i've said it before...

cancer sucks. i read that tony snow has had a recurrence of his colon cancer form 2005. and elizabeth edwards' devastating recurrence of her breast cancer is all over the news. before i used to just think, "wow, that really sucks for them." now i think, "how do they deal? how do they face cameras and act like things are good when everything important in life feels like its falling apart? what would i do if they tell me my mom has another tumor? one that they can't remove?" right now that's my biggest fear, and there's nothing i can do to assuage my fears... there's no way to prove a negative. most of the time i can distract myself with day-to-day life. i just spent a lovely weekend in houston with my parents and my brother's family... and that's really all i can do: enjoy my family as much as i can, and try to remember that there are no guarantees in life... and for now, things are good. my mom started chemo two weeks ago, and she's feeling better than she did before she started (she's still recovering from the surgery). she's been gardening and playing with lmsp, and we just got back from a spring walk in the city.

march

it's starting to feel like spring. i like that. i miss going outside for the fun of it... i miss outdoor cafes and walking in the park with my mom. hopefully the warm weather will stick around for a while. i need a little sunshine... if my skin were any paler, i would be translucent. i'm also hoping that the sunshine will get me out of this funk...maybe give me a little more energy. i'm also hoping the spring will bring mil some more acceptance letters. both of his interviews went well, so we're hopeful, but as we know, it's not just about the interview. so we wait.

i love my new banner

yesterday, i discovered these brushes through dooce that can do magical things with photoshop (which is magical to begin with). i managed to waste approximately an hour and a half of good work time playing with various photoshop filters and brushes. it's dangerous. i know only a couple of folks still come by here with any degree of regularity, but if either of you want a new banner, let me know. i'd love to make one for you.

in other news, i'm going to houston tomorrow. i'm excited because it means that the temperature will have to be more than 30 degrees. i don't even care if it rains the whole time... wait, scratch that. i do care, but it would still be preferable to this past week of "feels like 2."

yesterday, i was on the subway, and i saw something, and i thought... now this would be a really funny thing to write about on my blog... or at least somewhat funny thing to write about, and by the time i finished thinking all that, the original thought was gone. just like that. amazing.

in lieu of meeting

huh?
Originally uploaded by atb20.

mil and i opted out of going to the meeting this morning. he has a big biochem exam coming up on tuesday and wanted to get straight to the library when it opened. i think he succeeded. i foolishly suggested to myself that i might go to the silent vigil for peace the meeting holds in washington square park at 1pm, but here i am at 12:40 still in my pajamas... i guess that's not going to happen. the gloomy weather seems to be urging me to stay indoors.

it did that last night as well. mil suggested we go out for dinner for a change, but i was too immersed in my bout of organization to contemplate leaving the apartment. so it happened we discovered a fairly decent chinese restaurant that delivers to our area. i also succeeded in adding photos from 2000 to 2007 to a giant pottery barn photo album. i don't know how many photos this thing stores (and what this says about my ability to print out photos versus just upload them to flickr), but after adding about 10 envelopes full of photos, i still have almost a quarter of the album left. i also had the opportunity to reminisce a little... i saw photos from my old company conference in key west. there was a whole envelope or two with photos from my trip to france with doodlebug. what's sad is i don't quite remember if we went in 2000 or 2001... much of the evening was spent trying to use my various haircuts to discern what year it was. ("that can't be christmas 2004 because that's definitely january 2005 and my hair is significantly longer.") meanwhile i was also finally finishing the editing on our honeymoon video... only two and half years later....

today my goals are a little less significant. finish the work i didn't do last thursday and friday afternoons because of my computer troubles and buy some dvd-rs, so i can burn this honeymoon video and be done with it. very exciting.

new toy

this afternoon i got a new laptop. i waited maybe 24 hours after the first zig-zagging lines appeared on my old laptop screen before zipping over to the apple store on 5th ave to buy myself a new one. it is a beautiful little machine, and it zooms through documents five times as fast as my old powerbook. as much as i am enjoying my new toy, i can't help but feel a little disappointed in myself. recently, mil and i started a habit of going to these quaker meetings. though we have yet to make any kind of a commitment to one religion over another, we seem to like the silent spirituality of the unprogrammed quaker meetings. i try to use the quiet time to decompress and process the week. i also contemplate the possibility of becoming less materialistic. so far, i haven't had much luck (case in point stares back at me blankly). i try to de-newyorkify myself a bit as well... smooth out some of the prickly bits of my character that have built up after 12 years in the city. unfortunately, by the time friday rolls around any mellowness achieved in the meeting is long gone. all it takes is a woman sneaking in front of me at the exit turnstile at 116th street station... or a couple of folks walking side-by-side on a narrow sidewalk, not bothering to make room for me coming in the opposite direction. it's amazing how long i can let something like that steam me up for absolutely no good reason. 13 hours later i'm still wishing bad karma on that first lady. anyway, all i can say is i'm working on it... that's good for something, no?