American in Spain

My father let me sleep in a little on Monday morning to recover from being sick and not having slept much the previous night. After a shower, I met the others downstairs for breakfast. I wasn’t quite up to a full Irish breakfast, but I managed to eat some eggs and toast. I was, however, ready for my first day of Irish golf on the Ballybunion Old Course.

We had a teams rematch between the “Old Toms” and the “Young Toms” to play that day. Originally scheduled for the day before on the Cashen Course, the competition had been moved forward a day so that I could participate. Back in 2005, the Old Toms won, and this time the Young Toms were out for vengeance!
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We had this golf trip planned for three years, and then something came up that nearly caused me to not be able to go. My original flights to Ireland were scheduled on Friday, June 10. The Friday before, June 3, we were told that The Procedure would be scheduled for Friday the 10th, so I obviously couldn’t make my June 10th flight early that morning. I bought tickets to go early on Sunday morning. I’d miss a round of golf on Sunday, but meet up with the boys and continue the rest of the trip as planned.

Then, the Wednesday before, the nurse informed us that the doctors at the hospital had changed schedules and we wouldn’t be able to have The Procedure until Saturday. You see, this particular medical procedure is the only one that a doctor in Spain can refuse to perform on a patient; it’s legal, but not all doctors will do it. This pretty much destroyed my chance of going to Ireland on Sunday, since Marga would need my emotional support all Saturday night and Sunday. On Wednesday afternoon, I wrote to my friends and told them I wouldn’t be able to make it to Ireland. I was so devastated that I immediately broke into a fever and cold sweats, which put me in bed two days straight.
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On June 2, 2011, we went into Santander to visit a private obstetrician, the same guy we visited with the first pregnancy. His professionalism and caring way of treating us impressed us both times we’ve seen him. About halfway through the sonogram, he said, “I’m afraid I don’t have good news for you.” He took the time to carefully explain all the developmental deformations the fetus had, listed the many possible causes, and described the sum of deformations with a phrase I will never forget: “incompatible with life”.
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We had some really nice weather last weekend. On Sunday we were able to take Nora to the beautiful nearby Laredo beach for the first time this year. I’m pretty certain that she didn’t remember her visits to the beach last year. Walking barefoot in the pristine white sand was an immediate delight for her. There were a few times, however, when she got into a region with a little shell and stick debris where she froze up and insisted on being carried rather than risking a stick to the sole.
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Theories about information flow are particularly fun when they arrive to your brain through the very mechanisms they are explaining. Recently several of my Facebook friends, a couple people I follow on Twitter, and two of my favorite podcasts started reporting on a new concept from Eli Pariser called The Filter Bubble. The general idea goes like this: as search engines and social media sites use smarter and smarter algorithms to better serve what they determine our needs to be, the less and less we are exposed to opposing viewpoints.
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