Will you still love me to-marrow - John Mycroft and Multiple Myeloma

 7:45 appointment at Levine Cancer Institute tomorrow so no way were we going to drive here in the dark,  So we are staying in unashamed luxury at the Doubletree in Southpark.  Not as handy for the hospital (4 and a bit miles) as the place by the baseball stadium but far more comfortable.  Excellent dinner in the bar so we're now stuffed and back in our suite (!) waiting for an online chat with Sam if I can remember how to get it started.  Another load of blood to be taken tomorrow and an hour long infusion of something to stir up the greeblies in my blood. With luck we will be home before dark. It would appear that the pickup owners in NC did not take a New Year's resolution to drive even vaguely near the speed limit.  Plenty of arsehole drivers out there though the Nobel prize goes to the guy with the too-big wheels on his Jeep.  I think I would like to be reincarnated as a traffic cop on a mission.

 Not supposed to be out in crowds so the mall wasn't an option today, nor yet even Barnes & Noble.  I did a bit of internet shopping (for me and some window shopping for Susan) and accompanied Susan in the car to Harris Teeter (local supermarket) round the outside of which I walked (2000 paces and dead flat).  Didn't venture inside.  I sympathised briefly with what looked like a small group of Hispanic kids sitting on the ground outside the recruiting office being talked to in a friendly manner. I enjoyed a short trip to Ace Hardware where I bumped into an old Lowe's colleague.  Our pottery spoon rest met an unpleasant accident recently and I bought almost exactly the wrong thing to fix it with.   May have to wait il next week to exchange.   I got a bit industrious this afternoon and set up a small chunk of Sam's old electric trainset which still runs.  I have in mind building a baseboard for it (I mentioned that recently) and wanted...

 Off to Charlotte on a beautiful winter day here.  The weather was gorgeous but someone messed around with the temperature which varied from 20 to 58 in the old money on the way.  Nice to be snugly tucked up in Susan's Subaru listening to (and occasionally joining in with) the Christmas stations on the radio.  Particularly enjoyed Dean Martin pretending not to be pissed out of his mind and cringing at Have Yoursself a Merry Little Christmas.  We even scored a few of the spoof songs. Test results were all jolly good - some are off the end of the chart but at least don't say "PTO" on the end.  I've now got to set up a page in Desmos to handle the graphs.  If you have kids in high school and don't use Desmos - www.desmos.com - for their math, you are doing them a huge disservice - and it's free though I did send them a couple of bucks a while back)   I woke up early this morning courtesy of my tiny dose of dexamethazone - highly recommended if y...

 Clean out the crap day.  Anyone want to buy some 1960s German Marklin 3 rail model railway stuff?  All jolly nice but, as I have decided to build myself a proper train layout (more for the pleasure of building it than using it) I've decided to stick to something a bit more modern and a hell of a lot cheaper.  Definitely going to limit it to old fashioned "one train running at a time" on an 8 x 4 sheet of plywood (unless I can find a 12 x 4 - got a lot of room under the house.)  Just might fire up a computer or two to control it.  I've got a boxful of the bloody things.

 Another 3 a.m. phone call from our care team to tell me that my monitor is saying I'm dying.  Nice of them to tell me but a quick check from the other gizmo tells us that my oxygen is at a splendid 96% snd my pulse is at the kind of level you'd expect from being called at 3 a.m. to ask if you're dying.  I really do, honestly, appreciate this care but do wish that I had a bit more confidence in it.  It's not as bad as my first go around with this treatment when I would be woken up by bright fluorescent lights twice a night so somebody could check on this stuff manually but at least Susan didn't have to get woken up as well.  Indeed, it's she who gets woken up as I don't hear the phone.  She is pretty expert at not disturbing me, too.  So, what to do once you're done sleeping for the night and wide awake at 4 a.m. with none of your home toys around you?  Grab a computer only to find it tells you nothing but that trump is still alive and being a dic...

 No more ouch in my right arm which I celebrated with something like 15 hours sleep at various times through the day.  I may have missed a day as I could type with only one hand and was too lazy to try dictating which I really must do. I spent a short time tutoring one student yesterday and can't say it was one of my most fruitful sessions ever.  Perhaps the concept of multiplying by 299 by multiplying by 300 and then taking away the number you first though of is just too difficult to grasp.  Go ahead - try it.  Think of a number.  Then multiply it(on paper, not on a calculator) by the traditional "put down the two and carry the 7" method.  Then try slapping on two zeroes, multiplying by 3 and taking away the original number.  It's how I've been doing it for the last 60-odd years, much to the disgust of the headmaster at Fairways who made the mistake of challenging me to a public test of mathematical skills. It's warmed up a bit here in Charlotte ...