morrowlife

Here’s a hostage I’ve taken during the last few days. I know it doesn’t look much like a hostage, but it’s definitely doing the job. Turns out LRN1 left his beloved mouse here when he went home the other day. It also turns out he has my pneumatic wrench. So we reached an agreement – one mouse for one wrench. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken yesterday as proof of life during intensive negotiations, and part of my famous Machinery series.

I think I need to start an Electronics series. Any opinions, Loyal Readers?

Pretty good day today. LRN4 is doing well, although there are a few worrying signs. Mainly, she has a fever today. It’s apparently just over 100 degrees. She visited her doctor today. They took her temperature several times just to make sure the reading was accurate. It was. The doctor kind of shrugged his shoulders and said there’s really nothing to do about it until she starts showing some kind of other symptoms. He listened carefully to her lungs, of course, and did whatever else doctors do. So we’re watching and waiting, just like we are with a hundred other things.

In other LRN4 news, we have reservations to go to Houston to do the evaluation for the new clinical trial. We’ll be there for four days, starting on the 16th of this month. After that, we’ll see. Our doctor here told LRN4 today that the doctor conducting this trial is the premier FLT3 specialist in the world, which sounds pretty good to us. We have a lot of hopes pinned on this thing right now.

LRN4 has to be off of chemo for two weeks before the clinical trial, so they discontinued those treatments today for the time being. They need to keep a close eye on her white cell count while we wait.

On a sad note, LRN3 went home yesterday evening. The whole family is now gone. We had such a great time having everybody here and it’s sad that it’s over, possibly not to be repeated for a very long time. At least we have our memories. And I have LRN1’s mouse.

I’ve been working on the iPhone app for LRN23 some more today. I made some major changes to the previous version. It’s currently working on the iPad only; I’ll get the mods made to the iPhone version tomorrow. I’m having fun working on the app. It’s pretty simple conceptually, but it’s always a challenge to make everything work just right and look just right. I think this will be a nice app when it’s done.

For various reasons, I decided to reinstall Windows on my Bootcamp drive yesterday. Spent a very large part of the day accomplishing that, and then I spent some time today getting the medical app working on it again. I’ll get back to my documentation efforts on that program tomorrow. I registered (and paid a whole lot of money) for the February conference in Seattle where we plan to introduce the application. We have a 10×10 booth in the exhibition hall. Now all we need is the final product (scheduled to be completed by the end of this month), documentation and training materials (scheduled to be completed during January), promotional materials for the conference (January also), and the ability to take people’s money, including collecting sales tax and amending my business license accordingly. Lots to do, but I’m excited about it.

LRN2 and I took my beloved pickup to the upholstery shop today to have its driver’s seat cushion recovered. Sadly, the guy there got the wrong material for it, so he has delayed it until Saturday. Hopefully, the right thing will come in by then. This has been a bit of a slow process.

And it’s late, so I’ll end here for the day. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: rock-eating dog!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a rocket emerging from the assembly building at Baikonur. It’s on its way to the launch pad.  Great Art courtesy of . . . umm . . . some old low-res digital camera, taken by me in June 2001 at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and part of my famous Architecture and Machinery series.

Yeah, there’s some architecture in this picture. Pretty rickety-looking architecture at that. There were some terrible buildings there. But the clean rooms were very, very clean. Really.

Very good several days since my last post. Sadly, most of the Loyal Readers have now gone home. LRN5 and family left on Saturday afternoon and LRN1 and girlfriend left this afternoon. LRN3 is out tomorrow night. Boo hoo! I miss everybody already. We had a great time.

Didn’t do too much this weekend. Had a great Thanksgiving with just the ten of us here at the house. We went to LRN31’s house on Friday evening for family bingo and snacks. Had fun there. The kids went out on the town a couple times, we jacuzzified a time or two, we ate a ton of great food, the kids all played about a million video games, and we generally enjoyed being together.

LRN4 is doing pretty well. She got a bunch of blood on Sunday, so her counts were really good today. Her white cell count is down to 0.2, which is very good. And she’s been feeling pretty good. She did a ton of work all week and lived to tell the tale. So there’s that. We’re getting very serious about a clinical trial at MD Anderson Medical Center in Houston. We plan to go there for a consultation later this month, if everything works out. Full of hope over this.

We got a couple of new games and some DVDs from LRN8 a few days ago. What a nice Thanksgiving present! And we never receive Thanksgiving presents. Of course, we never give them either. She sent us four [amazon text=Disney dog movies&asin=B008H6GHLU], a game called [amazon text=5 Second Rule&asin=B003BLQG6M], and one more game called [amazon text=Spot It&asin=B0039S7NO6]. Thanks, LRN8! They’re all a ton of fun.

Didn’t do any Black Friday shopping this year. I really didn’t want to face those crowds. A few of our guests went but nobody seemed to find any really great deals anyway. And I don’t care. I’m sick of Black Friday. It’s stupid and it has turned violent at Walmarts all over the country. Time to put it out of its misery, thus ending our misery.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: lion-impersonating dog!

See you tomorrow.

Here are the insides of an old steam shovel. Well, it’s actually an old electric shovel. But who’s counting? Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the old mining museum in Cedar City, Utah, and part of my famous Machinery and Vacation series.

Pretty great couple of days. All the kids and their significant others are here, except LRN15, who is sorely missed. But we’re having a great time anyway, in spite of our deep sorrow at her absence. Hopefully, she’s having a restful and productive week.

We went to the Ethel M chocolate factory last night to see their cactus garden-based Christmas light display.  It was really beautiful, kind of surprisingly. We stopped in the gift shop for a cup of hot chocolate and then took their self-serve factory tour. Which was also interesting. Stayed quite a while watching the factory workers work. Dance, monkey, dance!

Today, all the male members of the family, including the Loyal Brother-in-law, went shooting. The females were invited but all declined. I guess we’re just not that much fun. But we had a great time. the LBIL took us to an outdoor range down in Boulder City. it was uncrowded and very nice. They have the range divided into several bunker-like areas, so you get your own little mini-range. It was great to have just the six of us there. LRN3 has extensive firing range experience, so he was our safety officer.

I brought my .22 and .25 pistols and my .22 rifle.  The LBIL brought his .22 and 9mm pistols and another .22 rifle. We all got in just about as much shooting as we wanted and had a great time together. Then we had lunch at Roberto’s and came home. Fun.

LRN4 is doing pretty well today. She’s getting red blood cells tomorrow and platelets on Sunday. Her stamina is very good, she’s looking great, and all’s well. We’re looking at an opportunity to go to MD Anderson hospital in Houston for a new clinical trial. Stay tuned for future developments. We really don’t want to go to Houston (too far from home), but we do want LRN4 to get well. We really want that.

The kids have been using our Wii quite a bit since they all got here. LRN3 brought a bunch of GameCube games and a couple of controllers with him and Mario Kart continues to be a big hit. Nobody seems to want to play our Wii Sports games. Those Mario Brothers really know what they’re doing.

No work today or yesterday. I guess I’m on vacation. I’m okay with that.  I did have a brief conversation with LRN23 today about the new app. I guess that counts as work, no? I might think about it again tomorrow too.

And that’s about it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: ice cream truck knife fight!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s an old-school personal computer. And there’s an early model of a text-messaging device right next to it. Pretty impressive technology, if you ask me. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in an old train station in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and part of my famous Machinery and Workbench series.

Missed a day or two there. We’re in Los Angeles yesterday and today. LRN4 had her regularly-scheduled doctor appointment here on Monday. The doc decided she needed a bone marrow biopsy, but her platelets were way down to 3.0 (the bare minimum he wants to see is 10 and he prefers at least 30), so she needed a transfusion before he could do the biopsy. By the time the transfusion could be done, it would be too late last night to do the biopsy, so we spent the night and my cousin Betsy’s house and came back to the hospital today. I’m feeling a bit bad because we decided not to pack an emergency bag this time (also last time, but that time it worked out), so we had no clean clothes, no supplies, no pills, no nothing. Fortunately Betsy gave us a couple of toothbrushes and the doctor gave (sold) us the pills LRN4 really needed to get by for a day.

New decision: I’m going to pack a backpack with a change of clothes, toothbrush and razor, and sample sizes of deodorant, toothpaste, and shaving cream. Will get the equivalent supplies for LRN4. Then we can throw it in the trunk when we come here and just put it back away when we get home if we don’t use it. All we’ll need to do to get ready is grab a day’s worth of pills and go.

Anyway. I can’t believe how close we’re coming to Thanksgiving. It’s next week! The kids start coming on Saturday and LRN23 just confirmed he’s coming either on Thanksgiving itself or the day before. I’m really looking forward to having everybody here.

Not too great of a visit with the doctor yesterday. There really isn’t a good treatment for LRN4 right now. He’s ruled out the previously-planned DLI transplant basically because there are so few remaining cells from Melanie running around in LRN4’s body. It’s not likely to work within a reasonable timeframe. So now he’s looking at another stem cell transplant (previously ruled out because of the low likelihood of success) or an upcoming new clinical trial, of which there are a couple of likely candidates that should be available between now and next February. In the meantime, LRN4 will just keep doing rounds of chemo for two weeks out of four.

The good news here is that they can keep the leukemia at bay with chemo for a very long time, and that LRN4 tolerates it extremely well and feels pretty good most of the time. She really only feels bad when she has no chemo for long enough that the leukemia starts taking over again. The bad news, of course, is that they don’t really have a reasonable path to a cure right now. Hard times.

The doctor prescribed Lyrica for LRN4’s chronic foot pain yesterday. It’s pretty expensive and new enough that there’s no generic alternative, but we went and got the prescription filled last night. She took her first pill yesterday evening and reported today that she had her first pain-free night in a long time. It still hurts some when she walks and it may be making her a bit drowsy, but she reports the difference is huge. Good times!

No work yesterday. Probably no work today. Too busy with higher  health-related priorities. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did spend some time thinking and talking about marketing my two products yesterday. So that counts as work, right?

And that’s about it for today. LRN4’s waiting for more platelets right now. That transfusion completes pretty quickly and then we’ll be back on the road for home. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: tree-sitting dog!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s one of the organs in the conservatory at Longwood Gardens. That’s a really big console. I would love to have heard that organ being played. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken last year at Longwood Gardens, and part of my famous Garden and Machinery series.

Yeah, I know you can’t see the garden in this picture, but it was there. Trust me.

Pretty good weekend. LRN4’s feeling pretty well and her white cell count is back down to 0.5. The doc says there are just variations. If it had gone up again today, he might have been worried, but the chemo seems to have been working fine. We go back to Los Angeles a week from today to see where we stand. Until then, we relax and enjoy life.

LRN4 has had to cut back down to a single Nexavar pill a day. She had tried to up it to two (our doctor in LA wants her to be taking four a day!), but she had such pain in her feet that she just can’t do it. We’ll have to hope that a single daily pill does the trick. Quality of life issues took precedence this time. She cut down a few days ago and reports that her feet are feeling a lot better by this evening.

Happy Veteran’s Day, by the way. Especially to my numerous Loyal Readers who are also veterans.  Loyal Reader veterans I know of are: LRN20 and . . . umm . . . that’s about it. Sorry if I missed anybody, but many thanks to LRN20, who is actively serving even as we speak.

Does the Coast Guard Auxiliary count? If so, also many thanks to LRN3, who volunteers with those good folks.

Didn’t get much work done today. I love being retired. Wait! No! I’m not retired. I’m self-employed. Guess I was a lousy employee today. Tomorrow’s task – getting at least a few draft chapters done on the user’s manual for the medical app.

Had an interesting discussion last night at the in-laws’ house. Our non-loyal-reader friend Grace asked me if I am in business writing iOS apps. I responded in the affirmative. She said she was approached by a friend to find out whether she knew any developers and wondered if she could give them my name. I asked if they have any money. She responded in the affirmative. I gave her one of my business cards and invited her to invited the friend to contact me. We’ll see if it happens. It would be great to get a paying gig, wouldn’t it? I’m ready for that now. Although I might actually have to work hard. Shiver me timbers.

Not a lot else going on today, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this combination shocking food violence news and exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: breaking-and-entering, Chinese-food-eating bear!

See you tomorrow.