It's been a powerfully busy week, as different companies prove to be damned liars, as they don't need to pacify individuals in this season of volume sales. I was shafted by the Pottery Barn this week, and by Amazon.com. (Damn you, Jeff Bezos! May your Time Person of the Year Award fall off your wall and land on your brain!) Thanks to the needs of medicine, of shopping and of sociability, I've managed to drive well over a thousand miles since last Friday. Saturday, at four in the morning, Mason and I were up (he stayed over and slept on the couch to better ensure we both woke up), picked up Van and drove him south to Manchester Airport, his ancient enemy. We got him to the plane just in time... and then it was discovered the pilot's window was jammed, which meant his flight was delayed. Van can't catch a break with a butterfly net at that place. Seeing him off, if somewhat late, Mason and I then dragged ourselves to the Mall of New Hampshire and shopped until... well, we were ready to die.

Getting back to Wolfeboro, Mason proceeded to get sick as a dog, including a high temperature. He sacked back out on the couch and I fell asleep myself, the fatigue of the day catching up with me. As a result I slept through the Academy's Christmas party this year. I feel somewhat badly about that.

He was feeling somewhat healthy on Sunday, so we piled on down to Portsmouth and shopped some more, as well as eating at Applebee's. We had an astoundingly perky waitress who went out of her way to check on the salt content of things for me. We overtipped her.

Two days of shopping in a row was a bit much for my medicated body. I began to feel pretty badly, but remained game. I also grabbed a component for the DVD Player which would allow me to use the DVD with the television and the computer's video in at the same time. I am the biggest geek on Earth.

Monday was something of a recovery day, though that swiftly went wrong. I discovered unforeseen problems with my nieces' Christmas present (and a special thanks to Pottery Barn for that development), and had to make strategy with my sister to see about a suitable replacement. And, naturally, I was coming down with the cold Mason had over the weekend.

Monday was also the day I gave my staff their Christmas presents, and took them out to lunch at Love's Quay, which is a great restaurant right on a canal. It's gorgeous down there in the summer. Sitting in a winter without snow it looked strangely bare, right up until the water in the inlet began to freeze.

Over the course of the meal, the water went from "bits of ice" to "fragile cover" to "totally covered over" to "turning white and thickening." It was remarkable to watch -- magical, almost. A transformation that's so mundane, yet so profound. No sticking snow, maybe, but Winter does come in its own way.

Tuesday, between the cold medicine and difficulty sleeping (post nasal drip), I was totally washed out, to the point that I left work early to nap. I was also invited by Alan to a soiree -- friends over for Christmas drinks and the like -- and I agreed cheerfully enough. But I also had to go to the Mall down in Portsmouth to get new stuff for my nieces, probably from Learningsmith, which is the best store on Earth for such things.

Correction. Was. It was clearly in the last days of a Going out of Business Sale. So, it turns out, is the Portland store. This is a tragedy. Which, I'd add, I didn't have time to mourn. I had to try and run and find a substitute. But as you can guess from my condition, running isn't my friend. About ready to die, I call Kris and officially give up, and she makes arrangements to get something for the girls and charge me for it. Which is likely what we should have done in the first place.

Next, I ran back home and out to Alan's, though I really needed to do laundry for my trip home on Wednesday. But you don't blow off friends like that, especially when they're your boss.

It was a very nice evening, actually. A good number of Brewster folks were there, drinking and chatting and noshing on excellent looking foods that Alan and his wife Donna passed out with cheer. I had a salt-free nonalcoholic (alcohol is not a good thing with Prinivil) sparkling wine/juice thing and didn't eat. I don't eat much these days. Too much work and I'm just too fat, y'know?

Riding back, I saw a glowing sky, with the much-mentioned full moon for the Solstice above clouds. It seemed to turn the sky liquid silver, though I didn't see the moon itself. I also got lost, and drove for almost an hour, looking for home. When I got there, laundry waited and I needed to wrap things and get ready and medicate and....

So I took medicine and went to bed. It was the only rational thing to do.

Wednesday started very early in the morning. I got laundry going, prepped the apartment for the cleaning staff on Thursday, and wrapped presents, which I then brought to Mailboxes, Etc. for shipping. I had to do everything very fast, as I needed to be on the road to Maine by ten to get to my parents' in time for the reason for the early trip home: my Nuclear Medicine Stress Test.

I made it. But it wasn't fun. I was exhausted and still kind of sick. I got home, and Dad and I ran out to the Cardiologists, so I could get on a treadmill and work out to the point of "reaction" while they monitored my heart. When I hit reaction, they were going to inject me with nuclear materials and I would have to keep going, though utterly wasted, for another minute so the radioactive factors would work their way into the exerting heart. At that point, I would be brought into another room and pictures of my heart would be taken, reading the radioactive materials as they flowed through my heart. It all sounded pretty cool.

I was so wrong.

First, the stress test. My heart rate and blood pressure are now very good indeed, which means the meds are working. They wired me up with electrodes, shaving bits of my chest to make sure they would stick well. So, my chest now looks stupid. I was talking with the guy who was prepping me, and he mentioned I wouldn't glow after the tests.

"The heck with glowing," I said. "Can I get superpowers?"

"You want to fly?" he asked, grinning.

"Nope, I want X-Ray vision."

He laughed, and said if I got it, he'd be the next on the table. They gave me the standard paperwork ("...you are doing this of your own free will, and if this causes a heart attack, which it well might, it's not our fault and your heirs can't sue us...."), started an IV (I get tired of people pushing needles into me these days) and I got on the treadmill and started walking.

The incline wasn't steep, the speed wasn't that fast. Both increased at regular intervals. And I felt them both. The "joys" of being spectacularly out of shape, especially with the exercise prohibitions. But I sweated it out. I wanted to be well. I wanted to be able to do a simple exercise test. When I was in the NROTC at Indoc, I stunned people by being able to not only finish the five mile run but to remain strong while I did it. It was the one thing I ever did with the Navy that impressed them, and it didn't last.

Now? Now if Y2K ends civilization I'd better prepare myself to pass through the digestive system of Coyotes.

And then I hit. The air just left me. I couldn't breath. My heart pounded. I felt horrid and I croaked that out to the people conducting the test.

"Okay," they said cheerfully, and injected the radioactive agent into my IV. "Just one more minute then."

A minute is a godforsakenly horrible long time when you can't breath and need to keep marching up a hill, do you know it? My eyes filled with tears and I felt my whole body shaking. This was truly horrible. I wanted desperately to just end that....

My legs could keep going, they complained. What the Hell was wrong with the rest of me? My lungs laughed a bitter laugh and threatened to let them starve.

And it was over. I was told I did quite well, and my heart is in good shape, considering. Out of deference to their high opinion of me I didn't collapse or lose bowel control, though I considered both. They sat me down and I waited, feeling horrible and fat and out of shape and broken.

I had managed six minutes and thirty seconds.

Now, apparently there's less than one in 250 that makes it to the whole fifteen minutes. The treadmill isn't designed to exercise you, it's designed to push you to the point where you can't go on. But that doesn't change the deep, core feeling that you have failed the most primal of male tests. You have no endurance or speed. You cannot forage food for yourself. You are better off dead so the rest of the tribe can live. There's nothing in the survival code of our DNA that gives exceptions for understanding 10/100 Ethernet or how to write a Quatrain, and at moments like that I know that in my core.

Dad walked over to me and smiled a bit. "You did fine," he said, clapping me on the back with a gentle smile. "When I had to do this test the same thing happened to me." My father knows what to say to me.

Sadly, the worst of it wasn't over. Next came the actual pictures. This involves lying on a painfully uncomfortable table on your back, with your arm over your head holding onto a strap and your other arm velcroed to your side because the table isn't wide enough to set it down. And you don't move. Not at all. You can't even talk or move your head, or it throws off the pictures. You're there for twenty five minutes in the quiet.

I can't comfortably lie on my back without some incline. My lower back hurts quite badly and I have problems breathing. The latter is a legacy of my heart. The former is a legacy of the weight on my stomach. Slowly, the machine rotates around you, a bit at a time, and takes pictures of the radiation in your heart. Out of the corner of my eye I could almost see my father, but not quite. I waited, trying to breath normally and not moving. When it was finished, I needed the Nurse to get up off the table, and I felt hobbled for hours.

I could look forward to doing the test again the next morning. It didn't make me happy. Fat old walrus.

The rest of the day was very nice with Mom and Dad. And the test this morning was... endurable. An injection, a mandated fatty breakfast (without the exercise, the lipids are needed to carry the radiation to my heart properly), and the liedown torment. Dad sat closer so I could watch him, and that helped. And it was good we did it -- my bloodflow is normal. I don't seem to have coronary disease. I probably won't need a Cardiac Catheterization, which would be far far worse.

Merry Christmas indeed.

On the way back, Dad and I talked about the new bigger Saturns, which oddly led to my test driving one. More on that tomorrow, when hopefully I'll have a lot of sleep before I waken. I don't want to have to rush any more. I want to relax, and enjoy Christmas as it comes, with my parents who love me.

Buddy is nestled against me, sleeping. I scratch behind his ears. It makes the frantic rushing worth it, perhaps.