On Tuesday Justin and I went to a show in Leob Playhouse called “Amazing China.” It was sponsored by the Confucius Institute. Students from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Symphony Orchestra performed various pieces of music from traditional chines songs to the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. The slideshow below is a taste of the dance and songs from the show.
Watch the video above to see a great interview from Sirius XM radio host Michelangelo Signorile interviewing North Carolina GOP State Sen. James Forrester.
It’s a great interview where Signorile brings calm reasoning to a State Senator who can’t answer simple questions and bring horrible bias and extremely bad incorrect “facts” to introduce legislation to ban same-sex marriage.
Yesterday marked the official repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the US Millitary’s ban on gay servicemen from serving openly. Above is a video produced by one military man (Randy Phillips) coming out to his Dad yesterday.
http://www.towleroad.com/2011/09/airmanfollow.html
After work today, Justin and I went to the College of Engineering 2011 Graduate Dinner. I (of course) went as Justin’s spouse and you had your choice of either Chick-Fil-A or Jimmy Johns. Why would I possibly pick Jimmy Johns when I could have me some delicious Chick-Fil-A?!
After eating we snagged ourselves a picture with the coolest cow in the land!
Yesterday I ran the Chicago Half Marathon. While I am happy that I was able to run it and it was certainly an amazing experience, I didn’t end up getting the time that I wanted and although it’s only my second half marathon, it’s also my last.
I ended with a time of 2:09:07, which was more than my time for my last half marathon, but not bad given that the weather was about 15ºF hotter than I was expecting. Having ran this half marathon, it did allow me to confirm that I’m going to focus on improving my times for the shorter 5k runs instead of going between those and endurance training for half marathons. I will do better than ever next year during the Purdue 5K Challenge and beyond!
Thanks Justin, Mom and Dad for coming to support me during the race!
Molly proves almost every day that she’s the queen and last week I was able to capture it in a small photo shoot. I came home last week and found Molly sitting in the middle of a blanket which was in a ball in the middle of the bed – like she was on her throne.
Image from uberhumor.com
Isotretinoin, how you’ve changed me these last seven months. You’ve vastly improved my acne while drying me out to where if I don’t clean my face every few hours and re-moisturize I start to look like the desert floor.
This morning was my last Isotretinoin pill. While I can’t wait for my natural oils to start to come back to tame the massive dryness, I’m happy with the results that have occurred during my treatment. I now await my follow-up appointment at the end of September to start to get on a long-term regiment.
It’s been one week since Sparky’s biopsy and it’s been quite the week, sadly not for the best reasons.
Late Monday we got a call from Dr. Corriveau of the Purdue Small Animal Hospital with the results of his biopsy. Unfortunately Sparky was diagnosed with squamous-cell carcinoma. While the best course of action is to get into surgery to remove it, this requires very expensive imaging to determine if the cancer has spread and to determine the margin of the cancer. After that would be the surgery which would be even more expensive. It would most likely require removing a few teeth as well. Taking into consideration the huge cost which isn’t feasible at this time along with how we feel his quality-of-life would be degraded, we opted for the next-best possibility. We started Sparky on chemotherapy.
Yesterday was his first dose of Piroxicam. It’s typically used for somewhat different areas of cancer but is promising. The best we can hope for is that it will maintain the current cancer and not allow it to grow. In a few weeks we will go back for another check-up.
Here’s hoping that our good boy, Sparky, gets through this successfully. He’s a great dog and it’s hard to even think about him having cancer.
Tomorrow, Sparky goes in for his first procedure.
This past weekend we noticed that he had a growth on the roof of his mouth by his teeth. The vet isn’t sure what it is with their initial sample so tomorrow they’re going to sedate him and get a biopsy for a much more thorough analysis.
Hopefully the results come back benign!