I wanted to thank everyone for the birthday wishes over the past few days. I think people like me more because of how belated the wishes are becoming. Part of me is super impressed. I swear to you that I got seven late birthday wishes today. My birthday was two days ago! I'm so happy. Keep them coming. I’ll take all I can get. It was truly overwhelming to hear from so many different people from so many different walks of my life. I also got my first royalty payment from Hope

Around the start of the baseball season, I like to wax poetic about our national past time. But considering baseball was supposed to start in March, and here we are, finishing out opening weekend on the cusp of the start of the school year, this is what we are going to get. Anyone who knows me knows of my deep love for the Cubs. So I’ve been chomping at the bit to get this thing started simply because of my fandom. But I also think there is something important about following

Abracadabra. It officially happened. It was yesterday, early afternoon, and I was sitting in the garage of my parents house. Sweat beaded down the back of my neck. I’m pretty sure that was from the late July heat, but one never knows. All I know is that it happened. I officially got nervous about going back to school. It kind of hit me all at once. I thought about needing pants and shirts and socks. A new pair of Chucks to light my students path. Oh yeah, and then the global

I’ve been spending a lot more time at my parent’s house these past few weeks. Doing absolutely nothing, mind you. It’s just that my three flights of stairs take a lot out of me. Most days I’ve got one, maybe two trips up and down. So once I get out I like to sit somewhere and not have to worry about traipsing. The main place I’ve been spending time has been my parents back yard. There’s the deck, there’s the driveway. There’s the garage in case it gets too hot and looks like

In other Pandemic related news, yesterday I woke up around noon and my wife was watching“The Floor is Made of Lava" on Netflix. Not that there’s anything wrong with watching “The Floor is Made of Lava.” This is a free country. She can watch whatever she wants. It didn’t feel like a total cry for help, it was just…you know… the floor is made of lava, and I have cancer, and it just felt like an odd way to spend a Sunday. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t tell what was weirder—t

Returned. That is the word that came to me this morning as I saw the news that John Lewis had passed away yesterday. That he was Resting. That he was Resting Well. That he had Returned. That he wasn’t from this world. None of us are really if we stop and think about it. We are here for a time, faced with a job to do. We do that job as much or as well as we choose to, and then we are let go. Returned. And hopefully resting well. He should be resting well…to face life the way R

Jaimie thinks the anti-depressants I’m on might be depressing me. She warned me they might. I don’t know whether or not to believe her, but I’ve never been on anti-depressants before, so what do I know. It’s not just her. A friend and an avid reader of the blog sent me a note the other day. It was more than a note, it was a gift. It was a Visa Gift Card, along with a commissioned drawing of a favorite picture of Jaimie and I. She said that she was reading between the lines o

I got a note from a former student today. He was in my Intro to Theatre Class at Furman. He was a Freshman on the baseball team, and been spending the year healing from Tommy John surgery. Being a baseball fanatic myself, we started chatting every morning before class about his injury, his healing, and about the weight of the Cubs historic end of year collapse. There is no suffering quite like baseball suffering. Simply due to the non-stop nature of the games. They seem just

Everything has an order This was the main thing I got from the Palliative Care team yesterday. Everything. Has. An Order. Again, I’ve been looking for the, “Take this one pill and all your problems will go away,” solution, but I don’t think that exists. I got there in the morning and laid out all my pills for the doctor and she went through them all. We got an order and made out a plan.We increased some dosages for certain things, shorted the time between when I took them. Th

I’ve written extensively about MRI’s over the past three and a half years. No one would ever describe an MRI as painful. They’re not. They’re loud. They’re long. They’re expensive. But painful? Never. Well, there is a first time for everything. This morning at 7:15 a. m. I took a pain pill and headed downtown to St. Francis for an MRI of my Pelvis and my Lower Lombard. I took one, just in case, because as I said, MRI’s are not painful. This was the first step in the informati