Getting Ready

I'm off work today to get ready for the Las Vegas trip. I'll be traveling tomorrow (Saturday) so today is a trade-off.

A bit of dilemma regarding clothing. I'm figuring that the conference center will be kept quite chilly if past experiences hold true. So I'll need a bit warmer items for day, but once conference time is over I know I'll be outside, wandering the strip, drinking, etc. I need less warm outfits for that.

I'm thinking that I'll wear my longer capris for the conference with a knit shirt and over-sweater. Then I can change the capris for shorts and ditch the sweater for after. Does that sound like a plan? I'm trying to stick to one suitcase for clothes and a smaller one for shoes, toiletries, etc. The airline is going to charge me $50.00 for two suitcases but I can't do a whole week with less.

That is the plan so far. Now I need to go try on everything to see if it all still fits. I had the cancer+20 (like the freshman+20) added last year but I think I've gotten rid of all of it now. Still I have enough doubt to want to check while I can still go pick up a few things if necessary.

Excitement and the usual nervousness is setting in. I love traveling but as a born worrier I always anticipate something going wrong.

Most Boring Day EVER

This morning I attended our local Community Leader's Breakfast with 6 of my co-workers. We sat down for the usual rubber scrambled eggs, mushy fried potatoes and hard sausage. No worries, we've done this before, so we know what to expect. EXCEPT...today, the new city manager came to our table and asked if he could sit down with us. OMG.

Well, of course, we said sure. But what a tense experience. Did I say the right things, did I drool? Did I sound stupid or needy or like a suck-up? Who knows? Everyone at the table became someone else. Unreal. The worst thing is that the speaker for the breakfast was excellent - spoke about generational differences with workers, etc., but it was very difficult to pay attention to her.

From there we went onto a meeting in Bloomington. It could have been a good meeting, but unfortunately it was without doubt the worst meeting I have ever attended. The speakers droned on and on - if I hadn't had my blackberry there for comic relief I might have had to hurt someone. Two hours of complete torture.

When we finally were released, we ate lunch, then indulged ourselves at Cold Stone Creamery. Yum yum - I had chocolate with raspberries. Only a little, though. Too many calories otherwise. I did have a taste of the flavor Sweet Cream. It was awesome but I'm mostly a chocolate girl. Maybe next time I'll give the Sweet Cream a shot.

So the day wasn't a total loss - could any day that involved ice cream be all bad?

Just when I thought the week could not get worse...

...my son was hospitalized. Not super serious - just not responding to oral antibiotics for lung infection. He'll be allowed to come home on home IV therapy soon.

Just one more brick on the pile, so to speak, as he was hospitalized in St. Louis, Missouri at Barnes-Jewish, meaning a 3 hour drive to see him and a 3 hour drive back.

It's all good, though. He could be a lot worse.

Difficult Work Week

This week is going to be difficult for a number of reasons.

Last week, one of our firemen died in a non-work related accident. He was working on a vehicle when the jack slipped and the vehicle fell on him, cutting off his air supply for quite a long time. He was kept alive for awhile and when it was determined he would not recover, life support was withdrawn. The family donated his organs so that others might live on.

If that weren't bad enough, one of our policemen had a child die on Friday. The child had a medical condition however the death was unexpected at this time.

Tonight I will have to go to both visitations and tomorrow attend one or the other funeral since they are happening at the same time.

It's really a shame and makes you think about life and how quickly and unexpectedly it can end.

My 32nd Wedding Anniversary - YIKES!

My husband and I celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary on April 28, 2009. It's really hard to believe those numbers. In many respects it seems like only yesterday but then again sometimes I feel every year of it.

Overall I think we've done pretty good.

We went to dinner with the kids that live here in our town and the grandkids. It was very enjoyable, especially now that the grandkids are almost human beings.

Here's hoping for another 32!

Flying Ants

It's hard to believe but my toy room was inundated with flying ants a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I know, sounds crazy, and I have no idea where they came from.

I don't mind regular ants - okay, that is a lie, I do mind them. But flying ones?

I had to remove everything from the room and spray, being careful not to hit any surface that my grandkids would eventually touch. It was really hard!

They seem to be under control for the time being. Here's hoping that they don't come back.

Man, Am I Behind or What?!

I've been woefully neglectful of this blog - and it's almost been a month since I posted.

Let's play catch-up.

I went on a business trip to Peoria, IL earlier in the month, staying at the Stoney Creek Inn. It's a quaint hotel that has a backwoods theme as you can see:



The conference was extremely boring. It was actually torture to sit all day and listen to someone lecture about how great they were.

One evening I went to the nearby casino and played craps. I ended up winning $81.00. Here's the payout:


That is about the first time I ever won and walked away without losing it all on some other game. Go, me!

That takes care of the first week of April, more or less.

Saturday Fun

My mother wanted to go shopping yesterday in a nearby town that houses an outlet mall. This is a big deal, you see, 'cause we don't have nothing like that near our hick little ole town. The extra special draw that gets people to go 45 miles to shop is the Coach outlet store.


If you love purses - and I KNOW you do - this is the place for you. I was there about a month ago and bought myself two new purses. I'm not embarrassed to say that I spent about $200.00 on them...but they retailed for about $600.00. (Income tax money, don't you know, and I deserved them for last year. Yeah, I'm still using that excuse and plan to use it all through 2009, so stay tuned.)

Anywho, Mom saw said purses and wanted one for herself. Her condition - any purse she would buy had to have a shoulder strap. I don't do the shoulder strap - I usually wear a small backpack for trips (this is the last one I bought):


...but it really isn't a good size to hold my Kindle, so I bought two tote-type bags although they are "tote" in style only. Not huge, just big enough to hold the Kindle and wallet without feeling stuffed. Here's an example (I couldn't find my exact purse but this is the same size/style):


So the hunt for a suitable bag that had a shoulder strap was on. We had all the sales associates helping and eventually we settled on one that looks like this (couldn't find a pic of the exact one she bought, but this is close):


Just imagine a shoulder strap instead of the smaller strap. She ended up being extremely happy with her purchase, and I was glad to take her there...she bought me a Coach umbrella as a thank you. Wasn't that nice?


I plan to NOT turn it inside out like I did the previous cheapo umbrella...I HOPE. This one is a bit too expensive to replace, so I'm gonna have to be extra careful.

Then we hit the Carter's kids clothing store.



After perusing the racks, we ended up buying waaaay too much for the granddaughter/great-granddaughter. Here's an example of one of the outfits we bought:


Again, it's not exactly the right shirt, but it's really hard to show you the right one since it seems that outlet outfits just aren't photographed and posted on the web anywhere for me to steal and post here. ;p

After spending too much, we headed up to Champaign to shop at Birkenstock Concepts. Mom wanted to see new styles. We both are Birkie people due to feet problems. I mostly wear Birkenstock Footprints and she is straight Birks. We saw a few new interesting styles, but nothing that made us go wow...until we looked at their Finn Comfort shoes. They are built the same as Birkenstocks as far as the cork footbed and the fact that the footbed can be replaced. She loved them and bought this pair in two colors:



After spending more money there, Mom and I headed over to pick up the grandkiddies from their father. He lives/works in Champaign, so it worked out for me to pick them up this weekend since I'd planned to be there anyway. Once we had them in the car, we decided to go eat. First choice was the Original Pancake House on Springfield Ave. I let Mom and kids out so I could park since it had started to rain and Mom is not really a great walker anymore. I get inside to join them only to find out they have a 45 minute wait. What? On a Saturday at 1:00 p.m.? Sheesh - a popular place, I guess.

I would have waited any other time, but a 3 and 6 year old are NOT great waiters. I knew they'd already be tired and cranky from being at their Dad's house - he lets them stay up late and so forth, so I wasn't going to risk that kind of wait.

Instead we went down the street to Famous Dave's Barbeque. We actually had an enjoyable time. The kids were really well-behaved (not that they aren't normally, but we have had tantrums and other issues in the past) and the food was great.

After eating we headed back home to Decatur and I let the kids watch Betsy's Kindergarten Adventures in the DVD player - they love that show and were good as gold all the way home. That is definitely noteworthy. No fights, no arguments between them - I was definitely happy with how the day went.

I'm spending more time with my mother than I ever have, for good or ill. The reason is mostly that her health is deteriorating. It's a slow progression but it's age, her weight and other issues. So of course I'm worried about her, but I also want to spend time with her while I can. I don't think I did that as well as I could have with my father (he died in 1980) and I have always regretted that.

Anyway, another weekend down. Next weekend it's Quacker Duck breakfast at the Children's Museum, then the Vet Med Open House at the University of Illinois for the kids. I can't wait to go in the school again as my son's class picture will be up on the corridor wall. I haven't seen it yet - they don't put it up till after the class leaves, and the last time I was there I forgot to look for it! I'll take a picture of the picture and post it once I have it.

Week after next I have a business trip and I am really looking forward to it. Lots of "me" time with other adults, drinking, gambling boat visit, should be fun.

Let the good times roll.

Illini in the First (and Last) Round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

That's the photo my vet son took before the game started...unfortunately the Illini lost. But at least my son got to be there to "cheer them on".

Natasha Richardson - What a Shame

I didn't know Natasha Richardson, nevertheless I feel incredible sadness over her death. That something so inconsequential as a fall can do such serious damage is hard to grasp. I myself have fallen and hit my head a number of times - and recently - with no lasting ill effects.

When I was a child, a neighbor boy fell off his bike and hit his head on the curb of the street. He was fine, we (and he) thought. He went home later in the day, complaining of a headache but had no other symptoms, so no one was overly concerned. Next morning he was found dead in his bed. It sounds like this is the same cause of death as for Richardson - the "talk and die" syndrome.

I think about her young sons and her husband and hope that they will get through this devastating time okay. Although is anyone ever really okay when a close relative dies? I still remember my father's death with sadness and I was a grown woman when that occurred.

Here's hoping that the people and the press give them all the time they need to come to terms with their loss.

Illini in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

The first round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament starts on Thursday for the Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois. The game will be played in Portland.

Well, guess who's going, bitches? My son, the vet, who lives just outside Portland. He called last night to say he got the golden tickets - golden because the event is SOLD OUT.

Here's the proof:


I'm so excited for him! Here's hoping they play well.

Cancer Yoga Study Part 2

Okay, well, I met with the person in charge of this study yesterday. She couldn't meet me off-site, so I went in for my quarterly bloodwork and met with her at the same time. I just hate that place, as I've mentioned before. Anyway, she was very nice, explained the study thoroughly. I went ahead and signed up due to her winning sales pitch...and when I got home I realized that I forgot the most important question of all - where is this going to take place?

If it ends up that it is going to be done in that building...well, I just don't know.

She is supposed to call at the end of the week to give the actual dates it will start, so hopefully I will remember that question. We'll see.

Cancer Yoga Study

Today is like a catch up day, I guess. I've already posted all the Nathan Gunn news that is fit to print, as they say, so I'll talk about me.

I got a call a few weeks ago from the Cancer Care Specialists wanting me to participate in yet another study. They are attempting to prove/disprove the theory that Hantha Yoga aids in helping post cancer patients sleep. I will admit to sleep problems, mainly waking up on an average of six times a night. I don't know if it is anxiety or what, but it has been happening since cancer became a part of my life.

The study requires that you wear a bracelet that tracks something for a week. Then one group will take four weeks of yoga, two times a week. The other group will do nothing for the same time period. At the end, they will measure something (I'm not clear on the details yet) that will prove/disprove their theory. The participants that did not get to do the yoga will then be offered the same class for four weeks. So either way you get four weeks of yoga. Not a bad deal as it's free.

Initially I said I would be interested. They had an evening meeting for all interested parties last week and I got ready, went out the door, drove to the center...and could not make myself go in.

I actually became ill at just the thought of going into the building. Yes, I know this is all mental. But that building is where they hurt me. Where they blithely administered chemotherapy and devastated my body/health. Where they told me, don't worry, your hair will grow back...everyone goes through this...platitude after platitude.

I don't consider myself weak. In fact, I know that I'm not. But this building and all it portrays took me under in that moment.

I went back home and resigned myself to not participating. On Friday, though, the woman in charge of the study called me and we are meeting in her office, off the Cancer Campus, on Monday morning. So I might be in the study or I might not. I think a lot is going to depend on where it is held.

I'll keep you posted.

More Granddaughter Witticisms

The other night as we were eating our fried chicken dinner, I observed my three year old granddaughter spear a piece of chicken with her fork (has to be de-boned for her) then run it through her mashed potatoes. The combination then went into her mouth.

I was taken aback - she is very picky about food touching each other and normally would have freaked out if I had tried to tempt her with food in that way.

I said to her, "Wow, you are getting to be almost a human being!" and she quickly shot back, "Is he a human being?" pointing over to her six year old brother. (Anything he can do she can do better is her new mantra.)

I replied, "Not quite yet, but he's getting there." She seemed content at that response.

Sibling rivalry over becoming human beings. You've got to love it.

Some Early Easter Humor

A friend of mine posted this elsewhere. I couldn't resist stealing it and posting it here.

Whistle While You Work...Not Hardly

I got to work this morning and opened my office door about a nanosecond before my boss came in. Over the weekend some of the senior members of our communications division did a horrible job taking and dispatching a call. I mean horrible. For some reason one of them took a call about a serious car accident, entered the call with the personnel as "on scene" and it went without rescue personnel actually being sent.

The problem with this, aside from the poor injured woman waiting 10 minutes until rescue personnel arrived, is that the people involved have been working here for over 15 years. This is not some new person who doesn't know the rules or how to do the job.

My job in this event, of course, is forensic. I am to recreate the situation that occurred in the computer from the call take to the actual dispatch. It's not a big thing, but it is time consuming. The person involved made it a bit more interesting by blaming the computer for part of the problem. Um, sorry, but that's not possible.

Computers do fail, programs do have glitches. But not the dispatch program and not only on one computer. If someone at another workstation in the center had reported computer problems that excuse would have flown better. But no one else had problems and I personally had checked out the server early Saturday morning in anticipation of the time change on Sunday. So I know the server was working properly and with no desperate phone calls to my home or cell to tell me that they had problems, everything had to have been working properly.

Like I said, it's not a big deal to do this work, but it is annoying in a day when I had already planned to work on some more complicated issues.

Ah well - mistakes. They are more or less job security.

Hairstyle Followup

All last week I must have had like 10 people tell me that they loved my new hairstyle/haircut. I tried not to snarl. I know it's a compliment and they have no idea that my current hair makes me crazy. Here's a self-pic taken in the office:
I don't think my face is truly this "round", but when you're taking your own pic with a phone you're kind of angling up from the chin level. In any case, this is the current style. I don't see the Jamie Lee thing unless it's the color.

I've thought a lot about what I want to do and I really think I'm going back to highlighting it. I just don't like that the majority of my hair from about an inch behind the forehead is brown/gray. If it were gray/brown I could take it better, I think.

Anyway, that's todays hair news.

Stylin' and Profilin' - Sort Of

Here's the dilemma. How do you style a little over one-inch of hair? I'm not complaining, mind you, but my slow regrowth is killing me.

The hair that I had before chemo is at home in a ziplock bag. I know, pretty macabre, huh? It seemed like a good idea at the time - to save it. My sons tell me it's gross, it's sick, etc. I just wanted to keep it until the new hair came in just to compare colors. I had heard tons of stories from the cancer survivors at chemo and other places that your hair will grow back curly if it was straight before, it will grow back red if it was blond, etc. So I really did keep it for that and some other possibly more deep-seated reasons.

The loss of hair during chemo was one of the most debilitating events of my life. I had no idea before it happened to me how important your hair is to your identity as a person, as a woman. I felt the ugliest I have ever felt in my life during those months. I wore a scarf and a hat over it, but I wished I could have worn a hood. I just did not want to be seen. I can't explain it any more clearly than that.

I still don't want to be seen. My hair, although it is growing, is so short it's unmanageable. It is growing back and forms a peak (a sort of faux-hawk) along the middle of my head that I have to ruthlessly tame down with gel. It is a totally different color - it is a pukey brown with lots of gray. I knew I had gray but not to this extent. I'm not in denial - my hairdresser of 20+ years is in agreement. I have never been afraid of gray, I just don't like gray mixed with brown. If it is predominantly gray, then I will embrace it...but right now it's more gray in the front and brownish in the back. Not loving it right now.

Several people have told me that they love the new look, that I am sort of rocking Jamie Lee Curtis. Hmm. I guess there are worse things that being compared to an attractive possible intersexual but that's not how I see myself. In fact, her hair is a bit longer than mine in this photo, although we both have dark glasses. While I don't have anything against her, I am not tall or thin and I just feel very "butch" with this hair.

The biggest decision I have looming is whether or not to highlight it blond again once it reaches a length where that can be done. It's really a hard choice. My photo in the sidebar shows that I had it a bit longer and very highlighted at the time of chemo. I am definitely growing it out again. I'm getting older and if I don't do it now, when will I, you know? But the color. That is the big question.

I guess I'll be patient for a few more months, get some more growth and see how it looks when it is not sticking up on my head. If it is mostly gray, I'll leave it alone, I think. Who knows? I'm a woman and we do have a tendency to change our minds...

The Laptop Saga

Yesterday I spent about 10 hours working on my work laptop. It has had problems since late last year connecting to the Verizon network from its embedded card.

I have chatted with Dell no less that about 10 times. They have sent out a tech to replace memory and again to replace the motherboard. They have mailed me parts. I have, against my better judgment, taken apart the laptop to find said parts and put in new ones. I will say, however, that it was a worthwhile experience. I have always kind of shied away from cracking open a laptop due to ignorance of its contents and fear that I would mess it up. It's not that bad, actually, and I feel pretty good about it.

None of these measures, however, have brought this thing back to life. So yesterday I was advised during a Dell chat to "just go ahead and format the drive, then reinstall the operating system". GAH.

Most of the time I spent on the thing was just ghosting the programs/files/etc. on the drive. Although it is a work laptop, I still have iTunes on it, I have some personal stuff on it and I didn't want to lose all that. It took a big chunk of the time to get all that copied off.

Then I install the OS. That alone took about 2 hours. I have no idea why. It's just Vista, not Linux or anything harder. It just took the time it took.

When I got all that done, and the thing was back up, guess what? The Verizon card STILL does not work. So 10 hours down the drain. Sort of.

The saddest part of all this? My boss, the Deputy Chief, told me on Friday that my having a laptop that works is mission critical (since I'm on call 24/7/365) and to just go out on the weekend, get some specs for a new one and give them to him. Instead I tried to rehab this thing. What a dumb/stupid/idiot I am. But I know I would not have felt right until I had done everything possible to revive this one before getting another.

The upside to all this? The laptop is wiped clean of anything I had on it, so if I have to get rid of it I won't have to drill the hard drive. Someone who doesn't need the Verizon connection can have this lovely thing now.

What a laptop humanitarian I am. Kudos to moi.

New Trip Added!

Forgot to mention that last week the boss decided that I and a co-worker need to go to training in Nashville, Tennessee in July. So that takes care of every month from April to October except August. Looks like Boston will have to be then. What a hardship...NOT!