Got to smell the roses here...

Yesterday I got caught in traffic...water main break off my exit. Traffic backed up for miles. Had I truly been tuned into the radio that I had on I would have been smart enough to get off before the jam started.
I forgot basically everything I was going to do this week. I realized I missed sending my aunt's birthday card. I forgot to send in my rebate check from a Best Buy purchase. I might have possibly even worn my socks inside out. I've been running around like a headless chicken for good reason.
And I forgot to mention something of importance to you faithful readers. Clean scan. Yup...another three months out and I am still cancer free according to those high tech images. With all the hassles of life and all the frustrations, I forgot to take a moment to tell you that everything once again is alright. It's like getting your driver's license renewed sort of...still okay to drive through life.

Politics...feeling overwhelmed? Check this out

Iowa and New Hampshire are so last week.
Now it's time to think about what you want in a candidate and with all the mixed messages, sensationalism and name calling...you are at a standstill. By saying this, I know I am taking a risk, but let's just say I feel our country would be safer in the hands of any of the candidates than I have felt its been in the last oh...say...seven years or so.
With that being said, I do not intend on playing 'eenie meenie miney mo' either. This is a highly important time for everyone to consider who can turn things around. Not that my political stance bears any weight out there but I was stymied. Repeat: I am not a pundit. So I decided to use a piece of really cool technology that my sister Mary sent me. Please do not think that it should be the litmus test for your voting but it's a fun way to see what they come up with. Who is your man or woman? Check here to see...
http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

SAVE VIVY! but I'm off strike.

I might have enacted a strike in haste.
Number 1- One blogger on strike does not really have an effect. And I had no picket sign.

People just stopped reading my page. Heh heh
Much like the writer's strike, huh? Don't get me wrong, I absolutely support what the writer's are asking for. Without these talented writers how would we ever get the creativity and level of entertainment we have? It would be all reality all the time, basically.

However maybe some people are turning to alternative sources of entertainment. Maybe youtube is getting an influx of people watching things labelled grandma plays laser tag or squirrels gone wild. As an aside, do you ever get an idea in your head and think it's the most revolutionary idea EVER. Then you find someone else has thought of it. I thought squirrels gone wild would be a great name for a spoof...it is taken. If you feel like testing my theory there are about a gazillion so-titled videos.

Number 2- I don't know how to strike and I think I might have caused a backlash.

Pre-strike I was getting hits from as far as Japan, Germany and all of over. Now I get 2 hits a day. By the way Thanks Mom and Dad.

But I have to share with you that someone from Sandwich Massachusetts is reading this. What a cool name for a town. I really hope you do community-tie in activities out there and fun with this. Do you do host themed eating events? Gosh I hope so.

I would like to give you a shout out and if you give this a visit again...I implore you to throw me an email and just comment on here. Tell everyone what life is like in Sandwich. A little google investigation led me to the fact that Sandwich is just outside Cape Cod.

Hey, this could be better than having a third grade pen pal or maybe even a crazy prision boyfriend. Okay maybe not the latter.

EPILOGUE:

PLEASE CONTINUE YOUR EFFORTS TO SAVE VIVY and the show SIDE ORDER OF LIFE.

The actress who plays Vivy, Diana Maria Riva even sent me an email thanking me for the support. If you are on facebook join the Save Vivy group. Myspace? Friend Vivy Porter.

This is the time to let Liftetime know. If you haven't seen Side Order, tell them you'd like a chance to see it because you've heard through the grapevine that you should be watching it.

Please follow this link to LIFETIME TV's comment board, register yourself and type in on the comment board. It doesn't have to be complex. SAVE VIVY will even suffice. http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/shows/side-order-life

I'm on strike, okay more like hiatus

I don't think anyone reads these posts...besides a few college friends...but this writers strike is really making me frustrated. So I have decided to do a mini strike...I will not post on here until I hear news (hopefully good) about the renewal of Side Order of Life.
Please leave your commments of support for Side Order on the Lifetime tv web page.
Realistically, I guess I am just talking to my college friends and so Carol, Deidre, Jill, Deidre...get on this. This show is fantastic!
Please read post below to see why I care.
SAVE VIVY!

Save Vivy!

I don't watch a lot of t.v. anymore. Now the televison is just what it used to be...background noise.
It's all for the absence of the only show I watched with regularity, Side Order of Life. In the fall it went on hiatus...and now with the writer's strike its future remains in the balance. If you didn't catch this new series when it premiered this summer you missed out.
Starring Marissa Coughlan, Diana-Maria Riva, Christopher Gartin and 90210 alum Jason Priestley.
It's a show about figuring things out, re-evaluating priorities, friendships and the whole mixed bag that is life. You might say...hmmm...what makes it so special?

Number one on my list is the portrayal of Vivy Porter, a young woman who is grappling with a cancer diagnosis. Yet this isn't your typical plot point during sweeps week. This is not the over dramatic and melodramatic fare we see in other t.v. series. We won't mention any names. Other shows use cancer as drama and then either kill off the character or never speak of the cancer again. Phew... Dust yourself off...pretend life is magically fixed.

Vivy is not that kind of character and Side Order of Life is not that kind of show.

For once a show dealt with cancer in a responsible, realistic way. They allow viewers to see a person with cancer as courageous, funny, bold but most of all... just like the rest of us.

If you have any interest in how the media portrays cancer survivors I urge you to flood Lifetime with emails of support for this show. Side Order of Life is doing it right. It would be sad if this groundbreaking show fell victim to the writer's strike. Check out this clip...



Better yet...PLEASE COMMENT HERE...share your thoughts about Side Order and I will send them on.

First read of 2008

My first post in January. I guess I didn't expect 2008 to creep up this fast...but here I am. I'm still trying to recover from New Years. I have this lovely way of looking at extended rest...with frustration. I've been held to various stages of rest and convalescence for way too many large chunks of my life but sometimes you have to listen to the body.

During this post ball drop slump I have had the pleasure of reading Sean Swarner's book, "Keep Climbing." Actually I just picked it up last night and have not been able to put it down. Sean is a fellow Hodgkins survivor who climbed Everest! Sean too is a two-time cancer survivor, his second being Askin's Sarcoma. By the way this second round with the big C held a 6 percent survival rate. You might expect that someone who beat those odds would take life light and easy...no sir...Sean decided to start climbing mountains.
Holy macanoli! Holi Denali!
After 'meeting' in the chat room following the Stupid Cancer Show segment I typed to him, telling him our students were reading Into Thin Air. Graciously, he offered to answer some of their questions via email. Actually, as I was reading his email the other night it seemed almost as if I was reading a note from a college friend, not someone who just recently completed the Seven Summits. For a guy whose had his head farther in the clouds than most of us could even fathom...he sure seems pretty down to earth.
I have about 50 more pages to go this morning but I am telling you the book is very powerful.
Sean, if you are reading...thanks for sharing your story with the world.

Year in Review...Part Thee and a third

The Year 2007.

Year in review...another installment.
Well, let's see we've covered up to June.
In July there was some major celebrite (notice: blogger doesn't do accente gue) in the Rochester area. On July 4th acclaimed race horse Funny Cide took Finger Lakes Race Track by storm.

And yes, you guessed it...the horse lover in me just could not resist. Actually, I've always wanted to see a triple crown race...and seeing a triple crown contender run against horses here in my hometown is as close as I've come so far. Seriously, do you know how much tickets to the Derby cost? This event...free baby. Anyway, at seven years of age this guy with the comical name was considered a senior citizen. The picture to the right is not great...but was taken literally balancing on tippy toe over the crowds around the paddock area. I swear he winked at me. I'm kidding folks...I'm kidding.

Anyway.... Before they called 'riders up' I went to a tent where the owners of Funny Cide were signing autographs for the public. Funny was quite busy and stamping hoofprints would have spoiled his pre-race concentration of course. These gentlemen were some of the most charming and gracious people I've ever had the pleasure to stand in line to meet. Spending most of my summers in Henderson Harbor, it was a delight to meet the hometown heroes; the pride of nearby Sackets Harbor. Yes, these blue collar boys took on the blue bloods and won. A bargain colt became the sensation to win the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in 2002...just missing the Triple Crown ringer at Belmont. While in line I ran into a former student of mine. With camera in hand my mother snapped a photo for the two of us. Oh, yeah and the race? Funny won. Yep. The old timer proved he had one more win left in him. I will not include any video since I don't have any and basically I was screaming so loud I nearly blew my Mom's eardrums out. What a good sport she was. Shortly after his win at the Wadsworth Memorial...Funny Cide was retired. We saw his last career win...and it happened here.

Later on in July...I left the country...yeah...yeah...I got the heck out of Dodge. Just kidding it was just a three week trip...no green card. Here's how that all went down.

When I made it through cancer the second time around I knew I would have to make some big leaps to get me revved up to truly live again. It's hard to feel like you're living when you're trying to just live period.

I guess I could have done something less cliche (no accente gue again) but I believe in kismet...you know...fate, the universe speaking to you. Does the universe speak to you...if you believe in it, yes it speaks.

After the New Year I got a letter in the mail inviting me to a reunion of the study abroad program I participated in back in college. Hello...Universe calling...At the time I opened the letter I was still a zombie and not capable of even thinking about travels or see ahead to the healthy future. I was in remission but far from recovered from what it took to put me there. Quietly I folded the letter, tucked it away and sighed. ...Leah..come in...do you read? Yet things got better and several weeks later, feeling a little more like myself I wondered...what if? It didn't take much to realize this was something I needed to do.

Beat cancer. Will travel. Problem Numero Uno....money. Solution: use my savings...worry about rainy days later. Something was calling me back to Oxford and to see all the places I've always dreamt about beyond England. Europe.. this had not even been in the travel plan. With a mission I visited the travel agent, had a plan and hurriedly scrawled a letter to my cousins in Yorkshire. I'm coming to see you, I wrote.

Though I really envisioned this trip as a solo venture part of the way through my planning my friend Megan asked if she could go along. Thinking about it a little more, I realized it might be fun to have her along for part of it. Yet the rest of the trip I needed to do on my own. She joined me for 2 weeks while we toured European cities on a whirlwind bus tour with Contiki. I highly recommend this company if you want to travel abroad with people in the 20-30s demographic. The best part besides seeing all these places was truly in the people we shared it with on our bus. I met some of the coolest people from Australia, South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand and Canada...oh and America represented too.

Together we saw Paris, London, Amsterdam, the Rhine Valley and Munich, Innsbruck Austria, Venice and Lucerne Switzerland. In addition Megan and I also saw Brussels ourselves where we met up with a friend of my friend's friend named Julie. She showed us Brussels in a way we might never have seen it if going it as just your ordinary map toting tourists. Thank you Julie for your kindness to a friend of a friend of a friend. By the way, the book she is holding is a thick Bible style menu of the 2,000 available beer offerings at a hole-in-the wall pub in Bruxelles (let's be authentic here). I am one quarter Flemish afterall.

The remaining week I stayed...and just as I had orginally planned I hoofed it by myself in London and in the rest of England. I joined the Bonaventure crew at Oxford. The reunion wasn't as well attended as I had anticipated, but it was so good to be back at Somerville and see all the wonderful old haunts of my time in Oxford. Minus the maximum study power hours and pub crawls it was just like old times. After it was over....it was time to head North for my cousins'. It was a good break from touristy fare. In Yorkshire, I had a chance to rest and I focused on catching up with them. Please see the video to really experience a spot of tea with this charming couple.

As you can see...Jack and Audrey are the two sweetest cousins, not to mention excellent hosts. I ate like a queen after many forrays on food and scarfed up take away on buses and trains. She even made lemon curd, muffins, cookies or biscuits. One night they treated me to Fish N' Chips in town. Though they are both in their 80s now, in their younger days they travelled to countries and places all over the world, including many visits to the U.S., which is how I became acquainted with them as a child. I used to hear about their adventures to far off places. I likened it then to the way Gobo from Fraggle Rock would get postcards from his Uncle, Travelling Matt. They call their desire to travel "itchy feet" and so too have I inherited this trait...perhaps not by nature...but more recently by nurture.

This adventure made me excited about life again...because life in and out of sterile hospital floors and infusion units had really thrown me into a funk. Travel seemed to be metaphorically related to the whole idea of overcoming cancer. Without really knowing if things would work out I felt I could roll with whatever came my way. Yet travel was a good escape from the practical and mundane bits of life. After years of hospitals and holding back on dreams this was my Everest, if you will. It was something that seemed impossible in the throws of all that life had thrown my way. I saw many things I had always dreamed about but just as important I revisited the place where I was happiest in a time when I was most at peace.When I was a junior in college...that summer in England was magical. Bryan Adams sang about the iconic summer of '69...mine was thirty years after that one. I wanted to believe that that summer of '99 could be back in my heart again. It was a dream I sometimes wondered if I would ever live to see. I even hope the chance to go back will come again... but if it doesn't I will always be grateful that I took it while it was here. You see, when you live knowing unequivocally that tomorrow is not assured... you have to pretend that today is all you have. I just hope there are many more tomorrows... And lots more adventure in the future.

I may or may not have a final end of the year post but in any case I want to wish you all a very happy New Year. May 2008 bring all of you the best that is in store!

Cue the hopeful Auld Lang Syne soundmix.

Love Always, Leah