I am posting during the day because things got busy yesterday. A friend of mine called and wanted to stop by. He and I were diagnosed with very different but possibly fatal diagnoses near the same time. He was going to be in town for some sort of certification test and wanted to stop by. He ended up having dinner with us and staying the night.

We talked for a few hours about his medical condition and mine. His situation was made all the worse by his employer dismissing him. There is a possibility the dismissal was because of his medical condition. These days doing something like that may well turn out to be a very dumb thing to do. And canceling his health benefits immediately does not help their defense case.

After all the death and dying discussion we got onto the living part of our lives. He is one of those people who constantly scrounges things up. He had built a large garden complex made of things he has collected. It sounds very interesting and I would very much like to see what he has done. He wants me to help him sort through some aluminum material and windows to see if we can arrive at a plan to built a green house out of it all. That should be a very interesting project. He has so many projects going on and we talked about several that are underway. While we talked I was going through some of my bookcases and found all sorts of old books I had collected that had been tucked away and lost. He and I both like to cook so we discussed a book on pickling. And there were some books on stained glass. He said wants to get into that activity so I promised him I would build him a work table. I have all the woodworking tools and an idea of what is needed in a bench to work on glass. As providence would have it, yesterday a shelf in my garage collapsed and my stained glass tool box ended up right in the middle of the floor. Maybe I need to look at that activity a little more.

This afternoon my old friend from California is coming in. We go a long way back, some 35 years. We are both older and somewhat wiser now. But we have slowed down. We will no doubt talk well into the night tonight and tomorrow. Because of that my posts will probably be a little sparse this weekend. He used to have hair, I did too. Mine will come back, his hair has retired. We are both a lot slower now as well. Where we used to go through beer like the brewery was solely dependent on us for customers, now we will have maybe one or two. But at least we are still alive and kicking, just maybe not so much or as often.

Cancer news is slim but encouraging. I was scheduled to start another set of chemotherapy next week. I got a call yesterday from the oncologist's office. They have the CT scan set for Wednesday and then Thursday the doctor and I will discuss the results and see if I need to continue chemo. They went ahead and scheduled one cycle of the next set, but that is just a placeholder depending on the results. Anymore, any news that is not definitely bad news can be assumed to be good news. I really think I will be given a green light to skip chemo and go on the maintenance list, with just periodic checkups. It may not work out that way but for now I am going to believe that things went very well during my first set of chemo. I haven't taken a pain pill in weeks, my blood sugars are stable, appetite is good and my weight is holding. Even my pallor is looking good. All of these things are what the doctors use to assess my health. My primary care physician is really happy with my progress. I find all that very encouraging.

My wife needs a few days of R&R, away from cancer boy and the stress of life. My sister in law's death hit her hard. And her company is in turmoil, the corporate structure is going through a major overhaul and the uncertainty of it all has taken a pretty big toll on her. The visit from her parents left her a little shaken as her mother is really starting to show her age at 86. My poor wife has sort of rolled it all up into one tight ball and can't unsort it. I would really like to deliver some good news to her next week so maybe she can get her world to stop spinning so out of control.