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

Nearly normal weekend.   On Saturday I ran the sideline on two under-12 soccer games.   Fortunately there weren’t any truly grotesque calls to make – one goal (or non-goal) when a goalie stopped the ball on the line and then rolled over and one melee from which the ball rolled over the touchline.  Always impossible to know who the ball touched last.  Anyway, I wasn't beaten up by the parents as I left the field so I assume I made more or less the right calls. I did rather balls up Susan's birthday dinner on Friday - she'd asked me to get a pre-done shrimp cocktail platter and some asparagus from Ingles while I was there picking up her cake.  As part of my "improve my memory" regime, I was determined not to write a shopping list.  Needless to say, I picked up the cake. On the negative side, I am starting to ache all over - shins, hips and between the shoulder blades mostly.  I tend to wake up early and have difficulty getting comfortable. ...

Day +100 is the magic day when I find out if I am temporarily out of the woods or a shovel-ready project.  (Temporary only because what I have is incurable though people have been known to live another 15 years with it).  I have spent the last couple of months galloping towards it but now it seems an eternity away.  I have to keep exercising but mustn't overdo it - gym membership is definitely out (thank goodness). So I boldly emailed the guy who assigns soccer games to refs and said "Give me a couple of soft ones so I can see how I go."  So the day after tomorrow I get to chase a load of 12 year olds around the field while trying to remember all the changes to the offside law as well as who I am and am not allowed to kick off the field for being loud and obnoxious among the parents and coaches (really not a big problem - I've only ever had a word with a couple of them and never needed to ask them to leave.  I am not allowed to tell them to leave but I can call...

Well, here I am on day +80 and feeling on top of the world (except all the walking is making my legs ache).  I've finally plucked up the guts to get out and about a bit last week.  Starting with a quick trip to Belk to grab Susan's birthday present, wearing my Darth Vader mask.  The charming lady who looked after me - Norma Jean by name but I wasn't a big enough prat to comment on it - decided I'd like to spend half an hour chatting with her (which I did) so it wasn't quite as quick as I'd hoped.  Yesterday I ventured into Home Depot to recycle a pile of batteries and CFLs.  Some smart person has moved the electric trolleys in front of the recycle bins which gave me more exercise than I'd bargained for.  While I was there I picked up the wherewithal to do battle with our perennial ants (we're not infested but there are always half a dozen of the little sods around), crickets and moles.  I wonder why I don't mind putting down glue traps for the cricke...

Ah, joy!  Once every 7 days (and every Wednesday) Sam has a 1 hour delayed start at school which means - tada! - a lie in.  Nobody has told my body clock that and I more or less wake up at more or less the usual time.  Still, it does mean a leisurely breakfast over the Asheville Citizen-Times (adv) which, unfortunately, was all about basketball and Trump this morning so it was a quick read. The drive to school was very pleasant - the sun was out, nobody was driving like a moron and the conversation focused on literary contest we'd won (and the delightfully unfortunate way that Swhite had announced me as a winner.) Despite the sub-40 degree temperature, I like to use the late starts to take a walk at Biltmore and that was again the plan this morning - walk up the walking trail to the house and back down through the gardens, past the bass pond and then about half a mile along the road back to the carpark.  Right then.  Park the car by the lake and head up the tr...

Some months ago the people who look after Lake Lure decided to lower it by about 3 metres so they could do some maintenance on the dam.  I went out to Lake Lure township (not all the way to the dam) earlier this week to see if it was refilling.  It wasn't but a sign in the carpark (which I had to myself) said that it would start refilling on March 1.  Now there is a pretty big stream (or small river) - the Broad River - runs into Lake Lure and we had a decent dose of rain yesterday so I wandered out there today for another half hour walk, expecting to see cascading torrents refilling the lake like the Aratiatia Rapids in spring.  Nah - it looks like it's still emptying. No problem - it was a nice day for a walk (45 degrees and next to no wind) so I treated myself to a wander around the surprisingly sandy shore (remember her?) of the lake.  At one point I considered taking a shortcut hop and a skip across a foot wind channel from a small bay but the quicksa...

It doesn't feel like 60 days since I was being pumped full of my own stem cells in Wake Forest but here we are on day +60, another milestone.  Being a Sunday, I didn't get to go to a hospital to have an arm emptied - that's tomorrow and I only have to make the trip to Mission in Asheville rather than schlepp all the way to Wake Forest.  That comes on day +100, round about mid-April.  I don't know if I will be back at work by then or not - apparently flu and gastric problems abound and the school doesn't have a "100% vaccination" requirement so I suspect they're going to tell me not to go back tomorrow. Physically, I am doing great.  My walks are up to a couple of miles now and neither hills nor stairs are knocking the wind out of me, at least for the first 20 meters / 30 stairs or so.  Probably head for Lake Lure tomorrow for a couple of flat miles.  I'll resist renting a canoe.  I've just quit an online course on using the Raspberry Pi with t...

Intrepid explorer at Base Camp 1 What more appropriate quote to commemorate the ascent by yours truly and my trusty sherpa, Sam, to the lofty heights of Biltmore House.  Parking closer to the trail leading up to its south face, we made it to Base Camp 1 before pausing for water.  We agreed that we should have used oxygen but it was too late to change that now.  We headed up the goat track on the left in the picture, marveling at both the view and the temperature which, unusually for the time of year, was above freezing.  By about 40 degrees. At the higher altitudes, something has been done to the fences and you now approach the summit on the western side of the fence rather than the east.  There is no need to negotiate the knuckle-eating gate, either which will be handy next time I attack the path by bike. We made sure to touch the wall of the house (I wonder if they know there is a major crack in it) and utter Sir Edmund's famous words.  Sher...