had to take care of him and not the other way around. It was a tough week while I was still recovering and in pain and he was so sick.

As I indicate in my title, we’re in Las Vegas! Friends drove out this far to meet up with us and we flew out from Oakland on Sunday. Talk about a feeling of normalcy. We had to wear our masks inside the airport and on the plane and in the Uber, but once we were in Vegas and on the ground, we no longer have to wear them. I guess California will be like that when we return.

Our timing on the trip was not great - they are having the hottest weather of the year this week (so far) and tomorrow is supposed to be 117 degrees. Ugh. We are mostly staying indoors except for early morning and later in the evening - it was 107 at 8:30PM last night! We had a delicious breakfast at a place called EGGscellent and the menu has so many options we are going back again tomorrow so we can all try something different. Not sure what dinner will be yet - we had cocktails earlier. This wasn’t so great - we went to three bars before we could get served. I have no idea what the servers were thinking, but we got up and left twice before finding someone to take our money. Nuts.

The other thing that is odd out here is that most of the restaurants close at 10:00PM but take their last diners at 9:00PM. It took us several tries to find someone to feed us last night. We ended up at a Greek spot inside The Venetian that was excellent; prices are ridiculous, but at least the food is outstanding.

We’re here until Thursday morning, then head back to California. We have dinner Thursday night with some other friends, so I’ll report more on that next time.

It’s good to be back writing again!