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Ken Update

On Sunday afternoon, Mary Jo drove Ken down to the Mayo Clinic's ER because he's been having increasing pain in the general region of his liver and he's been having considerable difficulties eating/swallowing.  About a month ago, he started a new chemo regime - interferon and something - although the doctors had confessed that they were sailing in uncharted waters with him since he had already survived longer than the norm for his type of cancer.  And not only just survived, but really, he has done amazingly well during these past three years.  When I talked to Ken about it about a month ago, he took a sort of perverse--but well-deserved--pride in being the strongest kidney cancer patient on record at the Mayo.

About a week ago, Ken and MJ decided to stop the chemo because they felt it was accelerating the extreme fatigue and causing the swallowing problems.  When things didn't improve much after stopping the chemo, and the pain has only continued to grow (varying between a 3 and a 9 on a scale of 1-10, depending on what he is doing and how he is positioned), they decided that they would feel better seeing their doctors at the Mayo.  So, after an interesting few hours in the ER with some fascinating people-watching, Ken was seen and they decided to admit him to Mayo-Methodist for tests.

In the end, it appears that the pain in caused by the tumor on his liver.  The team of doctors/med students (Ken refers to them as the Vultures) came through and determined that he breaths deeply or is in certain positions, his diaphram pushes down against his liver and the tumor and this is causing the pain.  At one point they thought perhaps the pain was being caused by gall stones, which I thinking we were all hoping for because then they could take him in for surgery and remove the source of the pain; however, they are pretty sure that is not the case so now they are left with giving him pain medications to mask the pain.

Unfortunately, the pain medications leave him pretty sleepy but when he wakes up he is clear-headed and his usual self.

I was down there all day yesterday and Ken was in and out, but when he was "in" he was his usual, feisty, opinionated, funny self.  Who knows what happens from here? 

I think that if they could get his pain meds titrated so that he isn't so groggy that he can't get out of bed, he will be much happier.  That is what I am hoping for.  It looks like they are sending him home today.

I left my niece in San Francisco...High on a hill...

I really did leave my niece, Meredith, in San Francisco last weekend.  On a hill in Pacific Heights.  Of course, that was the intention all along since the whole point of the weekend was to get her settled into her new apartment.  Meredith graduated from Villanova in Philadelphia back in May and starts a new job with PwC in San Francisco next week and in the interval managed to find herself an amazing apartment in a beautiful neighborhood!


Here is a little video tour of her apartment but I would suggest turning the sound down since I am babbling in the background.

The quality isn't great since I just shot this with my phone, plus I cannot figure out how to rotate the video clip so sorry about that.  Still it gives you an idea of where Mere is living.

We had a really lovely weekend.  Perhaps I shouldn't speak for Meredith, but I had a really lovely weekend with Meredith and if she didn't have quite as wonderful a time, at least she was gracious enough to fake a positive attitude.  They were LONG days though!  Meredith arrived with only two suitcases and two boxes of clothes and small items and we ran around the Bay Area looking for inexpensive furniture (mostly IKEA), sheets, towels, miscellaneous supplies, groceries, etc.

Meredith was very concerned about the cost of everything and we did try to be frugal; but I kept telling her that if her mother was truly concerned about containing costs of the move, then she shouldn't have put me--her sister with no financial good sense and a great love of decorating--in charge.  Seriously, what was Margaret thinking?  Despite me, we managed to set Meredith up for a very reasonable amount. 

Mere will have three roommates - all strangers to each other - and shockingly enough, they all seem really nice and normal.  Another Craigslist.com success story.

Oh, the embarrassment!

Ian is out of town so I've been rambling around the house by myself (well, Attila and Bodicea are there but they don't keep me on the straight and narrow) which usually means that I watch sappy chick flicks, or made-for-TV movies on Lifetime, but last night I sunk to a new low.

While channel surfing after watching a god-awful movie on Lifetime, I stumbled upon an infomercial from Time-Life on "Singers and Songwriters".  I was all set to just surf right past it but they started playing a snippet of James Taylor's Sweet Baby James, followed by Cat Stevens' Wild World, follow by Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years, followed by Don McLean's American Pie....and what was I supposed to do?  How do you turn away from Don McLean and American Pie?  I was singing along because I know all the words to all those songs, and I found I couldn't turn the channel...and pretty soon something like 20 minutes had passed and I was still there, singing along with all 150 songs.  But wait, there's more!  The also had The Classics (free with purchase of Singers and Songwriters) and I knew all of those songs as well.

The sad thing was, there wasn't even any wine involved.  I was that pathetic absolutely sober.

Finally, the trance was broken when Margaret and Dave stopped by to return the kayak and I had to hurriedly turn off the TV lest they see what a sad sack I truly am.

In my defense, at least I didn't order anything...

(...but it did cross my mind)

Singers and Songwriters

Greetings from the Free and Hansiatic City of Hamburg

I like Hamburg.  I went on a tour of the city on Sunday afternoon and was really impressed.  It's very clean (as one would expect from a German city) but it also has an interesting history.   But we won't get into a history lesson. 

I am here for the International Society for Professional Innovation Management which has been a very mixed bag.  I've met several very interesting people, made a new friend in a woman from Latvia whose name is Gundega which is the name of the flower we call "Buttercup" which I think is a fantastic name, although I find myself wanting to greet her each day with, "What's up, Buttercup?", but I am not sure that she would really appreciate that.  I think it's funny when Mr. Barker says it to me, but she might just think I was strange.  

Most of the conference has been really academically focused and we all know that I have problems with people claiming to be experts on business and/or the challenges of managing technology when they have never worked in a business nor had anything to do with developing or managing technology.  Still, there are enough corporate types here to make it worthwhile.

I am staying at the Alster-Hof Hotel which is, of course, almost painfully clean if not just a wee-bit dated.  The location is wonderful, though, being just a couple blocks from the Binnen Alster (you were right, Ken) which is the little, lower part of Lake Alster.  Much like Minneapolis, there is a chain of lake here in Hamburg, surrounded by beautiful homes and trendy neighborhoods.   

Here is a photo of the Binnen Alster with the spires of four of the major churches and the Rathaus (City Hall - I love that they call the seats of local government "Rat" Houses...what could be more appropriate?).

Here's the Rathaus and the canal that runs alongside.

There are canals all over the place.  These are the old warehouses which had been built back in Hamburg's Hansa history.  At the time they were built, it was the largest warehouse complex in the world.

Parts of Hamburg were destroyed in The War, but amazingly much of it remains.

Amusingly, our planned social event for this evening is a Mississippi paddleboat ride/dinner down the Elbe!  Ha!  To think I have flown thousands of miles to take a boat tour which is part of every conference in Minneapolis/St. Paul!

Bis bald!

Bodicea Silliness

Our new cat, Bodicea, having fun with a shopping bag.  She had been going absolutely crazy with it and, of course, I missed that while I was looking for the camera but while this is more subdued, it is still cute.

Slideshow of photos from Spain

The Rain in Spain...

Ah...Valencia...warmth,sunshine..hmm...not so much.

So our warm weather vacation wasn't quite as warm as we might have planned but it was still absolutely delightful! We had the opportunity to stay with a couple of Ian's friends from college at their second home in Spain and it was really a wonderful visit! Poor Suzanne and Paul were stuck with us non-stop for almost a week but they were very gracious about it.

Xabia (I think!)

Suzanne and Paul have a lovely home just outside of Denia and we spent the week visiting local markets, walking the hillside, reading, watching football (soccer) and cricket, but mostly eating and visiting and eating some more. The food was fantastic! We ate like kings! Suzanne (and Paul) created such delicious meals for us that Ian and I are now committed to cooking more and better at home.

Ian, Tess, Suzanne, and Paul in Denia.

We quickly slipped into a relaxed routine of sleeping in, having a little breakfast on the patio, wandering or reading, eating a late lunch, wandering or reading, and having dinner at about 9pm and then watching cricket or soccer and THEN sitting around drinking wine and visiting until WAY past my bedtime.

Now that we are back home we are back to our usual, up at 6am, at work by 8:30-ish, and asleep by 10-ish. Oh well...

Ian in front of the very futurist IMAX theatre and Art Museum in Valencia--The whole complex is amazing (there are more photos in the slideshow to the right).

It actually feels like we'd been gone longer than a week because the weather here in Minnesota had changed so much in our absence. When we left there was still a covering of about 2 feet of snow everywhere with snowbanks along the streets between 4 and 6 feet and when we got back there was a lot of soggy bare ground and the dirty, salty, sandy remains of snowbanks. Yesterday morning they were talking on the radio about how the temperatures were REALLY going to drop and be prepared for frigid weather for the rest of the week. I was sure they were going to say the temps were in the single digits but then they announced low-30s! Two weeks ago, low-30s would have been deemed "balmy".

Oh the difference 13 days makes!

Fallas Festival in Valencia. The dresses are amazing--beautiful fabric and ornate designs--there was a parade led by the youngest girls, and in the plazas they created huge amazing papier mache floats which were to be burned on the last day of the festival.