First couple of days last week I felt really miserable and cranky. It took me until Tuesday night to realize that it was because I abruptly stopped eating sugar (at Dagstuhl I kept a daily regimen of cake and chocolate); as always, finding an underlying cause for my feelings made me feel much better. My mood has stabilized, but towards the weekend, I entered a "hungry all the time phase." Usually, it's OK, but, of course, if I have food around (esp. high-density stuff like meat and nuts), I tend to overeat. Yesterday, I ordered in room service around 6pm, and then went out again for a burger at 10. Today I had a huge lunch (I even exceeded the cafeteria coupon allowance they gave us), and a normal-sized dinner, but was feeling too hungry to work in the evening, so stopped by Safeway to pick up some snacks. Ended up eating 4 (!) bananas and about 5oz of pistachios, and probably would eat more if I were staying up much longer.
I really do wish that there was an easier fix for the fat accumulation bug...
- Music:Pandora
The flight took us over the northern arctic—the display even switched to a polar map when the Cartesian projection stopped making sense! We actually went much further west than we needed, going through about the middle of Mongolia, before cutting back east towards Beijing and then Shanghai. The winds must have been favorable, since we arrived a full hour early. I got a whole lot of writing done on my CAREER proposal; it's amazing what being stuck with a computer and no Internet for 13 hours can do. They fed us three meals; the last one was the best: some noodles and dumplings! We also got chopsticks with our food.
We made it through quarantine and customs quickly; people inspected our documents but did not ask a single question. Once past customs, you go through a long passage where people are holding up signs with names. We contemplated making a sign for Russell, but decided that we were pretty easy to spot in a crowd in Shanghai. We tried to spot the Canadians coming out, but had trouble distinguishing them from other white people until we saw a maple leaf. Russell was a bit later than everybody; he made the mistake of declaring that he had a runny nose on the health inspection form, but they let him go through eventually.
We took the maglev out of the airport, traveling at a blazing 430 km/h, though for all of a few minutes. It was a bit surreal going through turns, as those were intensely banked. Probably the funniest feeling is slowing down from 430 km/h—250 km/h feels so <em>slow</em> in comparison! Our next adventure was the subway. The car started out empty, but got gradually fuller, culminating at People's Square where everyone, including us, got out. The walk to change lines was very impressive, as we were swept up in a giant mass of people, all moving along, and periodically being squeezed through a bottleneck of an escalator. They cleverly set up separate area for people walking in each direction, because trying to get this many people past each other seemed near impossible. We certainly weren't in Kansas anymore!
Finding the hotel was a breeze because everywhere seems to have signs in English. We waited for the rest of our crew to arrive but eventually one by one drifted off. Finally woke up after a nap and ventured out in search of food. The restaurant we arrived at had excellent menus: not only did everything have photos, but there was even an English version. Unfortunately, the waitress was standing over us while we ordered, so I didn't get a chance to memorize the characters for "hot and sour soup." The pictures also didn't tell us just how large the portions were, but it turns out that at least a few of us were quite hungry, so we polished off four rather big portions. The wait staff barely spoke English, so I tried to request some water and rice in Chinese, but this only reminded me why I didn't choose to study Chinese before coming here: being understood through my terrible accent and complete ineptitude with tones was not going to happen. I finally was able to mime "water," and the waiter knew the English word for rice, so it all worked out.
Our bill came out to 142 ¥, which is about US$20. They say Shanghai is no longer very cheap, so I guess costs were even lower before. Now we're winding down by getting everyone set up on the Internet. For all my worries, a simple SSH SOCKS proxy bypasses the Great Firewall completely (well, after I convinced Firefox to use SOCKS for DNS as well, since they seem to rewrite DNS for twitter and facebook). All in all, most of this trip felt almost disappointingly easy. I hope I stay disappointed!
Eventually, I realized that I was supposed to transfer at Brussel-Noord, a couple of stops earlier, and that my intended train and I had crossed paths. I tried to decide whether to take the Thalys to be only slightly late to meet
So I got on the next train and made it to Antwerp, where we caught up with the Thalys, and then the train got stuck. They explained that there was a problem with the track, and we had to take another train to Kappelen, then a bus to Essen, and then another train from there. Just as I was figuring out where to go, I ran into another faculty member from ECE, who was in Brussels for a couple of days and decided to take a short trip to Amsterdam before returning. I think his company was the only thing that made the next four hours bearable.
The train to Kappelen was crowded, but manageable. There we found a huge horde of people, waiting for buses. One bus came, quickly filled to capacity, and went on its way. 15 minutes later, another bus came. The driver of this one was more strict and would only allow people who could get seats onto his bus. While we were figuring this out, a second bus pulled up and filled to capacity as well. Finally, a city bus was recruited into the shuttle effort. That driver didn't insist that people sit down, so we all packed in like sardines and were on our way.
The distance to Essen (Belgium, not the one in Germany) was less than 20km, but on small roads and through cities with traffic, so it took us most of an hour to make the trip. When we arrived, we saw a local train just pulling away from the station. The next one would be in 30 minutes, they told us. We at least got some water and chips; our hopes of finding some actual food were dashed when we discovered that every place in Essen was closed.
30 minutes later, the local train arrived, dumped a crowd of people who were going through the same hell, but in the other direction, and filled up again. We even got seats! The train then proceeded to sit on the track for another 20 minutes, waiting for some indeterminate event, while we all started to bake on the inside. When the train finally closed its doors and pulled away, everyone inside applauded.
Arriving at the next stop, Rosendaal, we were directed to another track, where we could see a train to Amsterdam just pulling away. Fortunately, at this point things were a little more organized and they sent an extra train to Amsterdam just for us. The train had to wait on the track a few times, but it did get us to Amsterdam, four hours after we were originally supposed to arrive. A had graciously gone to pick up
That will show me for raving about the great train service in Europe! At least the train ride back was uneventful...
Finally decided it was time to drag my sorry ass outside; met up with
Now I'm enjoying some of the aforementioned tea. I need to make a quick run to the local grocery store to resupply for the rest of the long weekend. I also bought a new Belgian SIM; I just need to get it working with my phone. I already unlocked the iPhone, I just can't unlock the SIM compartment for lack of a safety pin. Off to the store!
- Location:leuven, belgium
A bit before 10, they called me in, told me my kidney function was good, and were about to start the IV. But they wanted to double-check: did I drink the barium suspension? Turns out, no; I didn't have to do it last time, and no one told me to do it this time. Well, they said, you have to go back out, drink the tasty "berry shake" (which I now think is better than the banana-rama), and come back in 90 minutes. This gave me enough time to drive
I finally got out of the CT scan that was scheduled for 9am at 12:15pm and rushed to our noon faculty meeting. I stopped back around 4pm to pick up the CD and any lab results that may have been ready. Turns out that LDH was done: this was my high tumor marker that, for whatever reason, has not been tested since last July. It looks like it's within the normal range. The radiologist report was not ready yet, but then I got home, I finally took a look at the CT scan.
Unofficial verdict: the tumor is still visible, but looks distinctly thinner. It looks like it's about 1.5cm x 1cm in cross-section (down from 2.4cm x 1.8cm in November). It's still about as long as before, but given it's elongated shape, it would make sense that it would lose volume in the cross-section before shrinking lengthwise.
So, even though some data is still outstanding, from what I can glean, things are progressing as they should be and there's no reason to think that I have any active cancer cells left. I still want to talk about surgery when I see the doctor on Monday, but now that I'm getting back into the swing of things, I'm less gung ho to go back into the hospital. I've been thinking this week about how I'd react if the CT scan turned out badly, and I had trouble picturing it, but I was pretty sure that this wasn't going to be a fun weekend. I guess I can put away that thought until my next scan now and focus on getting better again.
Turns out that there are quite a few; I had time to try out the most popular ones: mint.com, wesabe.com, and geezeo.com.
Mint.com is by far the most polished. The site looks nice, with rounded transitions and flash animations. While in most cases, the interface simply makes the experience a bit more pleasant, their spending trends visualizer is great, letting you drill down into a pie chart of spending categories and see the corresponding transactions. (It also feels more responsive than Quicken on my computer, but that's saying more about Quicken than about Mint.com.) Wesabe.com seems to have pretty good visualizations, too, though it feels less polished and responsive overall. Geezeo is the least pleasing to the eye, and I actually could not find any visualization tools.
The coolest feature of the online sites is that they can automatically download the financial data from your accounts. It's been my job to regularly download transactions from all of our banks and put them into Quicken. With the sites, they will actually do this automatically and will always have up-to-date information. So with the Quicken method, it was pretty infeasible to check our budget progress more than once a month (in fact, I'd often go many months without the downloads, even when I wasn't in the hospital), with the online sites, you can really check your budget progress weekly or even daily.
The process of linking accounts is slightly different for each site. Mint.com has a large list of financial sites it supports and you simply enter your login credentials. They don't have a login for our home bank; I'm starting to suspect that this is because it uses a (world's dumbest) CAPTCHA at login time. But they seem to support every other bank in our area, as well as every other financial institution (loans, IRAs, mortgages) we use. Wesabe.com can download transactions from a limited number of sites; for everything else, you can get a Firefox plugin that can record your login and download interactions and upload data to Wesabe. Clever, though more cumbersome than simply supplying your credentials (and it still won't work with our home bank). Geezeo's solution for unsupported banks is simply to let you upload an .ofx file manually, which might be the best approach.
Once the transactions are imported, the sites let you categorize them, with some automation built in. Mint.com has the best automation right off the bat, classifying probably 80-90% of our transactions automatically. Wesabe requires that you enter your own tags, but will apply them to similar transactions in the future. Geezeo follows a similar system.
The tag structure in Wesabe and Geezeo is free-form: you enter as many tags as you want for a transaction, and Wesabe will even display all your tags in the familiar tag cloud format. Mint.com, on the other hand, has a more rigid structure, with some user extensions built in (reading online reviews, it looks like the extensions are a recent addition). It has a fairly detailed two-level category hierarchy. You can add your own categories, and it even comes with a large bank of suggested ones, but you can't delete the built-in ones. It also allows you to assign tags to transactions; tags can span multiple categories and a transaction can have multiple tags. So in the end, you can get a similar structure to Wesabe and Geezeo, but there's a separation of primary and secondary properties of a transaction.
You can then use these tags and categories in visualization tools, or to set up a budget of spending targets. Here, all three sites leave a lot to be desired. Mint.com allows to create a spending target for a category or a sub-category. Wesabe lets you use a tag, and Geezeo lets you combine two tags (using an OR). So, for example, Mint.com allows you to tag things as Reimbursable (it's even part of a default tag set), but you can't create a budget for non-reimbursable travel expenses. (Though you can query them in the visualizer.) And in Wesabe and Geezeo, I was hoping to create separate budgets for "clothing nikita" and "clothing lenore," but neither will let me do that. (I'd have to basically tag things as "clothing clothingnikita" and "clothing clothinglenore.") My hope is that, given that all of these sites are fairly recent, at some point at least one of them will get around to implementing some decent search operators.
We finally settled on Mint.com as our main site. It has a nice interface, it painlessly supports all of our accounts except for the checking one (we actually looked into switching banks and found a better deal at another bank in town that is "minty"), and it has an iPhone interface which looks pretty slick. It seems like it would be pretty useful for day-to-day planning. One nice thing about the budget display in Mint.com is that it not only shows you how much of the budgeted amount you have spent so far, but also a line that shows where you should be given how far into the month/year/etc. you are, so we can see, for example, that our food expenses for this month have actually been lower than expected.
I'll have to see how well it will work for a monthly evaluation of spending, but I'm pretty sure it will save me time over using Quicken. And it's pretty cool to see all of our financial accounts added up in one place to calculate our "Net Worth" (which is heavily negative, since it includes our mortgage).
Overall, I decided that Cool Nights was the wrong profile for me. I chose it mainly because many of the pictures showed solid color shirts in bold colors, which is something I like. But the description says that "The Cool Nights selection can be described as going-out clothes with a youthful flare." But I don't do very much going out, and while I'm interested in an update to my wardrobe, "flare" is not what I'm looking for.
So I decided to switch over to Tomorrow's Boss for my next shipment. The description still mentions "youthful flare" (it looks like they didn't break the bank on their writers), but it also talks about building "sharp wardrobe for a day in the office or a night out." That's definitely more of what I'm looking for; from what I can see, the styles are not too conservative, but I don't think I'm likely to get loud patterns from this collection.
The good news is that my nerves seem to still be alive, even in my feet. Also, I confirmed that the soreness I feel in my wrists & arms is in fact nerve pain. But I'm really not sure if the treatment was a good idea. My wrists and arms have been hurting quite a bit more than they did before the treatment, especially around the time the painkillers run out. For my feet, the sensation did eventually become a pleasant one, but I'm not sure if there's any lasting benefit, and there's definitely some pain around some of the puncture points there, too. So even though I made an appointment for next week, I'm not sure I will return, especially if the pain persists for more than a couple of days.
At least the cost of the session should be tax-deductible. I noticed during my accounting that we will probably exceed the 7.5% of AGI floor for medical expenses this year. This motivated me to go and pay off the balance of my hearing aids—I had only paid for half of them when I bought them. The staff was a little confused as to why I wanted to give them money sooner than they required, but after I explained that I effectively get a 25% discount if I pay out the money now rather than next year, they were more than happy to accommodate me.
While browsing Facebook a month or so ago, I came across an ad for OutfitEZ. "Hate shopping for clothes?" it asked. Why yes, I do! I checked out the website. It's a service that picks out and sends clothes for you to wear once every quarter. The idea is that someone with more taste than you picks out outfits that are coordinated and they get delivered right to your door. A dream come true, right? What I found funny is that the makers of the site decided there's no point even mentioning that the service caters exclusively to men. (Though now,
fanlain is a little bit jealous.)
It sounded tempting, and I decided to try them out. The price isn't cheap: $100/month, but it works out to roughly $40 per item of clothing, inclusive of shipping and tax (well, there's no tax charged unless you're in Colorado). They also have plans for $50 or $150, though the per-item price stays the same. You get to select your size, your profile (I picked Cool Nights), and some other things, like whether you live in a warm or cold climate, your complexion, etc.
My first shipment arrived a couple of days ago, but I finally got to look through it this evening. The collection includes:
- A striped shirt
- A paisley shirt
- A patterned long-sleeve shirt
- A mock turtleneck
- Black pants
- Designer jeans
- A tie
- A belt
One of the reasons I liked the idea of OutfitEZ is that it would be a way to leave my comfort zone and try something new; this shipment definitely did not disappoint in that respect. I think other than the pants, and maybe the belt, I would not have bought any of the rest of the things myself. But I'm pretty sure I'll keep most of these things. You're allowed to return items you don't like, but they recommend you get a second opinion before discarding an item. So this is where you come in.
fanlain and I decided to do a photo shoot to get comments.
I put all the photos in a Flickr set. What do you think? Rate them from 1 to 5, where 5 means "ooh, snazzy!" and 1 means "ow! my eyes!"
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17
Mean: 3.06 Median: 3 Std. Dev 1.11
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| 5 |
Mean: 3.47 Median: 4 Std. Dev 1.04
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Striped shirt left open, with mock turtleneck
Mean: 2.06 Median: 2 Std. Dev 1.16
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| 5 |
Mean: 3.06 Median: 3.5 Std. Dev 1.09
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| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 |
Mean: 2.75 Median: 3 Std. Dev 0.90
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| 4 | |
| 5 |
Mean: 3.12 Median: 3 Std. Dev 1.18
| 1 | |
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| 5 |
Paisley shirt with black pants
Mean: 4.07 Median: 4 Std. Dev 1.06
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| 4 | |
| 5 |
Mean: 3.06 Median: 3 Std. Dev 1.11
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| 5 |
Mean: 2.94 Median: 3 Std. Dev 1.20
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| 5 |
Mean: 3.12 Median: 4 Std. Dev 1.08
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| 5 |
Mock turtleneck, not tucked in
Mean: 2.41 Median: 2 Std. Dev 1.19
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After a week, the loud noises from papers and such stopped being so jarring. But I was still pretty frustrated at not being able to understand people; I'd have real trouble in meetings, especially if they included more than one person. Since that's a large part of what I do, I was pretty sad, and hoped that the hearing aids could be adjusted. Fortunately, it turns out they could—initially, they turn them down a bit to make the background sounds less disorienting to people who had not worn hearing aids before. And even though I had only had significant hearing loss for less than four months, it was definitely helpful for me. The audiologist adjusted them using this machine that actually measures the sound levels inside my ears, and afterward a lot of the harsh high-pitched sounds that became less noticeable over the first week and a half I was wearing the aids popped out again, though not quite as dramatically. I started to hear more noises, like our microwave timer and my feet shuffling. More importantly, speech recognition became much easier. It's still not perfect, but I can understand most people without much effort, and for the really quiet people, like
I find these days that if I increase the volume by 4–6 dB using my ($500!) remote, speech recognition becomes pretty good, but being in a moderately noisy environment gives me a headache. But I'm still adjusting; I think I'll learn to ignore the background sounds a bit more with time, and the plan for next Monday is to do another, fine-grained adjustment. I might try to bring
I'm still not sure if I want to try the higher-end model. It supposedly has somewhat better noise suppression, with a feature that clamps down on sudden loud noises, which could be pretty nice. It also has a neat directional control, where I can choose to focus on sounds to the left or right of me (or even behind), rather than the default front. This is intended to help when you're in the car, or walking along with someone. I'm also trying to decide if I should get an in-ear model rather than behind-the-ear one I'm wearing now. I don't mind the hearing aid hanging off my ear; the little piece that's inside the ear bothers me more (though I'm mostly used to it now). And it's hardly noticeable, from what I've heard from others; the transparent tube is hard to spot unless you're looking for it, and the piece behind the ear gets masqueraded very well by my glass rims (and eventually will be hidden by my hair). But it gets in the way when I take my glasses on and off (e.g., when I switch to my prescription sunglasses for driving). And it's uncomfortable to lay my head down on a pillow without removing the aid first. I'll have to discuss that on Monday.
One thing that I've realized from the hearing loss is just how much of spoken language you can infer from context. I discovered that I had the hardest time understanding people when they changed the subject, since it was much harder to predict what they were saying. Numbers were also difficult, and I would confuse "two" for "three" and "nine" for "one," since it's usually not obvious from context which was used. But trying to predict what was said and reparsing the audio stream based on that takes a lot of mental energy; I found that I was tired or not focusing my mind on what they were saying, I could hardly understand people at all.
On other neat thing about hearing aids is that you notice pretty quickly that your hearing is now controlled by a computer program, as it suddenly detects a situation change and adjusts the volume, or detects a speaker and isolates them so that they come through clearly. It's a little disorienting at first, but when it works well, it's actually pretty nice (and I can sometimes make adjustments with my remote control). I guess it's good practice for when more of my senses become bionic!
But it feels good to be at work and to be productive again. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to clear my list of overdue items by the end of the week! Of course, it will just fill up again when the next semester starts...
At first, a yet another doctor stopped by. I gave him a brief update on how things were going, he listened to my lungs and heart (I believe this is required during any doctor-patient contact), and went away. Both
The main question was, and remain still, about whether I should have surgery to remove the remaining mass in my retroperitoneal lymph node. He pointed out that the mass had shrunk quite a lot since July, and that it was not unusual for some tissue to remain, but the question of what to do about it was still open. His plan of action is to a) get an updated measurement of my tumor markers (I got blood taken after the appointment), b) discuss my scan with other doctors, and c) perhaps do a PET scan to see if there's any activity. I'm supposed to see him again in January to make the final decision.
I also talked to him about my painkillers and whether I should be worried about addiction. I take fewer of them than before, but I still need about two pills (5 mg oxycodone each) a day, and when I don't take them, I end up in pain and unhappy. He said that as long as I'm taking the pills for pain, and not for the high you get from them, I should be OK, and wrote me a prescription for more. This is reassuring and should improve my quality-of-life a bit, since I had been waiting until I feel pretty miserable to take the next dose, but now I feel OK about not letting it get that far.
By the time we left, it was nearly 5 (Eastern), so we decided to stop for dinner at Blu Martini, where
It's a bit disappointing that the visit wasn't more productive and I'm left with the same uncertainty. I guess I'll call next week to get my tumor marker results; if they're back up from what they were, that would be scary, though, as the doctor explained, not yet a death sentence. For the last few weeks, I've been feeling like my life is returning back to normal, and I'm very ready to put all of this behind me, but this visit was a reminder that I'm not out of the woods yet. Realistically, even if all the tests come up perfect, it will still be a year or two before I can breathe that sigh of relief that the cancer is likely not coming back. I just have to try to remain optimistic until then.
I figured the appointment would be to discuss the plan for surgery to extract it, get my consent, that kind of thing. I arrived a bit late, but turns out it didn't matter, since the surgeon was running much later himself. I spent some time getting breakfast at the hospital cafeteria (a pretty poor choice, but they told me not to leave the hospital/clinic); by the time I got back, they led me straight in to see him. When we got in the room, he asked me to lie down on an exam table and take off my shirt... so that it doesn't get bloody. I blinked—was he going to cut out the catheter right there? He removed the bandage and said "let's see if I can pull this thing out." My eyes went wide as he went YANK! and said "it's done." I barely had time to say "ouch!"
After that, the nurse put some pressure on it for a few minutes, and then bandaged it up. My instructions were to check for bleeding a few times during the day, and to not lie down for the next 4 hours. But I could have a normal shower the next day! That was exciting, since I've had a catheter in that spot since mid-August.
I went back to work for a bit, then came back in the afternoon to meet with my nephrologist. He was a little disturbed, telling me that I looked tired, when I was supposed to be getting better. I suggested it was because of the long drive back from Florida (I still haven't recovered, I don't think). He ordered tests for my blood and urine to see how things were going. Impressively, he called me back personally in the evening and explained the results—usually, you just get a note in the mail a week later saying things were fine. Apparently, everything was fine: my creatinine was down to 1.9 (2.2 at last measurement), my hemoglobin stayed at around 11.5, despite not receiving any more Epogen, and the protein leakage into the urine was only slightly above the norm. He did mention that I need to be drinking more fluids. My plan was to bring my camelbak water bottle to work, though somehow it didn't happen today. But overall, good news.
I also stopped by to get a flu shot, being already at the clinic. I've never gotten one before, since I was never in a high-risk group. I'm not sure whether I'm in one now; I think my immune system is working fine again, though if I happen to need chemo again, it would obviously help not to be sick. But if I understand these things correctly, the flu shot has significant positive externalities, so I decided to do it. It was pretty painless, though they made me wait around for 10 minutes to see if I'd have an allergic reaction. (And the arm was a little sore today.)
- Plan for leaving: pack up Thursday night, leave work at 3, grab Soba, and get on the road by 4 at the latest. Actual: didn't finish packing despite only getting five hours of sleep and waking up early. End up leaving at 6, and coming back at 6:30 because we thought we forgot
fanlain 's phone. Turns out we did have it, but we had left one of the lights on, so I guess it was good we came back. - Learned a bunch of geography on the way down: we saw some barge traffic on the [[Ohio]] and [[Tennessee]] rivers (the latter of which we, of course, had to cross twice), passed by the [[Land Between the Lakes]] (formerly Land Between the Rivers, until the dams were built), saw the [[Red Mountain]] in Alabama, at the tail end of the [[Appalachians]] (though it was too dark to see the color).
- Didn't stay in Kentucky long enough to experience their famous southern hospitality, crazy accents, fried chicken, or jelly.
- I had trouble getting sleep at the LaQuinta in Nashville because of my feet hurting (and I had left my painkillers in the car), so I was up with Soba at 6 a.m.
- We remembered that Soba doesn't like elevators. She was a little iffy with the stairs, too, because her feet don't have a good grip on painted concrete, but eventually she learned to be OK with it. I had a little trouble taking the stairs back up to the fifth floor, especially on not enough sleep and before breakfast, but I made it, which I think is a very good sign.
- Visited the Grand Ole Opry (on the outside only) and also tried to find the waterfall from my second wedding. The Opryland Hotel has been redecorated and expanded; I found a waterfall, but I'm not sure it's the right one.
- Stopped at REI to buy myself a nice winter coat. I bought a different jacket in Champaign, but it's way too bulky, if really warm, so I'll be returning it. This one is very lightweight, and still feels pretty warm. And it doesn't look too much like you're wearing a sleeping bag, even though you are.
- Left Nashville way to late, so ended up driving really late and arriving at the beach house past 1 a.m. Central, which is past 2 a.m. local time. Still trying to get back to a more regular schedule. (Yes, we're on vacation, but it's annoying to have the sun set a few hours after you get up.)
- Stopped for food in Dothan, AL at one of the three (!) Japanese restaurants there. The sushi was better than what you get in Champaign, probably due to the proximity to the Gulf.
- Location:Cape San Blas, Port St Joe, FL
It will be interesting discovering what noises I have been missing. Some have been obvious: I don't hear beeps from things like the microwave very well now. And I realized this morning that I can barely hear our alarm clock, even when
We discussed my options. The basic question was how "active" a life I lead. I clearly fell into the "very active" category (remember, most people who get hearing aids are a bit older than I), which would indicate that I should go for the premium, top of the line hearing aids. But we discussed the differences between the high-end and mid-range aids and it wasn't clear that it would make a big difference. Since I get a 30-day trial period on the aids (required by state law!), the audiologist recommended that I try the mid-range ones, and if I'm a little disappointed in their performance, I can try the premium ones for another 30 days to decide if they're worth it.
The costs are a little daunting. The pair of mid-range hearing aids costs $4900. This is a little higher than the prices I had seen (e.g., from Hearing Planet, but the difference is exactly the amount that my insurance would cover, and I figure it's nice to have a local audiologist. The little remote that controls some of the functions is priced at a ridiculous $500. Hopefully I'll find I don't use it that much and return it, though I thought it might be nice to have it along for the trial. And the premium aids costs $1400 more. Plus there's a non-refundable $150 fitting fee.
But the prospect of not having hearing aids sounds worse, so I asked the audiologist to order a pair for me. They'll be ready for me right as I get back from Thanksgiving, so I'll report more then.
... but once they got the results, things sped up considerably. I got a call yesterday afternoon that I should go to Carle clinic for a blood test before dialysis this morning. Having done that, I got hooked up to the machine as usual and was waiting out my time (with an increasingly full bladder)1 when a phone call came in from the nephrologist saying that my blood test results came back, and I didn't have to come back for dialysis, and in fact they could let me go straight away.
I was, of course, very excited. I was pretty sure that I was not going to be among the 25% for whom the kidney function does not recover since I found out from my oncologist that my creatinine levels were dropping, but it felt great to be officially off. And now we can go to Florida for our vacation next week without worrying about driving an hour+ to the closest decent size city to get dialysis there.
As icing on the cake, they told me that my potassium levels were actually low and I should be less restrictive with my diet. So I had a burrito for lunch to celebrate!
As one of the nurses said, it's one more step towards returning to a normal life. I found myself with a bunch of free time for Thursday and Friday, so I spent today filling it up with meetings I hadn't thought I'd have time for. Tomorrow I have an appointment for a hearing aid fitting. Once I get those... oh yeah, and once I'm declared in remission (fingers crossed), I should be able to put these last few months behind me.
1 On a couple of previous visits, I asked to go to the bathroom while on dialysis. The first time, they disconnected me and it was OK, just added a few minutes to the time I had to spend in the clinic. The second time, my blood pressure dropped low enough that I started feeling nauseous and my hands started shaking, I was quickly surrounded by all the nurses in the room, and I spent the rest of my time on dialysis inclined backwards so that blood would flow back towards my heart and brain. After that, I've learned to wait until the end.
I had my CT scan today. The radiologist report won't be available for a little while, but I was able to get the scan itself. It took me a while of panning around using a DICOM viewer, but I eventually found the tumor. It's bigger than I expected, actually: about 5.8cmx2.4cmx1.8cm (these are the longest measurements in each dimension; its volume is much smaller). But I think it started out much larger, something like 7cm x 5cm. Hopefully it's all dead tissue; last time I had a PET scan confirm if it is.
When I met with Dr. Williams in July, we discussed what to do in such a case. He said it's a tough decision. Normally, if there is a large residual mass, they do a PET scan. If the PET scan shows up no sugar uptake activity, they typically leave it for observation; otherwise, they perform surgery to extract the remaining tumor tissue. The main reasoning behind this is that, in case of a negative PET scan, the odds of recurrence are pretty low, and the surgery is a major one, requiring 3-6 days of recovery in the hospital (and many days of recovery at home, I'm sure). On the other hand, I am (or rather would be, if a PET scan showed up as negative) in the exact same spot I was 8 months ago, when I had large residual masses that appeared not to have any live cancer in them. It's pretty likely that, had I gone for the surgery then, I would not have had the recurrence and would have avoided this whole second round of treatment. So the question is, do I do something unpleasant and slightly risky to hopefully avoid a low-probability event in the future, considering that the event is pretty scary? Or do I simply stick with observation and hope for the best? I have a feeling it will be a tough meeting in December.
ETA:
fanlain points out that this post might be more scary than it was intended to be. I should mention that because my tumor was so large before the second round of chemo, this is the expected scan result for a successful treatment; it was always unlikely that my body would be able to totally absorb all of the dead tissue. So the CT scan is not an indication of anything bad, it just presents a dilemma.
Another factor that I thought of later that might influence this decision is how my insurance company feels about all this. I don't think this is a cheap surgery, so if they won't cover it, that might help make our decision.
I then decided to check with the other clinic in town. It's covered less well by my insurance, but it turns out that the maximum benefit of $500 remains the same in both cases. Turned out that they could see me next Wednesday (19th). I figured that's better, even though I still won't get an actual hearing aid until December.
I had settled on getting a Phonak Versata or Exelia, but then, reading the hearing aid forums, it turned out that people were generally happier with the Bluetooth transmitter / remote on the Oticon Epoq. I was conflicted for a while, but then discovered that the closest place that sells them would be in Bloomington. Reading the forums, I realized that people often make many trips back to the audiologist for adjustments (and probably more so for a first hearing aid), so I figured it's better to work with someone local and live with the inferior transmitter. I'm still undecided on what style I want—behind the ear or in the ear—but I'm told the audiologist can make a suggestion based on my hearing test.
In other news, my health continues to improve. I've had quite a bit more energy over the last few days; I can tell my hemoglobin must be up significantly. My feet are starting to improve, too; they still hurt, but the pain is now manageable, sometimes even without painkillers (though I still take them regularly). I've also started sleeping a lot better, so I'm not feeling exhausted all the time from lack of sleep, either. This has helped me become more independent: I started walking by myself, and I've even driven the car a couple of times. Other than being a little rusty from not driving for a couple months, it seemed to go OK. This really helps, since I can now go to the office, or to various doctor's appointments, on my own schedule.
- Music:"the price is right"
We woke up again at 5:45am, to make the 7:09am train to the airport. This was ridiculously early for my flight at 11:05, but that way I could ride with
On the drive home, I started to feel a lot of muscle and joint pain. At first, I thought it was from the long flight, but then it started being a bit more extreme. I finally realized that this felt very much like it did after Bleomycin injections, when I would get a fever. Indeed, when I got home, I measured in at 100.0F. That would probably explain why I was freezing on the plane, too. I guess a week of drinking beer and not sleeping enough caught up with me.
I took a couple of tylenol and I'm feeling better now, down to 98.3.
- Music:"Dans je de hele nacht met mij" (in my head)
Then, in the evening, I met up with another friend from Amsterdam. I found out that he was going to be visiting NYC the same time as me by using Dopplr. Turns out he was there for the NANOG conference. So I crashed their reception, had some drinks and hors d'oeuvres, and caught up with my friend for a while. (As I got to the reception, I asked the bar hostess if this was where the NANOG party was. She said yes and proceeded to put an orange wristband on me, explaining that this way, they'd know I was part of the group and not some guy who just walked off the street.) While there, I also got to meet the directors of two of the largest internet exchanges in the world. According to their projections, they should together be forwarding over a terabit of traffic per second by this time next year. Interesting people.
Finally, to finish it off, I had a brief video chat with
I discussed this more with
Seeing as the "Bill To" address on the packing slip was myself, I decided to check my credit card statement. Lo and behold, there was a charge from the Franklin Mint for $300. This made even less sense. I certainly didn't remember ordering these cars, and though last week was tough and confusing, I seriously doubt I would have ordered model cars by mistake. I thought that maybe someone had stolen my card number, but then why use it to ship cars to me?
Finally, a dim recollection had entered my mind... my sister had asked to borrow my credit card number because she wanted to buy something for a friend but the site would only accept a US shipping address. She asked this the same day as
We celebrated by going out to Yellowfin Restaurant — a new Japanese place in town. One of their distinction is the presentation of their fancy rolls, so I decided to order the Champaign roll, which was baked spicy snapper around crab and cucumber. The roll was disappointing because it turns out they bake the whole thing, so you get something that tastes very little like sushi (rather than, say unagi, which is baked separately before being added to the roll). Plus the supposedly spicy sauce was more sweet than spicy. But everything else we had was quite good, so I think I might try going again sometime (when our budget allows) and try something more conventional.
The dinner party was held by my colleague who works in the office next door. He's Indian, so we had a number of yummy dishes, including a very nice coriander lentil sauce. Now our stomachs are happy and we can enjoy a quiet evening at home for the rest of the night — perfect for a snowstorm.
I was planning to go grade exams tomorrow morning, but given the snow, I think I'm going to stay home. We're still planning to go to Chicago tomorrow afternoon to celebrate our 8th anniversary of dating at Japonais and then pick up my mother from O'Hare. But by that time the snow should have been cleared. I'm really glad she's not flying in tonight!
I've been kind of in the mood for something more light and fluffy, like comedies or action flicks. Unfortunately, everything I can find in those genres seems like complete crap. My latest failed attempt was Firewall. From the preview it looked like a fun action movie with a silly premise. But the movie itself was so terrible, I seriously thought about turning it off in the middle. I can't tell whether the movie makers have simply gotten lazier, or whether my tolerance for bad writing, wooden acting, and cheesy plots has gone down with years, but I do yearn for the days when I could enjoy spending two hours watching something that's not at all serious. In hopes that it's not all just me, I'm asking you, my dear readers, for suggestions. Seen anything lately that has been shallow but fun to watch?
After the park we crashed out for a few hours, then went out to a Mediterranean restaurant where I had some manti. I had thought that it was just what I wanted, but turns out what I wanted was the manti we had had in a small place near Ephesus, and not the second-rate substitute we go here. Afterwards we watched "Pieces of April." I hadn't realized that cancer had a central theme in that movie, but it wasn't so bad. I liked it a bit better than Hedges' new movie "Dan in Real Life," though
My mother and sister are both on a big supplement kick and talked about preparing my body for tolerating chemo. I tried to look up some studies and found a few useful ones (Selenium, Magnesium, and Vitamin E), but there also seems to be debate about whether antioxidants help your body or interfere with chemo. More research is needed.
Living without a computer at home has been really weird. I've been able to devote more time to things like laundry, stretching, reading, and video games. It's refreshing, but after a few days I felt too antsy and finally broke down and borrowed

Poll #1029847 Hat switch
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 48
Which logo do you like?
Black and white hat![]()
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17 (35.4%)
White hat![]()
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16 (33.3%)
Just the text![]()
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6 (12.5%)
None of the above![]()
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12 (25.0%)
We both have different favorites, but we're not going to say what they are to avoid influencing your votes!
It's really weird to see Google tell me "No new mail!", since I don't remember seeing that message in a long time. But it makes it a lot easier to remind myself to actually deal with email rather than leaving it in my mailbox, since it's much more manageable to deal with 1-5 messages than to look at a huge big inbox. It also makes email checking a less rewarding distraction, since when I get no new mail (it happens sometimes!), I see an empty inbox, rather than 1100 messages that I could be doing something about. I've done this once before, though, and it devolved back to a full inbox, so I'll report back in a couple of weeks how it's going this time.
fanlain and I almost had to answer that philosophical
question last night; we were starting to lose hope when it turned
past 6 p.m. and no guests had arrived. But finally the two people
who RSVP'ed held true to their word and arrived bearing ice cream
and wine. We had a nice evening, mostly focused around Soba in
both conversation and activities. They really liked the chicken (between
brining and using the rotisserie, it ended up being super-moist!) and were
surprised to learn that I, and not
fanlain, had made it.
I guess the other side effect of holding a party, whether anyone comes or not, is that we got to clean the house. Our kitchen is finally uncluttered (though some of the clutter moved to the office) and the floors are cleaner than they have been in months. The hard part about cleaning our house is that Soba relentlessly tries to attack the mop, broom, or vacuum, and will throw a huge tantrum if we lock her in her crate or outside while we clean. We're seriously considering throwing technology at the problem and getting the Scooba, not as much to save us the work (though that's certainly a welcome bonus), but to be able to run it while we take Soba to the dog park or the farmer's market.
I've been really enjoying how trips to the farmer's market have become our Saturday morning routine. Soba gets to enjoy a nice long walk and lots of attention, and we get to enjoy some tasty treats from Mirabelle's and some fresh stuff from the market. Our trip Saturday was prolonged by delayed baguettes: apparently, Mirabelle's had a power outage in the morning and were behind schedule. They kept promising that the baguettes would come first at 11, then at 11:30, and they finally put two baguettes (still hot!) into my hands just before noon. But we got sit outside, have a leisurly lunch, and talk with an ECE prof and his family, and even say hello to our dean (who didn't remember who I was). I guess that's one of the advantages of living in a small town.
- Mood:
accomplished
We made a todo list for the weekend and have made remarkable progress on it. I think usually we're over-optimistic and end up less than halfway through our list by the time our weekend is over, but perhaps we've started to learn. Our list for yesterday:
Farmer's market with SobaGive Soba flea & tick medsLunch at J's- Install sink (N) (halfway done)
Put together filing cabinet (N)- Put together IKEA desk
Buy salmonBuy letter files & Soba food (L)Plank-grill Salmon (L)Water front lawn (N)- Make travel plans for August
- File (L) (halfway done)
Our list for today was less ambitious, with lots of time allocated for work on my proposal. Unfortunately, the unfinished sink installation is likely to eat up a good chunk of that time, but it will be nice to have running water in the kitchen again. Plus I managed to sneak in an hour of work yesterday, so that's progress.
- Location:bernal heights
For the summer, my initial thought was to go to a later schedule, not having classes or other things to wake up for. But then again, it should be even easier to wake up at 6 in the summer, since it's light out by then, and since we don't have a social life to speak of, why wake up any later and miss the sunshine? So my plan was to stick with the earlier schedule... but the best laid summer plans always go awry, and between spending a week on the west coast and getting sick, I'm now very time-shifted. We're finally ready to get out of the house and get stuff done, and it's 1pm already! Ugh.
- Location:still home
- Mood:
lazy
So I spent last night putting together the grill, and today the gas guy came and drilled lots of holes and put a fitting outside. Finally, everything was set... just in time for the first rain of the month. I didn't give up hope, and there was a clearing just as I was heading home, so I decided to be ambitious and picked up a couple of grass-fed steaks. It started pouring as I got home and I tried to convince
Fortunately, the radar showed a promising lack of clouds to the west of us, so I stalled for another 30 minutes and the rain passed. (That's one thing I like about midwest weather: don't feel like getting wet? just wait 20 minutes.) I fired up the grill and cooked the steaks in record time; actually, I ended up overcooking them, but the middle was quite tasty. I also had some asparagus fresh from the farmer's market with my dinner, fried with olive oil and garlic. A yummy way to finish off the day. And yet another small step in the transition to suburbia...
- Mood:
tired
It's hard to believe that less than 3 weeks ago, both the flower bed and the veggie garden were a mass of overgrown weeds! Our next task is maintenance of the rest of the landscaping, including weeding, mulching, watering, and maybe pruning. As a first step, I ended up pulling out the two trees (!) that grew at the corner of our house. It's amazing; I think they weren't there when we moved in and now they had deep roots and were over 7 feet tall. I'm not sure what kind they were — perhaps oak? — but they sure are fast-growing.
- Location:shower
This morning I woke up around 7 and after some breakfast went back outside to work. I turned over the soil, added some "garden tone" and turned it over once more. Unfortunately, the soil was kind of wet and clumped to our tiller, so I ended up doing this all by hand with a trowel. Then it was back to Lowe's to pick up some mulch. After lunch, we decided that today would be a good day to get patio furniture, so we stopped by World Market to pick up a set we'd had our eye on. They only had one chair in stock, and they sold us a table that ended up being cracked, but at least we have a bench and a chair to sit on outside, and more stuff is on order.
After putting those together, it was time to turn back to the garden. I laid out all the veggies and herbs. It turns out we still have a fair bit of room for stuff, but there's a herb fest at the nursery next week, so I'm sure we'll find some way to fill it up. Then I layered on the mulch (and appreciated why some people use plastic sheeting as mulch: it took nearly a full Prius of mulch to cover our 100 sq. ft. of garden) and finally turned to the fencing. That turned out to be a daunting job and I finished only after sunset. The fence looks reasonably OK; it's crooked in places (esp. around the gate), in part due to our uneven ground and in part due to my inability to nail the stakes in completely straight. But it looks significantly nicer than Homer's spice rack, and much nicer than chicken wire, which was our other alternative. Of course, it remains to be seen if it in fact accomplishes its main goal, which is keeping bunnies away.
As I was lying exhausted on the couch after working basically sunrise to sundown, I turned to
1 Well, actually, I started the day by going to work out at the Mettler Center, which turned out to be completely superfluos given the rest of the weekend activities, but I hadn't been to the gym in about 2 weeks and was feeling guilty...
- Mood:
exhausted
Tomorrow's drive will be longer, but we're starting earlier and we're going to take her on a hike first, so hopefully it will go about as well.
- Location:memphis, tn
I'm dreading the switch to Daylight Saving time. It's funny, because when I first heard it announced, it sounded like a great idea, and it brings us closer to my oft-stated ideal of year-round DST. But times have changed, and these days I am up before sunrise. It is just getting to the point when it starts getting light around the time of my alarm, and of course, by Sunday, that will all be screwed up again. "Stupid farmers."
As I was jogging around Mission Bay, enjoying the freah air and the sunrise, I passed local residents jogging, walking their dog, or just out for a walk, and thought to myself "man, what I wouldn't give to live in California again!" And then about five minutes later I realized what — my current job. As stressed out as my life gets sometimes, I can't imagine doing anything that I'd enjoy more. I just wish every once in a while that it wasn't in central Illinois, but you can't have it all.
- Location:san diego
I arrived into the office to find everything dead — no cars in the parking lot, no people inside. But my meeting was on, since it was mostly attended by outside guests who were staying in the hotel across the street. (Most of them ended up being stuck for another night, since leaving CU just wasn't going to happen.) At 8:50, I got the email that classes for the whole campus were canceled. This seemed like really poor timing, seeing as some classes started earlier than that. (In further display of administrative genius, it was explained that people who called in before the cancellation would have to take the day as a personal day, whereas everyone else got the day off.)
I went home after lunchtime and made it almost all the way home, but got stuck on a small side street. The people who lived there pushed me back out and I tried to drive home a different way, taking care to drive slowly enough to maintain control but quickly enough to not get stuck again. I actually missed the turn onto our street, since it was hard to see, so I turned around and powered through the snow to about halfway up our driveway. Then it was time to get out the shovel to clear a path to the garage.
In the evening, we got another message from the chancellor, canceling classes for Wednesday as well, even though the snow had stopped Tuesday night. When I woke up Wednesday morning, I saw that the plows had already been down our street, but there was a huge snowdrift in front of our garage. I spent about two hours in the morning digging a path wide enough for one car through our driveway. Since the Subaru got damaged when it got stuck in the snow and started leaking antifreeze, we ended up taking the Prius to work this morning, which required making an n-point turn inside our garage so that it could go out the clear part. I finally decided to clear up another chunk of the driveway so that we could actually access both cars. Tomorrow's project will be clearing a path to the front door.
Tonight we had a power outage so we got to curl up on the couch by the fireplace while Soba ran around looking all agitated. It's funny how little of our house works when the power is out. We thought about taking a bath, since the water heater still works, but the forced air heater does not, so it would have been really cold getting out.
So I think I'll take everyone's advice and stick with having breakfast before going to work out. I'm still not convinced it's completely necessary: I made it through my workout fine this morning without food, and unless I have a really big breakfast, it's unlikely that I can get enough energy to get me through my workout anyway (at least if you believe the calorie meter on the elliptical that read out 600 for this morning), but I think the timing will probably be better.
6am - alarm goes off
6:10am - alarm goes off again, gets turned off
6:55am - finally drag myself out of bed, feed Soba, make coffee, have breakfast
8:05am - arrive at gym
9:15am - back from gym, shower
9:40am - leave for the office
10:05am - arrive at work (took a bit longer than usual due to snow)
So the good news is that, had I actually gotten up by 6, I could have made it to the office by about 9. The bad news is that it takes me over 3 hours from waking up to being in the office, which seems like way too long. Certainly the 6:55-8:05 period could have been compressed quite a bit. I wonder if things would be faster if I went straight to the gym and had a coffee there, and then had breakfast upon coming back. Maybe I'll try that tomorrow. Of course, actually getting up at 6 would help, too.