I have no idea where I am going with this but feel compelled to write. So bear with me. Or don’t, it’s your choice. That’s the danger (from my perspective) of blogging.

So I got the news that I have achieved a 3-log reduction in the presence of the Leukemia mutation. Or something like that, but I was never great with Biology. Suffice it to say, this is the goal for treating my kind of Leukemia (CML), and within this threshold the disease is considered well under control. My next step is for the mutation (actually it’s the presence of a protein, or something like that) to be undetectable by the machines that do the detecting. That won’t necessarily mean the mutation is gone, but rather that it is so low that the machine can’t find it (we are on the molecular level at this point).

It’s strange, though, because I still sense that I have a ways to go in terms of dealing with the emotional side of having leukemia. For those of you that know me well, this summer has sucked horribly. I’ve been sick and injured for most of the season, and then I was forced to try a different leukemia drug because the original one was no longer effective. Not to mention that I struggled with the side effects of that original drug.

Now I feel better than ever, and I actually have more energy now than I know what to do with. But this morning, a friend of mine mentioned in passing that he had had some blood work done and the doctor said he wanted to run another, more specific test. It ended up being nothing (except that my friend needed to lose a little weight), and yet when I heard this story being told, I almost had a small heart attack at the idea of him needing more blood work. I’ve been down that road, and it didn’t go well with me.

It was like a small panic attack induced by PTSD, or something like that. I can be a little dramatic at times.

But it did tell me that I have a ways to go. I still get depressed, and who wouldn’t? After the leukemia, the multiple deaths of loved ones, the car wreck, my cat that died, the million kidney stones, and a few other things, this shouldn’t surprise me.

It all reminds me of how messy life really can be. I get impatient with movies that have nice, black and white, neatly wrapped endings. How is that anywhere near life-like? Real life has real struggles, real joy, and everything in between – and often at the same time.

I am in remission. That’s incredibly good news, but it isn’t the end of the story, nor is it the beginning of another. My good news simply is. I will carry this damned mutation all my life, and my life will likely be long.

Learning to live in that tension takes serious chutzpah. I pray that God grants me some of his…

I have a strong sense of smell. When I was a kid, my mom couldn’t sneak candy in the car without me sniffing it out (and then asking for some). It’s a blessing and a curse.

When I walked into the theater last Friday at 11:30am to see “New Moon,” I noticed that someone sitting behind us had been drinking. I was initially surprised by the smell as it was still early in the day, but considering he and I were both likely being forced to watch the movie by our significant others, I couldn’t judge him.

About 20 minutes into the movie, I was *this* close to turning around and asking him for some of whatever he had. Yes, the movie was bad. The dialogue was tepid at best, the cinematography was mediocre, and the movie itself reeked of melodrama – worse than my friend behind me and whatever cheap bourbon he had been sucking down.

But that really didn’t bother me that much. I’ve seen bad movies before, and I have an active enough imagination to be entertained while watching even the worst fermented garbage that Hollywood throws at us. Like “Mom and Dad Save the World” with John Lovitz. That movie is terrible. Terribly awesome, but still terrible.

I found myself becoming more and more uncomfortable the longer I watched the movie. No, it wasn’t the gratuitous scenes of sculpted boys and men taking their shirts off, though there was plenty of that. It was with the movie’s heroine, Bella. Listening to her talk and watching her react to life’s twists and turns (I won’t spoil anything for you in case you particularly hate yourself and are going to see it) became harder and harder to bear.

The reason is due to her complete and utter dependence on Edward (and a little on Jacob, too). We all depend on people to some extent. I think it was Thomas Merton John Donne that said “No man is an island.” But Bella is so dependent that she spends months sitting in her room being depressed because Eddy isn’t around anymore. Like I said, melodrama. However, I am incredibly unnerved by how much her character needs Ed around to feel happy.

That whole “You complete me” nonsense in a relationship is literal poison.

If someone bases their sense of self and well-being on another person with whom they are involved, they are setting themselves up either for a quick and meaningless  or a volatile (and possibly violent) relationship. It’s dangerous, psychologically and emotionally.

And yet, this is exactly how Bella approaches her life. Her entire sense of self revolves around Ed-the-love-machine. In anything other than a movie (and book), this would be a recipe for an incredibly unhealthy relationship. But no, it’s a movie, so everything works out in the end. She gets the Ed she needs in order to survive, and everything works out.

My fear is this: Do we really want to act like being co-dependent is a good thing? That sounds like a horrible idea.

Ok, the title isn’t not as epic as it sounds. I haven’t posted in forever, and at the end of each week, I kick myself for it. Why? Writing takes up a large portion of what I do for a living, and yet I can’t ever get myself to put together something as small as a blog post every other day. Absurd.

Maybe it’s like exercising. I used to hate working out, and now I do all the time. The trick was that I had to stop thinking about it as working out and actually develop a goal. So I chose triathlons, because why not? Swimming, biking, and running – not enough monotony to drive me nuts.

We’ll see if blogging is more like that. Of course, I need a goal, but we’ll see…

For OS X: This will allow you to add events by typing a few words and hitting enter. Then you get to watch as the new event(s) are magically synced to iCal.

What you need:

• gcalcli (and prereqs) -  http://code.google.com/p/gcalcli/ (don’t worry. installing these aren’t as difficult as it seems)
• gmail/gcal account
• ical
• Script Editor (comes with your Mac)
• Calaboration – http://code.google.com/p/calaboration/

Install gcalcli using the instructions on the site – when you get it working, make sure you remember where you put the actual file “gcalcli.”

Now you need to get your google calendar and iCal synced up. Install Calaboration and run it after you have a good calendar set up. This will then configure iCal to work and sync with gCal. It should go fairly easily.

Here’s the juicy part. Google Calendar has a slick “quick add” feature that will parse through and interpret text that you enter. For example, if I type “meeting with boss on tues at 8am” it will set up an event called “meeting with boss” to occur at 8am the following Tues. In this case, it would be the 20th of January. You can also add things like “from 8am to 2pm,” and when you use the word “at,” it will even set up the location. Very cool stuff.

So we are going to create a very small Applescript to send such a bit of text to gcal with ease. Here’s the code:


on run

   repeat

      display dialog "Enter event information:" default answer ""

      set eventInfo to text returned of result

      do shell script "/usr/bin/gcalcli --user YOURUSERNAME --pw YOURPASSWORD quick \"" eventInfo & "\""

   end repeat

 

end run

You can test the script by hitting the “run” button and checking your google calendar.

The only important part here is that the stuff after “do shell script” has to be one line, though it is OK if it wraps. the /usr/bin part before “gcalcli” might change depending on where you installed it, and you will need to enter your username and password (no quotes). Fire up GCal when you test the script, and you should know if it is working. Then open iCal, and voila! It is stored locally too!

Once the script is working correctly, you can save it as an application in the “Save” dialog, and then launch it like any other application. I like to use spotlight to launch it, for quicker access.

If you have a bunch of events to add with chunks of the same text (like an event title that is the same but with changing dates), you should be able to just paste it into the script without a problem. Enjoy!

I mean, I guess that’s almost a buck off……

I remember in high school youth group we had to respond to this particular situation: What two things would you take with you if you woke up with your room was on fire?

It was hilarious, in retrospect, because we all had to be very pious. This meant that our first item was our Bibles, followed by the one item that we really wanted to keep from getting torched. Give me a break. Our Bibles? Unless this is a 200 year old Bible that has been in a family for that long, I somehow doubt that any one of us would have cared at all about the ten-dollar Bible sitting under a pile of dirty laundry.

Of course, by answering such, we all appeared very well behaved and spiritual in front of everyone else. And we perpetuated the stigma that one can only be a part of the group if you were very pious, or at the very least, can fake it really well. We tended toward the latter.

It wasn’t until college that I heard the first accurate response to that question. My friend, Stephen, answered with, “My pants.” After all, we tend to sleep without pants, and if we have to watch the firemen try to save what’s left of our house or protect the houses around us, then it’s probably best to do so with our pants on.

I was traveling around Lake Tahoe and taking pictures, but I kept getting distracted and would occasionally forget to adjust my circular polarizer (lens filter). I’m glad I did, because it gave me a chance to see the difference between using it correctly and forgetting to rotate it. Check this out:

(Top – Without rotating) (Bottom – With Rotating)

I think the difference speaks for itself.