Getting ready for Washington

I'm off to Washington in a week. The build-up is very exciting, although calling and sending e-mails to senators' schedulers to try to set up appointments is not all that thrilling. I've been fairly good at it, making sure I get the calls in and the follow-up done. I've now had to hand the leftover following up with others as I'm pretty sure I won't be able to finish up this week.
In painting, I'm still in a series of trees. I should say it's a series of a tree - a very specific chestnut tree that I took a photo of last year in Montenegro, in what looked like an abandonned chestnut orchard, near the Lake Skadar. The first in the series is very realistic and the others get less and less so as I worked more from memory and less from the photo. I also imagined different seasons, or no season, just the form on colored background.
My medical check-ups have been good. That back-ache back in December set off a search. First came a sonogram to make sure it wasn't my kidneys. It wasn't, but my spleen was enlarged. For that, I saw a hemotologist at the Salpétrière hospital who ordered more complete blood work specifically to look for the hairy-cell marker, and everything came back fine -- no marker. She also ordered a scan to see if there was anything in addition to the spleen to look into. The scan seems fine. Through it I now know that my shoulder and arm are sore because of tendonitis in my shoulder and that is being taken care of. There are some glands behind the left breast which led to a mammogram ahead of schedule, but all seems okay, there, too. So, all is good.
What else has been going on? I've been to Paris almost enough to warrent using a weekly pass! The library on Tuesdays, no hikes recently, but I did some envelope stuffing at the AAWE last Wednesday.
This coming week, I have the library on Tuesday, followed by an AARO board meeting which I will have to leave early to return to the library for movie night. Then, on Wednesday evening, there's the AARO tax seminar. Thursday and Friday, there's the STCFrance and TAC Content Strategy forum. Saturday morning I leave for Washington.
What's really hard, though, is coming tomorrow. Our friend and neighbor, Christine, died last week and her funeral is tomorrow. She wasn't well and this time she wasn't getting better. I saw her a few weeks ago as she was coming home from treatment and thought that she looked especially gaunt because she had just had the treatment, but I guess it was more than that. I feel very sad. I feel hurt for Jacques, Julien and Emmanuel. And for Ken and Sandy, who became their close friends, and on to the Rodewalds and Shappirs.