This past Friday I had quite a life event. You see, I recently turned 50 years old and at that age one is highly recommended to have a certain "preventive maintenance procedure" done. Those of you who are near or over 50 probably know what I'm talking about.  If you don't, I don't want to be gross about it so let's say I'm a car... I had to fill my tank with some Gumout cleaner and then have my exhaust system inspected internally from the tailpipe, past the muffler, to the exhaust manifold to make sure there is no rust, carbon build-up or fuel deposits.  There was a deposit that had to be removed but there is no rust as far as we know right now!

I must say though, the experience wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  I was a bit freaked out about it, but now that it's over, I'm glad I did it. The bad thing is I have to have another exhaust inspection in three years.

The last thing I can take away from the whole experience is this; doctors are great and thank goodness we have them. But, if it wasn't for the nurses, the whole experience would be horrible! Nurses are the best and they make the whole show work! Of course I may be biased since Eileen is a nurse, but they all ROCK for sure!

I came up with the car analogy because when I was getting wheeled into the O.R., I told the nurse it looked like a garage.  I mean there were all these lights that looked like "light-alls", there were lots of tables and tools and there was a bunch of what looked like tool chests!  You know that gives me an idea, what if they made operating rooms look like garages?!  Make the tool chests have "Craftsman" logos on them, have a bunch of pictures of cars in there, make the floor a black and white checkerboard!  Wouldn't that be cool?  Kind of like Sport Clips only for an operating room!  But, it would obviously have to be really clean!  No grease-monkeys allowed!  Then again, maybe not such a good idea...

As relieved as I was knowing that my procedure wasn't as bad as I thought, it was still no walk in the park. I would so much rather have been here where I took this shot.  This swinging bench was at Shipwreck Beach on Kauai! I guess rocking in this chair could be my happy place so to speak!

 
Exif data:

Camera - Nikon D700
Lens - Nikkor 28.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length - 28mm
Aperture - f8
Exposure - 6 secs
Exposure program - Aperture priority AE
ISO speed - 1600
Exposure bias - 0 EV
Tripod - Yes
HDR - Yes
# of brackets - 7, from -3 to +3 spaced 1 EV apart