Cycle 3 begins

Sitting in what is now my private room, as my much older roommate for the day left long ago, listening to some very soothing Dr. Toast, I'm nearing the end of the last IV for chemo round 3.  My guess is that I'll be done around 9 PM.  Which means maybe I won't get this post fully done (it's 8:25 now).  This is much later than I would ordinarily want to schedule things, but things were a little complicated this time around, both from me switching from Oakland to Berkeley, and switching insurance carriers.  I was originally scheduled today to start at 3 PM, although they called this morning and asked if I could come in at 1 PM.  Nevertheless, as I was warned, things definitely take longer here.  The original estimate I was given was 6 hours total, but it looks like it's going to end up being more like 8.  Which isn't totally made up for by the savings in driving time, but I think I'm going to stick with Berkeley anyway.  And even the driving time argument becomes more persuasive if you factor in all of the non-chemo appointments (typically 3 more in a single 3 week chemo cycle), and the fact that they're not particularly keen on the idea of me getting chemo in Oakland but doing everything else in Berkeley (if you thought that they could somehow manage a single integrated system of records between a few offices, you'd be wrong).

And the time has gone by reasonably fast.  It doesn't feel like nearly 8 hours, and I don't feel like I've done much.  Read a bit on the kindle, did random web browsing, but had put off blogging b/c I was feeling kind of tired.  In retrospect, I think I was tired b/c I needed to eat.  I brought some food with me, but not enough, as I counted on being home earlier and having dinner then.  And they advertise various free food here -- which I'm sure is probably semi-crappy, but I figured it would be good enough.  Only when I finally asked for some, the answer was that it was so late in the day that it was basically all gone.  Before this, I had been feeling somewhat negative about my nurse.  She's from Vietnam, and I mentioned that I traveled there in 2003, and somehow our conversation veered to her telling me not to go to China because they kill people there and harvest their organs.  Hmmm....  Anyway, she totally redeemed herself by, after telling me there was no food left, volunteering to send someone to head out around the corner and pick up some Thai food.  I totally took her up on the offer (I think some of the staff that's left here now, which is pretty minimal, it's all pretty quiet here now).  I feel so much better now, hence the blogging.

The cold continues.  My cold, that is.  The weather hasn't been all that cold, although we're in the middle of another storm and another few rainy days.  I suspect it could take me a while to get over the long tail of congestion and runny nose from this cold.  It's kind of reached the point where it's mostly an annoyance.  For the most part it's no longer keeping me from doing anything that I want to do, as it's not making me feel overall crappy the way it had been before.  Except I really want to get back to yoga, but I'm not thrilled at the idea of doing that until the cold is really gone.

I was feeling well enough to continue the yard work.  Did some on all of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  Most of it wasn't particularly strenuous (except shoveling wood chips was a little tiring), but it was still enough of a workout to get my muscles sore.  Back to the whole needing yoga thing.  Our rose bushes that formerly reached up more than a full story also left me with a fair share of wounds on my arms -- maybe I should get pruning gloves that cover the whole forearm, and not just past the wrist?  We filled our entire green bin, one of our neighbor's bins, and most of the bin of our other neighbor.  A huge shout out of thanks to Rebecca and Ali who came over on Sunday and did a major amount of weeding.  I hadn't really appreciated just how much of our front yard had become weeds.

Another huge bit of thanks to Alice who came here last night with Matt and cooked dinner for us.  And brought some of the dessert wines that I had liked at their tapas party, so that Lorien could try them.  And we both had the idea of following through on the thought of pairing the port with a dark chocolate, which left us with an opportunity for chocolate tasting and comparison.  Which was actually the second food tasting of evening -- since she ended up bringing all of her own ingredients, we had previously compared fancy balsamic vinegars.  And discovered that homemade motzah is a wonderful vehicle for vinegar tasting.

The machine is beeping again, and this time it's a good beep!  I'm all done!  To be continued when I get home...

I didn't ride my bike to chemo due to both my cold and the possibility of rain.  Lorien dropped me off, and was planning on picking me up.  But since that happened later than planned, and Dylan was in bed by then, Erin was kind enough to be my chauffeur for the evening.  Thanks!  I'm home now.

Back to dinner with Matt and Alice...

I didn't want to contribute nothing to the meal, and since I do have a bit of a sweet tooth now, and that will likely increase with the Prednisone, I once again consulted David Leibovitz for inspiration.  I had to rule out a bunch of possibilities because Matt doesn't like chocolate.  I settled on Gingersnaps.  They were wonderful.  And continue to be so.  And I only baked half -- and left 1/4 of the dough in the fridge, and put 1/4 in the freezer, so they will continue into the future.  Despite being pretty full from pad thai, I think I'm going to take a break and have one as soon as I'm done typing this sentence....  Mmmm.... that was tasty.  Don't you wish you could have one?  Well, you can -- they're pretty easy to make.  And while I got the recipe by browsing through one of David's cookbooks, it looks like a very similar recipe (with slightly different preportions and instructions, but it's pretty damn similar) is available on his website.  Which gets me wondering sometimes why I bought a bunch of his books (I went perhaps a bit overboard in a minor frenzy of patissier related book buying, shortly before I got sick, which somewhat put the brakes on that), since it seems like most every recipe that I make and like I can also find online. I do like reading through the books though, and especially like the mouth watering pictures.  The book has a totally different description, and somewhat surprisingly doesn't mention that this is copied from one of Alice Water's books.  Which gets me wondering if I should get that book as well.  Unlike most of David's books, it's about more than just desserts. And I do particularly like this tidbit of his review:

I realized that these are recipes for the staples that people could and should learn, and the book is a complete reference for anyone who wants some solid, well-tested basics new dishes to add to one’s repertoire. Unlike larger and bulkier reference tomes, the recipes in The Art of Simple Food are for the way many people cook today and the book is laid out with a simple design to make it very easy for anyone to follow the recipes. [From David, on his blog, about Alice's book]

On a similar note of basic dishes, if you're looking for a book of reasonably simple recipes for everyday cooking, we have and like Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers.  We also have Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, but tend to use it much less.

I mentioned the online description (of the gingersnaps recipe) is different.  This bit is worth sharing, and gives you an idea of David's attitude, which I can appreciate:

For the best flavor, use very fresh spices.  I grind my own cinnamon and cloves for these, and never, ever use preground black pepper.  If you don't have a pepper mill, shame on you.  Go get one. [From David, accompanying the recipe on his web site]

Fwiw, I ground my cloves fresh, but I've found that grinding my own cinnamon is kind of a pain, and rough on the grinder, so I buy it ground except when I want to use a whole stick in an infusion.  But we rotate it pretty quickly, and don't buy it prepackaged at a supermarket, so I have a reasonable confidence that it's pretty fresh.

While I'm writing this, Lorien just walked by and gave me an unsolicited comment that "these gingersnaps are totally irresistable".  Just sayin'.

Although tonite's dinner gave me some short term energy, it turns out that I am actually kind of tired.  So I think I should wrap this up and try to get to bed early tonite.

But first I will note that I of course brought Snoopy with me to chemo again, and he's keeping me company now on the couch.  No pictures from chemo this time, but I will share some cute pictures taken when Dylan decided to steal Snoopy from our bed one morning.