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Sorry I haven't posted anything for a while, but things are still pretty much the same. I went to the Mariner's  game last monday with my very good friend Michelle. She works for Alki Lumber and they have two sets of season tickets. One set is about 15 rows off the field on the 100 level along the first base line. The area where you really have to be on your guard for foul tips and broken bats. Awesome seats though. After a couple beers in the Pyramid brewery beer garden across the street, we took our seats near the bottom of the first inning. Stayed there till the bottom of the 4th inning and went to the second set of season ticket seats.

I felt like a king. The second set were in the terrace club. Menus on the seat backs, waiters, the whole nine yards. It was great!

The next day, I was reminded once again how necessary it is for me to cover up from the sun. Even from being in those lower seats in the sun for a couple innings (and after applying a very generous layer of sun block) I burnt well and good. My hand was even slightly swollen from the burn the next morning. I had to laugh. Actually I didn't laugh, I sighed.

Overall though, I had a very, VERY good time! Thanks, Michelle!

I think I'm gonna go to the Muslim supply store and get one of those floor length burkahs with just the eye slit. Can you imagine me at the cash register asking the cashier if this fabric is SPF rated?

Man

Hello peoples,

Sorry I haven't been keeping up on this thing very much, there's just not a lot going on. Either that or there's lots going on and I just don't feel like sharing it all (which is probably more likely...).

I've decided to find a new home for "Clark", my corn snake. I'm just not being a very good owner to him, and he should be somewhere he'll be appreciated. Snakes are the easiest pets to keep, you can go on vacation for a month without having to worry about finding someone to take care of him. He eats one live mouse every 1 or 2 weeks, but is very friendly. You'll get the whole cage and everything. He really is quite a conversation piece. Any takers?

Anyway, May marks the one year anniversary of my "stage 4" diagnosis. I can't remember the exact date, but it was May. I was only given about a thirty percent chance of making it this far (thanks RO5185426!). May also marks the three year anniversary of my first cancer diagnosis. Isn't that strange? Not to complain, but I'm entering my third consecutive summer with chemotheraputic restrictions. I've been taking chemo for three summers in a row.

If I am going to live my life by logical principals,  I can deny no longer the fact that I'm a complete fucking stud. I mean, seriously. I've never been in a fight, but I bet I could destroy anyone who would be so bold as to cross me. There's simply no way the previous paragraph could be true unless I was a complete man. That's all there is to it.

That's all, I hope everyone is having a nice day.

Sewing Kit

Now that the spring time is swinging into full gear, I'm being reminded of just how sensitive my skin is to things like sunlight. This creates unique challenges to someone who only has a motorcycle to get around on. When I went on that road trip down to Eugene, and back via Yakima, I got a pretty healthy burn through my full face helmet, and it was cloudy the entire time.

So, I've been thinking, what could I use in conjunction with my half shell helmet (the full-face is just too damn much helmet in the heat) to keep the sun of of my skin. They have face masks and the like, but they all leave a tiny triangle exposed on the bridge of the nose. They have neoprene ones with a contoured nose channel (would that be called a "channel"?), but neoprene doesn't breathe well, so I might as well use the full face.

If only I had something custom shaped to my face shape that rode up in the nose to cover up that little patch. Something breathable and light weight. At first I was thinking about getting some small sheets of wire mesh to make a form of my lower face, then sew SPF rated fabric to the inside and outside, making it so I can breathe, but get full coverage from the sun.

Then I realized I have that mask they made for my radiation treatments. They let me take that bad boy home, and it's made of light weight plastic, is custom molded to my face, and has holes all through it (much like a mesh). Many of you have seen this thing, it's kinda creepy looking. I put my riding goggles on it and drew guide lines. then cut out the nose, mouth, and jaw portion. Now I'm in the process of sewing the SPF rated fabric to the inside, then I'm going to cover the outside with a light-weight piece of black fabric. It's turning into a sewing nightmare. It has to be hand stitched. This is incredibly time consuming and is driving me a little mad. I'm attaching a double wound stitch at every mesh hole to maximize the amount of room left in the thing when it's on my face.

I bought a sewing kit at Walgreens, and have already gone through all my white and grey thread. The needle threader, handy as that little thing is, broke after the second use or so. There's only one of them in this kit. So I've been threading all my needles the old fashion way. I'm tempted to go up to Walgreens and buy another sewing kit just for that tool. Except this time I'm going to treat it like it's the priceless tool that it is...

Check In

Hey Everybody,

Just checkin in. Everything's normal and fine. Just so you know. Nothing interesting is going on. Nothing at all to report on. Life as usual. Still can't stop listening to Deja Vu. Been doing a bit of stippling lately. Learned it when it was at Highline. This is my latest. Sorry if it's sideways, I haven't even checked. I tried to upright it in edit mode or whatever and almost hurt myself, so I left it alone. Its some building in Boston. I gave it to my Psychologist.

Joshua

A Real Whomper

I'm thinking about throwing myself a birthday party. A real whomper. My birthday happens to fall on a Saturday this year, so that's extra cool. I was just beginning to scout out some locations and pretty much fell in love with the first place I found. It's the Broadway Bar And Grill, and they have a VERY swanky space you can reserve for a party and all you have to do is put your name in. It's free.

I don't know much about party planning, but I'm going to need some sort of count in order to get the ball rolling. I have no idea how many people are likely to attend. I think it could be between 20 and 200, but that doesn't help much. When I think about the whole "e-vite" thing, I know there's people who would come, but I don't have their e mail addresses. Is there a less formal way of going about this? Any suggestions? Like if I send out an invitation to a list of people representing as many facets of my life as I can think of, then tell them to invite everyone they think might come, then get back to me with a count or something?

(not that it matters, and please don't feel sorry for me) My last TWO birthdays were basically canceled because of cancer treatment. I had a couple friends come over to note the occasion, but no parties. I want this one to be a blow out. It deserves to be a blow out.

In other news, it turns out the warranty is going to pay for all the repairs on the bike! Hooray!! Now I can take the money I was going to spend on repairs and spend it on drugs and hookers instead!!

I was watching this Stephen Hawking documentary recently and they had a really awkward scene where a group of his students and he were sitting around some living room eating and laughing and having a good time. Hawking was eating too, but he was being fed by some care giver. They never actually showed him eating. They showed her moving toward his mouth with a spoon, but not actually eating. Probably because it's one of those things you wish you could un-see. It was really gratuitous. The camera would generously show these students laughing and enjoying their food, then Hawking from the back of his wheel chair.

Anyway, There was another physicist on there that was explaining a very interesting thing about atoms. If you inflated an atom (for the sake of illustration) until its nucleus was the size of a marble, its electron would be the width of a hair. The electron, of coarse, orbits the nucleus. At the scale of the marble and the hair, how far away would you say the hair would be from the marble to be accurately to scale? Think about it first. Look around you, and look at your self, your physical body. Look at the ground, feel the solidness of your chair. Everything is made up of atoms. They are, as far as we can tell, all there is to make stuff out of.

At the scale where the nucleus is the size of a marble and the orbiting electron is the width of a hair, the electron would orbit about two miles away from the marble sized nucleus. All the rest is empty space. Atoms touch (unless under extreme circumstances) at the electron orbit. That means that the nucleus is this tiny, tiny little thing, just floating there in this vast empty space, almost not existing.

We are all made of this stuff. Almost nothing. It's mathematically provable.

Weird...

Heritage Classic

So, I took the old bike in for it's twenty-five thousand mile tune up. It's the highest milage 2010 they've seen. As I'm sure I've mentioned, I'm proud of my milage :)

Anyway, they found a few things, one that made the bike unfit to ride. Rear wheel bearings or something,  he said my rear wheel could have seized up at any moment. Luckily They are covered under the bike's warranty. They also noticed my belt (it's a belt drive bike) is shot and it looks like I got a rock or something rolling around in there and things are pretty banged up. This is most likely not going to be covered under the warranty, and will run around thirteen hundred. I nearly shit my boxer-briefs.

I pulled the cancer card so fast, it would have made your head spin. The service manager said we've got a 40/60 chance (we're on the 40 side) of getting it covered. I was like "PLEASE use the word 'terminal' when you're stating my case".

Anyway, to add insult to injury, they gave me a loaner, and its a Heritage Classic. A FUCKING HERITAGE CLASSIC! I feel like my knees are up by my ears. At least it's not a Sportster. It was weird getting used to, especially the moment I realized it didn't have anti lock breaks (like mine). The rear wheel seized up on me about ten feet from their parking lot and threatened to swerve out from under me. I'm pretty sure I left a black line in the pavement, and maybe even a little puff of smoke. I was like "This fucking bike...".

So yeah, let's all just hope it's covered under the warranty. We'll find out Tuesday. I have to ride this fucking Heritage Classic till Tuesday. I've been spoiled by my bike. This one doesn't even have a stereo :(

Coffee Filters

How does the coffee filter industry stay afloat? I mean seriously, They're like a thousand for a dime. I've been working on the same pack of coffee filters since Lincoln was president. Any company that goes into coffee filters as a venture MUST have fingers in other product lines (that was a little sexy, no?)

Anyway, I just wanted everyone to know that I had a CT scan on Monday, the results Tuesday. Everything is continuing to hold stable. No increases, no decreases. The appointment was so routine, I was like "yawn".

I'll leave you with a quote I read in a book recently. It goes:

"Life threatening illness may cause us to reexamine the very premises on which we have based our lives, perhaps freeing ourselves to live more fully for the first time"

This is true. I wouldn't recommend life threatening illness to anyone, but this quote is definitely true.

Flay the Skin

Yesterday was the first time I forgot to take a dose of RO5185426. My Friday afternoon dose. I woke up this morning at 4 (like usual) to take my dose, and the box on the pill caddy for "Friday PM" still had the dose in it. My heart sank to the bottom of the Earth. Yesterday I got home from work, got caught up on a couple e mails, took a shower, then headed out to meet up with a couple friends for happy hour. I completely left without the dose.

I can't believe I did that. I'm sure it's not a problem, I mean Dr. T has even suggested I stop taking it for a week or so when I was going through the pink eye phase, so I'm guessing the absence of one dose isn't going to be the end of the world.

Another factor (I may have discussed this already) is that I recently started taking a medication to control anxiety. I kept being overcome with feeling like I wanted to flay the skin off my body, then sprint in any direction. This medication is definitely helping with that feeling, but it's really fucking with my memory. I have to make a choice between having the anxiety and clear memories, or having (very) foggy memories and a reprieve of the anxiety. For now, I'll take the reprieve, but I know this'll get old after a while, at which point I'll probably go back to anxiety.

Anyway, another thing that may have added to forgetting the dose would be this anti anxiety medication I've recently started taking. I was having some real issues with anxiety and started on this medication that is having some significant impact on my memory.

I'm test riding a bike for Jeannine today at 11 in Lynnwood. Then I'll probably come home and take a nap. Life is hard, just kidding :)

Eugene

So the trip to Eugene proved to be a bigger adventure then I was expecting, in a good way.

I left my apartment at 9:30, got into town at about 3:30 or so. It rained a lot on me, but not as much as I was expecting. I met up with my friend Claire, she was in the middle of a kick ball game, so I sat and watched, then we went for a motorcycle tour of Eugene. Very cure community. We sat around her apartment and chatted for a while, then headed out for food. We went to a couple places, ate at a very swanky vegan pizza place with a DJ spinning some very delicious music. It was great. Got back to her apartment about 11:15 or so, this is when she got a text from her brother that her mother was going in to have her gall bladder removed. In Yakima.

Needless to say, Claire was freaking out a little. She doesn't drive. I said "Well, let's just jump on the bike and I'll drive you there." So that's what we did, right around midnight we suited up and hit the road. Made it about one hour and realized I was far too tired for this, and the consequences for being tired were a little too steep, so we stopped into a Super 8 in Woburn (about 10 miles north of Salem) and slept for 4 hours, got up and hit the road.

That drive from Portland to Yakima is fucking gorgeous. I highly recommend taking it.

We pulled into Yakima Memorial Hospital, I gave her a hug goodbye and headed off toward Snoqualmie pass. I was a little concerned about the conditions, but I honestly didn't even look in to it. I figured we were close enough to April for it to be impassible. Got home around 3:30, took a shower and pretty much crashed. I google mapped the route and it was about 712 miles.

It's strange that after about 700 miles, the distance between North Bend and Seattle can seem like an eternity...

It was fucking great. Great distraction, great mind clearing time. I feel fantastic today and I keep thinking about that ride. Many more road trips in the future.