morrowlife

Here are some roses whose name I actually know: Rainbow Sherbet.  I think these blossoms are beautiful, but the interesting thing is that the red and yellow blossom there on the bottom left is on the same plant as the purple and white ones.  They have some amazingly beautiful, award-winning roses in the rose garden here.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPad-cam (a first!), taken at the City of Hope’s rose garden, and part of my famous Garden series.

Not a lot of health news today.  We didn’t go to the clinic, LRN4 took her pills on schedule, she didn’t walk up any stairs, and nothing scary happened.  That’s the definition of a perfect day as far as I’m concerned.

LRN4 did get some exercise today, though.  Since we expect to go home in a few days (hopefully!), we went to IKEA and spent a few hours buying some things we need for the house.  Unbelievably, there’s no IKEA in Las Vegas!  All my Loyal Readers should write their congressman immediately and demand that one be built.  Letters to Santa Claus on this topic are also encouraged.  And are likely to be just as effective.

Anyway.  We had a nice time wandering around the store and buying the things we needed, along with several things we didn’t really need but wanted anyway.  We topped it off with a 50-cent hot dog and dollar ice cream cone for me.  LRN4 still isn’t supposed to eat restaurant food due to her low-bacteria diet, and we wisely decided that an IKEA hot dog wasn’t a good place to stretch the rules, so she didn’t get anything.  But it was awfully nice of her to encourage me to get one.  It tasted good and was worth every cent it cost!

After we got back to the Village, we had a delicious lunch (WAY better than an IKEA hot dog!) and then went back out for me to get a badly-needed haircut.  My head feels way better.  I mentioned to the nice lady barber than I now gauge my need for a haircut by how long my eyebrows have grown.  It’s tough getting old.  She also mentioned what a pretty color my hair is – such a nice blend between brown and platinum blond.  Sigh.

I didn’t really start working on my iOS app until the evening, other than some study and preparation for adding the security feature, which I plan to incorporate tomorrow.  Something big did happen today, though – LRN2 finished the XML file he’s been working on!  I had to massage it a bit to incorporate a couple of late format changes I hadn’t told him about and replace some special characters with their XML replacements.  Then I ran it through an online XML checker, found a single small error (way to go, LRN2!), and stuck it in the app.  It works!  One thing I really need to do is find a way to verify it matches the online version perfectly.  Don’t know how I’ll get that done yet.

In the meantime, LRN31 got registered with my beta testing app installation website, so I’ll push another build tomorrow morning and get it out to her.  LRN3 is also working on getting set up to run the app – we’re having problems with his iPad for some reason – so I’ll get him definitely included in tomorrow’s build as well.

And that’s about it for the day.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: cheeseburger assault!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s one more of the famous City of Hope roses – the star rose!  Actually, I seriously doubt that’s its name, but it ought to be, don’t you agree, Loyal Readers?  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken here at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Garden series.

Pretty good day today.  LRN29 was here, as predicted.  She was kind of sad to leave because we don’t think we’ll be here next Tuesday – at least we hope we won’t – so we won’t be getting together for our regular Tuesday morning get-togethers.  We’re sorry to bring those visits to an end too, but still want to go home.  I’m sure my Loyal Readers understand.  But we will definitely miss LRN29’s visits.  Also John’s frequent Sunday evening visits.

On the other hand, we’re looking forward to hanging out with Ken and Melanie again too.  I guess we can’t have everything.

Got a call from LRN9 today and had a nice chat.  Also had a nice long talk with LRN23.  Did I miss anybody?  Oh, yeah.  Talked with my dad.  Talked to LRN8 a day or two ago.  Talked with my mom sometime in the last couple of days – I need to call her again tomorrow.  Probably some other people too.  I appreciate all the calls.

LRN4 is doing pretty well today.  I think she may be starting to get a rash on her scalp, but she’s otherwise just the same as she was yesterday.  Which is not the best, but it’s far from the worst.  Did I mention yesterday that her doctor addressed her large weight loss during that past ten days by instructing her not to exercise?  I tried to get him to tell me not to exercise as well, but no such luck.  But I didn’t exercise today anyway, out of sympathy with LRN4.

Oh, I spoke with LRN1 today too.  And LRN2 yesterday.  I’ll also talk to LRN2 again tomorrow.  That’s a prediction.

Made a little more progress on the app today.  I cleaned up the development and distribution certificates and improved the presentation of text fields – capitalizing the first letters and making the return key navigate from one field to the next.  Not much, but it was something.  I also started the research for adding password verification.  I think I’ll implement that tomorrow.  I got LRN1 to download and have a look at the app.  He suggested the text field cleanups – thanks, LRN1!  As soon as LRN2 gets me the updated standards XML file, I’ll get a copy to LRN31.  I really want her to look at it.

Didn’t buy anything from Amazon today.  But I always appreciate it when my Loyal Readers click on one of my links and buy something.  Not that anybody ever has, of course.  But we did come close to buying something from Amazon today: LRN4 needed an Indian spice called [amazon asin=B000JSQ66U&text=garam marsala] for something she’s planning to make this weekend.  Strangely, she couldn’t find it at Walmart.  I would never have guessed.  She and LRN29 were looking it up on amazon.com when it suddenly occurred to me that I had seen a little Indian restaurant and grocery store very nearby.  So we got in the car and went hunting.  Found the place, went in, and got exactly what she needed for a few bucks.  Also got a can of [amazon asin=B004XNJI9O&text=Milo], which I love.  It’s like malted hot chocolate – delicious and highly recommended.  Anyway, we also ordered a lunch for me there, which was delicious.  It was huge and came with an entree, nan bread, soup, some sauces, and dessert.  I don’t know what any of it really was or had in it, but it was delicious all the same.  LRN29 is currently limiting her dietary choices with great success and LRN4 isn’t supposed to eat out, which explains why I was the only one to get anything.  I felt kind of bad eating all that great stuff in front of them, but I somehow managed to ease my conscience and finish my meal.

Nothing else to report today.  So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: toilet-dwelling ferret!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s yet another one of the beautiful roses found here at the City of Hope.  I don’t seem to ever get tired of these things.  I’m not sure I can say the same for my Loyal Readers.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope’s rose garden, and part of my famous Garden series.

We had a pretty good weekend.  We did very little, other than going in for chemo, working, eating, and sleeping.  That’s not a bad thing.  Our brother-in-law John came over again on Sunday evening, which was nice, as always.  He and LRN29 have been absolutely wonderful to us.  Very grateful.

Day 10 of chemo is over!  Other than the twice-daily dose of the hyper-expensive other chemo drug LRN4 is taking, she’s done with chemo until the end of this month.  Doesn’t sound like a really long time, does it?

We saw the doctor today and got some great news, some good news, and some less great news.  Fortunately, no terrible news.  So first the less great news: as mentioned in the previous paragraph, LRN4’s next round of chemo should start during the last couple of days of this month.  She’ll have her next bone marrow biopsy on about the 28th, followed by the start of chemo round two whether she’s in remission or not.

Now the good news.  There have been no blasts in LRN4’s blood for the last five or six days.  They were at 6% two days before we started chemo and 8% on the first day, but they dropped quickly and are gone for now.  That doesn’t mean there’s nothing bad in her bone marrow, of course, but it’s certainly not a bad sign, is it?

Other good news: we have a plan.  At least a preliminary one, anyway.  After round two of chemo, we get the next biopsy at the end of September.  Assuming she’s in remission, we start the DLI transplants at the beginning of October and have them once a month for about five months.  They’re all outpatient treatments, but we think we’ll have to be in the Village for a week or two after the first one at least.  If she tolerates them well, we may be able to spend most of the time at home.

Which leads us to the great news: if things continue to go well, we think we’ll be going home a week from today!  There will be numerous trips back to Duarte, of course, including one or two a week for quite a while, but that’s okay.  I’ll make those trips if it means we can live at home.

Everything is very preliminary and subject to massive change, of course, but we’re pretty excited right now.

We also had a frank talk with the doctor about LRN4’s prognosis.  We realize and accept that the odds changed pretty significantly when LRN4’s relapse happened.  The numbers aren’t overly encouraging, but they’re way better than a lot of cancer patients are facing and they’re even better than we were guessing.  So we’re working with what we have and moving forward.  Press on regardless!

Made some excellent progress on the iOS app.  As discussed in Friday’s post, I got the basic functionality working on the iPad on Saturday and got a good start on the iPhone version.  I think I finished the iPhone side today and I have a functioning, fairly solid app.  Of course, it only contains about 50% of the functionality it’s ultimately supposed to have, but things are actually going well.  Will I have it ready for market by the time we leave the Village?  Doubtful, assuming the above predictions are true.  But I still think I have a good chance of making it by the end of the month.  Much hard work will be required, though.  I don’t think I like hard work.

We watched a fun movie tonight – [amazon asin=B002ZG9864&text=Knight and Day], starring the truly bizarre Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, whose bizarreness quotient I am unacquainted with.  In spite of Mr. Cruise’s oddness, it was a fun, mindless action movie.  Recommended.

And it’s time to get ready for bed.  We need to be up early to greet LRN29 and we need our beauty rest.  So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: ostrich-like cow!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a customized manhole cover.  I’m displaying this in honor of LRN2’s birthday!  He’s a fan of Steam-powered games, you know.  This Great Art is humbly submitted as my entry for their new logo design.  Not that they’re looking for one, of course.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken here at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Machinery series.

Happy birthday to LRN2!  He’s no longer a teenager.  In fact, there are no more teenagers left in our little family and there will never be another.  That’s kind of a bittersweet thing, actually.  It was wonderful watching the kids grow and mature.  There’s more growth to watch in the future, of course, but a milestone has been passed.

However, there are grandchildren – not only LRN12, but also whatever others may come along.  And I certainly hope there will eventually be more.  Although LRN12 is pretty great on her own.

Wonders of WordPress today, by the way.  It’s actually Saturday evening as I write this.  I got busy and forgot.  What was I busy with?  Why, celebrating LRN2’s birthday, of course!  Well, no, not really.  We talked with him today and swapped some congratulatory texts and emails.  But that was about it.  He and LRN1 did some celebrating themselves – they tell me they went to see the recent [amazon asin=B00AZMFK3K&text=Star Trek Movie] at their local dollar theater.  They both said it was good.  I’ll have to check it out when it comes around for free.

LRN2 also reported an enjoyable birthday dinner with his maternal grandparents.  Thanks, maternal grandparents!

Otherwise, it’s been a good day.  LRN4 continues to do well.  As of Saturday night, she’s completed 8 of 10 chemo treatments.  Her stomach is doing well.  She continues to lose a kilogram or so of weight pretty much every day.  We don’t consider this to be a good thing.  Significant muscle loss happened during previous rounds of chemo and had been finally noticeably improving just before her relapse.  So we’re pretty sure it’s happening again.  The encouraging thing is that we know it will come back, eventually.

LRN4 also reports that her fingertips are getting more red and painful.  Not good.  We’ll talk to our doctor about it on Monday – I think she can make it until then.  If not, we have options.

We sent away to our insurance company’s mail-order pharmacy for some of LRN4 prescriptions today.  Our insurance gives very good coverage for prescriptions from local pharmacies for the first three months.  After that, the prices go way up if you don’t start using their mail-order service.  Now’s our time for that.  The one little complication is that we keep having changes made and I wouldn’t like to waste too much money on expensive prescriptions that we end up only needing for a few days.  Fortunately, the total price of the four 90-day prescriptions I ordered today is less than $6.50.  So we’ll be okay on those no matter what, I think.

My work progress has actually picked up quite a bit, I’m delighted to report.  I gave the project some additional thought and realized I had added a level of complication that simply wasn’t necessary.  So I took that out, had a bit of a consultation session with LRN1 to figure out how to unbreak a thing or two I had broken, and I’m back in business.  There are still lots of functionality issues to address, but the iPad version is working well enough for LRN31 to do some beta testing, just to see if it does what she had hoped.  I might be able to rope in a few other beta testers soon as well – principally LRN8, if she’s interested.  I’ll contact LRN31 on Sunday to start going through the work needed to sign her up.

Oh, I also have the iPhone version of the app about 60% functional!  That implementation is much easier to do, being less complex visually, so I expect to have it fully functional by Monday – or at least equally functional to the iPad version, anyway.  I’m taking Sunday off and will work on my cryptography class instead.

Did I mention that LRN1 has a new job?  Well, he does.  He’s joining a small iOS and Android development firm in Denver.  He starts in a little bit more than a week.  I’m really excited for him – I’m sure he’ll love Denver and I’m also pretty sure he’ll love the job.  It’s a very small company, so he’ll get a lot of visibility.  I’m sure he’ll thrive there.

The response to my video mentioned a couple days ago has been fairly large.  Unfortunately, I took my blank DVDs home when we overnighted in Las Vegas last weekend, but I can get more.  So for those Loyal Readers who are coming here soon, I’ll get something burned before you get here.  For others, I’ll probably do it when we get home.  Don’t expect much – it’s just a whole bunch of photos including LRN4 – great ones, good ones, bad ones, sharp ones, fuzzy ones, etc. – and some music.  I didn’t even do the Ken Burns effect.  Although I guess I could modify it to try that.  Might work on that.  Might not.  I kind of like what I have now.

Anyway.  We ran out today for a tiny bit of shopping.  I got a couple pairs of jeans, LRN4 got some shoes, and I got my very own [amazon asin=B007X5RERW&text=power squid]!  I’ve wanted one of those things for years.  They’re way better than a power strip (of which I seemingly have dozens) because you can use every outlet, no matter how big your wall warts are.  LRN4 noticed it on one of the junk tables at Ross for only about ten bucks.  Its packaging was a bit torn in one spot, which possibly explains the low, low price, but the squid itself is cosmetically perfect and presumably functionally perfect as well.  I’ll plug it in soon and make sure.  In any case, I’m inordinately excited to have it.

We’ve been so frustrated with the terrible, horrible, unreliable Wifi service here at the hospital that we decided to go to the local public library for a couple hours today, just for their free Wifi.  As a bonus, they have actual tables that both of us can sit at and use our computers and even have a reference book or two open at the same time.  Their Wifi is kind of slow, but it didn’t constantly disconnect us for 5-20 minutes at a time, so the experiment was a great success.  We’ll be going back.  Besides, it’s also kind of good to get out of the house to work every once in a while.  At home, we have an office we can use for working and a living room, bedroom, exercise room, kitchen, dining room, garage, and yard we can use for everything else.  Here, not so much.  So it’s nice to have someplace else to go.

And that’s it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: fugitive kangaroo!

See you on Monday.

Here’s a gnarly old tree here on the City of Hope campus.  Not a very attractive background on this Great Art, but I think the beautiful tree makes up for that.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Garden and Architecture series.

Yeah, it’s lame, but that is technically architecture there in the background.  Even if it does look a bit like a trailer.  Trailers have architecture too, right?

Pretty good day today.  LRN4 had her sixth chemo infusion this evening.  This one took about two and a half hours, as opposed to yesterday’s treatment  that got done in a little more than an hour.  We just can’t predict these things, can we?  So we had a bit of a late dinner – chicken fricassee.  It was delicious!  I’m not sure it really agreed with LRN4, though – she’s feeling a bit under the weather tonight.  Not that I’m worried, but I don’t like it one bit.  She’s also starting to get a rash on her fingertips that’s similar to the one she got last time she was taking Nexavar.  That was a bit of a nasty side effect that we don’t want to repeat.  If she needs the drug at the current dose, so be it.  Her recovery is more important than some discomfort now.  But we’re going to talk to the doctor tomorrow and see if there’s something extra or different we should be doing, as there frequently is.

The app continues to frustrate me.  I would say I made no progress at all today, but I did find two or three things that won’t work.  So I feel a bit more like Thomas Edison but I don’t feel like a developer who has an app that will be ready for sale in another couple of weeks.  Very frustrating.  Tomorrow’s another day, though.

And I’m way later getting to bed than I should be, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: vandalizing goat!

See you tomorrow.