A week and change in Wisconsin

I'm writing to you from the wilds of southeastern Wisconsin. This week has been an upturn for me. I began the week with some sort of illness, a fever and cough. My mother worried that the respiratory illness had to do with my appendicitis, and we almost went to the emergency room when my fever hit 102.4. Luckily, a little tylenol on day 3 of the illness and a steady recovery since then allowed me to attend my regularly scheduled doctor's appointment on Monday. Dr. Froehlich told me the illness was unrelated to my appendicitis. My dad thinks I had the swine flu (Wisconsin has the highest incidence of H1N1 of any U.S. state).

I finally left my cloud of illness on Tuesday, and realized that my mother was in Madison for the week at a writer's conference in Madison. Stina and I spent most days lounging about the house, avoiding mosquoitos and going on brisk walks with the dogs (running past the pond to escape the mosquitos). We thank our luck stars that we're getting married in October 2010, after mosquito season.

On Wednesday I started to show an interest in being a useful member of society, and managed to  make Stina one of her birthday dinners, a delightful task I've been catching up with for the past several days. On Thursday I managed to acquire the presence of good friends Wiley and Nicole for a little RPG action. They'll return in the morning for the final installation of our game.

Wiley may (fingers crossed) join us for part of our tramping through Europe.

I've seen some family here: the Bruces on the day we arrived; Delmer while I was sick, and we were just able to reconnect with my family at my uncle's 60th birthday party: David, Roseann, Sarah, Betsy, Delmer, Helen, and extended family, including Stina's first-cousin-once-remove-in-law-in-law-to-be (or, as we say in Wisconsin, "a shirttail relation").

And so, another day passes, and we get this much closer to my whole body wellness and our next journey. We're leaving on Monday for NYC and will leave NYC on June 30th (with my appendix still intact) for Dusseldorf and lands beyond. Michael (of Freeballin fame) will let us sleep at his mother's home in NYC.

After Europe we plan to move to L.A. so I can pursue my dreams of professional acting... then on to the wedding and back to Seattle if the film industry doesn't love me like I hope it will.

Love It! and you,

Brendan