To make up for my melodrama the other day, here's some silliness (Phillipe is always good for cheering you up)...
It's too big for the window, so click on it to read it all.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Feeling better
It felt good to get out the anger the other night. Might have seemed tame to you, but I erased a lot before I settled on the final text. Since then, I found some leftover hope under the couch cushions (this is where I sleep--I'm too wiggly for post-op Jill), and some determination to make some plans and keep them. As soon as she's better from surgery, we're going birding up near Vancouver. Maybe I can find a cheap backpack to throw E into, or maybe we'll just let someone babysit.
To make up for my melodrama the other day, here's some silliness (Phillipe is always good for cheering you up)...
It's too big for the window, so click on it to read it all.
To make up for my melodrama the other day, here's some silliness (Phillipe is always good for cheering you up)...
It's too big for the window, so click on it to read it all.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Not a diagnosis...
I am so pissed off right now. Also, I don't believe that this is happening. Also, there must be some kind of mistake. Also, I really, really love Jill, and this is completely unfair. Dammit!
She did everything right. She worked her ass off to get where she is, made very good contacts in an honest, open manner, without backstabbing or climbing over corpses, approached everything with an amazingly thoughtful sense of fairness...she's just an amazing person, and she gets saddled with this. All before she has a chance to really grow her lab, all before the first birthday of our daughter.
Bad things happen to people all of the time. Last week, hundreds of thousands of people died in Asia in a cyclone and earthquake. Many of them were probably amazing people who enriched the lives of others around them, prior to being swept away or crushed to death. Many were schoolchildren. What was left was a tattered remnant of the societal fabric that had existed before. Wounds will mend. Twenty years will pass. Eventually those left with scars will die off, and all is forgotten.
Sorry about this. I'm pretty angry, and wallowing in ugliness is what I'm into right about now. The sun'll come out tomorrow.
Maybe.
(Hey, kids. Sorry about the pottymouth. I think that this is the first time that I said any no-no's in this whole entire blog. That's how I roll...no cussin', no nudie pictures, no talkin' bad about mom.)
Edit: For the sake of historical record, Jill's diagnosis was subsequently corrected to metastatic colorectal cancer. Still pretty bad, but not the automatic death sentence of pancreatic.
She did everything right. She worked her ass off to get where she is, made very good contacts in an honest, open manner, without backstabbing or climbing over corpses, approached everything with an amazingly thoughtful sense of fairness...she's just an amazing person, and she gets saddled with this. All before she has a chance to really grow her lab, all before the first birthday of our daughter.
Bad things happen to people all of the time. Last week, hundreds of thousands of people died in Asia in a cyclone and earthquake. Many of them were probably amazing people who enriched the lives of others around them, prior to being swept away or crushed to death. Many were schoolchildren. What was left was a tattered remnant of the societal fabric that had existed before. Wounds will mend. Twenty years will pass. Eventually those left with scars will die off, and all is forgotten.
Sorry about this. I'm pretty angry, and wallowing in ugliness is what I'm into right about now. The sun'll come out tomorrow.
Maybe.
(Hey, kids. Sorry about the pottymouth. I think that this is the first time that I said any no-no's in this whole entire blog. That's how I roll...no cussin', no nudie pictures, no talkin' bad about mom.)
Edit: For the sake of historical record, Jill's diagnosis was subsequently corrected to metastatic colorectal cancer. Still pretty bad, but not the automatic death sentence of pancreatic.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Jill
Hi everyone,
As some of you know, Jill has recently undergone emergency surgery for what appeared to be a localized tumor in her colon. It turned out to be more widespread than that, and she had a bilateral ovarectomy in addition to a hemi-colectomy. They also saw peritoneal studding, which is evidence of cancerous growths on the lining of the abdomen. I'm really sorry if you're hearing it here for the first time.
In short, my wife has cancer, and it appears to be aggressive. They removed 99% of what they saw, but it was impossible to get all of it. We won't know for a few days what the tissue of origin is, which determines the treatment options. We have our heads up, and we have a lot of support, and Jill is in one of the best places in the Northwest, receiving excellent care.
To find out more about Jill, and to keep up with her progress, I'd recommend bookmarking this site, which is dedicated to providing regular Jill updates. I won't be doing that here, except as inspiration for other thoughts that I'd like to express.
My basic message to those concerned is that Jill is not dead. Jill is still Jill, and she is going to be around for as long as we have her. I'm not grieving her, and you shouldn't either. The surgeon said that it is going to be an uphill battle, but he also said that long term management was also a good possibility. We just don't know enough yet. She would like to hear from you, though, and she'll be increasingly available on the phone over the next week.
We are so lucky to have so many great friends who have already extended offers of help, or who have offered to come out and lend a hand. Even just thoughts of support are welcome. Thanks to all of you. Really.
As some of you know, Jill has recently undergone emergency surgery for what appeared to be a localized tumor in her colon. It turned out to be more widespread than that, and she had a bilateral ovarectomy in addition to a hemi-colectomy. They also saw peritoneal studding, which is evidence of cancerous growths on the lining of the abdomen. I'm really sorry if you're hearing it here for the first time.
In short, my wife has cancer, and it appears to be aggressive. They removed 99% of what they saw, but it was impossible to get all of it. We won't know for a few days what the tissue of origin is, which determines the treatment options. We have our heads up, and we have a lot of support, and Jill is in one of the best places in the Northwest, receiving excellent care.
To find out more about Jill, and to keep up with her progress, I'd recommend bookmarking this site, which is dedicated to providing regular Jill updates. I won't be doing that here, except as inspiration for other thoughts that I'd like to express.
My basic message to those concerned is that Jill is not dead. Jill is still Jill, and she is going to be around for as long as we have her. I'm not grieving her, and you shouldn't either. The surgeon said that it is going to be an uphill battle, but he also said that long term management was also a good possibility. We just don't know enough yet. She would like to hear from you, though, and she'll be increasingly available on the phone over the next week.
We are so lucky to have so many great friends who have already extended offers of help, or who have offered to come out and lend a hand. Even just thoughts of support are welcome. Thanks to all of you. Really.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Ha! I link, therefore I spam!
That was terrible.
This is not. Kick off your weekend with this clip of one of my favorite bands, The Shins, roaming around Paris playing music at people. I've linked to La Blogotheque in a previous post, a long time ago, but I think that that link is now dead. I find that the new version of the site is a little harder to use, but if you feel like poking around, the amazing music clips are referred to as Take-Away Shows.
Anyways, here's the link.
This is not. Kick off your weekend with this clip of one of my favorite bands, The Shins, roaming around Paris playing music at people. I've linked to La Blogotheque in a previous post, a long time ago, but I think that that link is now dead. I find that the new version of the site is a little harder to use, but if you feel like poking around, the amazing music clips are referred to as Take-Away Shows.
Anyways, here's the link.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
...and 6 months later...
I finally sent my old boss a draft of my alleged paper. It may or may not ever get published, but at least I dressed that pig up and sent it off to the prom. Now I can sit on my butt and stare vacantly at the wall with absolutely no guilt.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Everything in Moderation?
A few recent news items have given me cause to navel-gaze about my personal politics. In most things, particularly social legislation, I think of myself as a liberal. I also like to add a hasty, "...but I'm fiscally conservative!", at the end of that claim, but I'm not sure how true that is. The reality is that my personality, or my biological interface with real-time society, tends more towards a moderate stance. I have the curse of being able to see both sides of most issues, combined with the competing angel and devil of empathy and pragmatism on my shoulders.
People from Canada and Europe who post regularly at my favorite social forum, Boardgamegeek, are fond of saying that there are almost no liberals in U.S. politics. I think that they're mostly correct. I also think that the majority of people are actually born moderates, but that they tend to drift right or left based on one or two issues that are very important to them. Buying the whole hog, so to speak, when all they wanted was a BLT.
The tricky part about being (and staying) a moderate is the lure of stability. Our political culture frowns upon the wishy-washy, and rewards the "courage" of convictions. It's a bit of a relief to land on one side or the other, where welcoming hands pull your dinghy to shore and clap you on the back for your wise decision. At a personal level, it can be paralyzing to consider everything from all sides. Cars tend to pile up behind you at the drive-thru window, honking in the sunshine.
Anyhows, here's the news items: this story is about a proposal to convert some land in a government-owned park into housing for the homeless (it's much more nuanced than that). It's not in my neighborhood, but it very well could be. Seattle prides itself on being progressive, and voters have supported initiatives to "end homelessness" in the past, but this is where that progressiveness gets put to the test. I think that any neighborhood is going to fight this due to an increased risk of crime and plummeting property values. However, it's really difficult to imagine any other way of solving this problem short of creating a slum downtown. I would like to see homeless people get more of an opportunity for personal stability, particularly if they have children. I would really want to vote FOR this if it came up in my neighborhood, but I'm not sure if I could actually pull the trigger. I've committed to providing for the future of a family here, and such a vote seems irresponsible in light of that.
The second one is about torturing alleged terrorists. I know that there are domains in which the U.S. government acts outside of all laws, and a small part of me supports this capability, evil as it is (I'm not proud of this, just being honest). I think the reason lies in the thought experiment that's often posed by bad television shows, like "24": what do you do when the clock is ticking on a nuclear device in a metropolitan area, or when someone is holding your loved ones, and you have someone in front of you, tied to a chair, who may or may not have the solution? Applied to national security, it would seem on the surface to be irresponsible and unrealistic to shackle our guard dogs against the insidious and persistent threat of terror attacks. So why not just make it legitimate, and protect the perpetrators of torture from the threat of prosecution and notoriety? I guess because it's a terrible policy and is irredeemably immoral, and that accepting it for the sake of national security is a slippery slope to seeing it applied to more homegrown types of criminal behavior (or seeing the terrorism tag applied to a broader range of offenses).
People from Canada and Europe who post regularly at my favorite social forum, Boardgamegeek, are fond of saying that there are almost no liberals in U.S. politics. I think that they're mostly correct. I also think that the majority of people are actually born moderates, but that they tend to drift right or left based on one or two issues that are very important to them. Buying the whole hog, so to speak, when all they wanted was a BLT.
The tricky part about being (and staying) a moderate is the lure of stability. Our political culture frowns upon the wishy-washy, and rewards the "courage" of convictions. It's a bit of a relief to land on one side or the other, where welcoming hands pull your dinghy to shore and clap you on the back for your wise decision. At a personal level, it can be paralyzing to consider everything from all sides. Cars tend to pile up behind you at the drive-thru window, honking in the sunshine.
Anyhows, here's the news items: this story is about a proposal to convert some land in a government-owned park into housing for the homeless (it's much more nuanced than that). It's not in my neighborhood, but it very well could be. Seattle prides itself on being progressive, and voters have supported initiatives to "end homelessness" in the past, but this is where that progressiveness gets put to the test. I think that any neighborhood is going to fight this due to an increased risk of crime and plummeting property values. However, it's really difficult to imagine any other way of solving this problem short of creating a slum downtown. I would like to see homeless people get more of an opportunity for personal stability, particularly if they have children. I would really want to vote FOR this if it came up in my neighborhood, but I'm not sure if I could actually pull the trigger. I've committed to providing for the future of a family here, and such a vote seems irresponsible in light of that.
The second one is about torturing alleged terrorists. I know that there are domains in which the U.S. government acts outside of all laws, and a small part of me supports this capability, evil as it is (I'm not proud of this, just being honest). I think the reason lies in the thought experiment that's often posed by bad television shows, like "24": what do you do when the clock is ticking on a nuclear device in a metropolitan area, or when someone is holding your loved ones, and you have someone in front of you, tied to a chair, who may or may not have the solution? Applied to national security, it would seem on the surface to be irresponsible and unrealistic to shackle our guard dogs against the insidious and persistent threat of terror attacks. So why not just make it legitimate, and protect the perpetrators of torture from the threat of prosecution and notoriety? I guess because it's a terrible policy and is irredeemably immoral, and that accepting it for the sake of national security is a slippery slope to seeing it applied to more homegrown types of criminal behavior (or seeing the terrorism tag applied to a broader range of offenses).
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