Monday Morning... It use to signal the start of the work week... now it is the start of when I can contact people by telephone--- to get the dogs groomed, schedule maintenance for the air conditioning, have an alternator replaced in Denise’s car...(so I can get mine back...) and figure out if I am accepted in the Cal 101 phase 2 trial or not...I have an appointment at Moffit later in the week... but I would like to know before, so I can start arranging my life accordingly. If I can do the trial in Tampa, it would not require anything of me...but if I need to go to OSU, I need to start arranging housing, determine how I will get there---fly, drive, etc. and work out all the other minutia that is associated with a temporary relocation. I need to do all that stuff eventually if I am going to transplant... but I would rather wait until the deed is ready to be done...procrastination is an art.

The house is quiet-Denise has taken the grand daughters off- one to day camp, the other to the Zoo where they have season passes- so I am here alone with the dogs- they are Shtz Zus... Insecure Quincy, our 4 year old, and Ming our 16 year old who seems to be emulating Fish from the old “Barney Miller” television programs... Ming is getting pretty frail--- and mostly sleeps these days- but still has some zip...He swats at the bells we have on the front door when he wants to go out... or when he wants us to pick him up...or when he is bored... darn dog... He is getting quite frail... I know that he is on borrowed time.

The weekend went well... I felt rather good on Saturday-I wonder if it is a residual from my IVIG treatment, four hours getting an infusion from the collected “goodness” of 1000 blood donors to boost the immune system. Do you like my medical term “collected goodness?” I figure those of you who do not know what IVIG is can Google IVIG. Some people have challenges going through this infusion...physical discomforts- I never have had any problem with this or any of the chemotherapy... I once asked my Hem Doc- Dr. Lancet- if that was the reason I was not having remission from these agents... He claims there is no correlation to tolerance of the chemo and the effectiveness...but again, they do call it “practicing medicine” they haven’t quite figured it all out yet.

Sunday, Denise and I took a long drive to “explore”... we had lunch in a town called “Howie in the Hills”... no idea where the name came from- but it is a nice community on a lake in central Florida populate by retired “northerners”. We use to do that a lot of wandering in the past... more so when we lived in Vermont to go to the larger communities and “shop” at Home Depot, Lowe’s, BJ’s.... Also when we first moved to Florida- to determine where we wanted to live... Now that we have established roots and live in a rather urban area, we drive to see the sites. Usually lunch is involved- and usually we drive to the gulf, but I wanted to see something different and the rain thunderstorms looks threatening from the west.

Other than that, an uneventful weekend, the hot humid days of Florida really restrict what you can do here...

Geeze, I am sounding like Andy Rooney here... Rambling is one thing! Ming is ringing the bells...