The Mystery Continues
Had my PET scan yesterday. Blood test showed another rise in my CA19-9 counter but not as steep as the last rise. The scan imaging showed a small glucose uptake going on at the former site of my pancreas, just where I had all that radiation aimed last year. At least it appears that my back pain is indeed muscle pain and nothing else, so I’ve got some drugs for that.
I’m getting another endoscopy next week, have a better look around.
That’s it for now. I’m a bit sleepy now. Ciao!
April 10, 2021 @ 11:25 am
Thanks for finding the energy for updates. Keeping Melissa in my thoughts as well.
April 10, 2021 @ 12:48 pm
Thanx! I’m slowly recovering. Feeling a little bit better each day. It’s a beautiful day out today and still chilly. Good time to walk the pups.
April 10, 2021 @ 5:16 pm
So glad to hear there’s something to help the back pain. Hopefully you can finally get some rest. Let me know what the endoscopy shows. Hope your spring is as gorgeous as ours is shaping up to be.
Love and hugs,
Robin
April 11, 2021 @ 2:42 pm
Ah yes, Burning Man. When I found out you were no longer “The Man” at Burning Man, that (shall we say ) threw some cold water on my aspirations. (by the way, did you ever see Bob Bacon when he went? He did a giant metal fish there one year. He had a crew. Tried to talk me into it, but for some reason I said “no”)
Reading your posts it makes me think back to our youth when we worked together. I left Landmark after the acquisition, I think you left before that? 1996. Can that really be 25 years ago? You know, it seems like I have not changed at all (except I am not nearly as flexible as I used to be. And I need glasses to read. And I have to keep exercising, and I don’t sleep at night, and my hair is getting thinner, and the kids at work call me “sir” (ok, that last part is not true)) but the world has changed around us.
When Bob’s wife Annie had some medical issues, they used a service called “Caring Bridge” to do what you’re doing with this blog. It amazes me the opportunities that some folks (not the Bacons. He was just a user) take for monetization. Doreen and I often talk about how the tech world has morphed from smart people solving problems to greedy bastards trying to make a billion dollars.
Hence my new dedication to Anarchism, Socialism, and Georgism. One tax to rule them all.
Looking forward to new posts.
d
April 11, 2021 @ 7:38 pm
Gee I’ve been going to BM 17 times so far. Even went in 2019, only a few months after they opened me up and ran a salad spinner in my guts. Hey, I’ve never been *The Man* there because they always end up getting burned down on Saturday. I’ve certainly been *A* man there though.
I missed Bob entirely. I didn’t find out about his work until after I came back that year. Layton was telling me how it helped him a lot. I wasn’t surprised when Layton told me about him. It made perfect sense that Bob would ride that Burning Man thing really hard. Do you know how he’s doing these days?
I’ve heard of Caring Bridge. A friend used it during her treatments. Fortunately we haven’t been as challenged as many have, so the blog was just sitting around and it only made sense to use it rather than rely on FB.
25 years. Um wow. Yeah I left in 1996, right about the time that Halliburton’s IT group took over managing Landmark’s infrastructure. That sure was some good times. I still miss geophysics & geology like crazy. I’m really glad to have been at LGC though because it set me up really well to do the work I’ve been doing up here in the Pacific NW since then.
So we might be having a little Burn this year. We are certainly going to do another set of virtual Burns on something like 5 different 3d platforms. They were surprisingly effective last year and we had somewhere around 100,000 people online at any one time over the week we’d usually have been in the desert. It was cool hanging out with people from all over the world.
Gotta say, taxes are being pretty good to me these days. I’m enjoying that social security check each month. If I survive this cancer thing then I’ll probably get bored enough to go back into consulting in a year or two, so I’ll be skirting the line of institutional boundaries around big earning. It’s either that or I’ll be doing massive community volunteering somewhere. Fingers crossed.
April 12, 2021 @ 12:02 pm
17 times! I think that qualifies you to be The Man. I imagine that you’ve seen some changes in that time. I know that the WSJ and the NYT are fond of writing rather disparaging BM stories (for opposite reasons) but they are always able to get photos of scantily clad women in their pages. Some things never change.
Bob is mostly retired, and the work he does is focusing on his large scale metal sculptures (like that fish). He is as good a guys as I’ve ever met and I still stay in touch, though the pandemic has slowed that down.
But speaking of LGC, I had lunch with John Mouton last week. He is also retired, and just starting to slow down. He is still as sharp as a tac and as much a pleasure to be around as always. I’ve stayed in regular touch with him all these years. Not many others that I can say that about. I think you know Doreen Stoller and I got married, so I see her every day. Gaye Denley, Patrick Talley, Brian Adams are all folks that I see or talk to regularly. Layton (who gave me this URL) occasionally (he used to live nearby, and that was good. I would see him more then). Remember Carol Tessier? I still talk to her regularly. Joel Dye works for the same company I do, as does David Malaki. I am in good touch with Bob Howard as well.
And I have John Gibson on my Board of Directors, so I see him at least every two months. I will see him tomorrow.
d
April 13, 2021 @ 7:39 am
There’s plenty to disparage about Burning Man, especially from the NYT or WSJ viewpoints, but I think there are way more good things coming out of it that bad. It’s funny how many people pin on the scanty dress of the women but miss the scanty dress of all the other genders. It’s hot there! It’s also funny how different it is when seeing those scenes live rather than in pictures. One sees the dust much more. We’re all covered in it but it’s not a very good deodorant.
Dang, all those names! What a flash from the past! …and I still owe David an apology. I made my first mistake as a manager; a real stupid and unfeeling thing which is seared into my memory. I miss all those folks even though I took such a sharp turn away from the industry. I left a lot of good people behind. If my issues work out I’m thinking of a trip to Texas some time, maybe next winter. I know a lot of Flipside people out in the hill country & Austin, but adding a swing through Houston to visit y’all might be pretty cool too. You can ask Layton about Flipside. He went there in 2003.