morrowlife

Here’s Thomas Edison’s shop. He developed the lightbulb here. Nice work, Tom! Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken last July at Greenfield Village in beautiful Dearborn, Michigan, and part of my famous Architecture, Electronics, Vacation, and Workbench series.

It’s only been five days since my last post! That’s a new record in recent days here. So there’s not so much to report about. However, we are not without news here.

Joanne and I went back to the Bay Area on Saturday morning. We came home Sunday evening, so it was a bit brief. Joanne attended Katy’s bridal shower and appears to have enjoyed it quite a bit. My in-laws-to-be are wonderful folks and Joanne loves them too now.

In the meantime, Clifford took his stepdad James and me out for the world’s fanciest donuts, the world’s fanciest coffee, and the world’s prettiest wedding venue. It was a great morning! The big wedding will be beautiful. Sunday, Katy, Cliff, Mia, Joanne, and I went to the Berkeley Kite Flying Field. Surprisingly, while we were there, we flew kites! Never saw that coming, did you, Loyal Readers? In the afternoon, Joanne and I went to visit Ryan. We had lunch together and went over to visit with Junior, Joanne’s former dog and Ryan’s current dog. Then we came home.

Anyway, it was a pleasant weekend. San Francisco was beautiful. And we missed the big Las Vegas rainstorm on Saturday.

Joanne and I went to the 51’s baseball game last night. Our team won! We enjoyed the game. Plus, they gave everyone in our row free Big Foam Fingers! For keeps! Now that’s something.

I may need that finger. I sliced my thumb open this morning on Joanne’s mandoline. Oops. I wasn’t even cutting with it. I was just trying to put it back in its box. It was bleeding badly enough that I decided to take a trip to urgent care. They put a butterfly bandage on it and told me not to get it wet for a week. So it’s not a big deal. Still, it’s nice knowing I have a spare foam finger around the house just in case.

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

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Thomas Edison’s workbench.  Great Art taken during my June/July visit to Michigan, in Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, which is currently located in Greenfield Village in lovely Dearborn, and part of my famous Vacation and Workbench series.

Once again, it’s been unconscionably long since my last post. Sorry about that, Loyal Readers. I don’t know how you’ve been getting along without me.

First, an update on my mom’s condition. She’s not doing well. In fact, she is at home in hospice care and very close to the end of her life. I expect to hear it’s over at any time. I have another ticket to Detroit on Thursday. I hope she’s still with us by then. I can change plans and travel sooner if necessary. I’m truly grateful to have spent last week with her and to have been able to say goodbye and express my love for her.

Sandy and Julie are taking care of our mother 24/7 at this point. I’m also truly grateful for their dedication to do that. I just don’t think I have the wherewithal to do it, although I’m tremendously conflicted about that because I really wish I could be with my mother right now. No matter what, though, she knows I love her and am grateful for the wonderful childhood she gave me and for the things she taught me. I’ll always love her.

I’ve been in Denver since mid-day Wednesday. Andy got his tonsils taken out that morning. I didn’t find out about it until Tuesday evening, so I bought a ticket right then and got here as soon as I could. He’s doing remarkably well, although he’s in quite a lot of pain. They told him to expect the third day to be the hardest, and they were right. He was taking half-doses of his pain-killer and he has upped that to two-thirds. But the discomfort is still there and he’s just having to ride it out. He’s been quite tough and will be fine. Other than the tonsillectomy, I’m delighted to report he’s doing quite well indeed. He’s been through some hard times lately, but he’s navigating life’s difficulties like a champ.

Mark’s back in school! He’s been going for a couple weeks now. Or maybe a week. No, it’s been a couple of weeks. They started the week before Labor Day. He’s doing well, although his math class is as difficult as it could possibly be. Keep your chin up, Mark! You can do it!

Joanne and I hosted fifty people at her house on the day before Labor Day. It was quite a crowd, but it was a fun party that I think everybody enjoyed, including us. We were both glad when it was in the record books, though.

We’re going to the Bay Area tomorrow for a few days. We’ll see Katie, Cliff, and Mia on Sunday and then have a couple more days to ourselves. We’ll be staying at the WorldMark Windsor resort. Joanne’s been there before and we have high hopes for a peaceful few days. Then I’m heading to Detroit, unless plans need to be moved up.

And that’s it for tonight. I need to be up at 5:00 tomorrow morning, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: motorcycle-attacking fugitive bull!

See you on Monday.

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 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 another look at LRN4’s painting from last week.  This version’s a bit less complete.  This is how true artistic genius begins.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Workbench series.

Don’t give me that look.  That’s a workbench.

Great day today!  LRN4’s white blood cell count is up from 0.2 (200 cells/microliter) to 0.4!  That means the transplant is “taking.” Things are moving forward right on schedule.  We are so ready to get out of here.  This needs to work.

Nothing else new.  Spent some time trying to get a TIFF file manipulation library to compile as part of a program I’m working on.  It just won’t work!  I’m not sure how other people do it, but there must be a way.  I keep changing directions to try to make something work.  Changed directions again this afternoon.  I made some progress before coming up against yet another dead end.  Very frustrating.  This ought to be the easy part.  What am I doing wrong?

Anyway.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: missing-taco rage!

See you tomorrow.