Woodstock Birthday

special thanks to everyone who sent cookies and gifties and checkies for the old birthday. siobhan and i escaped (despite the driving snow) to woodstock for a little R and R outside of the city. i hadn't realized how long i had been here till we left. usually i get away every few weeks to go to boston but i haven't been travelling b/c of the big C. so it was nice to get away. the second day we were there the proposed one foot drop of snow did not happen so we got away with a few sunny, bright days.

here is the saugerties lighthouse, quite picturesque, no? they have rooms to let but you have to reservce them about a year and a half in advance... it is pretty cool tho and i think they have a fireplace. we were more or less constantly blocked this weekend in our searches for jacuzzis or fireplaces... thank goodness for used bookstores!

on the way back we checked out a few more towns such as kingston and poughkeepsie. here i am in the cancer healing dome of kingston (no, really) getting some good vibes. maybe that's why i still have my hair?

upon my return i notice my amaryllis has bloomed after two years of just giving me green long leaves. i had forgotten it was red...

chemo 4 report tomorrow or so, all is more or less well.

chemo 3 report

So this round was weird, as in it was unlike the other two, which were unlike each other, so i guess you might say that it was normal. In that I felt weird.

The first day, tuesday, was fine, just felt a off. For instance I would be walking down the street thinking normal thoughts and some part of my brain would start saying "boing! boing! boing!" for every few steps and the other part of the brain would go "what the?" and then the boinging would stop. That nights sleep (and the next three or four subsequent evenings, when sleeping) were also characterized by lucid, strange dreams; the eating of a giant shrimp, larger than a lobster, stuffed with smaller shrimps and stewed tomatoes; racing a biplane against a messerschmitt along the manhattan bridge then barnstorming a parade of victorian officials dressed in purple & gray crushed velvet suits; and several others the details of which escape me now.

Wednesday night unfortunately was a repeat of the prior cycles first tuesday - i was awakened at around 2 am with a sour stomach and spent most of the next four hours trying to decided which end of myself to point towards the water. After that passed, and tigerente was pressed into service, I slept till about noon and then went into work. Recovery was about normal, i went to sleep early Thursday night after seeing Siobhan and helpers move things from the van to her new apartment (i watched the truck whilst they were inside). She has said au revoir to boston and allo to new york, and i am very happy. Friday i felt good, and Saturday i was even well enough to ride my bike for the first time in two months. Sunday Siobhan Ned Dara Kristy and I went to the Russian Baths on wall st to celebrate kristy quitting her job, and the sweating and such there did such a world of difference that now (monday evening) i feel perfectly fine. This is different than the last cycle in that last time i felt "ok but not great" for about 8 days after treatment (and bad for two of those days) and this time is was 3-4 "bad" days and then ok. I think given the preference i would say i prefer getting the bad out of the way to make way for the good!

of course it could also be a combination of siobhan coming back into town and retail therapy ( i have been buying books like crazy for graphical research since saturday) but i don't know. the adventure continues.

orange you glad i didn't say banana

my mom visited me this past weekend from st louis and we got to hang out. it was a little cold walking around but we did manage to find something to do - we saw the sagmeister show at deitch, glad we showed up on saturday and not too much later, above is a picture of the actual wall of thousands of bananas they had installed, it was already a bit ripe and i have no idea how bad it must smell now. or good, depending on how much you like bananas.

there was also an inflatable monkey, which looked like it was made professionally. something is lost when that level of perfection is reached, a flavor that only exists in the made for the moment thing. later that night we saw many examples of this at the "kaiju big battel" event anney and keith invited us to-

although ostensibly a series of wrestling matches connected by loose storylines involving city-destroying monsters and the heroes that battle them, we found the show interesting just for the variety of costumes and monsters that they would drag out. The above lobster-looking thing was called "Call me Kevin", other monsters of note included Dust Bunny, Steam-Powered Boulder, and some type of surfing chicken. The costumes were really built for battle- these guys were actually wrestling in them, doing jumps and flips off of turnbuckles without pieces of tentacle or whatever coming off. i would guess it is some type of rubberized foam... my own predilection for making giant animal costumes to wrestle in was whetted by this event and made me wish for good health so i can get back to the important work of... making giant animal costumes to wrestle in.

sunday we relaxed, were meant to see chinatown's lunar new year parade but instead spent the day shopping for a tripod at B&H and watching movies at home. we did make it back to chinatown that evening for a little hot pot with ned, james, and mo... my suspicions were validated, grand szechuan has fresher veggies than hot pot city, there i said it... and the price was exactly the same , actually cheaper , $26 per person with tip and we all left full. unfortunately for james there were no live crabs this time, but perhaps next.

Tigaduck the Brave

a quick word about my friend tigaduck -
last week when i had the food poisoning i was basically up from 230am till 630am clutching my stomach. when siobhan woke up she asked if i needed anything, and i replied that the only thing i could think of that would make me feel good would be some flat ginger ale ... and a hot pad. clutching my aching stomach in misery all night had made me remember that this used to happen in high school sometimes (for who knows what reason i would get stomach cramps) and we had this hot pad you could plug into the wall then clutch against your stomach, warming it up and making it feel better. Siobhan did not know where to get a hot pad but she did know where a hot water bottle was.... enter the tigaduck!

Tho to me he resembles a zebra taxi more than a tiger duck, tigaduck lives downstairs from me with our friend Ryan. He was acquired some years ago in Germany, where apparently he is/was as big of a deal there as Barney was here some years ago. (quick note- did you know that Germany is the largest economy in Europe? and that light travels 30cm in one billionth of a second [a nanosecond]?)

here is tigerente in action-


what makes tigaduck special to me is that he contains for some reason a hot water bottle. This I thought was particularly brilliant because you are always trying to keep the towel around the water bottle and it slips and you burn... not good news. this thing has a ZIPPED IN HOT WATER BOTTLE so you can put it in, hold it tight, and drift off to sleep feeling somewhat better no matter what your stomach says.

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Tigaduck for helping me out, and to thank Ryan and Siobhan. For some reason i have a hair trigger stomach lately (i think last nite it didn't like the sundried tomatoes?) and Tigaduck makes it all better.

from wikipedia-
The Tigerente (lit., tiger duck) is a children's book character created by German artist and author Janosch. It is a little wooden toy duck on wheels, striped black on yellow, that is pulled around on a string by various characters of Janosch's books. It never gets a line of dialogue, but still has become by far the most popular figure ever created by the author. The Tigerente has since appeared on most traditional cultural icon hangouts, including posters, postcards, high school art projects, buttons, mugs, socks, umbrellas, cutlery, and nearly every item of children's furniture imaginable, and has been the namesake and mascot of a German TV show, all without ever uttering a single line.

Pandas, Wrasslin' , Brains

so tuesday evening i had dinner with Anney Fresh and her fiancé Keith and they showed me all the cool stuff they brought back from their trip to Japan this summer, including the above Panda hat. It has always been my contention that a stellar costume can be made from just a few elements if those elements include a really good hat. This, my friends, is a really good hat, if you go to youtube and type in anneyfresh you can see her wearing it while judging the idiotarod.


all in all i have been feeling ok this second week of the second treatment, tho i have to say i felt bad tuesday. Not necessarily nausea or food poisoning or anything, just a general malaise. this i attribute mostly to siobhan returning to boston for a few weeks to sort out her affairs, and i think i was just used to having her here and then when she left i was sad. but she has assured me she is returning soon so i am feeling much better today.



later that night something quite interesting occured- the cancer jumped out of me for a second. Surprised, i just had time for one quick photo before we began wrasslin'.

i am sorry to say that he got the upper hand and was able to crawl back inside, for the time being. i just wanna say to mr hodgkins- don't get comfortable pal you're not gonna be there forever. i mean, don't like move in and change your address and start getting your new yorker delivered here, because you are movin' out. you might as well reserve the truck now, try and get a deal on some storage space, start asking leukemia and non-hodgkins if they can help you next tuesday, WHEN YOU ARE GETTING KICKED OOOOOUUUUTTTT!!!! coz my mom's gonna be there next tuesday and it's you and me bro and you - are - going- down. just so you know.



oh, in the super amazing good news department, look what showed up today-
have you ever seen anything so beautiful? so full of potential laffs? i am very very very excited about this new WOW version of CRANIUM!!!!! and can't wait to have a big screaming CRANIUM fest of my very own.


happy chinese new year!

Pictures of Queens

This weekend, amongst going to both a La Chandaluer party (an obscure french holiday on which you must eat crepes and hold a coin while flipping a crepe in the pan to ensure good luck) and a Groundhog day party on the same day, Siobhan and I got slightly lost in queens and ended up at a place called Willets Point. It is right near the new Mets stadium and is like walking thru a third world country where they only sell auto parts. There is little paving and there seems to be no sewers, or only sewers clogged with giant sections of large trees. I didn't take many pics of the gentlemen selling used auto parts as that seemed intrusive and slightly foolhardy, but i did get a selection of other images i hope you enjoy.

No we did not eat here tho i hear from birds that the mexican/south/central american food around this neighborhood is the real deal.

The pictures are in no particular order


(top) many places flew flags of origin of the owners. this place i think was owned by americans.

(below)love that drop shadow!


the city is really up on keeping the streets and sewers here operational...


There were some monster trees around here, in defiance of the insane amount of pollution. Siobhan says they are London Plane Trees.



more handpainted fonts goodness



the view from the 7 train.



After that we went to Adam and Jessies house to watch the Patriots become, finally, defeated. But there were spicy brownies and commercials with dogs so the day must be called good.

The Return of the Feeling Good

Ahh, saturday. After a few days of felling dodgy i am beginning to feel normal again. The waves of nausea this time were different than the last - the first few days i didn't feel anything (besides of course my own self inflicted food poisoning, see below) and then the next few days (thurs and fri) were a bit sickly, thursday by far being the worst. Thursday nite i came home and Siobhan made Pastina (little star pasta) with butter, which i shoveled in like a zombie spooning warm brains then trundled off to bed at the rockin hour of 730. Slept right thru to the morning, i did, waking up at 730am thinking i could use a bit more sleep. Which i have to say is a bit normal for the few days after chemo, i wake up and feel nausea, eat something, feel slightly better but still not good enough to get going, and then just make myself get dressed and leave the house for work. As soon as i get moving it's alright - friday morning i realized i was fine when i found myself (a scant hour after lying on the couch clutching the hot water bottle to my embattled stomach bemoaning my fate of having to leave the house for the day) hanging off a scaffolding by one leg switching out the battery on a stop-motion camera. It was only twelve feet above the ground on a dusty construction site that the thought ran thru my mind that potentially i was no longer nauseous.

So work continued as it does, i have found that the tactic of eating as soon as i start to feel bad still works, the trick being finding something tasty that is fast and close to the office. One of my current answers is the delightful ham and cheese on croissant from the Paris Bakery around the corner from my office. Full disclosure-it is actually a vietnamese sandwich place, but since they make fresh bread (and i assume are infatuated with Paris as a possible conceptual reality) they call is Paris, and i guess once you call a place Paris you might as well start selling croissants with ham and american cheese on them. Which i guess works out for me at this juncture so i'll stop complaining. Vive la France!

Friday nite was nice, even though it was raining cats, i met Siobhan and Alexis and we went to China Mirch in Murray Hill. We have been chatting about this type of food (chinese food made for the Indian Palette) for a while so were excited to try. Unfortunately we needed to bring a few more people (tho that would have made getting a table at this very full place on friday nite a rather imposing prospect) in order to try all the tempting concoctions on the menu. we finally settled on fried okra (which was presented like frites ) lollipop chicken ( little legs dipped in some mystery Eastern spice combination, my faves) basil fish (yum) stir fried tofu and veg (good shrooms) and singapore noodles (not enough curry). Overall a steller meal, made even better by the date pancakes and ice cream we had for desert.

maybe i should change the focus of the blog from "ive got cancer" to "stuff i am eating while i happen to be going thru this cancer thing"


Grace, i have been rambling haven't i? OK back to work for all of you, with one more recommendation - go see /rent "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" , it is amazing, all shot from the point of view of a guy who is paralyzed and can only blink one eye.