We're having late fall weather in this early October.  Sunday morning we had our first hard freeze, and as I type, it's just a degree above freezing, and the furnace is running for the second day.  It was exactly two years ago this October that the pains began in my left shoulder, pains that should have indicated metastatic cancer.  After six months of misdiagnosis (torn rotator cuff, bursitis) and ineffectual treatment (cortisone, physical therapy), the cancer was finally discovered in April 2011.  The prognosis was less than a year, but it's now two years after the symptoms appeared, and this is my 90th post (I hadn't counted on writing so much or for so long) with over 7000 pageviews.  Here's thanking modern medicine and the doctors at KU Med.

After a couple of bad days, yesterday was fine--a good appetite, no stomach problems, and a fair degree of energy.  I had leftover Thai food for lunch with no adverse effects.  One of the most frustrating things is not being able to establish any solid connections between diet or behavior and their results.  Who would think that Thai food two meals in a row (including dinner the previous evening) would be all right?  Rice is generally good; fried foods are generally bad.  But even that isn't always the case.  I indulged in fried chicken tenders last week with no problems.  I wake up every morning full of energy, but with no idea how the rest of the day is going to unfold.  For someone who had always thought of himself as independent and adventurous, it's been quite an adjustment.  The same can be said, of course, for Mohamed.  Until April 13 of last year, he was living with one person (albeit one with a sore shoulder).  Then the word 'cancer' came into play, then metastatic cancer, then surgery...a whole new world with new challenges for him too.  In addition to taking a full load of classes, he has to balance physical and emotional support.  So here's thanking him as well.

My favorite word in French is reconnaissant.  It has a richer meaning than its English equivalent, describing not only awareness but also gratitude.  It's important, I think, that I try to remain reconnaissant of all there is to be thankful for. 

To be selfish, though, just a little bit, yesterday morning I decided I needed a new laptop.  The one I'm working on now is six years old, practically a relic, although it works perfectly well and serves all my needs.  Remember when computers were out of date after a year or so?  But then they reached a point where they had all the memory and speed that a regular user could need.  So now it's the new smart phones that need updating once a year and laptop sales have stalled.  I increased the memory on this one to 2Gb, and I could use it another six years and still have memory to spare.  (I remember taking a computer class in the late 90s where the instructor told us that 512Kb was more memory than we'd ever need--how naive that sounds now.)  But my current laptop doesn't have an HDMI port (frustrating when I want to connect the computer to the TV) or a numeric keypad (the easiest way to add accent marks and other symbols--alt + a four number combo rather than the improvised ways that work for me now on some programs but not on others, like this one) or a built-in camera.  So I went to my favorite shopping site, Overstock.com, and found one that remedies all those deficiencies and increases the memory to 6Gb and the speed to 2-3GHz at an extremely reasonable price.  Now I just have to be patient for a week or so until the UPS guy arrives.

I spent part of yesterday afternoon saving files and pictures from this computer onto a flash drive.  I had set aside an hour or so for the transfers, but it took about 15 minutes to transfer everything onto the teeny drive that can hold 4 Gb.  My 1987 Rip Van Winkle would be flabbergasted, to use Mohamed's new favorite word.  I did spent some extra time re-reading the last article I ever wrote and one of my favorites.  It's an analysis of linguistic invention in Melville's very strange (and only heterosexual) novel Pierre.  Usually, I write fast, but I've never worked so hard on one article in my life.  And when it was, I thought, finally finished and polished, the editor of Leviathan: The Journal of Melville Studies wanted me to look at the rest of Melville's fiction to see whether he coined as many bizarre words there as in Pierre.  Mardi just about did me in: it must be the worst novel ever written by a major author.  And then, when I was absolutely sure that I was done, the editor wanted me to re-format it so that paragraph and quotation indentations were not done by using the tab key or the space bar.  Try it.  It ain't fun--possible, but a giant pain.

So now it's an hour after chemo, so I can have my morning cereal, check to see what the dog has been doing in the dark outside, return my attention to "Morning Joe," and log-in to my Overstock.com account to see whether my new laptop has shipped.  Patience has never been one of my virtues.