16 Friday Jul 2010
Posted in quizzes
Tags
| You Are an Appaloosa Horse |
You are extremely independent and even a little stubborn. You always do your own thing. You have an amazing endurance, and you can soldier on through almost anything. You’re one tough cookie. You are quite intelligent and resourceful. You enjoy solving problems, and you’ve definitely got some street smarts. You work hard and never give up. You are loyal and reliable… you always get the job done. |
~ swiped from raincoaster ~
15 Thursday Jul 2010
I have to say that this summer is going so much better than the last two. Not only for the obvious reason of this being the first summer in three years that I haven’t been on chemo, but also because of summer jobs and work projects. First off, Nog has got a gig this month teaching a couple of intensive English classes at the language school across the street which – fingers crossed! – might also mean work in August, and perhaps a steady part-time position afterwards. This takes a whole lot of stress off of me as it means Nog will be able to pay his share of the rent & bills, at least in July. Meanwhile, my long-time student, good friend and GP Agustín has continued with his once a week English classes this month. He has always taken a “time out” from July-September and so I reckon these are kind of sympathy classes, but what the heck – I’ll take em! And I am continuing with my social media part-time job, which I am LOVING. Which for me sums up all the paid work I am doing, however…
14 Wednesday Jul 2010
Posted in animals & pets, cats, home, sevilla
13 Tuesday Jul 2010
Sometimes I think about the things that have happened over the past two years,which never would have happened if I hadn’t got cancer. And amongst all the nightmarish crap there is actually quite a lot of good stuff too. One of the best things has been meeting and getting to know my friends Gaelen and Jed, both of whom I met on the Colon Club forum. There are a lot of very good people on that forum, but somehow I’ve always felt especially connected to these two guys in a way that’s difficult to explain. I’ve also had many parallel experiences with both, and most recently with Jed…
You probably remember the seriously bad scanxiety I had before my last PET scan a couple of weeks ago, feeling almost certain that the other shoe was about to drop and I was going to end up back on chemo this summer. Or worse – that they would find more tumours and chemo would no longer be an option. Well, at that same time Jed was very seriously looking at that latter situation after having had a scary PET scan result a few months earlier. His follow-up PET was scheduled for a few days after mine but he then had to wait another ten days to get his results. Which was yesterday.
Jed’s been in Taiwan with his family this past year, teaching and writing, which means we are in way different time zones. And so when I woke up yesterday morning I knew that he would have already seen his doctor. First thing I did was grab the iPhone and check my emails, and there it was. A quick report from Jed saying those magic words – nothing visible on the scan – and I almost cried from relief and happiness, also knowing how relieved and happy he must be feeling. As he said, “we have both had our doctors convinced we were beyond hope before climbing back from the brink”, and I think it was over on the forum that he first made the remark about us activating our wonder twin powers, which made me laugh. But hey – it worked!
So, well done my wonder twin.
Together we are invincible!
12 Monday Jul 2010
First off I should say that I’m not actually interested in football, though I’ve occasionally watched important matches. The UEFA Cup final in 2003 comes to mind. And so last night, just before the Spain/Netherlands World Cup final began I suggested to Nog that we go out and find a bar showing the game on television. We first tried Cervecería Giralda across the street but it was packed out. Then I remembered that when I was giving a mini tapas tour the previous week I took my client to Casa Roman – there was a match that night too and all the staff were standing around like meerkats, eyes glued to the telly. So we went over there and, sure enough, same scene but not overly-crowded. In fact, we even managed to pull up a couple of chairs quite close to the “action” and grab a couple of beers. The match had begun.
As football matches go, it wasn’t a very exciting one. But it was fun to be in the midst of a small yet exuberant crowd who were very vocal about, well, everything. In fact, I was enjoying their reactions more than the match itself. But then as they went into extra time I started to get excited too. Could we win? Hell yeah, we HAD to win. I found myself perched on the edge of my chair and when Spain scored their winning goal I was up on my feet laughing and cheering and yelling with the rest of them. I’m so glad I went out to watch this with friends and neighbours – it really felt wonderful sharing all that excitement and happiness. On the way home we stopped by the fountain in front of the Cathedral as I was sure it was going to be full of crazy revellers – and I was right.
2010 FIFA World Cup Final
Spain 1 / Netherlands 0
casa azahar 