For the last several weeks we’ve (Adria and I) been working on a new business plan. It won’t make us any money. It will hopefully raise at least 10 million dollars for Cancer Research and Family Support though, it’s called Run for Leukemia.

To raise such a significant amount of money, Run for Leukemia will have to do something completely over the top, seemingly impossible and possibly insane.

Here’s the gist of the plan:

Run for Leukemia will start at Disney Land and run across the country to Vermont. Then we’ll run down the Eastern seaboard to Disney World.

Yes, Run.

I’ll be doing the running – 20 miles a day, 5 days a week for one year to be exact.

Over the past two years, while Serenity has been dealing with Leukemia, we’ve been itching to be able to do something significant to support Leukemia research and to help support the non-profits who provide help to Cancer Families. Running across the country to raise money for charity has been before, but we think that by treating it as a business we’ve figured out how to raise a significant amount of money while doing it.

The key is in the organization. We will have about 20 paid staffers who’s job is specifically to setup, organize and fully prepare fundraising events with local schools as we move across the country. They will work several months ahead of us contacting schools and working with them to do a fundraiser, once the schools have agreed, they’ll work with the local community to put on a big event and invite local fire departments, police departments, city and state dignitaries, hospitals, athletic team members and local celebrities. Most importantly, they’ll work with local media to have the events heavily covered.

The event highlight will consist of the school kids talking about how much they were able to raise and having them present the funds to local Cancer Families and Run for Leukemia. To be successful at raising $10 million, Run for Leukemia will need to put on 200 of these events across the country that raise $50,000 each. We plan to put on 250. The bulk of that $50k will be raised by selling local businesses sponsorship banners that the event will take place in front of. There are several other things we’ll be doing along the way to raise money and national media attention as well.

The entire family will be with me on the road for the year along with several paid staff members. We’ll be caravaning with 3 travel trailers and 5 trucks with campers. All of them will be wrapped with ads, essentially creating a group of moving billboards that will slowly move across and down the country for a year and will be the backdrop of all the events and interviews we do along the way. We plan to finance the trip by selling ad space on those vehicles.

We’ll be raising money for the following organizations: CureSearch (they fund research for children’s leukemia), Make A Wish Foundation, HopeKids and the Christmas for Children with Cancer Foundation. All of these organizations have had a significant impact on our lives and in supporting Serenity through her treatment.

I’m really excited about this! It will be a tough, grueling year but it’ll be totally worth it!

This is just a summary of a large business plan we’ve put together, we’re at the stage of beginning to execute on that plan by looking for advertisers who are interested in having a cross country billboard for a year. If you know of any companies that might be interested, please let us know!

We’ve just started a Facebook page, there’s not much there yet but we’re working on it. If you like this idea, please click the like button below!

Yahoo Inc. CEO Carol Bartz received a $47.2 million compensation package during her first year on the job as the Internet company tried to motivate her to engineer a turnaround.

Seriously?  47.2 million to try to motivate her to do her job?  I’d be motivated to do her job for a tenth of that – and given her results I bet I could do better.  Wait, is Yahoo still on the web?

Facebook’s new social plugins have been installed on 50,000 websites in one week.

Honestly, I figured it would be more than that but that is IMPRESSIVE!  I love the new social plugins and the open graph stuff they rolled out.  It’s VERY reminicent of the social network system I designed about 2 years ago.  Hey all you investors that told me it was a stupid idea – what do you think NOW????  Yeah, you’re pretty smart about this stuff, aren’t you.

Twitter is, in many, ways a network with only five degrees of separation.

I’m growing out of love with Twitter for the third time.  If you read this story it makes it sound like you can connect to anyone in the world with 5 steps – but don’t miss this story: Only 7% of Americans actually use Twitter while 41% have a facebook profile.  So basically, it takes you 5 steps to reach 7% of Americans.  That doesn’t really sound so good.  I personally find that I get about 400% more interaction off of facebook than I do off of twitter when I tweet something and it pushes to facebook.  Twitter interactions are becoming few and far between.

The person who found and sold an Apple iPhone prototype says he regrets not doing more to return the device to its owner

What a load of legal positioning, pr CRAP!  This dude found the iphone prototype and knew he had hit the big time!  He sold it as fast as he possibly could.  I would bet my wife’s iPhone that “returning it to the owner” never ONCE entered his mind!  He had the scoop of the year and he knew it!  I still think it’s insane the way the California Police responded to it.  SAVE APPLE!  Get their phone back!  Maybe the idiot from Apple that took a prototype phone to a bar should be held responsible for leaving it there – assuming it wasn’t all a PR stunt in the first place.

More than three-quarters of Americans have heard about the state of Arizona’s new immigration law, and of these, 51% say they favor it and 39% oppose it.

First of all, I think this move by Arizona is brilliant and about two decades late.  Second of all, Arizona is a soveriegn state, who gives a crap what the rest of the country thinks about it, or what the Federal Government thinks about it.  This hoopla about “racial profiling” in the new law cracks me up!  Of COURSE it’s racial profiling!  They’re trying to keep all the illegal MEXICANS from streaming in!  They’re aren’t worried about illegal Irish or Germans coming in by the thousands.  Good Grief!  Since when did “racial profiling” become illegal?  It’s just not ‘politically correct’. Maybe the Federal Government should stay out of things it doesn’t have a constitutional right to touch and instead worry about what it is constitutionally bound to protect, now there’s an idea!

The United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged “immodest.”

Wow, I don’t think I need to say anything here.  Not sure I could – I’m laughing too hard!  The UN continues to prove just how stupid and ineffectual they are.  Putting Iran in charge of women’s rights is kinda like putting the head of the KKK in charge of the NAACP.

“I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.“ – Barack Obama

So, the Obama’s adjusted gross income for 2009 was $5.5 million.  I wonder if he thinks he’s “made enough money”.

Former Vice President Al Gore have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings.  The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

OK, Al can make and spend as much money as he wants.  But when his latest money making is off the global warming farce, and then he does this – it’s just STUPID.  When will people quit listening to this idiot?

A Pentagon report presented a sobering new assessment Wednesday of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, saying that its abilities are expanding and its operations are increasing in sophistication, despite recent major offensives by U.S. forces in the militants’ heartland.

My Grand-daddy used to say “if you’re gonna fight a war, fight it to win it.” Ok, that’s not true but the point is.  If we’re going to fight this stupid war (as far as I’m concerned we should be out of there) we dang well better fight it to win it!  It’s stupid that we are making a half-hearted effort over there.  If we’re staying can we PLEASE do the job right?!?!

In 2008 & 2009 I was working for a 3PL company called Lanelinks.  In November of last year the company succomed to the economy and went under.  We thought that we could make the company work so some of us continued working without pay for a couple months.  Eventually we gave in and I was 'unemployed'.  We had burned through a lot of our reserves but the big eye opener for me was realizing that I didn't have anything set up that would bring me residual income or provide a buffer.  I realized that I had spent my whole career helping companies set up their internet systems to make money but had failed to do so for myself.  I vowed to change that and make sure that I always had revenue coming in from the internet that I could step to anytime I needed to.  I spent the next two months analyzing several possibilities and building out a business plan that I believed would be successful, be interesting and be something I could step away from once it was established without it dying. 

For the following several months I worked on my plan with a couple partners, doing some contracting work along the way.  After working on things since November of last year, here are some of the things that we've accomplished.  We've established and built up a preparedness community (forum), established and refined a preparedness store, have several other stores in the works and nearly ready to launch and built the beginings of an online Survival Training Center.  There are still some other things that are included in the plan that we're working on.  The main point of all these sites is to build a turn-key system for providing preparedness/survival information, supplies and training via the internet in a way that hasn't been done before.  By the time we're done it will be pretty cool – and not require much work at all. 

Over the last couple years I've become really interested in physical security, primarily in lock picking and other work.  I've become enough of an expert at it that on a recent trip to New Jersey, we were hanging out with Deviant (from Toool/DefCon) and Dr. Tran – both recognized lock experts – and devised a way to pick handcuffs they had deemed un-pickable.  When they pulled them out I jumped at the challenge and went to work, it took me about 20 minutes to devise a method to successfully pick them, with paperclips.  Deviant posted this video about it:

• My life and my objectives completely changed after Serenity was diagnosed with Leukemia.  Blogging anything that wasn't about her seemed a waste of time.
• My interest in being very public with my life and my thoughts waned.  A lot of the things that happened that year were too personal to talk about and they were the dominating factor in my life.
• Blogging itself got old.  I fail to see the point any longer in being the 'first one' to talk about a tech item.  Especially because there are a lot of shills out there that do just fine covering that. 
• My interests have really changed.  I still stay on top of tech news but it's not the dominating factor in my life anymore.  I've been looking for ways to change course with my career towards things I'm more interested in – tech combined with other things like security, survival and prepping.
• Most recently I've been more into talking about things on Facebook.  Micro-blogging became more interesting to me than writing big long articles. 
• This blog was always about building my "brand" as a bleeding edge tech guy.  My brand is diversifying a lot lately but this will still be about my "brand"
• Honestly, blogging became boring after several years. 

So here's what I'm thinking about doing.  I'm going to resurrect my blog and just write about the stuff I'm interested in, stuff I'm doing and stuff I'm thinking about.  A lot of times that will have to do with technology, a lot of times it won't.  Most of the posts will probably be short and simple.  Since this blog pushes to my twitter and facebook account I'll probably use it for micro-blogging to some extent.  Basically, my blog is going to be about me and what I'm doing, not so much about technology and tech news.  If you're still subscribing to me, cool – but you may not be as interested in my posts anymore. 

I may just get bored with it and not really post much. 

This morning I went to Phil Windley’s CTO Breakfast which is a breakfast meeting of a great group of techies.  I haven’t been in a while -I haven’t done much of anything public lately, except blogging on Utah Preppers, and I was pretty surprised by what went on.  This tweet from Phil Windley kind of summarizes it:

Big topics of discussion at #ctobreakfast: calendaring and syncing contacts.  Funny how these are still broken for most people.

Here’s the thing – they’re not broken for me, haven’t been for YEARS.  The only people they’re broken for are those with so much Microsoft hate that they refuse to use their software.  I’m blown away that so many of the techies at that meeting are having problems with this!  There is a very simple and elegant fix – it’s called Microsoft Exchange.  Here are the complaints from the meeting:

• My calendar doesn’t sync to my phone (in real time)
• My contacts don’t sync to my phone (from mail clients etc)
• My Email doesn’t sync to my phone (using gmail)
• When someone updates their contact info, I don’t receive it (and Plaxo tastes bad because of a mistake 3 years ago)
• gmail and google apps uptime isn’t that great

Seriously????  Really??  All these great techies and you’re all living like this?   I can’t believe that you haven’t heard of this hot new crazy named web 2.0 super awesome web service called Exchange!  Yeah, it’s actually been around for years – which is how long I’ve had all of the above issues resolved on my phone.

But it seems that the hot sexy thing is to use fragmented half-built “web services” that aren’t compatible with each other and don’t work but HEY!  THEY’RE FREE!   ….. Well, hope you’re enjoying what you pay for.

Oh yeah, then there’s the stupid iPhone – the over-hyped piece of garbage that can’t do half of what my NonIphone  can do.

Here’s what I do:

•  I use a Windows Mobile phone
• I use Outlook Mobile on my phone
• I use Plaxo with a LOT of my contacts
• I use a hosted Exchange Service for 10 bucks a month
• I use Outlook on my desktop and my laptop

What does this give me, all for 10 bucks a month?

Any time I add or change a contact on my phone, laptop, desktop or web outlook – the change automatically and instantly shows up on my phone, laptop, desktop and web outlook.  Any time I read an email on any of the previously mentioned devices – it automatically and instantly shows up on all the other devices as read.  Any time I schedule an appointment on ……. you get it?  It shows up.

Uptime has never been a problem for me actually – my email has NEVER gone down in the years that I’ve been using 4Smartphone.  It’s professionally managed and when everyone’s hollering about gmail being dead, I’m happily sending email.

Sharing calendars was brought up – everyone uses google calendars for that.  Yeah, me too.  But there’s also an Outlook sync that google provides so any changes that someone makes to my public google calendar …… automatically and almost instantly shows up on my phone, lap……

Tethering to your laptop for an internet connection was also brought up – you have to hack your stupid iPhone to get that to work – I use AT&T too iPhone people.  My phone natively tethers to my laptop – always has.  My phone has interactive gps with google maps too – I believe you finally sort of got that with the latest iPhone – hurry up and spend $400 bucks on the newest one!!!

By using Plaxo, many of my contacts are automatically updated in Outlook when they change their personal settings (like phone number) in Plaxo.   And guess where that goes?  To my phone of course.  So to recap that – if Johnny changes his phone number in Plaxo it automatically changes it in ALL my contact lists so next time I call Johnny I’m calling his new number without even realizing it.

So Phil, Sam, et al – syncing isn’t broke and waiting for a fix – it’s been available for a LONG time, it’s just not available to you because you hate Microsoft.  Hec, Outlook even works on a worthless Mac.

UPDATE:  My friend, Jesse Stay, has written a great tutorial in response to this post showing how to connect your iPhone with Exchange.  Check it out if you’re interested!

There are several things I want to update on.

The Juice Diet

My last couple posts were about me being on a juice diet – planned for 40 days.  When I started it I promised that if it compromised my health at all I would immediately stop it.  Well, five days into it I started passing blood – and stopped the diet.  After I stopped I didn’t have any more problems.  Something wonderful happened from it though!  I’ve been lactose intollerant for many years now, something in the juice diet changed that.  Since I spent 5 days only drinking pure juice I’ve been able to consume dairy products without ANY side effects!  I also felt pretty great and very energetic after the five days.  I plan to do a 5 day fast about once every couple months from now on.  It was a nice reboot.

Work

I recently took a full time position with a startup called LaneLinks.  We’re a backhaul management company for private fleets.  I’m the Director of Technology and while it’s been a tough adjustment to go back to a ‘real job’ it’s been very nice  to have a regular, reliable paycheck.  We’re building some very cool software that will change an industry that is stuck in the dark ages.

This Blog

I’m not sure where I want to go with this blog.  I’ve changed a lot in the last year.  Major trials tend to do that I hear.  I’m no longer interested in trying to stay on the bleeding edge of technology.  Web 2.0 has almost completely waned as an interest for me.  Some friends have said that they miss my tech posts and my views on emerging tech.  I don’t think I’ll be doing much of that anymore, maybe sometime down the road though, you never know.  I’ve tried to stay away from politics on this blog but lately politics have been really frustrating me and I’ll probably vent about them on here.  As I mentioned, preparedness is what has really flared up as a passion for me lately but I’ll keep most of that on a different blog.  Politics leads to preparedness and being a technologist means I’m looking at preparedness from that perspective a lot.  There are several technological things I’ve been working with in prepping and I’ll probably talk about that here.

People that know me know I’m an avid outdoorsman – that hasn’t changed a bit.  I’ve tried to keep my outdoor activities off this blog in the past but I’m thinking I may change that, although I may start using my personal blog for that (I haven’t blogged on that for years).  So, we’ll see where this goes.

Family

My family has been through a lot of trials in the last year.  I’m planning on writing a post about that soon.  My daughter Serenity, who has Leukemia, is doing fairly well right now.  She hasn’t had to be admitted to the hospital for several weeks so that is great!  Serenity was recently the recipient of the money raised at a charity tweetup at Sundance.  I’ll blog more on that later too but we’re very grateful for the communities continued concern and support for our daughter.

Other Activities

I plan to start doing a lot with The Serenity Foundation sometime in March (we are expecting to finish our software project at LaneLinks in Feb).  I plan on putting on more blood drives and doing several other things with the foundation.  Some people have asked me to put on more of my version of the Utah Geek Dinners – big with presenters, etc.  I may do some of that after March as well.  Some time ago I talked about doing a wellness bash for Serenity once she was stabilized a bit.  Her birthday is in May and spring will be here so I’m thinking of throwing her a community party sometime around then.

I’ve been thinking about putting on another conference.  This one would be Prepper and Technology based.  It will probably be in late summer or fall of 2009 if I decide to do it.  I think it would be a lot of fun.

I think that’s about it, that’s pretty much what’s going on in my life right now.  Thanks for still reading my blog after all this time.  Hopefully it’s still a little bit interesting.

Throughout the day I had 3 quarts of juice, 1 each of carrot, orange and apple.  Several times throughout the day I had hunger pains and a little bit of light headedness, but nothing too major.

The killer part was at night, we had a big family Christmas dinner last night with tons of my favorite food, it sucked!  I stood around watching everyone eat while I drank a gallon of apple juice.  Then, the desserts came out.  My brother and I went in a different room and talked some things over for a while and when we came back, they were cleaning up thank goodness!  I managed to make it through the whole day without eating but man, it was tough!  Several times I started talking myself into eating, even going so far as to tell Adria maybe I should do it another time.  She pointed out that there would never be a ‘good time’ and that if I was going to do it, I should just Man Up and Shut Up and get it done.  Well, she didn’t say it quite like that

In the comments on yesterday’s post, Gary asks if a juice fast is a healthy thing to do, here’s my answer.  I was drinking almost a 12 pack of Mt. Dew a day and usually consuming a very large lunch, often fast food, often greasy and I was eating a large dinner with lots of snacks and junk in between.  THAT is clearly not a healthy way to live.  I’m not a health nut or anything, and I don’t intend to become one, I’m just recognizing that to be healthy I need to basically let my body ‘reboot’.

When I say reboot, I mean let it clear EVERYTHING out – that includes dumping all the stored toxins and junk in my organs and everywhere else.  It means letting my digestive system shutdown, letting my stomach shrink dramatically and getting over all my addictions.  Will going on a Juice Fast make me un-healthy?  Well, like I said I certainly wasn’t eating healthy before.  Now I’m drinking only vegetable and fruit juices, I’m loading my body with vitamins and minerals – TONS more than I used to.  Sure, it’s different and my body is reacting to it, but it’s healthy.

Here are a couple links that talk about Juice Fasting, the authors of these sites talk about reasons and benefits for it that are beyond what I’m after and that I think are a bit weird.  I’m linking to these because they also have a lot of research and personal stories and background that cover what I’m doing.

AllergyScape

JuiceFasting.org

Tonight I’m going to try a juice that I’ve never had but is supposed to be and sounds very good – Cantaloupe juice.

I’m also going to try out this juice recipe (Jordy, who commented that he too likes celery juice, ought to like this one):

Cucumber~Celery Cooler

1 apple, sliced
4 medium carrots, greens removed
1 stalk celery
1/2 lemon, peeled (optional)
1/4 medium cucumber, peeled

I’m doing a slightly modified plan.  For the first 20 days I’ll consume nothing but pulpless juice and water.  For the following 20 days, I’ll consume whole, raw vegetables and fruites and brown rice.  After 40 days I’ll begin introducing other foods.

Go ahead and tell me I’m crazy – I know this is a nutty thing to do I’ve always thought that about people doing this.  But, the more I looked into it and read about it, the more it made sense.  I’ll be journaling the process here daily.  I guess number 5 is that it gives me something to blog about everyday

Yesterday was pretty easy, until night time.  I drank only juice all day but at night I started having major blood sugar levels.  In order to keep myself from passing out, I had a plain baked potato (insides only) – that settled things down with my blood sugar.  I sampled lots of different juices yesterday and found a few I liked, carrot juice, celery juice and cucumber juice are pretty good.  Mixed together they taste like crap though

Chicken Pox is a potentially deadly combination with Leukemia, but only if there is a severe reaction. So the Oncologist had her check in to the ICS ward at Primary Children’s Hospital so they could observe her reaction. 24 hours later she still wasn’t running a fever and was doing quite well, except for the sheer boredom! She has pox all over her body but it’s a mild case, the biggst concern is if they get in her mouth and respiratory tract. We are monitoring her temperature and her breakout, if they accelerate she’ll be back in the hospital, otherwise she’ll work through them here.

She is on a broad spectrum antibiotic (Acyclovir), taking 70 mls every 8 hours. She takes them through an IV pump which feeds into her port. This means we are performing nurse duties of managing sterile environments to hookup her IV to her port, monitoring the drip, etc.

I know there is a lot more to medicine than this, but sometimes it feels like we just need 10 more credits to be a full blown nurse.

Here’s a few pictures from this hospital visit:

The whole family hanging out

She’s pretty sure that she’s at her cutest with her tongue sticking out!

See what I mean? She’s holding her horse, he’s her ‘proxy patient’ – he gets most of her procedures done to him before she does. Her other animal is her monkey because my nickname for her is “Monkey Butt” – I have no idea why!

#serenleuk

 Serenity (my youngest daughter who has leukemia) has just been diagnosed with Chickenpox, one of the more dangerous things that could happen for her right now.  Adria is currently taking her to Primary Childrens Hospital to be admitted where they’ll pump her full of antibiotics again and try to fight off the infection.  Adria says she (Serenity) is MAD and is chanting “I DON’T WANT DINNER IN THE HOSPITAL!”.  She is tired of being stuck in a hospital bed and the worst part is, because she has chickenpox she will be isolated in her room and not allowed out to play. 

 And of course, we’re as sick as she is of being stuck there.  No idea how long this one will last, I’ll post updates as we get them.

#SerenLeuk

When I sit down to work my mind just won’t settle down, that’s when it decides to remind me of two dozen things I need to check, half a dozen things I need to write and 3 dozen things my wife wants me to take care of.  I’m used to having a singular focus when I sit down to work, usually nothing is able to distract me and THAT becomes a problem.  Now it’s completely flipped on its head.

I’m desperately trying to figure out something that will bring it back – checking off a few things that need doing, blasting heavy music at my neural paths, sleep deprivation – NOTHING is working!

I’m going off the rails on a crazy train.

Has this ever happened to you?  Any ideas on how to fix it?!?!

I’ve been a survivalist/prepper all my life.  I grew up spending all my time in the woods across the street and working on ranches.  It’s really in my blood, my father and his fathers several generations back were all mountain men/survivalists.  I’m one of those who are completely comfortable spending days in the woods without ever seeing another person, and I’m completely confident in my ability to survive with just the clothes on my back.

But, why do I prep?  There are lots of reasons: 1) I’ve been told by the leaders of my Church to store 3 months of regular food, 2 weeks of water, 1 year of basic essentials and as much fuel, clothing and shelter needs as possible.  2) I firmly believe that the time will come (soon, I believe) when the comforts and ease of life that we enjoy will cease to exist.  This may be through an economic crash, war on America, or several other things – but I expect that it will happen.  3) The world doesn’t have to end for food storage and prepping to be useful.  Losing a job for an extended period of time, needing to save money (on food) for a bit, a general food scare (like the recent china/milk scare, you don’t have to worry about food that has been stored) or any number of other things.

As many of you know, my family has been through a really rough year.  Previous to that we were stringing ourselves along doing a startup.  Our food storage was key to getting us through that time and in recent months we have worked hard to replenish it through bottling, freezing and stocking food.

I sincerely think that the point of food storage is so much more than actually having stuff to eat for a year.

Very little in life gives me the sense of accomplishment, security and peace that I feel when I walk into my storage room, stand in the middle and just look. I swear there is more food in there than some grocery stores. Or the feeling I get each morning when I walk into the garage and I see over 250 gallons of water sitting, waiting in their respective containers. Or the feeling I get when I open one of the storage closets and see over 100 bags of cereal or chips (depending on which one I look in). Or when I open one of my chest freezers and see all the meat, vegetables and other food stored there.  Or when I look in my ammo locker and see ammo can after ammo can waiting for use.

I feel accomplishment because I have fulfilled the one of the requests of my Church. Storing this much food is a major task (as some of you know) and completing that task brings a wonderful sense of accomplishment (of course the other thing that happens is that we’ve learned new habits and we’re never really “DONE”).

I feel a sense of security and peace because I know that if I loose my job, if I’m injured, if something else happens – I can feed and provide for my family. I don’t think people consciously stress about that, but they definitely do sub-consciously – every time there is a hiccup or some risk to financial security, I think that most adults concern themselves with how to feed the family – except those who have a year (or more) worth of food.

My storage areas are a place of sanctuary, a symbol of safety. When I stand in the middle of my storage room, I’m surrounded by physical evidence of my commitment and a symbol of safety.

The time may never come when I actually need my storage (again) and that is perfectly fine. My storage is a lifestyle in many ways including having different shopping habits than most people. We live off what we have and go shopping for fresh food and to replenish what we’ve used – we can easily skip a month of food shopping to use that money elsewhere. If I never have to rely on it again, that is fine with me – the value of it is so much more that physical nourishment, it is spiritual and emotional nourishment.

It serves another purpose as well, I have friends and relatives that have hit on hard times and can’t afford food. When we hear of this, we gladly open our storage to them and freely give them what they need.

When my wife and I die, our storage will still be viable and will surely help our 8 children with their own storage. Our legacy of storing will live on in our children’s basements. We’ve taught them well, they know the need to store and know the value of it. Most importantly, we’ve involved them in our inventories, purchasing and stocking shelves – it is part of their lives as well – when they are grown they will not have to learn the basic concepts of storing, they will have long since learned them.

Finally, when things get really bad for our country, our family won’t be involved in the rush to the empty store to try to find security for our family. We’ll be packing and heading for the hills – or bunkering in as the case may be – and have a long head start on those wandering in shock trying to acquire more than a candy bar to eat.

Are you a prepper? Have you stored food and other needful things against unseen calamities?

Honestly, things got to the point that I was emotionally drained and what ended up happening was that my blog was dragging me all the way back to day 1 with Serenity constantly.  I burned out on life online and pretty much burned out on life.  Getting through this has been the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do, and it’s still going.  As much as I love blogging, I had to huddle in a corner for a while to protect my sanity and try to regroup.  I miss the interaction with all the great people who read my blog so I’m going to try to get back into it.  Here’s a catch-up on several things:

About two months ago my 3 year old son, Taran, got really sick and spent 2 weeks in the hospital.  He had appendicitis, a telescoping bowell and  extreme colitis.  He underwent 3 surgeries, he had his appendix removed and then had to get cut wide open for exploratory surgery because they couldn’t figure out what was going on.  He’s home now and is pretty much fully recovered.

About 2 weeks after he got home, Serenity got really sick again.  She was running a fever of over 104 constantly and was hospitalized for 2 weeks.  She is home now as well and is still on an IV but gets to take a break from chemo.  There are more details on both of them over on Serenity’s blog.

So, in the last 6 weeks, Adria  has spent 4 weeks in the hospital with kids with me being virtually a single Dad of 7 kids – I didn’t like that very much   Things have been do-able but really crazy.

I’ve been working as a contractor on a few different projects while needing to maintain flexibility.  Life has been an interesting trip lately and we’re literally just along for the ride – no idea where we’re going right now.  Life with Leukemia is a long frustrating thing, but we’re glad we still have our little girl to experience it with.

I’m planning to start blogging regularly again and maybe turn into a social butterfly again – well probably just a social moth for now.   Here are a couple other blogs I’m writing on these days: GeeksNGuns and UtahPreppers - check them out!

I don’t know Tom very well, our paths cross several times a year at Utah networking and other events (he’s a regular at the CTO Breakfast), but I do know he’s a good man and someone I could be friends with.  About a month ago while we were at the Oncology clinic with Serenity I saw him in the hall and had a quick chat with him.  His son Tobin was in the ICS ward where Serenity had been in-patient a month or so earlier.  Tom explained to me that Tobin had neuroblastoma (a type of brain cancer) and I could tell by his demeanor that things were not going well.  Today I received an email from Tom that yesterday Tobin moved on to a place of no pain and suffering. 

Tobin was diagnosed in December of 2007, only 8 months ago, he would have turned 4 years old later this month. 

There will be a viewing this Wednesday evening with Funeral services on Thursday (Aug 21) Tom has posted details on his blog here.  I hope the Utah geek community can help support the Gregory family the way that it has my family. 

Tobin has a memorial fund at Washington Mutual Bank (ask to deposit into the Tobin Gregory memorial fund at any Washington Mutual). 

This obviously strikes very close to home for me – my heart and prayers go out to the Gregory family.  I can vividly imagine what they’re going through and my heart aches for their loss. 

 I’ve uploaded the photos I took of several donors, they’re available on my Flickr Feed here.

Twelve Horses hosted the event for us and provided food and drinks (unfortunately we found out that RockStars are a no-no after you’ve donated blood – they bought a bunch of them for us and we couldn’t drink them!) they also let us have Rock Band setup so everyone could play during the 5 hours the blood drive was going on.  HUGE thanks to Twelve Horses!  If you need internet marketing done, drop them a line!

We had The Serenity Foundation’s mascot on hand for the whole blood drive, she had a lot of fun meeting everyone!

I’m feeling particularly drained from donating, so instead of reporting on the whole day, I’m going to just tell my story.  Check out the link to my Flickr feed for more pictures of donors.

This was the first time I’ve donated blood since I was a teenager.  I decided to organize the blood drive after my daughter, Serenity, received multiple life-saving blood transfusions while being treated for Leukemia.  As much as I hated doing it, I’m really glad that I was able to and I’m extremely grateful for all those that donate blood – both those that did today (many for the first time) and those that have donated in the past. 

I was really freaked out today about the whole donating thing, literally scared senseless about getting poked with a needle.  It’s amazing how such a tiny thing can cause such discomfort before it’s even inserted!  I put off donating until pretty much the last minute and it was with great trepidation that I filled out the forms and sat down.  Fortunately, Brad Baldwin came in to donate for his first time and I used his bravery to motivate me to get on with it.  Charlie Oliver also came in and became my “blood brother” as we were stuck and drained at pretty much the same time.  Here’s how freaked out I was (click the picture for a bigger image):

(and yes, I’m wearing a Captain Hammer shirt from Dr. Horrible!) Even once the needle was in, it was still a pretty intense time for me. 

So, for all those of you who thought I was tough or whatever, there’s proof that I’m a big sissy!  And for those of you who have told me that you’re too squemmish for needles/donating – hey, I did it and so can you!

Our next Blood Drive will be in early October (I’ll be announcing a date at the end of this week).  This time we only had Salt Lake going on, next time in Utah we’re planning on having Ogden, Salt Lake and Provo all going at the same time and hopefully Seattle, Phoenix, San Francisco, New York and many other cities all going at the same time.  If we managed to save 69 lives this time, just think how many lives we’ll be able to save if you help us spread the word!  If you have already installed the widget on your blog, please leave it there, the banner will update with the next date as soon as we have it set – if you don’t have it installed yet, please consider installing it!

Blogging for good and saving lives, quite a concept!

#TSFBlood

This is just an RSS reminder about the National Bloggers Blood Drive today, if you’re in Utah please come join us at Twelve Horses in Draper any time from 3 – 8 pm today.  There will be movies, games, snacks and a couple prize drawings along with hanging out with lots of cool people!

Twelve Horses is located at 13961 South Minuteman Drive, Suite 125 in Draper.  Take the Bangerter exit off I-15, head east and turn south on MinuteMan Drive, the building is on the east side.

For more details, see my previous post here.

Remember to tag flickr, twitter and blog posts with TSFBlood so it’ll show up on the NBBD Aggregator!

The goal of the NBBD is to hold local blood drives in multiple locations around the world that occur at the same time allowing live tweeting/flickring and blogging to go on.  This being the first event and being planned with very little lead time and especially that it comes at a time when I’m completely swamped – it won’t be quite a representation of what I’m hoping the next one will be.  Hopefully this Wednesday’s event will be enough to really get the conversation started about the NBBD and the next one will have more locations. 

If you’re interested in hosting a local blood drive in your area next quarter, let us know – the next one will be in October. 

For now, if you live in Utah, please join us on Wednesday (July 30th, 2008) at Twelve Horses between 3 and 8 pm!  There will be a couple raffle giveaways, food, drink and movies for all.  Hope to see you there!

Twelve Horses is located at 13961 South Minuteman Drive, Suite 125 in Draper.  Take the Bangerter exit off I-15, head east and turn south on MinuteMan Drive, the building is on the east side.

We have a Facebook group here and any blog, flickr or twitter entry with the term: TSFBlood is automatically aggregated on the Blood blog here.  We also have a widget/plugin you can use to help advertise the blood drive here.

OK, long time readers will know that I’ve been excited about Batman, The Dark Knight since hearing it was going to be made.  Well, tonight Adria managed to get us free tickets to the midnight opener and we just got back from it and HOLY awesome movie BATMAN!  I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, but it definately didn’t disappoint.  It was definately one hec of a finale for Heath Ledger, his portrayal of The Joker was incredible! 

The movie is quite long but they manage to keep the action/intesity going strong throughout, keeping you from getting bored.  As Adria pointed out, it’s nice that the harsh violence in it is a bit vague, they generally pan away or do other things with the camera to keep from showing anything gruesome.  I think it’s great to be able to watch a rather violent film and not have to see heads blow up or get shot off or see people get stabbed.  I think it actually adds a lot to the movie when those things aren’t on screen, the imagination is powerful enough to make it as bad or even worse than it would have been with special effects.

Anyway, I’m not that good at reviewing movies, but The Dark Knight kicked some serious butt and I really enjoyed – if for some reason you’re waffling on seeing it, I highly recommend that you go!

… and another cool thing, two notable previews were shown – The Watchmen and Terminator: Salvation (starring Christian Bale) - both set to release next year!

Joss Whedon, one of the wonders of the sci-fi/fantasy world and modern day superhero, has done it again!  If you don’t know Whedon’s work …. well, yes you do.  Whedon is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and (the best series ever) Firefly.  Firefly of course was the precursor for the movie Serenity (yeah, the show my daughter is named after). 

Joss’s latest project is called “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog” and is probably one of the most daring things being done in film entertainment right now.  Joss describes it best:

Once upon a time, all the writers in the forest got very mad with the Forest Kings and declared a work-stoppage. The forest creatures were all sad; the mushrooms did not dance, the elderberries gave no juice for the festival wines, and the Teamsters were kinda pissed. (They were very polite about it, though.) During this work-stoppage, many writers tried to form partnerships for outside funding to create new work that circumvented the Forest King system.

Frustrated with the lack of movement on that front, I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.

The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.

So, what is it?  It’s a freaking musical!  And a great one at that!  It’s very, very well done – a completely professional production that is a LOT of fun with catchy original tunes that stick in your head like silly string.  So what’s the point, what’s it all about?  Again from Joss:

We intend to make it available for download soon after it’s published. This would be for a nominal fee, which we’re hoping people will embrace instead of getting all piratey. We have big dreams, people, and one of them is paying our crew.

And somewhat later, we will put the complete short epic out on DVD – with the finest and bravest extras in all the land. We’ll go into greater detail about that at Comiccon, but we’re changing the face of Show Friendliness a second time with that crazy DVD.

Spread the word. Rock some banners, widgets, diggs… let people know who wouldn’t ordinarily know. It wouldn’t hurt if this really was an event. Good for the business, good for the community – communitIES: Hollywood, internet, artists around the world, comic-book fans, musical fans (and even the rather vocal community of people who hate both but will still dig on this). Proving we can turn Dr Horrible into a viable economic proposition as well as an awesome goof will only inspire more people to lay themselves out in the same way. It’s time for the dissemination of the artistic process. Create more for less. You are the ones that can make that happen.

So basically, Joss is working on changing the world – specifically the entertainment world. Changing the world is always a good idea, but the entertainment industry could really use a kick in the teeth and I think Joss will be the one to do it!

Right now there are two episodes released with the third one coming out on the 19th. They are only 10 minutes long – WAY too short! And I bet that you will totally enjoy them – go check them out!

… oh, did I mention that Neal Patrick Harris is Dr. Horrible and he can sing – REALLY well!

Let me know what you think!

July 30th will be the first quarterly National Bloggers Blood Drive, this is a new project we’re organizing at The Serenity Foundation. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been working on organizing a new twist on blood drives and blogger/twitter meetups.  It turns out that someone else recently did something similar in Austin, TX.  Michelle Greer just hosted a blood drive Tweetup in honor of her sister who has ALL (the same Leukemia that Serenity has).  They had a great response and turnout and I hope that we will as well! 

The big idea here is to make this a national, or even global, effort.  Bloggers around the world unite to save lives!  We’ve already had people volunteer to host local blood drives in 2 other locations: KirstenP wants to host one in Seattle and Michele is working to put one together in Chandler, AZ!  If you’re in either of those locations and want to help out, I’ll connect you with Kirsten and Michele.  If you would like to put one together in your location, let me know and we’ll help you with organization as much as we can. 

The goal is to use social networking, web 2.0 and all these new shiny things to really make a difference!  We’ll post stats about how much blood we collectively donated in one afternoon – and how many lives that blood will be able to save.  During the blood drive people will hopefully be blogging and tweeting the experience, sharing photos of the different locations, registering with Takes All Types, etc.  We should be able to make donating blood into a fun, cool, social experience.

Here’s the key to making this all work – every tweet, blog post, digg entry, stumble review, etc needs to be tagged with a common id.  I’ll be setting up aggregators that will scour the social web looking for entries that are tagged exactly like this: #tsfblood 

TSF is for The Serenity Foundation which is the new legacy project for Serenity.  The aggregators will be set up on the Serenity foundation’s website which is still being built but is at: http://www.TheSerenityFoundation.org once the site is finished all the updates and info about the blood drive and other projects will come from there. 

So that’s all the background info, here’s the info about the Utah drive. 

 July 30th, 2008 from 3pm to 8pm MST at Twelve Horses, 13961 Minuteman Dr. Suite 125.  We’re very grateful to 12 Horses for allowing us to use their offices and their wifi.

ARUP has some pretty cool stuff going on!  Everyone who donates blood at the Utah location (twelve horses) will be entered into two raffles – one is a raffle to win a car (2 year lease free) from Ken Garff Mitsubishi, this raffle goes on all summer and the winner will be drawn after September 12th.  The other raffle is for a $50 gas card at Maverick and will be just for our event – one of the people who donate with us will win the card!  In addition to that we’ll be serving food and watching movies during the event.  If you or your company are interested in sponsoring food purchases, please let me know and we’ll make sure you get plenty of coverage at the drive. 

And here’s the call to action:

Help spread the word!  Please Digg, Stumble, ReTweet and Reddit this post, invite all your friends to the Facebook event page, blog about it, post the plug-in or banner ad where-ever you can, install the soon to come facebook app or just mark your calendar and be a participant!  We should be able to get a great turnout and make a huge dent in the current blood shortage - and make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives!

Click here for all the info including the WordPress Plugin and banner ads for the event.

#TSFBlood

Serenity’s life was saved because people donated blood.  I have a lot of guilt about that – I have MAJOR needle-phobia and have always avoided blood donation.  But as I watched Serenity bravely face getting poked by needles over and over and over again (at one point, before she got her port, she had bandages on both her hands and arms and they were going to access her through her foot) I knew that was going to change forever.  As the next week went by and she received several life-saving bags of blood and platelets, I knew that I was going to become a blood donor for life – and that I would advocate and encourage others to do so as well.

And so it begins – the quarterly Serenity Foundation Blood Drive.  My good friend, Rachel Strate, is one of my heroes – she is an avid platelet and blood donor – and I’m counting on her and others to help put all this together.  I’ve talked to ARUP (our local blood center) and there are some rules to doing a blood drive, one of them is that I have to get 35 people to commit to donating blood at the drive.  Another is getting a location, but I can take care of that one.  I’m thinking somewhere around Draper or Thanksgiving Point.  We’ll do it towards the end of July and I’ll be announcing a date in the next couple days.  I’d like to make this a Geek Dinner/Tweetup type of event with blood donating, blogging, tweeting and eating going on.

I’d also really like to make this more than a local thing.  If you’re reading this and you would like to help out and organize a local blood drive to coincide with ours, PLEASE DO!  Let me know and I’ll try to help publicize it.  I think it would be a LOT of fun to have multiple blood drives going on all over the country at the same time and for us to all be blogging and tweeting pictures and updates at the same time! 

This post is really a notification and call for volunteers.  If you are willing to donate blood with us, please let me know.  If you’re willing to organize a local drive, please let me know.  We’ll get customized banners like the one above made for your drive and have ones that everyone can put on their blog if they want. 

Blood is absolutely critical to saving little lives like that of my daughter and so many others.  Every one of you have blood and thus the capacity to help save those lives.  Please, Please join us in providing the elixir of life!

As a side note, I know that blood drives are nothing new and that many of you may already give blood regularly.  I also know that according to ARUP, only 4% of those who are able to actually donate blood.  This is a call to action for the other 96% – join me in becoming a willing donor!

The story of Serenity’s battle with Leukemia begins here.

K, I admit that I’m probably, maybe a teeny little bit biased here – but I think these are super cute pictures of Serenity (probably not quite as cute as your kid though ).  I’m calling this photo shoot (we took about 300 pictures) a “Celebration in Baldness” and these are my favorite shots.  We’re trying to select one to be her new banner glamour shot on her website, we’ve narrowed it down to these and want to know – what do YOU think?  Please let us know in the comments which of the pictures you think are the best “poster child” shot!  Thanks! (each photo is linked to a larger version)  You can view all the photos on Serenity’s new flickr feed here.

Picture 1:

Picture 2:

Picture 3:

Picture 4:

Picture 5:

Don’t forget to vote in the comments, and please share this post if you’re so inclined, we’d love to get tons of feedback!

The story of Serenity’s battle with Leukemia begins here.

UPDATE: Day 39 is here.

Yesterday we had another clinic visit, Serenity got 3 Chemo treatments; an IV one, an intrathecal one (in her spine) and an oral one. 

Some things to note in that picture: She’s wearing her new medic alert bracelet on her left hand, it has her name, that she has Leukemia and her blood type on it.   She’s also wearing her courage beads, she gets a bead for every major treatment/accomplishment/torture that she has endured – it chronicles her journey through Leukemia treatment and is already half full.  Also, she’s wearing a hat because her hair is extremely thin and we were out in the sun.  She’s holding her hospital ID tag which is gets put on her arm at the next stage of her visit.  She actually ends up with a second one on her ankle when she gets put under.  She has a huge collection of the bracelets now, when we cut them off every week we add them to her pile.  One of her routines at clinic is to have about 6 stickers made from her ID tag and stick them all over her shirt and mine while we’re waiting for her treatments. 

When she gets her intrathecal chemo, they put her under with general anesthesia to do the lumbar puncture.  This is her in the recovery room right after the procedure.  She has to fast for these and wakes up very hungry, it’s a celebration of eating and drinking!

Her hair has been shedding like crazy lately and tonight we decided it was time to shave it – she had big bald patches all over and was starting to look pretty ragged.  Not only that, but every time we picked her up we would come away covered in hair!  Here is a picture of her in the hospital when this all started – with all of her hair:

This is how she looked this evening right before we shaved her head:

Shaving her head was a bit of a family event:

And, here is the new Poster Child for Leukemia!

She keeps rubbing her head and saying “Bald!”, then rubbing my head and saying “Daddy Bald!” Then she points to her port and says “port!” and points to my chest and says “Daddy no port”.  She’s pretty proud of having something so cool that noone else in the family does.  

Her new oral chemo, 6-MP, is going pretty rough for her.  She hates how it tastes, so I tasted it – much to Adria’s horror – it doesn’t taste too bad at first, but it does have a yucky aftertaste.  I only put a dab on my tongue, I can’t imagine what 2 mls of it would taste like.  She nearly throws up every time she takes it and it has made her dis-trust any medicine again.  She was doing pretty good at taking them until the 6-MP, not that she liked it but it had gotten fairly routine and easy. 

Living with Leukemia is becoming routine for us, Serenity being bald is kind of the final committment for it – or so it seems.  She now looks a lot more like someone suffering from cancer.

The story of Serenity’s battle with Leukemia begins here.

Leukemia has become the centerpiece of our lives; instead of studying statistics and other computational research I’ve been reading lots on Leukemia, cancer in general and Hematology.  Everything we do now revolves around Leukemia and I’m striving to make The Serenity Foundation become a reality so that my work time can revolve around it too.  I believe I’ve found an excellent way to use technology to help families who have kids with Leukemia and other medical crisis. 

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of first, dealing with roid rage and roid binges and for the last week, having our little girl come back to us.  Serenity spent a month on steroids and the last week was the worst.  If you looked at her wrong, she would fly into a huge tantrum and hurt herself and anyone or thing around her.  She was also eating like a madman – Last Friday I bought 4 1/2 dozen eggs thinking they would last her a while – by that Sunday afternoon they were GONE!  About every thirty minutes to an hour she was waking up wanting 2 eggs, some yogurt and chips.  She would gobble them down – and by gobble i mean use a fork with her right hand to put a piece of egg in her mouth while grabbing the next piece at the same time with her left hand.  Once she had stuffed 2 eggs in her mouth, she would eat chips and yogurt for a while and then be ready to go back to sleep.  This would go on all night long – for that period, Adria and I got VERY little sleep and what we did get amounted to cat-naps. 

Last weekend she finished her steroid treatment and this week has been a lot of fun!  A lot of her cheek and tummy swelling have gone down and she looks quite a bit more normal.  The best thing though is that she has been her old self again – an extremely happy and fun baby!  She laughs a lot now and plays with the kids all the time, she hangs out with me a lot while I work.  It’s been really nice having her back instead of the Terrible Steroid Monster.  She still can’t walk, but her legs are getting much better, she can scoot around and tries to stand often.  Once or twice she has taken a couple steps – but that’s the most she can do so far.  I think it’s very frustrating for her to not be able to get around on her own at all. 

Holding her has become very similar to holding a long-haired dog in the spring time – you come away COVERED in hair!  When you run your fingers through her hair you come away with a full handful.  I suspect she’ll be bald by the end of next week and her body hair will probably follow soon thereafter. 

During the last week, we’ve managed to take Serenity and all the other kids to the park each night to have a bit of fun.  She really enjoys being in the baby swing and will sit there all night and just swing.  Her blood counts are within the healthy range so we were able to take her to church today for the first time in over a month and she’s been able to go to a lot of public places lately as well – like the museum. 

Tomorrow she starts her next chemo protocol, 6-Mercaptopurine or 6-MP, along with getting her bone marrow biopsy and intrathecal (in her spine) chemo treatments.  Hopefully that won’t set back all the progress she’s made in the last week. 

The story of Serenity’s battle with Leukemia begins here.

UPDATE: Day 38 is here.

A lot of the time, Serenity looks like this:

A lot of the time, she also looks like this, often just seconds after looking the way she did above:

I’m not sure what set her off in this case, it may have been finding out she has to take meds soon, it may have been that she was in pain, it may have been that someone touched her bed or anything else.  Steroids and a 2 year old that doesn’t quite talk can be an interesting combination, anything will set her off.  As if being 2 isn’t hard enough, she’s got Leukemia and everything that goes with it piled on top – and it makes for a tiring combination as a parent.

Saturday night her zofran (anti-nausea meds) and her steroids met up in just the right combination and she went on an eating binge!  Literally about every 30 minutes she would wake me up and place her food order – eggs, yogurt, chips, popcorn, cheese, cereal, tortilla with peanut butter, bread with ranch – whatever she was craving at the moment.  She ate about half a dozen eggs, 3 cups of yogurt, and tons of chips, popcorn and everything else listed up there, she put me to shame in the eating department!  It then carried on through most of the day today although not quite as intensely. 

After spending a full week in the hospital, then being stuck in the house for 2 weeks with only going to the clinic, we’ve had on onset of Cabin Fever.  Earlier in the week we started venturing out to the back yard to swing.  Then on Friday we decided to have Talysa babysit the other kids while Adria, Serenity and I went to a 12:30 showing of the new Narnia movie.  We knew that since it had been out for a few weeks and it was the middle of the day that the theatre would be mostly empty.  We decided that if we sat in an isolated section of the theatre Serenity should be ok without her mask on – but she had to wear it into the mall and theatre in case anyone got close to her.

She had quite a bit of fun hanging out with Mom and Dad and is probably the only 2 year old that will sit quietly through a movie.  On Saturday we took the whole family to the Orem Summerfest which is basically a big carnival.  She was able to have a lot of fun hanging out without her mask on, I wanted to enter her into a hot dog eating contest – she would have killed her age group  While we were walking through the booths at the fair section, all the sudden she started freaking out and screaming something we couldn’t understand.  At first we thought she was hurt so we took her out of the backpack – but then she started pointing behind us and screaming, so we backtracked.  We went one both back where a guy was standing there innocently eating chips from a bag.  She pointed right at him and screamed what we now understood to be “Chips!”.  We actually had some in our day bag and got them out for her – but that guy is LUCKY that she can’t walk!

We normally use the Kelty backpack for hiking in the mountains, but this time it came in really handy in a different situation.  On a side note, if you have a toddler, I highly recommend the Kelty line of kid packs – they’re awesome and we love them!  Serenity also got to ride on the carousel – it was the only ride she could go on since all the other ones required her to sit down.

She got a bit tired of it towards the end, and so did I!  So, in contrast to last weekend, which totally sucked, this weekend was a lot more fun, and a lot more normal with being able to get outside and do stuff with the family.  Normal now means lots of new rules though. 

Staying on the fun side of things, while we were at the hospital we were given a list titled “You know you’re the parent of a Cancer Kid when…(1-100)”.  A lot of these won’t make sense to most readers – which is actually number 45 “You don’t have to ask ‘what’s that mean’ to the previous 44 items”.  But for the cancer parents reading, I wanted to list out the ones that already apply to us and for eveyone else, give a glimpse of what’s different for us.

1. You carry a tube of Emla in your purse instead of lipstick.  (We actually carry almost an EMT’s med kit )

3. You can sleep anywhere, and anything that reclines more than 15 degrees looks “comfy”

15. Your child asks whats for dinner and you are relieved you don’t have to administer anti-nausea meds

16. Your 2 year old knows where all the medical equipment goes, and how to use it.

17. Your childs first word is a medical term. (Serenity uses several words, and now at least 5 are medical – including ‘port’)

18. You keep a bag packed at all times like you’re 9 1/2 months pregnant.

19. You can eat with one hand while you hold the barf bucket with the other.

20. Your childs bedroom looks like a Toys R Us store.

24. You know medical terminology better than your family practitioner. (for us, it was the ER doc)

29. You have a syringe in your purse (diaper bag) and you’re not diabetic. (I had one in my pocket the other day for some reason)

30. You have more meds in your cupboard than food.  (we have a whole cupboard JUST for meds and equipment)

31. You can read your kids chart better than the nurse.

33. You and your wife get matching stress tattoos.  (I’m working on this one actually)

34. You are teaching your daughter parts of her body and when you point to her chest she says “port”.

57. When the siblings want to know what the child’s counts are so they know whether they can go inside and eat at McDonalds.

58. When your kid asks for a Happy Meal, you immediately turn around and start heading to McDonalds as fast as you can, before the craving wears off (and if they’re on steroids, ask “A Happy Meal or a Super Sized one?”).

79. When you can whip up a 7 course meal in minutes for a child having a steroid pig out – and you’re happy about it!

82. You are totally comfortable in an examination room and don’t think twice about getting items out of the supply drawers.

84. When its time for your 2 year old to have her vitals taken and she lifts her arm and extends her finger without being told, or complaining – all without looking away from her movie.

87. When you have a collection of barf buckets in every room of the house.

91. When you think of anything your child will eat and keep down as a “nutritious meal”, even if it’s cookies and candy.

100. Your child has her own website to keep friends and family updated.

The story of Serenity’s battle with Leukemia begins here.

UPDATE: Day 36 is here.