Monday, November 29, 2010

More rants on government

All of the governments are cockroaches and WikiLeaks is the flashlight. It's not going to take them down, but it'll make them scatter for awhile and hopefully we can get some peace.

A politician makes his living saying what government can do for you; emphasis on the word SAYING.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

You've Got Mail

My daughter does this thing where she sits at her Tenda, writing a "letter." This letter has a few words on it but mostly pictures of things she loves: birds, cats, family, tv shows. She'll wrap up the letter into roughly what's an envelope size. She will then run past you and throw the letter at you in a delivery fashion. It'll float in the air for a few seconds then land near you. Then she'll watch from a distance as you open it and read the letter from her.

Monday, November 08, 2010

Social Security

Social security will fix itself by eventually raising the retirement age to equal the average life span.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

More Political Observations

Liberals need a lesson in economics. Conservatives need a lesson in conservatism. You can't force someone to do something and expect them to like it.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Election Day

When money is forced, it loses its value.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Examine Your Head

I am waiting in the OR waiting room at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. It is hour five into Mrs. Lock's brain surgery to remove a pheo tumor from her skull. I just got an update from the room nurse that things are going fine and that I can expect to talk to the surgeon in the next 45 minutes.

Update 1457. Dr. Heiss, the neurosurgeon came to talk to me. Procedure was uneventful - relatively speaking. They removed a good portion of the tumor. The parts left on the vein they didn't want to touch, too risky. Radiation will have to take care of that. They're waking her up now and I can see her in about half an hour. I have no idea what to expect.

Doctor did say a good portion of it was in the skull. It didn't look like any of it had invaded the brain, maybe touching it but not growing into it. And she was stable through the whole thing. She did receive "two units" of blood. Doctor said when they were closing her up, the bleeding had stopped.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Prophecy


Don't mistaken prophecy for a really good plan.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Worst day of my life

99% of you will never have a day this bad.

Today, on my wife's 37th birthday, her oncologist scheduled neurosurgery for her.

Yesterday, the oncologist and a team of doctors told her that she has a tumor in her skull growing and pressing into her brain. Brain surgery is the best option followed by radiation, but because of her existing condition surgery has to wait until they can get her blood pressure under control which they'll do with medication.

So we wait.

The speed of the growth of this neuro-tumor is surprisingly fast since it was just a speck on a scan just over a month ago. Now we wait another week before neurosurgeons can go in and remove it hoping it doesn't move in and make itself at home first.

Since my wife was diagnosed with metastatic pheo four years ago, we've been treading water. When that first doctor sat us down and told us she had a tumor in her hip and one in her neck, I remember being stunned. I couldn't move, react, talk, I couldn't even swallow saliva as it hung in my throat. This is the reaction to devastation. We thought at that moment, it was the end of the world. She had surgery later that year to remove both which did a bit of damage.

After that, she was accepted into a study group program at the National Institute of Health to began regular scans to find where else these tumors may grow. The scans revealed they were EVERYWHERE! She had them in her liver, her spine, her skull, her ribs, her other hip. When we got this report, it happened again. Stunned. We're still treading water, but we're sinking.

Now with this latest news, a disease that can not normally cross the blood-brain barrier like most cancers, it has found a way into her brain directly from the skull.

We are drowning.

If we felt our backs were against the wall four years, we've already pressed through the drywall and are standing outside on the lawn. I don't know how many more times I can reassess the situation, go through the stages of grief and come out at the end optimistic. This is the god damned brain we're talking about. It does NOT get more serious than this.

After the news in that NIH hospital room on that fateful day, after the team of doctors left us alone to grieve, and grieve we did, Mrs. Lock came through with it and still maintains a positive attitude. This automatically makes her the strong one.

We did even start to joke about it that day. Her lunch arrived. She had a popsicle she opened, tried to remove it from the package but only the stick came out, leaving the popsicle inside. When I saw what happened, I replied, "Boy, this just isn't your day." We had a good laugh about the obvious understatement this conveyed.

To take our minds of things, she asked me to go to the hospital library and check out a movie for us to watch. She said she wanted a comedy, no drama. I asked, "So no Brian's Song?" Are you starting to sense how I deal with grief?

When we debated when to call our parents and give them the dire news. Mrs. Lock said "Well at least it's not all in my head...well it is...but it's not." I suggested she call her parents and say it exactly like that "Well, it's all in my head!" Mrs. Lock laughed but reminded me they would be so pissed.

Probably.

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Facebook Family


Sometimes I wish my mom wasn't on Facebook because she can get all motherly in front of 250 of my friends. But then I think, how many people have a mom who's on Facebook? That's kind of cool.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Politics

Politics is about securing the most amount of power with the least amount of resistance. This makes it a moral issue for me.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Right or Left

The voters don't know what they want or rather they have short-term memory loss. In the previous administration (Republican), we went to war for basically nothing. Weapons of mass destruction that turns out weren't there. Afghanistan was a response to 9/11. So the country gets pissed off that we went to war for nothing and elects the other side into power (Democrats). This administration has passed bulky health care reform that has once again pissed off the country. It looks like they'll lose their power in the coming elections and the country will swing back to Republican.

The problem is, the damage has already been done. Nothing is ever undone in government. And the swinging that the voters are doing has a wrecking ball on the end and it is smashing the country every time we put the "other" party into power. It's the two major parties that are to blame and no one thinks that the true change is going to have to come from outside of the establishment. Quit voting Republican. Quit voting Democrat. Find a candidate that represents your beliefs the most and if you can't find one, vote for yourself or we won't be able to break this cycle and government will continue to interfere in our lives.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Bummer

I have a couple of stoned women in my bathroom and there's nothing I can do with this.

Friday, September 17, 2010

War Cont.

A follow up to my Jan 09 post "War."

Mrs. Lock is done with chemo. It did it's job and very well. It took care of her big pain but now it's no longer effective, so as of this month, she's done with her cycles after being on it for over a year and a half. She received a week of radiation to the hip to take care of the nagging pain there.

Her NIH doctors are looking at drugs to put her on to deal with what's left. In the meantime, she has her own medicine she's taking that has shown successful with a couple of patients with her disease.


Senior Citizen Parents

My blog has seen a lot of inactivity lately. I'll blame World of Warcraft mostly. I'm on a break now and am posting again so that must be it. It's unfortunate since there is so much going on in my life now, it's perfect time to talk (write) about it.

Dad came up to visit last week. I took him and the kids to the Children's Museum. Since he's 60 now, he gets the senior discount. This made me laugh although I went through a couple of emotions other than humor, mostly humor though. I was happy to pay a discount rate but Dad getting old reminds me I'm getting old. I am fortunate to have young parents. When they were my age, I was half way through high school. My oldest child is only 5.

It does make me think about what kind of people they were. Very much like me no doubt. Just thinking of them knowing then what I know now and they did it was three kids, it kind of awes me. Life is not hard in this country, far from it. There are few things to worry about but you do have responsibility, especially to your family and at 38 my parents were just kids like I am now. All things are relative of course.

Glad to be back and writing again.

Haven't done a snapshot in over four years! Here it is for 2010.

--

Snapshot


Market: (GAWD down 4.5 years later)
DJI 10615, NASDAQ 2316, SP5 1128

#1 Movie at the box office:
Resident Evil: Afterlife

Last movie I saw at the theater:
Toy Story 3

Last movie(s) I saw not at the theater:
The Green Mile
Daywatch


Books I'm currently reading:
None

Broadcasts I'm listening to:
Howard Stern on Sat radio
Alternative, 80's.

Video games I'm playing:
Angry Birds (Droid Phone), Starcraft 2, Got Populous 3 out of the closet, blew the dust off (Win95 game).

Price I'm paying for gas:
$2.89/gallon (wow, did not change this from the value I had 4.5 years ago).

Last several Google searches:

syler actor
dell precision t7400
webcam roulette
condusive (checked spelling, it's a c)
zionsivlle friendly tavern
easy root
doctor who episode guide