That's All Folks

Follow our lives at our new blog:

That's all for this one.

Bye Everyone.

Thanks for your support!

Job, House, Naples, & Ernesto

Sorry for the delay in posting everyone... well, for those of you who still read my musings.

We've officially moved to Naples. This past Thursday, 8/24/06, after our movers finally arrived 5 hours late, we loaded everything up and were unloaded and in our new house by 10:30 that night.

Speaking of our new place, we bought a house! We'll we're technically still going to buy a house. We're living in it, but we haven't closed yet. Because we don't own it yet, we haven't set up too many utilities yet... so, we don't phone service or internet yet.

Speaking on internet... I'm at work right now. Job seems pretty good thus far. Its 10am and the other lawyers haven't arrived yet. One of them has the Depos I was working on yesterday, so I can't really get started yet.

Back to the house. It’s a townhouse near I-75 and Pine Ridge Rd. We love it! There is allot still in boxes, but that's part of the fun of it. Unpacking, decorating, etc.

Naples seems great thus far, as well. I've got about a 10 to 20 minute commute to the office in "downtown Naples." How long it takes doesn't seem to depend upon traffic at all (which is fantastic!!!) it just depends upon how many traffic lights I hit. Man I can't tell you how great that is. Even if it gets allot heavier in the tourist season (the population, supposedly quadruples here in the winter), it will still be lighter that a good day at 5pm heading south on US1 in Miami.

Ernesto is coming, but it’s only a tropical storm. Not too worried.

That's all for now!

Oh, I should give a shout out to my Dr.... since this still is "the chemo chronicles" I suppose. He's been very accommodating and really reassuring! Even offering to stay late to see me, so that I will only have to miss a 1/2 of work when I go to see him. Dr. B is great!

Still More Great News

For those of you who don't know yet, 2 Fridays ago, I got a job!!!

Its a small (3 attorneys, including me), new (created in April of this year) federal litigation (not state court) law firm in Naples (Florida, not Italy).

Right now we're in the process of finding a new place to live over there. Its only a 2 hour drive accross the everglades, so its not too bad. We can make day trips to house hunt. I start on 8/28/06, so its kind of a time crunch, but its do-able.

Our trip to CA for Jen and Johnny's wedding was great! Disneyland was small, but jam packed with fun.

Rose's place in Newport Beach is awesome! Newport Beach is awesome! We could all learn a valuable lesson from the beach bum teenagers that frequent the beaches there. While on a pier, we hear one kid shout to another "Skimmers and body Boarders have to get along!"... Yes, yes. We all have to get along. haha.







The wedding was a blast, we all have a good time. It was good seeing some of our college friends again. I wish more could have shown up.





Hair is sprouting all over my head these days... Well, 1/2 of my head, anyway. The left side of my head could probably grow a full 1/2 head of hair, while the right side of my head is still pretty sparse.


I spent a full day walking around Disneyland without getting any more tired than a normal person, so my strength must be pretty much back too.

In general... YAY!

More Great News!

I got the results of my blood work today. My tumor markers are normal!!! No elevated tumor marks = no cancer!!!

Yea!

Great News!

Final tests today. Although tumor markers take a day or 2 to come in, based on my chest X-Ray and CT Scan, my Doctors have officially taken me off of Chemo and reduced the frequency of my Oncologist visits. Instead of having to go in every week, now I'll go in for blood work and a chest X-Ray once a month and a CT Scan just 4 times a year.

According to my Doctor, I have a "less than 1% chance of a recurrance." Wohoo!

Now, to find a job that will insure me...

I'm Done!!! (almost)

Ok, so I know it’s been a REALLY long time since my last post. I think that every post starts out this way, but what are you going to do? Yell at a cancer patient? yea... I didn't think so. haha.

I can't use that excuse for too much long because I got my last Chemo dosage on Monday (7/10/06). No more Chemo for me (hopefully)!!!! Pending the results of a CT Scan and chest X-Ray this coming Monday (7/17/06) I should get a "cured" diagnosis. Really happy about that. My tumor markers have been normal since my last hospital exit, so the doctors don't seem to be too worried about the CT Scan. They expect it to be normal.

Life is beginning to get back to normal. I'm eating and feeling fine. I still get outta breath very easily (playing with Sophie in the dining room last night got me tired more quickly than it did her) but that will return with time.

We made all of our reservations/bookings to head out to LA for the Hull/Abshire wedding yesterday (For those who don't know, they're fellow Emory Alums and Water Polo cronies). After searching all the usual travel .com (Orbitz, Travelocity, CheapTickets, Hotels, LastMinuteTravel, Expedia, Priceline, CarRental, and all the individual airline sites) I think we found good deals.

Oh FYI - Contrary to what all those Orbitz-type sites advertise, it was cheaper (and more direct... we got non-stop flights) to book the flight, hotel, and car rental separately as opposed to reserving all 3 at once through 1 site.

The World Is Flat got interesting again... talking about open-source projects. There is no need to use anything Microsoft. Linux Linspire to replace Windows, OpenOffice to replace MS Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Exchange, Publisher, etc.) Firefox to replace Internet Explorer, GIMP to replace Adobe Photoshop, Nvu or Mozilla to replace MS Frontpage.... all this for free. Buying all of those software titles would cost thousands of dollars. MS Office Professional $500, Windows XP $200, FrontPage $200, Photoshop $100... well, you get the idea.

Next time I need a new computer I'm going to spend $200 or $300 on the hardware and load all free open-source software onto it. We already use and love Firefox and Nvu.

I know this probably isn't news to some of you, but it was to me. I'd never heard of OpenOffice before. That one is pretty key to freeing one's self from MS.

Back in Bed-land

So I've been back in the hospital since Monday morning. Wiressless isn't that reliable and nither is the laptop, so.... Dail-up it is. I vaguely remember surking the web at this speed in 1996. haha.

I've been pretty good thus far. getting a little more tired, but haven't felt too bad. Nausea hasnt been too bad. Getting woken up what seems like ever four minutes at night is my biggest complaint. bllod preasure needs to be taken. Temperature needs to be taken. blood needs to be drawn. Saleen drip bag needs to be changed, etc. leads to very little sleep at night.

last weekend, we went to the Heat's championship prarde. bad idea. my weaked condition + hot sun + 250,000 people = Ben and Amanda sitting at a bar watching it on TV. 1 bartender for 1000 people was also a dumb idea on someone part.

I'm currently reading "The World is Flat." I was the author on the Daily Show twice and finally decided to give it a try. its pretty good.

More to come....