On Tuesday I went in for my 20,000+ day scheduled maintenance.  I had two doctor appointments plus one with the dentist.  At one time, my entire cadre of healthcare professionals was conveniently located close to home.  Overtime though, a sort of medical Diaspora has occurred.  Consequently, I spent a good part of the day just shuttling from one doctor’s office to then next.  It stacked up to be a full day; so, I had scheduled a sick day for Tuesday. 

I had gone to some effort to organize all of my appointments so that they fell on one day.  The reason I did this was the company’s sick leave policy.  The policy allows the use of sick leave for doctor’s appointments, but it also stipulated that only full sick days could be taken.  Taking three sick days for three appointments seemed a waste.  A few weeks ago the company changed the sick leave policy and now I am able to take partial sick days, but it was too late to change Tuesday’s appointments.  It all worked out fine, I got three good reports.

The picture above and today’s header both show Purple Cone Flowers.  The Purple Cone Flower is a composite flower and is composed of disk flowers, the orange petals in the center, and ray flowers, the pink petals radiating from around the bottom of the ray flowers.  Cone Flowers are members of the Sunflower family.  They produce heads that often appear to be a single flower even though hundreds of individual flowers form the flowerlike head.

The weather on Tuesday was very nice, so Anne and I went for a bike ride in the Park.  We were rolling along the bike path, when a woman excitedly flagged us down.  She pointed out the Red-Tailed Hawk, pictured below.  It was in a pine tree and was being harassed by smaller birds, Red Winged Blackbirds, Starlings and Grackles.  We also saw a Green Heron and a few Great White Egrets.  We got fifteen miles.