Slow week in Fiberland

I haven't been doing much fiber. In fact, I haven't been doing much lately. I have a desk full of spindles that need to be photographed, and 3 bins of yarn on the floor in the office that need to be photographed and listed but I just haven't felt up to doing much. I have been having a challenging gut time. I was lucky to get an appointment with head of GI at Johns Hopkins, to find out that the former diagnosis of Crohn's Disease was probably wrong, and that I have IBS instead. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I'm hopeful through the new meds and new diet that I can get to feeling a bit better. It's a whole different way of eating and dealing with attacks. I'm tired of having my abdomen rule my life these past couple of years. The Doctor tells me that stress is a trigger so I'm supposed to try to keep stress to a minimum.
But on to neat things, this morning our son Jonathan took us to his "office" to show us what projects he'd been working on. He works at the 3rd largest Quarry in North America and does pretty much any and everything, welding, hydralics, fixing and working every piece of machinery, and generally enjoying using his mind, his hands and his skills. None of the area is public and although he can take us to see it, the mine has to be closed down in order to go there. We always enjoy when he can invite us to take a trip there, now our jeep is now happily covered in mud and dirt from four wheeling on the rocky roads even though we weren't able to go down into the hole.
This quarry has been mined since the 1850's and is over 3 miles long and 600+ feet deep and they're not done yet! And, it's in the middle of a giant metropolitan area that has grown up around it. He often calls me from inside the hole or up on the giant belts that take the rock from the crusher to the screener as he's walking up checking to make sure it's working properly (when it's off, of course!) He faults or credits me with taking him and his sister up into the gold mining area in Colorado all the time when they were little (we lived outside Denver) to climb around on tailing piles and to look around at the equipment that was there. We'd peer into the chained up grates over the mine entrances and talk about the history of the region, the Railroads, the technology, and the people that pioneered the expansion of the Nation, as well as the Natural Beauty of the area. He then took Mark and I out to breakfast and we had a great time talking about everything under the sun. What a great morning!