Three Beautiful Things 08-17-2026: Christy Heads to Carol and Paul's, Big Pharma Harmless Phone Farce, Canadian Football League Connections

 1. At about 1:00 this afternoon, Carol rocketed up to the Shoshone Medical Center and picked up Christy. Yes, you read that right. Today the hospital discharged Christy and she will continue her rehabilitation at the rehab center in Smelterville, starting on Wednesday. On Wednesday, she will go over what the PT staff will have laid out are the goals and the plan for the next stage of her rehab. In the meantime, Christy will exercise her legs by walking with her walker in Carol and Paul's house (where she is staying now) and do exercises the physical therapy staff has given her to do at home. 

2. So that Christy could secure a new prescription drug on a free 30 day trial basis, I spent forty minutes or so, in a pharmaceutical farce of sorts, working with Carly, the Yoke's pharmacist, who authored none of the farce, and then calling a helpful representative at Squibb Pharmaceutical Company who asked me the right questions and then pushed the right keys on her computer to get the free trial card activated and processed. 

I managed not to get frustrated and to remain jolly As I endured recorded corporate messages, the options trees ("if you are a medical provider, push 2"), having to answer questions spoken to me by a robot, and eventually getting to talk with the human rep, I managed not to get frustrated and to remain jolly by imagining myself as The Dude ("this aggression will not stand, Squibb"), playing it cool, and trusting that I would get back my rug -- er -- I mean I would secure Christy's pills. 

And I did. 

3. It's not every day that telephone conversation with Debbie sends me onto the World Wide Web looking up connections between the Canadian Football League and Wallace, Idaho and also Whitworth College, but that's what happened today. When I looked into former Whitworth head football coach Hugh Campbell's extraordinary success coaching the CFL's Edmonton Eskimos (FIVE Grey Cups), somehow that led me to check up on some people I really enjoyed at Whitworth during the years of Hugh Campbell's tenure and it looked to me like they are living happy lives and so I had the sparkly feelings that come with combining late 1970s Whitworth nostalgia with the uplifting realities of the people I enjoyed doing well in the present.