Some random thoughts early on a Sunday morning:  My visit to the cardiologist went well on Thursday.  One of the side effects of the chemo is that it raises blood pressure rather dramatically, so I've been taking three different meds to control the hypertension.  Thursday, the reading was so low that the cardiologist said I could stop taking one of the pills.  This was good news because at this point, any reduction in meds is psychologically a boost.  On second thought, though, I realized that it was the oncologist, not the radiologist, who had prescribed the meds, so I'm waiting till my Tuesday appointment with the doctor in KC to make the change.

The regular schedule with the oncologist had been one appointment every month.  For two months, he'd simply do bloodwork, I'd get the expensive bone-strengthening shot, and we'd have a consultation.  The third month, I'd have the full battery of tests (CT scan, full-body x-rays, and bloodwork) in addition to the shot and consult.  Now, though, we're down to two visits in three months and one shot every third month.  This Tuesday's visit will be fairly short, since it's just drawing the blood and then meeting with Dr. Van.  If we meet with his assistant (Dr. Heins) instead, everything will go quickly, since she is always on time (and we like her very much).  Dr. Van, however, is always running an hour late, so the afternoon will be longer.

Strange factoid:  last night, we watched "We Bought a Zoo," a feel-good movie (bad omen #1) that did not have one unpredictable moment in the entire two hours.  All was predictable not because there was any recognizable human (or animal, for that matter) behavior, but because it ticked every formulaic box.  I'm convinced that the more often a movie touts that it is based on a true story, the less likely it is to be credible on its own.  The based-on-a-true-story gambit is an old one.  One of the many purposes of the introduction to Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter is to add another layer of fiction by assuring an audience potentially skeptical of a fictive "romance" that the story is based on actual events.  Nabokov brilliantly satirizes this American habit in his intro to Lolita.  But, as so often, I digress.  What was strange was that about two-thirds of the way through the movie, which is set in California, when Matt Damon goes to Home Depot to buy supplies, there is a close-up of his swiping his credit or debit card.  And the card is from Topeka's own bank Capitol Federal Savings.  The name and the logo are clearly visible. 

I finally finished a very long slog through the gay novelist David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk.  It was one of Amazon's "Howard, we have a recommendation for you" choices, so I had downloaded it on my Kindle.  Although the subject matter (also based on a true story and real characters--will I never learn?) sounded interesting, it was 500 pages of the "unlived life."  Henry James is a master of that theme.  David Leavitt is not Henry James.  Now, after a number of reactions to my post debating burial vs. cremation, I've begun Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death Revisited.  I remembered that it was her book (plus Evelyn Waugh's novel The Loved One) that were so shocking about the funeral business sixty years ago.  Mitford updated her book in 1995, so it's already somewhat outdated, but it seems still applicable, and the first pages have made me laugh outloud.  "Trenchant" might be a good word to describe her wit.

And now it's time for "Up" with Chris Hayes, my favorite show of the week.