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

(I wrote this last week but forgot to publish it). We've reached the part of the school year where the three lower classes engage in "intensives" while the seniors get ready to graduate.  For Sam that consisted of going to Dollywood yesterday - despite the peeing rain and a touch of lightning a good time was had by all.  The lousy weather also kept the faint-hearted at home so the queues for rides were shorter. I spent much of yesterday fighting with Quickbooks - we have two kosher licensed copies at home for two different organisations and on different computers.  In the grand re-install of Windows 10 on Susan's computer last month I had installed the wrong version of Quickbooks and clicked the "OK" button when it asked if I wanted to update her database to the correct Quickbooks version.  There being no illegal or unlicensed software in this house, we needed to get back to Quickbooks 2012 and the links on Intuit's website to download 2012 oddly enoug...

Heart in mouth time as Susan & I headed for Cancer Care for my post-transplant check-in with my guy, Dr. M.  Poor guy is going through hell with the new computer system they have inflicted on them and I took only the tiniest bit of pleasure from knowing that Mission Hospital had turned down my application to take part in the development of it.  (To be fair to Mission, I was probably the least qualified candidate they had - any 21 year old coming out of college with a computer science degree would probably have had a better background than I have.  But I digress.) Dr. M. told us that the transplant had largely been a success with my M-Spike taking a dive from .78 down to .2 - 0 is ideal but .2 is pretty darn good.  I'm also feeling great. They took an armful of blood and all the numbers in it, except for my white blood cells are right where they need to be, especially the hemoglobin which is probably why I can manage 5 or 6 miles up and down Cornelius Vanderbilt'...

Today was the last day of classes at school.  Most of the kids shook hands and thanked me which was nice.  I've even got a manageable mess left behind by the robotics class.  I somewhat fortunately have about half a dozen empty - or easily emptied - cantilever toolboxes that I use for storing parts.  The class already sorted out the parts needed by next year's class to make the first couple of weeks of projects (I'm changing what they do next year - still start with the Clawbot but get them into programming it earlier rather than keeping it as little more than a glorified RC car). The programming class are at varying stages of "nearly complete" with their Minesweeper programs.  If nothing else, they will have come out of the course appreciating that even a fairly simple looking game like Minesweeper has a lot of work behind it. I've been getting out reffing soccer - I've had my first two adult games amid warnings of obnoxious behaviour from the players (...

Finally contacted Wake Forest yesterday to say "Oi!  How long before I snuff it, then?"  The answer was, to put it mildly, quite encouraging.  It turns out that the gizmo they use to measure the protein causing the M-spike (yes, it's gobbledegook that I don't really understand either but bear with me) can't measure anything below 0.2 accurately.  So if its value is anywhere between 0 and 0.2 (but not 0), it gives a value of 0.2.  So I am doing pretty well but not perfectly.  Hence the need for more chemo. I've also been given the all clear to help clean up the drama department storage shed at school which means I must have decent resistance to nasty stuff.  I will refrain from asking why it is that the school can provide storage space for all the basketball gear you can imagine but that the drama department has to make do with a disused garage a quarter of a mile from the gym in which plays are put on.  But I digress. Peed with rain all last nig...