morrowlife

Here’s George Washington’s headquarters at Valley Forge. That may be the very table where George himself worked.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken last winter at Valley Forge, and part of my famous Architecture and Workbench series.

Busy couple of days. LRN4 has been doing very well these last few days. We’re ready for the next round of chemo to start on Monday and to continue in this status for the next few months. We’re anxious to get back on track towards a cure, of course, but we’re assiduously pressing on with what we’ve got.

Got a text from LRN23 a couple days ago, wondering if I would make him a quick app. Worked on it yesterday and today and have it essentially done.  I need probably a few more hours tomorrow and should be ready to submit it to the App Store by the end of the day. It doesn’t do a whole lot, but I think it looks nice and it will be a nice thing for LRN23 to give to customers and colleagues. I’m pretty pleased with it.

Nothing else going on. LRN5 and her family get here tomorrow. Then LRN1 gets here on Sunday and LRN3 arrives on Monday. The Thanksgiving week is on us!  Can’t wait for everyone’s arrival.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this rare toilet news: insulting toilet freshener!

See you on Monday.

Here’s LRN4 turning her back on our little Village apartment for the last time on Monday of this week.  Well, for the last time this month, anyway.  We expect to be back there in October, possibly for another extended stay.  Maybe even much longer than our previous one.  Although it’s almost certain we won’t be back in good old Number 141.  For all its (numerous) flaws, it was a good temporary home to us.  We were happy there, and that’s what matters.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken Monday morning of this week at the Parsons Village on the City of Hope campus, and part of my famous Architecture and Garden series.

Yeah, I know I play kind of fast and loose with my famous series.  There’s a building and some plants in that Great Art.  That’s architecture and a garden, as far as this blog is concerned.

Pretty good day, in some respects.  Pretty trying in others.  The good – LRN4 is feeling better this evening than she was this morning.  The trying – she spent 11 hours in the emergency room getting a couple of blood transfusions.  Our doctor couldn’t get her scheduled into the outpatient clinic, so that’s where he told us to go.  It was no fun.  After a couple hours, she convinced me to go home and work on my iOS app.  I reluctantly did.  Things worked out for her and I made some real progress.  Lots more to do, but I think I have a good start on tomorrow’s work.  Might even get a report or two generated tomorrow.  As usual, the iPad version is giving me troubles – that stupid split-view controller is really hard to do right.

Anyway, LRN4’s also feeling pretty good tonight because she slept very well last night and then had time for a couple naps while she was hooked up to the blood machine.  That’s apparently the ticket – frequent naps.  I’ll have to look into that myself as well.

We had a very late dinner tonight, since we didn’t get home until after 9:00.  We were both very ready to eat.  After dinner, LRN4 suggested we have some [amazon asin=B003KYSLMW&text=ice cream] out on the deck.  It was really pleasant.  The hospital is on the far east side of town, and we noticed that a weather front had just come through when we got outside.  The front hadn’t arrived at our house yet when we got home, and it passed through while we were outside.  The temperature dropped by probably ten degrees (all the way down to 90 or so!) and there was a nice breeze.  So we enjoyed our ice cream even more.

There’s a bit of work to do on the deck, by the way.  A couple of plants are dead – although the overwhelming majority are extremely health and have grown very nicely while we were away – and most of the beautiful, dramatic [amazon asin=B001RTG8U4&text=lighting] is burned out.  Also, we’ve decided the [amazon asin=B005J0FYHU&text=lemon tree] is in a very bad place and we want to swap it with the fencepost cactus.  So I sent an email to our landscaping guy this evening and we hope to see him in the next week or so.

And it’s late already, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: polluting monkey!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a head above a doorway.  Kind of creepy, huh?  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Bryn Athyn in Pennsylvania last May, and part of my famous Statue and Architecture series.

Because statues attached to walls are architecture, right?

Very good day today.  My dad is here and we had a great visit today.  Didn’t do too much – we mostly hung around in the Village.  He and I did go out to the post office to pick up the mail, to the pharmacy to pick up a couple of prescriptions for LRN4, and to the car wash to clean up my filthy, disgusting car.  Now it’s a clean, beautiful car.  But in a day or two, it’ll be filthy and disgusting again.  Such is the way of cars.

We all went on a nice long walk around the hospital grounds, including up to the sixth floor of the hospital to have a look at the view from the lobby.  Enjoyable walk and a beautiful view.

We had lots of excellent conversation, a couple of outstanding meals made with loving care by LRN4, and a thoroughly pleasant day.  There’s one more to come tomorrow, and then he goes back to Las Vegas tomorrow night or on Sunday – I’m not sure which.  In either case, our plan is to get together one more time at our house on Monday afternoon/evening, after which he’ll go home on Tuesday.  We’ll be very sorry to see him leave.

LRN4 continues to feel pretty well.  She’s definitely not as strong as usual, but she’s hanging in there.  No new problems, no new issues, no muss, no fuss.  That’s a very good status, if you ask me.

No work on the app today.  We had company!  No work is likely tomorrow either.  I stayed up until 11:30 last night finishing up the security feature, so I’m giving myself a couple days off.  I think we can all agree it’s for the best.  I’m still working like to dog to release on schedule at the end of the month.

And that’s about it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: watermelon heist!

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.

Here’s the view across the way from our apartment here in the Village during the daytime.  As opposed to the nighttime view.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in front of our apartment here at the Village, and part of my famous Architecture and Garden series.

Fine day.  LRN4 had another good one.  We slept way in this morning, throwing both breakfast and lunch off schedule.  It was worth it.  She took the afternoon walk on her own today – I was busy with my programming – and she reports she’s building her stair climbs back up.  Before her weekend with the lumbar puncture-induced headache, we were climbing the thirty-step staircase seven or eight times every day.  After the headache, she really struggled to make it two or three times.  Today she built it back up to four.  I’m also delighted to report that she’s feeling antsy to go home.  Ergo, she’s feeling much better.  But she’s also getting really sick of having numb feet and no hair.  There’s kind of a helpless feeling sometimes for both of us.  But we’re making progress.

Made some progress on the app again today.  That’s incredibly, frustratingly slow too.  I got one important thing working right today and was making some adjustments to some things during a consultation with LRN1.  He suggested a basic change to the page layout architecture to make some things better.  I don’t want to go back to fundamental things again on this app, but he’s right – it won’t look and work right unless I fix it.  So I’ll tackle that tomorrow.  Then I’ll finish the stuff I started today.  After I get that part working, I think it will be ready to share with a couple of alpha testers.  I’ve lined up LRN31, who suggested the app in the first place, for that.  I’m excited for her – an actual teacher – to have a look and tell me what works and what doesn’t.  My new goal is to have it available for download before Labor Day, which means I really want to have it submitted to Apple by the time we leave here.  That’s coming up very quickly.  Crunch time!  I guess I actually need to get productive on this thing.  Yikes.

Watched another movie tonight – [amazon asin=B001FB55MG&text=Bedtime Stories].  Cute movie.  I’d seen it before, but enjoyed it this time too.  I could go either way with Adam Sandler, though.  He can be funny at times, but he can also be just plain annoying.  Especially when he does his stupid voice.  Just shut up and act, Sandler!  But this movie was okay.  He only did the stupid, irritating, unfunny voice a few times.

Rousing recommendation there, huh?  Did any of my Loyal Readers see this movie?  Did you enjoy it?

Nothing else new today.  So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: pickle-related assault!

See you tomorrow.