Writing

Stephanie has been gently encouraging me to write something more substantial than a blog post for several years now and I stupidly promised about a week ago to write a short story or an essay or something that would qualify. Alas, I've been a complete failure in my mission so this post will have to suffice. It's writing something. It is. And if I get into the habit of sitting in front of the keyboard on a regular basis perhaps something more interesting will spew forth.

I was reading a really good book this week, Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan. It's a murder mystery populated by characters who, ironically, either write or edit murder mysteries. There was an idea in the book that struck me; about being an editor. That no one really sets out to be one. Folks just sort of fall into it through happenstance or circumstance. Of course that's not true. I'm sure there are plenty of people who aspire to be editors from an early age. But I do believe or would like to believe that there are probably plenty who start out, as another of the characters in Dolan's book did, to be writers but find they're better at pulling apart and putting together others' writing than they are at creating their own.

I think now in hindsight I would have really really enjoyed editing books since I love reading them so much. I'm also reminded of John Irving's The World According to Garp in which Garp's wife Helen, an English professor, explains that there are writers, like Garp, and there are readers, like her. As I'm sure you've gathered by now I'm more the reader than the writer. I would desperately like to be able to write something original. I can write a book report but I tremble like the proverbial leaf at the thought of writing a piece of fiction. I have all the best intentions when it comes to writing something but find I haven't the foggiest idea where to start. I'm sure "at the beginning" is probably the best place so I'll endeavor to try try try again. So maybe editing. Hmmm...In the book this character anonymously drops off three drafts of his own short story at the offices of a literary magazine named Gray Streets that publishes noir stories. Each draft is an improvement on the other. At the third leaving he runs smack dab into the managing editor of said magazine who hires him on the spot for his ingenuity and his evident editorial talent.

Once upon a time I held the title of Executive Editor with McGraw Hill Higher Education. Of  course like most titles this one was quite deceiving since I was neither technically an "executive" (whatever that is...or maybe I was) nor certainly an editor. I was a product manager for software products. But that's neither here nor there. I'm not sure where it is.

As I find myself faced with this dread disease and pondering death and dying on a more frequent basis I find myself noodling on things like writing or editing. Career paths I think in retrospect I might have pursued. Of course as the years go by I guess we all go from "It's never too late." to in my case it really is. It's not too late to write something that my children can read and even their children can read. I suppose they could even read this measly blog if that's what it comes down to and it will be...something. So if I never write my magnum opus I've left a few lines to be read and remembered by. So there. Not that I've given up on the opus. Opus opus opus.

Nearly a yearly

OK, it's been almost a year since I've posted to this blog. December 10 of 2010 to be exact. But since today is 11.1.11 it seems like a good time to start up again. I've decided to start to regularly post again and I'm sure you're all thrilled to no end.

Since I don't have the time or the energy to recount the events of the past eleven months I'll just pledge to put something out here on a more regular basis. At least once a week is my goal. So, there it is. Back in a jiffy.

Climate is Underrated

This will be a short post. I'm in Florida visiting with my father for a week. The Floridians are freaking out over their "cold" snap. It's gotten into the fifties each of the past three or four days and even into the thirties at night. Today it's back to normal. 76 degrees and sunny. I left Chicago at 13 degrees. Let me be clear. 76 is greater than 13 in every way. Especially when it's the farenheit temperature.

I hope to visit some friends while I'm here and bask in the warmth. Due to my chemotherapy I'm incredibly intolerant to the cold. 13 sucks. Minus 8 where Chicago is headed Monday is suckier by a factor of 5. I love Chicago and could never live in Florida full time again but give me Florida for the winters please. That is all. Thanks! Peace out!

Reflections on the oblong spheroid

OK, so I've been a bit lax in posting to the old blog lately. It's only been three and a half months. And it's certainly no coincidence that I've been silent since August 16. I've been busy! Consumed. As a matter of fact if you were to study my behavior (please don't) since about the age of eight I believe you'd observe a strikingly predictable trend. Between the middle of August and the middle of January every year I've been in the arms, or the clutches of a passionate mistress, football.

I don't apologize for it though I've felt pangs of guilt on a great number of occasions. I'm in love and have been for a long long time. I can't escape it or rather wouldn't try to if I could. It's all consuming. I wouldn't begin to try to explain it to those of you who don't already understand it. And there is no need to do so to the rest of you. I'm crazy mad coo coo for cocoa puffs for both professional and college football. Do I love it more than my wife and children? Of course not but it's been with me a lot longer.

When I was a boy I had dalliances with others. Basketball lost me when the players started signing shoe contracts at 7 and assembling their posses before they could drive. Baseball has its nostalgic charm but it's like your favorite aunt; quaint but nothing to stir the blood. Soccer, er...football? With apologies to my friend Steve who in his eloquent style compares and contrasts the two footballs by their spatial qualities...Call me an American apologist but soccerfootball just ain't football a'tall. Hockey? Please. I'm from freaking Florida. Now I can and will sit down in front of the tube or in an arena or stadium and take one of these others but would I change my plans to do so? As B.B. would say, the thrill (if there ever was one) is gone.

We've reached that part of the autumnal ritual, as predictable as the turning of the leaves, wherein the college game crescendos through rivalry weekend. This past weekend. Many of the titanic tilts throughout time were renewed again. The Game. The Big Game. The Iron Bowl. Michigan-Ohio State. Florida-Florida State. The Egg Bowl (my personal favorite name) And on and on. To not personally be attached to a school with a hated rival is to miss out on one of the great experiences of college life that fortunately or unfortunately carries on in perpetuity. When your team wins, as mine did yesterday, it makes the next 364 days of the year infinitely better.

Unfortunately, yet somehow ingeniously, the college game has managed to mangle the remainder of the season by allowing a collection of bowl representatives in loud sport coats to manage the process of picking its National Champion. If you wonder how that could be ingenious just listen to fans like me argue, moan, and cry about the process thereby stoking the fires and strengthening the collective brand. Ingenious.

Just after the New Year after the collegiate champion is mythically crowned the professionals take to the assorted frozen tundra and plastic grass to settle their championship the right way: On the field. And then, as Hamlet would say, the rest is silence. After the Super Bowl, unless your team wins it, you're left with seven months of waiting, wondering, and wishing that somehow next season was already here.

back from the beyond

Hello friends! I realize it's been just two days short of forever since I posted to this blog. I had a lot going on with planning our trip to Europe, going on the trip, recovering from the trip, and all that jazz. No excuses. I hope this post doesn't let you down after such a long absence.

First, I suppose I should provide a brief "health update". I am now in the final throes of some serious suffering caused by self inflicted wounds. A couple of weeks before we left for Europe Dr. Alex put me on an oral chemotherapy drug, Xeloda. Supposed to be good stuff. So I faithfully began taking it, four in the morning and four at night every day and continued to do so for five weeks. All through the trip. On the final stages of the trip I got really sick with a myriad of symptoms. Most of the symptoms were chemo side effects to the nth degree. Burning hands and feet, mouth sores, burns elsewhere on the body, etc. etc. When I got home I went straight to Dr. Alex where I found out almost immediately what the problem was. I was supposed to be taking the Xeloda every other week. Not every day. Chemotherapy overdose. Doc said if I hadn't come in I would have been in the hospital within three days. Now that I've been off it for almost a week I'm starting to come around. Sheesh.

He told me he gave me the instructions verbally. They weren't on the bottle that way. Just four in the morning and four at night. Thank goodness I went in. And thank goodness I didn't get sick until the last days of the trip. We had an amazingly great time.  As my friend, Inigo Montoya says, "Lemme explain. No, is too complicated. Lemme sum up."

The trip started out rather ominously at O'Hare. We were delayed almost six hours. We boarded and deplaned twice before getting on for good. We were in a race against time (how melodramatic) because our crew was about to be DQ'd for too many hours. We came within five minutes of being cancelled for the night. But all's well that ends well and we got on the plane and made it to Paris without further incident. We took a train into the city then walked five or six blocks to our hotel in the Latin Quarter.

We all loved Paris. What a beautiful and fascinating city. In addition to seeing all the major sights we wanted to see we also got to just wander around some of the neighborhoods and thereby make some unexpected discoveries. The people were great. The food was good and inexpensive, and the weather was perfect throughout our five days there. If I never see another miniature replica eiffel tower in my life it will be too soon. It seemed there were african vendors selling them on every corner at five for a euro. And they were available in every color imaginable. Enough already.

My favorite sights in Paris were Les Invalides, Versailles, and Ile St. Louis. And of course Notre Dame was absolutely breathtaking. We were almost sorry to leave Paris. If you haven't been, go. If you have been, go again.

Next we boarded a train for the village of Carentan in Normandy. We stayed there with a family we'd never met before, the Rohees. The matriarch was an old friend of my sister in law who studied for a year in France during college. They were roommates then and remained close. They were kind enough to offer to put us up in their home for a couple of nights. They have three teenaged children 18, 16, and 14 so our kids would have someone to relate to. The only slight problem was that none of them spoke English and none of us spoke French. Actually they did speak English much better than we did French but there was still quite a language barrier.

Mont St. Michel

They were the kindest and friendliest people we could have hoped for. The first night we arrived in Carentan they took us for a brief tour of the town then put us in their cars and whisked us off to Mont St. Michel. It's the most visited landmark in France and for good reason. An incredibly beautiful 10th century abbey/castle built on top of a mountain that just juts out of the sea. I'll put a picture in of it but it can't possibly do it justice. It was a two hour drive out there and two hours back and by the end of the journey we were all fast friends. We had dinner when we got back to their house at 2AM that night.

The next day they took us for a whirlwind tour of Normandy and the D-Day sights. We saw the US cemetery, Mere St. Elise where the paratrooper famously got caught on the steeple of the cathedral, and many other sights that no one but a native could have shown us. It was spectacular. The French countryside and its villages were just unbelievably lovely. That night we had a great dinner accompanied by some home made cider, liquers, and calvados. The next day we were sad to say goodbye to the Rohee family. I'm sure we'll keep in touch with them.

Next we were off to London via a rather circuitous route. We took a train back to Paris, then a cab to another train station in Paris, then a train to Calais, then the Eurostar train through the chunnel to London. We got a nice meal and drinks in our first class cabin on the Eurostar and were in London before we knew it.

We stayed at the Marriott Marble Arch in London. The Marble Arch is an entrance to Hyde Park and is quite literally a marble arch. The neighborhood surrounding the arch was, surprisingly, Middle Eastern. On the same block with the hotel we had Iranian, Iraqui, Arabian, Lebanese, Pakistani, and Afghani restaurants. Right across the street we had a Beirut Express. We later found out it was a chain. Rather than bowlers and umbrellas we saw houka bars and burkhas. The hotel was great. Definitely the best digs we had for the entire trip.

Rehearsal at the Globe

London was large and somewhat overwhelming. We decided to take one of those tour buses throughout the city. We could hop off and off wherever we wanted and had a cheeky Londoner guide for each bus. We resisted doing the bus at first. How touristy can you get, right? But it turned out well. We got to see all the major sights in the city and we did a good deal of hopping on and off. We toured Buckingham Palace and saw the changing of the guard, toured Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (v3) and several other landmarks. We also had a box of various "neighborhood walks" on cards and did some of those as well. Overall we all found London the least wonderful place on the trip. Very large, very crowded, very expensive. Still fun, memorable, and exciting. Just less so than the other places we visited. We spent four nights there. Madison got some good shopping in. Connor and I went to the British Museum which was very cool as well. I got a bit ill while we were there which probably didn't help matters. All in all we were happy to get on the train for Scotland.

We had a five hour train trip between London and Edinburgh. A beautiful ride through the English and Scottish countryside. We arrived in Edinburgh during the heart of the Edinburgh Festival and the Fringe Festival. Wacky wacky crazy fun time. If you're not familiar with these festivals they bring millions of people, both performers and audiences, to the city. There are thousands of performance venues featuring everything from jugglers with chainsaws to the Royal Shakespeare Company. Tickets run the gamut from free to incredibly expensive and the quality offers the same type of range. All in all though, hugely entertaining.

Aside from the festivals, Edinburgh is a really gorgeous city. We toured Edinburgh Castle and a few other amazingly beautiful landmarks and met some lovely Scottish people. The last day we were there Connor and I took a bus tour out into the Trossachs and to Stirling Castle. Saw some great scenery and the beginnings of the Highlands. And Connor had a dream come true when he bought himself a kilt with all the trimmings. All in all I think Connor and I liked Scotland best of all our stops and Stephanie and Madison would probably pick Paris with Edinburgh a close second.

I'll leave this post with a final observation. I brought and used something called a "transport chair" throughout the trip. It's a wheelchair without the big wheels on the side. Which means I couldn't transport myself in it. I had to be pushed. Thanks to my family for having the patience to push me around a lot of the time. I had the chair because of my somewhat weakened state and it's a good thing I did have it. I don't think I could have made it without it.

It also gave me a great appreciation for what actual handicapped folks go through. I was able to get up out of the chair and have Connor carry it up and down subway steps and other steps and obstacles. I can only imagine how frustrating most of these places would be for someone who couldn't get out of the chair. I thought I could empathize before but now I have a much better idea. What courage and strength those folks have.

overdue

Well, I'm through making promises about my frequency of posts. I see that it's been sixteen days since my last one when I vowed to make them once a week. Oh well. I'm sure nobody was gnashing their teeth to see the latest anyway.

I've been doing quite a bit of reading, as usual. I finished Atlas Shrugged. I suppose my reaction would be a shrug. Almost fourteen hundred pages of philosophical dogma with some shreds of plot thrown in for good measure. If you're not familiar with Randian philosophy, aka objectivism, it's all about free markets and egoism. One of the characters delivers a mind blowing three hour monologue outlining said philosophy near the end of the book. I know it would be three hours because she repeatedly refers to it as the "three hour speech".  I forced myself to finish it and I'm glad I did. I hate to leave things unfinished.

I also read The March by E.L. Doctorow, The Bloody Ground, another Civil War historical fiction thing, and Treasure Island. Treasure Island was a nod back to the pirate stuff I read previously. I didn't know I had a copy of it and when I discovered it on the shelf I couldn't resist. These three books combined didn't reach the length of Atlas Shrugged and yet I found them all infinitely more entertaining.

I just finished my last round of chemotherapy this week as well. It laid me out as usual but I am so glad to be done with it. I have to start radiation on June 1 but that couldn't be nearly as bad as the chemo. Could it? Let's hope not. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I look forward to feeling better as the doctor promises.

I'm contemplating some trips. To North Carolina with Madison to see North Carolina School of the Arts and to visit my ailing Grandma, and to Southern California to visit some friends and relations. Stephanie is being great about encouraging me to travel. She knows I'm somewhat depressed and that a change of scenery might do me good. I wish I could take her with me everywhere but her job doesn't permit unfortunately.  We're still planning to go to Europe at the end of July as well. Need to pick up the steam on the planning for that one or time will pass us by. Hasta luego amigos.

The end in sight

Yesterday I started cycle seven of eight of my nasty chemotherapy. It gets cumulatively worse as far as side effects go so I've been doing a lot of sleeping since I came home from the hospital and little else. Two weeks from tomorrow they'll disconnect me from this dreaded pump for (hopefully) the last time. Hooray!

Next step is radiation again. I have an appointment with the radiation oncologist tomorrow. Apparently they're going to try some narrow beam radiological surgery thing that is aimed at controlling the tumor growing into my pelvic bone. That's the one that they believe to be inoperable otherwise so I have my fingers crossed it will succeed.

After that it's probably back onto some chemo orally along with avastin orally. The doc tells me the side effects of the oral drugs are very mild so I should be able to function fairly normally. And he promised that if they do make me sick he'd give me a reprieve for a few weeks while we go to Europe this Summer.

That's about it on the medical front. Nothing much else to report. I've embarked on a new book, Atlas Shrugged. It's about 1500 pages so it should keep me occupied for a while at least. I'm also going to start a writing class down in Chicago later this week. We'll see how that goes.

Be well and Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there.