Longtime local blogger Gregory Blake is at Brigham and Women's, where he got a new lung on Wednesday (he writes here why he needed one). He blogged on the way to the hospital via his laptop and a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone (his dad was driving). Latest news, from a friend posting on his site:

I'm sitting here writing progress notes, and was getting bored, so I tied a bandana that was lying here around the cat's neck. So far so good. So I was typing and rubbing the cat's tummy, and he was rolling around like a freak. Then, as typically will happen eventually with this idiot, he liked the tummy rubbing so much that he fell off the couch. Whoever said cats always land on their feet apparently never tried rubbing a kitty tummy on a couch. Or a bed. So the cat fell to the floor with a thud as usual, except that this time the bandana flipped over his eyes. When cats get blindfolded, they back away from the blindfold, which is why it's especially fun to put socks over their heads.

Bob is relieved that an un-dead zombie squirrel in his backyard has moved to his neighbor's yard.

It's bad enough that the ants seem to be disabling Halley's kitching bit by bit. When one wanders onto her keyboard, it's too much. She lures it off, then gives it a mighty thwack:

"I win! You lose!" yells I as I saw his rumpled body yield to my wrath.

Hi, everybody.
Hope you're all having a happy holiday/Easter weekend. Mine was sweet--saw a lot of my family this weekend. After an enjoyable day outdoors on Saturday, I went over to my family's house last night, where we had a scrumptious dinner and the additional visitors were my 18-year-old nephew and his girlfriend, who goes to Brandeis and is very smart and attractive, and we had lots of great food and lots of talking, joking and laughter among ourselves. It was wonderful fun.
Early this afternoon, we all went for an equally fabulous buffet/brunch at Changsho, a local Chinese restaurant near Cambridge's Porter Square, which we all enjoyed to the fullest, as well as more talk, fun and laughter.

You need to put your wishes in writing! The Massachusetts Medical Society has a downloadable Health Care Proxy form that lets you specify your final wishes - and designate somebody to ensure they are carried out:

www.healthcareproxy.org

Fondofelves discusses the challenge of getting her mother out of the hospital and into a rehab center.

Eric discusses the challenge of getting his newborn into the hospital for an MRI to figure out the cause of a mysterious swelling in the back of his head before the end of the month:

I was taking the trash out this weekend behind my Cleveland Circle condo building, when I noticed some shelves, a mattress, a bunch of framed prints, a couple of stacks of clothing, all leaning against our trash barrels. In my building, a combination of units that haven't changed much since 1924 and overpriced renovated units housing Longwood transients for a few months at a time, this isn't an infrequent occurrence at the end of the month. At the end of every month since I've lived in Brighton, I've found myself trying to understand the mindset of people who leave a houseful of almost new items for the trash collector when they move. I mean, I'm finally at a point in my life where if I moved, getting $20 for my couch is hardly worth the hassle. But the idea of leaving a perfectly usable item for the landfill is just unfathomable to me when so many nonprofits will come and pick things up with a phonecall or e-mail.