morrowlife

Here’s another view of the dragon from yesterday’s post.  Only this time, LRN4’s taming it.  Observe the crazed look in the eye.  Ride ’em, dragongirl!  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Dorney Park, and part of my famous Machinery and Statue series.

Very quiet day.  LRN4 is starting to have some symptoms that indicate engraftment is starting to take place.  It’s a pretty uncomfortable situation for her, but it’s fantastic news anyway.  We’re excited.  The discomfort won’t last forever, but the healing will.

It’s LRN4’s birthday eve!  Tomorrow is going to be a great day.

I’ve been thinking the last couple of days about making one of these.  I don’t really need it and that kit is outrageously expensive.  In the original Make magazine article on the plane, they said it could be done for about a hundred dollars.  So I would buy the parts myself wherever I could find them for a good price.  I don’t need it, though.  And I’m not sure I could find anyplace around here to fly it.  The attraction is that it’s simple and cheap to repair when I crash it.  And it’s a machine.

But it might be more fun to make a robot.  Or maybe to get a couple of old bicycles, fix them up nicely, and use them to ride around the hospital campus while we’re here in the hospital.  But I think I’d probably enjoy the airplane or the robot more.  There’s no place for bicycles in our garage.  What do you think, Loyal Readers?

Struggling with work.  Can’t get deep into anything.  I keep hoping that’ll happen when we get out of the hospital.  Don’t know, though.  I need to decide what I really want to do and start doing it.  Sigh.

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

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN4’s current hospital building.  Looks pretty nice, huh?  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Machinery series.

Yeah, I know a building may not qualify as machinery, but there is a lot of machinery inside this one, so I’m counting it.

I think I need some new famous series, though.  Maybe one for gardens and one for architecture.  Wait a second, I think I’ll add them right now.

Okay, I’m back.  This post is now part of my famous Architecture and Machinery series.

Busy day today.  LRN4 finished her third and fourth radiation treatments, out of ten planned.  She’s 40% done!  And by the time I see her tomorrow morning, she’ll be halfway home.  Good thing.  The radiation doesn’t seem to be giving her negative side effects, but that stupid astronaut bed they made for her is extremely painful.  It appears to be pinching a nerve or something – her back and legs are extremely tender right now.  She’s going through some tough times.  Heavy sigh.  Stay tough, LRN4!

We moved up to the sixth floor in the hospital today.  That’s where the transplants from a different donor are done (as opposed to people on the fifth floor, who receive their own stem cells that were previously harvested).  We were just squatters on the fifth floor, although they treated us as one of their own.  Lots of nice people down there, both patients and nurses.  But we’re now where we need to be for LRN4’s transplant and recovery.

Today was day T-9!  We’re getting really close to the transplant.  Lots of things need to happen first, but the clock is counting down.  Getting excited!

We found out today we have a bunch of copays we need to make, so I’m bringing all the bills I can find to the hospital tomorrow to get them done.  We’re way beyond our maximum annual copay already, but we need to send out checks to all the doctors who need to be copaid.  Is that a word, by the way?  Now it is, at any rate.

Otherwise, not much going on here.  So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: blogging duck!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN4 with her friend Jack.  That’s LRN4 over there on the right.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Dorney Park last October, and part of my famous Event and Machinery series.

Update on LRN4: she’s doing great, responding perfectly to treatment, and feeling very good.  There’s still a lot of water to pass under the bridge, but she’s right on schedule and things are going great.

LRN4’s predicament is pretty much the only thing I’ve been concentrating on, so there’s not much else to talk about tonight.

Oh, there is one other thing going on.  The backyard project is going great!  They reported this morning that there were two days of construction remaining, so it ought to be done tomorrow!  Pictures will be provided.  It looks beautiful so far!  It’s going to be a great place to hang out.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: meatball embezzlement!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the view from the ship during our last Hawaii cruise, taken just as we were arriving in Ensenada.  Get a load of that flag.  We were only in port for a few hours and LRN4 and I didn’t get off the ship, but it was nice to see land again after five days at sea.  As discussed in this space before, we’re less than a month away from taking the same ship on the same trip.  I’m getting excited to go.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Cruise, Vacation, and Machinery series.

Disaster strikes!  My beloved pickup is in critical condition in the automotive hospital!  I spoke with them today and discovered that the misfire isn’t due to spark and isn’t due to fuel.  That leaves only one cause – the dreaded compression.  That means one thing and one thing only: either a valve job, a complete engine rebuild, or a new engine.

Okay, that’s three things.  But they’re really just different manifestations of the same thing, and that spells cubic dollars.  I don’t know which option I’ll choose, but it’ll be one of them.  Probably either a complete rebuild or a new (actually factory rebuilt) engine.  The beloved pickup will live to drive another day.

Fortunately, I received my big severance check from Lockheed today.  Although I would have preferred the engine rebuild money to be put to work as living expenses for a month.  But you can’t have everything, can you?  For one thing, where would you put it?

Thank you, you’re a great crowd.  Don’t forget to tip your server.  Or your blogger.  Speaking of which, should I put a tip jar on the blog?  Nah – I’d rather have my Loyal Readers just click through to Amazon from my blog, buy something nice for themselves, and let me collect a nice little commission.  Try it, Loyal Readers – it’s easy!  So much better than a plain old tip jar.  Although feel free to send me money too.  The juggernaut must be fed.

LRN4’s sister Melanie came over for dinner and conversation this evening.  We had a great meal and she brought us a delicious chocolate pie to top it off.  What a nice evening!  Happy Valentine’s Day to Melanie.  And to LRN4.  Especially to LRN4.

Also get-well-soon wishes to LRN4.  She’s still quite miserable.  She talked to her highly-trained medical staff this afternoon and told them she’s still not feeling so hot and wondered aloud whether she should come back for stronger measures.  They said as long as she’s not feeling worse than when she started, she should stay the course.  She’s been very sick for what seems like a very long time – sicker than I’ve ever seen her.  I’m worried.  Also missing her normal self.  It won’t be long now, I’m sure.

Work continues on my project to learn Visual Studio.  I’m not at all happy with the book I’m using, but it appeared to be the best available book covering VS 2005 (which is generally the version still in use for the projects I’m thinking of taking on – fortunately, it’s also the one I happen to already have).  So under the circumstances, it’ll have to do.  The problem is that it tries to teach you C++ at a very basic level first and then it gets into the Visual Studio part of Visual Studio.  I don’t mind a refresher course on C++, but this thing is going into minute details, which I don’t feel a need for right now.  But I can’t skip any of it, because it sprinkles random essential information in the middle of the minutia.  So it’s a bit slow going.  But I’m making progress and can feel that I’m right on the verge of gaining the knowledge I came for.  Any minute now.

My [amazon asin=B009OWLPM2&text=new shoelaces] arrived in the mail today.  They look great – I’ll have the coolest shoes in the gym tomorrow morning.  However, they also came with a velcro strap – the kind you typically use to bundle wires together or some other such thing.  I have no idea why it was shipped with five pairs of shoelaces.  Maybe just to keep the spare laces together?  Or is there something the cool kids are doing with velcro straps and athletic shoes?

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

See you tomorrow.

Here’s our preparations for our latest cruise.  Do you think I brought too much stuff?  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Ellis Island, and part of my famous Machinery series.

Luggage is machinery, right?

Extreme short shrift, as usual.  It’s about 15 minutes before I want to be in bed.  Sigh.

Been busy programming much of the evening.  I’m really starting to make progress on my next project.  I’m not too sure how impressive it will be visually – still need to work on that – but it’ll be my first Cocos2D game, and that’s a big deal.  It’ll go out under the spinfo.info umbrella, since it’s just for fun.

The real trouble is that I don’t know whether the folks at Apple will even approve it for the App Store.  I think it’ll be okay, but it’s a programming game and I don’t know how sticky they are about their rules that say you can’t release development systems.  It’s not a development system, it’s a programming game.  I have high hopes that they’ll be able to tell the difference between the two.  Still, I wish I could ask them to be sure before I invest a bunch of time in it.  Sigh.

Not much else new around here today.  Worked like a sled dog today.  Prefer to work like a house dog.  Maybe tomorrow.

LRN4 spent the day with the kids she’s been helping out with a lot lately.  They have a baby brother who’s been having a rough time of it and is in the hospital.  Hopes remain high for his recovery, but their family has been really sacrificing to take care of him.  I wish them all the best.

Anyway.  Just a week and a day before we head out for our long weekend (Wednesday – Sunday) in Michigan.  I’m looking forward to visiting my family again.  Then a couple of weeks later, we’re off for a weekend in Utah to visit LRN1, LRN2, and LRN4’s family.  Exciting month.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: Danish assault raccoon!

See you tomorrow.