I went to eat at Roy's tonight... after realizing I had a max of $80 a day to spend on food. After a rip off breakfast downstairs and a cheap lunch with the chaps from the San Francisco office, I had around $54 to blow on dinner... I reached my goal easily and even went over by $3... shouldn't have gotten the coffee.

I sat at the single diner section, which offered a glass wall so that you could watch the chefs... it was pretty entertaining. Fran was my waitress... she was nice, and the also had a very good beverage server. Plus 3 other waiters checked in on me while I was eating... I love good service.

The first two days here have been unremarkable (that is my new word... the doctors kept using it to describe Pearl's other organs... it's apparently a good thing), work from 9-6:45 (that is noon - 9:45 for you East coasters). Did get thanked by the former CEO and VP of the company Symantec purchased. This is a good opportunity for me to get some visibility. I say former cause they are now Exec's with Symantec but not Senior Execs. But they are my boss's boss's boss and his boss respectively. One or two down from John Thompson... the CEO of Symantec.

Lee and Andy are coming into town this weekend to keep me company. We only have a giants game planned, but I am sure we will have a good ol time. Will be good to see them.

I was also told today that I will be on this team until at least the end of the year, so that means I will be coming out here in the future... I imagine 2 or 3 more times. I will be bringing my wife with me if she can afford the time.

I think this bear was in the fraternity with me

Here is a picture of myself with the Reunion Queen (aka my wife)



You can see more reunion photos by clicking on the picture above.

I had a great time in Jacksonville this past weekend at my 10 year high school reunion. Will post some of the high light pictures for you guys once I have had time to review them... but I am leaving for San Francisco in the morning so time is not something on my side right now, considering I am still at work. But I got to spend some QT with my mom and Don and my BFFs from high school. Nothing like a little recharge before going into a very tough 3 months up ahead.

Pearl had her first dose of chemo and radiation yesterday and said that she is feeling good. Uneventful is good when you are putting such strong medicines in your body. Please continue your well wishes for her.

Will try to log my trip to San Francisco, just very uncertain of the schedule right now.

This new site meter is pretty cool (I put it at the bottom of the page), it gathers more information for me then the simple counter I had before... you can click on the number to see the same report I see.

But when I was looking through it this morning, I found this site, BlogShare, that had referred at least one hit to my site. I have yet to read up on it, but it looks like someone has made a stock market for blogs? Kinda weird, but at the same time, in a dorky way, kinda interesting. But I do think that he should at least let us know that he is tracking our sites.

I consider myself one whom doesn't care much with matching my socks, how scruffy I look, how long my hair is... etc, etc. But come on, getting a dorky looking hair cut 4 days before your 10 year high school reunion sucks! Hopefully it will grow out by then, but I look like Alferd E Newman right now.

I think someone is trying to tell us not to go to the reunion. We are basically trying to fly into the perfect storm with Bonnie and Charley meeting up in Jacksonville on Friday morning (the day we are suppose to arrive).


Things are not looking good!

Looks like cancer is a major concern for a lot of people. My counter has gone from around 3,500 views on Friday to over 430,000 this Monday. Guess I need to be more insightful about the research.

So either in response to the hectic week or just because certain friends bring out the hell raiser in Sherry, we got tore up this weekend. I wanted to mention this for several reasons. The first being that life goes on, and although we have received this horrible news, everyone's attitudes have been really good, mainly the doctors, but Pearl is in good spirits and everyone knows that life must go on. Secondly I worry about my blog turning into depression daily, and that isn't my style. Thirdly, I can't remember the last time I threw-up from drinking only beer.

So, Sherry has two friends, named Sara(h). Yes, they are both named Sara(h) (one with an h, one without), in fact they are both named Sara(h) B. Batkins and Bagley. They are quite humorous human beings, and good times abound when ever we hang out with them. Only problem is they don't live in town, although they are in town frequent enough for you people to know about them. Anywho, Jason (Sara(h)'s boyfriend... I am not going to specify which just cause I think it is kinda funny) had a birthday that we were celebrating this weekend. So on Saturday night, we went over to Jason's apartment for a few drinks and to blow off some steam. Apparently we both had a lot of steam to blow off.

The evening started out simple enough, I had brought over my handy dandy Michael Graves poker set, and we played a few hands (not real money... so therefore I kicked ass, cause I suck when real money is involved). After 2 hours of poker, diner was served. Jason is quite the cook, hooking us up with kabobs, steamed shrimp and the neighbors brought out some edamame.

After that, trouble started. We proceeded upstairs for 26 rounds of flip-cup, after which, Sherry decided to "lay down" which produced the typical post drinking experiance for her. A technacolor yawn into the closest flushable peice of furniture. Luckily it was the toilet this time. But don't worry... the newly trimmed down lightweight (me) was only 45 minutes behind her, with his offerings to the porcelain goddess. So the lightweight married people (yes we were the only married people there) layed down on the bed for the next 2 hours until Sherry was sober enough to drive home, since although I had puked out the alcohol, was still feeling quite ill.

Sara(h) thought it was the non-Atkins approved corn.

I took Friday off work to be an official member of the Tureman entourage. Cancer treatment is a three headed beast (as most of you know), but just to reiterate... the weapons are surgery, drugs (chemo), and radiation. Of course the medical profession refuses to use simple terms so we will also refer to the doctors as the Surgeon, the Medical Oncologist, and the Radiation Oncologist, specifically in Pearl's case David Vargas MD, Valiant Tan MD, and Mathew Sinesi MD.

As of Friday Dr. Vargas had given a rough diagnosis of a T3 mass (N and M are still unknown) meaning that she is either in Stage IIa, IIIb, IIIc, or IV... but she has had two CT scans that should have shown spread to other organs and there has been no mention of it, which is wonderful news.

Given this diagnosis, Vargas has decided to use Chemo and radiation as the first line of defense to stop potential tumor spread and decrease the tumor before surgery. She begins radiation and chemotherapy on August 16th, with surgery scheduled 6 weeks after treatment completion (to allow the organs to heal prior to surgery). She will undergo 25-30 treatments with the radiation being given 5 days a week (at 11 am everyday) and chemo therapy being delivered via a continuous drip being removed on the weekends. Dr. Tan (the Medical Oncologist, aka Chemo doctor) has selected 5Fu as his weapon of choice.

Dr. Sinesi (as far as I can tell the head of the Cancer treatment center at the hospital) seemed like an excellent human being and a fine doctor. The treatment center was quite impressive, issuing a scan card to Pearl, and being very precise about the radiation... giving her an additional CT Scan in order to pinpoint the angles to point the radiation and tattooing her (with single pinpoint dots) to assist in lining up the radiation rays for quicker treatment sessions. Pearl told the nurse that she felt a little to old to be getting tattoos :) When she arrives daily, all she has to do is scan the card and the office will automatically go into action, knowing that she is there.

They said that since the 5Fu is pretty easy on the system and the radiation is localized to the rectum the typical negative effects of radiation and chemo (hair loss, body sores) should be non-existent. She shouldn't lose her hair, and potentially only experience mouth sores and rectum discomfort, with slight hair thinning.

Please offer up a prayer to whatever it is you believe in. Sherry's mother (Pearl) was diagnosed with colon cancer yesterday. We don't know much more then the fact that there is a mass and 5 polyps were the rectum and colon connect. She was diagnosed yesterday during a colonscopy. I have spent the last two days on WebMD getting up to speed.

She is meeting with the general surgeon on Friday and from there we can assume she will be schedule for a CT scan and then surgery as quickly as possible. The GI doctor said the mass was around 10 cm. Will post more details as I get them... til then please pray.