Andy, Norm and Brady.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Repeat MRI
I had a second post-radiation therapy MRI on June 23, and met with my radiation oncologist a week later to discuss the results. It wasn't the best possible report nor the worst possible report. Something shows up on the scan, but short of doing a brain biopsy, which is not recommended, only time will tell what is going on. Could be "pseudo-progression" (a.k.a. radiation debris), which would be a good thing, because over time that should disappear. Could also be tumor progression, which would not be a good thing. So the plan is to stay the course, continue on the temozolomide, and repeat the MRI, again, in two months.
I'm feeling about the same, no pain, still able to walk Larue twice a day. But the neuropathy is getting worse, affecting almost my whole right side (hand, arm, leg, foot). But, one has to learn to live with it. When I'm out I use a cane, but I use a walker when walking the dog.
We hired a lawn maintenance service to take care of the yard. I just can't handle the mowing anymore. Rain yesterday and today; summer, as usual, should arrive on July 5.
I'm feeling about the same, no pain, still able to walk Larue twice a day. But the neuropathy is getting worse, affecting almost my whole right side (hand, arm, leg, foot). But, one has to learn to live with it. When I'm out I use a cane, but I use a walker when walking the dog.
We hired a lawn maintenance service to take care of the yard. I just can't handle the mowing anymore. Rain yesterday and today; summer, as usual, should arrive on July 5.
Dodgers Bean Town Road Trip
Pete, Andy, and I went on a baseball-themed trip to Boston for a three-game inter-league series between the LA Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox, June 18-20. I found the trip on dodgers.com, and we were among 150 Dodger fans on the tour. (Pete is not a Dodger fan, but he was kind enough to go along for my sake.) I flew to Boston direct from Portland; Andy flew from Redmond, and Pete flew from Eugene. We stayed at the Hilton Boston Back Bay Hotel, where the three of us shared a room with two queen beds. I got to sleep in one of the beds by myself, and Pete and Andy had to share the other bed, which they didn't seem to mind.
The package deal included game tickets to all three games, hotel room, polo shirts, "Mannywood" T-shirts, Fenway Park tour, and exclusive Dodgers brunch with team personnel. Team personnel included former Dodger manager and baseball icon/ambassador Tommy Lasorda, Dodger broadcaster Steve Lyons, and Dodger back-up catcher A.J. Ellis. Tommy is a real raconteur who could tell stories till the cows come home. Steve Lyons went to Marist High School in Eugene for two years, to Beaverton High for his senior year, and then on to Oregon State. Marist is where Pete and Tracy work, and Andy of course went to OSU, so lots of coincidences. The brunch was a highlight of the trip. The Sunday game was on ESPN, and Andy got his mug on camera for a brief time around the fourth inning.
Also among the photos that Andy took and Ali posted was one of the three of us with Ken Scheublin, who was in the Peace Corps with us and lived in the same town as Marge. Ken and his wife Meta live in Cambridge. We met in a bar for drinks before one of the games.
Fenway Park is 98 years old and does not have the ADA seal of approval, to say the least. I struggled a bit to get to my seat with no hand rails, but made it without falling down. We mostly went from hotel to Fenway and back by pedi-cab which could accommodate all three of us. We had the same seats for all three games, so we got to know the folks sitting around us, some nice people. It was an almost total sports weekend, with baseball, World Cup soccer, game 7 of the Lakers-Celtics NBA finals, and U.S. Open golf, where my friend Mark Nealy volunteered at Pebble Beach. Pete stayed an extra day and spent it with some friends who studied together for a semester in Spain, all of whom live on the East Coast.
It was a real treat for me that I got to spend Father's day with the boys. We are proud that they are such good fathers to their children. The only downside to the trip is that the Dodgers got swept by the Red Sox, which in the big picture was no big deal.
The package deal included game tickets to all three games, hotel room, polo shirts, "Mannywood" T-shirts, Fenway Park tour, and exclusive Dodgers brunch with team personnel. Team personnel included former Dodger manager and baseball icon/ambassador Tommy Lasorda, Dodger broadcaster Steve Lyons, and Dodger back-up catcher A.J. Ellis. Tommy is a real raconteur who could tell stories till the cows come home. Steve Lyons went to Marist High School in Eugene for two years, to Beaverton High for his senior year, and then on to Oregon State. Marist is where Pete and Tracy work, and Andy of course went to OSU, so lots of coincidences. The brunch was a highlight of the trip. The Sunday game was on ESPN, and Andy got his mug on camera for a brief time around the fourth inning.
Also among the photos that Andy took and Ali posted was one of the three of us with Ken Scheublin, who was in the Peace Corps with us and lived in the same town as Marge. Ken and his wife Meta live in Cambridge. We met in a bar for drinks before one of the games.
Fenway Park is 98 years old and does not have the ADA seal of approval, to say the least. I struggled a bit to get to my seat with no hand rails, but made it without falling down. We mostly went from hotel to Fenway and back by pedi-cab which could accommodate all three of us. We had the same seats for all three games, so we got to know the folks sitting around us, some nice people. It was an almost total sports weekend, with baseball, World Cup soccer, game 7 of the Lakers-Celtics NBA finals, and U.S. Open golf, where my friend Mark Nealy volunteered at Pebble Beach. Pete stayed an extra day and spent it with some friends who studied together for a semester in Spain, all of whom live on the East Coast.
It was a real treat for me that I got to spend Father's day with the boys. We are proud that they are such good fathers to their children. The only downside to the trip is that the Dodgers got swept by the Red Sox, which in the big picture was no big deal.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Papa, are you packed?
Muilenburg Boys (Norm, Andy, Pete)take Boston, three days and counting down! Pack your Dodger Blue!
World Cup primer
Futbol: More commonly known as soccer in the U.S., it is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players using a spherical ball. It is the most popular sport in the world. The game is played on a rectangular grass or artificial turf field, with a goal in the center of each of the short ends. The object of the game is to score by driving the ball into the opposing goal (between the posts and under the bar). The team that scores the most goals by the end of the match wins.
FIFA: The International Federation of Association Football, soccer's international governing body. French: Fédération Internationale de Football Association, from which the acronym FIFA is derived.
FIFA World Cup: Also called the Football World Cup or the Soccer World Cup, but usually referred to simply as the World Cup, it is the premier international soccer tournament contested by the men's national teams of the members of FIFA. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not contested because of World War II. The 2010 FIFA World Cup is the 19th World Cup; it is being held in South Africa.
Pitch: The soccer playing field.
Match: A soccer game, usually 90 minutes in duration, 45 minutes per half, plus "extra time."
Goal: A score in soccer, something that occurs about as often as a sighting of Halley's Comet.
Draw: A tie game in soccer. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time and/or a penalty shootout, depending on the format of the competition.
Nil: No score, as in nada, zip, zilch, zero. A nil-nil draw would be a 0-0 tie game, not an uncommon occurrence in soccer.
Keeper: Goalkeeper or goalie. The goalkeepers are the only players allowed to use their hands or arms to propel the ball; the rest of the team usually use their feet to kick the ball into position, occasionally using their torso or head to intercept a ball in midair.
Robert Green: The England goalie who has become known as the equivalent of baseball's Bill Buckner.
Wayne Rooney: The English soccer hero, not to be confused with Andy Rooney of "60 Minutes" fame.
Vuvuzela: The infamous plastic horn of distraction, incessantly blown by soccer fans during a World Cup match. As written by Jason Gay in today's Wall Street Journal: "Is everyone already exasperated with The Infamous Plastic Horn of Distraction? WE SAID, IS EVERYONE ALREADY EXASPERATED WITH THE INFAMOUS PLASTIC HORN OF DISTRACTION?"
Hooligan: A violent young ruffian or hoodlum, usually associated with an English soccer fan who has consumed too many pints of ale, either before, during, or after a soccer match.
Yellow card: Something submitted by soccer players after being asked to give a urine sample for drug testing.
FIFA: The International Federation of Association Football, soccer's international governing body. French: Fédération Internationale de Football Association, from which the acronym FIFA is derived.
FIFA World Cup: Also called the Football World Cup or the Soccer World Cup, but usually referred to simply as the World Cup, it is the premier international soccer tournament contested by the men's national teams of the members of FIFA. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not contested because of World War II. The 2010 FIFA World Cup is the 19th World Cup; it is being held in South Africa.
Pitch: The soccer playing field.
Match: A soccer game, usually 90 minutes in duration, 45 minutes per half, plus "extra time."
Goal: A score in soccer, something that occurs about as often as a sighting of Halley's Comet.
Draw: A tie game in soccer. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time and/or a penalty shootout, depending on the format of the competition.
Nil: No score, as in nada, zip, zilch, zero. A nil-nil draw would be a 0-0 tie game, not an uncommon occurrence in soccer.
Keeper: Goalkeeper or goalie. The goalkeepers are the only players allowed to use their hands or arms to propel the ball; the rest of the team usually use their feet to kick the ball into position, occasionally using their torso or head to intercept a ball in midair.
Robert Green: The England goalie who has become known as the equivalent of baseball's Bill Buckner.
Wayne Rooney: The English soccer hero, not to be confused with Andy Rooney of "60 Minutes" fame.
Vuvuzela: The infamous plastic horn of distraction, incessantly blown by soccer fans during a World Cup match. As written by Jason Gay in today's Wall Street Journal: "Is everyone already exasperated with The Infamous Plastic Horn of Distraction? WE SAID, IS EVERYONE ALREADY EXASPERATED WITH THE INFAMOUS PLASTIC HORN OF DISTRACTION?"
Hooligan: A violent young ruffian or hoodlum, usually associated with an English soccer fan who has consumed too many pints of ale, either before, during, or after a soccer match.
Yellow card: Something submitted by soccer players after being asked to give a urine sample for drug testing.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Kagan exercises
A few weeks ago there was a picture of Elena Kagan, Solicitor General of the United States and U.S. Supreme Court nominee, in The Wall Street Journal playing softball. For some reason, this picture caused quite a stir in the national media, the reasons for which I am not quite sure. Maybe an open stance is a predictor of judicial activism? I'm not even sure that she was playing softball. Since she received a Masters Degree from Oxford, she might have been holding a cricket bat instead of a softball bat, for all I know.
I suspect one of the reasons for her nomination by President Obama is that she comes from a rather unique minority, that of being a Jewish ballplayer. There is already a female Jewish Supreme Court Justice, but to my knowledge Ms. Kagan would be the first Jewish ballplayer on the court. Only Sandy Koufax and Sean Green come to mind as Jewish ballplayers who made it to the big leagues. How convenient that the Supreme Court consists of nine members, as does a softball team. If confirmed she will replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, who at 90 is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth to be sliding into second base.
The WSJ picture had a caption which now escapes me, but it could have been "Kagan at the Bat" or "Kagan Exercises," not to be confused with Kegel Exercises.
According to Wikipedia, a Kegel exercise, named after Dr. Arnold Kegel, consists of contracting and relaxing the muscles that form part of the pelvic floor (which some people now colloquially call the "Kegel muscles"). The aim of Kegel exercises is to improve muscle tone by strengthening the pubococcygeus muscles of the pelvic floor. Kegel is a popular prescribed exercise for pregnant women to prepare the pelvic floor for physiological stresses of the later stages of pregnancy and vaginal childbirth. Kegel exercises are said to be good for treating vaginal prolapse and preventing uterine prolapse in women and for treating prostate pain and swelling resulting from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and prostatitis in men. Kegel exercises may be beneficial in treating urinary incontinence in both men and women.
But I digress....
I suspect one of the reasons for her nomination by President Obama is that she comes from a rather unique minority, that of being a Jewish ballplayer. There is already a female Jewish Supreme Court Justice, but to my knowledge Ms. Kagan would be the first Jewish ballplayer on the court. Only Sandy Koufax and Sean Green come to mind as Jewish ballplayers who made it to the big leagues. How convenient that the Supreme Court consists of nine members, as does a softball team. If confirmed she will replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, who at 90 is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth to be sliding into second base.
The WSJ picture had a caption which now escapes me, but it could have been "Kagan at the Bat" or "Kagan Exercises," not to be confused with Kegel Exercises.
According to Wikipedia, a Kegel exercise, named after Dr. Arnold Kegel, consists of contracting and relaxing the muscles that form part of the pelvic floor (which some people now colloquially call the "Kegel muscles"). The aim of Kegel exercises is to improve muscle tone by strengthening the pubococcygeus muscles of the pelvic floor. Kegel is a popular prescribed exercise for pregnant women to prepare the pelvic floor for physiological stresses of the later stages of pregnancy and vaginal childbirth. Kegel exercises are said to be good for treating vaginal prolapse and preventing uterine prolapse in women and for treating prostate pain and swelling resulting from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and prostatitis in men. Kegel exercises may be beneficial in treating urinary incontinence in both men and women.
But I digress....
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