There is a resident named Marie that yells every obscenity in the book at me every time she sees me. She even knows my name. Whenever she sees me she starts out, “Steve, get your %^&$#@ @#% and furthermore #$%^#%^ $%^ $% #&$# % ^&$# %^&$@” and every other word cannot be repeated here due to standards of decency. I have no idea what I did to her to deserve that.

Did I ever tell you about the time I saved Parklands Nursing Center $500,000? The date was May 2nd, 2004, and Parklands was actually called the “Alachua Nursing Center” back then. I went to ANC with a box of Ritz Crackers that day, for a resident named Elijah Brown. He hadn’t been doing very well. I think he was 90 years old – he was slowing down and not eating well, and I wanted to fatten him up a bit.

I Hate Epics. You know, those movies that seem to go on forever...Apocalypse Now, Gladiator, Gone With the Wind. Wake me up when it’s over. Funny thing is, that's what I've been telling people for years. Then when I thought about it, two of my favorite movies are epics.

We recently lost a resident at Parklands named Ada Thurston, and I was thinking about her today. Ada was shameless – if she loved you, she was going to let the world know. Every time I would see her, the first thing she would shout was, “I LOVVVVVVVE YOU!” And she wouldn’t stop there. She would take my hand and kiss it, and say “I missed you so much!”

The phone rang last night and the callerID said “James King”. I hadn’t the slightest idea who that was. But when Allison answered and the voice said, “This is Jimmy from Claxton”, I think we both knew immediately the reason for the call. My friend Hugh had died, a couple months short of his 94th birthday. I met him the very first day I went to the nursing home, over 12 years ago now. He was the sole remaining resident that I had known from the very beginning.