Lakeshore

Dark Faith Invocations Pre-Order — This includes my short story "The Cancer Catechism".

The mega-epic pissing contest — Roger Ebert is snarky about film formats.

Powerhouse Museum Photo Collection — Some truly lovely old photos from Australia. (Thanks to threeoutside.)

Rodent thieves explain mystery of tree survival — Thievery by rodents moved an estimated 87 percent of seeds beyond the immediate vicinity of the parent tree, according to a study.

Future Mars rover may use bigger parachute, atomic clocks

Detecting Exoplanet Oceans

Can non-Newtonian fluid behavior explain stuck ketchup bottles?

The Eyes Don’t Have It: Lie Detection and Neuro-Linguistic Programming — (Via David Goldman.)

Dragon, L&H, Goldman Sachs… — Ah, me. Investment bankers are so highly paid precisely why?

What made the creationist footprints in the Giant's Causeway visitor centre? — Nice to see Creationist idiocy isn't confined to the United States. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Get Fuzzy on true conservatives — Hahahah.

Climate change denial as real estate ploy? — Of course most leading climate change denialists are venal scam artists. They're conservatives. Duh.

Five Obamacare Myths — Speaking of counterfactuals beloved by conservatives. (Ie, Republican lies.)

Romney’s Bain Yielded Private Gains, Socialized Losses — That's what American conservatives mean by market forces. (Via danjite.)

The Romney Standard — Ta-Nehisi Coates on Mitt Romney's laughable posturing over Bain Capital and his "retroactive retirement".

The Strange Political Ineptitude of the Romney Campaign

?otD: Do rainy days and Mondays always get you down? What about automatic weapons?

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7/17/2012
Writing time yesterday: 30 minutes (15 minutes on Going to Extremes outline, 15 minutes of WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (interrupted)
Weight: 240.0
Currently reading: The Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

Your Tuesday moment of zen.



Abandoned nineteenth century settler's cabin, the Missouri Breaks, 2006. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Just a headspace update, nothing new to report on the diagnosis and treatment front.

I've been having a great time lately in my social and personal life. These past few months I've enjoyed more energy and focus than I've had in over three years. The real me, the sparking, clever, thoughtful, sensuous, impetuous, energetic me, is back in full force. And I've been loving it.

My next round of tests are in four weeks. As has been the case with this disease, we find the metastases through early detection. I don't get sick, feel unwell or anything else. That loss of somatic and mental health is a function of the treatments, for me. So I will most likely continue to feel fine and focused until I walk into that lab on Monday, August 13th for my bloodwork and my CT scan. If my doctors run true to form, by the time I walk into my oncology consult on Wednesday, August 15th, I'll know the bloodwork and scan results. So for about two days, I'll have Schrödinger's tumor, and then we'll open the box.

It's like knowing your entire life will change based on a coin flip that happens every few months. Except the odds of my coin flip aren't anywhere near as good as 50/50. Everything hangs in the balance, by a thin thread. This will be true even if my current status of No Evidence of Disease persists long enough for me to be considered in remission. This will be true even if I were to persist in remission long enough for me to be cured. Cancer is a shotgun duct taped to my forehead, and I don't control when it goes off.

For the rest of my life, there will be this monster in my mental closet. If I'm lucky enough to have the years go by with me remaining unmolested by the disease, that monster will grow smaller and more distant. But he will never go away.

I guess the pre-test weirdness is starting up in my head. That's what I'm saying here. I should still be okay for a couple of more weeks, then around the beginning of August I will start feeling freaky and sad. It's still true that every time I do something, a little voice inside my head whispers, "This might be your last time." That voice will grow to thunder by the time I sit down to open my veins and slide my body through the CT scanner.

This I do not love.

I will be flying into Greensboro, NC for Day Jobbery late in the afternoon of Tuesday, July 24th. I'm declaring an Open Dinner there that evening, probably at 7 pm at Stamey's Barbecue, the Battleground location.

Please let me know if you think you'll be there. I've already got four confirmed and one maybe, so we're definitely having a party.