A Stiff Lower Lip

I took this photo on Monday while walking to Islington. That's St. Stephen's church in the foreground, with the dark bulk of the modern Royal Free Hospital rising behind it. St. Stephen's, which was built in 1869, is no longer an active church -- it was "made redundant" in 1977 and deconsecrated in 2002. It's a restored event space now and apparently quite beautiful inside, though I haven't seen it first-hand. More history is here.

I'm posting the picture because I had to be at the hospital yesterday for a biopsy of the rough spot on my lower lip. Now, usually I am very good at maintaining my calendar in my head and knowing when I have an appointment. But for some reason I misremembered both the date and time of this biopsy -- I thought it was the 14th, until Wednesday night, when I got a text from the hospital reminding me it was actually the next day.

And then, when I set out for what I thought was a 12:20 appointment, walking from my house, I checked that text and saw that the appointment was actually at 11:50 -- and it was already 11:45! Crikey! I literally ran all the way to the hospital -- a little over a mile away -- and I got there 11 minutes late. I was afraid they wouldn't see me, but I pleaded transportation problems and they fit me in.

Street art along the Regent's Canal, Monday

Let me just say, having a biopsy of the lip is no fun. As you can imagine, there are a lot of nerve endings in your lips. There's a reason that kissing is so popular.

First they gave me a numbing shot, and that hurt like heck until it took effect. Then I felt nothing and the biopsy itself was pretty smooth, until I felt blood dripping on my wrist, which gave me a bit of a shock! Eventually I emerged with a very swollen lip -- I felt like a bald Kardashian -- with a single stitch, which will apparently disintegrate on its own in about a week.

I had to zip back home -- but not so fast that I couldn't walk -- in order to meet Mrs. Russia and some roofers who were giving her an estimate for roof work. Fortunately I'm not really part of that process so I just let them in the back garden and then stayed indoors while they talked.

Here's the status of my slide-sorting project, which as you can see has taken over the dining room table. (At least the part not already taken over by orchids.) On the right are the slides I might want to scan, but probably about half of them will be discarded in a second round of sorting. The ones neatly stacked on the left are all rejects, which I'll just put in a box. And the loose pile in back is trash -- and that's where they're going. There's also a small pile just above the rejects, next to my slide viewer, of collectible stamps that were mixed in with the slides -- I'll just tuck them into my stamp collection.

The table lamp is there to give me an additional light source if needed. And the yellow boxes behind the lamp contain more slides that I haven't even looked at yet.

My new slide scanner -- actually a camera attachment that allows me to photograph the slides -- arrived yesterday, so assuming it fits my camera as expected and I can figure out how to make it work, I may have some slides to show you tomorrow.

Bailey is a bit under the weather. She didn't eat last night -- who knows why. The weather is much clearer today than it has been -- and cold! I brought some plants in because I thought we might get frost, though it actually only got down to 34º F (or 1º C) so not quite as cold as I feared. I still haven't covered the avocado. I don't think there's anything in the forecast yet that requires that much intervention.