Who doesn’t like ice cream! If you don’t, I’m pretty sure you’re not an American. At least not my kind of American. Forget baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie. You will find my people standing in line at the local Dairy Queen. Just because I don’t live in the north country doesn’t mean I don’t love a Blizzard now and then.
But sadly, okay, not so sadly, I can forget all about going to Dairy Queen and standing in line, thanks to Miss Terry. A while back, she ordered a Cuisinart ICE-100 ice cream and gelato maker from Amazon, and we are both really impressed with what she can turn out with it. It takes less than an hour to make a batch of ice cream that will make several servings.
The other day she made delicious orange sherbet from scratch. And to top it off, she threw in some bittersweet chocolate chunks. Oh man, what a treat!
The machine doesn’t make a real hard ice cream, more of a soft serve, but the taste is fabulous. We each had a bowl, and what was left over went into the freezer, and we finished that off last night. The day in the freezer gave us more traditional hard ice cream. Soft serve or hard, I don’t care, and neither do my taste buds!
Some of you who have been reading the blog for a long time know that I have a lot of pain from back injuries suffered when I was in the Army. In June of 2020, I had nerve ablations done at the L4, L5, and S-1 vertebrates in my lower back. At the time, the doctor told me that based on the MRIs and CAT scans he had of my back, the ablations should help, but there was so much damage back there that it was not an end-all. He warned me that I would still have pain from other areas in my back, although hopefully not as severe as I had been experiencing. He also said that the results could last anywhere from a couple of months to over a year, and sometimes longer.
While he was correct that I still had some pain from other areas, the procedure was life-changing for me. I walked into the place using two canes and never needed one again after I walked out. I was able to do so many things I couldn’t do without wincing in pain, even simple things like getting out of bed or walking up or down the three steps from one level to the next in our house.
However, in the last few weeks, the pain has been coming back again, and the last three or four days have been really rough, so I guess it’s time to contact Doctor Creamer and start the procedure all over again. But I have no complaints. I got almost two years of relief, and now we will do it again. I’m sure I can’t get anything scheduled before we leave on our trip to Alabama and Arizona to see the kids, but I’ll try to get something set up for when we return. Hopefully, the results will be just as good this time around.
And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.
Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Adam Gaffen’s Into the Black: Tales from the Cassidyverse. Science fiction fans are going to love this one, as Kendra Cassidy’s dream to drag humanity to the stars, as well as the dreams of her crew are revealed. It’s an old-fashioned whodunit, with an extra dose of interplanetary politics thrown in for good measure.
To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.
Thought For The Day – Don’t allow your past to make you bitter, use it to make you better.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!