Huffman Coding

When you head out to a destination and realize you’ve forgotten something, how far away from home do you have to be before you don’t bother to turn around?

For our family, its about two miles.

As I mentioned a month and a half ago, Chris was due to have the stent from her last procedure removed before we went to Vietnam.  So we left for Indianapolis Thursday night, and just as we were about to enter the freeway we realized we forgot to grab the GPS.  Since this was the third time we’ve done this, we decided to wing it.

As we crossed the state border, Chris wanted to have her final meal and she chose Cracker Barrel, the chain restaurant where the gift shop commemorating your meal is larger than the dining area itself.  The hostesses asked that quaint 20th century question we don’t hear in Ohio anymore: “Smoking or Non-?”

My family and I want to thank Ohio voters for deciding years ago to make restaurants non-smoking, but it seems smokers on the western edge of the state must drive to the nearest restaurant in Indiana so they can light up while dining.  The restaurant just reeked even in the non-smoking section.  Even I, who have no sense of smell, nearly gagged.

After dinner we headed to the hotel.  We have to stay overnight because the procedures are always early in the morning and we are so far away from the specialist.  My wife intended to stay at the same hotel as the first trip, but we accidentally ended up with reservations at different location of the chain.  We had the new address, but no map to find the place we’d never been to.  By sheer luck Chris saw the street name on a highway exit sign. I suppose my wife’s GPS would have been handy.

The wired Internet connection in the room, while complimentary, was non-functional.  The blue Ethernet cable jutting out of the wall was just there to taunt me.  I’m sure it was karma’s way of telling me just to go to bed.  We had gotten there late in the evening and we had to get up at 4:50am anyway for the morning procedure.

All the AC outlets in the hotel room were underpowered.  Before going to bed, I plugged in my cell phone charger and my phone’s display would continually alternate every 3 seconds between “Charger Connected” an “Charger Disconnected.”  Since it bleeped for every state change, I couldn’t charge the phone and still get a good night’s sleep. In the morning, the underpowered outlets would not heat up Chris’s curlers.  We left before the continental breakfast opened at 6am.

Without the GPS, I guessed how to get from the new hotel to the hospital. I guessed wrong so I had to stop for directions after going the wrong direction on a road. The gas station graveyard employees didn’t know exactly where it was, but they pointed me in the right direction.

Chris’s operation was uneventful, but they wanted to monitor her afterward for several hours, most of which she slept off while I sat in the recovery room’s little chair reading Newsweek.  By midday she was allowed to eat ice chips.  My wife would ask for a crushed ice chip and five seconds later, after I had chance to put down my magazine and scoop up an ice cube from the Styrofoam cup into a spoon, she’d be back asleep.

Before Chris was discharged mid-afternoon, the surgeon stopped by for a few words.  It had taken him only 4 minutes to take the stent out.  Before she went under he had given Chris the option to replace it with a larger stent that would have to be removed in another four months.

Chris declined. I’m sure she realized that would have meant that we would have had to forget to bring the GPS to Indianapolis a fourth time.