What I've Been Doing Lately...

Yeah, I've been slacking on the whole blog thing lately. There are a couple of reasons... I've been having a much harder time with chemo this round. The side effects are worse, and I have some new ones. I don't really want to talk about it, other than saying I've been kind of miserable in a dull, mostly non-acute kind of way.

I also was thinking that most of you would understand because I've been busy the last few weeks, and I've been with many of you at one point or another. But then I realized that few people have been with me for all these different events, so I could probably update you all on what's been happening.

There are the things I already wrote about... the trip to Chicago, the Red Sox game, my newfound addiction to LOST (don't worry, that will no longer affect my blogging because we've caught up to the rest of the world in record time). Then there are the things I didn't write about as they were happening for one reason or another. They all fit into 3 neat categories - family, friends, and work.

Family
For Memorial Day weekend, several of my cousins, aunts (and one uncle!) came up to visit from Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and out of town in Massachusetts. We went to Vinny T's for lunch, and that wore me out for the rest of the weekend ;-)

I'm lacking pictures of the weekend, but I do have a whimsical picture that my stepdad created of my mom and her sisters. That way you can put a face to the name when you see the responses...From left to right, it's Celine, Francine, Louise, and Pauline (my mom), and they're on top of a quilt that my mom is almost finished making (I think it's for my sister). The blue sky is photo-shopped in.

Friends
My close friend, Vicki, is getting married in a little over two weeks. Vicki and I met back in high school at Bishop Stang, and Vicki introduced me to Sarah. We are all best friends, and Sarah and I are in Vicki's wedding. We've been planning Vicki's bachelorette party, which was last weekend. My time has been occupied making handbags as favors for all the girls who went (they're simple, colorful, striped bags modeled after one that I use ALL the time). Of course, my mom made most of them, but I helped! Sarah made the rest of the favors (flower pots and herb seeds, martini glasses with drink charms). Sarah and I also made a picnic lunch for everyone. The menu:

• Beer -can roasted chicken, made into 2 chicken salads
  
• one with mayonnaise, grapes, and pecans
• the other with olive oil, dried cranberries, and pistachios
• Grilled zucchini, squash, and eggplant sandwiches with mozzarella (Vicki is vegetarian)
• Kettle Chips
• Brownies
• Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
• Fruit salad
• Fresh-squeezed lemonade with thyme-infused simple syrup
  

Mmm... That took all night to prepare :-) I have zero pictures of that day, but maybe I'll get some soon.

Work
I've been pretty busy at work. I feel kind of like 75% of an employee because I haven't been able to get in to work for a few days each round of chemo, and I've got mad chemo brain. I oftentimes feel like my head is in the clouds or like I have a bad cold and I can't think straight. It's so incredibly frustrating for an engineer to feel this way because I rely on being sharp to do my job. Luckily, I can work from home, so on days that I can't make it in I'm usually just as productive from home. Or, I can come home after a good day of work and finish up a few things. But enough about me... the cool thing is that the team I'm working on just launched the first release of the product. Unfortunately, I missed all of the launch festivities because of chemo :-( Grr...

And finally, as promised, I have some pictures of some of my shaven-head family.

This one is my dad. It's pretty shocking, considering my dad has had the same hairstyle (not shaved) ever since I can remember. So at least two and a half decades.

This is me and mom at Brimfield.

This is a cute one of Rusty holding two 6-packs when we were in Chicago. Just the way I like him :-)