Hey all....

 

OK, I know I've been out of touch for a few days - I hope this makes up for it.  Also, please know that beginning this morning, I'm starting the long process of getting back to each of you individually.  This might take a while....

 

OK, first a few housekeeping things.  If you getting this email from me its because you're one of the over 100 people who I've been trying to keep informed about all the recent changes in our lives (not the least of which are our 1100 mile move south and my recently faltering health.)  To date, no one has emailed back and complained about my stuffing their in-box with unwanted email, so I haven't taken anyone off the list.  As always, if you'd rather not get these updates, just let me know and I'll take you off the list.  On the flip side, if you come by this email because someone forwards it to you and you'd like to get updates (in the form of future issues of Southern Transplant,) then email me directly and I'll add you to the list.

 

All the emails sent as pain text and are distributed via a large "blind carbon copy."  Hopefully that protects every ones privacy and keeps "data miners" and "spiders" from picking up your address.  As long as Yahoo will support this many email address at once, I'll stick to this format.  Also, I have some pictures from our trek south, but I'll get them posted somewhere and send a link - I'd like to keep this forum to the written word.

 

OK, on to the update.

 

Lets start with our contact information.  Most of you have it already (numerous times,) but here it is again:

 

118 Londonderry Road

Goose Creek, SC 29445

843-824-9471

 

Mel and I both still have our cell phones, but we'll be changing the numbers over soon to a local number and we don't get great reception at the house.  Feel free to call anytime, but use the home number (sorry northerners!)

 

Email address are as follows:

Me - [email protected]

Mel - [email protected]

Zoe - [email protected]

Noah - [email protected]

Suzanne - [email protected]

 

Noah doesn't even know he has email yet, but I check it for him occasionally.  Zoe is only allowed to check when she remembers to bring all her school work home with her - it's good motivation so I know she'd love open her box and find some notes sometime.

 

To date, my health is fairly status quo - pretty much the same as when I left Boston a week ago.  I have my first real visit with the local doctors tomorrow afternoon and we should know more then.  I'm on the same regiment of oral medications (16 pills in all) in the morning.  I feel OK but not strong or energetic.  It's frustrating because there are some many little things to be done around the house but I don't have the energy to get through but one or two small things a day.  Still, it's a heck of a lot better than sitting in a hospital room waiting for something to happen.

 

Which brings me to my first musing about living in the south - waiting. I'm not real sure, but I have rreason to believe that South Carolina has it's own time zone.  I don't think they tell anyone about it - especially not those uptight, watch wearing, chronologically demanding northerners.  And I'm not talking about just a sift in time - it's more like a stretching of time.  When someone tells you that things move slow in the south, they mean it!  It reminds me of when we were travailing in Greece and discovered that all lines on the roads were merely "suggestions."  Around here, I'm fairly convinced that the hands on a clock are for direction - "Hey Bud, check out that mud buggy at 3 o'clock!"

 

However, the other classic southern cliche is right on the money - hospitality.  There is nothing like it!  I have yet to meet someone who wouldn't take a minute or two just to chat and say hi.  People will go out of their way to make you feel welcome and comfortable.  Mel and I sat in a little take out area the other day waiting for some food and woman sat down beside us, cracked open her celery sticks and dip and starting offering it around to everyone who was waiting.  In the grocery store yesterday, with line of groceries and customers at her register, the young lady ringing us out was willing to leave her post and walk Mel all the way back through the store to where we had passed the one last item on our list.  Small things I know, but you'd be hard pressed to find consistently similar situations north of the Mason-Dixon.

 

It may take a while for me to get used to the prevailing politics (and I'm sure I'll have more to say about that in the future,) but I can tell you the climate and people are very much agreeable!

 

I hope this note finds all you well and healthy.  I'll send out another update sometime after I start to get a steady stream of information from the doctors and lab reports.

 

Chris