You're stuck with me for the foreseeable future

I'm back from my heart cath follow up/regular cardiologist appointment and it looks like I'm gonna be around a bit longer. Dr. Hoadley told me everything looked good and that my heart is actually a bit stronger than it was when he first met me, of course when he first met me I was having a massive heart attack, the arteries around my heart were nearly all shut down, and my heart was grossly enlarged due to the blood not getting out properly. My ejection fraction, that's the rate blood leaves my heart, is lower than it was due to one of the bypasses not being open as much as it first was, but over all the other three bypasses look good and everything else is hunky dory.

Here are some snippets of my conversation with my cardiologist:
Dr. H: Do you remember what I told you before the heart cath?
Me: Yeah, you told me there was a chance I could have a stroke, or a heart attack, or die if you did the heart cath.
Dr. H: That's right, I...
Me: Dude, you need to work on your bedside manner.

A little later on in the visit he asked me:
Dr. H: What do you do to keep busy?
Me: I write. I...
Dr. H: Oh yeah, what do you write?
Me: I write a blog.
Dr. H: A political blog?
Me: Politics, pop culture, stupid jokes, I write about it all. I also play golf a couple days a week weather permitting.
Dr. H: That's good. So, who's going to win the election?
Me: You really want me to go there?

After I told him why I was backing Obama he said:
Dr. H: Well if Hillary gets elected she'll do some things to our medical system that people won't like but by the time they find out they don't like them it will be too late.
Me: Something's gotta be done, the system can't go on the way it is now with the insurance companies and big pharma running things.
Dr. H: You're right. I'm resigned to some form of socialized medicine...
Me: Let's stop using words that scare people. Let's stop calling it 'socialized medicine.' Let's call it instead 'Medicare for everybody.'
Dr. H: You know, that sounds pretty reasonable.
Me: Duh.

After my appointment Sparky and I went to lunch at The Sunspot, for those who aren't going to click on the link it's casual semi vegetarian restaurant near the University of Tennessee campus. Our food was good but there sure was a hell of a lot of it. I think they feel like they need to ramp up your portion size if you're not ordering something with meat in it.

After lunch we went to one of my favorite places in Knoxville, the Disc Exchange. After much perusing of the new and used CDs I narrowed my choices to a Holly Cole CD and a Gaelic Storm CD or a used copy of the double CD Bob Dylan Live at Budokan.In the end my memories of rocking out to the first Dylan album I ever bought won out and I purchased the Dylan CDs. Listening to my new purchase on the way home I remembered how much I loved it back when I first bought it at age 16. I had forgotten how bluesy some of the versions of the songs were and how reggae influenced others were. Despite Sparky begging me not to, I sang along with Bob on the way home.

Being the bibliophiles we are we visited a new to us used bookstore before we left town. It's called Book Eddy. Let me tell you people, I could easily spend a few weeks in there going over every inch of shelf space they have. The store is well laid out and it's full of every kind of book imaginable, they have everything from rare and antique books to pulp paperbacks to fiction to books from around the world to non fiction books of all stripes and subjects, plus they sell cheesy albums too. I spent entirely too much time just looking at a few shelves of the children's picture books. I'm definitely going back there after I get done with my next cardiology appointment.

That's how I spent my day today, tomorrow we'll be getting out of the house early since NASCAR has invaded our area, the Jack Daniels Screw Yer Sister 500 is going on in Bristol this weekend. We're going to head over to North Carolina and check out the little mountain towns of Marshall and Weaverville. If they are not happening enough burgs for us then we'll skate on in to Asheville and check out some of our usual haunts.

Have a good weekend my peeps and all you kids stay safe for the monkeyman. I'll see ya later.