morrowlife

Here’s LRN4 standing in front of three little mini-mountains at Zion National Park. I believe this was the first place we stopped after we got into the super-private buses-only area. That’s the famous Morrowmobile there on the left. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Zion National Park, and part of my famous Vacation and Hiking series.

We walked about 50 feet. Which is about as much as LRN4 is doing right now. So it’s a hike. And it was a good one.

Pretty good couple of days. LRN4 finished day 5 of 10 chemo treatments today and she’s feeling pretty good. No news on the state of her blood. We’ll find that out on Monday. I’m not enjoying the wait.

Work. I submitted an update to the Common Core Classroom app today. Added the ability to delete notes. I had tried to avoid that because I kind of wanted the app to keep an audit trail for users. However, LRN31 convinced me that there’s a real need. What if a teacher enters bad information? The only way to fix it previously was to delete the student’s entire record and re-enter everything. Not a good solution. Now it’s fixed. Or at least it will be when the update gets reviewed and approved.

LRN2 and I installed a new blind over the sliding door. The original curtain turned out to be too much of a pain. It was a great temporary solution, but its useful life was over. So we bought a blind at Lowe’s a couple day ago and we installed it today. Looks great.

LRN4’s car has been in the shop for two weeks now. I wanted them to replace the battery. They replaced a whole bunch of other things and now they can’t get the electronics to work right. I’ve run out of patience. I may have to start getting legal advice.

Ordered a [amazon asin=B007VDN1PA&text=slide scanner] today. We have a ton of old slides and a few photographs that document our entire life before a few years ago when we got our first digital camera, and we want to be able to see and share those photos. So I ordered a scanner. It should come on Tuesday and then we can start the arduous process of scanning them all. I’m sure the end result will justify all the work.

Also, LRN4 got a [amazon asin=B00BOS9DKA&text=neck pillow]. She spends a lot of time in a chemo/transfusion chair these days and this will make that time a bit more comfortable. Totally worth it. Bonus: velvety cover!

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

See you on Monday.

Here’s LRN4 by the entrance to Zion National Park. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Zion National Park (duh!) last week, previously published on Facebook, and part of my famous Vacation series.

Wonders of WordPress today. Fewer updates than usual lately. Sorry about that, Loyal Readers. Life is moving at a breakneck pace. Not that that’s a particularly good thing right now.

LRN4 continues to maintain, but not prosper. As I write this, we’re sitting in the doctor’s clinic getting her fourth of ten chemo treatments. The good news is that she’s still tolerating the chemo well. The bad news is that it doesn’t seem to be working. Her white cell count is up again from Monday’s number, which was way up from the previous Monday’s. That’s not good news. We know this particular chemo drug is slow-acting, but we’re not sure whether it’s capable of acting quickly enough. The first time she took it, it immediately brought the bad cells down to zero, which it doesn’t seem to be doing this time. Options remain, but this is discouraging news.

LRN4 stopped taking Nexavar a couple of days ago. She reports that it was very literally sapping her will to live. We have no idea whether that will impede her eventual recovery, but we do know she feels much better already. The doctor is encouraging her to take it when she feels well enough to take it and to take as much as she feels she can.

So we’re still not prevailing in our struggle. We have moments that feel normal, which we treasure. We have moments of incredible sadness as we contemplate the possibility of LRN4 not making it. And we have moments of worry as we try to figure out what to do.

Work is going slowly again, as my Loyal Readers might imagine.  I’ve been working for a couple days on an update to the Common Core Classroom app.  I submitted an update a few days ago to fix the broken Classroom report and I’m now working on adding the ability to delete notes. After struggling for a couple days to do it the wrong way, I had a little consultation with LRN1, who suggested what we like to call “the right way.” Took about five minutes to get it working after that. Sheesh. Thank heaven for supergenius children.

Anyway. I expect to release the latest update within a day or two and then get back to full-time on the medical app. Or as close to full-time as I get these days.

I’m not keeping the house clean enough. I really need to spend at least half an hour or so a day on that. My current average is pretty much zero. LRN4 has started working on getting a cleaning service to come. If we can afford it, I’m good with that. We’ll know soon.

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

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a hoodoo at Bryce Canyon National Park. Before today I wasn’t quite sure what a hoodoo was. Well, there was this. But that’s a whole other kind of hoodoo. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken today at Bryce Canyon National Park, and part of my famous Vacation series.

This kind of hoodoo is a tall, thin rock. There are lots of them at Bryce Canyon National Park.

Had another good day today. As hinted above, we went to Bryce Canyon National Park (that’s the fourth mention in this post of Bryce Canyon National Park) (whoops, there’s the fifth). LRN4 felt pretty good all day, although she’s having a lot of trouble walking. So we didn’t walk all that much. But we did walk a little. And it was a nice day.

Spent some time in the afternoon working on graphics updates for my iPhone app. Oh, by the way, I’ve now sold 29 copies of the app. That’s as of yesterday. At $2.99 a copy, that’s $86.71. Of course, Apple keeps 30%, so I’ve made $60.70 so far. And they thought I wouldn’t be successful as an independent developer. I guess I showed them, huh? Huh?

Welcome to Loyal Reader Number 32 – Erica! Check out her name over there on the right. She commented today that she’s been reading for a while, but she didn’t know how to become a Loyal Reader. Well, Erica, the secret is that only I can authorize a new Loyal Reader. And my standards are exceptionally high. Let’s see . . . you have to be human (I’m flexible on that one) and you have to tell me you want to be a Loyal Reader. Those high standards are what’s keeping my Loyal Readership to a manageable level.

Anyway, welcome, Erica! You’re in!

LRN4 forgot her [amazon asin=B0083RNTOG&text=Coban] on this trip. What is Coban, you ask? It’s the kind of tape that sticks to itself but not anything else. She uses it to keep the plastic bag over her PICC line safely in place in the shower. It works great! The interesting thing is what it was invented for – wrapping race horses’ legs for . . . some reason or other. All I know is that race horses’ legs must be wrapped. So must PICC line owners’ arms. I’ve been keeping an eye out for livestock supply stores here in the wilds of Utah so we can buy some more, but so far I haven’t seen one. Maybe tomorrow.

Which leads me to wonder what we’re going to do tomorrow. I have no idea. Bryce canyon was fully visited in a day, so we don’t need to go back. There are a few other nearby parks and possibly other tourist attractions. I’m pretty sure LRN4 has something in mind, which is exactly what I want to do. Can’t wait!

One and a half more days of vacation. It’s going to be . . . wait for it . . . legendary!

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: elite police goose!

See you tomorrow.

Here are LRN4 and me standing on a bridge in Zion National Park. It’s been a wonderful week so far. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken yesterday on a bridge over a raging river small stream at Zion National Park, and part of my famous Vacation series. That’s LRN4 over there on the right.

As mentioned above, we’re having a great week so far. Well, it actually started out kind of poorly. We went to Los Angeles for a doctor visit on Monday. Had a good visit with our doctor, but we learned that LRN4’s leukemia is still there and still quite aggressive. Currently, about 65% of her white blood cells are leukemic. That’s not good. There are also good cells and LRN4’s hanging in there, but we definitely need to get her back into chemotherapy. She’s starting a ten-day round on Monday, and there will be another one four weeks later. Then we’ll see where she is and look into whether we can start the DLI transplants.

My first thought when we learned this news is that we’re not winning our fight. Not currently, anyway. The fight’s not lost, but we’re not winning.

Went to Zion both yesterday and today. Yesterday, we started out at the visitor’s center. We got in line at the information desk and asked the lady there what you can see from your car, since LRN4 isn’t really up for much walking right now. After she showed us the driving routes on her map, I mentioned that we couldn’t really go see the main sights there because LRN4 can’t safely ride a bus with a bunch of strangers (they’ve closed that part of the park to all traffic but shuttle buses). The nice lady offered to give us a pass to drive up there, since we have a medical reason why we couldn’t ride the bus. So we drove our car to see all the pretty stuff. We were the only private car up there – we could park anywhere as long as we wanted and see anything and everything. It was great!

After that, we drove over to our rental condo, which is in Duck Creek. We went out the southeastern park entrance, which includes a drive through a very long, very dark tunnel. It’s really cool. It was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. They have to make it one-way in order for motorhomes to get through, which can cause a bit of a delay. But it was really cool.

We went up to Kolob Canyon this afternoon. It’s part of the park too, but accessible only from the northwest corner of the park, whereas we were in the southern part of the park yesterday. Today was equally beautiful. Watch this space for pictures.

Tomorrow: Bryce Canyon. If that only takes a day to see, we’ll check out some other local places on Friday. We’re having a great vacation. I’m so glad we came.

Every day is a gift. Remember that, Loyal Readers. Enjoy every day.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: spaghetti sauce bank robbery!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s our 2011 Hawaii cruise ship about to arrive back in North America. Fortunately, this wasn’t the end of the cruise – we still had one more night to go. We made a brief stop in Ensenada to stay legal with the Jones Act and then spent one more lovely night heading back to Los Angeles. That was a really good cruise. Great Art courtesy of the (then brand-new!) exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in the port of Ensenada, Mexico, and part of my famous Cruise, Machinery, and Vacation series.

That’s a really big flag. Really big.

Missed a couple of posts yet again. Sorry about that.

Pretty good day today. We visited with LRN4’s Las Vegas doctor and got a pretty clean bill of health – she’s at least clean enough to go for three more days without getting blood. Her platelets are down a bit but still just fine, her red cells are great, and her white cells are up a bit. We never know if increasing white cell counts are good or bad things these days, so we’re assuming it’s good.

We were supposed to go see our doctor in California on Thursday of this week, but he called today and let us know he won’t be in the office that day, so we rescheduled to next Monday. We’ll have to see whether we can get in to see our Las Vegas doctor on Thursday instead.

The weekend went well. LRN4’s still feeling quite weak, but she felt that she was improved enough to be able to make it through two hours of church, so we did. Otherwise, it was a relaxing weekend.

Not much news on the work front for me. I’ve started working on the medical app, but progress is slow. Maybe I’ll get something big done tomorrow. In the meantime, I did a little bit of support work on the iOS app. I made a quick “getting started” video, which I posted on the Business Casual website (have a look!). In the middle of making it, I noticed a bug in one of the reports, which I confirmed. Shortly after that, LRN8 reported another bug in that same report. Oops. I’ll get it fixed right away and resubmitted.

I finally got my Apple developer account switched from an individual account to a business one over the weekend. It took quite a while (since July!) because of Apple’s long downtime after their developer website was compromised, but it’s done! My apps now show up under my business name! I think that’ll end up being a good thing, businesswise.

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

See you tomorrow.