Mr. Gates Sighting

I went to Microsoft's "Big Day" event today down at the Convention Center. It was their big launch thing for Windows Vista and Office 2007. It was really pretty fun and I learned a lot.

But better than that -- I got to see Bill Gates speak in person!! As long as I've been in this town and working in IT, it's the first time he has been at an event I attended. Apparently I wasn't the only one a little gaga because as soon as he stepped out on stage the camera phone flashes started going like crazy.

He did a good job with his presentation of course and it was a pretty fun day.

Cancer Treatments for Genora

As I've talked about before my mother-in-law recently had a mastectomy. A few days ago she had her first appointment with an oncologist to determine what course of treatment will be necessary once she is sufficiently healed from the surgery. The verdict was a bit harsh. She must undergo chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and hormone therapy. It seems like a lot, but was not unexpected.

My sister-in-law will stay with Genora in North Carolina when she gets the first of her chemo treatments. I think that's in early April. I wish we lived closer so we could help with things like transportation back and forth for treatments. Please keep Genora in your thoughts and prayers.

Spring Is Coming

Part of our work to ready the apartment for inspections included doing a little work on the balcony - reorganizing, tossing old plastic pots, etc. I have three pots of tulips out there. As you can see they are coming up and will hopefully provide a nice blooming display in a month or so. It's so much nicer to look at these pots and the pansies on the rail instead of just the freeway view and the mall.

Photo of Walter

I really liked the new haircut Walter got a couple of weeks ago so I took a picture to share with his mom. It took several tries to get a photo without a funny face because Walter started getting silly on me, but I love the big smile in this one. I thought you might enjoy it too.

Dragon ... I Mean Draggin!

I've been away from the computer for a few days. You see, today we had apartment inspections. Each year our landlords inspect every apartment to make sure there is no damage they don't know about and take care of any problems they see. I suppose it's a good thing, but it is also a pain in the neck. Especially for someone like me who does not excel at housekeeping.

We worked on the apartment for three whole days plus 3 hours this morning (got up at 4am). That's why I'm "draggin'" today. I purged a lot of stuff and the place looks a lot better. Maybe one of these days I will learn not to be such a packrat.

A Poem for You

I was cleaning out some old files and came across this poem. I found it a long time ago on PostcardX and have been saving it to share with you.

Canned Laughter

I’ve been catching laughter
Snatching it out of the air
Jars of children’s giggles
I gathered at the fair

I’ve been catching laughter
With a net spun from dreams
Barrels full of chuckles
Bursting at the seams

I’ve been catching laughter
Tuck them under my arm
Plant them in my garden
Soon I’ll have a funny farm

© Barry Courtney
of Australia

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day everybody! I hope everyone enjoyed their day.

The other day I heard a couple guys on the radio talking about Valentines Day in a rather cynical manner. I understand that lot of men feel that there is just too much pressure on Valentine's Day, it's too commercial and the whole holiday is just a bad idea. In fact they mentioned a web site which promotes a movement against Valentines Day. (No I did not take note of the site's address.)

My feeling on the subject is that it is completely up to each individual couple as to how they want to celebrate Valentines Day. Some people choose to go all out and spend a lot of money. Other people don't celebrate at all. And there are many of us in between. If someone is feeling "pressured" about the day I believe that is a communication issue between the two people in the relationship. If you are going to be involved in a relationship with someone communication is important. I believe that the problem (if there is one) needs a conversation ... not a movement.

As for Walter and me, we like to go out to a nice dinner on Valentine's Day and we get each other fun mushy cards. This evening we went out to Bahama Breeze which is one of our favorite restaurants and had seafood and key lime pie. For us this is the perfect way to celebrate. How about you? If you have a special way to celebrate leave a ntoe in the comments.

Our Meeting Story

One of my favorite blogs is called "Creating Passionate Users." I find lots of good inspiration there for the part of my job that involves technical training. The blog's author occasionally posts something off topic but interesting. Yesterday I found this post asking for web/personal stories. She was looking for stories about people whose lives had been positively affected by the web.

If you know Walter and me you know we met online a long time ago. Now I think that's a pretty positive outcome! I couldn't resist - I sent in our story. For those of you who don't know it, I share it here too:

My husband and I like to say we met on the Information Superhighway when it was but a dirt road. We first connected when we were both members of CompuServe in 1984. For many years they had a feature on CompuServe called CB Simulator. There were different channels you could go to and talk (type) to people. It was much like chat on the internet today. We were casual friends at first, then grew into very close friends. Things turned romantic in 1986. We communicated by email, but also by phone. The phone bills were astronomical! I remember a couple in the $800 range. Yes, that's for a month. Thank goodness long distance rate plans have changed since those days of AT&T.

Walter came to Seattle to visit me in person for the first time on August 31, 1986. He was living in Lexington, Kentucky at the time. A couple plane trips back and forth for each of us, and he moved here to Seattle in February 1987. We married August 29, 1987 and have been happily married ever since - that will be 20 years this year!

Walter is legally blind and I think it's quite possible our paths would not have crossed if it were not for CompuServe's online services. Walter still has the same email address today that he used when we first met.

Okay, that's your romantic story for Valentine's week.

Too Funny!

Thank you to Colette for sharing a really funny video with me today. I was busy and didn't have time to watch it until this evening, but it cracked me up! I thought you would enjoy it too, so I wanted to share it here with you. As Colette suggests make sure your sound is on and be sure to watch the whole clip. It's about 6 minutes. Enjoy!

Typing Wars?

I came across this fun online typing game called Qwerty Warriors or Word Shoot. It helps improve your typing speed and requires no download or installation to your computer.

To play you type the word that appears below each enemy (cartoon tanks, army men, etc.) Press enter to fire. If you typed the word correctly, the enemy is killed and you get points. If not, you can try again but hurry before the enemy shoots you! I know it sounds a tad violent, but I promise no one gets hurt - it's just typing!

A couple of hints: As you play you will figure out how you can use the fullhealth and detonate tools that are sometimes available for you. Also, a couple of the "enemies" look like misspelled words. In order to kill them you must spell them the way they are spelled on the screen even if it's a misspelling.

There are multiple levels of difficulty. Start where you feel comfortable. Warning - this game can be addictive. Would anyone like to challenge my score on the "Medium" difficulty level of 104610 points and 97% accuracy?

Click here, then click the "PLAY" link on the other site to play. (Do not click on the monkey's face - you could get lost.)

Broke a Tooth

At the beginning of the year I sat down with my dentist and did a little budget planning. We figured out which tooth it was most important for me to get a crown on this year and which one could wait until next year and which one might need a crown the year after that. One crown a year - all planned out.

I scheduled my first appointment for yesterday - February 6th. On Sunday (two days before the appointment) I broke a different tooth on a soft sandwich! I spent the two hours in the chair yesterday having the prep work done for a crown on the tooth that got broken. That means the tooth I had planned to get done will have to wait until the broken one is completed. Since each crown requires two appointments that will be 4 dental appointments in a short period of time.

I tried arguing that the newly broken tooth could wait, but the dentist pointed out that if the other side of the tooth breaks too that could mean I would need a root canal. Of course we can't have that, so I had to let them go ahead with this new plan. Although it was a bit of a "pain" to spend two hours in the chair, the bigger pain will come in my wallet later.

It may be time to give serious consideration to calcium supplements.

Superbowl Commercials

Are you a football fan? If so I'm sure you are glued to the set today, Superbowl Sunday. Since the Seahawks aren't in it this year I have to say I'm not such a huge fan that I have to watch the Superbowl. I do find the commercials enjoyable, though.

Today presented a dilemma for me. I had some things to get done away from the set, but I didn't want to miss the Superbowl commercials. It looked like I would just have to wait and see if they repeated the commercials in a TV special as they have done in past years.

But guess what! I found out you can go here on the web and view the commercials online at your leisure. Check it out if you missed them. Some are pretty entertaining.

A Miracle

Most of the information I was able to give about Genora's condition in the previous post was thanks to my sister-in-law Cathy. Cathy stayed in North Carolina with Genora until Saturday and on Friday she went with her to her doctor's appointment and got all the scoop.

In the week between Genora's surgery and her follow-up appointment Cathy and Genora had lots of time to hang out and go window shopping. One day they were at WalMart and they happened to be looking at the silicone breast enhancers that women sometimes use to enhance their breast size.

While they were looking at the silicone breast enhancers another woman was there too. She started a conversation with Genora and Cathy by telling them she had just had a lumpectomy and that's why she was looking at those. Surprised, Genora told her she had just had a mastectomy. The woman said "well then you will need a full prosthesis. These won't be sufficient for you." And she proceeded to tell Cathy and Genora about the perfect store where they would want to shop and told them exactly where to find it.

According to the woman this shop had everything a woman needs who has breast cancer. Bras, prostheses, gowns, wigs, etc. On Friday after Genora's follow-up appointment they went there and had a great time. Genora got 2 prostheses (one for day, one for night) and 6 bras. And Medicare paid for all but 30%. Cathy says Genora now looks great in her clothes again and one side looks just like the other.

When they saw what good quality the wigs were, Genora became less fearful of the possibility of chemo. And of course Cathy fell in love with the most expensive wig in the store and wants to get one for herself.

Cathy was astounded that they just "happened" to run into this woman in Wal-Mart. Cathy had planned to help Geonra find a store to get a prosthesis, but she was just going to look in the yellow pages. That may not have yielded as good a result as what they found by way of this woman's recommendation. As Cathy so aptly put it, "God works in mysterious ways!"

Post-Mastectomy Report for Genora

My mother-in-law Genora went back to the surgeon who did her mastectomy on Friday (one week after her surgery). She is healing well and was relieved to have the drain tubes removed.

After testing the tissues and the lymph nodes they removed in surgery it seems Genora's cancer was pretty extensive and involved most of the breast tissue removed. Before the mastectomy they first took out 3 lymph nodes to test them. I am told that if those lymph nodes had been cancer free they would not have bothered to remove any other lymph nodes. But two out of the three contained cancer. So they ended up taking a total of 14 lymph nodes - 9 of which were cancerous. This means that her cancer is closer to a stage 3 or 4 than the stage 2 they originally thought.

The next step for Genora will be to visit two oncologists - a medical oncologist for hormone therapy and a radiology oncologist for radiation treatments. She doesn't know yet if they will need to do chemo. They think they got all the cancer for now, but may recommend chemo to make sure it doesn't come back. Nothing is going to happen for 4 to 6 weeks because she needs to heal from her surgery first.

I'm happy to report she is in good spirits and keeping a positive outlook. I appreciate all the good wishes and prayers for her.

Wear Red Day

As you may have gathered from my lack of posts, this has been a whirlwind week for me. I had ideas for posts and then couldn't find the time to get them done.

One of the entries I meant to post was about Friday's Wear Red Day. Did you know that Friday, February 2nd was Wear Red Day for women? It's a national observance to give women a personal and urgent wakeup call about their risk for heart disease. Did you know that heart disease is the number one killer of women in America?

I'm sorry I didn't get this posted in time for you to wear red if you didn't already know about it. I will mark my calendar to do better next year. In the meantime you can go to this site to learn more about National Wear Red Day and here are some tools for lowering your heart disease risk.