Cancer Sucks

 

Some time ago, I posted an entry about a reader of this blog who has died of cancer. This is a malady that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, but would consider wishing on some politicians we all know and loathe.  Today, I had a conversation with DCD, a man who I knew through a therapy group we once attended, and he was feeling a bit down.  After 2 operations and a round of chemo (could be radiation, I don't remember for sure), I'm pretty sure that he is scared for his life.

As I've mentioned before, my late wife died of cancer, and it was 9 months from diagnosis to death.  Although this happened more than 2 decades ago, some of the memories are as fresh as if they were made last week. So I feel sorry for DCD, as I have an inkling of what he and his girlfriend are going through.  Like my situation with my late wife, DCD doesn't communicate that well with his girlfriend.  And this isn't helping things much, as DCD doesn't have many options left to him in his life.  If he survives, he'll likely be working until the day he dies.  Let's hope that isn't anytime soon.

One of these days, we'll hear doctors say: "It's only a mild case of cancer.  Don't worry.  We can cure it with this regimen...."  Unfortunately, that day has not come yet.  But the promising developments that started while my wife was alive are slowly beginning to bear fruit.  Let's hope that it comes soon enough for our children not to need to worry about this medical issue....

Not so sure of what to talk about today.

 

The above cover is one of my favorites from the Lampoon.  It's wonderfully political, politically incorrect, and funny as heck.  We had much thicker skins when this magazine was published.  One could drop the "N-Word" and use it humorously, as Mel Brooks did in Blazing Saddles.  

I miss the humor magazines of my youth.  Both Mad Magazine and the National Lampoon are long gone, or exist only to recycle old articles.  Both magazines were influential in their own ways.  Mad taught young people to think of current events in a different way than most people might think.  And the Lampoon taught young adults that good humor was rarely politically correct.  Mad would spoof Star Trek's opening ("To go where no man has gone before"), by having the male crew exit to the ladies room. The Lampoon would attack minorities with an "Unwanted Foreigners" issue, and attack these same groups with racist descriptions of these groups - all meant to generate laughs, and not to be taken seriously.

Yet, I miss something even more.  When I was young, TV could afford to provoke thought. Could you imagine "All in the Family" being a popular TV series?  Too many people would get upset at the Archie Bunker character's use of politically incorrect language.  And yet, it was considered acceptable way back when, as the show illustrated how both Archie and "Meathead" were just as prejudiced - just from different directions.

- - - - - -

Today, many "conservatives" want to "Own the Libs".  In the process of doing so, they often act like children, calling Liberals names I won't repeat here.  But many Liberals are just as bad in their own way.  They ignore how and why many Conservatives became radicalized, and have no interest in the concerns of people from the other side of the aisle.

As a TG member of society, I would be among those groups at risk if the Conservatives gained absolute social power.  Luckily, it will take a lot to get the NYC region to flip.  But history has shown this can and does happen when enough people are alienated from the political system AND begin to put their faith in a bombastic populist leader.

So, what are we to do?  For one thing, we should celebrate and publicize the successes of TG people like Amy Schneider (of Jeopardy fame). If we can convince enough people that we are safe to be around, we might just be left alone when political winds change.  Yet, we will only be left alone in more progressive areas.  Most of us can not go stealth if needed.  It is in our interest to fight for the interests of our tribes while we can - and we must do so now....

My day overfloweth

 

As many of my readers are well aware, I normally go through the week with a bit of sleep deprivation.  Today was one of those days where I could have used another two or three hours of sleep.  So I had to fight off the impulse to sleep much of the day.

- - - - - -

One of the things that is a blessing and a curse of my job is the repetitive nature of many of its tasks.  Today, I shifted between two of these tasks.  The first task involved finding index documentation not captured during image scanning and insuring that each document had a clean index before deleting the indexing page from the document.  The second involved doing manual OCR scan of information found in a document and entering it into a data base.  Neither of these tasks takes much brain work.  So one can easily lose track of time while listening to music on an MP3 player.  Yet, one can that time moves slowly when one has things on her mind.  Because the tasks are so repetitive, one can get into a groove, and start nodding off.  This happens to me often.  So I have developed some tricks to keep from falling asleep on the job.

After 8 hours of pushing keys and moving mouse, I could have very easily fallen asleep.  Unfortunately, I had a co-op board meeting to attend to.  And this took up most of the evening after I got home.  Hopefully, my visit to the land of nod will be better than last night's visit....

One day at a time

 

Right now, it seems as if most intelligent people are participating in a slow motion pandemic shutdown. The roads are less crowded than before I went on my cruise. Businesses are telling their workers that it is OK to work from home for another month or two. And people have again become wary of any activity where they would be in direct or indirect contact with a large number of people.

It seems as if everyone I talk to has come into contact with someone who has been infected by the Omicron variant of Covid-19.  And they are afraid of getting sick - even if fully vaccinated and boosted.  Some vaccinated people have heard horror stories about booster shots going wrong.  Others are sick and tired of the virus, and decided not to bother with the booster.  (My brother is one of these people, and he has gotten infected.  What's worse, he would prefer to get sick than to have been boosted.  Go figure.)  As a result of all this, people are staying home in droves.

This has gotten in my way, as none of the people I might see on weekends are comfortable going to restaurants any longer.  It doesn't help that our local governments are not comfortable instituting capacity limits in public places - they want people to go about their daily business with as few impediments as possible, as they don't want the economy to freeze up again.  So, by not sending a message to be cautious, the people who would be cautious are overcompensating for the lack of informed guidance from our politicians.

As for me, I'm willing to take my chances.  I've been vaccinated and boosted, and am not in the mood to go back to the mindset we had in 2020.  The other day, I chatted with my ex-girlfriend, and she noted that it was almost 2 years ago that everything shut down.  What she didn't recall was that I was trying to get her attention NOT to attend any public events her meetup group was having.  It's amazing that we're seeing similarities in what we're going through now with a time that things were much worse.  It'll be years before people have a "normal" reaction to events - this pandemic has over sensitized people to fearing the risk of illness.  I just wonder what our (great?) grandchildren will be thinking when another pandemic is likely to strike....

I'm thinking of booking another cruise before my Hawaii trip.

 

The above is a map showing the ports on a cruise I'm interested in taking.  Given the uncertainties of the cruise industry at the time I write this, I'm not sure of whether my Hawaii cruise will become a reality later this year.  Although I've been to 4 of the 6 ports before, I'd take this 10 day cruise on the NCL Joy so that I could visit Boston (again), and to visit the ports of Charlottetown and Sydney.  (I'd also gain the 10 Latitudes points I need to achieve Platinum status if my complaint to NCL isn't addressed properly.)

The last time I visited Boston, I was on a cruise with my former cruise partner.  She insisted that I hang out with her son and his girlfriend (now wife), while I wanted to go to the Union Oyster House and to see the USS Constitution. If I take this trip, I will likely be able to do both activities I wanted to do on my last trip to Boston AND get back to the cruise terminal in time to return home.  It'll be interesting trying to go through a military checkpoint with a male id, while presenting as a female.  (And it'll give me a good idea of what to expect when I visit Pearl Harbor, later in the year.)  

However, this is not the only trip I might take.  There is a 5 day Royal Caribbean cruise out of Bayonne that goes to Halifax (NS) and Saint John (NS).  That'd be a much cheaper cruise for me to take AND it would give me an idea of whether I'd cruise with RCCL in the future.  Yet, there is another cruise that really piques my interest - a 16 day Princess Cruise out of Brooklyn to Greenland, stopping at Halifax (NS), Sydney (NS), Nuuk (Greenland), Nanortalik (Greenland), Qaqortoq (Greenland), and St. Johns (NL) before returning home.  The latter cruise may be a budget buster, and would likely require that I travel as Mario.  Saint John (NB) and St. Johns (NL) are not to be confused with each other.  The city in New Brunswick is not that interesting.  But visitors to Newfoundland praise its town.  So this place will be on my list places to visit as I plan future cruises. 

Unfortunately, many of the cruises I plan to take will cost some serious coin.  But it's the price I have to pay to make up for lost travel time....

Being lazy can be so refreshing.

 

I've been trying to find the dress in this picture amongst the clothing in my storage containers.  Sadly, I either donated it by accident, or it is hopelessly lost amongst things I've tossed away.  After letting my apartment go to hell for the better part of two years, I've been slowly working my way through all the clutter in my place.

- - - - - -

After doing nothing all day yesterday, I thought I'd have the energy to get a bit done today.  Surprise!  I had even less energy than yesterday.  I was barely able to get myself moving until 4 pm.  And then, I got a call from TCL that lasted 2 hours.  (I really didn't want to stay on this long, but something happened that she needed to talk about - and we did just that.)  But this got in the way of my plans to shop at Wegmans, and then call for NCL for information on the Hawaii cruise I plan on taking.

Once done with TCL, I got showered and dressed, and off to White Plains for food shopping. On my way home, I called MWL to keep in touch.  Like me, she did a lot of nothing today, save that she took down some of her Xmas decorations.  It was a pleasant chat, and she told me how Covid (Omicron) is affecting her lately. Like CWS (and my new friend, RQS), MWL isn't going much of anywhere these days.  Almost all my friends are afraid of the Omicron variant.

I never accomplished two of the things I wanted to do today - Laundry and Calling NCL for cruise information.  Yet, I'm comfortable with what little I did today.  I've needed to rest for a while, and I've gotten two days of needed rest this weekend.

 

The first snow of the season

 

I wasn't in the mood to go to work today, and the snowstorm gave me the perfect excuse to stay home.  Yes, I could have gone into work.  But that would have gotten in the way of catching up on some much needed rest.  And I wasn't going to let that happen.

- - - - - -

The plow had come a couple of times during the night, and there was 4"-5" of snow on the cars in the parking lot.  Instead of getting up earlier than usual to both get dressed as Marian AND clean my car of the snow on top of it, I decided to stay in bed an extra couple of hours and get dressed as Mario for the task of car cleaning.  Luckily, the snow was still fluffy, and I could easily brush it off without trouble,   So, off I went to get a late breakfast (or early lunch, as it might be called), and then back to the homestead.  But I wasn't inside for long before the plow came one last time to clean out the parking lot.  So, it was back into the car, and off to an already plowed visitor's spot.

When I finally looked at my email, I received an email from my pen pal in Canada.  Seems like life isn't going that well for her.  Her mom is ill, and needs surgery.  And if she survives the surgery, they don't know how well she will function.  Afterwards, I decided to see what was doing with my former cruise partner's niece, as she was dealing with stage 4 cancer.  Sadly, her niece passed away before I had the chance to visit.  I sent a message to my former friend to tell her of Becky's death - and have not heard from her.  Just as well.  She'll never get over her hatred for me, and there is no longer any chance to patch things up.  There is one last message I have to send her, and I plan to do so in a couple of weeks. At least, no sane person can say that my last messages were nasty or those of a nasty person....