morrowlife

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 are some floating trees, all decorated for Christmas.  Extremely grainy Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken well after dark at Longwood Gardens on a snowy Christmas Eve 2012, and part of my famous Garden series.

I think those three Christmas trees there on the left might not be real trees after all, now that I look a little more closely.  As I recall, there are no pine trees normally growing on boards floating out in the middle of that pond.  But oh how beautiful that place is at Christmas.  We went there for our annual Christmas Eve outing last year.  It was cool and brisk when we got there shortly before dark.  We walked around the grounds for a while, watched the model trains running, walked through the lovely old bell tower, and bought a cup of delicious hot chocolate before going inside the conservatory for the amazing Christmas displays there.  When we got back outside, the sun had gone down and it was snowing fairly hard.  We walked around the grounds a bit and enjoyed the numerous illuminated trees and other decorations as they were gradually covered with a light coating of snow.  It was – to overuse a phrase – magical.  The perfect Christmas Eve.  The snow didn’t affect our drive home, ending the night just perfectly.  To top it off, we had LRN1 and LRN2 with us for the holidays.  Perfect.

LRN3 and LRN15 came a little bit later in the week, as we recall, making it an even more perfect week.  All we were missing was LRN5 and her family.  We got with them a few weeks later, though, so we were okay.

Had a very good day today.  LRN4 had her fifth chemo infusion this afternoon and we otherwise pretty much relaxed all day.  She’s still feeling very well and doing very well.  Also looking very well.  Things are clicking right along.

Instead of working on my job, I spent a bunch of time today making a video.  I found a bunch of pictures of LRN4 – all the pictures in my iPhoto library that include her, in fact – and generated a slideshow with some music.  It was very cathartic.  It’s about 800 MB in size, so I’m not posting it online right now, but if any Loyal Readers are interested in seeing a lot of pictures of LRN4 in various places with various family members, let me know and I’ll burn you a DVD.  There are lots of cute pictures of our kids too.

Sadly, I only have digital photos from the time we lived in Virginia and after.  We have lots of photos and slides from before then.  After we get home, I need to digitize them all.  That will be a real treasure.  Then maybe I can make an even longer slideshow!

How I love my family.  How I love my children.  How I love my wife.  This video will be a treasure to me forever.  Much more importantly, the memories represented by this video are the real treasure.  That treasure I’ll carry with me forever.

Had a nice long chat this evening with LRN23.  He’s been calling me on a very regular basis since this whole mess started nearly six months ago, for which I will always be deeply grateful.  I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that and the many other phone calls, emails, texts, blog comments, and visits we’ve received.  They truly make us feel loved.  Thank you, Loyal Readers!

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: balcony-dwelling performing donkey!

See you tomorrow.

Here are some little flowers we found somewhere around here.  I don’t think they’re in the rose garden, though.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at an undisclosed location on the City of Hope campus, and part of my famous Garden series.

In this context, “undisclosed” also means “unremembered.”

LRN4 had a very good day again today.  We got chemo infusion number four this afternoon.  It seemed to go well.  It was great being home together all day, although she and LRN29 went out shopping this morning without me.  That was okay, though.  They made the Walmart and Target run and brought back food, a new frying pan, shower soap, and gum and candy for me!  I especially like the gum and candy part.  Thanks for coming again today, LRN29!  We enjoy your visits.

We watched one of LRN29’s movies tonight – an interesting old Cary Grant show called [amazon asin=B00000JRW5&text=Only Angels Have Wings].  It’s one of the few Cary Grant flicks neither of us had seen.  Kind of a hard plot to follow.  Or even really care much about, for that matter.  It’s a drama about a bunch of people running some kind of cargo airline in the Andes during the 1930s.  Bad things happen, pilots fight with each other, some planes crash, things look very bad for the good guys, and they prevail right at the very end.  Completely unexpected!  But it was fun to watch.

Zero progress on the app today.  I’m really stuck on one bug fix.  I’ve tried several things without success.  Will come out swinging again tomorrow morning.  I’ll get it.

LRN4 and I have been chatting about our current situation.  We really have no idea what our future will bring, but we’re both feeling much more calm now.  We don’t know whether we’re in denial or acceptance or what.  But we do feel better.  I think that’s a good thing for us to the extent that it makes it possible for us to fully enjoy every day together.  The only problem is that I just want to spend all my time with her.  I don’t want to work, eat, sleep, or do anything else but be with LRN4.  Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow.  It’s all I want to do.

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

See you tomorrow.

Here’s yet another rose from the City of Hope rose garden – this time a white one.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken this afternoon during our walk, and part of my famous Garden series.

Very busy weekend.  LRN4 went into the hospital on Saturday afternoon.  They started chemo at about 9:00 that evening, gave her the second infusion at the same time on Sunday, and then the third at about 4:00 today.  Her hospital room was in the old building, but it was reasonably comfortable.  She had to share the shower with her next-door neighbor and the bathrooms in that building are nearly impossible to navigate when you’re attached to an IV pole, but everything was otherwise okay there.  It took two hours to get dinner on Saturday, but the food service was otherwise okay too.  Oh, they also forgot to bring her a cookie when she wanted one.  That’s a serious omission!

Little progress on the programming front.  I was distracted.  But I must keep working.  I did get version 0.1 of the iOS app done this afternoon with the exception of a small bug in portrait mode.  I’ll get that fixed tomorrow and get LRN31 hooked up with a beta copy to check out the general layout and functionality and to see if she can drive out any bugs.  Then there’s the artwork and icons (maybe I should at least put some kind of icon on it for tomorrow – shouldn’t be too hard), reports, printing, supporting evidence, and probably some other stuff.  So there’s still plenty left to do.

I also need to update my account with the Apple people.  Their developer portal was taken offline because of a system intrusion, so it hasn’t necessarily been possible to do the kind of update I need to do.  But I think they’re probably able to hand it now.  So I need to get on the phone with them tomorrow and get that done too.  There’s still lots left to do, but I’m making progress!  My new goal is to get it released before Labor Day.  I’m guaranteed to make my deadline, just as long as I’m willing to push the deadline out every time I miss one.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: family pop tart theft!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a lone living rose among the poor, sad ex-roses in the rose garden.  Actually, it looks like there are a couple good ones there in the background too.  So all is not lost.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in the rose garden at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Garden series.

Greetings from Las Vegas!  I know it’s absolutely nuts, but we just couldn’t stand hanging around the Village any longer.  So we drove over here this evening.  Took a long time, but I think it was worth it.  We were originally going to spend two nights, but we had to cut it to one at the last moment.  Our doctor wants us to be available tomorrow afternoon in case he needs us.

Kind of a rough afternoon.  The doctor isn’t happy with LRN4’s blood right now.  He did another test this afternoon and we hope to have at least preliminary results tomorrow afternoon.  I’ll keep you informed, Loyal Readers.

And that’s about it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity – traffic-snarling goat!

See you tomorrow.