morrowlife

Here’s a statue of a lion.  As I recall, it’s an ancient Egyptian lion.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken last May at Bryn Athyn in Pennsylvania, and part of my famous Statue series.

I really like statues.

No post yesterday – forgot again.  I think it would be a good idea if I forgot less.  On a positive note, I’ve been remembering to post here way more frequently since LRN4 got out of the hospital and I invited my Loyal Readers to check here for her progress updates.  So there’s that.

And speaking of LRN4, let’s update her status, shall we?  She’s doing well.  We had a very good weekend.  Nothing much is new.  We spent the weekend without any clinic visits – nice! – and pretty much just relaxed.  Our Monday visit with the doctor was also good.  LRN4’s blood counts were still above the minimums, so that makes about a week and a half since her last infusion!  That’s unprecedented.  We think the string will be broken this coming Friday, though.  LRN4 has another lumbar puncture and chemo treatment that day, and they won’t puncture you if you’re platelet count is below 100.  As of Monday, it was above the minimum of 25, but way below 100.  The likelihood of it going up to 100 on its own is non-zero, of course, but I don’t think it’s very high yet.  I hope to be very pleasantly surprised when she gets her next blood test on Thursday, but I’m not counting on it.  Doesn’t matter, though.  Transfusions are part of the deal here.

We had a nice day today.  LRN29 and my cousin Betsy were here, LRN29 making her customary Tuesday morning visit and Betsy coming to go to the Gamble house in Pasadena with us.  We had a very pleasant time there.  The Gamble house was built in 1908 in the Craftsman style, but it doesn’t look like any other Craftsman bungalow I’ve ever seen.  For one thing, all the other ones are tiny little cute houses in tiny little cute neighborhoods.  This one is 7,000 square feet on a huge lot with extremely luxurious design, construction, and appointments.  It really is beautiful and was definitely worth touring, even if our docent was a grouchy old lady who acted like she would have been much happier if we hadn’t intruded on her reverie.

Why do grouchy old ladies become docents anyway?  It’s obvious they resent their customers, so why do they bother?  Maybe it gives them the feeling of owning whatever it is they’re docenting on or maybe it just makes them feel needed or something.  Whatever the cause, it certainly makes visits to their pride and joy much less pleasant.  Let this be a lesson for all of us.  Repeat after me: if we decide to be docents when we get old, we promise to be gracious, pleasant, and welcoming to all who honor us with their visits.  Now doesn’t that make you feel better?

Before the tour, we were invited to sit on the house’s beautiful wood deck to eat our picnic lunch, which we enjoyed.  We got there a little later than we had hoped, so we didn’t have time for dessert before the tour started.  Accordingly, we went back out to the patio for dessert afterwards.  Had a very nice chat and a thoroughly pleasant early afternoon.

By the way, the Gambles who lived in the Gamble house were good friends with the Proctors.  So they could afford a 7,000 square foot summer house in Pasadena.

When we got back to the Village, LRN29 left.  Betsy hung around a little while to get help with some technical stuff and then took her leave as well.  I goofed around for the rest of the day – accomplished no work.  Tomorrow is another day and I’m pretty sure it will be a productive one.  I have lots to do on my iOS app and I’m not quite sure how to do it yet, so I think I was procrastinating today.

Speaking of the app, LRN2 did a bunch of work for me today in support of the app, which I needed for this next phase I’m starting on tomorrow.  Thanks, LRN2!  So things continue to come together for the app.  Slowly.

And it’s very late, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: chip and dip assault!

See you tomorrow.

power up and down for the blu-ray player

Here’s the big fountain out in front of the Main Medical building here at the City of Hope.  Check out that fleet of wheelchairs there in the background.  They mean business around here.  Great art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope in Duarte, California, and part of my famous Statue and Garden series.

Yes, I realize this particular fountain has been featured here before.  That was totally different, though.  That was night, this is day.  They’re as different as … umm … night and day.  Har!

Pretty view, night OR day.  But I still think those parents are taking way too many chances with that poor little kid.  Also, that woman has one leg that’s way shorter than the other.  But it’s still no excuse for child abuse.

Good day today.  I made substantial progress on my app.  Of course, nowhere near enough progress, but it’s moving forward.  I think I have the database architecture figured out and I’ve started implementing it.  I also put in a quick placeholder for the Settings/About view.  Good (but not great) progress.

LRN4 is feeling pretty well today.  We’ve increased the daily quantity of the medication that is supposed to reduce the pain in her feet.  That drug is also pretty famous for making you sleepy.  So she’s sleepy today.  And her feet hurt.  But otherwise, she’s doing great!

We watched one of our favorite movies tonight: [amazon asin=B0001WTWS8&text=My Favorite Wife].  It has Cary Grant, LRN4’s favorite actor of all time, and Irene Dunne, umm . . . an actress I like.  Not to mention Randolph Scott.  [amazon asin=B0001Z4OXS&text=Raaandooolph Scooott]!  Highly recommended.

And there’s nothing else to add today.  So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: burrito assault!

See you on Monday.

Here’s a manhole cover.  But it’s a very special manhole cover.  Check out where it’s from.  One of my favorite places!  I think that’s part of my shoe there on the bottom.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive old Minolta-cam, taken in May of 2011 during one of our great visits to Detroit, and part of my famous Vacation series.

Should I have made it part of my famous Machinery series too?  Under normal circumstances, I would, of course.  But I already have another famous series to put it in.  So maybe I won’t.

I had a much nicer camera when I took that picture, by the way.  Don’t remember why I took the old Minolta on that trip.  Must have been because it fit in a shirt pocket.  I really liked that about that camera.  Still have it, in fact.  It had kind of a low pixel count and some dead pixels, but it had a true zoom lens and halfway decent optics.  Not totally decent optics, but halfway.  On the other hand, the exclusive iPhone-cam has a great pixel count and takes pretty good pictures.  But it has no zoom lens.  But it also fits in a pocket and I always have it with me.  So I use it pretty much exclusively these days.

Anyway.  Had another good day.  We visited LRN4’s doctor, which means she also got a blood test done.  The great news is that her red cells, white cells, and platelets were all pretty good today – no blood products needed at all.  None of them are at normal levels yet, of course, but she’s going longer all the time between transfusions.  So it was a great day.  The doc tweaked a couple of medication levels – raised one and lowered another – and pretty much that was it.  She has another chemo treatment on her spine scheduled for a week from tomorrow.  Not a fun thing, but necessary.

No progress on my iOS app so far today, but I’m hoping to get some stuff done tonight.  Planning on a brief consultation with LRN1 to help me clarify my thinking – I need to figure out some architectural issues before I can make much more progress and it will be nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

And that’s about it for tonight.  More news on the app tomorrow.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: fire-alarm-triggering cow!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the button they gave LRN4 during this year’s annual Bone Marrow Transplant Reunion, held on May 10th.  She wasn’t technically in attendance, but I ran over there and had a bite to eat and looked around a bit.  They had t-shirts and buttons for all the survivors there, so I asked them for a shirt and a button for LRN4.  They obliged and marked her number of years as a survivor.  She liked it and it gave me a ton of hope and cheer to think we were on our way to her twenty-year button.  Slightly out-of-kilter Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in LRN4’s former hospital room at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Event series.

Very short shrift tonight.  I’m using the Wonders of WordPress to backdate this to Wednesday because it’s actually just a little after 1:00 AM on Thursday morning.  I sat down to write this about an hour ago, but the internet was dead (as usual), so I decided to pass the few minutes of waiting time by working on my iOS program.  Really got going and made a breakthrough!  The thing I’ve been working on for about the past four days is done.  Now on to the next huge obstacle, for which I need to come up with not only the code to make it work, but also the theoretical model for it.  It’s going to get interesting tomorrow.

LRN4 has been working on learning Adobe Illustrator and producing a logo for the app.  She has a design degree, after all, so I’ve hired her as the official Business Casual Software chief designer.  For no money, of course.  But she does get to keep half of all the sales.  I’m not sure whether she would be better off just getting paid by the hour, but I haven’t made that an option.

I’ve contracted with LRN2 to produce some XML files for the app, or more likely a single gigantic XML file.  I need to transform data from either an existing PDF file or an HTML file out there on the internets.  That kind of work is right up LRN2’s alley and he’s available right now, so he said he’d do it.  For money, of course.  This is a business expense.

Speaking of LRN2, he had a temp job yesterday that involved manual labor, and plenty of it.  He doesn’t seem to have enjoyed it at all.  Finish college, LRN2!  Really.  But in the meantime, congratulations for getting back into the wage-earning life.  I know you can and will succeed.

Oh, LRN4 had a good day, for all of you LRN4-tracking Loyal Readers.  We went over to the clinic this afternoon for her CT scan, which took only a couple of minutes.  That was pretty much our only excitement for the day.  We need to go out for the mail and one prescription tomorrow in addition to her clinic visit, so it should be a much zestier day.  Although today was also great, at least work-wise.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: flying squid!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a cluster of pink roses.  That’s why I’ve titled this post “Pink cluster.”  Call me a realist.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope rose garden, and part of my famous Garden series.

Maybe no more rose pictures for a while.  Although who knows.  I took a few more today while we were out walking.

No post yesterday.  I got discombobulated and forgot.  Sorry about that, Loyal Readers.

But lots of things are going on nevertheless.  The biggest news – LRN4 doesn’t have to go to the clinic every morning for a daily IV infusion anymore!  Since she got off the ‘roids a week ago, she’s been ruled healthy enough to avoid fungal infections on her own.  The doc does want her to get a quick CT scan tomorrow to make sure the previously-seen nodules on her lungs either aren’t there or at least aren’t doing anything nasty.  We’re pretty confident she’ll be fine in that area.

So we slept in this morning.  It felt great!  Got up a little after 8:00 this morning.  Did I mention it felt great?  Well, it did.  Now we’ll probably stay up way too late every night and get up way too late every morning.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  In fact, I kind of prefer it that way.  I could sleep until 8:00 every day.

And, well, that was about all the news.  So I guess lots of things aren’t really going on.  LRN4 mentioned this morning that even she can see a lot of strengthening in her arms and legs.  She is really doing well.  No new complaints, no new problems, no new nothing.  Even her poor sore feet are doing a bit better.  Her toe looks a bit better also, although that’s a very relative term.  There’s still a ways to go on that one.  Still, progress.

Didn’t do any work today.  No excuse.  I’m just a lazy programmer, I guess.  Instead, I finished the week 2 programming problem for the crypto class.  Worked on it last night until kind of late and got the first half figured out.  I got the second half working today.  I was supposed to write code to encrypt and decrypt AES ciphers, but the decryption part was the only part we really needed to use, so that’s all I’ve gotten done so far.  I’m still planning on finishing that part, but this class is taking a lot more time than I had expected.  On the positive side, I’m learning a lot more about cryptography than I knew before, and I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject.  So there’s some good and some bad.  At any rate, I’m still really enjoying it.  I just can’t let it get in the way of working for money, now can I?

So I’m planning on putting in a full day’s work tomorrow.  I have the little matter of LRN4’s CT scan to work around, but that’s manageable.  We’ve been managing around a whole lot more than that for lo these many months.  I have specific things I’m working on, which are too boring to share here, and I think I’ve been avoiding them a bit.  New stuff is hard, no?  So wish me luck tomorrow, Loyal Readers!

And that’s it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: scrounging tortoise!

See you tomorrow.